Connie Willis - All Clear

ALSO BY CONNIE WILLIS

Lincoln’s Dreams

Doomsday Book

Impossible Things

Uncharted Territory

Remake

Bellwether

Fire Watch

To Say Nothing of the Dog

Miracle and Other Christmas Stories

Passage

Blackout

All Clear is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or

dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Connie Willis

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Spectra,

an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s”

are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Willis, Connie.

All clear / Connie Willis.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52269-6

1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Historians—Fiction.

3. World War, 1939–1945—England—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3573.I45652A79 2010

813′.54—dc22 2010030197

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.1

TO ALL THE

ambulance drivers

firewatchers

air-raid wardens

nurses

canteen workers

airplane spotters

rescue workers

mathematicians

vicars

vergers

shopgirls

chorus girls

librarians

debutantes

spinsters

fishermen

retired sailors

servants

evacuees

Shakespearean actors

and mystery novelists

WHO WON THE WAR.

You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.

—WINSTON CHURCHILL

CONTENTS

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

London—26 October 1940

London—7 May 1945

London—26 October 1940

Bethnal Green—June 1944

London—26 October 1940

Kent—April 1944

London—27 October 1940

London—November 1940

Kent—April 1944

Golders Green—July 1944

London—November 1940

Kent—April 1944

London—November 1940

London—November 1940

Oxford—April 2060

Bletchley—November 1940

Dulwich—Summer 1944

London—November 1940

Bletchley—December 1940

Dulwich—Summer 1944

London—December 1940

Oxford—April 2060

London—December 1940

Saltram-on-Sea—December 1940

London—December 1940

London—December 1940

London—29 December 1940

St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940

St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940

Ludgate Hill—29 December 1940

Blackfriars Tube Station—29 December 1940

St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940

The City—29 December 1940

St. Bartholomew’s Hospital—30 December 1940

St. Paul’s Cathedral—30 December 1940

Croydon—October 1944

London—Winter 1941

London—Winter 1941

Croydon

London—Winter 1941

London—7 May 1945

London—Winter 1941

London—Winter 1941

London—Winter 1941

London—Winter 1941

Kent—April 1944

Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995

Dover—April 1944

Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995

Wales—May 1944

London—Spring 1941

London—May 1944

London—Spring 1941

Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995

Kent—June 1944

Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995

Kent—October 1944

Kent—October 1944

London—Spring 1941

Croydon—October 1944

London—Spring 1941

London—Spring 1941

London—Spring 1941

Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995

London—19 April 1941

London—19 April 1941

Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995

London—7 May 1945

London—19 April 1941

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to say thank you to all the people who helped me and stood by me with Blackout and All Clear as one book morphed into two and I went slowly mad under the strain: my incredibly patient editor, Anne Groell, and my long-suffering agent, Ralph Vicinanza; my even longer-suffering secretary, Laura Lewis; my daughter and chief confidante, Cordelia; my family and friends; every librarian within a hundred-mile radius; and the baristas at Margie’s, Starbucks, and the UNC student union who gave me tea—well, chai—and sympathy on a daily basis. Thank you all for putting up with me, standing by me, and not giving up on me or the book.

But most especially, I want to thank the marvelous group of ladies who were at the Imperial War Museum the day I was there doing research on the Blitz—women who, it turned out, had all been rescue workers and ambulance drivers and air-raid wardens during the Blitz, and who told me story after story that proved invaluable to the book and to my understanding of the bravery, determination, and humor of the British people as they faced down Hitler. And I want to thank my wonderful husband, who found them, sat them down, bought them tea and cakes, and then came to find me so I could interview them. Best husband ever!

Well, he hasn’t come yet, sir, he’s more than a bit late tonight.

—LONDON PORTER TO ERNIE PYLE, REFERRING

TO THE GERMAN BOMBERS

London—26 October 1940

BY NOON MICHAEL AND MEROPE STILL HADN’T RETURNED from Stepney, and Polly was beginning to get really worried. Stepney was less than an hour away by train. There was no way it could take Merope and Michael—correction, Eileen and Mike; she had to remember to call them by their cover names—no way it could take them six hours to go fetch Eileen’s belongings from Mrs. Willett’s and come back to Oxford Street. What if there’d been a raid and something had happened to them? The East End was the most dangerous part of London.

There weren’t any daytime raids on the twenty-sixth, she thought. But there weren’t supposed to have been five fatalities at Padgett’s either. If Mike was right, and he had altered events by saving the soldier Hardy at Dunkirk, anything was possible. The space-time continuum was a chaotic system, in which even a minuscule action could have an enormous effect.

But two additional fatalities—and civilians, at that—could scarcely have changed the course of the war, even in a chaotic system. Thirty thousand civilians had been killed in the Blitz and nine thousand in the V-1 and V-2 attacks, and fifty million people had died in the war.

And you know he didn’t lose the war, Polly thought. And historians have been traveling to the past for more than forty years. If they’d been capable of altering events, they’d have done it long before this. Mr. Dunworthy had been in the Blitz and the French Revolution and even the Black Death, and his historians had observed wars and coronations and coups all across history, and there was no record of any of them even causing a discrepancy, let alone changing the course of history.

Which meant that in spite of appearances, the five fatalities at Padgett’s Department Store weren’t a discrepancy either. Marjorie must have misunderstood what the nurses said. She’d admitted she’d only overheard part of their conversation. Perhaps the nurses had been talking about the victims from another incident. Marylebone had been hit last night, too, and Wigmore Street. Polly knew from experience that ambulances sometimes transported victims to hospital from more than one incident.