All Clear (10 page)

By the end of the day, she’d obtained a dozen names. She tried them out on Eileen when she came back from Bethnal Green, with no luck. Eileen hadn’t been able to get an identity card either. “The clerk in Bethnal Green told me I had to go to the National Registration office, but it isn’t open on Monday.”

“It’s probably just as well,” Polly said. “Mrs. Rickett serves trench pie on Monday night.”

“What’s that?”

“No one knows. Mr. Dorming’s convinced she makes it out of rats.”

“It can’t possibly be that bad,” Eileen said. “And at any rate, I don’t care. I can bear anything now that I’ve found you and Mike. I’d be willing to eat sawdust.”

“That would be Mrs. Rickett’s victory loaf, which we have on Thursdays,” Polly said. She tried to give Eileen some money for lunch, but she refused it.

“We’ll need all our money for our train fare to the airfield,” Eileen said, and went off to see if Selfridges had an ABC.

It didn’t. And neither did the
Daily Herald
’s office. When Polly got off work, Eileen and Mike were both waiting for her outside the staff entrance, and they reported no luck in finding one.

And no luck with the drop. “I stayed there till two,” Mike said, “and nary a shimmer of a shimmer.”

He’d spent the rest of the afternoon at the
Herald
, going through July and August editions for airfield names. As soon as they got to Notting Hill Gate and the emergency staircase—which was colder than ever—he tried them on Eileen. “Bedford?”

“No,” Eileen said. “I’m convinced it was two words.”

“Beachy Head?”

“That sounds a bit like it … no.”

“She thinks the second word begins with a P,” Polly said.

He checked his list. “Bentley Priory?”

Eileen frowned. “No … it wasn’t Priory. It was Paddock or Place or …” She frowned, attempting to remember.

He checked the list again. “No Ps,” he said. “How about Biggin Hill?”

Eileen hesitated. “Perhaps … I’m not certain … I’m so sorry. I thought I’d know it when I heard it, but now I’ve heard so many … I’m not certain …”

“It would be a logical choice,” Mike said. “It was in the thick of the Battle of Britain.”

“So was Beachy Head,” Polly said. “And Bentley Priory. And that’s the one nearest Oxford. Perhaps we should try that first.”

“But it’s not just an airfield, it’s the RAF command center,” Mike said, “which means security will be tighter. Biggin Hill’s closest. I say we try that first and then the other two. Now, what about messages we can send? Did you tell Eileen my idea, Polly?”

“Yes,” she said, and to prevent Eileen from launching into an account of mystery novels which hadn’t been written yet, she continued, “How’s
this for an ad? ‘Historian seeks situation involving travel. Available immediately’?”

“Great,” Mike said, scribbling it down. “And we can do variations of your ‘Meet me in Trafalgar Square or Kensington Gardens or the British Museum.’ ”

“There are lots of notices looking for soldiers who were at Dunkirk,” Eileen mused. “What about ‘Anyone having information regarding the whereabouts of Michael Davies, last seen at Dunkirk, contact E. O’Reilly,’ and Mrs. Rickett’s address?”

Mike wrote their suggestions down. “What about crosswords?” He pointed at the
Herald
’s puzzle. “I could compose one with our names in the clues, like ‘This bird wants a cracker.’ Or ‘What an Italian tower might say if asked its name?’ ”

“Absolutely not,” Polly said.

“Because they’re bad puns?”

“No, because a crossword nearly derailed D-Day.”

“How?”

“Two weeks before the invasion, five of the top-top-secret code words appeared in the
Daily Herald
’s crossword puzzle:
‘Overlord,’ ‘mulberry,’ ‘Utah,’ ‘sword,’
and I forget the other one. The military was convinced the Germans had tumbled to the invasion and was ready to call the entire invasion off.”

“Had they?” Eileen asked. “Tumbled to it?”

“No. The puzzle’s author was a schoolmaster who’d been doing them for years. He told the military his students and dozens of other people composed the clues and that they’d have no way of knowing which puzzle they’d be in, and in the end they decided it was just a bizarre coincidence.”

“And was it?” Mike asked.

“No. Forty years later the
Herald
published a story about it, and a man who’d been one of the schoolmaster’s students confessed he’d overheard two Army officers talking and had co-opted the words for clues with no idea what they meant.”

