Small Island: Chapter 26: Queenie Summary & Analysis

When the Prime Minister announces that Britain is at war with Germany, Queenie can barely hear the radio over Bernard’s grandfather clock. Right away, an air-raid siren sounds. Panicking, Bernard gathers their gas masks and runs to the back door, while Arthur trembles mutely. Mr. Plant, a German-Jewish refugee who rents a room, runs down the stairs screaming in German.

All four are climbing in to the bomb shelter, which Arthur has constructed over the past weeks in the backyard, when the all-clear sounds. The air raid is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to Queenie, and she decides she’s looking forward to war.

Soon after, government officials come to the house asking Queenie about Mr. Plant. Even though she tells him he rarely leaves his room and never sees anyone, they take him away for internment. Queenie is bothered that the police won’t explain anything to her, but Bernard just says that “Jews are more trouble than they’re worth.”

When the Blitz begins, Queenie forgets her excitement and realizes how frightening the bombs really are. Arthur refuses to enter the shelter, since it reminds him of his time in the trenches during the Great War. Every night while Queenie and Bernard huddle underground, they hope that the bombs spare Arthur inside the house.

Families from bombed-out houses have to resettle in other neighborhoods, and a Cockney family comes to live next to the Blighs in Earls Court. Bernard and Cyril Todd are upset that people of a lower class are invading their neighborhood, muttering that “they’d be happier among their own kind.” Queenie is struck by the sad spectacle of a family struggling down the street in torn clothes, carrying the few possessions they’ve scavenged from the bombing. The government has forced Mrs. Newman to rent them a space in her house, but she consigns them to the attic and refuses to let them use her bathrooms.

Queenie and Bernard become exhausted from spending nearly every night in their shelter, listening to bombs. Once, when a bomb lands particularly close, Bernard has a panic attack; but when Queenie attempts to open the shelter to look outside and reassure him, he tackles her to keep her from endangering herself. The house and Arthur survive intact, and afterward Bernard tells her that he loves her.

The Blighs leave their shelter to find that Mrs. Newman’s house has been completely destroyed, although all the inhabitants have survived. The Cockney mother curses in despair, and Mr. Todd smugly scolds her for her language.

Without asking Bernard, Queenie offers to shelter the Cockney family, now displaced twice, in her own home. Bernard is furious and refuses to let them stay for more than a day, after which Queenie takes them to a rest center, or shelter for bombing victims. Once she’s there, Queenie volunteers to help, and comes home to tell Bernard triumphantly that she has a job of which he won’t approve.