She could at least give him a message to give John Bartholomew when he returned. If he returned. Eileen had said he’d left immediately after he’d been injured. She’d had it wrong—he wasn’t the one injured—but she might have got the part about his leaving then right. He might have gone to hospital and then not been able to get back to St. Paul’s because of the fires.

“Humphreys went with them.”

“To which hospital?”

“I don’t know.”

“St. Bart’s, I think,” Nickleby said.

“Where is that?” Polly asked.

“Over there,” the first firewatcher said, and pointed over the northern edge of the roof at a sea of smoke and flame. “But you’ve no business going out there. You need to be in a shelter.”

An anti-aircraft battery just below them started up. “Nickleby, take her down to the Crypt,” he shouted over it, “and then get back up here!” He looked up at the smoky sky, listening to the planes, now nearly overhead. “We’re due for another round.”

Polly let Nickleby lead her over to a doorway at the base of the dome, then wrenched free of him and ran down the spiraling stone steps to the Whispering Gallery—oh, God, those stairs do go all the way up! If I’d only come that way!—and the telephone post of the watch just below it.

She shot past the startled fire-watch volunteer on the phone and on down the steps and out into the nave. And down it, through the whirlwind of burning cinders and orders of worship, past the visitors’ desk, past the charred sixpenny print of Light of the World, and fled out the door and down the steps into the fire.

Not a hope. Nothing can get through.

—BUS DRIVER TO A NURSE TRYING
TO REACH HER HOSPITAL,
29 December 1940

The City—29 December 1940

EILEEN AND THE CHILDREN MADE FIVE RUNS TO AND FROM St. Bart’s with Dr. Cross over the next few hours with no opportunity to get away from him. When they returned to St. Bart’s, he never even got out of the ambulance. Instead, he had Eileen back up to the entrance, where attendants unloaded the patients while he gave instructions to the house officer through the window and was told their next assignment.

“St. Giles, Cripplegate,” he’d say to Alf. “Do you know where that is?” and they were off again.

On the third run, Eileen had said, “We’re nearly out of petrol,” hoping she’d be sent to fill the tank when they arrived back at St. Bart’s and they could escape, but Dr. Cross had simply asked the incident officer for a tin, which he’d poured into the tank as flames licked less than five feet away.

We’ll have to make a run for it when we arrive back at St. Bart’s this time, Eileen thought.

But they didn’t go back. At the last moment the incident officer leaned in to say, “Injured ARP warden in Wood Street. St. Bart’s wants to know if you can pick him up on the way back.”