All Clear

by Connie Willis

  “Had they?” Eileen asked. “Tumbled to it?”

  “No. The puzzle’s author was a schoolmaster who’d been doing them for years. He told the military his students and dozens of other people composed the clues and that they’d have no way of knowing which puzzle they’d be in, and in the end they decided it was just a bizarre coincidence.”

  “And was it?” Mike asked.

  “No. Forty years later the Herald published a story about it, and a man who’d been one of the schoolmaster’s students confessed he’d overheard two Army officers talking and had co-opted the words for clues with no idea what they meant.”

  “But the puzzle incident wasn’t till 1944,” Mike said. “It isn’t likely British Intelligence would be reading crossword puzzles now—”

  “In which case the retrieval team won’t be either. I think they’re much more likely to read personal ads. There are lots of ‘losts.’ Perhaps we could do something with that.”

  “Like ‘Lost: historian. Reward for safe return’?”

  “No,” Polly said, “but we could say we’d lost something and give our name and address. Here’s one. ‘Lost: pair of brown carpet slippers on Northern Line platform, Bank Station. If found—’ ”

  “Oh,” Eileen said. They looked inquiringly at her. “You told me to remember any detail, no matter how irrelevant, about my conversations with Gerald—”

  “Does Gerald’s airfield have the word ‘bank’ in it?” Mike asked eagerly, grabbing for his list of names. “Glaston Bank?”

  “No, not that part. The bit about the slippers.”

  They looked blankly at her.

  “ ‘Slippers’ sounds like ‘slippage.’ ”

  “Slippage?”

  “Yes. Linna was on the phone while I was talking to Gerald, and whoever she was talking to wanted to know how much slippage there was on someone’s drop, and then when I went through to Backbury, Badri was talking to someone about an increase in slippage, and Linna asked me if the slippage the last time I went through had increased from the other times.”

  “And had it?” Mike asked.

  “No, and when I told her that, she said, ‘Good,’ and looked at Badri.”

  “Who was she talking to, do you know?”

  “No. I assume it was Mr. Dunworthy. She called him sir.”

  “And it was an increase?” Mike asked eagerly. “Not a decrease? You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Because then there wasn’t too little slippage, Polly thought. And it couldn’t have let Mike—or me—go to a place where we could alter events.

  “They questioned Phipps on his slippage, too,” Mike said. “Did they say anything to you about it when you came through, Polly?”

  “They asked me to note how much there was and tell them when I reported in.”

  “And how much was there?”

  “Four and a half days. It was only supposed to be an hour or two. I assumed there was a divergence point that—”

  “I don’t think so,” Mike said excitedly. “I think a bunch of drops were experiencing an increase in slippage, and it was enough to worry them. Which means it couldn’t have been a few days’ worth. It must have been weeks. Or months.”

  “And that’s why our retrieval teams aren’t here?” Polly said. “Because the slippage sent them to November or December instead?”

  He nodded.

  “So all we need to do is wait for them to come fetch us?” Eileen said eagerly.

  “No. It might be a while before they get here, and in case you haven’t noticed, this is kind of a dangerous place. The sooner we can find a working drop and get out of here, the better.”

  “But if there’s slippage, then Gerald’s drop won’t open either, will it?” Polly asked.

  “Even if it doesn’t, he may know more about what the slippage problem is and how long we’re looking at. That means finding him’s still our first priority. And our second’s to make sure the retrieval team can find us when they get here. Eileen, have you had a letter from Lady Caroline?”

  “No, not yet,” Eileen said, looking at Polly. She was obviously afraid he was going to ask her if she’d written the Hodbins.

  “What about you, Mike?” Polly asked hastily. “Have you left a trail of bread crumbs for your team to follow?”

  “Yes, I wrote the hospital in Dover and Sister Carmody at Orpington, and I sent my address to the barmaid at the Crown and Anchor.”

  “Barmaid?” Eileen said.

