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outside. If we manage to avoid taking a direct hit or having an incendiary set the dome on fire, we’ll be all right. I know this building, it’s very resilient.’
    ‘Would any of you gentlemen like a cup of hot Bovril?’
    The lady who was asking, clearly a cathedral first aider, was elderly with fluffy, thinning grey hair underneath her felt beret.
    ‘Oh, no thank you very much, Mrs Andrews,’ Mr Smith replied.
    Mr Ronson turned her offer down as well. Once she’d gone, I asked the others who she was. I assumed she was connected to the Mr Andrews who was some sort of priest.
    ‘Andrews is a chaplain,’ Mr Ronson said. ‘The lady who offered us the Bovril is his wife.’
    ‘W-what’s a c-chaplain?’ I knew about army chaplains, but what they did in civvy street I didn’t know. ‘W-what’s that mean here?’
    ‘I really don’t know,’ Mr Ronson said. ‘I’m Jewish.’
    Mr Smith was talking to another man now and so I sat down in the chair next to where Mr Ronson was sitting at his desk. Like me he was a dark, rather thin man, although very much younger. Mr Ronson was, I thought, about thirty-five years of age.
    ‘So why do you, er, why if you’re J-Jewish . . .’
    ‘Why do I come and watch over the cathedral?’ He smiled and offered me a Passing Cloud fag which I took very gratefully. ‘Because as an architect, I know that St Paul’s is the heart of the City,’ he said. ‘A St Paul’s of one sort or another has stood here since Saxon times. Fires and wars, and God alone knows what other disasters, have overtaken this place, but it’s always gone on and it must continue to do so.’
    I said I thought that even if St Paul’s was destroyed, we, the people of Britain, would build it up again as our ancestors had done before us. I believed that then and I believe it now.
    Mr Ronson frowned. ‘Mr Hancock,’ he said, ‘do you believe in evil?’
    I did and do. I may not believe in God, but the Great War acquainted me very closely with the evil, some would say the devil, that lives in people’s hearts. How else would you explain how our generals and the generals of France, Germany and Russia allowed so many of us to die? Whatever side they were on, they were all as wicked as each other.
    ‘Hitler is evil,’ Mr Ronson said. ‘What he’s doing, what it is said he is doing to Jews in Czechoslovakia, Poland, well it’s . . . I hope it is beyond belief, Mr Hancock, but I really do fear that it is not.’
    Hannah, my lady friend, is Jewish and she’s told me some things about Hitler. There’s nothing much in the papers of course, but word amongst the Jews is that Hitler is killing them in their thousands. For some reason he hates certain types of people; Jews and Gypsies, mainly. Some folk even go so far as to say he wants to completely do away with such people, so there are no more Jews and Gypsies. That’s far more frightening than the destruction of just one building . . .
    ‘Mr Hancock, this cathedral was built by a very great architect,’ Mr Ronson continued. ‘Sir Christopher Wren built this place on the ashes of the old Gothic cathedral that burnt down in the Great Fire of London. He built it as a symbol of survival. Yes, I agree with you that if St Paul’s is destroyed tonight, we, or people like us, can build a new cathedral on this spot yet again. But if we can protect it, if we can ensure this place survives . . .’ He stopped for a moment, turned away, and, I think, wiped some tears from his eyes. ‘Christian or not, a Londoner is a Londoner and this great big dome we’re sitting under is our mascot.’ He turned back towards me and smiled. ‘It’s sticking two fingers up at Adolph – you understand?’
    I did. But then he said something that I didn’t understand.
    ‘Sir Christopher’s true men are here tonight, Mr Hancock, we’re fighting the enemy both outside and in.’
    ‘Outside and—’
    The ringing of the Watch telephone meant that Mr Ronson had to