Connie Willis - All Clear

A hushed silence, as if someone was holding his breath.

“I know you’re in there,” Polly said, and Eileen emerged from the bushes. “Eileen? What on earth are you doing here? Has Mike come back?”

“No. I decided to come along and see if anyone had answered your ad. I told Mrs. Rickett where we’d be, and I left a note for Mike with Mrs. Leary.”

Which didn’t explain what she had been doing lurking in the bushes, and Eileen seemed to realize that because she added, “But then I couldn’t find the statue, and I ended up in among the trees,” which was clearly untrue. The signposts pointing the way to the Peter Pan statue were the only ones in England which hadn’t been taken down, and at any rate Eileen was looking guilty of something, though Polly had no idea what.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Why did you really come?”

“Eileen!” Mike called. “Polly!”

“Eileen!” Mike called. “Polly!”

He was limping up the path toward them, waving.

Mike. Oh, thank God. He wasn’t dead.

“Mike!” Eileen cried, and ran to meet him. “You’re back! Thank heavens. We’ve been so worried!”

“Tensing didn’t find you, did he?” Polly asked anxiously.

“No.”

“Then where were you?”

“In Oxford.”

“Oxford?” Eileen gasped. “Oh, God, you’ve found Gerald! Thank heavens.”

“No, no, Oxford right now. In 1940. I’m sorry,” he said, looking in dismay at her disappointed face. “I didn’t mean to get your hopes up like that. I didn’t find Gerald. I—”

Polly cut him off. “We want to hear all about your journey,” she said loudly, and then in a whisper, “but not here. Somewhere where we can’t be overheard. Come along. I know just the place.”

She tucked her arm in Mike’s and led him down the path, chattering brightly. “We thought you’d never come, didn’t we, Eileen?”

“Yes. If you’d told us which train you’d be on,” Eileen said, playing along, “we’d have come to meet it.”

“I didn’t know myself,” Mike said. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “What’s going on? Was someone spying on us back there?”

Only Eileen, Polly thought. “I don’t think so,” she said, “but loose lips sink ships. Come along.”

She led them past the trenches to an open lawn with a large monument in its center. From here, they’d be able to see anyone coming from any direction. “All right,”

she said, sitting down on the monument steps. “Now we can talk.”

“What did you mean, ‘loose lips sink—’?” Mike stopped, staring at the statuary around the monument. “Jesus, what is this thing?”

“The Albert Memorial. Possibly the ugliest monument in all of England.” Polly smiled happily at the elephant, the water buffalo, the semi-naked young women clustered round them, at Prince Albert sitting on top reading a book. She felt giddy in her relief that Mike wasn’t in the Tower. Or dead.

“It’s hideous. It wasn’t destroyed in the Blitz, was it?” he asked hopefully.

“No, only minor damage, I’m afraid, though supposedly at one point someone put up a large arrow to guide the Luftwaffe to it.”

“It’s too bad it didn’t work,” Mike said, still staring, appalled. “Christ, is that a buffalo?”

“Who cares what it is?” Eileen said impatiently. “Tell us what happened and why you went to Oxford.”

“Okay. After I called you about Tensing, I went back to Mrs. Jolsom’s to pack my stuff, and she told me the room I’d rented was supposed to have been Phipps’s.”

“It was Gerald’s room?” Polly said.

“Yes. He was supposed to have come two months ago, but he never arrived, so I went to Oxford to see if I could find out whether something had happened to him on the way.”

“And?”

“He never came through. He’d made a reservation at the Mitre in Oxford for the night he arrived, but he never showed up there either.”

“The increased slippage could have sent him through late,” Eileen said, “and he decided to go straight to Bletchley instead of stopping in Oxford.”

Mike shook his head. “He’d mailed a package addressed to himself to the Mitre. He never picked it up.”

“Do you know what was in it?” Polly asked.

“Yeah, that’s why I was gone so long. It took me forever to steal it.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from his pocket and laid them out on the steps of the monument.

“It’s all the papers documenting that he was who he said he was—letters of recommendation, school records, security clearances, everything he’d need to pass a background check. Plus train tickets and money. And a letter from his sister in Northumbria informing him his mother was ill. Addressed to Mrs. Jolsom’s address.”

He looked up at them. “He obviously never came through.”

The net wouldn’t let him, Polly thought, which means its safeguards are still functioning. Only it didn’t necessarily mean that at all. It might just as easily mean that there was no Oxford from which to send him.

She glanced anxiously at Eileen to see how she was taking the news, but she didn’t look upset.

Because she doesn’t believe it, Polly thought. In a moment she’ll say Mr. Dunworthy must have rescheduled Gerald’s assignment and Mike shouldn’t have taken the parcel because Gerald will need it.

Mike said it instead. “I intended to put the package back, but when I saw what was in it, I thought I’d better not leave it there for some curious hotel clerk to open.”

“Will the Mitre notice it’s missing?”

“No. I wrapped my wool vest up in the brown paper—and had a hell of a time doing it, I might add; I couldn’t get the string tied around it for the life of me—and sneaked it back on the shelf, and I stuck a Notting Hill Gate ticket stub in the pocket, so if Phipps does come through, he’ll know where to look for us.”

“If he can get to London,” Polly said, looking at the money on the steps.

“I stuck enough money for the train fare to London in the pocket, too,” Mike said. “I was going to leave all of it, but I decided we might need it to tide us over till we find some other way out. I assume our retrieval teams still haven’t shown up?”

“No,” Eileen said. “Have you heard from Daphne?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been to Mrs. Leary’s yet. I came straight to Mrs. Rickett’s to find the two of you. I’ll check when we go back. But if Phipps’s drop didn’t open, then our retrieval teams’ drops probably can’t either, which explains why they’re not here. But if that’s what happened, then Oxford knows something’s wrong, and they’ll start working on figuring out a way to get us out of here. We’ll be home in no time. We just need to make sure they can find us when they get here, so we need to—”

“Will we be home in no time?” Eileen asked challengingly. “Or will we still be here when the war ends, Polly?”

“When the war ends?” Mike said. “What are you talking about? None of us knows how long we’ll—”

“She does,” Eileen said. “She was already here.” She turned to Polly. “That’s why the night you found me in Padgett’s you asked me if the manor in Backbury was

“She does,” Eileen said. “She was already here.” She turned to Polly. “That’s why the night you found me in Padgett’s you asked me if the manor in Backbury was my first assignment. Because you were afraid I had a deadline like you.”

“A deadline?” Mike said. “You were here before, Polly?”

“Yes,” Eileen said, looking steadily at Polly. “That’s why she asked me whether you were supposed to go to Pearl Harbor first. She was afraid that you had one, too. And that the increased slippage means we won’t get out before her deadline.”