“You know,” Hazzley said, “these little celebrations make us pause and reflect, don’t they? Whether we want to or not. Yesterday, I got to thinking about my childhood. After the war, in 1945, a Victory Party was held on our street. I wasn’t quite five, but I can still haul details out of the past. The entire neighbourhood was involved in this huge street party. Wooden tabletops were set up on supporting trestles. All of us—children of every age—sat facing one another. And our mums, bless them, laid white tablecloths over those joined tables that stretched right down the middle of the road in the shape of a long, narrow V. Maybe the women had been saving their precious linens to unfurl at the end of the war. I know they had hopes of normalizing our lives and theirs. Everyone longed for ordinary, and ordinary we got! Fish-paste sandwiches. But for dessert, vanilla ice cream scooped out of a deep tub. What a treat! The best part was the cake. That’s what we wanted most, even on rations, even if it had to be cake with no eggs. I’ll never forget the cake. As I gobbled it up, I looked over at the mums, who were standing together in a subdued group once the children were settled. Every one of them holding a precious cup of tea—tea was rationed, you know, right through to 1952. And there was my mum, crying silently in the midst of this scene, tears rolling down her cheeks. For the sheer relief, I suppose, of the war being over.

“A few months after the Victory Party, my dad returned home. After that, we celebrated my first Guy Fawkes Day, also my fifth birthday, on November 5, 1945. Bonfire day! I’ve told you about that already.”

“You have. It’s wonderful that you remember the celebrations. But you remember the bombing, too. You’ve told me about that.”

“When I returned to London with Lew ten years ago, we visited the Churchill War Rooms, the underground complex that was once the command centre. Every detail was interesting to us: a combination of Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum. We were acting the part of tourists and took our time because we wanted to read every word of explanation that accompanied the displays. But at one point, while listening to sound effects of the period, a chill went through my body. I feel it even now. What I was hearing was the sound of a doodlebug, the V-1, the buzz bomb. I was completely unnerved and thought I’d have to run out of the museum. The recapturing of sound from the past was just too much. It was as if an airplane was flying close at that very moment. Abruptly, all noise ceased before the bang was heard. We knew, during the war, that if you were lucky enough to hear the bang, you were safe. In that command centre, my body remembered the reflexes it had learned, even though I was very young when doodlebugs fell on the city. At that time, the V-2 rockets were still to come. It’s difficult to bring this back, even now.”