Page 127 of Strangers in Time

They had only a few more people left to find when the familiar humming commenced in the pavements. They both looked up to see the dark cigar shapes in the skies above. The ack-ack fire started and the lethal rounds soared skyward as a fresh battle began.

“Looks to be quite a few of the damn things,” Parker calmly noted over the noise of the guns and the engines roaring above them.

“Yes,” said Oliver grimly. “It does.”

They dashed off in different directions to fetch the remaining people who needed corralling.

When the first bombs struck, Oliver was knocking on the door of The Secret Garden tea shop.

“Desdemona. It’s Ignatius. It’s not safe to remain in your basement anymore. Please come with me.”

There was no answer.

He rapped harder. “Desdemona! It’s Ignatius. You must come with me to the shelter.” He tried the door but it was locked. He gave a searching look both ways down the alley just as more bombs exploded in the distance.

“Desdemona!”

Damn the woman.

The government had finally announced the truth of the V-2 rockets. More than a hundred had already been launched against London, and they hit without warning and obliterated everything in their path; no building or person aboveground was safe because they flew so fast that no real warning was possible. And while the sirens and the planes above indicated that a conventional air raid was looming, the V-2s could still strike at any time.

Oliver put his shoulder against the wood and pushed hard. It popped open and he burst into the tea shop’s front room.

“Desdemona!”

He searched everywhere around her shop, and then upstairs where her living quarters were, just to make sure she had not fallen asleep in bed and not heard the sirens. He then ran down to the basement. While many Londoners, like Macklin, preferred to shelter in place, he also knew that Macklin had rheumatism and bad lungs, and thus he always tried to get her to come to the shelter. She almost never consented to go, but this was the first time she had not answered his knock.

He found her in the basement. And it was now clear why she hadn’t come to the door. She was dead, and her death had not been natural. He was not speculating on this; the knife was still sticking out of her chest.

He knelt beside her. “My God.”

Her limbs were heavy, her skin still somewhat warm, but cooling rapidly. An explosion that rocked the tea shop brought the shocked Oliver back to the present.

He grabbed a blanket from a small cot in the corner and covered her body with it. He ran back up the steps and out of the shop,and sprinted down the alley as more detonations sounded in the distance.

He had one more person on his list. But the house where he lived was empty. The man must have headed to the shelter. At least Oliver hoped so. He looked up again; the sky was filled with aircraft, and the ack-ack raining upward was so intense that what had been a clear night sky was nearly opaque with smoke. He could hear the rapidity of machine-gun fire and the scream of aircraft engines, and he knew that meant RAF pilots were thousands of feet up there engaging the enemy.

As he rushed toward the shelter, two planes suddenly swooped low out of the dark sky. One he recognized as a British Beaufighter, the other a German Messerschmitt. The Messerschmitt was in the lead and the British plane was racing to catch up.

“Go get ’em,” Oliver called to the RAF pilot.

The German pilot must have spotted the uniformed Oliver because he pointed the Messerschmitt in his direction. A blistering salvo of bullets then raced at him, forcing Oliver to dive headlong through the glass door of a shop. He slid across the shard-littered floor, slammed into a counter, and lay stunned, as the two planes shot down the street, barely twenty feet off the ground.

Oliver rose and slip-slid over the broken glass to poke his head out of the shattered doorway. In the distance he saw an explosion. It was not a bomb; he had just seen the German plane veer out of control and slam into a building, as the Beaufighter soared upward to take on the Luftwaffe fleet once more.

Oliver breathed deeply and gingerly felt his sore arm.Before this war would I have ever imagined seeing two planes engaged in combat flying down the streets of Covent Garden!?

He walked to the next street, turned, and a minute later was in the shelter, closing the door securely behind him. He found Charlie and Molly, who were seated in a far corner.

“You okay, Mr. Oliver?” asked Charlie, eyeing the man’s dirty and cut-up clothing.

“Fine, Charlie, considering the alternative would have been extremely unpleasant.”

Hours later, when the bombing was over, Oliver took the children back straightaway to The Book Keep and then made a phone call.

Thirty minutes later the police showed up along with what looked like a doctor with his bulky medical bag. While Molly and Charlie watched in confusion, Oliver led the men over to the tea shop and inside.

When the police finally departed, Oliver returned to the shop, where both Molly and Charlie assaulted him with queries.

---