All Clear (24 page)

“Since
you
were an infant,” Stephen said, smiling fondly at her. “The last time I saw you, you were in pigtails.”

“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” Fairchild said. “I thought you were stationed at Tangmere. Mother said—”

“I was, and then at Hendon,” he said, looking at Mary. “But I’ve just been transferred to Biggin Hill.”

“Biggin Hill? What good news! That means you’ll be only a few miles away.”

And squarely in the heart of Bomb Alley. It was already the most-hit airfield, and when Intelligence’s misinformation made the rockets begin to fall short, it would be even more dangerous. As if tipping V-1s wasn’t dangerous enough.

“How lovely!” Fairchild was saying. “How did you find out I was here? Did Mother write to you?”

“No,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I had no idea you were here. I came to see Lieutenant Kent.”

“Lieutenant Kent? I didn’t know you two knew each other.”

“I drove him to a meeting in London last month after Talbot wrenched her knee. The Major asked me to substitute. But I had no idea you knew him,” Mary said, thinking,
Please believe me
.

“And I had no idea you knew my little sister,” he said.

“I’m not your sister,” Fairchild said. “And I’m not an infant. I told you, I’m nineteen. I’m all grown up.”

“You’ll
always
be sweet little Bits and Pieces to me.” He tousled her hair and smiled at Mary. “I hope you girls are taking good care of this youngster.”

Oh, worse and worse
. “She doesn’t need taking care of,” Mary said. “She’s the best driver in our unit.”

“Oh, no, she’s not.
You
are,” he said. “That’s one of the things I came
to tell you. Do you remember when I told you to turn down Tottenham Court Road on our way to Whitehall, and you turned the wrong way? Well, it was fortunate you did. A V-1 smashed down in the middle of it not five minutes later.”

He turned to Fairchild. “She saved my life.” He smiled at Mary. “I told you our meeting was destiny.”

“Destiny?” Fairchild said, looking stricken.

“Abso—”

“Absolutely not,” Mary cut in before he could ruin things even more completely, “and I fail to see how making a wrong turn constitutes expert driving. And the reason we met was because I couldn’t tell a flying bomb from a motorcycle.”

She turned to Fairchild. “Did you say there was a trunk call for me? I’d best go take it.” She started for the door. “It was nice seeing you again, Flight Officer Lang.”

“Wait, you can’t go yet,” Stephen said. “You still haven’t said you’ll go out to dinner with me. Bits, convince her I’m not a bounder.”

You
are
a bounder
, Mary thought.
You’re also an utter fool. Can’t you see the poor child’s in love with you
?

“Tell her what a nice chap I am,” he said to Fairchild. “That I’m entirely trustworthy and upstanding.”

“He is,” Fairchild said, looking as though she’d been cut to the heart. “Any girl would be lucky to get him.”

“There, you see? You have my little sister’s endorsement.”

“Oh, but the two of you must have tons of catching up to do,” Mary said desperately. “Childhood memories and all that. I’d only be in the way. You two go.”

“I can’t,” Fairchild said, managing somehow to keep her voice natural. “I must go fetch a shipment of medical supplies for the Major.” And Stephen at least had the decency to say, “Can’t you get one of the other girls to go in your place?”

“No. We’ll do it next time you come. You go, Kent.”

And if I do
, Mary thought, watching her make her escape,
she’ll never forgive me
. She might not forgive her anyway, but Mary had no intention of making it worse than it already was. “I really must go take that call from HQ,” she said, “and if it’s about what I think it is, I won’t be able to go to dinner either.”

“Then tomorrow.”

“I’m on duty, and I told you, I don’t believe in wartime attachments. There must be scores of other girls dying to go out with you.”

“None I knew in a previous life. The day after tomorrow?”

“I can’t. I really
must
take that call.” She started for the door.

“No, wait,” he said and grabbed her hands. “I haven’t thanked you yet.”

“I told you, I didn’t save your life. Tottenham Court Road is a very long road, and—”

“No, not for that. This is about the V-1s.”

“The V-1s?”

“Yes. Do you remember how you managed to slip out of my grasp just as I was about to kiss you before Bits and Pieces came in?”

