Connie Willis - All Clear

Gone to make certain they’re not there? Polly thought, horrified. On the night Bank Station was bombed?

She grabbed up her coat and began putting it on. “Where are you going?” Sir Godfrey asked.

“To find Miss O’Reilly.”

“But it’s nearly eleven,” Miss Laburnum said. “The trains will have already stopped for the night.”

“She’ll surely have gone to a shelter when the raids began,” the rector said.

That’s just the problem, Polly thought. She’s gone to a shelter which is going to be bombed.

But Eileen knew it was going to be bombed. She’d find Alf and Binnie and get them out of there immediately. If they didn’t refuse to go. They’d delayed her on the twenty-ninth. What if they delayed her tonight and kept her from leaving the station?

“I’m certain nothing will happen to your friend,” the rector said reassuringly.

He’s right, Polly thought. You’re forgetting about VE-Day. You saw her there in her green coat, which means she can’t have been killed at Bank Station.

But Mike hadn’t been there on VE-Day. What if he’d gone with her? “Did Mr. Davis come to the boardinghouse this afternoon?” she asked Mrs. Rickett. “Did you show him this note?”

Mrs. Rickett drew herself up angrily. “I most certainly did not. I haven’t even seen your Mr. Davis today. I am not in the habit of handing over my boarders’ mail to their gentleman friends.”

“No, of course not,” Polly said hastily. “It’s only that I’m so worried. They should both have been here hours ago, and the raids are so bad tonight.”

“There’s nothing you can do till morning,” Mr. Dorming said.

Nothing except worry, Polly thought, listening to the crumping bombs and wishing she knew when Bank Street had been hit and what else had been bombed. And where Mike was. What if he’d spotted Eileen as she was leaving Mrs. Rickett’s and followed her? And then lost her in the crowd at Bank and didn’t realize she’d taken Alf and Binnie to another station? What if he was still at Bank looking for her?

You don’t know that he followed her, she thought. He could very well have gone to check your drop. Or to Fleet Street to deliver an ad and couldn’t get back. He’d been late last night because he’d been working on a story. He’s very likely in the cellar of the Herald and Eileen’s at a tube shelter which wasn’t hit, trying to prevent Alf and Binnie from picking other shelterers’ pockets, and the best thing you can do is get some sleep.

But the bombs kept waking her, and she crept off twice to see if either of them had come back to the emergency staircase.

The all clear went at half past five. “But they’ll have to wait till the trains start,” the rector said.

“I know,” Polly said, and gave them half an hour extra, in case the first trains were too crowded to squeeze onto, but they still didn’t come.

“They may have gone home and assumed they’d meet you there, Miss Sebastian,” Miss Laburnum said, folding up her blanket.

“I thought of that, but I’m afraid if I leave—”

“You’ll miss them,” Miss Laburnum said. “I quite understand. You stay here, and if Miss O’Reilly’s at home, I’ll tell her where you are. And I’ll stop at Mrs.

Leary’s on the way and tell her to tell Mr. Davis.”

“I’ll be here for at least another hour,” Mrs. Brightford said, pointing at her still-sleeping girls, “so if you want to go look for her, I can have her wait here till you return.”

“Thank you!” Polly said gratefully, and ran out to each of the platforms to see which lines weren’t running, and then stationed herself at the foot of the District level escalator so she’d be able to spot Eileen and Mike no matter which way they came in from, searching the crowd anxiously for an orange scarf or a green coat.

There was Eileen, emerging from the northbound tunnel. “Eileen!” Polly called, and ran over to her. “Thank goodness!” She looked past her into the tunnel. “Is Mike with you?”

“Mike? No, he told me yesterday morning he had to work last night. Isn’t he here?”

“No, but the Central Line’s down. Damage on the line. He probably couldn’t get back. I was afraid he might have gone to Liverpool Street or Bank looking for you.”

you.”

“Alf and Binnie weren’t in Bank. They were at Embankment, but the only way I could be sure of keeping them there was to stay with them. I couldn’t very well tell them”—she lowered her voice—“that Bank and Liverpool Street were going to be hit, and you know Alf and Binnie. If I’d forbidden them to go there without giving them a reason, they’d have gone there immediately to see why. And besides, I needed to find out something.”

Exactly how many crimes they’ve committed? Polly said silently, looking up at the people coming down the escalator. Miss Laburnum should have got to Mrs.

Leary’s by now and told Mike. If he was there.

“I’ve been thinking about how Alf and Binnie ran away the other morning when I said I’d take them home,” Eileen said. “And how the day I borrowed the map from them, they wouldn’t let me in.”

More and more people were coming down the escalator, shelterers with their bedrolls under their arms, making the trek back to the East End, and factory workers on the early shift, but there was still no sign of Mike.

“And Alf and Binnie are so dirty and ragged. I mean, I know their mother doesn’t take proper care of them, but Binnie’s wearing the same dress she had at the manor, and it was too short for her even then. And—”

Miss Laburnum was coming down the escalator toward them. “It’s all right,” Polly called up to her. “I found her. You were right. She spent the night—”

And saw the ARP warden on the step above her. And the look on Miss Laburnum’s face. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?” But she already knew.

No, she thought. No.

“Are you Miss Sebastian?” the ARP warden said, and she must have nodded because the warden said, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m afraid your friend Mr. Davis was killed last night.”

Viola: What country, friends, is this?

Captain: This is Illyria, lady.

Viola: And what should I do in Illyria?

My brother he is in Elysium.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

TWELFTH NIGHT

London—Winter 1941

MIKE WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WHO HAD BEEN KILLED IN THE raid. Mr. Simms had, too. He’d been filling in for a warden who had the flu when the ARP post was hit. Nelson had been with him, and the dog’s whimpering had led the rescue crew to his master, but it was too late. Mr. Simms had already bled to death.

Nelson was unhurt, except for a lacerated paw, but Mr. Simms had no family, and there was concern among the troupe over what would become of him. But the next week Mr. Dorming brought Nelson to Notting Hill Gate and announced that he had paid a guinea for him.

“Mr. Dorming doesn’t even like dogs,” Polly said when Miss Laburnum told her. “And I thought Mrs. Rickett didn’t allow her boarders to keep pets.”

“I told you, my dear. Mr. Dorming’s moved out. He’s taken Mr. Simms’s old rooms.”

Polly didn’t remember Miss Laburnum having told her that. She didn’t even remember having been told that Mr. Simms had been killed, though she must have been because she recalled wondering if he had been in Houndsditch, too. She remembered scarcely anything of those first few days. It was all she could manage to absorb the fact that Mike was dead and to do all the things that had to be done.

She had always wondered how the contemps had found the courage to go on after their husbands, parents, children, and friends had been pulled lifeless from the rubble. But it wasn’t courage. It was that there were so many things that had to be taken care of that by the time one had done all of them, it was too late to give way.