Connie Willis - All Clear

“No, it’s just what he needs. There’s been so much rain this autumn,” Polly said, but her eyes were on the carpetbag. She braced herself as Miss Laburnum reached in again.

“That’s why I got your cousin this,” she said, pulling out a bright green umbrella. “It’s a frightful color, I know, and it doesn’t match the black coat I obtained for her, but it was the only one without any broken spokes. And if it’s too gaudy for her, I thought we might be able to use it in The Admirable Crichton. The green would show up well onstage.”

Or in a crowd, Polly thought.

“It’s lovely, I mean, I know my cousin won’t think it too bright, and I’m certain she’ll lend it to us for the play,” she said, chattering in her relief.

Miss Laburnum laid the umbrella on the counter and pulled the black coat out of the carpetbag, then a black felt hat. “They hadn’t any black gloves, so I brought along a pair of my own. Two of the fingers are mended, but there’s still wear in them.” She handed them to Polly. “Mrs. Wyvern said to tell you that if any of Padgett’s employees are in a similar situation to send them to her and she’ll see they get coats as well.” She snapped the bag neatly shut. “Now, do you know if Townsend Brothers sells plimsolls and where I might find them?”

“Plimsolls?” Polly said. “You mean canvas tennis shoes?”

“Yes, I thought they might work instead of beach sandals. The sailors on board ship might have been wearing them, you see, when it sank. I asked in your shoe department, but they hadn’t any. Sir Godfrey simply doesn’t realize how filthy the station floors are—chewing gum and cigarette ends and who knows what else. Two nights ago, I saw a man”—she leaned across the counter to whisper—“spitting. I quite understand that Sir Godfrey has more pressing things on his mind, but—”

“We may have some in the games department,” Polly said, cutting her off in midflow. “It’s on fifth. And if we’re out of plimsolls,” which Polly was almost certain they would be, with rubber needed for the war effort, “you mustn’t worry. We’ll think of something else.”

“Of course you will.” Miss Laburnum patted her arm. “You’re such a clever girl.”

Polly escorted her over to the lift and helped her into it. “Fifth,” she said to the lift boy, and to Miss Laburnum, “Thank you ever so much. It was terribly kind of you to do all this for us.”

“Nonsense,” Miss Laburnum said briskly. “In difficult times like these, we must do all we can to help each other. Will you be at rehearsal tonight?” she asked as the lift boy pulled the door across.

“Yes,” Polly said, “as soon as I get my cousin settled in.”

If she and Mike are back by then, she added silently as she went back to her counter, but she felt certain now they would be.

You were worried over nothing, she thought, picking up the umbrella and looking ruefully at it. And it will be the same thing with Mike and Eileen. Nothing’s happened to them. There weren’t any daytime raids today. Their train’s been delayed, that’s all, like yours was this morning, and when they get here, you’ll tell Eileen the airfield names you’ve collected, and she’ll say, “That’s the one,” and we’ll ask Gerald where his drop is and go home, and Mike will go off to Pearl Harbor, Eileen will go off to VE-Day, and you can write up your observations of “Life in the Blitz” and go back to fending off the advances of a seventeen-year-old boy.

And in the meantime, she’d best tidy up her counter so she wouldn’t have to stay late tonight. She gathered up the umbrella, the Burberry, and Eileen’s coat and put them in the stockroom and then put the stockings her last customer had been looking at back in their box. She turned to put the box on the shelf.

them in the stockroom and then put the stockings her last customer had been looking at back in their box. She turned to put the box on the shelf.

And heard the air-raid siren begin its unmistakable up-and-down warble.

In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best.

WINSTON CHURCHILL,

VE-Day, 8 May 1945

London—7 May 1945

“DOUGLAS, THE DOOR’S CLOSING!” PAIGE SHOUTED FROM the platform.

“Hurry!” Reardon urged. “The train will leave—”

“I know,” she said, attempting to squeeze past the two Home Guards who were still singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” And forming a solid wall. She tried to go around, but dozens of people were trying to board the car and pushing her back away from the door. She shoved her way back to it.

The door was sliding shut. If she didn’t get off now, she’d lose them and never be able to find them again in these crowds of merrymakers. “Please, this is my stop!”

she said, eeling her way between two very tipsy sailors to the door. There was scarcely enough room to slip through. She braced the door open with both elbows.

“Mind the gap, Douglas!” Paige shouted and held out her hand.

She grabbed for it and half stepped, half jumped off the train, and before her feet even touched the platform, the train was moving, disappearing into the tunnel.

“Thank goodness!” Paige said. “We were afraid we’d never see you again.”

You wouldn’t have, she thought.

“This way!” Reardon called gaily and started along the platform toward the exit, but the platform was just as jammed as the train had been. It took them a quarter of an hour to get off it and through the tunnel to the escalators, where things were no better. People were blowing tin whistles, cheering, leaning over the top throwing confetti on them as they rode up, and somewhere someone was banging on a bass drum.

Reardon, five steps above her, leaned back down to shout, “Before we get outside, we’d best settle on a meeting place! In case we get separated!”

“I thought we said Trafalgar Square,” Paige shouted.

“We did,” Reardon shouted, “but where in Trafalgar Square?”

“The lions?” Paige suggested. “What do you think, Douglas?”

That won’t work, Douglas thought. There are four lions and they’re right in the middle of the square, which will be jammed with thousands of people. Not only will we not be able to find the correct lion, but we won’t be able to see anything from there if we do.

They needed an elevated vantage point they could see the others from. “The National Gallery steps!” she shouted up to them.

Reardon nodded. “The National Gallery steps.”

“When?” Paige asked.

“Midnight,” Reardon said.

No, she thought. If I decide I need to go tonight, I’ll have to be there by midnight, and it will take me the better part of an hour to get there. “We can’t meet at midnight!” she shouted, but her voice was drowned out by a schoolboy on the step above her blowing enthusiastically on a toy horn.

“The National Gallery steps at midnight,” Paige echoed. “Or we turn into pumpkins.”

“No, Paige!” she called. “We need to meet before—”

But Reardon, thank goodness, was already saying, “That won’t work. The Underground only runs till half past eleven tonight, and the Major will have our heads if we don’t make it back.”

Half past eleven. That meant she’d need to start for the drop even earlier.

“But we only just got here,” Paige said, “and the war’s over—”

“We haven’t been demobbed yet,” Reardon said. “Till we are—”

“I suppose you’re right,” Paige agreed.

“Then we meet on the National Gallery steps at a quarter past eleven, agreed? Douglas?”

No, she thought. I may need to be gone before that, and I don’t want you waiting for me and ending up being late getting back.