Connie Willis - All Clear

“Wait,” he said as she brought the Daimler to a stop. “You can’t go yet.” He reached to take her hand.

She avoided letting him by reaching past him for the transport form at the same time. “Have you a pen?” she asked innocently. “Oh, never mind, I have one.”

He tried again. “You can’t go yet. We’ve only just met.”

“You forget, we met before,” she said, filling up the transport form. “You really do need to keep your pickup lines straight, Flight Officer Lang.”

“So I do,” he said ruefully. “But just because I’ve failed in the romance department doesn’t mean you should starve. You’ve already gone all day without food, thanks to me. Look, there’s a nice little pub only a few miles from here.”

She shook her head. “I must go to Edgware for those stretchers, remember?”

“I’ll go with you. I’ll help you load your stretchers, then we’ll have dinner and work out where it was we’ve met before.”

That was the last thing she needed. “No, I must get back. My commanding officer’s extremely strict.” She handed him the form to sign. “Sorry,” she said, and smiled at him. “It’s fate.”

“All right. You win, Isolde.” He signed the form, climbed out of the Daimler, and then leaned back in. “But keep in mind this is only round one. I have all sorts of techniques I haven’t tried yet, which I promise you, you will not be able to resist—though I’m forced to admit you have better defenses than any girl I’ve ever met.

Perhaps we should use you to stop the V-1s. You could turn them away with a flick of your hand or a well-timed word—”

He stopped and looked blindly at her, as if he’d suddenly remembered something.

Please don’t let it be where we met, she thought. “I really must be going,” she said quickly.

“What?”

“The stretchers.”

“Oh. Right,” he said, coming back from wherever he’d been. “Adieu, Isolde, but don’t think you’ve seen the last of me. It’s our destiny to meet again very soon.

Very soon. It wouldn’t surprise me if I needed a driver again tomorrow.”

“I’m on duty tomorrow, and you’re lassoing V-1s, remember?”

“Quite right,” he said, and got that odd, looking-straight-through-her gaze again. She took the opportunity to say goodbye, pull the door shut, and drive off quickly.

“One can’t escape one’s destiny by driving away from it!” he called after her. “We were meant to be together, Isolde. It’s fate.”

I’ll have to make certain I’m on duty or away from the post for the next few days, she thought, turning toward Edgware. After which he’ll forget all about attempting to remember where he met me and begin calling some other girl Isolde.

She should have found a way to escape from him sooner. By the time she located Edgware’s ambulance post and managed to talk them out of one lone stretcher, it was not only dark but past eight o’clock. She was in unfamiliar territory, her shuttered headlamps gave almost no light at all, and if she got lost and took the wrong road, she’d be blown up.

But she also couldn’t creep along. Dulwich had had three V-1s tonight. They’d need every ambulance, and the route she’d mapped out was only good till twelve, and with the blackout, she’d have no way to look at the map. I must be home by midnight, she thought, leaning forward, both hands on the wheel, peering at the tiny area of road her headlamps illuminated. Just like Cinderella.

area of road her headlamps illuminated. Just like Cinderella.

There wasn’t enough light to see signposts by, even if there were any, which there weren’t. The threat of invasion’s long since over, she thought, annoyed. There’s no reason for them not to have put the signposts back up.

But they hadn’t, and as a result, she made two wrong turns and had to retrace her way for a tense few minutes, and it was half past twelve by the time she reached Dulwich.

The garage was empty. They’ve already left for the V-1 that fell at 12:20. Good, that means I can have my tea before the next one. But she’d no sooner pulled in than Fairchild and Maitland piled in beside her. “V-1 in Herne Hill, DeHavilland,” Fairchild said. “Let’s go.”

“They’ve had three in the last two hours,” Maitland said, “and they can’t handle it all.”

And for the rest of the night, Mary clambered over ruins and bandaged wounds and loaded and unloaded stretchers.

It was eight in the morning before they came home. “I heard you got stuck with my job, Triumph,” Talbot said when she went into the despatch room. “Which one was it? I hope not the Octopus.”

“The Octopus?”

“General Oswald. Eight hands, and cannot keep any of them to himself.” Talbot shuddered. “And very quick, even though he’s ancient and looks like a large toad.”

“No,” Mary said, laughing. “Mine was young and very good-looking. His name was Lang. Flight Officer Lang.”

“Oh, Stephen.” Talbot nodded wisely. “Did he convince you he’d met you somewhere before?”

“He attempted to.”

“He uses that line on every FANY who drives him,” Talbot said, which should have been a relief, but part of her had been secretly looking forward to the possibility of seeing him on her next assignment.

“I wouldn’t set my cap for him,” Talbot was saying. “He’s definitely not interested in wartime attachments.”

“Good,” Mary said. “I’m not either. If he rings up saying he needs a driver, would you—”

“I’ll see to it the Major sends Parrish.”

“Thank you. Talbot, I wanted to apologize again for pushing you down. I am sorry.”

“No harm done, Triumph,” Talbot said, and the next day she hobbled into the common room on her crutches and kissed her on the cheek.

“What was that for?” Mary asked.

“This,” Talbot said, waving a letter at her. “It came in the post this morning. Listen, ‘Heard about your accident. Get better soon so we can go dancing. Signed, Sergeant Wally Wakowski,’ ” she read. “And in the parcel with it were two pairs of nylons! Your pushing me down was an absolute godsend, DeHavilland! As soon as my knee’s healed, I’ll take one—no, two—of your shifts for you.”

But over the next week, the Germans increased the number of launchings till nearly two hundred and fifty V-1s were coming over every twenty-four hours, and everyone, including Talbot, went on double shifts. If Stephen had called and pretended he needed a driver, there wouldn’t have been any drivers or vehicles to send.

Mary and Fairchild drove the Rolls to three separate incidents, and the Major spent most of her time on the telephone attempting to talk HQ into an additional driver and/or ambulance.

But the next week, the number of V-1s arriving abruptly dropped. Mary wondered if the Germans had finally begun acting on the false information Intelligence had been feeding them and recalibrated their launchers to send the V-1s to pastures in Kent. Or perhaps Stephen had thought of a way to shoot them down. Whichever it was, the ambulance unit was able to go back to regular shifts and going to dances.

Parrish, Maitland, and Reed dragged Mary to one in Walworth. Since she now knew what a V-1 sounded like—she’d heard one on a run to St. Francis’s—and since there weren’t any within a twenty-mile radius of Walworth on the day of the dance, she thought she could risk it.

She was wrong. She met an American GI with exactly the same “Haven’t we met somewhere before?” line as Stephen Lang, none of Stephen’s charm or wit, and no dancing ability at all. She came home limping almost as badly as Talbot.

The GI rang her up every day for a week, and on Thursday, when she and Fairchild got back from their second incident of the day—one dead, five injured—