Connie Willis - All Clear

She needed to tell them to go on without her if she wasn’t there. “No, wait!” she called, but Reardon was already to the top of the escalator and stepping off into an even larger crowd. She turned back to say, “Follow me, girls,” and disappeared into the mêlée.

“Wait! Reardon! Paige!” Douglas called, pushing up the moving stairs to catch Paige, but the boy with the horn was blocking her way. By the time she reached the top of the escalator, Reardon was nowhere to be seen, and Paige was already nearly to the turnstiles. “Paige!” she called again, and started after her.

Paige turned back.

“Wait for me!” Douglas called, and Paige nodded and made an effort to move to the side but was swept on through.

“Douglas!” Paige shouted and pointed to the stairs leading up to the street.

She nodded and started that way, but by the time she reached Paige, she was halfway up the steps and clinging madly to the metal railing. “Douglas, can you see Reardon anywhere?” Paige shouted down to her.

“No!” she called, bracing herself against the noisy, laughing crowd, which was carrying them inexorably up the stairs to the street. “Listen, if one of us isn’t there on the steps when it’s time to leave, the others shouldn’t wait!”

“What did you say?” Paige shouted over the din, which was growing even louder. Just above them a man in a bowler shouted, “Three cheers for Churchill!” and the crowd obligingly bellowed, “Hip hip hurrah! Hip hip hurrah! Hip hip hurrah!”

“I said, don’t wait for me!”

“I can’t hear you!”

“Three cheers for Monty!” the man shouted. “Hip hip—”

The cheering crowd pushed them up out of the stairway, rather like a cork from a bottle, and spewed them out onto the packed street. And into an even louder din.

Horns were honking and bells were ringing. A conga line snaked past, chanting, “Dunh duh dunh duh dunh UNH!”

Douglas pushed up to Paige and grabbed her arm. “I said, don’t—”

“I can’t hear a word you’re saying, Doug—” Paige said, and stopped short. “Oh, my goodness!”

The crowd crashed into them, around them, past them, creating a sort of eddy, but Paige was oblivious. She was standing with her hands clasped to her chest and a look of awe. “Oh, look, the lights!”

Electric lights shone from shops and the marquee of a cinema and the stained-glass windows of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The pedestal of Nelson’s monument was lit, and so were the lions and the fountain. “Aren’t they the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen?” Paige sighed.

They were beautiful, though not nearly as wonderful to her as they must be to the contemps, who’d lived through five years of the blackout. “Yes,” she said, looking over at Trafalgar Square.

St. Martin’s pillars were draped in bunting, and on its porch stood a little girl waving a glittering white sparkler. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, and a giant bonfire was burning on the far side of the square. Two months ago—two weeks ago—that fire would have meant fear and death and destruction to these same Londoners. But it no longer held any terror for them. They danced around it, and the sudden drone of a plane overhead brought cheers and hands raised in the V-for-victory sign.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Paige asked.

“Yes!” she said, shouting into Paige’s ear. “But listen, if I’m not on the steps at a quarter past eleven, don’t wait for me.”

But Paige wasn’t paying any attention. “It’s just like the song,” she said, transfixed, and began to sing, “ ‘When the lights go on again all over the world …’ ”

The people near them began to sing along with her and then were drowned out by the man in the bowler, shouting, “Three cheers for the RAF!” which was in turn drowned out by a brass band playing “Rule, Britannia.”

The jolly mob was pushing her and Paige apart. “Paige, wait!” she shouted, grabbing for her sleeve, but before she could catch hold, she was abruptly grabbed by a British Army private who swung her into a dip, planted a wet kiss on her lips, swung her back to standing, and grabbed another girl.

The entire episode had taken less than a minute, but it had been long enough. Paige was nowhere to be seen. She attempted to find her, heading in the direction she’d last seen her going, and then gave up and struck out across the square toward the National Gallery.

Trafalgar Square was, if possible, even more crowded than the station and the street had been. Huge numbers of people were sitting on the base of Nelson’s monument, astride the lions, on the sides of the fountain, on a Jeep full of American sailors that was, impossibly, trying to drive through the center of the square, horn honking continuously.

As she passed it, one of the sailors leaned down and grabbed her arm. “Want a ride, gorgeous?” he asked, and hauled her up and into the Jeep. He called to the driver in an exaggerated British accent, “Buckingham Palace, my good man, and make it snappy! Does that please you, milady?”

“No,” she said. “I need to get to the National Gallery.”

“To the National Gallery, Jeeves!” the sailor ordered, though the Jeep clearly wasn’t going anywhere. It was completely surrounded. She scrambled up onto its bonnet to try to spot Paige. “Hey, beautiful, where you goin’?” he said, grabbing at her legs as she stood up.

She swatted his hands away and looked back toward Charing Cross, but there was no sign of Paige or Reardon. She turned, holding on to the windscreen as the Jeep began to crawl forward, to look toward the National Gallery steps.

“Get down, honey!” the sailor who was driving shouted up at her. “I can’t see where I’m going.”

The Jeep crept a few feet and stopped again, and more people swarmed onto the bonnet. He leaned on the horn, and the crowd parted enough for the Jeep to creep a few more feet.

Away from the National Gallery. She needed to get off. When the Jeep stopped again, blocked by the conga line writhing past, she took the opportunity to slip off.

She waded on toward the National Gallery, scanning the steps for Paige or Reardon. A clock chimed, and she glanced back at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. A quarter past ten. Already?

If she was going to go back tonight, she needed to be back in the tube station by eleven, or she’d never make it to the drop, and it could take longer than that just to reach the National Gallery steps. She needed to turn back now.

But she hated to leave without saying goodbye to Paige. She couldn’t actually tell her goodbye, since her cover story was that she’d been called home because her mother had been taken ill. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to leave without permission, but with the war over, she’d have been demobbed in the next few days anyway.

She’d intended to go back tonight because, with everyone from the post in London, it would be easier to slip away. But if she went tomorrow—even though it would be more difficult to effect her escape—it would give her a chance to see everyone one last time. And she didn’t want Paige to wait for her, miss the last train, and get into trouble.

But surely Paige would realize she’d failed to show up because of the crowds and go on without her. Now that the war was over, it wasn’t as if her absence would mean that she’d been blown up by a V-2. And even if she did stay, there was no guarantee she could find Paige in this madness. The National Gallery steps were jammed with people. She’d never be able to spot … no, there Paige was, leaning over the stone railing, anxiously peering out at the crowd.

She waved at Paige—a totally useless gesture amongst the hundreds of people waving Union Jacks—and elbowed her way determinedly toward the steps, veering left when she heard the “dunh duh dunh” of the conga line off to the right.