FIRE WATCH
                                               by Connie Willis
  "History hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over." -Sir Walte
Raleigh

   September 20 -Of course the first thing I looked for was the fire-watch stone. And of cour
wasn't there yet. It wasn't dedicated until 1951, accompanying speech by the Very Rev-erend D
Walter Matthews, and this is only 1940. I knew that. I went to see the fire-watch stone
yesterday, with some kind of misplaced notion that seeing the scene of the crime would some
help. It didn't.
   The only things that would have helped were a crash course in London during the Blitz and a
more time. I had not gotten either.
   "Travelling in time is not like taking the tube, Mr. Bartho-lomew," the esteemed Dunworthy
said, blinking at me through those antique spectacles of his. "Either you report on the twentie
you don't go at all."
   "But I'm not ready," I'd said. "Look, it took me four years to get ready to travel with St. Pau
Paul. Not St. Paul's. You can't expect me to get ready for London in the Blitz in two days."
   "Yes," Dunworthy had said. "We can." End of conversa-tion.
   "Two days!" I had shouted at my roommate, Kivrin. "All because some computer add
apostrophe s. And the esteemed Dunworthy doesn't even bat an eye when I tell him. `Time trav
not like taking the tube, young man,' he said. `I'd suggest you get ready. You're leaving the day
tomor-row.' The man's a total incompetent."
   "No," she said. "He isn't. He's the best there is. He wrote the book on St. Paul's. Maybe
should listen to what he says."
   I had expected Kivrin to be at least a little sympathetic. She had been practically hysterical w
she got her practicum changed from fifteenth to fourteenth century England, and how did e
century qualify as a practicum? Even counting infectious diseases they couldn't have been more
a five. The Blitz is an eight, and St. Paul's itself is, with my luck, a ten.
   "You think I should go see Dunworthy again?" I said. "Yes."
   "And then what? I've got two days. I don't know the money, the language, the history. Nothin
   "He's a good man," Kivrin said. "I think you'd better listen to him while you can." Good
Kivrin. Always the sympa-thetic ear.
   The good man was responsible for my standing just inside the propped-open west doors, gaw
like the country boy I was supposed to be, looking for a stone that wasn't there. Thanks to the g
man, I was about as unprepared for my practicum as it was possible for him to make me.
   I couldn't see more than a few feet into the church. I could see a candle gleaming feebly a
way off and a closer blur of white moving toward me. A verger, or possibly the Very Reverend D
himself. I pulled out the letter from my clergyman uncle in Wales that was supposed to gain
access to the Dean, and patted my back pocket to make sure I hadn't lost the microfiche Ox
English Dictionary, Revised, with Historical Supplements, I'd smuggled out of the Bodlei
couldn't pull it out in the middle of the conversation, but with luck I could muddle through the
encounter by context and look up the words I didn't know later.
   "Are you from the ayarpee?" he said. He was no older than I am, a head shorter and much thi
Almost ascetic look-ing. He reminded me of Kivrin. He was not wearing white, but clutching it t
chest. In other circumstances I would have thought it was a pillow. In other circumstances I w
know what was being said to me, but there had been no time to unlearn sub-Mediterranean Latin
Jewish law and learn Cockney and air-raid procedures. Two days, and the esteemed Dunwo
who wanted to talk about the sacred burdens of the historian instead of telling me what the aya
was.
    "Are you?" he demanded again.
    I considered shipping out the OED after all on the grounds that Wales was a foreign country,
didn't think they had microfilm in 1940. Ayarpee. It could be anything, including a nickname fo
fire watch, in which case the impulse to say no was not safe at all. "No," I said.
    He lunged suddenly toward and past me and peered out the open doors. "Damn," he said, co
back to me. "Where are they then? Bunch of lazy bourgeois tarts!" And so much for getting b
context.
    He looked at me closely, suspiciously, as if he thought I was only pretending not to be with
ayarpee. "The church is closed," he said finally.
    I held up the envelope and said, "My name's Bartholomew. Is Dean Matthews in?"
    He looked out the door a moment longer, as if he expected the lazy bourgeois tarts at any mo
and intended to attack them with the white bundle, then he turned and said, as if he were guid
tour, "This way, please," and took off into the gloom.
    He led me to the right and down the south aisle of the nave. Thank God I had memorized the
plan or at that moment, heading into total darkness, led by a raving verger, the whole bi
metaphor of my situation would have been enough to send me out the west doors and back t
John's Wood. It helped a little to know where I was. We should have been passing nu
twenty-six: Hunt's painting of "The Light of the World"-Jesus with his lantern-but it was too da
see it. We could have used the lantern ourselves.
    He stopped abruptly ahead of me, still raving. "We weren't asking for the bloody Savoy, j
few cots. Nelson's better off than we are-at least he's got a pillow provided." He brandished
white bundle like a torch in the darkness. It was a pillow after all. "We asked for them ov
fortnight ago, and here we still are, sleeping on the bleeding generals from Trafalgar because t
bitches want to play tea and crumpets with the tommies at Victoria and the Hell with us!"
    He didn't seem to expect me to answer his outburst, which was good, because I had unders
perhaps one key word in three. He stomped on ahead, moving out of sight of the one pathetic
candle and stopping again at a black hole. Number twenty-five: stairs to the Whispering Gallery
Dome, the library (not open to the public). Up the stairs, down a hall, stop again at a medieval
and knock. "I've got to go wait for them," he said. "If I'm not there they'll likely take them over t
Abbey. Tell the Dean to ring them up again, will you?" and he took off down the stone steps
holding his pillow like a shield against him.
    He had knocked, but the door was at least a foot of solid oak, and it was obvious the
Reverend Dean had not heard. I was going to have to knock again. Yes, well, and the man ho
the pinpoint had to let go of it, too, but even knowing it will all be over in a moment and you w
feel a thing doesn't make it any easier to say, "Now!" So I stood in front of the door, cursing
history department and the esteemed Dunworthy and the computer that had made the mis-take
brought me here to this dark door with only a letter from a fictitious uncle that I trusted no more
I trusted the rest of them.
    Even the old reliable Bodleian had let me down. The batch of research stuff I cross-ord
through Balliol and the main terminal is probably sitting in my room right now, a century ou
reach. And Kivrin, who had already done her practicum and should have been bursting with ad
walked around as silent as a saint until I begged her to help me.
   "Did you go to see Dunworthy?" she said.
   "Yes. You want to know what priceless bit of information he had for me? `Silence and humilit
the sacred burdens of the historian.' He also told me I would love St. Paul's. Golden gems from
master. Unfortunately, what I need to know are the times and places of the bombs so one doesn
on me." I flopped down on the bed. "Any suggestions?"
   "How good are you at memory retrieval?" she said.
   I sat up. "I'm pretty good. You think I should assimilate?" "There isn't time for that," she sai
think you should put everything you can directly into long-term."
   "You mean endorphins?" I said.
   The biggest problem with using memory-assistance drugs to put information into your long-
memory is that it never sits, even for a micro-second, in your short-term memory, and that m
retrieval complicated, not to mention unnerving. It gives you the most unsettling sense of deja v
suddenly know something you're positive you've never seen or heard before.
   The main problem, though, is not eerie sensations but re-trieval. Nobody knows exactly how
brain gets what it wants out of storage, but short-term is definitely involved. That brief, somet
microscopic, time information spends in short-term is apparently used for something be
tip-of--the-tongue availability. The whole complex sort-and-file pro-cess of retrieval is appar
centered in short-term; and without it, and without the help of the drugs that put it there or arti
substitutes, information can be impossible to re-trieve. I'd used endorphins for examinations
never had any difficulty with retrieval, and it looked like it was the only way to store al
information I needed in anything ap-proaching the time I had left, but it also meant that I would n
 have known any of the things I needed to know, even for long enough to have forgotten them. If
when I could retrieve the information, I would know it. Till then I was as ignorant of it as if it
not stored in some cobwebbed corner of my mind at all.
   "You can retrieve without artificials, can't you?" Kivrin said, looking skeptical.
   "I guess I'll have to."
   "Under stress? Without sleep? Low body endorphin levels?" What exactly had her pract
been? She had never said a word about it, and undergraduates are not supposed to ask. S
factors in the Middle Ages? I thought everybody slept through them.
   "I hope so," I said. "Anyway, I'm willing to try this idea if you think it will help."
   She looked at me with that martyred expression and said, "Nothing will help." Thank you
Kivrin of Balliol.
   But I tried it anyway. It was better than sitting in Dunworthy's rooms having him blink a
through his histori-cally accurate eyeglasses and tell me I was going to love St. Paul's. When
Bodleian requests didn't come, I overloaded my credit and bought out Blackwell's. Tapes on W
War II, Celtic literature, history of mass transit, tourist guidebooks, everything I could think of.
I rented a high-speed recorder and shot up. When I came out of it, I was so panicked by the fe
of not knowing any more than I had when I started that I took the tube to London and race
Ludgate Hill to see if the firewatch stone would trigger any memories. It didn't.
   "Your endorphin levels aren't back to normal yet," I told myself and tried to relax, but that
impossible with the prospect of the practicum looming up before me. And those are real bullets,
Just because you're a history major doing his practicum doesn't mean you can't get killed. I
history books all the way home on the tube and right up until Dunworthy's flunkies came to tak
to St. John's Wood this morning.
   Then I jammed the microfiche OED in my back pocket and went off feeling as if I would hav
survive by my native wit and hoping I could get hold of artificials in 1940. Surely I could get thr
the first day without mishap, I thought; and now here I was, stopped cold by almost the first w
that was spoken to me.
    Well, not quite. In spite of Kivrin's advice that I not put anything in short-term, I'd memorize
British money, a map of the tube system, a map of my own Oxford. It had gotten me this far. S
I would be able to deal with the Dean.
    Just as I had almost gotten up the courage to knock, he opened the door, and as with the pinp
it really was over quickly and without pain. I handed him my letter, and he shook my hand and
something understandable like, "Glad to have another man, Bartholomew." He looked strained
tired and as if he might collapse if I told him the Blitz had just started. I know, I know: Keep
mouth shut. The st ared silence, etc.
    He said, "We'll get Langby to show you round, shall we?" I assumed that was my Verger o
Pillow, and I was right. He met us at the foot of the stairs, puffing a little but jubilant.
    "The cots came," he said to Dean Matthews. "You'd have thought they were doing us a favor
high heels and hoity-toity. 'You made us miss our tea, luv,' one of them said to me. `Yes, well, a
good thing, too,' I said. `You look as if you could stand to lose a stone or two.
    Even Dean Matthews looked as though he did not com-pletely understand him. He said, "Did
set them up in the crypt?" and then introduced us. "Mr. Bartholomew's just got
    in from Wales," he said. "He's come to join our volunteers." Volunteers, not fire watch.
    Langby showed me around, pointing out various dimnesses in the general gloom and then dra
me down to see the ten folding canvas cots set up among the tombs in the crypt, also in pas
Lord Nelson's black marble sarcophagus. He told me I didn't have to stand a watch the first
and suggested I go to bed, since sleep is the most precious commodity in the raids. I could
believe it. He was clutching that silly pil-low to his breast like his beloved.
    "Do you hear the sirens down here?" I asked, wondering if he buried his head in it.
    He looked round at the low stone ceilings. "Some do, some don't. Brinton has to have
Horlich's. Bence-Jones would sleep if the roof fell in on him. I have to have a pillow. The impo
thing is to get your eight in no matter what. If you don't, you turn into one of the walking dead.
then you get killed."
    On that cheering note he went off to post the watches for tonight, leaving his pillow on one o
cots with orders for me to let nobody touch it. So here I sit, waiting for my first air-raid siren
trying to get all this down before I turn into one of the walking or nonwalking dead.
    I've used the stolen OED to decipher a little Langby. Mid-dling success. A tart is either a past
a prostitute (I assume the latter, although I was wrong about the pillow). Bourgeois is a catchall
for all the faults of the middle class. A Tommy's a soldier. Ayarpee I could not find under
spell-ing and I had nearly given up when something in the long-term about the use of acronyms
abbreviations in wartime popped forward (bless you, St. Kivrin) and I realized it must b
abbreviation. ARP. Air Raid Precautions. Of course. Where else would you get the bleeding
from?

