All Clear

by Connie Willis

  “I’m happy to,” Polly said, and meant it. Marjorie was coming back to work. Polly’d been afraid she’d been too traumatized by her experience to stay in London, but she was coming back.

  And when she arrived, she was nearly her old rosy-cheeked self. I was right, Polly thought. I didn’t alter the end result. Everything’s worked out just as it would have if Marjorie’d never been injured.

  “I’ll wrap your parcels for you till your arm’s better,” she told Marjorie, “though you can no doubt do better with one hand than I can with two. I never have got the hang of it, and now that the paper and string are rationed—”

  But Marjorie was shaking her head. “I’m not staying. I only came to tell everyone goodbye.”

  “Goodbye?”

  “Yes. I’ve handed in my notice.”

  “But—”

  “I … the nurses in hospital were so kind to me. I wouldn’t have made it if it weren’t for them, and it made me think about what I was doing to help win the war. I couldn’t bear to see Hitler come marching down Oxford Street because I hadn’t done all I could.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve joined the Royal Army Nursing Service.”

  There are six evacuated children in our house. My wife and I hate them so much that we have decided to take away something for Christmas.

  —LETTER,

  1940

  London—November 1940

  I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I CAN GET A MAP, EILEEN THOUGHT, hurrying out of Townsend Brothers and up Oxford Street to the tube station to catch a train to Whitechapel. Alf Hodbin has one. His planespotting map. Why didn’t I think of it before?

  She could get it from him and locate Gerald’s airfield—she was nearly positive she’d recognize the name when she saw it—and Polly and Mike would stop looking at her as though she were an imbecile for not remembering. And they could go to the airfield, find Gerald, and go home.

  If Alf still has the map, she thought. And if he’d give it to her. He might well refuse, especially if he sensed how badly she needed it. Hopefully he and Binnie would still be in school and she could get it from their mother instead and not have to worry about Alf’s refusing or about the children following her and finding out where she lived. Though it wouldn’t matter—she wouldn’t be here that much longer.

  She looked at her watch. It was just one. She should be able to get to Whitechapel well before school let out. But Alf and Binnie had constantly played truant in Backbury, and Mrs. Hodbin didn’t seem the type who’d see to it that they went to school. And if they were there …

  I’m going to have to bribe them, she decided. But with what?

  I know, she thought, and took a train to the Tower of London, where she bought a book on beheadings at the first souvenir shop she could find and a film-star magazine for Binnie, then set out for Whitechapel.

  Which proved nearly impossible to get to. The District Line was shut down. Polly said there weren’t any daytime raids today, Eileen thought nervously, going back upstairs to take a bus, but the damage turned out to have been from a raid the night before—damage which became apparent as she neared Whitechapel. There was a massive crater in the middle of Fieldgate Street and, a bit farther on, the wreckage of a warehouse lying across the road.

  Polly’d said the East End had been badly bombed, but Eileen hadn’t expected it to be this bad. On every street at least one of the clapboard tenements had collapsed inward in a heap of wood and plaster. Others had toppled sideways onto the next tenement and the next and the next, like a line of falling dominoes.

  Eileen was grateful there weren’t any raids today. She didn’t know how Polly and Mike stood them. “You’ll get used to them,” Polly’d said. “A few more weeks, and you won’t even hear them,” but it wasn’t true. She still jumped every time she heard the crump of an HE and flinched at the poom-poom-poom of the anti-aircraft guns. Even the wail of the sirens sent her into a panic. If there had been raids in the East End today, she wasn’t certain she could have summoned the courage to come, map or no map.

  At Commercial Street, she was supposed to change buses, but with every street barricaded she decided it would be faster to walk the half-mile to Gargery Lane. It was already three o’clock. But even walking was difficult. Entire streets had been reduced to rubble, and the tenements which still stood had their sides smashed in or their fronts torn away, the furniture inside exposed to the street. In one, a kitchen table set for breakfast stood on a now-slanting floor, food still on the plates. In another, a staircase climbed up into empty space. And in between, everything was smashed flat, including the corrugated iron roof of an Anderson shelter exactly like the one she and Theodore had spent so many nights in.

  In more than one place, rubble covered the street, too, and Eileen had to backtrack and go around, getting thoroughly lost in the process. She had to ask directions and then ask again—first of an elderly man pushing a pram full of household belongings and then of a middle-aged woman sitting on the curb with her head in her hands. “Gargery Lane? It’s down that way,” the woman said, pointing toward a line of gutted buildings. “If it’s still there. They were hit hard last night.”

