Connie Willis - All Clear

The steps were packed. She pushed over to the end of them, hoping it might be less crowded there.

It was, marginally. She began to work her way up, stepping between and over people. “Sorry … I beg your pardon … sorry.”

There was the sudden heart-stopping, high-pitched whine of a siren, and the entire square fell silent, listening, and then—as they realized it was the all clear—

erupted into cheers.

Directly in front of her, a burly workman sat on a step, his head in his hands, sobbing as if his heart would break. “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously, putting her hand on his shoulder.

He looked up, tears streaming down his ruddy face. “Right as rain, dearie,” he said. “It was the all clear what did it.” He stood up so she could pass, wiping at his cheeks. “The most beautiful thing I ever ’eard in me ’ole life.”

He took her arm to help her up to the next step. “ ’Ere you go, dearie. Let ’er through, blokes,” he called to the people above him.

“Thank you,” she said gratefully.

“Thank you,” she said gratefully.

“Douglas!” Paige shouted from above, and she looked up to see her waving wildly. They worked their way toward each other. “Where did you go?” Paige demanded. “I turned round and you were gone! Have you seen Reardon?”

“No.”

“I thought perhaps I might spot her or some of the others from up here,” Paige said. “But I haven’t had any luck.”

She could see why as she looked out over the crowd. Ten thousand people were supposed to have gathered in Trafalgar Square on VE-Day, but it looked like there were already that many here tonight, laughing and cheering and throwing their hats in the air. The conga line, at the far corner, was weaving off toward the Portrait Gallery, replaced by a line of middle-aged women dancing an Irish jig.

She tried to take it all in, to memorize every detail of the amazing historical event she was witnessing: The young woman splashing in the fountain with three officers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment. The stout woman passing out poppies to two tough-looking soldiers, who each kissed her on the cheek. The bobby trying to drag a girl down off the Nelson monument and the girl leaning down and blowing a curled-paper party favor in his face. And the bobby laughing. They looked not so much like people who had won a war as people who had been let out of prison.

Which they had been.

“Look!” Paige cried. “There’s Reardon.”

“Where?”

“By the lion.”

“Which lion?”

“That lion.” Paige pointed. “The one with part of his nose missing.”

There were dozens of people surrounding the lion and on the lion, perched on its reclining back, on its head, on its paws, one of which had been knocked off during the Blitz. A sailor sat astride its back, putting his cap on the lion’s head.

“Standing in front of it and off to the left,” Paige directed her. “Can’t you see her?”

“No.”

“By the lamppost.”

“The one with the boy shinning up it?”

“Yes. Now look to the left.”

She did, scanning the people standing there: a sailor waving his cap in the air, two elderly women in black coats with red, white, and blue rosettes on their lapels, a blonde teenaged girl in a white dress, a pretty redhead in a green coat—

Good Lord, that looks just like Merope Ward, she thought. And that impossibly bright green coat was exactly the sort of outfit those idiot techs in Wardrobe would have told her was what the contemps wore to the VE-Day celebrations.

And the young woman wasn’t cheering or laughing. She was looking earnestly at the National Gallery steps, as if trying to memorize every detail. It was definitely Merope.

She raised her arm to wave at her.

There won’t be any next time if this war is lost.

—EDWARD R. MURROW,

17 June 1940

London—26 October 1940

FOR A MOMENT AFTER THE SIREN BEGAN ITS UP-AND-DOWN warble, Polly simply stood there with the stockings box still in her hand, her heart pounding. Then Doreen said, “Oh, no, not a raid! I thought for certain we’d get through today without one.”

We did, Polly thought. There must be some mistake.

“And just when we were finally getting some customers,” Doreen added disgustedly. She pointed at the opening lift.

Oh, no, what a time for Mike and Eileen to finally arrive. Polly hurried over to intercept them, but it wasn’t them after all. Two stylish young women stepped out of the lift. “I’m afraid there’s a raid on,” Miss Snelgrove said, coming over, too, “but we have a shelter which is very comfortable and specially fortified. Miss Sebastian will take you down to it.”

“This way,” Polly said, and led them through the door and down the stairs.

“Oh, dear,” one of the young women said, “and after what happened to Padgett’s last night—”

“I know,” the other one replied. “Did you hear? Five people were killed.”

Thank goodness Mike and Eileen aren’t here, Polly thought. But they could easily have been on their way up when the siren sounded and would be down in the shelter when they got there, and there would be no way to avoid the subject. And no way to convince Mike this didn’t confirm the fact that there was a discrepancy.

“Were the people who were killed in Padgett’s shelter?” the first young woman was asking worriedly. She had to shout over the siren. Unlike at Padgett’s, where the staircase had muffled the sirens’ sound, the enclosed space here magnified it so that it was louder than it had been out on the floor.

“I’ve no idea,” the other shouted back. “Nowhere’s safe these days.” She launched into a story about a taxi that had been hit the day before.

They were nearly down to the basement. Please don’t let Mike and Eileen be there, Polly thought, only half listening to the young women. Please …

“If I hadn’t mistaken my parcel for hers,” the young woman was saying, “we’d both have been killed—”

The siren cut off. There was a moment of echoing silence, and then the all clear sounded.

“False alarm,” the other young woman said brightly. They started back upstairs. “They must have mistaken one of our boys for a German bomber,” which sounded likely, but it wouldn’t necessarily convince Mike. Polly hoped he and Eileen hadn’t been within earshot of the siren.

But the fact that the women knew about the five fatalities must mean it was in the papers, and if it was, it would be chalked on news boards and newsboys would be shouting it, and there’d be no way to keep it from him. And there was no way a shopgirl could ask a customer, “How did you find out about the fatalities?”

Polly hoped the young women might bring it up again, but now they were solely focused on buying a pair of elbow-length gloves. It took them nearly an hour to decide on a pair, and when they left, Mike and Eileen still weren’t there. Which is good, Polly thought. It means the chances that they didn’t hear the siren are excellent. But it was after two. Where were they?

Mike heard a newsboy shouting the headline “Five Killed at Padgett’s” and went to the morgue to see the bodies, she thought worriedly, but when Mike and Eileen arrived half an hour later, they didn’t say anything about fatalities or Padgett’s. They had been delayed at Theodore’s.

“Theodore didn’t want me to go,” Eileen explained. “He threw such a tantrum I had to promise to stay and read him a story.”

“And then on the way back we went to the travel shop Eileen had seen, to try to find a map,” Mike said, “but it was hit last night.”

“The owner was there,” Eileen said, “and he said there was another shop on Charing Cross Road, but—”