Yes. As I write all these years later I taste the dust on my lips.

And I think of those young bomber crews above us that night, trapped in their tin cylinders, netted by searchlights as the big anti-aircraft gun at Kom el-Dikka opened up underneath them. They must have screamed as loud as Célia and I did. I pray that when Tom falls in love—it’s hard to imagine now, he’s still such a small boy, only ten—I pray that it will be in peacetime, so that lovely warm feelings can grow at their leisure, and sparkling glances can be exchanged until the moment comes for their fingers, his and his lover’s, to gently interlink. Let there be no more clutching of strangers’ hands in terror. Let no more young people scream in the air and on the ground.

—

The all-clear sounded. We had become strangely used to the basement. We got to our feet sluggishly, and joined the crowd trudging up the stairs to the ground floor. All the doors and windows had been blown in. We crunched across the tiles and out down the steps to see two vast craters in the street. We might have been on the moon had not the moon been up there above us, as bright and bold as before and even higher in the sky. We picked our way in single file past hills and valleys of rubble. In between them stood undamaged buildings with not so much as a dent in the wrought-iron grilles of their balconies. I will never get used to this. I mean, the simple reality that bombs fall in one place and not another. It’s sickening.

We looked absolute frights. Célia seemed to be wearing a disheveled ashy wig and James had gone gray overnight. I put a hand to my head, felt my hair matted with dust and plaster.

“Where’s the Fifteen?” said Célia, wiping her nose.

“Oh Lord. If they bombed the car, Papa will kill me . . .”

But we found the Citroën at the end of the street, completely untouched. Driving is a reflex action, thank goodness. I left James outside the club where he would rejoin Peter. When we got back to Cleopatra my parents were standing out on the street in their robes. They were hoarse like us but from crying, and their eyes were red.

—