  “Yes.” He told them about Daphne’s coming to see him in hospital. “She’ll tell everybody in Saltram-on-Sea. I’ll put this ‘Meet me in Victoria Station’ message in tomorrow’s paper when I go down to the Express in the morning. I’m going to see if I can talk the paper into having me write a piece on ‘Our Biggin Hill Heroes.’ That’ll help me get access, and I can earn some money while I’m at it. Maybe they’ll even pay my way.”

  “But aren’t we all going?” Eileen asked.

  “No, I’ll be able to get there quicker and find out more in a shorter time if I’m on my own.”

  “And I can’t leave my job,” Polly said.

  “I know,” Eileen said reluctantly. “It’s only … I think it’s a bad idea for us to split up when it took us so long to find one another.”

  “We’re not splitting up,” Mike said. “We’re doing what Shackleton did.”

  “Shackleton? Is he an historian?” Eileen asked.

  “No, Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. They were trapped in the ice, and he had to leave his crew behind to go get help. If he didn’t, none of them would get out. That’s what I’m doing—going off to find help. If Gerald’s at Biggin Hill, I’ll ring you and have you come there.”

  “You won’t go through without us?”

  “Of course not. I’ll get you both out, I promise. In the meantime, Eileen, I want you to get your name on file at the department stores, and Polly, keep trying to scout up an ABC.”

  “I will,” she said.

  She tried, with no luck at all. She also made a list of the next week’s raids for Mike and Eileen to memorize, spent a fruitless evening in Victoria Station “by the clock” waiting for the retrieval team and being accosted by soldiers, and then went to rehearsal in the hopes that Lila and Viv would be there. They were, but the troupe was rehearsing Act Two, which everyone was in, so she had no chance to ask them.

  Mike returned from Biggin Hill Friday morning. “No luck,” he told Polly, leaning over her counter at Townsend Brothers. “He’s not at Biggin Hill. I got a look at every one of the ground crew and all the pilots. I don’t suppose Eileen remembered the airfield name while I was gone?”

  Polly shook her head.

  “I was afraid of that. I brought a new list of names for her to look at. Is she at Mrs. Rickett’s?”

  “No,” Polly said after a hasty look around to see if Miss Snelgrove was watching. “She’s still making the rounds of the department stores. She should be back soon. She said she was going to check in at lunch.”

  “When’s your lunch break?”

  “Half past twelve—yes, may I help you, sir?”

  “May …? Oh, yes,” he said, thankfully not looking over at Miss Snelgrove, who’d suddenly appeared. “I’d like to see some stockings.”

  “Yes, sir,” Polly said, bringing out a box and opening it. “These are very nice, sir.”

  He leaned forward to finger them. “Do you have these in any other colors?” he asked, and then, under his breath, “I’ll meet you and Eileen at twelve-thirty at Lyons Corner House.”

  “Yes, sir. They also come in powder pink and ecru,” and, to give him an exit opportunity, “I’m afraid we’re out of ivory.”

  “Oh, too bad. My girl had her heart set on ivory,” he said, and left, mouthing “Twelve-thirty” at her.

  Eileen still wasn’t back by then. Polly left a note for her and went to tell Mike, who’d got them a table in a secluded corner.

  “I told her to mee
t us here,” she said, shrugging off her coat.

  He handed her the menu. “I’m afraid they’re out of everything but the fish-paste sandwich.”

  “Which is still better than anything at Mrs. Rickett’s,” Polly said. She handed him a sheet of paper.

  “More airfield names?”

  “No, the upcoming raids. The worst one’s on the twelfth. Sloane Square Underground station, seventy-nine casualties.”

  “And no break in the nightly raids, I see,” he said, looking at the list.

  “Not till next week. Then they shift to the industrial cities—Coventry and then Birmingham and Wolverhamp—”

  “Coventry?”

  “Yes. It was hit on the fourteenth. What’s the matter?”

  “I hadn’t even thought of that,” he said excitedly. “We’ve only been considering the historians who are here right now, not the ones who were here earlier.”

  “Before 1940, you mean?”