“But the puzzle incident wasn’t till 1944,” Mike said. “It isn’t likely British Intelligence would be reading crossword puzzles now—”

“In which case the retrieval team won’t be either. I think they’re much more likely to read personal ads. There are lots of ‘losts.’ Perhaps we could do something with that.”

“Like ‘Lost: historian. Reward for safe return’?”

“No,” Polly said, “but we could say we’d lost something and give our
name and address. Here’s one. ‘Lost: pair of brown carpet slippers on Northern Line platform, Bank Station. If found—’ ”

“Oh,” Eileen said. They looked inquiringly at her. “You told me to remember any detail, no matter how irrelevant, about my conversations with Gerald—”

“Does Gerald’s airfield have the word ‘bank’ in it?” Mike asked eagerly, grabbing for his list of names. “Glaston Bank?”

“No, not that part. The bit about the slippers.”

They looked blankly at her.

“ ‘Slippers’ sounds like ‘slippage.’ ”

“Slippage?”

“Yes. Linna was on the phone while I was talking to Gerald, and whoever she was talking to wanted to know how much slippage there was on someone’s drop, and then when I went through to Backbury, Badri was talking to someone about an increase in slippage, and Linna asked me if the slippage the last time I went through had increased from the other times.”

“And had it?” Mike asked.

“No, and when I told her that, she said, ‘Good,’ and looked at Badri.”

“Who was she talking to, do you know?”

“No. I assume it was Mr. Dunworthy. She called him sir.”

“And it was an increase?” Mike asked eagerly. “Not a decrease? You’re sure?”

“Yes. Why?”

Because then there wasn’t too little slippage
, Polly thought.
And it couldn’t have let Mike—or me—go to a place where we could alter events
.

“They questioned Phipps on his slippage, too,” Mike said. “Did they say anything to you about it when you came through, Polly?”

“They asked me to note how much there was and tell them when I reported in.”

“And how much was there?”

“Four and a half days. It was only supposed to be an hour or two. I assumed there was a divergence point that—”

“I don’t think so,” Mike said excitedly. “I think a bunch of drops were experiencing an increase in slippage, and it was enough to worry them. Which means it couldn’t have been a few days’ worth. It must have been weeks. Or months.”

“And that’s why our retrieval teams aren’t here?” Polly said. “Because the slippage sent them to November or December instead?”

He nodded.

“So all we need to do is wait for them to come fetch us?” Eileen said eagerly.

“No. It might be a while before they get here, and in case you haven’t noticed, this is kind of a dangerous place. The sooner we can find a working drop and get out of here, the better.”

“But if there’s slippage, then Gerald’s drop won’t open either, will it?” Polly asked.

“Even if it doesn’t, he may know more about what the slippage problem is and how long we’re looking at. That means finding him’s still our first priority. And our second’s to make sure the retrieval team can find us when they get here. Eileen, have you had a letter from Lady Caroline?”

“No, not yet,” Eileen said, looking at Polly. She was obviously afraid he was going to ask her if she’d written the Hodbins.

“What about you, Mike?” Polly asked hastily. “Have you left a trail of bread crumbs for your team to follow?”

“Yes, I wrote the hospital in Dover and Sister Carmody at Orpington, and I sent my address to the barmaid at the Crown and Anchor.”

“Barmaid?” Eileen said.

“Yes.” He told them about Daphne’s coming to see him in hospital. “She’ll tell everybody in Saltram-on-Sea. I’ll put this ‘Meet me in Victoria Station’ message in tomorrow’s paper when I go down to the
Express
in the morning. I’m going to see if I can talk the paper into having me write a piece on ‘Our Biggin Hill Heroes.’ That’ll help me get access, and I can earn some money while I’m at it. Maybe they’ll even pay my way.”

“But aren’t we
all
going?” Eileen asked.

“No, I’ll be able to get there quicker and find out more in a shorter time if I’m on my own.”

“And I can’t leave my job,” Polly said.

“I know,” Eileen said reluctantly. “It’s only … I think it’s a bad idea for us to split up when it took us so long to find one another.”

“We’re not splitting up,” Mike said. “We’re doing what Shackleton did.”

“Shackleton? Is he an historian?” Eileen asked.

“No, Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. They were trapped in the ice, and he had to leave his crew behind to go get help. If he didn’t, none of them would get out. That’s what I’m doing—going off to find help. If Gerald’s at Biggin Hill, I’ll ring you and have you come there.”

