Chapter 15
They cut through the docks, a guard giving them a nod and letting them in through a wrought-iron gate.
Inside the walls of the vast compound, Gracie gave a running commentary of each wharf and warehouse they passed.
She had all of Frankie’s enthusiasm for the docks and the island. Cook saw where the boy had got it from.
In the old days, Gracie said, a ship would come in and it would be loaded with a bit of everything.
Dockers would be carrying tea one minute, spices the next, even gold.
But that was history. Nowadays it was efficiency itself – each ship specialised in one product.
Each warehouse likewise. Gracie listed them off with each looming building they hurried past – cacao, sugar, cotton, spices, fresh-cut pine from the vast Canadian forests.
The largest warehouse on the long southern side of the basin held enough wheat for the whole country for several months, assuming enough got through the U-boat blockades in the Atlantic.
Cook knew a bit about the wheat trade, it had decimated domestic prices in the decades between the wars.
A lot of good men had lost their farms, waiting for things to turn around.
The steel drawbridge at the far end was up. Cook assumed Gracie would get it lowered. A favour for a local, or perhaps a bribe. An old friend with a long history of mutual assistance. But Gracie hurried past the bridge, the rusting metal roadway left pointing towards the sky.
They followed the water’s edge to the Thames, just visible between a row of smaller, older warehouses.
The original docks, Gracie said, before the modern ones replaced them.
Another wrought-iron gate, this one unattended, opened with a screech, and Cook followed her down a narrow alley, both his shoulders brushing against walls black with mould.
At the end of the alley, a wooden staircase led down to the foreshore, and a floating dock where small boats bobbed in the waves.
Gracie stepped expertly into the nearest boat, a small craft, grey wood planks for seats and an outboard motor on the back.
Cook followed suit, tried not to let the side down.
Gracie had made it look easy. The boat hadn’t even wobbled as she’d stepped on board.
Cook found it wasn’t as simple as he’d hoped.
He must have put his foot an inch too far to the side, because the whole thing tilted as if it was going to capsize, but Gracie shifted her weight to counterbalance Cook, a glint in her eye.
Cook sat, gingerly, on a plank that spanned the boat, conscious that he was raising the centre of gravity with his mere presence.
‘First time?’ Gracie asked, with a grin.
*
Gracie kept the boat close to the north bank of the Thames as they motored under Tower Bridge, past the tower itself – the Norman keep almost a thousand years old, its white stone glowing in the moonlight.
‘Traitor’s Gate!’ she shouted cheerfully, above the noise of the engine. Cook eyed the barred gate warily. He could feel the despair of the men and women who’d been taken through there on their final, one-way trip.
From behind them, further east, Cook watched as black smoke rose into the evening sky.
Specks of light glinted in the smoke. The longer he looked, the more things resolved.
He could make out bombers, black specks flying in formation.
The higher, looping specks must be fighters, ours or theirs.
Cook wouldn’t have wanted to be in a bomber, relying on your comrades high above, waiting to get the job done so you could turn for home.
Give him solid ground beneath his feet and a rifle any day, no matter how desperate the mission.
Gracie tied the boat off at a dock on the far side of Blackfriars Bridge, opposite the Oxo Tower.
They cut through the Inner Temple, its gardens and courtyards entirely unflustered by the war.
It was late on a Saturday but smartly dressed, grey-faced men hurried between law offices, bundles of legal documents in their hands.
Everyone was dressed lightly, suit coats held in crooks of arms. The newspapers were already calling it an Indian summer.
Cook felt like an intruder, but Gracie clearly knew where she was going. She led Cook through passageway after passageway until they emerged next to a dingy pub, opposite the black stone gatehouse to the Royal Courts.
Traffic was light, heading west towards Trafalgar Square. Buses passed them, and Gracie peered anxiously into each one.
‘She could be up top,’ Cook said.
But Gracie shook her head as if he didn’t understand.
Cook peered into buses as they hurried past, curious about the mass of humanity, living lives he had no knowledge of.
Growing up in a small town, he’d got used to knowing people’s business, recognising them on the street.
Here were thousands of people passing each other in complete anonymity.
A lonely place. Cook’s eyes settled on a row of shoppers sitting next to each other on a bus, studiously ignoring each other, reading their papers.
They crossed Trafalgar Square and took an alley next to the National Gallery, up through Leicester Square. Gracie cut through the crowds without slowing, a woman on a mission.
But the momentum was lost at Piccadilly Circus. Traffic was stopped, and police constables were directing traffic down Haymarket or up, along Regent Street.
Gracie hurried across the road, trying to squeeze past a wooden barrier, but she was stopped by an ARP warden – a civilian with a steel helmet and an armband.
‘Road’s closed,’ the warden said. ‘Bomb damage.’
Behind the warden, Piccadilly was eerily quiet. The road and pavements were empty, apart from a few parked cars. In the distance, Cook could make out what looked like the remains of a bus.
A direct hit, by the look of it.