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Authors: Edith Templeton
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me."
"What do you think, then, if you don’t know what to think?"
"I figure he ran into some kind of trouble," said Kelly, "and they didn’t want to court-martial him, so they made him plead screwball to get fired. You don’t know half of what’s going on there."
I did not consult with Claudia and June and Betty, because to them I had remained no more than "Prescott-Clark, who got on with the Major like a house on fire." It was useless, I knew, to go to the General’s; information of that kind would be withheld from anyone but the next of kin. I knew my only hope was Sergeant Parsons, and I decided to have another try at gleaning information from him.
The next day was my day off, and I spent it tediously, washing, ironing, and going to the hairdresser. On the following morning, as I was riding in the bus toward Oxford Street, I heard as we drove past Marble Arch a whisper going from seat to seat. It was a sibilant sound—"Selfridges, Selfridges." I got out at Selfridges and went round the side of the store. There was rubble lying across the street, and the house where the pub had been, on the corner, was demolished. Three windows of the store’s food department were boarded up, with streamers stuck across the front bearing the by now familiar "Business As Usual" sign. I went through the narrow doorway and climbed down the stairs to the office. On the last landing there were many people assembled, civilians and military, all from our office. I got nearer and stepped behind the General, who was just calling in his high, peevish voice, "Parsons, where is Parsons? I want Sergeant Parsons." And I heard Kelly’s voice, deferential, answering, "You can’t have Sergeant Parsons, sir, because Sergeant Parsons is dead."
My sight and hearing grew blurred. I heard talk going on around me without taking it in, and I kept staring into our office, which was tidy and empty, bathed in the artificial daylight, and the only unusual sight in it was a bottle of Rose’s lime juice, with its glossy label and gleaming cap, standing on one of the desks. I think it was Queenie’s. Then I recalled that for the past two weeks there had been a large display of Rose’s lime juice in one of the windows of the food department of Selfridges. I still did not understand.
Sergeant Kelly came and said that we civilians would have two days off and please to report to work on the third morning at nine sharp, as usual. I left with Claudia and June, and we went to the Danish coffee shop in Wigmore Street, round the corner. Betty was not with us; it was her free day. They told me the Sergeant had been killed the night before by a V-2, together with about two hundred other people, and that there had been such a crowd in the street because the bomb fell at eleven o’clock, which was the closing time of the many pubs in the neighborhood.
"But he never touched drink," I said. "You know he didn’t."
"He didn’t," said Claudia, weeping. Like many hard drinkers, she was easily given to tears. "He stayed behind in the office, straightening up after us. He often worked late hours. And he got out in the street just at that moment."
"Why couldn’t it have killed someone else instead?" said June.
"What’s going to become of us now?" I asked.
The Sergeant had not been crushed by falling masonry or struck down by flying debris. The same invisible force that had lifted a bottle of Rose’s lime juice from the display shelf in the window and placed it unbroken and upright on Queenie’s desk had caved in his chest. Later on, we knew that this had been the last V-2 to fall on London.
FOR SOME DAYS, we could not eat or sleep, and we shivered with cold. We could not accept the Sergeant’s death, as we accepted, later on, the death of Sergeant Danielevski, who was killed in battle, and the death of Sergeant Kelly, who, during a drunken celebration of V-E Day in London, walked out of a fourth-floor window.
Claudia, June, and Betty all went to America and got
"What do you think, then, if you don’t know what to think?"
"I figure he ran into some kind of trouble," said Kelly, "and they didn’t want to court-martial him, so they made him plead screwball to get fired. You don’t know half of what’s going on there."
I did not consult with Claudia and June and Betty, because to them I had remained no more than "Prescott-Clark, who got on with the Major like a house on fire." It was useless, I knew, to go to the General’s; information of that kind would be withheld from anyone but the next of kin. I knew my only hope was Sergeant Parsons, and I decided to have another try at gleaning information from him.
The next day was my day off, and I spent it tediously, washing, ironing, and going to the hairdresser. On the following morning, as I was riding in the bus toward Oxford Street, I heard as we drove past Marble Arch a whisper going from seat to seat. It was a sibilant sound—"Selfridges, Selfridges." I got out at Selfridges and went round the side of the store. There was rubble lying across the street, and the house where the pub had been, on the corner, was demolished. Three windows of the store’s food department were boarded up, with streamers stuck across the front bearing the by now familiar "Business As Usual" sign. I went through the narrow doorway and climbed down the stairs to the office. On the last landing there were many people assembled, civilians and military, all from our office. I got nearer and stepped behind the General, who was just calling in his high, peevish voice, "Parsons, where is Parsons? I want Sergeant Parsons." And I heard Kelly’s voice, deferential, answering, "You can’t have Sergeant Parsons, sir, because Sergeant Parsons is dead."
My sight and hearing grew blurred. I heard talk going on around me without taking it in, and I kept staring into our office, which was tidy and empty, bathed in the artificial daylight, and the only unusual sight in it was a bottle of Rose’s lime juice, with its glossy label and gleaming cap, standing on one of the desks. I think it was Queenie’s. Then I recalled that for the past two weeks there had been a large display of Rose’s lime juice in one of the windows of the food department of Selfridges. I still did not understand.
Sergeant Kelly came and said that we civilians would have two days off and please to report to work on the third morning at nine sharp, as usual. I left with Claudia and June, and we went to the Danish coffee shop in Wigmore Street, round the corner. Betty was not with us; it was her free day. They told me the Sergeant had been killed the night before by a V-2, together with about two hundred other people, and that there had been such a crowd in the street because the bomb fell at eleven o’clock, which was the closing time of the many pubs in the neighborhood.
"But he never touched drink," I said. "You know he didn’t."
"He didn’t," said Claudia, weeping. Like many hard drinkers, she was easily given to tears. "He stayed behind in the office, straightening up after us. He often worked late hours. And he got out in the street just at that moment."
"Why couldn’t it have killed someone else instead?" said June.
"What’s going to become of us now?" I asked.
The Sergeant had not been crushed by falling masonry or struck down by flying debris. The same invisible force that had lifted a bottle of Rose’s lime juice from the display shelf in the window and placed it unbroken and upright on Queenie’s desk had caved in his chest. Later on, we knew that this had been the last V-2 to fall on London.
FOR SOME DAYS, we could not eat or sleep, and we shivered with cold. We could not accept the Sergeant’s death, as we accepted, later on, the death of Sergeant Danielevski, who was killed in battle, and the death of Sergeant Kelly, who, during a drunken celebration of V-E Day in London, walked out of a fourth-floor window.
Claudia, June, and Betty all went to America and got
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