Connie Willis - All Clear

“Could it have been Saji Llewellyn?” Polly asked.

“No, she was observing Queen Beatrice’s coronation. You know that, Polly,” Mike said. “Do either of you know Denys Atherton?”

“I’ve seen him at lectures and things,” Eileen said, “but I’ve never spoken to him. What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said, “but it’s something from March first to June fifth, 1944, which is also too late to help us. What would he be observing then, Polly? The war in Italy?”

war in Italy?”

“No, he would have come through earlier for that. He’s likelier to have been observing the buildup to the invasion, especially since his return date’s one day before D-Day.”

“Which means he’ll be here in England,” Mike said. “Where? Portsmouth? Southampton?”

“Yes, or Plymouth or Winchester or Salisbury,” Polly said. “The buildup was spread over the entire southwestern half of the country. Or he could be observing Fortitude, in which case he’d be in Kent. Or Scotland.”

“Fortitude?” Eileen said. “What’s that?”

“An intelligence operation to fool Hitler and the German High Command into believing the Allies were attacking somewhere other than Normandy. They built dummy Army installations and planted false news stories in the local papers and sent faked radio messages. Fortitude North was in Scotland. Its mission was to convince the Germans the invasion would be in Norway, and Fortitude South in southeast England’s mission was to convince them it was coming at the Pas de Calais.”

“So Denys Atherton could be anywhere,” Mike said.

“And if he’s working in Intelligence, he won’t be using his own name,” Polly said.

“But I know what he looks like,” Eileen said. “He’s tall and has dark curly hair—”

“Christ,” Mike said. “I hadn’t even thought about names. That means Phipps could be here under some other name, too. Eileen, did he say anything about whether he’d be using his own name or not?”

“No.”

Polly asked Mike, “And you didn’t see his name on the letters he was carrying?”

“No,” he said disgustedly.

“But you and Eileen both know what he looks like.”

“If I can only remember the name of his airfield,” Eileen said ruefully. “I know I’d know it if I heard it.”

“It’ll be in the railway guide,” Polly said. “I’ll see if Mrs. Rickett has one in the morning, and if she doesn’t, I know Townsend Brothers has one in the book department. I used it to look up the trains to Backbury. I’ll buy it on Monday. And in the meantime, the best thing we can do is get some sleep. We’ll all be able to think more clearly if we’ve had some rest.” And I’ll be able to think of a way to keep Mike from going to Padgett’s in the morning, she thought.

But how? Telling him that they couldn’t help, that historians couldn’t affect events, brought them back to Hardy. And telling him it had already happened and there were fatalities, and therefore there was no point in trying, not only sounded completely heartless but was too much like their own situation. And hopefully Mr.

Dunworthy wasn’t telling Colin the same thing at this very moment.

She would have to persuade Mike that she should be the one to go to Padgett’s. “Mr. Fetters is less likely to recognize me than Eileen or you,” she could tell him,

“especially if I change my clothes and put my hair up. I can tell him I was waiting outside for Eileen and saw people go in just as the store closed.”

But when she tried to persuade him, waking him up before the all clear so the sleeping Eileen wouldn’t hear, he insisted on going himself.

“But shouldn’t I show you where the drop is first?” Polly asked. “If it’s working, you can go through and tell Oxford to send a team disguised as rescue workers.”

He shook his head. “We’ll go to Padgett’s first and then the drop.”

“But what will we tell Eileen?”

He finally agreed to take Eileen back to Mrs. Rickett’s, tell her the two of them were going to the drop, and then go to Padgett’s.

Which created a whole new problem. If they left now, they’d run straight into the troupe, and Miss Laburnum would almost certainly say something about the five fatalities.

“We need to wait here till everyone’s gone so they don’t see us leaving the emergency staircase,” she said. “Once they realize it’s not locked, all sorts of people will want to use it. And we should let Eileen sleep, poor thing. I doubt if she’s had a good night’s rest since she came to London.”

“All right,” he said, and agreed to let Eileen sleep another half hour, during which Polly hoped he’d fall asleep and she could go find out alone. But he didn’t, and after they’d walked Eileen home and Polly had got her safely upstairs without seeing anyone, he insisted on going straight to Padgett’s, even though it had begun to rain again. And there was nothing for it but to go with him and hope a rescue crew was digging, or Mike might insist on going down into the pit himself.

But a crew was there, at least a dozen men hard at work with picks and shovels in spite of the rain, and the incident officer had just come on duty and didn’t know if they’d recovered any victims or not. “But they must think there are some of them under there,” he said when Mike told him he’d seen three people going in. “Or they wouldn’t be working like that.”

Which seemed to satisfy Mike, at least for the moment, and when Polly said they needed to go now or they’d run into people on their way to church—which was true, even though St. George’s was no longer there; the rector was conducting services at St. Bidulphus’s—Mike agreed to leave the dig and let her take him to the drop.

She felt guilty over it—it was raining harder than ever, and even with the Burberry Miss Laburnum had got him, he’d freeze sitting on the cold steps. But she had to have time to find out the truth about the fatalities.

And Mike didn’t seem dismayed by the rain. “At least there won’t be many contemps out in this,” he said, “so there’ll be less chance of the shimmer being seen.”

He was right about no one being out in the rain. The streets were deserted. Polly led Mike through the partially cleared rubble to the alley and over to the passage which led to the drop. The rain had washed away the chalked messages she’d scrawled on the walls and the barrels, but the ones on the door were still there, and she was glad to see that the overhang had largely protected the steps and the well.

“It seems fairly dry in here,” she said. But it was also untouched. The dust, leaves, and spiderwebs were all still there.

“You put this ‘For a good time, ring Polly’ here?” Mike asked, pointing at the door.

“Yes, and I put an arrow on that barrel,” she said, pointing, “and Mrs. Rickett’s address and the name of Townsend Brothers on the back, though I imagine the rain’s washed them away. I thought if the retrieval team came, it could help them find me.”

“It was a good idea,” he said. “I had one like it when I was in the hospital.”

“You were going to put messages on your gun emplacement?”

“No, in the newspapers. We could put an ad in the personal column.”

“No, in the newspapers. We could put an ad in the personal column.”

“An ad? What sort of ad? ‘Stranded travelers seek retrieval team to come and get them’?”

“Exactly. Only not in those words. They’ll have to look like all the other personal ads, but be worded so someone from Oxford would recognize them as being from us and know what they mean.”

“ ‘Wounds my heart with a monotonous languour,’ ” Polly murmured.