‘C-cover him,’ I said as soon as I could speak again.

  ‘No, we have to get him out of the way! We—’

  This time I pulled his face close up to mine. ‘I – if he was, er, if he was killed, w-we must leave him,’ I said. ‘F-for the – the coppers.’

  He gave me that furious, blank look I was beginning to know so well. Mr Andrews hadn’t liked me from the start. I’d been a nuisance, an inconvenient ‘refugee’, unwelcome in his cathedral. Time passed and then he said, ‘The police won’t come, not with all this going on! But…’ He knew that what I was saying about the coppers was true. He knew also, and more significantly to me, that they would need to view Mr Ronson’s body at some time. I had not misheard what he had said to his wife and I was not about to forget that whatever he might think. ‘I’ll find some canvass or something to cover him with.’

  ‘Yes, that will, er, that…’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said as he headed off up towards the altar. ‘I don’t need an undertaker to advise me about that.’ And then as soon as he was almost invisible to me he turned and said, ‘Are you really a papist? I thought you were a Jew. You have the look of a Jew.’

  ‘I-I am a Catholic,’ I said. ‘I d-don’t follow it though.’

  ‘But you are one, a born one, I understand, and maybe…’ He didn’t finish that sentence but instead he said, ‘You were looking for that little girl, weren’t you?’ Before I could reply he continued, ‘I suggest you find her.’

  And then he was swallowed by the gloom.

  Maybe I would have thought more about why Mr Andrews was suddenly so interested in the little missing girl no one but me seemed to want to find, but I was distracted by what sounded like an army of watchmen running on to the Whispering Gallery.

  ‘What happened?’ I heard one bloke say to the chap who had charge of the telephone up there.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the other one replied. ‘One minute he was up here, the next… It’s said he slipped on the water on the floor.’

  ‘He was looking for Harold Phillips. I heard him myself. He said he was looking for Harold.’

  My ears pricked up at this. Once again, Mr Phillips was being talked about. I still hadn’t seen him even though I’d been up to the Whispering Gallery once myself.

  ‘Well, he didn’t find Harold,’ the bloke on the telephone said. ‘Don’t know why he was looking for him at all.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ some other chap asked.

  ‘Because I’ve not seen Harold and if I haven’t, I can’t see how he can be up here,’ the telephone man said. ‘Harold, of everyone, is… well, Harold is distinctive, isn’t he?’

  There were some murmurs of agreement from the Whispering Gallery. Down below I wondered what they meant by ‘distinctive’. I stamped my feet a little to get some life back in them but then I realised that what I was actually doing was kicking blood up into the air and so I stopped.

  Chapter Four

  As well as the London Fire Brigade film unit, who went straight up to the Stone Gallery to film and record the events unfolding up there, more watchmen turned up over the next half-hour. Their faces blackened by what they described as the inferno outside, they talked of the fires that surrounded the cathedral as if they were living, intelligent things.

  ‘They’re getting closer all the time,’ one chap said. ‘Hitchcock Williams looks as if it could catch at any minute! Bloody fires! It’s as if they’re seeking buildings out to burn!’

  ‘The bombs are just feeding the flames, that’s what’s happening,’ another bloke said.

  Hitchcock, Williams and Co., the famous textile wholesaler, was very near to the cathedral, in St Paul’s Churchyard. If they were in danger from the fires, then we had to be in almost as much peril. I had no idea what the time was by then. It was one of those moments when it feels as if you’ve been in a place for ever and, at the same time, just for a few minutes.

  ‘You didn’t see anyone, er, o-outside?’ I asked a man whose clothes were so hot they were smoking.

  ‘Outside?’ he shook his head. ‘No. Poor bloody LFB engaged in battles with these endless fires is all I saw. There’re no civvies left out there – at least, I hope that there aren’t!’

  The little girl would have come back in to the cathedral. Whatever people might have said to her, the fires were now so fierce that she would have been left with no choice. Even inside a great cathedral made of thick stone, we were beginning to feel the heat. She was either somewhere in the building or she was probably already dead.

