“They’re impossible,” she says. “Don’t mind them. They’re just teasing.”
“I know,” Julian says, inexpressibly pleased to be teased. “And I don’t mind.”
“So you know how to fight?” Mia says.
“I got lucky.”
“Sure you did,” she says, giving him an amused up and down. “I think it’s us who got lucky when you found us. I can’t tell you how badly we needed someone like you. Now that Lester’s gone, Duncan’s the only one facing the thieves. Nick comes sometimes, but he doesn’t like to fight. Wild likes to, but can’t. Hard to find someone who likes to and can.”
“Who says I like to?”
“I don’t know.” She squints at him. “You have that look about you.”
Julian squints at her in return, takes a breath. “Glad to help. Who is Lester?”
“One of us. He died last week,” she says.
“A blast got him.” At the house, Mia holds the kerosene lamp to light the way, and together she and Julian locate the woman’s half-open trunk in the debris of her partially destroyed home. The woman stands out in the street, shouting orders in a trembling but grateful voice. Near the spilled-out trunk lie necklaces and photo albums, a torn and dusty wedding veil, a child’s baptismal gown.
“Thanks for helping me,” Mia says to Julian as they collect the valuables. “Look how precious these small things are to her.”
“They’re not small,” Julian says. “They’re irreplaceable.”
“I guess. Often, finding these items is what matters most to these poor people. Not the house, but the wedding rings.”
Before he can respond, the all clear sounds. It’s an intense, one-note, high-pitched shriek, and it lasts one interminable minute. Julian can’t express the relief he feels for the blessed silence that follows. “Mia, you don’t do this every night, do you?” he says as they drag the trunk over the bricks. Please tell me you don’t do this every night.
“We try for every night. It doesn’t always work out.” She chuckles. “Sometimes Nick and Wild and Dunk get so drunk they can’t go anywhere when the siren calls. Finch judges them pretty harshly for that. He never overindulges.”
“In anything?”
That makes Mia blush for some reason and hurry past it without replying. “And the week Dunk had a concussion, I didn’t go. It wasn’t safe.” She shrugs, calmly acknowledging the reality of certain disadvantages of being a woman during war. “The thieves bring big wooden sticks. It’s a good thing all scrap metal, including tire irons, has been requisitioned by the city. Otherwise they’d be swinging iron, not wood, and we’d all be in a lot worse shape.”
After they pull the trunk out into the street and leave the old woman sitting on it, Julian looks Mia over. “Are you okay?” He stops her from walking. With his thumb, he wipes a trickle of blood off her forehead.
“Tonight was nothing.” She smiles. “It’s not always this easy.”
“This was easy?” Three houses destroyed, valuables lost, families homeless, looters. Seeing her quizzical expression, he coughs. “I mean, of course it’s been worse, but surely this wasn’t easy.”
Mia tells Julian that once Duncan had to battle six guys on his own.
“Well, I can attest that’s certainly not easy,” Julian says.
Sometimes parachute mines float down, she tells him, and when you get close to them, they explode and rip you open. That’s what happened to Lester. “Have you seen them?” When Julian shakes his head, she continues. Sometimes the incendiaries fall and everything is aflame and no one can get out. “Have you seen any of that?”
Julian nods. That he has seen, everything on fire and no way out. “People get caught under walls and broken glass.”
“Yes. Children—the few that are left—get trapped in the houses with their mums and grandmas and aunts. The older men and the kids can’t help. They sit nearby and watch their loved ones die under rubble no one can move or in a fire that’s out of control.”
“Are you afraid of fire, Mia?” Julian says, mining her face.
“I’m not not afraid of it,” she says, undisturbed by his scrutiny. “It’s not my favorite thing.”
He wants to ask her what her favorite thing is but doesn’t. What if she says it’s Finch?
“Today we helped a little,” Mia says. “But sometimes we can’t. Are you ready for that, to do everything in your power and still not be able to save the lady under the rubble?”
“No.”
He will never be ready for that.
MIA BRINGS HIM A MUG OF HOT TEA FROM THE REFRESHMENT truck. Julian must look as if he needs it.
“Where are you really from?” she says, looking at him calmly but questioningly. “Forgive me for saying this, but you look like this was your first bombing.”
“No, no, not my first,” he says hurriedly. “But I told you, I’ve been away. Just came back recently.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Mia says. “We all did. We had to. What a time to come back, though. Why didn’t you stay where you were? Where were you, Wales?” she asks, sparing him an answer. “Bet it was safer.”
“It’s true, Mia, there are magical dangers here,” Julian says. “But this is our last stand.”
“By our, you mean London, right? Not …” She flicks her finger between him and her and smiles, like a joke. And he forces a smile in return, like a joke also.
They remain at the site until almost daybreak. Eventually the fire brigades arrive and the police, and the rescue services, who remove the possessions from the blasted-out homes. The Incident Officer appears in an enormous truck. Finch works closely with the IO and without Finch’s meticulous itemization of damages, the IO’s job would be much harder. Finch is indefatigable. Hours after the all clear, he is still interviewing people, taking down information, even comforting them occasionally, if awkwardly. He tags what’s been found, he lists what’s been lost. He catalogs everything. He is like a less genius and less genial George Airy.
“Finch does this every night?” Julian asks Mia, a grudging respect creeping into his voice.
“Day and night,” she replies. “This is his full-time job. He gets paid by the Bethnal Green Council. There’s bombing during the day, too. You don’t know that either, East Ender? When did you get here, yesterday?”
“Hardy-har-har.”
