An Excerpt from
To Say Nothing of the Dog
by Connie Willis
(Bantam, 1997, $23.95)
There were five of us--Carruthers and the new recruit and myself, and Mr. Spivens and the verger. It was late afternoon on November the fifteenth, and we were in what was left of Coventry Cathedral, looking for the bishop's bird stump.Or at any rate I was. The new recruit was gawking at the blown-out stained-glass windows, Mr. Spivens was over by the vestry steps digging up something, and Carruthers was trying to convince the verger we were from the Auxiliary Fire Service.
"This is our squadron leader, Lieutenant Ned Henry," he said, pointing at me, "and I'm Commander Carruthers, the post fire officer."
"Which post?" the verger said, his eyes narrowed.
"Thirty-six," Carruthers said at random.
"What about him?" the verger said, pointing at the new recruit, who was now trying to figure out how his pocket torch worked and who didn't look bright enough to be a member of the Home Guard, let alone AFS.
"He's my brother-in-law," Carruthers improvised. "Egbert."
"My wife tried to get me to hire her brother to work on the fire watch," the verger said, shaking his head sympathetically. "Can't walk across the kitchen without tripping over the cat. 'How's he supposed to put out incendiaries?' I asks her. 'He needs a job,' she says. 'Let Hitler put him to work,' I says."
I left them to it and started down what had been the nave. There was no time to lose. We'd gotten here late, and even though it was only a bit past four, the smoke and masonry dust in the air already made it almost too dark to see.
The recruit had given up on his pocket torch and was watching Mr. Spivens digging determinedly into the rubble next to the steps. I sighted along him to determine where the north aisle had been and started working my way toward the back of the nave.
The bishop's bird stump had stood on a wrought-iron stand in front of the parclose screen of the Smiths' Chapel. I picked my way over the rubble, trying to work out where I was. Only the outer walls of the cathedral and the tower, with its beautiful spire, were still standing. Everything else--the roof, the vaulted ceiling, the clerestory arches, the pillars--had come crashing down into one giant unrecognizable heap of blackened rubble...
The bishop's bird stump wasn't underneath the mass of twisted girders and broken stone, and neither was the parclose screen. A broken-off length of kneeling rail was, and part of a pew, which meant I was too far out into the nave...I sighted along the new recruit again, who was still watching Mr. Spivens dig, paced off ten feet, and started digging again.
"But we are from the AFS," I heard Carruthers say to the verger.
"Are you certain you're with the AFS?" the verger said.
"Those coveralls don't look like any AFS uniform I've ever seen."
He wasn't having any of it, and no wonder. Our uniforms had been intended for the middle of an air raid, when anyone in a tin helmet can pass for official. And for the middle of the night. Daylight was another matter. Carruthers' helmet had a Royal Engineers insignia, mine was stenciled "ARP," and the new recruit's was from another war altogether.
"Our regular uniforms were hit by a high explosive," Carruthers said.
The verger didn't look convinced. "If you're from the fire service, why weren't you here last night when you might have done some good?"
An excellent question, and one that Lady Schrapnell would be sure to ask me when I got back. "What do you mean you went through on the fifteenth, Ned?" I could hear her asking. "That's a whole day late."
Which was why I was scrabbling through smoking roofbeams, burning my finger on a still-melted puddle of lead that had dripped down from the roof last night, and choking on masonry dust instead of reporting in.
Excerpted from TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG by Connie Willis. Copyright (c) 1997 by Connie Willis. Reprinted by permission of Bantam Spectra Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or republished without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information about this and other Bantam Spectra books, please visit the Spectra Forum at: http://www.bdd.com/spectra
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