A Christmas Gift. Ruby Jackson

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СКАЧАТЬ Sam Castleton, grey with fatigue under his smoke-grimed face, told them of the hours he and others like him had spent helping the fire service by carrying buckets, wash-basins, anything that could hold water, from any source they could find, forming immense human chains of men, women and even children from every stratum of society. All night they had fought, passing the containers from hand to hand until the water reached the fires that were bursting out in various parts of the great monument.

      ‘Poor old Thames must be near bone dry, and the buggers have hit water mains. God knows how the hospitals are coping.’

      Max stood up and clapped his hands loudly so as to still the chattering. ‘No point in starting anything now. I want everyone home before dark. Go over your pieces at home, try them out in the shelters if we have another night like last night, and tomorrow, if you judge you can’t be here by ten at the latest, don’t even try. We’ll do a show with whoever turns up. Now go.’

      ‘Come on, Sally, you look as if you’re about to drop.’ Sebastian surreptitiously examined Sally as she allowed the wall to support her. She was deathly pale so that her beautiful blue eyes seemed larger and brighter than ever. They made him think of cold spring water coursing down the stream at the bottom of his late grandfather’s orchard. The sun made each clear droplet sparkle and somehow the greyish stones on the bed of the stream changed colour, now green, now blue, and then neither green nor blue. One day, he vowed, he would gaze into Sally’s lovely eyes and discover what colour they actually were.

      ‘Come along,’ he repeated, for all the world like an exasperated schoolteacher dealing with a recalcitrant pupil, ‘I’ll get you home somehow and there must be soup. Grandmamma swears by soup.’

      Sally was not listening; he doubted that she understood one word but she pushed herself off the wall and turned towards the door, unable to do anything but what she was told.

      ‘See you tomorrow,’ he yelled. ‘New Year’s Eve. Who’s for the Savoy?’

      ‘Do shut up, Seb,’ the others yelled back in unison but Sally smiled and that was all he cared about. He heard her wince with fatigue as he opened the outside door but she recovered.

      ‘All right?’

      ‘Yes, thank you, Sebastian.’

      He put his arm around her as a prop. ‘Lal worked you too hard today.’

      Lal? That was it. She would ask now – anything to take her mind away from the terrifying events that were taking place all around her. ‘Sebastian, what exactly is a répétiteur?’

      ‘What lively questions you do ask. It’s the brilliant person who repeats everything for the singer or the actor. He/she is a voice coach, and accent coach, but the most sought after are those who are also stunningly good musicians. If a singer or a dancer is having trouble with a particular phrase, the répétiteur plays it over and over until the performer sings or dances or speaks it properly. Invaluable. Some focus on opera or acting; some are all-rounders, like Lal, who can sound as if she’s never left the East End of London one minute and become a sophisticated Russian princess the next.’

      ‘I never realised it was all so difficult.’

      ‘Nothing that’s worthwhile is easy. But perhaps today, two hours of concentrated Lalita Cruz was overkill.’

      She tried to smile. ‘No, Sebastian. She’s amazing. I appreciated so much individual attention.’

      ‘Which Max is getting now.’

      ‘He doesn’t need …’ began Sally and then, aware of Sebastian’s meaning, blushed.

      ‘You didn’t hear the door lock behind us? You didn’t wonder how they managed to reach the theatre early and to find a Primus stove, not to mention sausages?’

      Sally said nothing. Too much had happened and, at this particular moment, all she wanted was to get to her boarding house and fall into bed, preferably after a hot bath.

      How dark it was. Not that daylight in London was a patch on the clear air of the Kent countryside she and her friends had loved to cycle through. In London one always had to peer to find the kerb of a pavement, and now, after all these fires, buildings collapsing in a cloud of dust, it was always dark. There was little or no traffic running. Rubble was being cleared from roads and pavements, frighteningly close to Little Church Lane, where Mrs Shuttlecock’s house was; police and firemen were still much in evidence. Sally’s breath caught in her throat.

      ‘Have they worked all day too, Sebastian?’

      ‘Probably. But they may have a rota system – two-hour breaks or whatever. They’re not automatons.’

      Sally desperately wanted Sebastian to accompany her all the way to her boarding house but his sensitive remarks about the long hours worked by the rescue services reminded her that he too had been awake through the fraught hours of the air raid. She straightened up. ‘I’ll be fine from here; it’s not too far. You should get home before there’s another air raid.’

      He pretended to be hurt. ‘How can you not allow me to play knight in shining armour? Grandmamma will be delighted to hear that her strenuous efforts paid off. I’ll deliver you to your door in one perfect piece. Then I’ll trot off home feeling rather pleased with myself.’

      What could she say?

      ‘Then let’s hurry; you must be home before sunset.’

      He took her hand and together they walked as quickly as they could, avoiding rubble wherever possible. What a prolonged battering the city had suffered!

      A heavy layer of smoke and dust hung over the approach to Sally’s street. Foreboding filled her as she turned onto Little Church Lane. The bus stop was still there outside the garden gate. The pole leaned precariously, almost pointing to the rubble-filled crater into which the boarders’ house and the garden, which only yesterday had boasted the last of a fine show of Michaelmas daisies, had fallen. Sally turned as if expecting to find the house on the other side of the street. Houses did stand there, some windowless, two without front doors, most without chimneypots. These looked as if some giant hand had swept them off the roofs, tossing them down to smash to smithereens on the road.

      ‘Sal …’ Sebastian tried gently.

      ‘Know the people in the ’ouse, miss? Them as lived there, I mean? Mrs Shuttlecock ’ad lodgers and none of ’em survived – far as we can see. Rotten luck.’ A police constable, his kind but tired eyes looking out of a prematurely aged face, had appeared from one of the surviving gardens.

      ‘Watch ’er,’ he croaked, hours of smoke and dust having filled his throat, but Sebastian had already caught Sally before she fell.

      ‘Miss Brewer was a resident of number eleven,’ he said. ‘Last night she was caught in the raid on St Paul’s and sheltered in the underground.’

      ‘Everyone?’ asked a tremulous voice.

      ‘All as was in the ’ouse, miss. I’m so sorry, but it’s lovely for me to cross one off my list.’ He licked the point of his pencil and crossed out ‘MISS SALLY BREWER’. ‘Any family, miss? They know you’re safe, do they? And the ’ousing officer’ll find you a place for the night, washing things an’ that.’

      ‘Miss Brewer will stay with me, Officer, and will СКАЧАТЬ