All Clear (79 page)

“Lord Woolton’s National Wheatmeal Bread,” Camberley said, making a face. “It tasted of ashes. It’s my personal opinion that Hitler was behind the recipe.”

“Can I quote you on that?” he asked, pulling out his notebook. He introduced himself, then asked them their impressions of the exhibit and what they’d done in the war.

“I drove an ambulance,” Camberley said.

It was difficult to imagine her being tall enough to see over the steering wheel. “In the Blitz?” he asked.

“No, during the V-rocket attacks. I was stationed at Dulwich.”

Dulwich. That was near Croydon, which meant she might have known Polly, but that was no help. He needed someone who’d known her later, or rather, earlier, after she went to the Blitz. “Did you drive an ambulance as well?” he asked Herbaceous Border, whose name tag read “Margaret Fortis.”

“No, nothing so glamorous, I’m afraid. I spent the Blitz cutting sandwiches and pouring tea. I worked in a WVS canteen in one of the Underground shelters,” she explained. “They’re supposed to have a replica here.” She looked vaguely about.

“Which station?” he asked, trying not to sound too eager. If it was the one Polly had used as a shelter, there was a chance she might have known her.

“Marble Arch,” she said.

Marble Arch had been hit, so that didn’t help.

“You’re interested in the Blitz?” Camberley asked.

“Yes, my grandmother was in London during the Blitz.”
Forgive me, Polly
, he thought. “And I was hoping to find someone who knew her.”

“What did she do?”

“I don’t know. She died before I was born. I know she worked at Townsend Brothers during the first part of the Blitz and then did some sort of war work, and an uncle of mine said he thought she might have driven an ambulance.”

“Oh, then Talbot might know her.”

“Talbot?”

“Yes. Talbot—I mean, Mrs. Vernon. During the war we got in the habit of calling one another by our last names, and we still do it, even though most of us have married and those aren’t our names any longer. Mrs. Vernon was at Dulwich with me. She drove an ambulance in the East End during the Blitz.”

If Polly’d known Mrs. Vernon, or rather, Talbot, during the rocket attacks, she’d have taken care to keep out of her way during the Blitz, but he went with Camberley to find her in case she knew of other ambulance drivers he could contact.

Talbot, a formidable woman three times Camberley’s size, was listening to a BBC recording with headphones on. Camberley had to tap her on the back to get her to turn around. “This is Mr. Knight. He’s looking for someone who knew his grandmother. She was an ambulance driver.”

“What was her name?” Talbot asked.

“Polly. Polly Sebastian.”

“Sebastian …,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I don’t remember anyone by that name in the FANYs. But I know whom you should ask. Goody. Mrs. Lambert,” she explained. “She’s our group’s historian, and she knows everyone who worked in the Blitz.”

“Which one is she?”

“I don’t see her,” Talbot said, looking round the room. “She’s medium height, gray hair, rather stout.” Which described three-quarters of the women he’d seen this morning. “I know she’s here somewhere. Browne will know.”

She dragged him over to a gray-haired woman peering through her spectacles at a parachute mine. “Browne, where’s Goody Two-Shoes, do you know?”

“She’s not here. She had to do something in the City this morning, I don’t know what, but she said she’d come as soon as she’d finished with whatever it was.”

“Oh, dear,” Talbot said. “This young man is looking for someone who might have known his grandmother.”

“Oh. What did your grandmother do in the war?” Browne asked, and he went through the entire rigamarole again.

“Were you an ambulance driver?” he asked her.

“No, an RAF plotter. So I was only in London for the first two months of the Blitz. You said your grandmother worked at Townsend
Brothers. So did Pudge. That’s her over there in the green dress,” she said, pointing at a thin, birdlike woman looking at a display of clothing ration books.

But Pudge, whose name tag read Pauline Rainsford, had worked at Padgett’s, not Townsend Brothers. “Till it was hit,” she said matter-of-factly, “at which point I decided I might as well be in the armed services, and I volunteered to be a Wren.”

“Do you know of anyone who
did
work at Townsend Brothers?” he asked.

“No, but I know who you should ask. Mrs. Lambert. She’s our group’s historian.”

“I was told she wasn’t here.”

