All Clear

by Connie Willis

  “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—”

  Miss Snelgrove was eyeing them disapprovingly from Doreen’s counter. “You can tell me when I get home,” Polly said. She gave them the coats, her latchkey, and Mrs. Leary’s address. “I may be late,” she added.

  “Should we go to the tube station if the raids begin before you come home?” Eileen asked nervously.

  “No. Mrs. Rickett’s is perfectly safe,” Polly whispered. “Now go. I don’t want to lose my job. It’s the only one we’ve got.”

  She watched them depart, hoping they’d be too busy settling in to their new accommodations to discuss Padgett’s or daytime raids with anyone. She’d planned to go to the hospital tomorrow to try to find out if there really had been five fatalities, but if the deaths were in the newspapers, it couldn’t wait. She’d have to go tonight, and poor Eileen would have to face her first supper at Mrs. Rickett’s alone.

  But she might as well have gone straight home. She couldn’t get in to see Marjorie or find out anything from the stern admitting nurse, and when she reached the boardinghouse, Eileen was sitting in the parlor with her bag, even though Polly could hear the others in the dining room. “Why aren’t you in there eating supper?” Polly asked.

  “Mrs. Rickett said I had to give her my ration book, and when I told her about Padgett’s, she said I couldn’t begin boarding till I got a new one, and Mike wasn’t here—”

  “Where is he? At Mrs. Leary’s?”

  “No. He arranged things with her and then went to check a travel shop in Regent Street and then fetch his clothes from his old rooms, but he said he’d be late and not to wait for him, to go ahead to Notting Hill Gate and meet him there. When do the raids begin tonight?” she asked nervously.

  “Shh,” Polly whispered. “We shouldn’t be talking about this here. Come up to the room.”

  “I can’t. Mrs. Rickett said I wasn’t allowed to till I’d paid her.”

  “Paid her? Didn’t you tell her you were moving in with me?”

  “Yes,” Eileen said, “but she said not till I’d given her ten and six.”

  “I’ll speak to her,” Polly said grimly, picking up Eileen’s bag. She took her up to the room, left her there, and went down to the kitchen to confront Mrs. Rickett.

  “When I moved in, you said I had to pay the full rate for a double,” Polly argued. “It shouldn’t be extra for—”

  “There’s plenty as wants the room if you don’t,” Mrs. Rickett said. “I had three Army nurses here today looking for a room to let.”

  And I suppose you plan to charge them three times the rate for a double, Polly almost snapped, but she couldn’t risk getting them evicted. Eileen would already have given Theodore’s mother this address, and Mrs. Rickett wasn’t the type to tell a retrieval team where they’d gone if they did show up. Polly paid the additional ten and six and went back upstairs.

  Miss Laburnum was just coming out of her room, carrying a bag full of coconut shells and an empty glass bottle. “For Ernest’s message in a bottle,” she explained. “Sir Godfrey said to get a whiskey bottle, but with Mrs. Brightford’s little girls there, I thought perhaps orange squash would be more suitable—”

  Polly cut her off. “Would you tell Sir Godfrey I may not be at rehearsal tonight? I must help my cousin get settled in.”

  “Oh, yes, poor thing,” Miss Laburnum said. “Did she know any of the five who were killed?”

  Oh, no, Miss Laburnum knew about the deaths, too. Now she’d have to keep Mike and Eileen away from the troupe as well.

  “Were they shop assistants?” Miss Laburnum asked.

  “No,” Polly said, “but the incident’s left her badly shaken, so I’d rather you didn’t say anything to her about it.”

  “Oh, no, of course not,” Miss Laburnum assured Polly. “We wouldn’t want to upset her.” Polly was certain she meant it, but she or someone else at the boardinghouse was bound to slip. She had to find a way to get in to see Marjorie tomorrow.

  “It’s dreadful,” Miss Laburnum was saying, “so many killed, and who knows how it will all end?”

  “Yes,” Polly said, and was grateful when the sirens went. “I’d appreciate it if you told Sir Godfrey why I can’t come.”

  “Oh, but you can’t be thinking of staying here with a raid on? Can she, Miss Hibbard?” she asked their fellow boarder as she came hurrying out of her room carrying a black umbrella and her knitting.

  “Oh, my, no,” Miss Hibbard said. “It’s far too dangerous. Mr. Dorming, tell Miss Sebastian she and her cousin must come with us.”

  And in a moment Eileen would open the door to see what was going on. “We’ll come to the shelter as soon as I’ve shown her where things are,” Polly promised, to get rid of them. She escorted them downstairs.

  “Don’t be too late,” Miss Laburnum said at the door. “Sir Godfrey said he wished to rehearse the scene between Crichton and Lady Mary.”