   September 21 -Now that I'm past the first shock of being here, I realize that the hi
department neglected to tell me what I'm supposed to do in the three-odd months of this prac-ti
They handed me this journal, the letter from my uncle, and a ten-pound note, and sent me pac
into the past. The ten pounds (already depleted by train and tube fares) is supposed to last me
the end of December and get me back to St. John's Wood for pickup when the second letter ca
me back to Wales to sick uncle's bedside comes. Till then I live here in the crypt with Nelson,
Langby tells me, is pickled in alcohol inside his coffin. If we take a direct hit, will he burn like a t
or simply trickle out in a decaying stream onto the crypt floor, I wonder. Board is provided by a
ring, over which are cooked wretched tea and indescribable kippers. To pay for all this luxury
to stand on the roofs of St. Paul's and put out incendiaries.
   I must also accomplish the purpose of this practicum, whatever it may be. Right now the
purpose I care about is staying alive until the second letter from uncle arrives and I can go home
   I am doing makework until Langby has time to "show me the ropes." I've cleaned the skillet
cook the foul little fishes in, stacked wooden folding chairs at the altar end of the crypt (flat in
of standing because they tend to collapse like bombs in the middle of the night), and tried to slee
   I am apparently not one of the lucky ones who can sleep through the raids. I spent most o
night wondering what St. Paul's risk rating is. Practica have to be at least a six. Last night I
convinced this was a ten, with the crypt as ground zero, and that I might as well have applied
Denver.
   The most interesting thing that's happened so far is that I've seen a cat. I am fascinated, but t
not to appear so since they seem commonplace here.

   September 22 -Still in the crypt. Langby comes dashing through, periodically cursing va
government agencies (all abbreviated) and promising to take me up on the roofs. In the mean
I've run out of makework and taught myself to work a stirrup pump. Kivrin was overly conce
about my memory retrieval abilities. I have not had any trouble so far. Quite the opposite. I calle
fire-fighting information and got the whole manual with pictures, including instructions on the u
the stirrup pump. If the kippers set Lord Nelson on fire, I shall be a hero.
   Excitement last night. The sirens went early and some of the chars who clean offices in the
sheltered in the crypt with us. One of them woke me out of a sound sleep, going like an air raid s
Seems she'd seen a mouse. We had to go whacking at tombs and under the cots with a rubber
to persuade her it was gone. Obviously what the history depart-ment had in mind: murdering mic

    September 24 -Langby took me on rounds. Into the choir, where I had to learn the stirrup p
all over again, assigned rubber boots and a tin helmet. Langby says Com-mander Allen is gettin
asbestos firemen's coats, but hasn't yet, so it's my own wool coat and muffler and very cold o
roofs even in September. It feels like November and looks it, too, bleak and cheerless with no
Up to the dome and onto the roofs which should be flat, but in fact are littered with tow
pinnacles, gutters, and statues, all designed to catch and hold incendiaries out of reach. Shown
to smother an incendiary with sand before it burns through the roof and sets the church on
Shown the ropes (literally) lying in a heap at the base of the dome in case somebody has to g
one of the west towers or over the top of the dome. Back inside and down to the Whisp
Gallery.
    Langby kept up a running commentary through the whole tour, part practical instruction,
church history. Before we went up into the Gallery he dragged me over to the south door to te
how Christopher Wren stood in the smoking rubble of Old St. Paul's and asked a workman to b
him a stone from the graveyard to make the cornerstone. On the stone was written in Latin, "I
rise again," and Wren was so im-pressed by the irony that he had the words inscribed above
door. Langby looked as smug as if he had not told me a story every first-year history student kn
but I suppose without the impact of the firewatch stone, the other is just a nice story.
   Langby raced me up the steps and onto the narrow balcony circling the Whispering Gallery
was already halfway round to the other side, shouting dimensions and acoustics at me. He sto
facing the wall opposite and said softly, "You can hear me whispering because of the shape o
dome. The sound waves are reinforced around the perimeter of the dome. It sounds like the
crack of doom up here during a raid. The dome is one hundred and seven feet across. It is e
feet above the nave."
   I looked down. The railing went out from under me and the black-and-white marble floor cam
with dizzying speed. Ihung onto something in front of me and dropped to my knees, staggered
sick at heart. The sun had come out, and all of St. Paul's seemed drenched in gold. Even the ca
wood of the choir, the white stone pillars, the leaden pipes of the organ, all of it golden, golden.
   Langby was beside me, trying to pull me free. "Bartholo-mew," he shouted, "What's wrong?
God's sake, man."
   I knew I must tell him that if I let go, St. Paul's and all the past would fall in on me, and that I
not let that happen because I was an historian. I said something, but it was not what I inte
because Langby merely tightened his grip. He hauled me violently free of the railing and back
the stairway, then let me collapse limply on the steps and stood back from me, not speaking.
   "I don't know what happened in there," I said. "I've never been afraid of heights before."
   "You're shaking," he said sharply. "You'd better lie down." He led me back to the crypt.

