Connie Willis - All Clear

“What part of the square was she in?” Binnie asked.

“I don’t know. She said she saw me from a long way off.”

“Well, I can’t see nothin’. She must’ve climbed up on Nelson’s statue or somethin’,” he said, elbowing his way over to a lamppost.

“She would not have climbed a lamppost,” Eileen said.

“She would not have climbed a lamppost,” Eileen said.

“I know,” Alf said. “I’m only climbing up so’s I can see.” He stuck the staff of his Union Jack between his teeth, like a pirate’s cutlass, and shinned up it.

“Can you see her?” Eileen called up to him.

“No,” Alf said, taking the flag out of his teeth. “Are you sure she’s—there she is!” He pointed toward National Gallery with his Union Jack. “She’s wearin’ a uniform.”

Eileen craned her neck, standing on tiptoe and hanging on to the lamppost for balance. Uniform, uniform …

“I see her!” Binnie said excitedly.

“Where? Show me where she’s standing.”

“There,” Binnie said, pointing. Eileen sighted along her outstretched arm. “On the porch.”

“No, she ain’t!” Alf shouted from halfway up the lamppost. “She’s comin’ down the steps.”

“Where?” Eileen still couldn’t see her, and if she’d started down the stairs already … “Where?”

“There. At the foot of the stairs.”

If Polly had already gone down the stairs, she had already seen her standing by the lion, was already leaving for her drop in Hampstead Heath.

“Did you see her?” Binnie asked.

“No,” Eileen said, “but it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t necessary for me to see her.”

But she’d hoped so much that she would catch a glimpse of her. All these last four years, she’d held to that hope, that she’d see her again, if only from a distance.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” Binnie said.

“It’s all right.” She gave Binnie a hug. “Let’s go get some supper.” She looked for Alf, but he was no longer on the lamppost. “Where’s Alf?” she asked. “Can you see him anywhere?”

“No,” Binnie said, scanning the crowd.

She darted off suddenly into the middle of the square. “Binnie, wait! No!” Eileen said, grabbing for her, but she was already out of reach.

And out of sight. The crowd closed about her as if it was water, leaving no trace. “Binnie! Come back!” she called, starting after her through the crush.

And saw Polly. Polly was only a few yards away, working her way against the current toward Charing Cross. She looked younger than Eileen remembered, nearly as young as Binnie, her face without the worry and sorrow it would have. And without the transcendent joy it had had that night when Colin came.

Because none of it’s happened yet, Eileen thought.

She had hoped for one final look, but this wasn’t the end, it was the beginning. Everything—the escape from Padgett’s and the race to St. Paul’s the night of the twenty-ninth and Christmas dinner with Miss Laburnum and Miss Hibbard and Mr. Dorming—was all still to come. Standing in line together at the canteen and walking home from Notting Hill Gate in the foggy dawn after the all clear and sitting on the platform after everyone else was asleep, talking of Mrs. Rickett’s appalling meals and the trials of wrapping parcels and mending stockings.

“Oh, Polly,” she murmured, “we’re going to be such good friends!”

And though she couldn’t possibly have heard her, Polly turned as if she had and looked straight at her. But only for an instant, and then a group of GIs pushed in front of Eileen, blowing on noisemakers, hiding Polly from sight.

Eileen had thought she’d lost her, but she hadn’t. Polly was still there, moving steadily toward the tube station and her drop and Oxford. Where she’ll see me walking to Oriel and she’ll tell me I must get a driving authorization first and I’ll tell her Colin’s in love with her and we’ll go to Balliol and stand talking to Michael Davies in the sunlit quad.

“Goodbye!” she called after Polly, over the sound of a brass band which had struck up “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” “Don’t be frightened. Everything will work out all right in the end.” She stood there, looking after her, oblivious to the music, the noise, the people shoving and jostling against her, till Polly was out of sight.

Then she turned to go look for Alf and Binnie, though she had no idea at all how to find them in this solid mass of people.

There was a whoosh and a boom from over by the National Gallery, followed by screams. Alf’s fireworks. She started toward the fountains, hoping to climb up on the rim and get a better look, pushing her way through the crowd past several tipsy soldiers and a man enthusiastically selling Churchill buttonhole badges, toward an elderly man in a black suit who was attempting to go in the same direction she was. If she could follow in the opening he made, she might be able to—

“Mr. Humphreys!” she called, recognizing him. She caught hold of his sleeve, and he turned to see who had grabbed him.

“Hello!” she said, shouting over the din.

“Miss O’Reilly!” he shouted back, and then, as if he was greeting her at the door of St. Paul’s, “How nice to see you!”

He looked around at the swirling, shoving mob. “I’m attempting to get to St. Paul’s. Dean Matthews rang me up and said there are hundreds gathering at the cathedral already, and I thought I’d best go see if I could assist.”

He beamed at her. “This is a wonderful night, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, looking around at the crowd. She had wanted to come here, to see this, ever since she was a first-year student. She’d been furious when she’d found out Mr. Dunworthy had assigned it to someone else.

But if she’d come then, she would never have properly appreciated it. She’d have seen the happy crowds and the Union Jacks and the bonfires, but she’d have had no idea of what it meant to see the lights on after years of navigating in the dark, what it meant to look up at an approaching plane without fear, to hear church bells after years of air-raid sirens.

She’d have had no idea of the years of rationing and shabby clothes and fear which lay behind the smiles and the cheering, no idea of what it had cost to bring this day to pass—the lives of all those soldiers and sailors and airmen and civilians. And of Mike and Mr. Simms and Mrs. Rickett and Sir Godfrey, who’d been killed two years ago on his way home from entertaining the troops. She’d have had no idea what this meant to Lady Denewell, who’d lost her husband and her only son, or to Mr. Humphreys and the rest of the fire watch, who’d worked so hard to save St. Paul’s and who, hopefully, would never know what had eventually happened to it.

“I feared this day would never come,” Mr. Humphreys was saying.

“I know,” she said, thinking of all those dark days after Mike died, when she’d thought that no one was coming for them and that Polly was going to be killed, of the even darker days when she’d thought she and Alf and Binnie had lost the war.

the even darker days when she’d thought she and Alf and Binnie had lost the war.

“But it has all come right in the end,” Mr. Humphreys said, and there was a whoosh and a boom over by the bonfire. Pigeons wheeled frantically up over the square.

“I think I’d best go look for Alf and Binnie,” she said. Before they kill someone.

“And I’d best get to St. Paul’s,” he said, and in his best verger manner, “We’re having a service of thanksgiving tomorrow. I do hope you and your children will come.”

“We will,” she promised. If Alf’s not at the Old Bailey.

Mr. Humphreys pushed off through the crowd toward the Strand, and she started for the National Gallery, guided by further booms, an outraged “You hooligan!”