Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh

burning. It was all on fire. The immensity of it quenched my own fear in a wave of awe; it seemed like the end of the world.
    Our danger was only, after all, a small thing, seen in that light. I got right up, stood up, and pulled her to her feet too. Leading her by the hand I went on over the bridge, walking steadily. At the other end of the bridge was a little hut, a fire-watcher’s post. In front of it a man was sitting, on a pile of sandbags. Round his neck hung a pair of binoculars, and a field telephone dangled in his drooped hand. His head was thrown back, so that the light of the burning city drew a circle of gold round his face, on the under side of the rim of his helmet. As we passed him I saw that his eyes were open, and the fire glinted in them too. They were still shining, still moist; he was very newly dead.
    When we climbed down from the bridge we were in a warren of unfamiliar streets. I don’t very well remember how long we wandered around there, but in the end we were found by a warden, who took us to a rest-centre; a grim sort of school building. It was like a very overcrowded shelter inside, or so it seemed at first glance. Then I saw that everyone there was filthy, covered with dirt and plaster, clothes tom and thick with dirt. A woman sitting at a table by the door said to us, ‘Bombed out?’
    Looking sideways at Julie, I saw that she was covered in sooty grime from crawling around on the bridge, and I supposed I was in the same state myself. ‘Over there,’ the woman said, without waiting for an answer. We went over there, and sat down. After a while someone brought strong black tea in chipped enamel mugs, and bread and jam. There was nowhere to wash. The people around us looked vacant, stunned. Children cried, and could not be quieted. We slept, almost at once, since sleep seemed the only good place to go.
    We walked for hours the next morning. We didn’t want to cross Hungerford Bridge back into the part of London we knew. There were lots of poor little streets over there, all knocked to blazes. Clouds of thick dust hung over the crushed buildings, and made a haze in the air everywhere. And it was all horrifying. The houses weren’t abandoned, and boarded up, there were people everywhere. They scrambled around on piles of rubble, or came in and out of battered houses, carrying things. There were piles of furniture on the pavements; women sat on doorsteps, dabbing swollen eyes with the hems of their aprons. Puzzled and frightened children clung to them. We saw two women come staggering out of their house through a great hole in the wall, one carrying a dusty aspidistra in a pot, the other carrying a mantelpiece clock. They were smiling.
    A little further down that street a woman was scrubbing her doorstep. Every window in the house was blown in, and the door hung crazily, blasted nearly off its hinges. But she was busily scrubbing her whitestoned doorstep, As we passed she called to someone across the street, ‘ ’Ave you seen the flaming milkman?’ People, like trees, planted in their ways, persist absurdly in the same routines when everything is changed. Just beyond her two neighbours were talking.
    â€˜You go and shelter last night, ducks?’
    â€˜No I did not. ’Itler ain’t goin’ ter get
me
outer bed!’
    â€˜Whatser use? If it’s got your number on it, it’ll getcher anywhere. Rather die comfy in my bed, meself.’
    On we went. On the next corner a dark blue lorry was parked, pulled up onto the pavement where it was wider in front of a pub. Two men were busy putting up boards, making cubby holes. The lorry was connected to a standpipe in a water hydrant in the road, and steam was drifting out of a little ventilator in its roof. It had LEVER BROS. SUNLIGHT SOAP painted on the side. A woman came out of the van. She was wearing a blue overall, and cap. Seeing us standing staring at it, she called out, ‘You can have a