Connie Willis - All Clear

Mr. Jeppers didn’t answer. He can’t hear me for the fire bells, Ernest thought. They got very loud and then stopped, and he could hear doors slamming, and voices.

Perhaps they had a flashlight. “Hullo!” he called to them, and stopped to cough. “Do you have a flashlight?”

But they must not have heard him because they were walking away from him. “No, over here!” he shouted—a mistake. It caused him to suck in a huge amount of plaster dust and choke.

“I thought I heard someone coughing,” one of the girls said, and he could hear the crack of wood and the slither of dirt as they came toward him. “Where are you?”

“Here,” he said. “Jeppers, it’s all right. Someone’s coming.”

“Where are you? Keep talking,” the second girl called after a moment, but he didn’t answer her. He was listening to her voice. It sounded somehow familiar.

“Here he is!” the first one shouted from what seemed like far away. He heard a scrabbling sound, and then, “I found him,” and he could tell from the tone of her voice that he was dead.

But I’m not, he thought. We survived the V-1—

“There’s another one here somewhere,” the second voice said, and something else—he couldn’t make out what. More scrabbling. “Over here!” she called, closer.

Then she was there, bending over him. “Are you all right?”

He looked up at her, but the light from the fires wasn’t bright enough for him to see her face. All he caught was a glimpse of fair hair under the tin helmet. “You mustn’t worry,” she said. “We’ll get you out of here straightaway. Fairchild!” she called sharply. “Over here!” and moved down to his legs and began tossing aside bricks and pieces of wood. “I need a light!”

The girl she’d called Fairchild arrived. “Is he alive?” she asked, stooping down next to him, and the fire must have been growing brighter. He could see her face clearly. She looked very young. “How bad is he?”

“His foot—”

“That wasn’t the V-1,” he said. “It happened at Dunkirk.” But they didn’t hear him.

“I’ve tied a tourniquet. Go get the medical kit,” the first girl said to Fairchild. “And a stretcher. Is Croydon here yet?” she asked, and her voice sounded just like Polly’s.

“No,” Fairchild said. “Are you certain we should move him?”

“He’ll bleed to death if we don’t,” the girl who sounded like Polly said, and he could hear Fairchild run off across the rubble. “Telephone Croydon. And Woodside,” she called after her. “Tell them we need help.”

It can’t be Polly, he thought as she tried to free him. The deadline’s passed.

“You mustn’t worry, we’ll have you out of here in no time,” she said, bending so close he could see her face in the light of the fire, and it was Polly. He would know her anywhere.

No, oh, no, no. She was still here, and it was too late. Her deadline was already past. He hadn’t gotten her out. “I’m so sorry,” he croaked.

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

But it was his fault. He hadn’t been able to find Denys Atherton, and none of his messages had got through to Oxford. If they had, she wouldn’t be here. “I am so sorry,” he tried to say, choking on dust, on despair. It had all been useless—all those personal ads and wedding announcements and letters to the editor. His messages hadn’t got through. No one had come. She’d still been here when her deadline arrived.

“I thought if I left, I could get you and Eileen out,” he said, looking up at her, but the fire must have burned out, he couldn’t see her face, though he knew she was still there. He could hear her scrabbling at the bricks and wood, pushing them off his chest, freeing his arm.

“I didn’t think you’d be here—”

“Don’t try to talk.” She crawled over him to reach his other arm.

“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he tried to say. “You were supposed to be in Dulwich.”

But the only part that came out must have been “Dulwich,” because she said, “We’ll take you to Norbury. It’s quicker. You mustn’t worry about that. That’s our job.”

He could hear her raise her head suddenly, as if she had heard something, and then he heard Fairchild call from a long way off, “I can’t get the stretcher out! It’s stuck!”

“Leave it! Just bring the medical kit,” Polly called back.

“Leave it! Just bring the medical kit,” Polly called back.

But Fairchild must not have heard her because she shouted, “What? I can’t hear you, Mary!”

Mary? “Mary?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, so softly he could scarcely hear her, and relief broke over him in a great wave. She wasn’t here after her deadline. She wasn’t Polly. She was Mary, and this was her rocket-attacks assignment, and he wasn’t too late. None of it had happened yet—she hadn’t even gone to the Blitz—and there was still time to save her, to already have saved her, and he must be weeping with relief and the tears must be running down his cheeks into his mouth because he could feel wetness on his tongue, in the back of his throat.

“Fairchild!” she shouted. “Bring the kit! Hurry!”

He had to tell her the drops wouldn’t open, had to warn her. “You mustn’t go! There’s something wrong with the net. The drops won’t open. Don’t go!”

But she didn’t understand. “I need to,” she said. “I’m going,” and started to leave.

“No!” he shouted, and grabbed hold of her wrist. “You can’t go! You’ll be trapped there!”

“I won’t leave you trapped here. I promise.”

“No! You don’t understand! You can’t go to the Blitz!” he cried, but he couldn’t get the words out, the tears and dust in his mouth had mixed into a choking mud.

“Your drop, it won’t open—” And there was a sudden, shattering noise and a blast so powerful it knocked them both down.

No, that wasn’t right. He was already down. The Arizona, he thought. It took a bomb right down its stack, and the concussion knocked her off her feet.

She was getting back to her feet, running toward him. “No!” he tried to call to her. “Get down! The Zero’s coming around again!”

She hadn’t heard him, she was still running. “Hit the deck!” he called, but it was too late. The Zero had already strafed her. She fell across him.

“Where are you hit?” he asked her, afraid she was dead, but she wasn’t. She was getting to her knees, fumbling with his collar.

“It was a V-2,” she said, but it couldn’t be. He’d made the Germans shorten their trajectories so they’d fall on Croydon.

“I need to go,” Polly said, bending over him, or had he said that? He couldn’t tell.

“I have to leave,” he said again, in case it hadn’t been him who’d said it. “It’s the only way I can get you out before your deadline.” But she wasn’t listening. She’d stood up and was running across the deck.

And he had been wrong about its being a Zero. It was a Stuka. It had dropped a stick of bombs and sunk the Grafton. And the Lady Jane was pulling away from the mole, leaving without him. “Don’t go!” he shouted. “The Germans will be here any minute.”

Then, miraculously, she was back, bending over him again, and he had to tell her something, only he couldn’t remember what. Something important. “Tell Eileen Padgett’s was hit,” he said, but that wasn’t it.

What was it? He couldn’t think for coughing. “Tell her to take the stairs,” he said, thinking of the stuck elevator, and remembered. He had to warn Polly not to go through to the Blitz.

“It’s a trap,” he said again. “You won’t be able to get out!” But it wasn’t her, it was a soldier wearing a helmet.