“I’ve kind of fixed it up, ma’am. With the help of Jeff and some other servants and the gardener. It’s right comfortable.”
Minerva listened to the faint and far-off rise and fall of River City’s inadequate warning devices. The sound of a police car, passing in the distance, its own siren going, was much plainer.
Willis was waiting, holding the door, and yet looking away and upward toward the winter lace of treetops and the glimmer of high buildings in the distance.
“If any ‘preparations’ were made in my cellar,” Minerva said, “I should have been told!”
“We thought you might object, ma’ am.”
“I would have! Insane…!”
“It was owing to the gardener’s brother, mostly. He went through the blitz in the last war.
Near London.” Willis coughed vaguely. “You see, ma’am, this house is pretty close in toward town, for so fine a place. The big buildings are only a little more than a mile away.”
Minerva, scornful but shaken, said, “Very well. Come on, Norma.”
“I’m Nora. Do you think there’ll be an A-bomb?”