  “I may not be able to rehearse with you with my cousin—”

  “You can bring her with you,” Miss
Laburnum said.

  Polly shook her head. “She’ll need rest and quiet.” And to be kept away from people who know there were five killed. “Tell Sir Godfrey I’ll be there tomorrow night, I promise,” she said, and ran back upstairs.

  She waited to make certain Mrs. Rickett went with them and then ran back down to the kitchen. She put the kettle on, piled bread, oleomargarine, cheese, and cutlery on a tray, made tea, and brought it up to Eileen.

  “Mrs. Rickett said we weren’t allowed to have food in the room,” Eileen said.

  “Then she should have let you begin boarding immediately.” Polly set the tray on the bed. “Though, actually, it was a blessing she didn’t. This is much better than supper would have been.”

  “But the siren,” Eileen said anxiously. “Shouldn’t we—”

  “The raids won’t start till eight forty-six.” Polly buttered a slice of bread and handed it to Eileen. “And I told you, we’re safe here. Mr. Dunworthy himself approved this address.”

  She poured Eileen a cup of tea. “I found out some more names of airfields today,” she said, and read them to her, but Eileen shook her head at each one.

  “Could it have been Hendon?” Polly asked,

  “No, I’m so sorry. I know I’d recognize it if I saw it. If only we had a map.”

  “Did you get to the shop in Charing Cross Road?”

  “Yes, but the owner demanded to know what we wanted with a map and asked us all sorts of questions. He even asked Mike what sort of accent it was he had. I thought he was going to have us arrested. Mike said he suspected us of being German spies.”

  “He may have,” Polly said. “I should have thought of that. There’ve been all sorts of posters up warning people to be on the lookout for anyone behaving suspiciously—snapping photographs of factories or asking questions about our defenses—and trying to buy a map would obviously fall into that category.”

  “But then how are we to get hold of one?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll check Townsend Brothers’ book department to see if they have an atlas or something.”

  “Would they have an ABC?” Eileen asked.

  “Yes, I looked up the trains to Backbury in it,” Polly said, wondering why she hadn’t thought of using a railway guide. It listed the stations alphabetically. They’d be able to find Gerald’s airfield under D. Or T. Or P. “Did you use an ABC when you brought the children to London?”

  “No, they used an ABC in one of Agatha Christie’s novels to solve the mystery,” Eileen said. “And we can use it to solve ours.”

  If only it were that simple, Polly thought.

  Eileen looked up at the ceiling. “Is that sound bombers?”

  “No. Rain. But luckily,” Polly said lightly, “we have an umbrella.”

  She took the tea things downstairs, made a sandwich to take to Mike, and set off for Notting Hill Gate with Eileen. It was coming down hard—an icy downpour that made Polly glad Miss Laburnum had brought Eileen the coat and made her wish she’d brought a second umbrella. It was impossible to huddle under Eileen’s and lead her along the wet, dark streets at the same time, and twice Polly stepped in an ankle-deep puddle.

  “I hate it here,” Eileen said. “I don’t care if I do sound like Theodore. I want to go home.”

  “Did you tell Theodore’s mother your new address so your retrieval team can find you?”

  “Yes, and her neighbor Mrs. Owen. And on the train in from Stepney, I wrote the vicar. I wanted to ask you about that. Do you think I must give Alf and Binnie my new address?”

  “Are those the children you told me about? The haystack-fire starters?”

  “Yes,” Eileen said, “and if I tell them where I am, they’re likely to take it as an invitation, and they’re—”

  “Dreadful,” Polly finished.

  “Yes, and the only way the retrieval team would know where they are was if the vicar told them, and I’ve already told him where I am, so the retrieval team wouldn’t need—”

  “Then I don’t see any reason you need to contact them,” Polly said, leading her down the steps into the tube station, hoping they wouldn’t run into any of the troupe. “Where did Mike say he’d meet us? At the foot of the escalator?”

  “No, in the emergency staircase. There’s one here just like the one in Oxford Circus.”

  Good, Polly thought, following Eileen through the tunnel. We’ll be safe from the troupe there. And if Mike’s been waiting in it, I needn’t worry about his having overheard people discussing Padgett’s.

  But Mike wasn’t there. Eileen and Polly climbed up three flights and then down as many, calling his name, but there was no answer. “Should we go to Oxford Circus?” Eileen asked. “That’s what he said to do if we got separated.”

  “No, he’ll be here soon.” Polly sat down on the steps.

  “The raids weren’t on Regent Street tonight, were they?” Eileen asked anxiously.