  ‘What’s that?’ one of the new watchmen asked me as he pointed towards Mr Ronson’s body. Now covered with a canvass tarpaulin, which Mr Andrews had found to cover him, Mr Ronson’s dead body was just a thing as opposed to a person in the middle of the cathedral.

  ‘He, er, he fell…’

  ‘It’s Sidney Ronson!’ I heard someone call down from up above.

  ‘Blimey!’

  ‘He’s dead!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dead. He’s dead.’

  The bloke in front of me, the one with the smoking clothes, made as if to go towards the canvass, but I stopped him.

  ‘It’s er, he’s very… unrecognisable,’ I said.

  ‘Is he? Is he just…’ He was holding what he felt inside, as we all do, or at least try to. Then, as if suddenly coming to himself and remembering where he was, he said, ‘Who are you? You’re not a watchman, are you?’

  I told him, faltering as usual as I did so, but he stood patiently listening to my story until I’d finished. ‘So this little kid…’

  ‘Is not your concern, Mr Steadman.’ Mr Andrews was once again at my elbow. The man was like bloody Dracula! ‘Mr Hancock is looking for the child. It’s better that way.’

  Mr Steadman, whose name I recognised as being the same as that of one of the partners in Phillips, Steadman and Rolls, looked as confused as I felt. What could possibly be ‘better’ about a man like me, as opposed to anyone else, looking for the child, I did not know.

  ‘M-Mr Steadman,’ I said, ‘you, you work with Mr Harold Phillips?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Mr Steadman pushed his tin hat back a bit on his head. His fire-smutted face was thin and, although it was impossible to tell his age accurately underneath all that, I reckoned that he was about fifty. ‘We’re partners, Mr Phillips, Mr Rolls and myself. Poor Mr Ronson, he – well, he worked with us for a number of years. He was a good lad.’ He swallowed hard, pushing his feelings right down deep into his body. ‘Very conscientious. A good man.’

  ‘Mr Ronson was going to see Mr Phillips for me when he, um, he fell,’ I said.

  ‘He fell.’

  ‘He fell,’ Mr Andrews moved just slightly in front of me. ‘The floor up in the gallery was wet.’

  ‘Did Harold, er, Mr Phillips, did he see it happen?’ Mr Steadman asked. ‘God, Harold’s always on watch he’ll be, he’ll… He always had a lot of time for Sidney Ronson. A lot of time – in the past, you know.’

  ‘We don’t really know precisely what happened,’ Mr Andrews said as he effectively ignored Mr Steadman’s thinly disguised grief. ‘No one saw it happen. He went to another emergency “up top” and also, as Mr Hancock here has said, to see Mr Phillips too.’

  ‘Harold is here?’ Mr Steadman asked.

  ‘He is believed to be.’

  They looked at each other for a while, Mr Steadman and Mr Andrews. God alone knew what was going through their heads, but then Mr Steadman upped and headed off towards the stairs to the Whispering Gallery. I had meant to ask him, he being a fellow worker, so to speak, what was so very ‘distinctive’ about Mr Phillips. But then he was gone and once again I was left with Mr Andrews. We were not, however, alone. As well as a couple more soot-stained watchmen who were catching their breath before they went about their business, young George the chorister had reappeared.

  ‘Have you found that little girl yet?’ he said to me.

  ‘No, he hasn’t,’ Mr Andrews answered for me.

  I hadn’t moved from Mr Ronson’s side. I hadn’t known where to start. St Paul’s is huge and it’s difficult enough in the daylight to get into all its nooks and crannies, but in the dark, as I well knew from my little adventure up in the Whispering Gallery, it’s terrifying as well as huge.

  ‘Everywhere is open to you, Mr Hancock,’ Mr Andrews said. ‘Every room in the building. Do you have a torch?’

  ‘N-no.’

  ‘George, give Mr Hancock yours and then get another one from my office,’ Mr Andrews said.

  The boy passed his torch over to me without a word. Now with a light in my hand I just stood there, until Mr Andrews said to me, ‘Then go about your business.’