  “No, not earlier now,” he said. “Earlier in Oxford time. Historians who had World War II assignments last year. Or ten years ago. Like Ned Henry and Verity Kindle. Weren’t they in Coventry the night it was bombed?”

  “Yes, but that was two years ago … Oh,” she said, seeing what he was getting at. It didn’t matter when historians had done it in their past. This was time travel. Here in 1940, they would do it two weeks from now.

  “But there’s no way we could get to Ned and Verity. We don’t know where they were except that they were in the middle of Coventry, in the heart of the fire. And it’s much too dangerous—”

  “Not any more dangerous than Dunkirk,” Mike said. “And we know one place they were—in the cathedral.”

  “As it was burning down,” Polly said. “You can’t be thinking of trying to go there. The area around the cathedral was nearly a firestorm.”

  “It might also be our fastest way out. We wouldn’t necessarily have to find Ned and Verity. The drop was inside the cathedral, wasn’t it? All we have to do is find it.”

  “Mike, we can’t go through their drop.”

  “Why not? We know it was working.”

  “But we can’t use it because it was two years ago. We can’t go through to a time we’re already in. Their drop opens on Oxford two years ago, and two years ago—”

  “We were all in Oxford,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. But we can send a message through them.”

  “A message?”

  “Yes. We find Verity and Ned before they go back and have them tell the lab where we are and that our drops won’t open and to reset the drop so it opens in our time. There’s no reason we can’t do that, is there?”

  “Yes, there is. Because we didn’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do. If we’d found them and told them what had happened, Oxford would have known what was going to happen when it sent us through. We’d have known what was going to happen.”

  He considered that. “Maybe they couldn’t tell us because it would create a paradox. If we knew we were going to be trapped, we wouldn’t come, and we had to come because we had come.”

  “But Mr. Dunworthy wouldn’t have let us come. You know how over-protective he is. He’d never have let you come knowing they couldn’t get you out after you were injured.” And he wouldn’t have let me come knowing I had a deadline.

  But she couldn’t say that. “This is a man who was worried I might get my foot caught in a barrage-balloon rope,” she said instead. “He’d never have let us get trapped in the Blitz. Or let you go to Coventry to get us out. The entire city burned. It would be suicide for you to go there. You’re here to observe heroes, not die trying to be one.”

  “Then we need to come up with somebody besides Ned and Verity. Who else was here? Didn’t Dunworthy go to the Blitz at some point?”

  “He went several times, but—”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. I know he observed the big raids on May tenth and eleventh, because he talked about watching the fire in the House of Commons, and that happened on the tenth.”

  “And you said before that the ninth and tenth were the worst raids ofthe Blitz?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Nothing. We need something sooner. When else was he here?”

  “I don’t know. I remember him telling a story about attempting to get to his drop, and the gates at Charing Cross Railway Station being shut and him not being able to get in.”

  “But you don’t know the date?”

  “No.”

  “But if he told you he was trying to get to his drop, that means it must have been somewhere in Charing Cross.”

  “No, it doesn’t. He might have been taking the train to his drop. He could have been going anywhere.”

  “But it’s a place to start, and we can’t afford to leave any stone unturned. I want you to go check it while I’m at Beachy Head. Unless one of these names I got at Biggin Hill turns out to be Phipps’s airfield. Speaking of which, what’s keeping Eileen?” he asked, glancing at his watch. “I need to read them to her. I managed to wangle a ride to Beachy Head, and the guy’s leaving at two, but I don’t want to waste my time there if Gerald’s at one of these other airfields.”

  Eileen hurried in just as Mike was paying the bill, saying, “Sorry, I was applying at Mary Marsh, and they kept me waiting.”

  Mike read her the list. She shook her head decisively at each of the names.

  “Okay, then, it’s Beachy Head,” he said. He hurried off to catch his ride. “I’ll be back before the fourteenth.”

  So you can go to Coventry, Polly thought.

  She had to keep him from doing that. Which meant she had to find Gerald’s airfield.