“About to kiss—”

“Yes, of course. That was the entire point of all that Babylon rot, don’t you know?” he said, grinning. “And just as I thought it was working, you eluded my grasp, more’s the pity.”

“I thought you were going to tell me about the V-1s.”

“I was. I am. You did the same thing that day you drove me. Twice. My line of attack was working splendidly, and then suddenly I found myself totally thrown off course, even though I’d never got near enough to lay a hand on you.”

“I still don’t know what this has to do with—”

“Don’t you see?” he said, squeezing her hands. “That was where I got the notion of throwing the V-1s off course. You’re the one who gave me the idea. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have been blown up by now, trying to shoot them down.”

AFTER POLLY FOUND OUT THAT THE REIGN OF TERROR
had been over four years after the storming of the Bastille, she attempted to convince herself that there couldn’t possibly be that much slippage. The most on record for a non-divergence point had been three months and eight days. Someone had had six months’ slippage, and Mr. Dunworthy had overreacted and canceled everyone’s drops, that was all. And the fact that he hadn’t canceled hers proved it.

But the fear still nagged at her, so much so that she redoubled her efforts to find a way out. She put a new set of ads in the papers and went to Charing Cross to see if there was any spot in the sprawling station where Mr. Dunworthy could have come through on his earlier journeys. There wasn’t. Even the emergency staircase was filled with amorous couples. His drop had to have been somewhere else.

There was no sign of a younger Mr. Dunworthy either, though she wasn’t certain she’d recognize him if she saw him. The first few times he’d gone to the past, he’d been scarcely older than Colin. She tried to imagine him Colin’s age—lanky, eager, taking the escalator steps two at a time—but she couldn’t manage it, any more than she could imagine Mr. Dunworthy sending them knowingly into danger. Or not coming to get them if he could.

She wondered suddenly if it was not just an increase in slippage that was keeping him from pulling them out, but the fact that he was already
here on a previous assignment and couldn’t come through till after his younger self had returned to Oxford. Which would be when?

Mike didn’t phone again on Tuesday or Wednesday, or write, which Eileen was convinced was a good sign. “It means he’s found Gerald, and they’re on their way to check his drop,” she said. “You mustn’t worry so. Just when things are in a complete mess, and you can’t see how they can possibly work out, that’s when help arrives.”

Not always
, Polly thought, remembering the thousands of soldiers who hadn’t made it off Dunkirk’s beaches, or the victims who’d died in the rubble before the rescue teams reached them.

“When I took Theodore to the station on the train,” Eileen was saying, “he grabbed hold of my neck and wouldn’t let go, and the train was leaving. And just as I was about to despair, who should show up but Mr. Goode, the vicar, to rescue me.” She smiled at the memory. “And we’ll be rescued, too. You’ll see. I’m certain we’ll hear from Mike tomorrow. Or from the retrieval team.”

They heard from Mike, a scrawled note saying, “Arrived safely and am in comfortable lodgings. More later.” There was also a newspaper clipping in the envelope, of a sale on men’s suits at Townsend Brothers.

“Why did he write that? We already know it. And why did he put the clipping in?” Eileen asked. “Is he saying the jacket and waistcoat we sent him in were the wrong sort of clothes?”

“I don’t know,” Polly said, turning the clipping over, but the only thing on the back was a filled-in crossword puzzle.

When he’d phoned, he’d said he was doing crosswords as a cover while he looked for Gerald in pubs. Could he have accidentally stuck it in the envelope along with the note?

“Oh, Miss O’Reilly,” Miss Laburnum said, coming in from the parlor. “You had another letter in the afternoon post.” She handed it to her.

“Perhaps it explains this one,” Polly said, but it was from the vicar.

Eileen went up to their room to read it. Polly stayed in the vestibule, looking at the clipping. Mike had talked about sending a message in code, and she’d told him about the D-Day code words appearing in the
Daily Herald
puzzle. Could he have hidden some message in the crossword answers?

She grabbed a pencil, went up to the bathroom, locked the door, and sat down on the edge of the tub to decipher it.
I hope the code’s not too complicated
, she thought.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t even a code. He’d simply printed his message in
the puzzle’s squares, beginning with 14 Across: NO LUCK YET CHECKING BILLETS DO U NO SITE OLD REMOTE DROP ST JOHNS WOOD OR DROPS HISTS USED B4 CLD B HOLDING OPEN EMERG XIT.

