Connie Willis - All Clear

“No, it doesn’t. He might have been taking the train to his drop. He could have been going anywhere.”

“But it’s a place to start, and we can’t afford to leave any stone unturned. I want you to go check it while I’m at Beachy Head. Unless one of these names I got at Biggin Hill turns out to be Phipps’s airfield. Speaking of which, what’s keeping Eileen?” he asked, glancing at his watch. “I need to read them to her. I managed to wangle a ride to Beachy Head, and the guy’s leaving at two, but I don’t want to waste my time there if Gerald’s at one of these other airfields.”

Eileen hurried in just as Mike was paying the bill, saying, “Sorry, I was applying at Mary Marsh, and they kept me waiting.”

Mike read her the list. She shook her head decisively at each of the names.

“Okay, then, it’s Beachy Head,” he said. He hurried off to catch his ride. “I’ll be back before the fourteenth.”

So you can go to Coventry, Polly thought.

She had to keep him from doing that. Which meant she had to find Gerald’s airfield.

Over the next few days, she spent her lunch breaks going to Victoria and St. Pancras Stations to copy down two-word names beginning with B and P from the departure boards and her evenings incurring Sir Godfrey’s wrath by trying to get additional airfield names from Lila and Viv, but they were almost no help at all.

“We nearly always go to the dances at Hendon,” Lila said.

“There’s one on Saturday,” Viv told her. “You and your cousin could come with us.”

She nearly accepted. They could ask the airmen they danced with where else they’d been stationed. But she was afraid if they weren’t there when Mike came back, he’d decide to go to Coventry, which would be not only dangerous but pointless.

Because if Mike had found Ned and Verity and given them the message, that would mean Mr. Dunworthy had known for years that all this was going to happen and not only allowed it to but arranged it. Arranged for Mike to go to Dunkirk, for Eileen to go to a manor where the evacuees had the measles, had manipulated and lied to all of them from the moment they entered Oxford.

It’s impossible, she told herself.

But even as she thought it, she was remembering. He made me bring extra money, he made me learn the raids through December thirty-first. He insisted I work in a department store that was never hit during the entire Blitz. And if they had managed to get a message through, then he’d have known they were pulled out in time and that they weren’t in any actual danger.

But if Mr. Dunworthy had lied, then why hadn’t he sent Mike to Dunkirk in the first place instead of scheduling him to do Pearl Harbor and letting him get his Land-A implant? And why had Linna and Badri been questioning everyone about increased slippage if they already knew about it?

Mike still wasn’t back by the twelfth, and they’d had no word from him. It hadn’t taken him this long when he went to Biggin Hill.

What if he went to Coventry without telling us? Polly thought, looking over at the lifts from her stocking counter, hoping one would open and Mike would emerge.

One of them finally did, but it wasn’t Mike. It was Eileen. “I came for two reasons,” she said. “I’m determined to have the name of Gerald’s airfield for Mike when he gets back from Beachy Head, so I came to tell you I’m going to go scour the secondhand bookshops for an old ABC or a book about the RAF or something with airfield names, and I wanted to make certain there weren’t any raids in Charing Cross Road today.”

airfield names, and I wanted to make certain there weren’t any raids in Charing Cross Road today.”

“There aren’t any daytime raids anywhere in London today,” Polly reassured her.

“Oh, good. I’m sorry I’m such an infant about them—”

“It’s not being an infant to be frightened of someone who’s trying to kill you,” Polly said. “You said you had two reasons for coming?”

“Yes. I wanted to tell you I found out why Lady Caroline didn’t write. I got another letter from Mrs. Bascombe. Lady Caroline’s husband was killed.”

“Oh, dear. Had you met him?”

“No, Lord Denewell worked in London at the War Office, and the house he was staying in was bombed—”

“Lord Denewell? You worked for Lady Denewell?”

“Yes, at Denewell Manor. Why? Is something wrong? Did you meet Lord Denewell?”

“No. Sorry. I saw Miss Snelgrove looking this way. Perhaps you’d better go—”

“I will. I only wanted to ask you if you thought it would be all right for me to send her a letter of condolence? I mean, with my being a servant and everything. I’m afraid she’ll think I’m acting above my place, but—”

Polly cut her off. “Miss Snelgrove’s coming. We’ll discuss it tonight. Go look for your ABC.”

Eileen nodded. “I won’t come back till I have either a list of airfields or a map in hand.”

She started toward the lifts. “Wait,” Polly said, running after her. “If you have to ask for a map, tell them you want it for your nephew who’s interested in planespotting. That way they won’t be suspicious.”

“Planespotting … I never thought of that,” Eileen said. “Polly, listen, I’ve just had an idea—uh-oh, Miss Snelgrove at eleven o’clock,” she whispered. “I’ll see you tonight.” And she hurried off.

“Miss Sebastian,” Miss Snelgrove said.

“Yes, ma’am. I was only—”

“Miss Hayes will be returning to work today, and I’d like you to be here to assist her, so if you wouldn’t mind waiting to take your lunch break till two—”

“I’m happy to,” Polly said, and meant it. Marjorie was coming back to work. Polly’d been afraid she’d been too traumatized by her experience to stay in London, but she was coming back.

And when she arrived, she was nearly her old rosy-cheeked self. I was right, Polly thought. I didn’t alter the end result. Everything’s worked out just as it would have if Marjorie’d never been injured.

“I’ll wrap your parcels for you till your arm’s better,” she told Marjorie, “though you can no doubt do better with one hand than I can with two. I never have got the hang of it, and now that the paper and string are rationed—”

But Marjorie was shaking her head. “I’m not staying. I only came to tell everyone goodbye.”

“Goodbye?”

“Yes. I’ve handed in my notice.”

“But—”

“I … the nurses in hospital were so kind to me. I wouldn’t have made it if it weren’t for them, and it made me think about what I was doing to help win the war. I couldn’t bear to see Hitler come marching down Oxford Street because I hadn’t done all I could.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve joined the Royal Army Nursing Service.”

There are six evacuated children in our house. My wife and I hate them so much that we have decided to take away something for Christmas.

—LETTER,

1940

London—November 1940

I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I CAN GET A MAP, EILEEN THOUGHT, hurrying out of Townsend Brothers and up Oxford Street to the tube station to catch a train to Whitechapel. Alf Hodbin has one. His planespotting map. Why didn’t I think of it before?

She could get it from him and locate Gerald’s airfield—she was nearly positive she’d recognize the name when she saw it—and Polly and Mike would stop looking at her as though she were an imbecile for not remembering. And they could go to the airfield, find Gerald, and go home.

If Alf still has the map, she thought. And if he’d give it to her. He might well refuse, especially if he sensed how badly she needed it. Hopefully he and Binnie would still be in school and she could get it from their mother instead and not have to worry about Alf’s refusing or about the children following her and finding out where she lived. Though it wouldn’t matter—she wouldn’t be here that much longer.