Connie Willis - All Clear

“What is it?” he said. “Did you remember something?”

She shook her head, attempting to catch her breath, her hand to her bosom.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Can I get you a glass of water or something? We could go into the cafeteria.”

“No, they’ll all be coming in for lunch shortly. I’m sorry about that just now. I couldn’t say anything with Talbot and Pudge there.” She took his arm and led him

“No, they’ll all be coming in for lunch shortly. I’m sorry about that just now. I couldn’t say anything with Talbot and Pudge there.” She took his arm and led him past the gift shop and into the main hall, looking around, presumably for somewhere they could talk. “I’d hoped to catch you when you first arrived, but I wasn’t certain where you’d be. St. Paul’s is opening their exhibition today as well, and I thought you were more likely to go there to look.”

Oh, God, it was Eileen, and the story about the brother was a fabrication, part of the identity she’d had to adopt after Polly died and she’d been left to fend for herself. She’d had to cope all alone with the duration of the war and all the long years after. And how could she stand there smiling, he wondered. Knowing what I did to her, to them?

She couldn’t, he thought. It isn’t her. She’s talking about something else, a reporter she was supposed to meet or a—

“… and they had exhibits all over the cathedral, in the Crypt and both transepts, so it took forever to make certain you weren’t there, and then another hour to drive out here, and—” She stopped, frowning at him. “You are Colin, aren’t you?”

And there went any doubt. It was her.

“Oh, dear, I’m afraid I’ve made a dreadful mistake,” she said, just as Ann had. “I thought—”

“You didn’t make a mistake,” he said dully. “I’m Colin.”

“Colin Templer?”

He nodded.

“Oh, good,” Eileen said. “I was afraid for a moment I’d got the wrong man. It’s been so many years since I saw you.” She glanced toward the gift shop. Three chattering women were headed their way from it with bags full of parcels. “Come, let’s go find somewhere quiet where we can talk.” She led him back into the Blitz exhibit and over to the door marked “Air Raid Shelter.”

She opened the door, took a swift look around, and pushed him through it. Inside was a replica of an Underground station platform. Mannequins sat along the curved tile walls and lay on the floor wrapped in blankets.

Eileen shut the door. “This is perfect,” she said over the muffled sound of a bomb. She sat down on a bench and patted the seat beside her.

He sat down.

“Now, then,” she said, and beamed at him.

And how can she? he thought. Knowing how I failed her? “Eileen,” he said helplessly. “Merope, I am so sorry—”

She looked up at him in surprise. “Oh, Colin, I am sorry. I recognized you, so I suppose I thought you’d recognize me, but I was forgetting you haven’t met me yet.”

Haven’t met—

“And even if you had, it’s been over fifty years. I should have told you straightaway.” There was another explosion and a flash of red light. “I’m not Eileen. I mean, I am, but not Eileen O’Reilly.”

Hope leaped in Colin. This wasn’t Eileen, which meant there was still a chance he could get them out. And if this Eileen knew where they were—

“I should have started at the beginning,” she said. “I’m Binnie Hodbin. My brother, Alf, and I were evacuees. We were sent to the manor where M—where Eileen worked as a maid.”

Alf and Binnie Hodbin, the children everyone had remembered because they were such terrors. And apparently Alf still was, since he was “detained” at the Old Bailey. Was that merely a polite way of saying he was under arrest? Or worse?

But this made no sense. Binnie had been a child during the war. “But the women said you drove an ambulance,” he said.

“I did. During the V-1 and V-2 attacks.”

“But you’d only have been—”

“Fifteen,” she said. “I lied about my age.”

And that certainly went with what he’d been told about the Hodbins. And now that he looked more closely at her, she was obviously younger than the other women. “But you said your name was Eileen—”

“It is. Binnie wasn’t a real name—it was short for Hodbin. So, since I hadn’t any name of my own, Eileen said I could choose any name I wanted, and that’s the name I chose. And then after the war, when Mum—I mean, Eileen—and Dad legally adopted us, that was the name that was put down.”

After the war. Oh, God. “You called her Mum.”

“I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you don’t know any of this yet. After we went back to London at the beginning of the Blitz, Eileen took us in and raised us. Our mother had died, and we were living in the Underground, and Eileen found us and …”

He wasn’t listening. Eileen had raised them. He hadn’t got them out. That was why Binnie was here. Eileen had sent her to tell him he’d failed, that she’d spent the last fifty-five years waiting for him to come rescue her. To no avail. “She doesn’t want to see me, does she?” he asked. “I don’t blame her.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Binnie said. She took a deep breath. “Mum died eight years ago.”

If an air raid warning be received during the performance the audience will be informed from the stage.

—NOTICE IN THEATER PROGRAM,

1940

Kent—October 1944

“DUNWORTHY, JAMES,” ERNEST TYPED. “DIED SUDDENLY. At his home in Notting Hill. Of injuries incurred in a V-2 rocket attack.”

Cess leaned in the door. “Have you seen Chasuble?”

“No,” Ernest said, typing, “Mr. Dunworthy, originally of Oxford—Did you check the mess?”

“No, I’ll do that,” he said, and, amazingly, left. Ernest went back to typing. “—is survived by his children, Sebastian Dunworthy and Eileen Ward—”

“Hullo,” Chasuble said, coming in with several photographs. “Is that the caption for the church in Hampstead you’re typing?”

“No, here it is.” Ernest handed it to him. “Check the time, will you? I couldn’t decipher your handwriting,” and while Chasuble was reading it, he typed hastily,

“The funeral will be held at St. Mary-at-the-Gate in Cardle 20 October at ten o’clock,” ripped it out of the typewriter, and laid it face down on the desk. “Is that the right time?”

“No,” Chasuble said. “It should be 3:19 P.M., not 2:19.” He handed it back to Ernest, who rolled the sheet in, Xed out the time, and typed “3:19” above it.

“Where did it actually hit?”

“Charing Cross Road,” Chasuble said, and handed Ernest several photographs. “Here are last week’s incidents, but I don’t think there’s anything we can use. Only one church and one shopping street, and they were both totally demolished. Nothing identifiable. The V-2’s simply too good at what it does.”

Ernest leafed through the photos. “What about this one?” He held up a photo of a demolished school with a dozen uniformed students clambering happily over the wreckage.

Chasuble shook his head. “Photo’s already been in the Daily Express.”

“I thought they’d been told they had to run it by us first.”

“They were, but they failed to tell the reporter that, and it slipped through.” He shuffled through the photos and handed Ernest one of a tangle of timbers. “See that?” he said, pointing to a broken sign in one corner.

Ernest squinted at the tiny letters. “Dentist?” he guessed.

“Dental surgeon,” Chasuble said. “Or, rather, ‘dental surg—’ I know it’s small, but I thought perhaps a personal-interest story—‘Extreme Cure for Toothache,’ or something, about a man who was on his way to the dentist when the V-2 hit, and the blast knocking the offending tooth out.”