    September 25 -Memory retrieval: ARP manual. Symp-toms of bombing victims. S
one-shock; stupefaction; unawareness of injuries; words may not make sense except to victim. S
two-shivering; nausea; injuries, losses felt; return to reality. Stage three-talkativeness that canno
controlled; desire to explain shock behavior to rescuers.
    Langby must surely recognize the symptoms, but how does he account for the fact there wa
bomb? I can hardly explain my shock behavior to him, and it isn't just the sacred silence o
historian that stops me.
    He has not said anything, in fact assigned me my first watches for tomorrow night as if no
had happened, and he seems no more preoccupied than anyone else. Everyone I've met so f
jittery (one thing I had in short-term was how calm everyone was during the raids) and the raids
not come near us since I got here. They've been mostly over the East End and the docks.
    There was a reference tonight to a UXB, and I have been thinking about the Dean's manner an
church being closed when I'm almost sure I remember reading it was open through the entire B
As soon as I get a chance, I'll try to retrieve the events of September. As to retrieving anything e
don't see how I can hope to remember the right information until I know what it is I am suppose
do here, if anything.
    There are no guidelines for historians, and no restrictions either. I could tell everyone I'm from
future if I thought they would believe me. I could murder Hitler if I could get to Germany. Or c
I? Time paradox talk abounds in the his-tory department, and the graduate students back from
practica don't say a word one way or the other. Is there a tough, immutable past? Or is there a
past every day and do we, the historians, make it? And what are the conse-quences of what we d
there are consequences? And how do we dare do anything without knowing them? Mus
in-terfere boldly, hoping we do not bring about all our downfalls? Or must we do nothing at all
interfere, stand by and watch St. Paul's burn to the ground if need be so that we don't chang
future?
    All those are fine questions for a late-night study session. They do not matter here. I coul
more let St. Paul's burn down than I could kill Hitler. No, that is not true. I found that out yeste
in the Whispering Gallery. I could kill Hitler if I caught him setting fire to St. Paul's.

   September 26 -I met a young woman today. Dean Matthews has opened the church, so the w
have been doing duties as chars and people have started coming in again. The young wo
reminded me of Kivrin, though Kivrin is a good deal taller and would never frizz her hair like
She looked as if she had been crying. Kivrin has looked like that since she got back from
practicum. The Middle Ages were too much for her. I wonder how she would have coped with
By pouring out her fears to the local priest, no doubt, as I sincerely hoped her lookalike was
going to do.
   "May I help you?" I said, not wanting in the least to help. "I'm a volunteer."
   She looked distressed. "You're not paid?" she said and wiped at her reddened nose w
handkerchief. "I read about St. Paul's and the fire watch and all and I thought, perhaps ther
position there for me. In the canteen, like, or something. A paying position." There were tears i
red-rimmed eyes.
   "I'm afraid we don't have a canteen," I said as kindly as I could, considering how impatient K
always makes me, "and it's not actually a real shelter. Some of the watch sleep in the crypt. I'm a
we're all volunteers, though."
   "That won't do, then," she said. She dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. "I love St. Pa
but I can't take on volunteer work, not with my little brother Tom back from the country." I wa
reading this situation properly. For all the outward signs of distress, she sounded quite cheerful
no closer to tears than when she had come in. "I've got to get us a proper place to stay: With
back, we can't go on sleeping in the tubes."
   A sudden feeling of dread, the kind of sharp pain you get sometimes from involuntary retri
went over me. "The tubes?" I said, trying to get at the memory.
   "Marble Arch, usually," she went on. "My brother Tom saves us a place early and I go-"
stopped, held the handkerchief close to her nose, and exploded into it. "I'm sorry," she said,
awful cold!"
   Red nose, watering eyes, sneezing. Respiratory infection. It was a wonder I hadn't told her n
cry. It's only by luck that I haven't made some unforgivable mistake so far, and this is not beca
can't get at the long-term memory. I don't have half the information I need even stored: cats
colds and the way St. Paul's looks in full sun. It's only a matter of time before I am stopped col
something I do not know. Nevertheless, I am going to try for retrieval tonight after I come off w
At least I can find out whether and when something is going to fall on me.
   I have seen the cat once or twice. He is coal-black with a white patch on his throat that looks
it were painted on for the blackout.

   September 27 -I have just come down from the roofs. I am still shaking.
   Early in the raid the bombing was mostly over the East End. The view was incredible. Searchl
everywhere, the sky pink from the fires and reflecting in the Thames, the exploding shells spar
like fireworks. There was a constant, deafening thunder broken by the occasional droning o
planes high overhead, then the repeating stutter of the ack-ack guns.
   About midnight the bombs began falling quite near with a horrible sound like a train running
me. It took every bit of will I had to keep from flinging myself flat on the roof, but Langby
watching. I didn't want to give him the satisfac-tion of watching a repeat performance of my beh
in the dome. I kept my head up and my sandbucket firmly in hand and felt quite proud of myself
    The bombs stopped roaring past about three, and there was a lull of about half an hour, and th
clatter like hail on the roofs. Everybody except Langby dived for shovels and stirrup pumps. He
watching me. And I was watching the incen-diary.
    It had fallen only a few meters from me, behind the clock tower. It was much smaller than I
imagined, only about thirty centimeters long. It was sputtering violently, throwing greenish-white
almost to where I was standing. In a min-ute it would simmer down into a molten mass and beg
burn through the roof. Flames and the frantic shouts of firemen, and then the white rubble stretc
for miles, and noth-ing, nothing left, not even the firewatch stone.
    It was the Whispering Gallery all over again. I felt that I had said something, and when I look
Langby's face he was smiling crookedly.
    "St. Paul's will burn down," I said. "There won't be anything left."
    "Yes," Langby said. "That's the idea, isn't it? Burn St. Paul's to the ground? Isn't that the plan
    "Whose plan?" I said stupidly.
    "Hitler's, of course," Langby said. "Who did you think I meant?" and, almost casually, picke
his stirrup pump.
    The page of the ARP manual flashed suddenly before me. I poured the bucket of sand aroun
still sputtering bomb, snatched up another bucket and dumped that on top of it. Black sm
billowed up in such a cloud that I could hardly find my shovel. I felt for the smothered bomb
the tip of it and scooped it into the empty bucket, then shovelled the sand in on top of it. Tears
streaming down my face from the acrid smoke. I turned to wipe them on my sleeve and saw Lan
    He had not made a move to help me. He smiled. "It's not a bad plan, actually. But of cours
won't let it happen.
    That's what the fire watch is here for. To see that it doesn't happen. Right, Bartholomew?"
    I know now what the purpose of my practicum is. I must stop Langby from burning dow
Paul's.

  September 28 -I must try to tell myself I was mistaken about Langby last night, th
misunderstood what he said. Why would he want to burn down St. Paul's unless he is a Nazi
How can a Nazi spy have gotten on the fire watch? I think about my faked letter of introduction
shudder.
  How can I find out? If I set him some test, some fatal thing that only a loyal Englishman in
would know, I fear I am the one who would be caught out. I must get my retrieval working prope
  Until then, I shall watch Langby. For the time being at least that should be easy. Langby has
posted the watches for the next two weeks. We stand every one together.

   September 30 -I know what happened in September. Langby told me.
   Last night in the choir, putting on our coats and boots, he said, "They've already tried once,
know."
   I had no idea what he meant. I felt as helpless as that first day when he asked me if I was from
ayarpee.
   "The plan to destroy St. Paul's. They've already tried once. The tenth of September. A
explosive bomb. But of course you didn't know about that. You were in Wales.
   I was not even listening. The minute he had said, "High explosive bomb," I had remembered
It had burrowed in under the road and lodged on the foundations. The bomb squad had trie
defuse it, but there was a leaking gas main. They decided to evacuate St. Paul's, but Dean Matt
refused to leave, and they got it out after all and exploded it in Barking Marshes. Instant
complete retrieval.
  "The bomb squad saved her that time," Langby was say-ing. "It seems there's always someb
about."
  "Yes," I said. "There is," and walked away from him.

  October 1 -I thought last night's retrieval of the events of September tenth meant some so
breakthrough, but I have been lying here on my cot most of the night trying for Nazi spies i
Paul's and getting nothing. Do I have to know exactly what I'm looking for before I can rememb
What good does that do me?
  Maybe Langby is not a Nazi spy. Then what is he? An arsonist? A madman? The crypt is h
conducive to thought, being not at all as silent as a tomb. The chars talk most of the night and
sound of the bombs is muffled, which somehow makes it worse. I find myself straining to hear t
When I did get to sleep this morning, I dreamed about one of the tube shelters being hit, br
mains, drown-ing people.

   October 4 -I tried to catch the cat today. I had some idea of persuading it to dispatch the m
that has been terrifying the chars. I also wanted to see one up close. I took the water bucket I
used with the stirrup pump last night to put out some burning shrapnel from one of the anti-air
guns. It still had a bit of water in it, but not enough to drown the cat, and my plan was to clam
bucket over him, reach under, and pick him up, then carry him down to the crypt and point hi
the mouse. I did not even come close to him.
   I swung the bucket, and as I did so, perhaps an inch of water splashed out. I thoug
remembered that the cat was a domesticated animal, but I must have been wrong about that.
cat's wide complacent face pulled back into a skull-like mask that was absolutely terrifying, vic
claws extended from what I had thought were harmless paws, and the cat let out a sound to to
chars.
   In my surprise I dropped the bucket and it rolled against one of the pillars. The cat disappe
Behind me, Langby said, "That's no way to catch a cat."
   "Obviously," I said and bent to retrieve the bucket.
   "Cats hate water," he said, still in that expressionless voice.
   "Oh," I said and started in front of him to take the bucket back to the choir. "I didn't know tha
   "Everybody knows it. Even the stupid Welsh."