  Over the next few days, she spent her lunch breaks going to Victoria and St. Pancras Stations to copy down two-word names beginning with B and P from the departure boards and her evenings incurring Sir Godfrey’s wrath by trying to get additional airfield names from Lila and Viv, but they were almost no help at all.

  “We nearly always go to the dances at Hendon,” Lila said.

  “There’s one on Saturday,” Viv told her. “You and your cousin could come with us.”

  She nearly accepted. They could ask the airmen they danced with where else they’d been stationed. But she was afraid if they weren’t there when Mike came back, he’d decide to go to Coventry, which would be not only dangerous but pointless.

  Because if Mike had found Ned and Verity and given them the message, that would mean Mr. Dunworthy had known for years that all this was going to happen and not only allowed it to but arranged it. Arranged for Mike to go to Dunkirk, for Eileen to go to a manor where the evacuees had the measles, had manipulated and lied to all of them from the moment they entered Oxford.

  It’s impossible, she told herself.

  But even as she thought it, she was remembering. He made me bring extra money, he made me learn the raids through December thirty-first. He insisted I work in a department store that was never hit during the entire Blitz. And if they had managed to get a message through, then he’d have known they were pulled out in time and that they weren’t in any actual danger.

  But if Mr. Dunworthy had lied, then why hadn’t he sent Mike to Dunkirk in the first place instead of scheduling him to do Pearl Harbor and letting him get his L-and-A implant? And why had Linna and Badri been questioning everyone about increased slippage if they already knew about it?

  Mike still wasn’t back by the twelfth, and they’d had no word from him. It hadn’t taken him this long when he went to Biggin Hill.

  What if he went to Coventry without telling us? Polly thought, looking over at the lifts from her stocking counter, hoping one would open and Mike would emerge.

  One of them finally did, but it wasn’t Mike. It was Eileen. “I came for two reasons,” she said. “I’m determined to have the name of Gerald’s airfield for Mike when he gets back from Beachy Head, so I came to tell you I’m going to go scour
the secondhand bookshops for an old ABC or a book about the RAF or something with airfield names, and I wanted to make certain there weren’t any raids in Charing Cross Road today.”

  “There aren’t any daytime raids anywhere in London today,” Polly reassured her.

  “Oh, good. I’m sorry I’m such an infant about them—”

  “It’s not being an infant to be frightened of someone who’s trying to kill you,” Polly said. “You said you had two reasons for coming?”

  “Yes. I wanted to tell you I found out why Lady Caroline didn’t write. I got another letter from Mrs. Bascombe. Lady Caroline’s husband was killed.”

  “Oh, dear. Had you met him?”

  “No, Lord Denewell worked in London at the War Office, and the house he was staying in was bombed—”

  “Lord Denewell? You worked for Lady Denewell?”

  “Yes, at Denewell Manor. Why? Is something wrong? Did you meet Lord Denewell?”

  “No. Sorry. I saw Miss Snelgrove looking this way. Perhaps you’d better go—”

  “I will. I only wanted to ask you if you thought it would be all right for me to send her a letter of condolence? I mean, with my being a servant and everything. I’m afraid she’ll think I’m acting above my place, but—”

  Polly cut her off. “Miss Snelgrove’s coming. We’ll discuss it tonight. Go look for your ABC.”

  Eileen nodded. “I won’t come back till I have either a list of airfields or a map in hand.”

  She started toward the lifts. “Wait,” Polly said, running after her. “If you have to ask for a map, tell them you want it for your nephew who’s interested in planespotting. That way they won’t be suspicious.”

  “Planespotting … I never thought of that,” Eileen said. “Polly, listen, I’ve just had an idea—uh-oh, Miss Snelgrove at eleven o’clock,” she whispered. “I’ll see you tonight.” And she hurried off.

  “Miss Sebastian,” Miss Snelgrove said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I was only—”

  “Miss Hayes will be returning to work today, and I’d like you to be here to assist her, so if you wouldn’t mind waiting to take your lunch break till two—”