Connie Willis - All Clear

But she wasn’t about to tell Eileen that. “The job’s not definite yet,” she said. “I may be assigned to an ARP post instead.”

She went to the Works Board early the next morning to see to it that she was. Mrs. Sentry, thankfully, wasn’t there. She picked out the most sympathetic person she could find and laid out her case, but all she got was a not-at-all-sympathetic lecture on the importance of every service job—“Each task, no matter how humble or seemingly insignificant, is vital to the war effort”—and the impossibility of being reassigned to an ARP post “unless you have authorization from the commander of the unit. You haven’t, have you?”

Not yet, Polly thought, and went to every ARP post in Bloomsbury and Oxford Street and Kensington.

All of them were “fully staffed at the moment.” “Perhaps in six months,” the warden at the Notting Hill post told her.

The Blitz will only last four, she thought, frustrated, and asked to speak to the post commander.

“She won’t be in till three o’clock,” the warden told her.

But by three she needed to be at rehearsal, and it was already after one. She had two hours to find a post that would take her. She couldn’t keep going from post to post. She needed to talk to someone who’d know which posts were shorthanded, someone who—

Mr. Humphreys at St. Paul’s, she thought. He’d know all the Civil Defence personnel in the area. He might even be able to talk one of them into taking her on.

She hurried to the tube station, caught the train to St. Paul’s, and raced up the stairs and out of the station toward the cathedral.

And was appalled all over again. She hadn’t been here since Mike’s memorial service, and in the meantime, work crews had cleared away the charred hulks of the buildings on Paternoster Row and Newgate and Carter Lane, leaving St. Paul’s standing all alone in a flat gray wasteland.

“It looks like a pinpoint bomb went off here,” Polly murmured as she hurried up the street, and thought suddenly of Oxford. Was this what it looked like?

“Watch where you’re going,” a female voice said, and she came out of her reverie just in time to avoid colliding with a woman in a WAAF uniform.

“Sorry,” Polly said, hurrying around her and up the hill. She ran across the courtyard, up the steps, and into the cathedral.

There was no one at the desk or in the south aisle. What if Mr. Humphreys isn’t here today? she thought, starting up the nave, but he was in the north transept, standing with a trio of sailors in front of the piled sandbags which covered Captain Faulknor’s memorial.

“Being in His Majesty’s Navy, you’ll be interested in this,” Mr. Humphreys said, though the sailors showed no sign of it. They looked bored and fidgety. “Captain Faulknor was one of our greatest naval heroes, though he’s not so well known as Sir Francis Drake or Lord Nelson. He—”

“Mr. Humphreys,” Polly said, hurrying over. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I—”

“Miss Sebastian,” he said, turning in mid-gesture. “I’ve been hoping you’d come in! How fortuitous that you’re here today.”

He turned back to the sailors. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to speak with Miss Sebastian. I’ll be back directly.” He dragged Polly off toward the dome.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said, leading her into the choir. “He’s a great admirer of The Light of the World, just as you are. He spends hours and hours looking at it.”

“I’m afraid I’m in rather a hurry today—” she began, but Mr. Humphreys wasn’t listening.

“I saw him come this way when we were in the nave.” He led her into the apse. The altar was still blocked off for repairs. “Oh, dear,” he said, looking around at the ladders and scaffolding. “He’s not here. I’m certain I saw him—”

“Mr. Humphreys, I have a favor to ask,” Polly cut in. “I was hoping you could help me get taken on as an ARP warden.”

“A warden? That’s no job for a young lady,” he said, still looking vaguely around. “It’s dirty, dangerous work, what with the raids and all. And out in the winter cold all night. You’d catch your death.”

I’m going to catch my death no matter what I do, she thought.

“Being a warden’s no more dangerous than being on the fire watch,” she said, but Mr. Humphreys was still looking for this person he wanted her to meet.

“I do hope he hasn’t left,” he fretted, starting back along the choir aisle. “I did so want you to meet him. I’ve told him all about you. Such a nice gentleman. Do you

“I do hope he hasn’t left,” he fretted, starting back along the choir aisle. “I did so want you to meet him. I’ve told him all about you. Such a nice gentleman. Do you know what he said the first time he saw The Light of the World? He said, ‘He looks as though he could forgive anything.’ So interesting, isn’t it, what people see?

Each time one looks at it, one sees something diff—”

“If not an air-raid warden, then some other Civil Defence job—”

“Mr. Hobbe—that’s the gentleman I want you to meet—has only just got out of hospital.” He peered into the dim recesses of the south transept. “He’s had rather a hard time of it, I’m afraid. He was wounded in a bomb blast, a head wound, and he’s still not entirely recovered. Let me just check the north transept,” he said, though Mr. Hobbe obviously wasn’t there—they’d just come from there.

The sailors weren’t there either. They must have seen their chance and fled.

“Mr. Hobbe is almost as fond of Captain Faulknor’s memorial as he is of The Light of the World,” Mr. Humphreys said, which Polly doubted. She wondered if he’d fled, too.

“Last week I found him here after the sirens had gone,” Mr. Humphreys went on obliviously, “sitting against one of the pillars, looking at Captain Faulknor’s statue.”

Which is impossible, Polly thought. It’s covered in sandbags.

“And when I began to tell him about Captain Faulknor’s tying the two ships together, he knew all about it. ‘It bound them into one,’ he said—”

“I think Mr. Hobbe must have gone home,” Polly said, “and I must go, too. If you could just tell me the name of someone I could speak to about getting hired on by Civil Defence, I—”

“But he can’t have gone home. I don’t believe he has one. I think it may have been destroyed in the same bomb blast. I’ve found him here at night several times since then.”

“At night?”

“Yes, and that first night, when I said I’d have one of the watch accompany him home—he’s not well, and I hated to think of him out in the blackout—I asked him where he lived, and he said, ‘It doesn’t exist.’ ”

“It doesn’t—?”

“Yes, dreadful, isn’t it, to think of him bombed out in this weather, with only a shelter to—”

“You said he’s been coming in every day,” Polly said. “For how long?”

“Several weeks,” he said, walking back out to the dome. “He began coming in shortly before the New Year. I’m afraid you’ve just missed him. What a pity. I did so want you two—”

“What does he look like?”

“Look like? He’s my age, or perhaps a bit older. Tall, thin, spectacles. I think he may have been a schoolmaster. He knows all about the history of St. Paul’s. He’s clearly troubled about something. I fear his family may have been killed in the bombing, he looks so sad. That’s partly why I wanted you to meet him. I thought your being interested in The Light of the World, too, might cheer—”

He stopped in midsentence. “I know where he’ll be,” he said. “He never leaves without taking a last look at it.” He started across the nave, but Polly had already passed him, running toward the south aisle, praying he was still there.