By Paul Fahey
London 1940
With the blackouts down and the curtains drawn, Eva sat at her dressing table barely able to see her reflection in the mirror. In a way she was thankful. She didn’t need to see her fear. The Blitz was enough to deal with, and now Eva had a body lying on the living room floor mucking up the mix.
Eva hadn’t meant to kill Ambrose. If only she hadn’t caught him going through her briefcase and photographing the papers. She rarely brought documents home from the office, especially ones so sensitive, but she had to prepare for a security briefing the next day, so she made the exception. Just the once.
An air raid siren shrieked through the night. She’d deal with poor Ambrose later. Right now there were more pressing matters. People in her neighborhood depended on her and it wouldn’t do to arouse suspicion.
“Tonight’s our night to celebrate, love,” Ambrose said earlier that evening when he dropped by her flat with a bottle of champagne. They’d been seeing each other off and on almost six months now, but for Eva, it wasn’t serious, just good fun, something to ease the tensions of living through the Blitz.
Eva retreated into the bedroom to dress for dinner but soon realized she’d left her compact in her handbag on the couch. Ambrose, so engrossed in his task, barely noticed the door open or her soft footsteps coming from behind. It was over in a moment. The thin blade went in quickly, severed a major artery, and Ambrose was dead. Full stop.
Eva donned her round black warden’s hat with the chinstrap and the letter W writ large above the brim; it reminded her of those blokes with the silly safari hats in the Tarzan films at the Odeon. She smiled at the memory and then grabbed her wool coat and hurried down the stairs.
Outside, Eva directed neighbors to the shelter while the sirens continued to blare and the buzzing grew louder overhead. After ushering the last family down the steps to relative safety—one was never completely safe these days—she took her place with the others already seated in rows on the cold concrete of the Edgware Road tube station.
When the buzzing ceased, heads craned upward as if their eyes could follow the path of the flying bomb from the depths of the Underground. The V-1 hit its mark and the earth shook violently. Eva knelt down and hugged a young boy. “It won’t be long, love,” she said, “Not to worry.”
The all clear sounded and Eva followed her charges up the stairway to the street. The moment she surfaced, she felt the intense heat on her face. Eva’s building was gone, the neighborhood destroyed. She almost laughed aloud. No need to worry about Ambrose now.
Eva patted her coat pocket and felt the documents safely inside, but she wasn’t out of danger yet. She would make a call, and by the time the firemen and volunteers cleared the debris, she’d be out of the country and on her way home—to Berlin. Eva smiled again as she watched the fires illuminate the night sky. It was the only light in town.
Paul Alan Fahey, a writer and editor, resides on the Central Coast. He writes for JMS Books. He’s looking forward to 2016 and writing a new script as well as editing another nonfiction anthology of personal essays: Equality: What Do You Think About When You Think of Equality. Paul is a member of SLO NightWriters, for writers at all levels in all genres. Find them online at slonightwriters.org.
