Connie Willis - All Clear

Direct pressure. She replaced the torn shirt over the wound and pressed down with the palm of her hand while she looked about for something better. His coat—No, it was twisted under him so she couldn’t get at it. The upholstery from the seat cushions might work, but she knew from trying to free her foot that it was too tough to tear.

If that woman at the Works Board had let me become a rescue worker, she thought, I’d have had a medical kit and bandages with me.

She hoisted herself to her knees and wrenched off her skirt. “Help! Casualty over here!” she shouted, folding it into a not-nearly-thick-enough compress.

ENSA’s costumes are much too skimpy, she thought, wriggling out of her bolero and bloomers and folding them and the skirt into a thick square. She stretched out flat again, clad only in the bathing suit, laid the pad against the wound, and pressed down as hard as she could with the heel of her hand.

Sir Godfrey grimaced. “Did you come to tell me you’ve decided to do the pantomime after all?” he asked.

“Shh,” Polly said, “you mustn’t try to talk.”

“Nonsense. How else shall I do my death scene?”

Her heart twisted. “You’re not dying,” she said firmly. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

“You always were a wretched actress, Viola,” he said, shaking his head against the timbers he lay on. “This isn’t quite the farewell I’d imagined. I’d always hoped to die onstage. Halfway through the second act of a Barrie play so I would be spared from doing Act Three.”

He could always make her laugh, even here in the rubble, with him bleeding to death and no sign of a rescue squad.

What’s taking them so long? she thought. They’re as bad as the retrieval team.

Blood was soaking through the compress. She wasn’t applying enough pressure. She inched forward, trying to get into a better position, and pushed down as hard as she could on it.

“Which speech will you have?” Sir Godfrey asked. “Hamlet? ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.’ ”

No, it isn’t a divinity. I caused this. But he’s not going to die if I can help it, she thought, pressing down with all the force she could muster. The continuum was going to have to correct itself some other way.

She raised her head and shouted for help again, trying to remember everything Sir Godfrey had taught her about projecting to the very back of the stalls. “In here!

Help!” And as if in answer there was the sound of planes in the distance.

“They’re coming round again,” Sir Godfrey said, looking up at the ceiling. “You must get to a shelter—”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“You must, Viola. Your young man would never forgive me if I got you killed.”

My young man. “I lied to you back there at the theater,” she said. “There’s no young man.”

“Of course there is. He’s why I never had the ghost of a chance with you,” he said, and after a minute he asked, “Was he killed?”

“I think he must have been, or he’d be here by now.”

“He may yet come,” Sir Godfrey said gently. “Which is why you must go, Miranda. ‘Fly, Fleance, fly.’ ”

She shook her head. “ ‘If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.’ ”

“Shakespeare!” he said contemptuously. “I have always loathed actors who quote the Bard. ‘Go, get you gone, foul varlet.’ I will not have your death on my hands.”

“You have it the wrong way round,” she said bitterly. “This is my fault. I did this to you.”

“You have it the wrong way round,” she said bitterly. “This is my fault. I did this to you.”

“I fail to see how, unless you abandoned your air-raid duties with ENSA and enlisted in the Luftwaffe within the last hour. I fear the guilt is mine. I shouldn’t have come to ask you to be in the pantomime,” he said, and then murmured, as if to himself, “I should have told Greenberg yes. I should have gone to Bristol.”

He closed his eyes in pain. “ ‘We are not the first who with best meaning have incurred the worst.’ ”

“No, we’re not, “she said. “None of us meant to do any harm.”

But Sir Godfrey wasn’t listening to her. “What’s that?” he asked, moving his head slightly as if trying to catch a sound. “I thought I heard something.”

“The planes seem to be moving away,” she said, but he shook his head, still with that attentive look. She raised her head, straining to catch the clang of ambulance bells, of voices.

The raiders’ drone faded away, but she still couldn’t hear anything except a creak as a piece of the wreckage gave way. And the faint hiss of escaping gas.

And why had she ever thought she stood a chance against the entire space-time continuum? Why had she ever believed she could save Sir Godfrey’s life, could stop history in its blind attempt to correct itself?

I am so sorry, Sir Godfrey, she thought. I am so sorry, Colin, and she must be crying. Hot drops were splashing onto the back of her hand, onto the compress, onto Sir Godfrey’s already soaked chest.

“ ‘Boy, why are you crying?’ ” he said, and at any other time that line from the play he most despised would have made her laugh, but not now. Not now.

“Because I couldn’t save”—her voice broke—“your life.”

“What?” he said, and his voice regained some of its old strength. “ ‘You lie! Thrice now hast thou plucked me from the jaws of death. And in repayment of that solemn debt, would I save your life now.’ ”

She no longer knew what play he was quoting from, but it didn’t matter. You can’t save it, she thought. We’re both done for. And she remembered the man looking up at the incendiary halfway up St. Paul’s dome saying, “She’s done for.”

But it hadn’t been. The fire watch had saved it. And it might look as though they were done for, but she didn’t have to put out twenty-eight incendiaries, didn’t have to keep putting them out night after night. All she had to do was keep Sir Godfrey alive and conscious till help came.

“We shall never give in,” she murmured, “never surrender,” and bent over the hole to see if she could do something to stop the gas.

The hiss was louder from the left. She told Sir Godfrey to turn his head to the right and to breathe shallowly, wishing she’d obeyed all those government directives to “carry your gas mask with you at all times,” and tried to pinpoint the source of the gas. It was coming from a narrow gap between two of the seats. If she could block the gap with something …

All that was left of her costume was the bathing suit. It wouldn’t be enough to fill the space, and at any rate, she didn’t think she could wriggle out of it with only one hand free. And she couldn’t go fetch something. He’d begin bleeding again. But she had to block the space up somehow, and quickly, before the gas rendered him unconscious.

If it hadn’t already. “Sir Godfrey?”

“What is it?” His voice was already drowsy, blurred.

You need to keep him talking, she thought.

“Sir Godfrey, you asked me which speech I wanted. Do the one from that first night we acted together—Prospero’s speech. ‘Our revels now are ended—’ ” she prompted.

“My dear, our revels now are ended,” he said.

“I still want to hear it. ‘These our actors—’ ”

“ ‘These our actors,’ ” he said, “ ‘as I foretold you, were all spirits …’ ”

Good, that should keep him going for a bit, she thought, looking about for something to stuff the gap with. The stuffing from a seat would do it, but all of the ones within her reach were intact, with the playbills still lying on them.

The playbills. Keeping her right hand clamped down on Sir Godfrey’s chest, she shimmied carefully backward and reached behind and around for them with her free hand.