   October 8 -We have been standing double watches for a week-bomber's moon. Langby d
show up on the roofs, so I went looking for him in the church. I found him standingby the
doors talking to an old man. The man had a newspaper tucked under his arm and he handed
Langby, but Langby gave it back to him. When the man saw me, he ducked out. Langby
"Tourist. Wanted to know where the Windmill Theater is. Read in the paper the girls are starkers
   I know I looked as if I didn't believe him because he said, "You look rotten, old man. Not ge
enough sleep, are you? I'll get somebody to take the first watch for you tonight."
   "No," I said coldly. "I'll stand my own watch. I like being on the roofs," and added silently, w
I can watch you.
   He shrugged and said, "I suppose it's better than being down in the crypt. At least on the r
you can hear the one that gets you."
   October 10 -I thought the double watches might be good for me, take my mind off my inabili
retrieve. The watched pot idea. Actually, it sometimes works. A few hours of thinking a
something else, or a good night's sleep, and the fact pops forward without any prompting, wi
any artificials.
   The good night's sleep is out of the question. Not only do the chars talk constantly, but th
has moved into the crypt and sidles up to everyone, making siren noises and begging for kippe
am moving my cot out of the transept and over by Nelson before I go on watch. He may be pic
but he keeps his mouth shut.

   October 11 -I dreamed Trafalgar, ships' guns and smoe and falling plaster and Langby sho
my name. My fist waking thought was that the folding chairs had gone off. I could not see for a
smoke.
   "I'm coming," I said, limping toward Langby and pulling on my boots. There was a hea
plaster and tangled folding chairs in the transept. Langby was digging in it. "Bartholo-mew!
shouted, flinging a chunk of plaster aside. "Bartho-lomew!"
   I still had the idea it was smoke. I ran back for the stirrup pump and then knelt beside him
began pulling on a splin-tered chair back. It resisted, and it came to me suddenly, there is a
under here. I will reach for a piece of the ceiling and find it is a hand. I leaned back on my h
determined not to be sick, then went at the pile again.
   Langby was going far too fast, jabbing with a chair leg. I grabbed his hand to stop him, an
struggled against me as if I were a piece of rubble to be thrown aside. He picked up a large
square of plaster, and under it was the floor. I turned and looked behind me. Both chars huddl
the recess by the altar. "Who are you looking for?" I said, keeping hold of Langby's arm.
   "Bartholomew," he said and swept the rubble aside, his hands bleeding through the coatin
smoky dust.
   "I'm here," I said. "I'm all right." I choked on the white dust. "I moved my cot out o
transept."
   He turned sharply to the chars and then said quite calmly, "What's under here?"
   "Only the gas ring," one of them said timidly from the shadowed recess, "and Mrs. Galbra
pocketbook." He dug through the mess until he had found them both. The gas ring was leaking
merry rate, though the flame had gone out.
   "You've saved St. Paul's and me after all," I said, standing there in my underwear and b
holding the useless stirrup pump. "We might all have been asphyxiated."
   He stood up. "I shouldn't have saved you," he said.
   Stage one: shock, stupefaction, unawareness of injuries, words may not make sense exce
victim. He would not know his hand was bleeding yet. He would not remember what he had said
had said he shouldn't have saved my life.
   "I shouldn't have saved you," he repeated. "I have my duty to think of."
   "You're bleeding," I said sharply. "You'd better lie down." I sounded just like Langby in
Gallery.

   October 13 -It was a high explosive bomb. It blew a hole in the choir roof; and some o
marble statuary is broken; but the ceiling of the crypt did not collapse, which is what I thoug
first. It only jarred some plaster loose.
   I do not think Langby has any idea what he said. That should give me some sort of advan
now that I am sure where the danger lies, now that I am sure it will not come crashing down
some other direction. But what good is all this knowing, when I do not know what he will do
when?
   Surely I have the facts of yesterday's bomb in long-term, but even falling plaster did not jar
loose this time. I am not even trying for retrieval now. I lie in the darkness waiting for the roof t
in on me. And remembering how Langby saved my life.

   October 15- The girl came in again today. She still has the cold, but she has gotten her pa
position. It was a joy to see her. She was wearing a smart uniform and open-toed shoes, and her
was in an elaborate frizz around her face. We are still cleaning up the mess from the bomb,
Langby was out with Allen getting wood to board up the choir, so I let the girl chatter at me w
swept. The dust made her sneeze, but at least this time I knew what she was doing.
   She told me her name is Enola and that she's working for the WVS, running one of the m
canteens that are sent to the fires. She came, of all things, to thank me for the job. She said that
she told the WVS that there was no proper shelter with a canteen for St. Paul's, they gave her a
in the City. "So I'll just pop in when I'm close and let you know how I'm making out, won't I jus
   She and her brother Tom are still sleeping in the tubes. I asked her if that was safe and she
probably not, but at least down there you couldn't hear the one that got you and that was a bless

   October 18 -I am so tired I can hardly write this. Nine incendiaries tonight and a land mine
looked as though it were going to catch on the dome till the wind drifted its para-chute away from
church. I put out two of the incendiaries. I have done that at least twenty times since I got here
helped with dozens of others, and still it is not enough. One incendiary, one moment of not watc
Langby, could undo it all.
   I know that is partly why I feel so tired. I wear myself out every night trying to do my job
watch Langby, making sure none of the incendiaries falls without my seeing it. Then I go back t
crypt and wear myself out trying to retrieve something, anything, about spies, fires, St. Paul's i
fall of 1940, anything. It haunts me that I am not doing .enough, but I do not know what else to
Without the retrieval, I am as helpless as these poor people here, with no idea what will ha
tomorrow.
   If I have to, I will go on doing this till I am called home. He cannot bum down St. Paul's so
as I am here to put out the incendiaries. "I have my duty," Langby said in the crypt.
   And I have mine.

   October 21 -It's been nearly two weeks since the blast and I just now realized we haven't see
cat since. He wasn't in the mess in the crypt. Even after Langby and I were sure there was no o
there, we sifted through the stuff twice more. He could have been in the choir, though.
   Old Bence-Jones says not to worry. "He's all right," he said. "The jerries could bomb Lo
right down to the ground and the cats would waltz out to greet them. You know why? They
love anybody. That's what gets half of us killed. Old lady out in Stepney got killed the other
trying to save her cat. Bloody cat was in the Anderson."
   "Then where is he?"
   "Someplace safe, you can bet on that. If he's not around St. Paul's, it means we're for it. Tha
saw about the rats deserting a sinking ship, that's a mistake, that is. It's cats, not rats."

  October 25 -Langby's tourist showed up again. He cannot still be looking for the Win
Theatre. He had a newspaper under his arm again today, and he asked for Langby, but Langby
across town with Allen, trying to get the asbestos firemen's coats. I saw the name of the pap
was The Worker. A Nazi newspaper?

   November 2 -I've been up on the roofs for a week straight, helping some incompetent work
patch the hole the bomb made. They're doing a terrible job. There's still a great gap on one s
man could fall into, but they insist it'll be all right because, after all, you wouldn't fall clear thr
but only as far as the ceiling, and "the fall can't kill you." They don't seem to understand it's a pe
hiding place for an incendiary.
   And that is all Langby needs. He does not even have to set a fire to destroy St. Paul's. A
needs to do is let one burn uncaught until it is too late.
   I could not get anywhere with the workmen. I went down into the church to complain to Matt
and saw Langby and his tourist behind a pillar, close to one of the windows. Langby was hold
newspaper and talking to the man. When I came down from the library an hour later, they were
there. So is the gap. Matthews says we'll put planks across it and hope for the best.

   November 5 -I have given up trying to retrieve. I am so far behind on my sleep I can't
retrieve information on a newspaper whose name I already know. Double watches the perma
thing now. Our chars have abandoned us altogether (like the cat), so the crypt is quiet, but I ca
sleep.
   If I do manage to doze off, I dream. Yesterday I dreamed Kivrin was on the roofs, dressed l
saint. "What was the secret of your practicum?" I said. "What were you supposed to find out?"
   She wiped her nose with a handkerchief and said, "Two things: One, that silence and humilit
the sacred burdens of the historian. Two," she stopped and sneezed into the handkerchief. "D
sleep in the tubes."
   My only hope is to get hold of an artificial and induce a trance. That's a problem. I'm positiv
too early for chemi-cal endorphins and probably hallucinogens. Alcohol is defi-nitely available,
need something more concentrated than ale, the only alcohol I know by name. I do not dare as
watch. Langby is suspicious enough of me already. It's back to the OED, to look up a word I
know.

