"R. Garcia y Robertson - Wendy Darling, RFC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

of anti-aircraft fire appeared in its path. When they reached Liverpool Station she
saw bombs start to fall, and yelled to Mother, “We’re under attack. They are
bombing Tottenham Court. I can see the smoke.”

“Twenty to noon,” Mother reminded her.

Wendy swung back into the nursery. She’d be late for afternoon session, and
she had the infant’s class. What did sixty-four quarrelsome kindergartners know
about the war and air raids? She dashed downstairs. Mother pressed a fresh
cucumber sandwich into her hands. “Here, eat this on the bus.” Wendy fled the
house.

From atop a belching omnibus she saw the tiny specks separate, one gaggle
headed south across the Thames, the others turning north toward Dalston. She was
not the least frightened by this grand show, put on free for the citizens of London.
People craned their necks in the street. No one searched for shelter. Nothing
matched the innocence of that first daylight raid.

At the North Street stop an officious bobby told her, “Take care. Bombs
been falling hereabouts.”

She nodded hastily. “I work in a basement.” The infant’s class in North Street
School was below ground level, in a large partitioned basement with three stories of
older children’s classes overhead. Wendy could not picture a safer spot —
protected by God’s Grace and tile floors.

The peeler touched his helmet. “Then you’d best get to your work.” She
started off fast, to please the bobby— not afraid, just late. Heavy smoke hung over
Southwark. Warehouses were burning, but the planes themselves had vanished. The
double beat of their engines faded over the East End— new to being bombed, she
supposed the raid was over. Wendy Moira Angela Darling was as raw as the rest of
London.

Half a block from the school she came on the crowd, and heard the clanging
firetrucks. She jostled her way to the front. Frantic mothers combed the throng,
jerking dazed children around to search their faces. Cries of thanksgiving mixed with
agonized wails. Wendy grabbed a teacher. “What’s happened?”

“Angela, where were you? It came through the roof, dragging an older child
with it.”
 Wendy let the woman go, pushing into the school, descending into the
wrecked basement. The bomb had hit the roof, split in two, and punctured three
floors before exploding — as though an invisible hand guided it to the infant’s class.
Sailors carried out the wounded in blankets, sobbing as they worked. Only the dead
remained at their desks. Wendy began brushing off dust and rubble, straightening
limbs, trying to make her still charges comfortable. She had seen maimed children
before, scores of times — but always in Neverland, where death and life are
dreamlike things. In London it was too horribly real. All she could do was cry and
wipe at blood with the hem of her dress.