“You won’t go through without us?”

“Of course not. I’ll get you both out, I promise. In the meantime,
Eileen, I want you to get your name on file at the department stores, and Polly, keep trying to scout up an ABC.”

“I will,” she said.

She tried, with no luck at all. She also made a list of the next week’s raids for Mike and Eileen to memorize, spent a fruitless evening in Victoria Station “by the clock” waiting for the retrieval team and being accosted by soldiers, and then went to rehearsal in the hopes that Lila and Viv would be there. They were, but the troupe was rehearsing Act Two, which everyone was in, so she had no chance to ask them.

Mike returned from Biggin Hill Friday morning. “No luck,” he told Polly, leaning over her counter at Townsend Brothers. “He’s not at Biggin Hill. I got a look at every one of the ground crew
and
all the pilots. I don’t suppose Eileen remembered the airfield name while I was gone?”

Polly shook her head.

“I was afraid of that. I brought a new list of names for her to look at. Is she at Mrs. Rickett’s?”

“No,” Polly said after a hasty look around to see if Miss Snelgrove was watching. “She’s still making the rounds of the department stores. She should be back soon. She said she was going to check in at lunch.”

“When’s
your
lunch break?”

“Half past twelve—yes, may I help you, sir?”

“May …? Oh, yes,” he said, thankfully not looking over at Miss Snelgrove, who’d suddenly appeared. “I’d like to see some stockings.”

“Yes, sir,” Polly said, bringing out a box and opening it. “These are very nice, sir.”

He leaned forward to finger them. “Do you have these in any other colors?” he asked, and then, under his breath, “I’ll meet you and Eileen at twelve-thirty at Lyons Corner House.”

“Yes, sir. They also come in powder pink and ecru,” and, to give him an exit opportunity, “I’m afraid we’re out of ivory.”

“Oh, too bad. My girl had her heart set on ivory,” he said, and left, mouthing “Twelve-thirty” at her.

Eileen still wasn’t back by then. Polly left a note for her and went to tell Mike, who’d got them a table in a secluded corner.

“I told her to meet us here,” she said, shrugging off her coat.

He handed her the menu. “I’m afraid they’re out of everything but the fish-paste sandwich.”

“Which is still better than anything at Mrs. Rickett’s,” Polly said. She handed him a sheet of paper.

“More airfield names?”

“No, the upcoming raids. The worst one’s on the twelfth. Sloane Square Underground station, seventy-nine casualties.”

“And no break in the nightly raids, I see,” he said, looking at the list.

“Not till next week. Then they shift to the industrial cities—Coventry and then Birmingham and Wolverhamp—”

“Coventry?”

“Yes. It was hit on the fourteenth. What’s the matter?”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” he said excitedly. “We’ve only been considering the historians who are here right now, not the ones who were here earlier.”

“Before 1940, you mean?”

“No, not earlier
now
,” he said. “Earlier in Oxford time. Historians who had World War II assignments last year. Or ten years ago. Like Ned Henry and Verity Kindle. Weren’t they in Coventry the night it was bombed?”

“Yes, but that was two years ago … Oh,” she said, seeing what he was getting at. It didn’t matter
when
historians had done it in their past. This was time travel. Here in 1940, they would do it two weeks from now.

“But there’s no way we could get to Ned and Verity. We don’t know where they were except that they were in the middle of Coventry, in the heart of the fire. And it’s much too dangerous—”

“Not any more dangerous than Dunkirk,” Mike said. “And we know one place they were—in the cathedral.”

“As it was burning down,” Polly said. “You can’t be thinking of trying to go there. The area around the cathedral was nearly a firestorm.”

“It might also be our fastest way out. We wouldn’t necessarily have to find Ned and Verity. The drop was inside the cathedral, wasn’t it? All we have to do is find it.”

“Mike, we can’t go through their drop.”

“Why not? We
know
it was working.”

“But we can’t use it because it was two years ago. We can’t go through to a time we’re already in. Their drop opens on Oxford two years ago, and two years ago—”

“We were all in Oxford,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. But we can send a message through them.”

“A message?”

“Yes. We find Verity and Ned before they go back and have them tell the lab where we are and that our drops won’t open and to reset the drop so it opens in our time. There’s no reason we can’t do that, is there?”

“Yes, there is. Because we didn’t.”