   November 11 -The cat's back. Langby was out with Allen again, still trying for the asbestos c
so I thought it was safe to leave St. Paul's. I went to the grocer's for supplies and hopefully
artificial. It was late, and the sirens sounded before I had even gotten to Cheapside, but the raid
not usually start until after dark. It took awhile to get all the gro-ceries and to get up my courag
ask whether he had any alcohol-he told me to go to a pub-and when I came out of the shop, it
as if I had pitched suddenly into a hole.
   I had no idea where St. Paul's lay, or the street, or the shop I had just come from. I stood on
was no longer the sidewalk, clutching my brown-paper parcel of kippers and bread with a ha
could not have seen if I held it up before my face. I reached up to wrap my muffler closer abou
neck and prayed for my eyes to adjust, but there was no re-duced light to adjust to. I would
been glad of the moon, for all St. Paul's watch curses it and calls it a fifth columnist. Or a bus,
its shuttered headlights giving just enough light to orient myself by. Or a searchlight. Or the kick
flare of an ack-ack gun. Anything.
   Just then I did see a bus, two narrow yellow slits a long way off. I started toward it and n
pitched off the curb. Which meant the bus was sideways in the street, which meant it was not a
A cat meowed, quite near, and rubbed against my leg. I looked down into the yellow lights I
thought belonged to the bus. His eyes were picking up light from somewhere, though I would
sworn there was not a light for miles, and reflecting it flatly up at me.
   "A warden'll get you for those lights, old torn," I said, and then as a plane droned overhead,
jerry."
   The world exploded suddenly into light, the searchlights and a glow along the Thames seemin
happen almost si-multaneously, lighting my way home.
   "Come to fetch me, did you, old tom?" I said gaily. "Where've you been? Knew we were o
kippers, didn't you? I call that loyalty." I talked to him all the way home and gave him half a tin o
kippers for saving my life. Bence-Jones said he smelled the milk at the grocer's.

   November 13 —I dreamed I was lost in the blackout. I could not see my 'hands in front o
face, and Dunworthy came and shone a pocket torch at me, but I could only see where I had c
from and not where I was going.
   "What good is that to them?" I said. "They need a light to show them where they're going."
   "Even the light from the Thames? Even the light from the fires and the ack-ack guns?" Dunwo
said.
   "Yes. Anything is better than this awful darkness." So he came closer to give me the pocket to
It was not a pocket torch, after all, but Christ's lantern from the Hunt picture inthe south na
shone it on the curb before me so I could find my way home, but it shone instead on the firew
stone and I hastily put the light out.

   November 20 —I tried to talk to Langby today. "I've seen you talking to the old gentlema
said. It sounded like an accusation. I meant it to. I wanted him to think it was and stop whatev
was planning.
   "Reading," he said. "Not talking." He was putting things in order in the choir, piling up sandba
   "I've seen you reading then," I said belligerently, and he dropped a sandbag and straightened.
   "What of it?" he said. "It's a free country. I can read to an old man if I want, same as you can
to that little WVS tart. "
   "What do you read?" I said.
   "Whatever he wants. He's an old man. He used to come home from his job, have a bit of br
and listen to his wife read the papers to him. She got killed in one of the raids. Now I read to h
don't see what business it is of yours."
   It sounded true. It didn't have the careful casualness of a lie, and I almost believed him, excep
I had heard the tone of truth from him before. In the crypt. After the bomb.
   "I thought he was a tourist looking for the Windmill," I said.
   He looked blank only a second, and then he said, "Oh, yes, that. He came in with the paper
asked me to tell him where it was. I looked it up to find the address. Clever, that. I didn't gues
couldn't read it' for himself. "\But it was enough. I knew that he was lying.
   He heaved a sandbag almost at my feet. "Of course you wouldn't understand a thing like
would you? A simple act of human kindness?"
   "No," I said coldly. "I wouldn't."
   None of this proves anything. He gave away nothing, ex-cept perhaps the name of an artificial
I can hardly go to Dean Matthews and accuse Langby of reading aloud.
   I waited till he had finished in the choir and gone down to the crypt. Then I lugged one o
sandbags up to the roof and over to the chasm. The planking has held so far, but everyone w
gingerly around it, as if it were a grave. I cut the sandbag open and spilled the loose sand into
bottom. If it has occurred to Langby that this is the perfect spot for an incendiary, perhaps the
will smother it.

   November 21 —I gave Enola some of "uncle's" money today and asked her to get me the bra
She was more reluctant than I thought she'd be so there must be societal complications I am
aware of, but she agreed.
   I don't know what she came for. She started to tell me about her brother and some prank
pulled in the tubes that got him in trouble with the guard, but after I asked her about the brandy
left without finishing the story.

   November 25 —Enola came today, but without bringing the brandy. She is going to Bath fo
holidays to see her aunt. At least she will be away from the raids for awhile. I will not have to w
about her. She finished the story of her brother and told me she hopes to persuade this aunt to
Tom for the duration of the Blitz but is not at all sure the aunt will be willing.
   Young Tom is apparently not so much an engaging scape-grace as a near-criminal. He has
caught twice picking pockets in the Bank tube shelter, and they have had to go back to Marble A
I comforted her as best I could, told her all boys were bad at one time or another. What I r
wanted to say was that she needn't worry at all, that young Tom strikes me as a true survivor
like my own tom, like Langby, totally unconcerned with anybody but himself, well equippe
survive the Blitz and rise to prominence in the future.
   Then I asked her whether she had gotten the brandy.
   She looked down at her open-toed shoes and muttered un-happily, "I thought you'd forgotte
about that."
   I made up some story about the watch taking turns buying a bottle, and she seemed less unha
but I am not convinced she will not use this trip to Bath as an excuse to do nothing. I will hav
leave St. Paul's and buy it myself, and I don't dare leave Langby alone in the church. I made
promise to bring the brandy today before she leaves. But she is still not back, and the sirens
already gone.

   November 26 —No Enola, and she said their train left at noon. I suppose I should be grateful
at least she is safely out of London. Maybe in Bath she will be able to get over her cold.
   Tonight one of the ARP girls breezed in to borrow half our cots and tell us about a mess ov
the East End where a surface shelter was hit. Four dead, twelve wounded. "At least it wasn't on
the tube shelters!" she said. "Then you'd see a real mess, wouldn't you?"

   November 30 —I dreamed I took the cat to St. John's Wood.
   "Is this a rescue mission?" Dunworthy said.
   "No, sir," I said proudly. "I know what I was supposed to find in my practicum. The pe
survivor. Tough and re-sourceful and selfish. This is the only one I could find. I had to kill Lan
you know, to keep him from burning down St. Paul's. Enola's brother has gone to Bath, and
others will never make it. Enola wears open-toed shoes in the winter and sleeps in the tubes and
her hair up on metal pins so it will curl. She cannot possibly survive the Blitz."
   Dunworthy said, "Perhaps you should have rescued her instead. What did you say her n
was?"
   "Kivrin," I said, and woke up cold and shivering.
   December 5 —I dreamed Langby had the pinpoint bomb. He carried it under his arm l
brown-paper parcel, coming out of St. Paul's Station and up Ludgate Hill to the west doors.
   "This is not fair," I said, barring his way with my arm. "There is no fire watch on duty."
   He clutched the bomb to his chest like a pillow. "That is your fault," he said, and before I c
get to my stirrup pump and bucket, he tossed it in the front door.
   The pinpoint was not even invented until the end of the twentieth century, and it was anothe
years before the dis-possessed Communists got hold of it and turned it into something that coul
carried under your arm. A parcel that could blow a quarter-mile of the City into oblivion. Thank
that is one dream that cannot come true.
   It was a sunlit morning in the dream, and this morning when I came off watch the sun was sh
for the first time in weeks. I went down to the crypt and then came up again, making the round
the roofs twice more, then the steps and the grounds and all the treacherous alleyways betw
where an incendiary could be missed. I felt better after that, but when I got to sleep I dreamed a
this time of fire and Langby watching it, smiling.

   December 15 —I found the cat this morning. Heavy raids last night, but most of them
towards Canning Town and nothing on the roofs to speak of. Nevertheless the cat was quite de
found him lying on the steps this morning when I made my own, private rounds. Concussion. T
was not a mark on him anywhere except the white blackout patch on his throat, but when I pi
him up, he was all jelly under the skin.
   I could not think what to do with him. I thought for one mad moment of asking Matthews
could bury him in the crypt. Honorable death in war or something. Trafalgar, Waterloo, Lon
died in battle. I ended by wrapping him in my muffler and taking him down Ludgate Hill to a bui
that had been bombed out and burying him in the rubble. It will do no good. The rubble will b
protection from dogs or rats, and I shall never get another muffler. I have gone through nearly a
uncle's money.
   I should not be sitting here. I haven't checked the alleyways or the rest of the steps, and
might be a dud or a delayed incendiary or something that I missed.
   When I came here, I thought of myself as the noble res-cuer, the savior of the past. I am not d
very well at the job. At least Enola is out of it. I wish there were some way I could send St. Pau
Bath for safekeeping. There were hardly any raids last night. Bence-Jones said cats can su
anything. What if he was coming to get me, to show me the way home? All the bombs were
Canning Town.

