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the pinpoint bomb. He carried it under his arm like a brown paper parcel, coming out of St. Paul’s Station and around 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 could get to my stirrup pump and bucket, he tossed it in the door.
    The pinpoint was not even invented until the end of the twentieth century; and it was another ten years before the dispossessed communists got hold of it and turned it into something that could be carried under your arm. A parcel that could blow a quarter mile of the City into oblivion. Thank God 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 shining for the first time in weeks. I went down to the crypt and then came up again, making the rounds of the roofs twice more, then the steps and the grounds and all the treacherous alleyways between where an incendiary could be missed. I felt better after that, but when I got to sleep I dreamed again, 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 over toward Canning Town and nothing on the roofs to speak of. Nevertheless the cat was quite dead. I found him lying on the steps this morning when I made my own, private rounds. Concussion. There was not a mark on him anywhere except the white blackout patch on his throat, but when I picked 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 if I could bury him in the crypt. Honorable death in war or something. Trafalgar, Waterloo, London, died in battle. I erded by wrapping him in my muffler and taking him down Ludgate Hill to a building that had been bombed out and burying him in the rubble. It will do no good. The rubble will be no protection from dogs or rats, and I shall never get another muffler. I have gone through nearly all of uncle’s money.
    I should not be sitting here. I haven’t checked the alleyways or the rest of the steps, and there might be a dud or a delayed incendiary or something that I missed.
    When I came here, I thought of myself as the noble rescuer, the savior of the past. I am not doing very well at the job. At least Enola is out of it. I wish there were some way I could send St. Paul’s to Bath for safekeeping. There were hardly any raids last night. Bence-Jones said cats can survive anything. What if he was coming to get me, to show me the way home? All the bombs were over Canning Town.
    December 16
—Enola has been back a week. Seeing her, standing on the west steps where I found the cat, sleeping in Marble Arch and not safe at all, was more than I could absorb. “I thought 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, and 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, too. 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, looking for bombs and dead animals.
    December
20—Langby isn’t a Nazi. He’s a communist. I can hardly write this. A communist.
    One of the chars found
The Worker
wedged behind a pillar and brought it down to the crypt as we were coming off the first watch.
    “Bloody communists,” Bence-Jones said. “Helping Hitler, they are. Talking against the king, stirring up trouble in the