Connie Willis - All Clear

The tea included sandwiches, and he ate two, hid four more for Cess inside the bandages on his hands, and went to find him. Cess said, “You look like Boris Karloff in The Mummy. And don’t try to convince me you did it to keep from being recognized in the photo. I know the real reason.”

“You do?” Ernest asked cautiously.

“Yes. You didn’t want to be stuck in an itchy plaster cast all afternoon.”

“You’re right. You can have my wheelchair, and I’ll do the crutches,” he offered, then regretted it. The crutches dug into his armpits, the afternoon turned beastly hot, and he began to sweat under his bandages.

And the Queen was three-quarters of an hour late. “She’s royalty,” Moncrieff said when Ernest complained. “She can keep us waiting, just not the other way round.

Why don’t you spend the time writing up those articles you said were due?”

“I can’t.” He held up his bandaged hands.

“That’s not my fault. You were the one who decided to come as the ghost of King Tut. I don’t know why you felt it necessary to use so much bandage.”

Neither do I, he thought. Especially since it had turned out to be a false alarm. The hospital in Dover hadn’t been able to spare any nurses. These were from Ramsgate. He considered taking the facial bandages off, but just then the Queen—a stout, sweet-faced woman in pale blue—arrived along with a half dozen photographers from the London papers, and the affair commenced.

“You never did tell me how to address her,” Ernest whispered to Prism, who was in the bed next to him as they proceeded down the row.

“You don’t say anything unless she asks you a direct question,” Prism whispered. “And then it’s ‘Your Majesty.’ Shh. Here she comes.”

He should have asked him if she knew this was a hoax or not. It was impossible to tell. She spoke to the “patients” as if they actually had been injured in battle, asking them what unit they were with and where they were from. If she did know, she was doing an excellent job of acting. We could use her in Special Means, he thought.

The entire thing was over by half past two. The Queen declined to stay to tea and left at a quarter past, and the photographers took a few more pictures and departed. He could still make it to Croydon if they left now.

He put the case to Moncrieff. “All right,” Moncrieff said. “We’ll leave as soon as we’ve loaded the beds back onto the lorry.”

“And got me out of this plaster,” Cess said.

The former was no problem—they had the lorry loaded and off by three. But Cess’s plaster cast was another matter. Both tin snips and a hacksaw failed to work.

“Can’t we do this back at the post?” Ernest asked, but they couldn’t get Cess through the door of the car with the cast on. A servant had to fetch a hammer and chisel.

It was nearly seven before they got home. “We’d better not have to blow up any more tanks tonight,” Cess said, limping inside.

They didn’t, but Ernest had to write up the hospital event for the London papers and then phone it in, and it was past ten before he was able to start in on his own news articles. It was much too late for Croydon, but he’d made Moncrieff feel guilty enough about it on the way home that he’d promised to let him drive them over to Bexhill to meet the Village Gazette’s deadline, which meant he’d have an entire afternoon to do what he needed to do unobserved.

He rolled a new sheet of paper in the typewriter and typed the letter he’d thought up about the bull, and then an ad for a dentist in Hawkhurst. “New patients welcome. Specializes in American dental techniques.”

Cess leaned in the door. “Still at it?”

“Yes, and if you’re here to ask me to go blow up an aircraft carrier, the answer’s no,” he said, continuing to type in the hope that Cess would take the hint and go away, but he didn’t.

“I think I’m permanently crippled,” Cess said, coming in and perching on the desk. “It was worth it, though, to get to meet the Queen. D’you know what she said to me? She thanked me for my bravery in battle. Wasn’t that nice?”

“It would have been if you’d actually been in battle,” Ernest said, continuing to type.

“I was, when they were trying to get that plaster off my foot. And in that pasture with that bull last night. What did she say to you?”

“She asked me to elope. She said The Mummy was her favorite film and asked me to run off to Gretna Green with her.”

“All right, don’t tell me,” Cess said. “I’m off to bed.” He left and then leaned back in the door. “I’ll get it out of you eventually, you know.”

No, you won’t, Ernest thought, though Cess wouldn’t know what it meant if he did tell him, and she had probably told hundreds of soldiers the same thing. But it had cut a little too close to the bone.

He waited five minutes, typing up the fictitious wedding of Agnes Brown of Brixton to Corporal William Stokowski of Topeka, Kansas, “currently serving with the 29th Armored Division,” till he was sure Cess had really gone to bed. Then he took the manila envelope from the bottom drawer of the desk and rolled the story he’d been writing yesterday into the typewriter. But he didn’t begin to type. Instead, he stared at the keys and thought about the Queen and her words to him.

“Your King appreciates your sacrifice and your devotion to duty,” she’d said. “He and I are grateful for the important work you are doing.”

What of the future?… Will the rocket-bomb come? Will more destructive explosions come?

WINSTON CHURCHILL,

6 July 1944

Golders Green—July 1944

THE BRIDGE LAY JUST AHEAD, AND THERE WERE NO TURNOFFS that Mary could see. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, she thought. The bridge was less than a hundred yards from the ammunition dump. If this was the bridge the V-1 had hit, they’d be blown to bits. She glanced at her watch. 1:07.

Beside her in the ambulance Stephen Lang was still talking about the ineffectiveness of England’s rocket defenses. “The only way to stop them is to prevent them from being launched at all. I say, slow down a bit. You’ll get us both killed.”

Not if I can get us over this bridge before 1:08, she thought, stepping on the accelerator pedal. She shot over the bridge, braced for the blast and trying to gauge how far away they had to be to not be hit.

“The meeting’s not that important,” Stephen protested.

“I have orders to get you there on time,” she said, roaring down the lane.

And there was the road she’d taken to Hendon. Thank God. She turned south on it and, now that they were out of range, slowed down. “You were saying the only way to stop the rockets is to prevent them from being launched?” she asked.

“Yes, which is why I should be flying a bomber in France instead of being stuck here—not that I’m complaining. After all, it affords me a chance to be with you again,” he said and smiled that heartbreakingly crooked smile. “Where were you before?”

She looked at him, startled. “Before?”

“Before Dulwich. I’m attempting to determine where it is we first met.”

“Oh. Oxford.”

“Oxford,” he said, and frowned as if he was truly trying to remember.

Oh, no. She’d assumed he was only flirting. “Haven’t we met?” had been almost as common a pickup line during the war as “I’m shipping out tomorrow.” But there was a possibility she had met him. This was, after all, time travel. She might have known him on an upcoming assignment. And if she had, it could be a major problem, especially since she’d have been there under a different name. And if he’d seen her somewhere which didn’t match the story she’d told the FANYs and the Major, and he told Talbot … I need to get him off this topic before he remembers where he met me, she thought. “What do you fly?” she asked. “Hurricanes?”