  December 16 —Enola has been back a week. Seeing her, standing on the west steps wh
found the cat, sleeping in Marble Arch and not safe at all, was more than I could absorb. "I tho
you were in Bath," I said stupidly.
  "My aunt said she'd take Tom but not me as well. She's got a houseful of evacuation children
what a noisy lot. Where is your muffler?" she said. "It's dreadful cold up here on the hill."
  "I ..." I said, unable to answer, "I lost it."
  "You'll never get another one," she said. "They're going to start rationing clothes. And wool,
You'll never get another one like that."
  "I know," I said, blinking at her.
  "Good things just thrown away," she said. "It's absolutely criminal, that's what it is."
  I don't think I said anything to that, just turned and walked away with my head down, lookin
bombs and dead ani-mals.

   December 20 —Langby isn't a Nazi. He's a Communist. I can hardly write this. A Communis
   One of the chars found The Worker wedged behind a pillar and brought it down to the cry
we were coming off the first watch.
   "Bloody Communists," Bence-Jones said. "Helping Hitler, they are. Talking against the
stirring up trouble in the shelters. Traitors, that's what they are."
   "They love England same as you," the char said. .
   "They don't love nobody but themselves, bloody selfish lot. I wouldn't be surprised to hear
were ringing Hitler up on the telephone," Bence-Jones said. " "Ello, Adolf, here's where to dro
bombs.'"
   The kettle on the gas ring whistled. The char stood up and poured the hot water into a chippe
pot, then sat back down. "Just because they speak their minds don't mean they'd burn down ol
Paul's, does it now?"
   "Of course not," Langby said, coming down the stairs. He sat down and pulled off his b
stretching his feet in their wool socks. "Who wouldn't burn down St. Paul's?"
   "The Communists," Bence-Jones said, looking straight at him, and I wondered if he suspe
Langby, too.
   Langby never batted an eye. "I wouldn't worry about them It I were you," he said. "It's the je
that are doing their bloody best to burn her down tonight. Six incendiaries so far, and one al
went into that great hole over the choir." He held out his cup to the char, and she poured him a
of tea.
   I wanted to kill him, smashing him to dust and rubble on the floor of the crypt while Bence-J
and the char looked on in helpless surprise, shouting warnings to them and the rest of the watch.
you know what the Communists did?" I wanted to shout. "Do you? We have to stop him." I
stood up and started toward him as he sat with his feet stretched out before him and his asbe
coat still over his shoulders.
   And then the thought of the Gallery drenched in gold, the Communist coming out of the
station with the package so casually under his arm, made me sick with the same stagger-ing ve
of guilt and helplessness, and I sat back down on the edge of my cot and tried to think what to d
   They do not realize the danger. Even Bence-Jones, for all his talk of traitors, thinks they
capable only of talking against the king. They do not know, cannot know, what the Communists
become. Stalin is an ally. Communists mean Russia. They have never heard of Karinsky or the
Russia or any of the things that will make "Communist" into a syn-onym for "monster." They
never know it. By the time the Communists become what they became, there will be no fire w
Only I know what it means to hear the name "Commu-nist" uttered here, so carelessly, in St. Pau
   A Communist. I should have known. I should have known.

   December 22 —Double watches again. I have not had any sleep, and I am getting very unst
on my feet. I nearly pitched into the chasm this morning, only saved myself by dropping to
knees. My endorphin levels are fluctuating wildly, and I know I must' get some sleep soon or I
become one of Langby's walking dead; but I am afraid to leave him alone on the roofs, alone i
church with his Commu-nist party leader, alone anywhere. I have taken to watching him whe
sleeps.
   If I could just get hold of an artificial, I think I could induce a trance, in spite of my
condition. But I cannot even go out to a pub. Langby is on the roofs constantly, wait-ing fo
chance. When Enola comes again, I must convince her to get the brandy for me. There are on
few days left
   December 28 —Enola came this morning while I was on the west porch, picking up the Chris
tree. It has been knocked over three nights running by concussion. I righted the tree and was ben
down to pick up the scattered tinsel when Enola appeared suddenly out of the fog like s
cheer-ful saint. She stooped quickly and kissed me on the cheek. Then she straightened up, her
red from her perennial cold, and handed me a box wrapped in colored paper.
   "Merry Christmas," she said. "Go on then, open it. It's a gift."
   My reflexes are almost totally gone. I knew the box was far too shallow for a bottle of bra
Nevertheless, I believed she had remembered, had brought me my salvation. "You dar-ling," I
and tore it open.
   It was a muffler. Gray wool. I stared at it for fully half a minute without realizing what it
"Where's the brandy?" I said.
   She looked shocked. Her nose got redder and her eyes started to blur. "You need this more.
haven't any clothing coupons and you have to be outside all the time. It's been so dreadful cold."
   "I needed the brandy," I said angrily.
   "I was only trying to be kind," she started, and I cut her off.
   "Kind?" I said. "I asked you for brandy. I don't recall ever saying I needed a muffler." I shov
back at her and began untangling a string of colored lights that had shattered when the tree fell.
   She got that same holy martyr look Kivrin is so wonderful at. "I worry about you all the tim
here," she said in a rush. "They're trying for St. Paul's, you know. And it's so close to the riv
didn't think you should be drinking. I ... it's a crime when they're trying so hard to kill us all that
won't take care of yourself. It's like you're in it with them. I worry someday I'll come up to St. P
and you won't be here."
   "Well, and what exactly am I supposed to do with a muffler? Hold it over my head when
drop the bombs?"
   She turned and ran, disappearing into the gray fog before she had gone down two steps. I st
after her, still holding the string of broken lights, tripped over it, and fell almost all the way to
bottom of the steps.
   Langby picked me up. "You're off watches," he said grimly.
   "You can't do that," I said.
   "Oh, yes, I can. I don't want any walking dead on the roofs with me."
   I let him lead me down here to the crypt, make me a cup of tea, put me to bed, all very solici
No indication that this is what he has been waiting for. I will lie here till the sirens go. Once I am
the roofs he will not be able to send me back without seeming suspicious. Do you know wh
said before he left, asbestos coat and rubber boots, the dedicated fire watcher? "I want you to
some sleep." As if I could sleep with Langby on the roofs. I would be burned alive.