“She’s not,” Pudge said, “but she’s coming. In fact, I expected her here already. I’ll let you know as soon as she arrives, and in the meantime, you can ask the others. Hatcher!” she called to an elegant elderly woman in tweeds and pearls. “You were in London during the Blitz, weren’t you?”

“No. Bletchley Park,” she said, coming over, “which was not nearly as romantic as the historians make it sound. It was mostly drudgery, sorting through thousands upon thousands of combinations, looking for one that might work.”

Like the last eight years of my life
, he thought, calculating coordinate after coordinate, searching for clues, trying to find a drop that would open.

“Do you know of anyone who was in London during the Blitz?” Pudge was asking Hatcher.

“Yes,” she said, pointing at two women looking at a display of war posters. “York and Chedders were.”

But neither York nor Chedders—Barbara Chedwick, according to her name tag—remembered a Polly Sebastian, and neither did any of the other women they passed him on to.

“There was a Polly in our troupe,” a large woman whose name tag read “Cora Holland” said.

“In your troop?” he asked. “You were in the WAACs?”

“No, not troop,
troupe.
” She spelled the word out. “We were in an ENSA show together. We were both chorus girls.” He must not have succeeded in hiding his astonishment because she snapped, “I realize you may find that difficult to believe, but I had quite a good figure in those days. What did you say her last name was?”

“Sebastian.”

“Sebastian,” Cora repeated. “No, that doesn’t ring a bell, I’m afraid, though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I might not have ever heard her last name. Mr. Tabbitt called us all by our stage names. Polly’s was Air Raid Adelaide. If her name
was
Polly. It might have been Peggy.”

Well, and Polly wouldn’t have been a chorus girl in any case
. But he couldn’t afford to leave any stone unturned. “Do you know what happened to her?”

“I’m afraid not,” she said apologetically. “It’s so easy to lose track of people in a war, you know.”

Yes
.

“I seem to remember having heard that she’d been assigned to one of the groups touring airfields and Army camps.”

So, definitely not his Polly. And neither was the Polly who’d worked with Miss Dennehy on a barrage-balloon crew, even though Miss Dennehy was certain her last name had been Sebastian. “She was killed in August of ’40,” Miss Dennehy said.

By half past eleven he’d interviewed the entire group except for another white-haired woman too deaf to understand anything he’d said to her, and Mrs. Lambert still wasn’t there. And if he waited any longer, he’d miss the ones at St. Paul’s.

He went to find Pudge to ask for Mrs. Lambert’s address and telephone number, but she’d disappeared. He checked the blackout room, holding the curtain aside so he could see, and then the mockup of a tube shelter.

Pudge wasn’t in there, but Talbot was, looking at a “Report Suspicious Behavior” poster on the tiled tunnel wall. “Did you find Lambert?” she asked. “Did she know what your grandmother did during the Blitz?”

“No,” he said. “She’s not here yet, and I’m afraid I must go. I was wondering if you—”

“She’s not here yet? I can’t imagine what’s keeping her,” she said, and dragged him off to find the woman who’d been too deaf to interview.

“Rumford,” Talbot said, “did Goody Two-Shoes tell you what she had to do before she came here?”

“What?” Rumford said, cupping her hand to her ear.

“I
said
,” Talbot shouted, “did Goody Two-Shoes—Mrs. Lambert—tell you what she had to do before she came here?
Mrs. Lambert!
”

“Lantern?”

“No.
Lambert
. Do you know where she was going this morning before she came here?”

Rumford looked round vaguely. “Isn’t she here yet?”

“No. And this young man wants to speak to her. Do you know where she went?”

“Yes,” she said. “To St. Paul’s.”

St. Paul’s, where he could already be if he hadn’t waited here for her.

“St. Paul’s?” Talbot said. “Why did she need to go there?”

“What?” Rumford cupped her hand to her ear again.

“I said, why did—oh, good, she’s here,” Talbot said, pointing at the far side of the exhibit where a plump, friendly-looking woman was rummaging in her handbag. “Goody Two-Shoes!” Talbot called, and when she didn’t look up, “Lambert! Over here. Eileen!”