  Unlike Mr Smith, who had been of the opinion that a child would have to know its way around the cathedral in order to hide, Mr Andrews obviously felt that anything was possible. But then so did I. What Mr Smith had said was nonsense and I couldn’t at the time make out either why he’d said it or why I’d bothered to listen. But Mr Andrews was waving me away now and so I began to move eastwards towards the high altar. I had wanted to ask him not only where I might begin my search but how I might recognise Mr Phillips, should I come upon him, too. But my voice wasn’t really working at all now and I could see something thick and black dripping down the walls of the great building. Blood from the First Lot, blood of my comrades. I stopped and closed my eyes and listened as Mr Andrews and young George argued about something behind me. I didn’t know what it was, but George sounded very upset. The ack-ack barrage had intensified over the course of the last hour and that, combined with the pictures in my head and in front of my eyes, was beginning to drive me out of my mind. I would never save or even find the little girl, if she even existed. I wasn’t even going to be able to save myself. But then suddenly, as I stood in the middle of what was an even darker, more blood-covered part of the building, the guns suddenly stopped.

  I wasn’t expecting to fall over. I was using my torch and, once the ack-ack had stopped and my mind had a few seconds to actually sort itself out, I came back to the real world again and knew where I was. The quire is where the choristers sit in normal, sane times. It’s made up of dark wooden pews on either side of the nave, just in front of the high altar. Like the rest of the cathedral it was undamaged so far, or so I thought. My foot went in to some sort of hole that shouldn’t have been there and I ended up hitting the deck and landing on my back. It wasn’t what could have been called a proper accident, but it was unexpected, it hurt, and it caused me to swear. Not that anyone except God and the angels heard me. George and Mr Andrews had gone and I was a long way away from all the other blokes now. I picked up my torch and looked at the floor which was in a very sorry way indeed. There was a lot of damage in actual fact and I was just beginning to wonder what might have happened when a sound started that froze my marrow. Machine-gun fire! Christ, the bloody Luftwaffe were shooting at people on the ground! God Almighty, when were they going to stop? Were they going to stop?

  ‘What you doin’ down on the floor, mister? You have an accident, did you?’

  I couldn’t see her face or even her body, just her hair. Long and blond and shiny, it danced about in front of my face – in front of the altar – like a puppet.

  ‘Blimey, little er… I’ve been looking all over for you!’ I said.

  ‘Why’s that?’ East End or no East End, this little’un was certainly no child from anywhere posh. This kid’s voice was husky as if she smoked Woodbines and the bolshie cheek behind it wasn’t difficult to find either. No wonder those ladies down in the crypt hadn’t taken to her.

  ‘What’s your name, love?’ I asked as I pushed myself up off the floor and tried to stand up.

  The answer was not one I had expected. ‘Me boyfriends call me Milly,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, is that—’

  ‘Why? Want to talk when you fuck me, do you?’ Milly said and then she laughed. ‘You’ll have to wait your turn, you know, like a good boy!’

  I’ve seen and done a lot in my forty-eight years, but I was shocked by this. If Milly was, as everyone said, ten years old at the most, what was she doing talking like this? Was it just devilment on her part or was she, poor kid, one of those little girls who did indeed earn money by immoral means? My lady friend, Hannah, provides for herself in that way. We met because I was lonely and ill and I couldn’t get the confidence to meet ladies in the usual fashion. Years on now, I care for Hannah and I think she cares for me. I’ve learned much about her life and the lives of others who live by that trade. Little girls are used more than people know or want to know. Now I could see her, just a little bit. Not her face, but her short thin body as she stood, laughing still, in front of me.

  ‘Milly,’ I said, ‘why don’t you…’

  My words were drowned out by the sound of machine-gun fire from outside the building. Bloody bastard Jerries! Weren’t we suffering enough for them? I suppose I looked away from her for a second at the most, but it was enough time for the kid to hop it.

  ‘Milly?’