  December 30 -The sirens woke me, and old Bence-Jones said, "That should have done you s
good. You've slept the clock round."
  "What day is it?" I said, going for my boots.
  "The twenty-ninth," he said, and as I dived for the door, "No need to hurry. They're late ton
Maybe they won't come at all. That'd be a blessing, that would. The tide's out."
  I stopped by the door to the stairs, holding onto the cool stone. "Is St. Paul's all right?"
  "She's still standing," he said. "Have a bad dream?"
   "Yes," I said, remembering the bad dreams of all the past weeks—the dead cat in my arms i
John's Wood, Langby with his parcel and his Worker under his arm, the firewatch stone garish
by Christ's lantern. Then I remembered I had not dreamed at all. I had slept the' kind of sleep I
prayed for, the kind of sleep that would help me remember.
   Then I remembered. Not St. Paul's, burned to the ground by the Communists. A headline from
dailies. "Marble Arch hit. Eighteen killed by blast." The date was not clear except for the year. 1
There were exactly two more days left in 1940. I grabbed my coat and muffler and ran up the s
and across the marble floor.
   "Where the hell do you think you're going?" Langby shouted to me. I couldn't see him.
   "I have to save Enola," I said, and my voice echoed in the dark sanctuary. "They're goin
bomb Marble Arch."
   "You can't leave now," he shouted after me, standing where the fire-watch stone would be.
tide's out. You dirty ..."
   I didn't hear the rest of it. I had already flung myself down the steps and into a taxi. It took al
all the money I had, the money I had so carefully hoarded for the trip back to St. John's W
Shelling started while we were still in Oxford Street, and the driver refused to go any farther. H
me out into pitch blackness, and I saw I would never make it in time.
   Blast. Enola crumpled on the stairway down to the tube, her open-toed shoes still on her feet
a mark on her. And when I try to lift her, jelly under the skin. I would have to wrap her in the mu
she gave me, because I was too late. I had gone back a hundred years to be too late to save her.
   I ran the last blocks, guided by the gun emplacement that had to be in Hyde Park, and ski
down the steps into Marble Arch. The woman in the ticket booth took my last shilling for a tick
St. Paul's Station. I stuck it in my pocket and raced toward the stairs.
   "No running," she said placidly. "To your left, please." The door to the right was blocked o
wooden barricades, the metal gates beyond pulled to and chained. The board with names on i
the stations was X-ed with tape, and a new sign that read, "All trains," was nailed to the barric
point-ing left.
   Enola was not on the stopped escalators or sitting against the wall in the hallway. I came to
first stairway and could not gpt through. A family had set out, just where I wanted to ste
communal tea of bread and butter, a little pot of jam sealed with waxed paper, and a kettle on a
like the one Langby and I had rescued out of the rubble, all of it spread on a cloth embroidered a
corners with flowers. I stood staring down at the layered tea, spread like a waterfall down the ste
   "I . . . Marble Arch ..." I said. Another twenty killed by flying tiles. "You shouldn't be here."
   "We've as much right as anyone," the man said belliger-ently, "and who are you to tell us to m
on?"
   A woman lifting saucers out of a cardboard box looked up at me, frightened. The kettle bega
whistle.
   "It's you that should move on," the man said. "Go on then." He stood off to one side so I c
pass. I edged past the embroidered cloth apologetically.
   "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm looking for someone. On the platform."
   "You'll never find her in there, mate," the man said thumbing in that direction. I hurried past
nearly stepping on the teacloth, and rounded the corner into hell.
   It was not hell. Shopgirls folded coats and leaned back against them, cheerful or sulle
disagreeable, but certainly not damned. Two boys scuffled for a shilling and lost it on the tra
They bent over the edge, debating whether to go after it, and the station guard yelled to them to
away. A train rumbled through, full of people. A mosquito landed on the guard's hand an
reached out to slap it and missed. The boys laughed. And behind and before them, stretching
directions down the deadly tile curves of the tunnel like casu-alties, backed into the entranceways
onto the stairs, were people. Hundreds and hundreds of people.
   I stumbled back into the hall, knocking over a teacup. It spilled like a flood across the cloth.
   "I told you, mate," the man said cheerfully. "It's Hell in there, ain't it? And worse below."
   "Hell," I said. "Yes." I would never find her. I would never save her. I looked at the wo
mopping up the tea, and it came to me that I could not save her either. Enola or the cat or an
them, lost here in the endless stairways and cul-de-sacs of time. They were already dead a hun
years, past saving. The past is beyond saving. Surely that was the lesson the history department
me all this way to learn. Well, fine, I've learned it. Can I go home now?
   Of course not, dear boy. You have foolishly spent all your money on taxicabs and brandy,
tonight is the night the Germans burn the City. (Now it is too late, I remember it all. Twenty-
incendiaries on the roofs.) Langby must have his chance, and you must learn the hardest lesson
and the one you should have known from the beginning. You cannot save St. Paul's.
   I went back out onto the platform and stood behind the yellow line until a train pulled up. I
my ticket out and held it in my hand all the way to St. Paul's Station. When Igot there, sm
billowed toward me like an easy spray of water. I could not see St. Paul's.
   "The tide's out," a woman said in a voice devoid of hope, and I went down in a snake pit of
cloth hoses. My hands came up covered with rank-smelling mud, and I understood finally (and
late) the significance of the tide. There was no water to fight the fires.
   A policeman barred my way and I stood helplessly before him with no idea what to say.
civilians allowed up there," he said. "St. Paul's is for it." The smoke billowed like a thun-derc
alive with sparks, and the dome rose golden above it.
   "I'm fire watch," I said, and his arm fell away, and then I was on the roofs.
   My endorphin levels must have been going up and down like an air raid siren. I do not have
short-term from then on, just moments that do not fit together: the people in the church when
brought Langby down, huddled in a corner playing cards, the whirlwind of burning scraps of w
in the dome, the ambulance driver who wore open-toed shoes like Enola and smeared salve on
burned hands. And in the center, the one clear moment when I went after Langby on a rope
saved his life.
   I stood by the dome, blinking against the smoke. The City was on fire and it seemed as i
Paul's would ignite from the heat, would crumble from the noise alone. Bence-Jones was by
northwest tower, hitting at an incendiary with a spade. Langby was too close to the patched p
where the bomb had gone through, looking toward me. An Ncendiary clattered behind him. I tu
to grab a shovel, and when I turned back, he was gone.
   "Langby!" I shouted, and could not hear my own voice. He had fallen into the chasm and nob
saw him or the incendi-ary. Except me. I do not remember how I got across the roof. I think I c
for a rope. I got a rope. I tied it around my waist, gave the ends of it into the hands of the fire w
and went over the side. The fires lit the walls of the hole almost all the way to the bottom. Below
I could see a pile of whitish rubble. He's under there, I thought, and jumped free of the wall.
space was so narrow there was nowhere to throw the rubble. I was afraid I would inadvertently s
him, and I tried to toss the pieces of planking and plaster over my shoulder, but there was b
room to turn. For one awful moment I thought he might not be there at all, that the piece
splintered wood would brush away to reveal empty pave-ment, as they had in the crypt.
   I was numbed by the indignity of crawling over him. If he was dead I did not think I could
the shame of stepping on his helpless body. Then his hand came up like a ghost's and grabbed
ankle, and within seconds I had whirled and had his head free.
   He was the ghastly white that no longer frightens me. "I put the bomb out," he said. I star
him, so overwhelmed with relief I could not speak. For one hysterical moment I thought I w
even laugh, I was so glad to see him. I finally realized what it was I was supposed to say.
   "Are you all right?" I said.
   "Yes," he said and tried to raise himself on one elbow. "So much the worse for you."
   He could not get up. He grunted with pain when he tried to shift his weight to his right side an
back, the uneven rubble crunching sickeningly under him. I tried to lift him gently so I could
where he was hurt. He must have fallen on something.
   "It's no use," he said, breathing hard. "I put it out."
   I spared him a startled glance, afraid that he was delirious, and went back to rolling him ont
side.
   "I know you were counting on this one," he went on, not resisting me at all. "It was boun
happen sooner or later with all these roofs. Only I went after it. What'll you tell your friends?"
   His asbestos coat was torn down the back in a long gash. Under it his back was charred
smoking. He had fallen on the incendiary. "Oh, my God," I said, trying frantically to see how b
he was burned without touching him. I had no way of knowing how deep the burns went, but
seemed to extend only in the narrow space where the coat had torn. I tried to pull the bomb out
under him, but the casing was as hot as a stove. It was not melting, though. My sand and Lang
body had smothered it. I had no idea if it would start up again when it was exposed to the
looked around, alittle wildly, for the bucket and stirrup pump Langby must have dropped whe
fell.
   "Looking for a weapon?" Langby said, so clearly it was hard to believe he was hurt at all. "
not just leave me here? A bit of overexposure and I'd be done for by morning. Or would you r
do your dirty work in private?"
   I stood up and yelled to the men on the roof above us. One of them shone a pocket torch dow
us, but its light didn't reach.
   "Is he dead?" somebody shouted down to me.
   "Send for an ambulance," I said. "He's been burned."
   I helped Langby up, trying to support his back without touching the burn. He staggered a little
then leaned against the wall, watching me as I tried to bury the incendiary, using a piece o
planking as a scoop. The rope came down and I tied Langby to it. He had not spoken since I he
him up. He let me tie the rope around his waist, still looking stead-ily at me. "I should have let
smother in the crypt," he said.
   He stood leaning easily, almost relaxed against the wood supports, his hands holding him up.
his hands on the slack rope and wrapped it once around them for the grip I knew he didn't h
"I've been onto you since that day in the Gallery. I knew you weren't afraid of heights. You c
down here without any fear of heights when you thought I'd ruined your precious plans. What
it? An attack of conscience? Kneeling there like a baby, whining. `What have we done? What
we done?' You made me sick. But you know what gave you away first? The cat. Everybody kn
cats hate water. Everybody but a dirty Nazi spy."
   There was a tug on the rope. "Come ahead," I said, and the rope tautened.
   "That WVS tart? Was she a spy, too? Supposed to meet you in Marble Arch? Telling me it
going to be bombed. You're a rotten spy, Bartholomew. Your friends already blew it u
September. It's open again."
   The rope jerked suddenly and began to lift Langby. He twisted his hands to get a better grip
right shoulder scraped the wall. I put up my hands and pushed him gently so that his left side w
the wall. "You're making a big mistake, you know," he said. "You should have killed me. I'll tell."
   I stood in the darkness, waiting for the rope. Langby was unconscious when he reached the
I walked past the fire watch to the dome and down to the crypt.
   This morning the letter from my uncle came and with it a ten-pound note.