“28 JUNE 1944,” ERNEST TYPED. “DEAR EDITOR, I LIVE IN
Sellindge, near Folkestone, and our little village has always been a charming, tranquil place. For the past fortnight, however, that tranquility has been destroyed by a constant stream of troop transports. I’ve been forced to hang my washing inside because of the dust, and my cat, Polly Flinders, has nearly been run over twice. How long will this continue? When I spoke to Captain Davies, he said it might last until—”

He paused, wondering what date he was supposed to use for the invasion. Immediately after they’d invaded at Normandy, they’d discussed July first as an invasion date, but that was when the longest they were hoping the deception would hold was D-Day-plus-five. It was already D-plus-twenty-two, and there was still no sign the Germans had caught on.

“They’ve got to tumble to it soon,” Cess had said disgustedly the night before in the mess. “There are over five hundred thousand Allied forces in France. What do the jerries think they’re doing there? Picking flowers?”

“You’re only annoyed because you lost the pool,” Prism had said.

Ernest had lost the pool, too.
It’s too bad I didn’t study the post-invasion period
, he thought.
I could have won fifty pounds
. He’d guessed the eighteenth of June—D-plus-twelve—even though he’d privately believed the whole deception would collapse the moment the troops hit the beaches
of Normandy. But here he was, in the last week of June, still typing phony wedding announcements and irate letters to the editor.

He went to find Chasuble, but he wasn’t in his office, and Prism didn’t know where he was.

“Gwendolyn might,” Prism said, and Ernest went out to the garage to find him.

Gwen was underneath the staff car. Ernest leaned under and asked, “Do you know where Chasuble is?”

“He went to Station X to drop off the radio messages,” Gwen said.

Damn
. “Do you know—” he began, then stopped and looked up, listening. There was a faint
putt-putt
ing off to the east. It sounded like a motorbike approaching.

“That’s odd,” Gwen said, sliding out from under the car. “I didn’t hear the siren.”

“Perhaps they’ve stopped bothering with them.”

Gwen nodded. “Or worn them out.”

It’s possible
, Ernest thought, listening to the
putt-putt
grow louder. In the two weeks since the V-1s had started, the sirens had sounded at least five hundred times.

“What did you ask me before?” Gwen asked.

“I asked you,” Ernest said, raising his voice over the chugging of the V-1, “if you knew when we were invading France.”

Gwen waited till the rocket had passed safely overhead and headed loudly off to the northeast and then shouted, “Invading France? I thought we already had!”

“Very amusing!” Ernest yelled back. “Not the real one. I’m talking about the one we’ve been working on for the last five months!” He was suddenly shouting into silence as the V-1’s motor cut out.

Gwen held up his hand, signaling him to wait. There was a brief silence and then a muffled boom off to the northwest.

“That’s the eighth flying bomb today,” Gwen said. “You’d think Hitler would be growing bored with his new toy by now.” He slid back under the car.

“You still haven’t told me when we’re invading Calais.”

“I think they decided on July fifteenth, but I’m not certain. Cess will know.”

But Cess would follow him back to the office and stand there watching him type.

“Whenever it is, I hope it’s soon,” Gwen said from under the car. “I can’t wait to get out of this bloody place.”

They’d all be out of this bloody place as soon as the Germans caught on to the deception.

And then what
? Ernest thought. Where would he be assigned? He had to see to it he wasn’t sent to France. He hadn’t realized deception units had operated over there after D-Day till last week, when an officer from Dover had arrived and requisitioned all their dummy tanks. They apparently planned to set up dummy-tank battalions in France to confuse the Germans, and the officer’d said the units manning them would be drawn from Fortitude South. “We need people who’ve had experience with these bloody unwieldy inflatables,” he’d said, which meant everyone in the unit was vulnerable.

Hopefully, Ernest’s bad foot would keep him from being sent, but he couldn’t count on it—the officer had asked him how much experience he’d had with tanks, and Cess had told him the entire story of the bull.

Ernest wished he knew what other deception missions they’d done after D-Day so he’d know what to avoid and what to ask for. He needed an assignment that would keep him in England, and one that involved sending messages that an historian might have an interest in. It was his only hope, now that D-Day was over and Denys Atherton had gone back to Oxford.

It also had to be an assignment where he wouldn’t have to undergo a background check, and where he wouldn’t be likely to get caught.