Neil raised his eyes from the loathsome bear in his hands and gazed around them.
At first he had thought they were in the middle of a building site but now, under the glare of the orange sky, he could see that what he had mistaken for half-finished houses were in fact ruined homes. Overhead, he heard the distant engines of German planes and saw the searchlights desperately trying to pierce the billowing plumes of black smoke. The whine of plummeting bombs rang in the boy's ears and a horrible cold washed over him as he realised Ted was speaking the truth.
‘My God,’ Neil whispered, ‘What have you done?’
Ted cocked an ear upwards and shuddered. 'This ain't my fault,’ he cried, ‘We never meant to arrive in the middle of no air raid. Look, there ain't time for this, you gotta find shelter—we're sittin’ ducks out here.’
Neil shook his head defiantly. We're not going anywhere,’ he said, keeping a tight hold of the wriggling bear, ‘not until you tell me where Josh is. Why isn't he here?’
‘If you'da entered the gateway when I told you,’ Ted shouted, ‘he would be! Time is a funny gizmo, kid—you start tinkerin’ with it an’ all kindsa things go wrong. Your pig-headed delay back there in the museum throwed us a little outta whack. This ain't where Joshy is supposed to turn up an’ if we don't find that place then his chances o’ makin’ it through are nil. I know I ain't no Valentine o’ yours but we gotta stick together in this place ‘cos I'm all you got and vicey-versa. You got that?’
‘Just tell me where to go,’ Neil muttered.
The bear tapped the boy's hands indignantly until he loosened his grip to let him climb on to his shoulder once again.
‘First we gotta get outta this bomb site—they say lightning don't strike the same place twice but that don't apply to no German. We ain't gonna be no use to no one if one of them heels up there gets lucky. You ever seen the bits left over after a bomb explodes, kid? Sometimes there ain't enough to fill a bucket. Get movin’!’
‘I can't see where I'm walking,’ Neil said as he blundered through the rubble, stubbing the toes of his slippered feet. ‘Hang on, I've got a torch in my pocket.’
‘Get a move on, will ya?’ Ted hissed in his ear. 'Them babies are getting closer.’
Moving as fast as he could, shining the torchlight before him, Neil navigated through the fallen lintels and shattered beams until at last he was standing upon the pavement of a dark and narrow terraced street.
Everywhere, except for the sky, was swallowed in a hollow darkness. No street lamps shone and not a chink of light glimmered from behind the curtains of the houses. Neil had never experienced anything like it before, except when his family had gone on a caravanning holiday in Dorset two years ago where the absolute night of the country had startled and amazed him. But this was not the middle of nowhere; there were homes and shops, yet it was completely deserted—as if all human life had vanished from the face of the earth.
Ted glanced keenly from right to left and rubbed his furry chin thoughtfully. ‘Damn!’ he cursed. ‘I ain't gotta clue where this is. Hurry to the corner, kid, ya oughta spot a shelter sometime soon, they was everywhere.’
Neil obeyed, for the droning aircraft were directly overhead now. Over the rooftops of the far terrace a fountain of bricks and slates shot into the night and Neil stumbled as the pavement shuddered beneath his feet. An acrid, burning smell hung on the air and the tension in the bear's voice mounted as he spurred the boy on.
'That was too close, I can smell the cordite. Listen, kid, you gotta climb over the back wall of one of them houses—there'll be a shelter in the yard, hammer on the door like there's no tomorrow.’
Neil hurried around the corner of the street and breathlessly shone the torch on to a low fence.
‘Over there?’ he cried.
‘Like now!’ Ted urged, clinging to his collar.
‘Oi!’ a deep voice suddenly roared.
Neil whipped around and the torchbeam glared in the face of a large man wearing a tin hat.
‘ARP,’ Ted breathed with relief in the boy's ear, ‘stick with him, he'll see you right.’
Arnold Porter stormed over to them, his fat face quivering with rage. ‘Put that light out!’ he trumpeted, snatching the torch from Neil's hand. ‘Gawd's sake, that's too bright for the blackout. Why in't there no tissue paper over the bulb?’
