All Clear (86 page)

“I’m the retrieval team, old man,” the orderly said. “It’s Colin. Colin Templer. You’re in Croydon, in an ambulance. I’m taking you back to Oxford.”

Ernest clutched Colin’s arm. “But I have to tell you about Polly,” and some of his desperation must have got through because Colin nodded.

“All right. When did you see her last, Michael?”

Had it been a few minutes or longer than that? “I don’t know. She”—he tried to raise his hand to show Colin where she’d gone—“left.”

“When did you leave?” Colin asked. “On January eleventh? That’s when the
Times
said you died.”

No
, he thought,
it’s October
. But Colin meant when he’d been in London. “Yes, on the eleventh.”

“Where was Polly working when you left? Was she still working in Oxford Street?”

He nodded. “At Townsend Brothers. On the third floor. But she and Eileen—”

“Eileen? Merope’s there?” Colin said eagerly. “She and Polly are together? Do you know where they’re living?”

“Fourteen,” he said, swallowing. There was an odd metallic taste in his mouth. He swallowed, trying to get rid of it. “Cardle Street,” he attempted to say, but he couldn’t for coughing—and he must have coughed so hard he vomited because Colin was wiping at his mouth with a corner of the blanket. “Mrs.—”

“Don’t try to talk,” Colin said, dabbing at his chin. “They’re living at Mrs. Rickett’s in Cardle Street. Number fourteen.”

Ernest nodded. “In Kensington,” he tried to say, but more coughing overtook him.

But it was all right, Colin understood. “In Kensington, right? We worked that out from your messages. And the shelter they’re using is Notting Hill Gate?”

Ernest nodded, grateful he didn’t have to try to say all that because there was something else he needed to tell him, something important. “She didn’t come through in June. She came through in December of ’43. You have to get her out before the twenty-ninth.”

“I will. But first I’ve got to get you back.” He stooped over him. “Can you put your arms round my neck?”

“Don’t,” Ernest said, afraid the V-2 would hit again when he lifted him. “Get Polly to help you. Tell her to bring the stretcher.”

“She’s not here,” Colin said gently. “She’s in 1941. Remember? You told me where to find her.”

“No. Here. At the incident.” But Colin wouldn’t know that word. He wasn’t an historian. He was just a boy. “She was the one who found me in the wreckage,” he tried to say. “She rescued me. She’s an ambulance driver at Dulwich.”

But that must not have been what he said because Colin asked, “She
wasn’t working at Townsend Brothers when you left? She was driving an ambulance?”

“
No
. Here. In the wreckage”—he swallowed—“after the V-1 hit—”

“Polly was here just now?” Colin cut in.

“No, Mary. She hasn’t gone to the Blitz yet. But it’s all right. She didn’t recognize me. I didn’t ruin it,” he said between coughs. “You’ve got to warn her. You’ve got to tell her not to go.”

“If I’d known—” Colin said, looking off into the distance, and Ernest knew they weren’t at the incident, that Colin had taken him somewhere else.

“Are we in the ambulance?” he asked.

“No, we’re at the drop. If I’d known Polly was there …,” Colin said, and his voice sounded full of despair and longing.

Like that night I left London
, Ernest thought,
when I knew I could never see her or Eileen again
.

But he had to see her. “You have to stop her. Go back—”

“I’ve got to get you home first. The drop’ll open any second now. There’s an emergency medical team waiting for us in the lab. We’ll have you fixed up in no time, old man.”

“There’s no time. She’ll be gone,” he opened his mouth to say. “You have to go find her.” But without any warning he was vomiting again, all down Colin’s coverall, only it wasn’t vomit, it was blood.

“I’ll find them, I promise,” Colin said, and put his arms around him.

Good
, he thought.
I won’t have to die alone
.

“Why the bloody hell doesn’t the drop open?” Colin said angrily.

“It’s broken. We’re all trapped here in the Blitz.”

“Stay with me, Davies. We’ll be there any second. We’ll get you to hospital, and they’ll get you all fixed up, they’ll get you a new leg, and I’ll go fetch Eileen and Polly. They’ll be there before you come out of surgery. They’ll be so glad to see you. You’re a hero, you know.”

“I know,” he said. “I saved Cess’s life.”
And Chasuble’s. And Jonathan’s and the Commander’s. And that dog’s
. He wondered what had happened to it, and whether it had helped to win the war.

