Connie Willis - All Clear

Colin had leapt lightly down off a chunk of broken stone and had helped Mr. Dunworthy—who looked like he might not make it—down off the pile of rubble, and was leading him over to the brightness in front of the door. He glanced back at Polly, saw her, and started back toward her.

“Go with him!” Polly called softly across the rubble. “I’ll come next time. Go!”

He shook his head, said something to Mr. Dunworthy, and stepped back away from the shimmer, out of its reach.

“Colin, go—”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” he said, and the shimmer brightened to a white-hot flame.

It looks exactly like an incendiary, Polly thought. It lit Mr. Dunworthy’s face and then hid it, obliterating it, and the light began to fade, to shrink. Mr. Dunworthy was no longer there.

He made it, Polly thought. He’s safely home. A weight seemed to lift off her. But Mike didn’t make it. Eileen didn’t. They both sacrificed themselves for you. And so did Colin.

He was already clambering back over the wreckage to her. “Stay there,” he whispered.

“I haven’t any choice,” she said. “My foot’s stuck.”

“And you’d have let me go through and leave you here?” he said angrily. “Is your foot injured?”

“No, it’s only my shoe. It’s caught. Careful,” she warned as he hurried to her.

He knelt beside her and began shifting timbers aside. “Take care you don’t get stuck,” Polly said.

“You’re a fine one to talk.” He broke off the end of a wooden slat, pried another rafter up with it, reached down into the hole, and took hold of her ankle. “Do you care about your shoe, Cinderella?”

“No.”

“Good.” She could feel him yanking on her foot and then pulling up on whatever was holding it down, and her bare foot came suddenly free.

He straightened. “All right now, let’s go before anything else—” he said, and the rafter he’d pushed aside went clattering suddenly down the pile of rubble with an unholy crash and into the crater.

“Oh, Christ! Hurry! No, not that way.” He pushed her back across the rubble in the direction of the transept’s entrance. “If someone comes, there’s nowhere to hide in the transept.”

They clambered quickly across the wood and broken stone. And please don’t let one of us get caught again, she thought.

The shimmer was fading rapidly. By the time they were safely back down on the floor—which, thankfully, wasn’t as strewn with glass on this side—and over the barricade, the light was nearly gone.

“What’s the best place to hide?” Colin whispered. “The choir?”

“No,” she said. “There’s no way out.” She grabbed his hand, and they darted across the nave and down the south aisle. They could hide in the Chapel of St.

Michael and St. George, behind the prayer stalls—

Colin grabbed her around the waist and thrust her behind a pillar. “Shh,” he whispered against her ear. “I hear footsteps.”

She listened. “I don’t—” she began, and then did hear them. Footsteps from inside the main stairway. And a flash from a pocket torch.

They ducked farther behind the pillar and pressed against it, listening. The sound of footsteps came out onto the floor, into the north transept, and then there was another flash of light.

He’s looking at the wreckage, Polly thought.

More footsteps and a wide sweep of light as he shone the torch slowly around the transept.

“How much longer till the drop opens again?” Polly whispered to Colin.

“Twelve or thirteen minutes.” It wouldn’t open if the firewatcher was still there, of course, but they were running out of time. When the all clear went, the men would come down from the roofs, and from then on there’d be men in the Crypt and going off duty. She remembered the firewatchers on the morning after the twenty-ninth walking out through the nave, standing on the steps talking. And Mr. Dunworthy had said they made morning rounds, checking for incendiaries and damage.

Now the firewatcher was shining the torch up at the ceiling to see if something had fallen.

Leave, Polly said silently, but it was forever before the torch finally switched off and the footsteps went back upstairs.

They faded away, but Colin still didn’t move. He went on standing there, pressing her against the stone, his arm still around her, waiting. She could feel his breath against her cheek, feel his heart beating.

“I think he’s gone,” he whispered finally, his mouth against her hair. “More’s the pity.” And she felt her heart lift.

But how could even love repay him for the years, the youth he’d sacrificed for her?

“I wish we could stand here forever,” he said, pulling away from her, “but we’d better—” There was a flicker of light. “He’s back.” Colin pushed her behind the pillar. And a moment later he said, “That’s not a torch. It’s the shimmer. The drop’s already opening again.”

“No, it isn’t,” Polly said. “It’s from outside. A flare, I think.” But it must have been an incendiary because a yellow-orange light began to fill the aisle.

She hadn’t realized they were in the bay that held The Light of the World. As the light grew, as golden as the light inside the lantern, she could see the painting more clearly than she ever had. And Mr. Humphreys was right. There was something new to see every time you looked at it.

She had been wrong in thinking Christ had been called up against his will to fight in a war. He didn’t look—in spite of the crown of thorns—like someone making a sacrifice. Or even like someone determined to “do his bit.” He looked instead like Marjorie had looked telling Polly she’d joined the Nursing Service, like Mr.

Humphreys had looked filling buckets with water and sand to save St. Paul’s, like Miss Laburnum had looked that day she came to Townsend Brothers with the coats.

Humphreys had looked filling buckets with water and sand to save St. Paul’s, like Miss Laburnum had looked that day she came to Townsend Brothers with the coats.

He looked like Captain Faulknor must have looked, lashing the ships together. Like Ernest Shackleton, setting out in that tiny boat across icy seas. Like Colin helping Mr. Dunworthy across the wreckage.

He looked … contented. As if he was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do.

Like Eileen had looked, telling Polly she’d decided to stay. Like Mike must have looked in Kent, composing engagement announcements and letters to the editor.

Like I must have looked there in the rubble with Sir Godfrey, my hand pressed against his heart. Exalted. Happy.

To do something for someone or something you loved—England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history—wasn’t a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.

She turned to look at Colin. He was looking uncertainly at her, and his soot-smudged face was as open to her as hers had been to Sir Godfrey. “Colin, I—” she said, and stopped, amazed.

She hadn’t seen him clearly either. She’d been so intent on finding in his face echoes of the seventeen-year-old boy she’d known, so entranced by his resemblance to Stephen Lang, that she hadn’t seen what was so obviously there. Though Eileen clearly had.

No wonder Eileen had said, “You know I didn’t go back.” And no wonder Colin had looked at her after she’d said, “Colin knows I stayed, don’t you?” for that long, silent moment before he’d said, “Yes, I know.”

How could Polly not have seen the resemblance before? It was right there. No wonder, at the last, that Eileen had hugged Polly and said, “It’s all right. I’ll always be with you.” No wonder she’d called Colin “my dear boy.”