He shone his own smaller torch into the boy's face and scowled, making his blubbery chins wobble. ‘Now who the ‘ell might you be?’ he declared. ‘Know most o’ the nippers round ‘ere I do, ain't seen you afore. What you doin’ out in the middle of the raid? Where's your house, who's your mum and dad? What they thinkin’ of—lettin’ you sneak out?’
Before Neil could answer, the corpulent warden took hold of his arm and sternly frogmarched him into the next street.
‘Back to the post with you, my lad,’ Fat Arnold said. ‘I reckons your dad'll ‘ave your guts fer garters when he learns about this. You want to get yourself murdered out here? I've a mind to give you a good hidin’ myself— bloomin’ perisher.’
Wriggling in the man's grasp, Neil twisted and turned, then, over the warden's shoulder he saw a sight that made him stumble and come to a halt.
Clearly defined against the burning heavens, a large, dark shape was gracefully floating down through the wisps of smoke—almost directly over their heads. It was so big that Neil thought it could only be a car, but his mind rebelled against such a preposterous idea.
Arnold Porter turned to see what he was staring at and at once his chubby jowls dropped in dread.
‘Bleedin’ Ada!’ he spluttered. ‘A parachute mine!’
With a crunch, the lethal device disappeared behind the chimney stacks of the house opposite, splintering straight through the roof and crashing through the ceilings of the rooms below. It was followed by a vast, flapping tarpaulin that twirled briefly over the roof top before it was dragged after it with a clatter of slates and tiles.
Suddenly, Neil's world was flung into chaos and it was a moment that remained with him for the rest of his life. Arnold Porter roared like a wounded lion, scooped Neil up in his great hands and charged like a maniac into the nearest doorway.
The breath was forced from Neil's lungs as the heavy man flattened him against the door, but whilst he was gasping for air with his face squashed into the buttons on the warden's coat, there came a loud rushing noise and a flash of brilliant light from inside the house where the mine had landed.
Neil felt the force of the explosion before he actually heard it, but the sound hit him a fraction of an instant later. The world was torn apart and his head crashed violently against the wooden door as the ground leaped under him. It was the most awful moment of his life and he clenched his teeth as the shock wave blasted through his bones. It had only taken a moment, but to Neil the experience seemed to last for ever. Eventually, the doorstep stopped shivering and though his ears continued to ring, he knew that it was over.
Choking, he struggled to breathe, but the full weight of the warden was pressing down on him and his arms were trapped beneath the man's heavy stomach.
‘Get off,’ his muffled voice implored, but still the man refused to budge.
Crushed and frantic for air, Neil used all his strength to move him. After several attempts, fat Arnold shifted and the great, flabby man slumped limply to the floor.
Neil staggered to his feet and leaned against the porch, gladly gulping down the fume-filled air.
Across the street, a mere twenty feet away, there was now a large crater, but the house that had once stood opposite the very doorway in which he coughed and spluttered was nowhere to be seen. All that was left was a cloud of dust and a scattering of timbers that were strewn over the street like gigantic straws.
Neil knelt beside the warden and shook him gently. ‘Are you all right?’
But Arnold Porter did not move.
In the doorway, Ted pulled his paws away from his ears and tottered unsteadily from the step. Then he saw the warden and scooted round to the man's plump hands to check his pulse.
Neil swallowed in horror as the bear let the hand drop from his paw and beheld the ghastly expression on the furry face.
'The guy's dead,’ Ted muttered, ‘musta absorbed most of the shock. A body can only take so much—you was lucky, kid. He done saved your life.’
Appalled and distraught, Neil reeled away from the warden's body, covering his mouth to keep down the rising bile.
Ted gave Arnold Porter one final glance, then looked grimly up at Neil.
“We can't stay here,’ he uttered fearfully, ‘We gotta find somewhere safe till the raid's over.’
Without saying a word, Neil picked him up and together they fled into the darkness.
Edie Dorkins carefully picked her way over the ruins. Her jumbled mind was bewildered. She had witnessed something exceedingly strange that night, the boy's teddy bear had walked and talked with him and she had to return to her beloved sanctuary to try and figure it out.
This time, the marvellous window had disappointed her—she thought it had appeared only for her and her alone. Where had that boy come from, what did he want here?’ He'd better not try and recover the first gift she had seen spinning from the fiery circle—what if he had already found it and was even now stealing the lovely thing?
