Or perhaps, like Jane, I just didn’t want to miss anything. She was as silly as me about the fireworks. We crowded for the view at the narrow window.

“My word, that is a direct hit—something is on fire!” Jane exclaimed.

We heard distant sirens. We couldn’t see anything on the ground, only oily black smoke lit by the red glow of flames. A thick column rose in the sky, showing the German pilots exactly where to aim on their next pass.

They came back. We couldn’t tell if they hit anything the second time. Then the Royal Air Force came roaring in to chase them off—not our Blenheims, but a swarm of Spitfires from Deeside. It was like watching the Battle of Britain all over again. I thought I’d never grow tired of it: the soaring dots against a bottle-blue predawn sky, the whine and roar of engines, the twisting loops of vapor trails as it started to get light—and in my stomach a knot of painful envy because I was not up there too, doing something useful, able to fight back.

It didn’t last five minutes before the Luftwaffe planes turned tail. They didn’t have a fighter escort to protect them.

“Hitler is a madman,” Jane pronounced. “What a waste of fuel and effort, bombing an empty aerodrome! I suppose it is a miracle those boys managed to get all their planes off the ground before the bombs fell. Somebody must have seen the storm coming—”

“‘Seen the storm coming!’” I cried. “Storm front! Windyedge!”

Jane grabbed my arm.

“Jamie got all the planes out in time,” I breathed.

“I hope the girls are all right,” said Jane.

Jane and I spent the afternoon by the peat fire in the public bar feeling nervous, while Nancy Campbell sullenly served and washed up after the villagers. She glanced at the wishing coins every now and then, muttering under her breath, as if she were praying to them. The Blenheims didn’t come back.

Of course the aerodrome telephone was knocked out again, and they couldn’t spare anyone to bring us news, so we had to wait. We played records on Jane’s gramophone to count off the time. It took ten hours and twenty minutes to get to the bottom of the record pile, she said, but we’d only played three hours’ worth (not counting while the pub was open) when the front door slammed in the vestibule.

Mrs. Campbell practically fell over herself with anxiety. She threw open the wooden gate and leaped from behind the bar. “Phyllis? Ellen?”

It was Ellen on her own. She stood in the doorway.

“I won’t come through just now,” she called across the room hoarsely. “I’m all over soot. I had to help with the firefighting, and then I had to drive to Aberdeen and back twice.”