  But she’d gone – if she’d even been there in the first place. But then although I see things that aren’t there probably more than anyone else I know, even I only tend to see certain things. Like the phantom voices in my head, the pictures are sinister. Blood and screaming men’s faces and mud are what generally push themselves unbidden in front of my eyes. Bits of body turn up, too, from time to time, but little girls especially with long golden hair are unheard of. I don’t and never have had any thoughts about little girls. Milly, or whatever her name was, had been there and she’d been as coarse as the shelterers in the crypt had said she was. What she was doing now and where she’d gone to, I didn’t know. I was cross at myself at the time for not managing to grab a hold of her and take her to safety. Loose in the cathedral at night, even without all the bombing, she was liable to have an accident or get into mischief of some sort.

  My feet wobbled on the uneven floor as I went further on towards the high altar. It was only then that I thought, suddenly, how strange it was of Mr Andrews to think that Mr Ronson had been murdered. For Mr Ronson to have an accident was very possible, but murder… to my way of thinking murder under circumstances such as we were experiencing was very unlikely indeed. By his own admission, Mr Andrews had seen nothing, if he was in fact telling the truth. Also why, suddenly, did he want me to find the little girl? Not that I – stupid beggar – had managed to hang on to Milly. She’d gone somewhere and, apart from the gunfire up above, I was in an area of the cathedral that was very, very quiet. Maybe she had just been inside my head? Maybe just the wanting to find her had made her happen?

  ‘You mustn’t tell anyone, about the damage.’ It was young George who now, it seemed, had finished arguing with Mr Andrews and had a new torch in his hand which he shone up into his face so that I could see him. He said, ‘It happened before Christmas. A bomb landed on the high altar. It didn’t go off, thank God. But no one outside the cathedral is supposed to know. Mr Andrews shouldn’t have sent you up here.’

  ‘He said I could go wherever I wanted. He sent me to find the little girl who’s missing,’ I said. ‘And, and… George, I saw her!’

  He frowned. ‘Here?’

  ‘A m-minute ago, at the m-most.’

  George looked around, flashing his torch into corners that I could now see were splintered and damaged. Bad for morale, are scenes like that, which was why I supposed I wasn’t meant to tell anyone about what I’d seen.

  ‘Mr Hancock,’ George said, ‘the guns you can hear outside are not the Germans, they’re our RAF boys taking on the Luftwaffe over the city.’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘We’re fighting for our lives! Tonight it could all be over, unless… Mr Hancock, we are in the hands of the Divine and we must trust that power to protect us. But we must also, all of us, do what we can for each other. You were right to go looking for this poor child. We have a duty to her, to everyone in the care of the cathedral tonight.’

  ‘S-she’s g-gone.’

  ‘You don’t know where?’

  I shook my head. Outside, something, probably some previously untouched building close by, burst into flames which then roared up the side of the cathedral, the brightness of it even shining through the huge blackout curtains at the stained-glass windows.

  I watched George sigh and then he said something that reminded me of that strange little conversation I’d had with Mr Andrews’s wife. ‘Sir Christopher’s building cannot fall, Mr Hancock,’ he said. ‘If it did, that would send the wrong message.’

  Even through the gloom he could make out the confused look on my face.

  ‘To Hitler,’ George said. ‘Sir Christopher was a master. Hitler is nothing. Hitler must be shown his place.’ And then I saw him smile. ‘But maybe our RAF boys are doing that for us now. Let’s go and find the little girl, shall we?’

  I don’t know how long young George and myself looked around the altar, treading lightly on that delicate, shattered floor. But we didn’t find Milly. With the fires from the incendiaries crackling around the building as well as the great clatters of machine-gun fire from the battling air crews overhead, it was like being in what I was told hell was like when I was a kid. Now, of course, I know that there is no hell beyond the one we’ve created here for ourselves on earth. That’s where I was.

  George, I imagined, from what he’d said before, was only really concerned about the cathedral. He most probably had friends and family somewhere, but maybe that wasn’t in London. He didn’t in any case talk about people or places outside of St Paul’s. But his silence on these matters didn’t stop me from thinking. If the bombing was bad here, what was it like at home?