"Connie Willis - Jack" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

shelter of the landing. We crouched against the blast, my hands over my head, but
nothing happened. The whine became a scream and then sounded suddenly further
off. I peeked round the reinforcing beam at the open window. Light flashed and then
the crump came, at least three sectors away. "Lees," I said, going over to the
window to see if I could tell exactly where it was. "High explosive bomb." Jack
focused the binoculars where I was pointing.
I went out to the landing, cupped my hands, and shouted down the stairs, "HE.
Lees." The planes were still too close to bother sitting down again. "Twickenham's
done interviews with all the wardens," I said, leaning against the wall. "He'll want to
know what you did before the war, why you became a warden, that sort of thing. He
wrote up a piece on Vi last week."
Jack had lowered the binoculars and was watching where I had pointed. The fires
didn't start right away with a high-explosive bomb. It took a bit for the ruptured gas
mains and scattered coal fires to catch. "What was she before the war?" he asked.
"Vi? A stenographer," I said. "And something of a wallflower, I should think. The
war's been rather a blessing for our Vi."
"A blessing," Jack said, looking out at the high explosive in Lees. From where I
was sitting, I couldn't see his face except in silhouette, and I couldn't tell whether he
disapproved of the word or was merely bemused by it.
"I didn't mean a blessing exactly. One can scarcely call something as dreadful as
this a blessing. But the war's given Vi a chance she wouldn't have had otherwise.
Morris says without it she'd have died an old maid, and now she's got all sorts of
beaux." A flare drifted down, white and then red. "Morris says the war's the best
thing that ever happened to her."
"Morris," he said, as if he didn't know which one that was.
"Sandy hair, toothbrush moustache," I said. "His son's a pilot."
"Doing his bit," he said, and I could see his face clearly in the reddish light, but I
still couldn't read his expression.
A stick of incendiaries came down over the river, glittering like sparklers, and fires
sprang up everywhere.
The next night there was a bad incident off Old Church Street, two HEs. Mrs
Lucy sent Jack and me over to see if we could help. It was completely overcast,
which was supposed to stop the Luftwaffe but obviously hadn't, and very dark. By
the time we reached King's Road I had completely lost my bearings.
I knew the incident had to be close, though, because I could smell it. It wasn't
truly a smell: it was a painful sharpness in the nose from the plaster dust and smoke
and whatever explosive the Germans put in their bombs. It always made Vi sneeze.
I tried to make out landmarks, but all I could see was the slightly darker outline of
a hill on my left. I thought blankly, We must be lost. There aren't any hills in Chelsea,
and then realized it must be the incident.
"The first thing we do is find the incident officer," I told Jack. I looked round for
the officer's blue light, but I couldn't see it. It must be behind the hill.
I scrabbled up it with Jack behind me, trying not to slip on the uncertain slope.
The light was on the far side of another, lower hill, a ghostly bluish blur off to the
left. "It's over there," I said. "We must report in. Nelson's likely to be the incident
officer, and he's a stickler for procedure."
I started down, skidding on the broken bricks and plaster. "Be careful," I called
back to Jack. "There are all sorts of jagged pieces of wood and glass."
"Jack," he said.
I turned around. He had stopped halfway down the hill and was looking up, as if