Hastening through the desolate acres of the bomb site, the scraggy girl drew near to the skeletal remains of three buildings which jutted starkly from the ravaged landscape and reared before her like the twisted crown of a titanic and fallen god.
Deep wells of shadow were spread before the entrances to her secret refuge. She was safe there, not one of the iron heads had found her—they thought it was dangerous and all had heard the strange rumours that were circulating about it.
Pattering up to the central door of her fortress which was hanging off its hinges, she ducked smartly beneath and entered the dark kitchen beyond.
The shattered fragments of a broken sink winked and shimmered in the reflected light of the ruddy glare that poured in through a gaping window. A perpetual, solemn drip from one of the taps disturbed the silence and trickled a meandering trail over the dust-covered linoleum. Shards of crockery were strewn everywhere and on the corner of a buckled table a battered, metal teapot balanced precariously.
Edie paused. There was a movement in the hallway and from the murky shadows an indistinct shape was shambling towards her.
The misty figure of an old man, dressed in a glimmering grey shirt with trousers hitched up almost to his chest, shuffled to the sink and halted by the leaking tap, moving his gnarled hands into the line of drips. But the water poured straight through him.
The old man did not seem to care and rubbed his phantom hands together in a ghastly pretence. Then he turned and smiled kindly at the small girl.
‘Evening Miss Edie,’
came the hollow rasping of his dead voice,
‘you been gone a tidy while, the others will be pleased to see you. They was all askin’ after you and when you'd be back. It gets so ... so very lonely on us own.’
He stood before her, blinking in the pulsing, garish glow that streamed in through the broken window—the fiery light passing clean through his spectral form. Turning towards the back door, the shade stared at the devastation as if for the first time and struggled to remember what had befallen him. But pitted against the fierce will of the small girl, his faded mind was powerless. Pressing his fingers to his forehead, the spirit trembled, then looked up falteringly.
'Is it nice out?'
he finally murmured.
With a triumphant grin, the girl considered him for a moment then nodded.
‘Does the garden still look lovely?'
he asked, his pale, corpse-like face wrung with worry and confusion.
‘I do hope so, my pride and joy that is.’
Edie ignored the question and bustled past him into the hallway.
‘I think the others are coming,'
he called after her,
‘listen, Miss Edie, there's more tonight... Miss Edie..?'
Broken stair rods hung from the damaged bannister like bent reeds but the girl was short enough to walk beneath them without having to stoop over.
In through the parlour door she trailed and sat down upon a pile of cushions she had salvaged from various houses. The room was extremely draughty, for all the windows had been blown out and most of the ceiling was missing. Tossing her head back, Edie looked beyond the walls of the room above and the few remaining rafters of the roof, up to the troubled sky. The bombers were passing now, soon the raid would be over.
Lowering her eyes, she leaned forward to a low table and gazed enchanted at the treasures heaped upon its dusty surface.
This was her personal hoard, a splendid collection of cherished trinkets she had abstracted and rescued from nearly a hundred decimated homes. There was a bronze figurine of a dancer with ivory hands and an eternal smile moulded on her gorgeous face, the cut-glass top of a decanter, a small travelling clock, a gilt picture frame, four silver teaspoons, two fox stoles, a pair of black high-heeled shoes, a blonde wig complete with fake ringlets, three lipsticks, a pearl-sequined dress and a dented biscuit tin that contained a fantastic wealth of costume jewellery.
Edie reached across and let the riches run between her fingers. Taking up one of the fox furs, she draped it round her shoulders then wiped a lipstick over her mouth. Delving into the biscuit tin, she grabbed handfuls of diamante earrings and bracelets, then spent the following minutes decorating herself with them. Finally, she pulled the wig on over her pixie hood and reclined on the cushions like some miniature and grotesque goblin countess.
A piece of broken mirror hung on the blackened wall and the girl sauntered over, treading like a tightrope walker to keep all of her booty in place. Admiring herself in the glass, she pulled a succession of faces before the fussy wig slipped down over her eyes.
Edie returned to the cushions and carefully removed the adornments. The jewels had always been her favourite treasures and she had enjoyed hunting through the ruined houses to find them—until that is, the latest marvel arrived.