Ghost of a flea

On Saturday morning, the 83-year-old pensioner rode the Tube from her home in Kensington to Islington, where she watches her great-granddaughter for her 32-year-old grandson. Bailey recalled another time in the deep Tube tunnels. On Sept. 29, 1940, the alarms sounded a bit after 6 p.m. "They came down like rain," Bailey said of the incendiary bombs that flowed from hundreds of German warplanes. The Blitz attack set off London's second great fire, destroying much of the central city including 19 churches � 16 designed by famed architect Christopher Wren.

Bailey joined thousands of Londoners who descended into Tube stations for refuge. "I think about that every time I board the underground," she said serenely, almost sweetly. But she remembers more. "Mr. Churchill said we would have business as usual in London, business as usual," she said. "It was a way of fighting back, wasn't it?"