London - Edward Rutherfurd [585]
“Your name?”
“Fleming, sir.”
With his blue eyes blazing, the red-bearded admiral tapped his huge finger on Percy’s chest. “Fleming, if you are ever given food like this again, you are to pick up the telephone, ring HQ and ask for me personally. If they argue, you tell them I told you to. I’m trusting you to do that. Do you understand?”
“Oh yes, sir,” said Percy. “I do!”
“Good. Next time I come, we’ll have a song on that piano.” He looked at Herbert. “I shall eat supper with you.”
And after a brief private word with the station chief, the Admiral was off to galvanize and put heart into some other unsuspecting outpost.
Charlie listened: the drone had begun. Soon it became a roar as they came over, wave after wave of Heinkels and Dorniers, escorted by buzzing clouds of Messerschmitts. The barrage was beginning now, a huge chorus of bangs, thuds and rattles, and of bursts of light in the night sky; the searchlights waved back and forth like strange, silver wands in the darkness above. The first few nights the barrage had been an exercise in noise, just to make the Londoners feel that they were being defended; but the operation was improving now and some enemy planes were actually being hit.
Soon he could hear the thud and boom of the high-explosive bombs crashing down. They sounded closer than they had last night, and sure enough a few minutes later, the telephone rang with the first request.
“It’s the City. A serious fire near Ludgate. Off you go, lads.”
There were two categories of big fire. The largest of all would be an entire block: this was termed a conflagration. A serious fire was the other category, but would still require over thirty pumps, which meant that AFS taxi-trailers from all over London would be converging to help the handful of proper fire-engines of the regular service.
Charlie’s team crossed the river at Vauxhall Bridge, made their way along past the Houses of Parliament, up Whitehall and into the Strand. St Clement Danes flashed by. Then they found themselves joining a line of similar vehicles crawling down past the newspaper offices that lined Fleet Street, towards the church of St Bride’s.
It was quite a sight. A single high-explosive bomb, Charlie guessed, must have struck, ripping out the guts of two houses. But a cluster of magnesium fire bombs had also fallen and it was these that were really doing the damage. Though in themselves the fire bombs were not very fearsome – they burned like a large roman candle firework and you could actually kick them away or put them out – they often lodged somewhere practically inaccessible and before the firemen could get to them, the fire had frequently taken hold. In this case, half a dozen houses were already blazing furiously. The last house in the row had not yet caught, but there was an incendiary on the roof.
“Lines!” the officer in charge was calling. “More lines!”
They were close enough to the river to run hose lines straight down to its waters and pump from there. Already a dozen hoses were in operation.
“Come on,” said Charlie, “let’s go up there.” While the others started undoing the ladder, he and the senior man on the team ran up the narrow staircase. They could hear a crackling sound coming from the next house, but the walls were quite thick and they knew that if the fire came through underneath them they could move along the roof, or have a ladder run up to them.
Once on the roof, they saw the incendiary easily enough. It was lodged up beside the chimney. “Here,” said Charlie. “I could get that with a grappling hook.” He started climbing up towards it. His foot went through once, but he managed to grab a hold on the chimney to steady himself. “Lovely view!” he shouted, and, at a signal from his companion that the coast was clear, he took aim, swung, and knocked the fire bomb clean off the roof into the street below.
They had just neared the bottom of the stairs when they noticed the smell. For a second they looked at each other in surprise, then Charlie’s companion grabbed the stair rail. “I feel dizzy!” he cried, and Charlie