“I’ll show him upstairs,” said Nan. “Ellen, perhaps you’ll come along so I don’t have to go alone.”

The Jerry picked up his wooden box. He asked Jane another question.

“What did he say?” said Nan.

“He wants to take my gramophone to his room.”

“You let him,” said Nan, shaking a finger at her old auntie to make her mind. “I’ve given him a bed, and I’ve given you another whisky, and Ellen has to drive him about. You let him choose some records.”

Everybody paraded up the pitchy stairs together as if we were about to have a party. Louisa carted the gramophone, and I brought the record albums and the torch. Jane, who couldn’t do stairs quickly, jigged about trying to catch hold of things, finally anxious about something—her precious music. Louisa jigged about trying to catch hold of Jane. Mrs. Campbell jigged about anxiously as well, but she was worried about something else. She needed Jane to translate as she showed the Jerry how to work the gas fire in his bedroom.

He did not at all seem to understand about putting the money in the meter. In any case he hadn’t any small change. He turned the gas tap on and off about five times, which frighted me all over again, wondering if he might forget it was on and fill the house with gas.

He was only going to be here for one night, God pity us—couldn’t Nan Campbell just turn the fire on herself this one time without having to teach him all the fine points of the meter?

Louisa finally ran back to Room Number Five and donated a shilling of her own, which was a very dear donation. But it got the fire going without a gas leak, and it meant we could all go to bed.

As Louisa dropped her shilling into the meter like a wishing coin itself, I wished that the enemy airman staying under our roof would not shoot any of us before he left.

Louisa:

Felix Baer looked exhausted, but he didn’t go to sleep right away. I know, because I heard him playing records for half the night.

Beside me in Room Five’s mysteriously lumpy bed with its musty mattress—you could smell damp in it through the clean bedclothes—Jane was asleep, I think, the moment her head hit the pillow. Not me. It was the second-longest day of my life, after the day when the bomb dropped in Balham and Mummy was killed. I dozed off, in the unfamiliar bed next to this unfamiliar old woman, but I kept waking and hearing the music in Room Four. Record after record. I’d fall asleep listening to Mozart, and wake up and hear Ravel. Or Cole Porter. Or some German song I didn’t recognize.