Connie Willis - All Clear

“It’s seven,” Eileen said, coming back upstairs.

Polly insisted they wait another half hour, and then they went off to Holborn, after first extracting a promise from Miss Laburnum to take down any messages for them and promising in turn to try to find a suitable candle for the Ghost of Christmas Past’s crown.

“And a green fur-lined cloak for the Ghost of Christmas Present,” Miss Laburnum said.

“If I had a green fur-lined cloak, I’d wear it myself,” Eileen said as they walked over to Notting Hill Gate. “My coat isn’t half warm enough for this horrid weather.

And black is so grim.”

“Everyone’s wearing black,” Polly snapped. “There’s a war on. And no one has a new coat. Everyone’s making do.”

“I didn’t…,” Eileen said, turning puzzled eyes on her. “I was joking.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Polly said. “It’s only—”

“You’re worried about Mike,” she said. “I know. He knew you were busy with the play. He probably didn’t want to distract you by phoning.”

Distract me? Polly thought bitterly.

“I’m sure he’ll ring us tomorrow.” Eileen linked her arm through Polly’s and chattered the rest of the way to Holborn about how wonderful the play had been and

“I’m sure he’ll ring us tomorrow.” Eileen linked her arm through Polly’s and chattered the rest of the way to Holborn about how wonderful the play had been and how hungry she was and about Agatha Christie.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I actually saw her? She lived in London during the war and worked as a dispenser in the hospitals. Unfortunately, she won’t be in the tube shelters. She had an irrational fear of being buried alive.”

Not all that irrational, Polly thought, remembering Marble Arch. And Marjorie.

But it was a pity they had no chance of encountering her. They could have used her help, though Polly doubted whether even Agatha Christie could solve The Mystery of the Drops Which Wouldn’t Open.

“I wonder if she took the tube to work,” Eileen said. “If she—here’s our stop—if she did, we might see her on her way home.”

They got off the train.

“I do hope the queue for the canteen isn’t very long,” Eileen said, starting through the clot of passengers getting off and on and down the platform past a band of urchins up to no good, toward a group of young women in FANY uniforms.

Polly stopped.

“Come along, I’m starving,” Eileen said, beckoning to her.

A sailor passed, going the other way. Polly turned and walked swiftly after him along the platform as the train pulled out and then, as she reached the safety of the archway, looked back.

Eileen was coming after her, pushing through the FANYs, calling “Polly!”

She hurried through the arch and along the tunnel to the hall and onto the escalator.

“Where are you going?” Eileen asked breathlessly, catching up to her halfway up.

“I thought I saw someone,” Polly said.

“Who? Agatha Christie?”

“No, an historian. Jack Sorkin.”

“I thought he was in the Pacific.”

“I know, but I could have sworn …,” Polly said.

They reached the top of the escalator. Polly looked around at the crowd, frowning. “Oh, it isn’t him, after all,” she said, pointing at a sailor on the far side of the hall.

“Too bad.”

“It’s all right,” Eileen said. “We can still go to the canteen.” She started over to the escalator to go back down.

“Wait, I’ve just had a brilliant idea,” Polly said. “Let’s go to Lyons Corner House instead.”

“Lyons?” Eileen repeated doubtfully. “Why?”

“There aren’t any raids tonight. They’re bombing Bristol. We can have a proper meal, and you can tell me all about Murder in the Whatever It Is.”

“The Calais Coach,” Eileen said. “Do you think they may have bacon at Lyons? Or eggs?”

They had both, and tea that didn’t taste like dishwater. And pudding that didn’t taste like wallpaper paste.

“That was the most wonderful meal I’ve ever had,” Eileen said blissfully on the train home. “I’m glad you thought you saw Jack.”

“You were going to tell me about Murder in the Calais Coach,” Polly said.

“Oh. Yes. It’s wonderful. Everyone has a motive for the crime, and you think, ‘It can’t be all of them. It’s got to be one or the other,’ but then it turns out … but I don’t want to spoil it for you. Would you care to borrow it? I’m sure the librarian at Holborn wouldn’t mind if I kept it a bit longer.”

Polly wasn’t listening. She was thinking about the slippage and their altering events. “Eileen,” she asked, “did Linna or Badri say anything about what was causing the increase in slippage?”

“No, not that I remember,” Eileen said, and when they got back to their room, she handed Polly a sheet of paper. “Here, I wrote down everything I could remember, the way you and Mike told me to.”

On the sheet was scrawled, “G had umbrella, ddn’t offer it—Badri wking console—Linna on tphne—mad abt. Bastille—L sd she kn R of T first.”

“What’s R of T?”

“The Reign of Terror. Linna was talking to this person on the telephone about the lab changing whoever it was’s drop to the storming of the Bastille, and the person on the other end was obviously angry, and she said, ‘I know you were scheduled to go to the Reign of Terror first.’ But she didn’t say anything about slippage to them.”

Whoever it was had been scheduled to do the Reign of Terror, and they’d changed it so he or she went to the storming of the Bastille. Which had happened before the Reign of Terror.

“Where was Mike going before his assignment got changed to Dunkirk?” she asked Eileen. “Was it Pearl Harbor?”

“I don’t know. I believe so. They’d changed his entire schedule.”

“Where else was he supposed to go?”

“I don’t remember. Salisbury, I think, and the World Trade Center. I wasn’t—”

Really listening, Polly thought, wanting to shake her. Of course not. Just like you weren’t listening to Gerald Phipps.

“You can ask Mike when he rings us,” Eileen was saying. “Why do you need to know?”

Because Pearl Harbor happened on December 7, 1941. And the storming of the Bastille was before the Reign of Terror.

Mike had said Mr. Dunworthy had been shuffling and canceling dozens of drops. What if he’d been doing it because the slippage increase was a matter not of months but of years? What if Mr. Dunworthy had been putting all the drops in chronological order and canceling ones where there was already a deadline because he had been afraid their drops wouldn’t open in time? What if the increase had been four years? Or the length of the war, and that was why she’d seen Eileen at VE-Day?

Because they hadn’t got out?

But if that was it, then why hadn’t he canceled her drop?

Perhaps the increase isn’t that large, she thought. Pearl Harbor was only a year and a half after Dunkirk. She didn’t know how far apart the two events in the Perhaps the increase isn’t that large, she thought. Pearl Harbor was only a year and a half after Dunkirk. She didn’t know how far apart the two events in the French Revolution were. The storming of the Bastille was July 14, 1789, but she didn’t know when the Reign of Terror had begun. If it was less than three years …

Or that might not be the reason they’d changed the schedules at all. It might be something else altogether. When Mike phones. I need to ask him the original order of his assignments and what it was changed to, she thought. If he phones. And in the meantime, it’s pointless to worry.

But it was impossible not to. She spent her lunch break going to Selfridges and Bourne and Hollingsworth’s to look at women’s coats—which were luckily all far too expensive for Eileen to afford, even at Bourne and Hollingsworth’s “Bomb Damage” sale. And when clothing rationing went into effect, it would be impossible to save up enough points to buy one. But it still made Polly more cheerful to see that the only colors available were black, brown, and navy blue.