  “No, over the City and—”

  “The city?” Eileen said, looking nervously up at the ceiling. “Which part of it?”

  “Not the city of London. The City with a capital C. It’s the part of London around St. Paul’s.” And Fleet Street, Polly added silently. “It’s nowhere near here, and the raids later on were over Whitechapel.”

  “Whitechapel?”

  “Yes. Why? Mike wasn’t going there, was he?”

  “No. But that’s where Alf and Binnie Hodbin live.”

  Good Lord. Whitechapel was even worse than Stepney. It had been almost totally destroyed.

  “Was it heavily bombed?” Eileen said anxiously. “Oh, dear, perhaps I shouldn’t have torn up that letter after all.”

  “What letter?”

  “From the vicar, arranging to send Alf and Binnie to Canada. I was afraid they might end up on the City of Benares, so I didn’t give it to Mrs. Hodbin.”

  Thank goodness Mike’s late and wasn’t here to hear that, Polly thought. She was going to have a difficult enough time persuading him that Padgett’s five fatalities weren’t a discrepancy, let alone having to convince him that Eileen hadn’t saved the Hodbins’ lives by withholding the letter.

  There were lots of ships to America they might have gone on. Or the Evacuation Committee might have decided to send them to Australia instead, or to Scotland. And even if they had been assigned to the City of Benares, they might not have gone. Their train might have been delayed, or—if they were as dreadful as Eileen said—they might have been thrown off the ship for painting blackout stripes on the deck chairs or setting them on fire.

  But she doubted Mike would be convinced by her arguments, especially if he’d found out about Padgett’s. He’d go into a tailspin, certain he’d lost the war, and nothing short of telling him about VE-Day would persuade him otherwise. But telling him meant their finding out about her deadline, and the rest of it. Which would give them even more to worry about, and now, with this discrepancy …

  I must find out about those fatalities before he does, Polly thought. “Don’t bring up the subject of Alf and Binnie to Mike,” she said to Eileen. “He needn’t know about the letter. And there’s no need to tell him you didn’t write and tell them your address.”

  “But perhaps I should write to them. To tell them Whitechapel’s dangerous.”

  I should imagine they already know that. “I thought you didn’t want them to know where you are.”

  “But I’m the one responsible for them being there instead of in Canada. And Binnie’s still not completely well from the measles. She nearly died, and—”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Polly said.

  “Yes, she had a horribly high fever, and I didn’t know what to do. I gave her aspirin—”

  And thank goodness Mike hadn’t heard that either.

  “If Alf and Binnie are in danger,” Eileen said, “it’s my fault. I—”

  “Shh,” Polly said. “Someone’s coming.”

  They listened. Far below them a door shut and footsteps began to ascend
the iron steps.

  “Eileen? Polly? Are you up there?”

  “It’s Mike,” Eileen said, and ran down to meet him. “Where were you?”

  “I went to the morgue,” Mike said.

  Oh, no, I’m too late, Polly thought. He’s already found out about the five fatalities.

  But when he came up the stairs, he said cheerfully, “I found a bunch of airfield names, and I’ve got a job, so we don’t have to live on just Polly’s wages.”

  “A job?” Eileen said. “But if you’re working, how will you be able to go look for Gerald?”

  “I’ve been hired as a stringer for the Daily Express, which means I go out and find news stories—including at airfields—and get paid by the story. I didn’t have any luck finding a map, so I went to the Express’s morgue to look through their back issues for mentions of airfields—”

  The newspaper morgue, Polly thought, not the actual morgue.

  “And when I told them I was a reporter who’d been at Dunkirk, they hired me on the spot. Best of all, they gave me a press pass, which will give me access at the airfield. So now all we need is to figure out which one it is.” He pulled a list from his pocket. “What about Digby? Or Dunkeswell?”

  “No, it was two words … I think,” Eileen said.

  “Great Dunmow?”

  “No. I’ve been thinking. It might have begun with a B instead of a D.”

  Which means she has no idea what letter it began with, Polly thought. “Boxted,” she said.

  “No,” Eileen said.

  “B,” Mike murmured, going down the list. “Bentley Priory?”

  Eileen frowned. “That sounds a bit like it, but—”

  “Bury St. Edmunds?”

  “No, though that might … oh, I don’t know!” She threw her hands up in frustration. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find it,” Mike said, wadding up his list. “There are lots more airfields.”

  “Can you remember anything else Gerald said about where he was going?” Polly asked.

  “No.” She frowned in concentration. “He asked me how long I was going to be in Backbury, and I said till the beginning of May, and he said that was too bad, that if I’d been staying longer he’d have come up some weekend to ‘brighten my existence.’ ”