Free Ashes to Ashes by Barbara Nadel Page B

It was actually Mrs Andrews who handed my cup to me and I caught her eye, but she said nothing even though I tried, and failed, to speak to her. Up above, on the cathedral floor, Mr Ronson’s body lay hidden underneath a tarpaulin and I wondered as yet more men, women and children came in from other shelters nearby that were no longer safe, whether any of them wondered what was covered up underneath the dome as they passed. I decided that they probably didn’t, and I knew that the shelterers who did know had been asked by Mr Andrews not to talk about it. People in general do as they’re told in situations like this. The newcomers were just grateful to be safe and, as they all took their cocoa and sat down wherever they could, I listened to some of their conversations.
    ‘It’s creepy, isn’t it?’ one very young, very smart-suited clerical sort of bloke said. ‘Down here with all the dead!’
    The girl he was sitting next to on the floor, a pleasant dark-haired little thing answered. ‘Well, I think it’s quite a privilege to be sheltering with the likes of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Nelson.’
    ‘Yes, but Mabel,’ her companion continued, ‘they’re dead. Their bodies are underneath the floor right here!’ He pointed to a place just in front of him. ‘Just here!’
    ‘Lord Nelson, so they say,’ an old bloke with old-fashioned mutton chops who settled down slowly beside the couple said, ‘had to be carried home from the Battle of Trafalgar in a huge barrel of brandy.’
    Mabel put her cocoa cup down and said, ‘You what?’
    ‘To preserve the body so it could lie in state when they got it home,’ the old chap said. ‘Alcohol stops things from decaying.’
    I didn’t involve myself in their conversation, even though I particularly, out of everyone there, could have spoken with authority on this subject. I know about alcohol and its properties. Formaldehyde is what embalmers use to preserve corpses and, although people in our poor manor of West Ham don’t have the money for such luxuries, I’ve met embalmers and I know what they do. Lord Nelson was an early and very primitive example of embalming, as the old man now told the horrified youngsters.
    ‘Keeps a body fresh, alcohol does,’ he said. ‘Mind you, it’s said that some of the men transporting Lord Nelson did have the odd nip from the barrel from time to time!’
    The girl put her hand up to her mouth and squeaked.
    The young man put a protective arm around her shoulders and said to the old bloke, ‘Mr Wilkins! I do think that was a bit strong!’
    ‘You’ll have to get used to a lot stronger than that when you’re in the army, Ted!’ the old man said. ‘Can’t be too squeamish when you’re fighting the Hun.’
    A couple of families came over then; two women, one bloke with a wooden leg, and five children – three girls and two little boys. They were neighbours, I heard them say, and they came from the Friday Street shelter in Blackfriars. The bloke had apparently decided to move to the cathedral because he felt it was probably safer than the shelter. Not many families actually live in the square mile but the few that do are generally business people, like one of these women, who had a florist shop. Her friend and neighbour, by the look of her, was that rare type you occasionally find who live right in the City, the very poor person. The man with the wooden leg was, I gathered, her husband. Whether either of them worked, I didn’t know, but their thin, patched-up clothes seemed to suggest that they didn’t. The bloke’s Trilby hat had a hole in the crown that hadn’t just been made by the fires – it had been there for years. One of the girls and both of the little boys belonged to this couple. The two other girls, who had ribbons in their hair and warm gloves on their hands, were the florist lady’s daughters.
    At first the children whined a bit as their parents made them sit down and behave themselves. But once they’d