“Don’t quit on me, Davies,” Colin said. “You can do this.”

Ernest shook his head. “Kiss me, Hardy,” he murmured.

“What?”

He bent nearer, and Ernest saw that it
was
Hardy. “I’m glad I saved your life,” he said. “No matter what.”

“Finally!” Hardy said, “Thank God!” and scooped him up in his arms.

Just like at St. Paul’s
, Ernest thought,
the captain dying in Honour’s arms
,
though he’d never seen it—the sandbags had hidden it. And the captain hadn’t seen it either. He’d died the moment after he’d tied the boats together. He’d never known whether they’d won or not.

“Did we?” he asked Colin.

And he must only be a boy after all because he was crying. “Don’t do this, Davies,” he pleaded. “Not now. Michael!”

No, not Michael. Or Mike Davis. Or Ernest Worthing. And not Shackleton. “That’s not my name,” he said, and tried to tell him what it was, but the blood was everywhere, in his mouth, his ears, his eyes, so he couldn’t hear Colin, he couldn’t see the drop opening. “It’s Faulknor.”

THE SEDATIVE THE NURSE GAVE POLLY MUST HAVE BEEN
morphine because her sleep was filled with muddy, mazelike dreams. She was trying to get to the drop, which lay just on the other side of the peeling black door, but it had already shut, the train was already pulling out, and this was the wrong platform. She had to get to Paddington in time for the 11:19 to Backbury, and the troupe was blocking her way. She had to step over them—Marjorie and the woman at the Works Board and the ARP warden who had caught her that first night and taken her to St. George’s. And Fairchild and the librarian at Holborn and Mrs. Brightford, sitting against the wall reading to Trot. “And the bad fairy said to Sleeping Beauty,” Mrs. Brightford read, “ ‘You will prick your finger on a spindle and die.’ ”

“No, she won’t,” Trot said. “The good fairy will fix it.”

“She can’t fix it,” Alf said contemptuously. “They got here too late.”

“She can so,” Trot retorted, going very red in the face. “It says so in the
story
. Can’t she, Polly?”

“I don’t know,” Polly said. “I fear they’ll only make things worse.”

“Hush,” Mrs. Brightford said. “And then the good fairy said, ‘The spell is already cast, and I cannot undo it, but I will do what I can.’ ” And Polly wanted to stay and listen to the end of the story, but she was late, she had to get to Dulwich before the twenty-ninth. She ran through tunnels and corridors and up stairs which were sometimes in Holborn and
sometimes in Padgett’s, and she couldn’t run very fast because she was carrying the answer that she had puzzled out, clenched in her fist like a penny.

She didn’t dare let go of it. She had to hold it tight against her stomach till she had the string wrapped round it, till she had all the ends tucked in. She had been late getting to Dulwich and missed hearing the first V-1s, so she hadn’t known what they sounded like, so she had knocked Talbot into the gutter and wrenched her knee and had had to drive Stephen, and if she hadn’t, he and Talbot would have been killed in Tottenham Court Road, and he wouldn’t have come up with the idea of tipping the V-1s …

But it wasn’t a V-1, it was a siren, and Polly had to go out onstage and bend over and flip up her skirt, but her knickers didn’t say, “Air Raid in Progress,” they said “Wrong Way Round,” and when she tried to look over her shoulder to read the message, a V-1 came over, rattling like a motorcycle, and she had to run downstairs to the shelter in Padgett’s basement, holding the answer tight in her hand, the answer that made it all make sense—Eileen’s driving lessons and Stephen and the Wren and Alf and Binnie’s parrot and the library at Holborn.

But she wasn’t in Holborn, she was in St. Paul’s, trying to find a way up to the roofs. But she couldn’t. It was too dark. She needed a torch.

Mike had it, he was swinging it back and forth, trying to see what was fouling the propeller. “Shine it over here,” she said, but Mike said, “I can’t. There’s no time. The U-boats will be here any minute.” And when she looked up at the boat looming above them, she saw it wasn’t the
Lady Jane
, it was the
City of Benares
.

“Get the lantern!” Mike shouted.

“What lantern?”

“In the painting,” he said, and she ran back down the curving staircase, past the masks of Comedy and Tragedy, her hands cupped protectively around the answer, through the north transept and under the dome to the south aisle …

And full tilt into Alf and Binnie, colliding with them, her hands reaching out instinctively to break her fall, opening, spilling all of it—the slippage and Agatha Christie and the
Lady Jane
and the air-raid warden and her bloomers—like pennies, like Crimson Caress lipstick onto the pavement and into the road. “Oh, no,” she said, bending to pick it up. “Oh, no.”