  I should definitely have given Mrs. Hodbin that letter, Eileen thought guiltily. Alf and Binnie would have been safer on the torpedoed City of Benares than in this dreadful place. She hurried past the blackened shell of a tenement. What if Gargery Lane was a burnt-out ruin or a heap of plaster and bricks? What if Alf and Binnie had been killed, and it was her fault?

  But miraculously it was there, and fairly intact. The windows had been covered over with tacked-up pasteboard, but the row of houses still stood, and they were proudly flying Union Jacks. The tenement the Hodbins lived in had “Weel Gett Our Own Bak, Adolff!” written across its brown wooden front in red paint—no doubt Alf’s handiwork, since most of the words were misspelled. Its windows were boarded up, too, all except for one, which must have been just blown out. Shards of glass lay on the pavement in front of it.

  The door stood ajar. Good, Eileen thought. She could hopefully avoid the alarming woman with the red hands this time. She stepped over the broken glass and squeezed into the tiny front vestibule past a bicycle, a stirrup pump, and two buckets with ARP stenciled on them, one of which was full of soaking rags and the other of potato peelings.

  The door on her right shot open, and the woman with the red hands came charging out at her, brandishing a rag mop. “Thought you could sneak past me, did you?” she shouted, raising the mop above her head with both hands like an axe. “Not this time, you little bastard!”

  Eileen shrank back against the wall, her hand up to ward off the mop. “I’m Eileen O’Reilly. I was here before,” she said, and the woman lowered the mop and held it out in front of her like a bayonet. “I’m looking for Mrs. Hodbin.”

  “You and the greengrocer and the off-license,” the woman said scornfully. “Owes me four weeks’ rent, she does. And ten bob for the window in my parlor. As if ’Itler wasn’t breakin’ ’alf the windows in England, Alf ’Odbin’s got to smash the few we’ve got left. Threw a rock at it, ’e did, and when I get my ’ands on ’im and that sister of ’is …”

  It’s like being back in Backbury, Eileen thought. She’d had conversations just like this one with irate farmers at least a dozen times. But at least Alf and Binnie were all right, and apparently undaunted by the Blitz.

  “Them two’ll end up ’anged, you see if they don’t,” the woman said, “just like Crippen and—”

  “Mum!” a child’s voice called from inside the flat.

  “Shut it!” the woman shouted over her shoulder. “If you find ’em,” she said to Eileen, “you tell ’em to tell their mother either she pays me what she owes, or all three of ’em’ll be out on the street—”

  “Mum!” the child called again, shriller this time.

  “I said, shut it!” The woman stormed into the flat and slammed the door behind her. There was a smack and then a wail.

  Eileen hesitated. It was clear
Mrs. Hodbin wasn’t at home and there was no point in going up, but the thought of having to come all the way back here again made her determined to at least knock on the door. And she’d best do it before the woman reappeared with her mop.

  She ran up the stairs to their flat and knocked on their door, but there was no response. “Mrs. Hodbin?” she called, and knocked again.

  Silence. “Mrs. Hodbin, it’s Miss O’Reilly. I brought Alf and Binnie home from Warwickshire.” She thought she heard a noise from inside. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to speak with you about something.”

  More muffled sounds, and then a “Shh!” that sounded suspiciously like Binnie.

  “Binnie? Are you in there?”

  Silence. “It’s Eileen. Let me in.”

  “Eileen? Wot’s she doin’ ’ere?” she heard Alf whisper, followed by an even fiercer “Shh!”

  “Alf, Binnie, I know you’re in there.” She took hold of the doorknob and rattled it. “Open this door at once.”

  More muffled voices, as if an argument was taking place, then a scraping sound, and a moment later the door opened a few inches and Binnie stuck her head out. “ ’Ullo, Eileen,” she said innocently. “What are you doin’ ’ere?”

  She was wearing the same summer dress she’d worn on the train, with a holey cardigan over it, and the same draggled hair ribbon, the same falling-down stockings. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been combed in days, and Eileen felt a pang of sympathy for her.

  She suppressed it. “I need to speak—”

  “You ain’t ’ere to evacuate us again, are you?” Binnie asked suspiciously.

  “No,” Eileen said. “I need to speak with Alf.”

  “ ’E ain’t here,” Binnie said. “ ’E’s in school.”

  “I know he’s here, Binnie—”

  “Not Binnie. Dolores. Like Dolores del Rio. The film star,” she added unnecessarily.

  “Dolores,” Eileen said through gritted teeth. “I know Alf is in there. I just heard his voice.” She tried to peer past Binnie into the room, but all she could see was a line of not-very-clean-looking washing.

  “No, ’e ain’t. There ain’t nobody ’ere but Mum and me. And Mum’s asleep.” Her eyes narrowed. “What d’you want with Alf? ’E ain’t in trouble, is ’e?”