   December 31 -Two of Dunworthy's flunkies met me in St. John's Wood to tell me I was lat
my exams. I did not even protest. I shuffled obediently after them without even considering
unfair it was to give an exam to one of the walking dead. I had not slept in—how long? S
yesterday when I went to find Enola. I had not slept in a hundred years.
   Dunworthy was at his desk, blinking at me. One of the flunkies handed me a test paper and
other one called time. I turned the paper over and left an oily smudge from the oint-ment on
burns. I stared uncomprehendingly at them. I had grabbed at the incendiary when I turned La
over, but these burns were on the backs of my hands. The answer came to me suddenly in Lang
unyielding voice. "They're rope bums, you fool. Don't they teach you Nazi spies the proper wa
come up a rope?"
   I looked down at the test. It read, "Number of incendiaries that fell on St. Paul's. Number of
mines. Number of high explosive bombs. Method most commonly used for extin-guis
incendiaries. Land mines. High explosive bombs. Number of volunteers on first watch. Se
watch. Casualties. Fatalities." The questions made no sense. There was only a short space,
enough for the writing of a number, after any of the questions. Method most commonly used
extin-guishing incendiaries. How would I ever fit what I knew into that narrow space? Where
the questions about Enola and Langby and the cat?
   I went up to Dunworthy's desk. "St. Paul's almost burned down last night," I said. "What kin
questions are these?"
   "You should be answering questions, Mr. Bartholomew, not asking them."
   "There aren't any questions about the people," I said. The outer casing of my anger began to m
   "Of course there are," Dunworthy said, flipping to the sec-ond page of the test. "Numbe
casualties, 1940. Blast, shrapnel, other."
   "Other?" I said. At any moment the roof would collapse on me in a shower of plaster dust
fury. "Other? Langby put out a fire with his own body. Enola has a cold that keeps getting w
The cat ..." I snatched the paper back from him and scrawled "one cat" in the narrow space ne
"blast." "Don't you care about them at all?"
   "They're important from a statistical point of view," he said, "but as individuals, they are h
relevant to the course of history."
   My reflexes were shot. It was amazing to me that Dunworthy's were almost as slow. I graze
side of his jaw and knocked his glasses off. "Of course they're relevant!" I shouted "They ar
history, not all these bloody numbers!"
   The reflexes of the flunkies were very fast. They did not let me start another swing at him be
they had me by both arms and were hauling me out of the room.
   "They're back there in the past with nobody to save them. They can't see their hands in fro
their faces and there are bombs falling down on them and you tell me they aren't im-portant? You
that being an historian?"
   The flunkies dragged me out the door and down the hall. "Langby saved St. Paul's. How m
more important can a person get? You're no historian! You're nothing but a . . ." I wanted to cal
a terrible name, but the only curses I could summon up were Langby's. "You're nothing but a
Nazi spy!" I bellowed. "You're nothing but a lazy bourgeois tart!"
   They dumped me on my hands and knees outs4de the door and slammed it in my fac
wouldn't be an historian if you paid me!" I shouted and went to see the firewatch stone.

   December 31 —I am having to write this in bits and pieces. My hands are in pretty bad sh
and Dunworthy's boys didn't help matters much. Kivrin comes in periodically, wearing her St.
look, and smears so much salve on my hands that I can't hold a pencil.
   St. Paul's Station is not there, of course, so I got out at Holborn and walked, thinking abou
last meeting with Dean Matthews on the morning after the burning of the City. This morning.
   "I understand you saved Langby's life," he said. "I also understand that between you, you s
St. Paul's last night."
   I showed him the letter from my uncle and he stared at it as if he could not think what it
"Nothing stays saved forever," he said, and for a terrible moment I thought he was going to tel
Langby had died. "We shall have to keep on saving St. Paul's until Hitler decides to bomb
countryside."
   The raids on London are almost over, I wanted to tell him. He'll start bombing the countryside
matter of weeks. Canterbury, Bath, aiming always at the cathedrals. You and St. Paul's will
outlast the war and live to dedicate the firewatch stone.
   "I am hopeful, though," he said. "I think the worst is over."
   "Yes, sir." I thought of the stone, its letters still readable after all this time. No, sir, the worst i
over.
   I managed to keep my bearings almost to the top of Lud-gate Hill. Then I lost my way comple
wandering about like a man in a graveyard. I had not remembered that the rubble looked so much
the white plaster dust Langby had tried to dig me out of. I could not find the stone anywhere. I
end I nearly fell over it, jumping back as if I had stepped on a grave.
   It is all that's left. Hiroshima is supposed to *ave had a handful of untouched trees at ground
Denver the capitol steps. Neither of them says, "Remember the men and women of St. Paul's W
who by the grace of God saved this cathe-dral." The grace of God.
   Part of the stone is sheared off. Historians argue there was another line that said, "for all time,
I do not believe that, not if Dean Matthews had anything to do with it. And none of the watch it
dedicated to would have believed it for a minute. We saved St. Paul's every time we put ou
incendi-ary, and only until the next one fell. Keeping watch on the danger spots, putting out the
fires with sand and stirrup pumps, the big ones with our bodies, in order to keep the whole
complex structure from burning down. Which sounds to me like a course description for Hi
Practicum 401. What a fine time to discover what historians are for when I have tossed my ch
for being one out the windows as easily as they tossed the pinpoint bomb in! No, sir, the wo
not over.
   There are flash burns on the stone, where legend says the Dean of St. Paul's was kneeling w
the bomb went off. Totally apocryphal, of course, since the front door is hardly an appropriate p
for prayers. It is more likely the shadow of a tourist who wandered in to ask the whereabouts o
Windmill Theatre, or the imprint of a girl bringing a volunteer his muffler. Or a cat.
   Nothing is saved forever, Dean Matthews; and I knew that when I walked in the west doors
first day, blinking into the gloom, but it is pretty bad nevertheless. Standing here knee-deep in ru
out of which I will not be able to dig any folding chairs or friends, knowing that Langby died thin
I was a Nazi spy, knowing that Enola came one day and I wasn't there. It's pretty bad.
   But it is not as bad as it could be. They are both dead, and Dean Matthews, too; but they
without knowing what I knew all along, who sent me to my knees in the Whispering Gallery,
with grief and guilt: that in the end none of us saved St. Paul's. And Langby cannot turn to
stunned and sick at heart, and say, "Who did this? Your friends the Nazis?" And I would hav
say, "No. The Communists." That would be the worst.
   I have come back to the room and let Kivrin smear more salve on my hands. She wants me t
some sleep. I know I should pack and get gone. It will be humiliating to have them come and t
me out, but I do not have the strength to fight her. She looks so much like Enola.

   January 1 —I have apparently slept not only through the night, but through the morning mail
as well. When I woke up just now, I found Kivrin sitting on the end of the bed holding an enve
"Your grades came," she said.
   I put my arm over my eyes. "They can be marvelously efficient when they want to, can't they?
   "Yes," Kivrin said.
   "Well, let's see it," I said, sitting up. "How long do I have before they come and throw me out
   She handed the flimsy computer envelope to me. I tore it along the perforation. "Wait," she
"Before you open it, I want to say something." She put her hand gently on my burns. "You're w
about the history department. They're very good."
   It was not exactly what 1 expected her to say. "Good is not the word I'd use to des
Dunworthy," I said and yanked the inside slip free.
   Kivrin's look did not change, not even when I sat there with the printout on my knees where
could surely see it. "Well," I said.
   The slip was hand-signed by the esteemed Dunworthy. I have taken a first. With honors.

   January 2 —Two things came in the mail today. One was Kivrin's assignment. The hi
department thinks of every-thing—even to keeping her here long enough to nursemaid me, eve
coming up with a prefabricated trial by fire to send their history majors through.
   I think I wanted to believe that was what they had done, Enola and Langby only hired actors
cat a clever android with its clockwork innards taken out for the final effect, not so much beca
wanted to believe Dunworthy was not good at all, but because then I would not have this nag
pain at not knowing what had happened to them.
   "You said your practicum was England in 1300?" I said, watching her as suspiciously as I
watched Langby.
   "1349," she said, and her face went slack with memory. "The plague year."
   "My God," I said. "How could they do that? The plague's a ten."
   "I have a natural immunity," she said and looked at her hands.
   Because I could not think of anything to say, I opened the other piece of mail. It was a repo
Enola. Computer-printed, facts and dates and statistics, all the numbers the his-tory departmen
dearly loves, but it told me what I thought I would have to go without knowing: that she had g
over her cold and survived the Blitz. Young Tom had been killed in the Baedaker raids on Bath
Enola had lived until 2006, the year before they blew up St. Paul's.
   I don't know whether I believe the report or not, but it does not matter. It is, like Langby's rea
aloud to the old man, a simple act of human kindness. They think of everything.
   Not quite. They did not tell me what happened to Langby. But I find as I write this that I alr
know: I saved his life. It does not seem to matter that he might have died in hospital next day; a
find, in spite of all the hard lessons the history department has tried to teach me, I do not
believe this one: that nothing is saved forever. It seems to me that perhaps Langby is.

   January 3 —I went to see Dunworthy today. I don't know what I intended to say—s
pompous drivel about my will-ingness to serve in the firewatch of history, standing guard agains
falling incendiaries of the human heart, silent and saintly.
   But he blinked at me nearsightedly across his desk, and it seemed to me that he was blinki
that last bright image of St. Paul's in sunlight before it was gone forever and that he knew better
anyone that the past cannot be saved, and I said instead, "I'm sorry that I broke your glasses, sir
   "How did you like St. Paul's?" he said, and like my first meeting with Enola, I felt I mus
somehow reading the signals all wrong, that he was not feeling loss, but something quite differen
   "I loved it, sir," I said.
   "Yes," he said. "So do I."
   Dean Matthews is wrong. I have fought with memory my whole practicum only to find that
not the enemy at all, and being an historian is not some saintly burden afser all. Because Dunwo
is not blinking against the fatal sunlight of the last morning, but into the gloom of that first aftern
looking in the great west doors of St. Paul's at what is, like Langby, like all of it, every momen
us, saved forever.