“Shh, it’s all right,” someone said, and she opened her eyes. A nurse in a wimple and a starched white apron was bending over her, taking her pulse. “You’re in hospital.”

“I lost—” Polly murmured.

“Whatever it is, you can find it later,” the nurse said. “You must try to sleep.”

“No,” Polly said, thinking,
It had something to do with detective novels. And
Sleeping Beauty.
And a horse. “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse
 …”

“I must see Sir Godfrey,” she said.

“Sir Godfrey?” the nurse said blankly, and Polly thought,
They’ve taken him to some other hospital, like the man I tied the tourniquet on in Croydon. Or to the morgue
.

He died on the way to hospital
, Polly thought.
I didn’t save his life after all
.

But the nurse was saying, “It was lucky you found him in time. And lucky you knew what to do.”

But we weren’t lucky
, Polly thought.
I was late getting to Dulwich. Mike missed the bus to Dover. He missed Daphne in Saltram-on-Sea and had to follow her all the way to Manchester, and Eileen came to Townsend Brothers the one day I was gone
. And the night of the twenty-ninth, everything had conspired against them—the air-raid warden who stopped them just as they were going into St. Paul’s and the doctor who waylaid Eileen and the fires and falling walls and blocked-off streets. And Alf and Binnie.

“Why is it everywhere I go there are horrible children?” Eileen had asked, but if it hadn’t been for the Hodbins, Eileen wouldn’t have survived after Mike died. And if she hadn’t insisted on taking them in, if they hadn’t insisted on bringing their parrot, Alf and Binnie wouldn’t have got them thrown out of the boardinghouse. They all might have died along with Mrs. Rickett.

“It’s lucky we got thrown out, ain’t it?” Alf had said, and Mr. Humphreys had said, “What luck you came to Saint Paul’s today. He’s here, the man I told you about.” And Mike had said, “It’s lucky that was the only available room in Bletchley, or I’d never have found out what happened to Gerald Phipps.”

“It was lucky the warden heard me in the rubble,” Marjorie had said, and that night in Padgett’s, Eileen had said, “It’s lucky I heard you calling.”

And at some point Polly must have fallen asleep, must have murmured Eileen’s name, because Eileen said, “I’m here,” and when Polly opened her eyes, she
was
there, and it was morning. A nurse was pulling back the blackout curtains from the tall windows, and sunlight was streaming into the ward.

Polly held her hands up in the light and looked at them. They were open, empty of anything, but it didn’t matter. She hadn’t lost the answer
she’d been holding carefully cupped in them. It had been there all along. She had just been looking at it the wrong way round.

“Are you all right?” Eileen asked.

“Yes,” she said wonderingly. “I am.”
If I’m right. If Alf and Binnie
—

“Oh, thank goodness,” Eileen said, and Polly saw that she had been crying. “Mr. Dunworthy and I have been so worried … When you didn’t come home last night … The warden told us there’d been bombs all over the West End, and then when I rang the theater and the stage manager said you’d run out during the performance into the middle of a raid and hadn’t come back, I …”

Eileen broke off, blew her nose, and attempted to smile. “The matron said they found you inside the Phoenix Theatre. What on earth were you doing there?”

“Saving Sir Godfrey’s life,” Polly said. “Eileen, how ill was Binnie?”

“How ill? What—?”

“With the measles. Would she have died if you hadn’t been there?”

“I don’t know. Her fever was dreadfully high. But you’re not going to die, Polly. The nurse said you’d be fine—”

“What happened to the firewatcher?”

“The fire—”

“The one who was injured, who John Bartholomew took to St. Bart’s? Did Mr. Bartholomew save his life?”

“Polly, you’re not making any sense. The doctor said you breathed in a good deal of gas. I think you may still—”

“On the last day of your assignment, why didn’t you go back to Oxford?”

“I told you, the quarantine.”

“No, I need to know exactly what happened,” Polly said, clutching Eileen’s hand. “Please. It’s important.”

Eileen looked at her as if trying to decide whether to call the nurse, and then said, “I was leaving to go to the drop when some new evacuees arrived. Theodore was one of them.”