The lab had had a remote drop in St. John’s Wood, which they’d used for a number of years. Apparently Mike thought they might have opened it so they could employ it as an emergency exit, though why it would open if the problem was an increase in slippage, Polly didn’t know. But she wasn’t in a position to leave any stone unturned, so instead of going to meet the retrieval team at Trafalgar Square after work, she took the tube to St. John’s Wood. She didn’t know where the old remote drop was, but she hoped it was in some immediately obvious spot.

It wasn’t, and she didn’t know of any other London drops earlier historians had used. Except for hers in Hampstead Heath, which she’d last used just before midnight of VE-Day eve. At this point, it didn’t exist yet, but the lab might have reset its coordinates for 1940, so the next morning she put an ad in the
Times
, telling “R.T.” to meet her at St. Paul’s on Sunday.

Eileen was unexpectedly argumentative about it. “But we already placed one meeting the retrieval team at the National Gallery concert,” she said.

“You can do that one, and I’ll do St. Paul’s,” Polly said.

“But I’ve always wanted to see St. Paul’s,” Eileen argued. “Mr. Dunworthy was always talking about it. Why don’t I do it, and you do the concert?”

Because it’s more difficult faking having been to a concert
, Polly thought.
And besides, I’m not certain how long this will take
.

“No,” she said. “I know one of the vergers at St. Paul’s—Mr. Humphreys—and he’ll know if any strangers have been in.”

“I could go with you. The concert isn’t till one.”

I should have said I was going to Westminster Abbey or something
, Polly thought. “But I don’t know when the retrieval team will be there. I forgot to give a time,” she said. “I’ll meet you after the concert and we’ll go to Lyons Corner House for tea, and then I’ll take you on a guided tour of St. Paul’s.” And make certain she was gone before Eileen woke up.

Sunday morning she took the tube to Hampstead Heath and climbed the hill. It was raining, a fine mist, which was good—there wouldn’t be that many people about—but she wished she’d brought her umbrella. She hadn’t been able to find it in the dark this morning, and
she’d been afraid to switch on the light for fear of waking Eileen and having her insist on coming with her.

She hurried across the heath and into the trees, hoping she’d recognize the spot. The last time she’d been here, it had been May. Now the trees were russet and brown and heavy with rain.

No, there was the weeping beech, its golden-leaved branches sweeping the ground. The rain was coming down harder.
Good
, she thought, pushing the curtain of leaves aside.
If anyone catches me, I can say I was taking shelter from the rain
.

She stepped quickly under it, let the concealing leaves fall together behind her, and looked around at the dim, tentlike space. The ground was covered with curling yellow leaves and twigs. A lemonade bottle and a torn paper ice cream horn lay half buried in the leaves, but both were weather-faded.

The retrieval team hasn’t been here
, Polly thought, looking at the undisturbed leaves.

But the drop might only have been set up for them to return through. She sat down against the beech’s mottled white trunk, checked her watch for the time, and settled in to see if the drop would open.

It was cold. She pulled her knees up under her skirt and hugged her arms to her chest. The rain wasn’t coming through the leaves, but the leaf- and bark-covered ground was icily damp, its wetness soaking through her coat and skirt.

And as she sat there, all the things she was worried about began to soak through her, too—her deadline, and Mike, and whether the incident which had destroyed St. George’s and the shops hiding her drop was a discrepancy. She’d assumed the church hadn’t been on Mr. Dunworthy’s forbidden list because she’d intended to stay in the tube shelters, but it hadn’t been in the implant Colin had made for her either.

Which meant he
could
have been near her drop when the parachute mine exploded.

No, he couldn’t
, she thought, fighting down sudden nausea.
He didn’t put it in the implant because he thought I’d be safely in a tube shelter when it went off
.

And Colin had talked to her about parachute mines. He’d lectured
her
on the dangers of shrapnel and the blackout, and he was endlessly resourceful. And she knew from experience that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. If anyone could find a way to get them out of here, he could.