  Very probably, Eileen thought. “No,” she said. “Do you remember that map Alf uses to do his planespotting?” She spoke loudly so Alf could hear her from inside the flat, and noticed Binnie didn’t shush her on behalf of her sleeping mother.

  “Alf never stole it,” Binnie said, instantly defensive. “You give it ’im.”

  “I know,” Eileen said. “I—”

  “It’s ’is planespottin’ map,” Binnie said, and Eileen was surprised Alf didn’t pop up to chime in in his own defense. Was he hiding? Or had he gone out the window? She wouldn’t put either past him.

  “Binnie—Dolores—no one’s accusing Alf of stealing it.”

  “Then why’re you takin’ it back?”

  “I’m not. I only want to borrow it, so I can look at something.”

  “At what?” Binnie asked suspiciously. “You ain’t a Nazi spy, are you?”

  “No. I need to look for the town where a friend of mine lives. I’ve forgotten the name.”

  “Then ’ow can you look for it?”

  Eileen knew from experience that this sort of back-and-forth could go on all day. “I’ll give you this if you’ll lend me the map,” she said, showing her the film-star magazine.

  Binnie looked interested. “Is Dolores del Rio in it?”

  Eileen had no idea. “Yes,” she lied, “and lots of other good names—Barbara and Claudette and—”

  “I dunno,” Binnie said doubtfully. “Alf’d be awful mad if ’e found out. S’pose ’e needs to do some planespotting?”

  “If you’ll let me in, I could look at the map here,” Eileen said, but that had the opposite effect from what she’d expected.

  “I dunno where it is. I’ll wager Mum threw it out,” Binnie said, and tried to shut the door.

  Eileen put her hand on it to stop her. “Then wake your mother and tell her I’m here,” she said, “and I’ll ask her,” and was surprised to see Binnie look frightened.

  “I got to go now.” Binnie glanced behind her and tried to pull the door to.

  “No, wait!” Eileen said. “Binnie, is anything wrong?”

  “No. I got to go.”

  “Wait, don’t you want your film magazine?” Eileen asked, and the sound of an air-raid siren starting up suddenly filled the corridor. “What—?” She looked frightenedly up at the ceiling. Polly’d said there hadn’t been any raids over the East End today. She’d said there hadn’t been any daytime raids at all. And it was only half past three.

  “Binnie! Where’s the nearest shelter?” she cried, but Binnie had already drawn her head in and shut the door.

  You have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to everyone as Ernest … You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying your name isn’t Ernest.

  —OSCAR WILDE, THE IMPORTANCE

  OF BEING EARNEST

  Kent—April 1944

  AT CESS’S QUESTION, MONCRIEFF SLOWED THE CAR, AND Prism twisted around to look at them. “Well, are you a spy?” Cess asked Ernest.

  “Yes, Worthing,” Prism said, looking back at them from the front seat of the staff car. “Are you a German spy?”

  “If I were,” Ernest said lightly, “I’d be working for our side, like all the other German spies.”

  “All the spies we’ve caught,” Moncrieff said, without taking his eyes from the road. “Lady Bracknell evidently thinks there are some we haven’t caught, hence the memorandum.”

  “So Bracknell thinks one of us is a spy?” Cess asked.

  “No, of course not,” Prism said, “but this is a dangerous time. If the Germans were to find out that the First Army’s a hoax and we’re invading at Normandy instead of Calais—”

  “Shh.” Cess put his finger to his lips. “For all we know, Moncrieff here is sending secret messages to the enemy. Or you are, Worthing. You’re always typing up letters to the editor. How do we know some of them don’t have secret codes in them?”

  I have to get them off this subject, Ernest thought. “I think the bull’s your man,” he said. “He looked exactly like Heinrich Himmler. Is that Mofford House?”

  “Where?” Cess said. “I can’t see anything.”

  “There, beyond the trees,” Ernest said, pointing at nothing, and the three of them spent the next quarter of an hour attempting to catch sight of it, after which Cess spotted a turret and then the gates.

  “I say,” Cess said as they drove in through them, “one can’t have a hospital without nurses. Have we got some?”

  “Yes,” Moncrieff said. “Gwendolyn set it up.”

  “Are they the same girls who helped us when we did the oil-refinery opening?” Cess asked. “The ones from ENSA?”

  “No,” Moncrieff said. “These are the real thing. Gwendolyn borrowed them from the same hospital that lent us the beds.”

  Ernest looked up alertly. “The hospital in Dover?”

  “Yes, and don’t get any notions of flirting with them. There’ll be all sorts of higher-ups and Special Means people here. I don’t want any trouble.”

  I don’t either, Ernest thought, and the moment they pulled up in front of the manor house, he snatched up his nightclothes and the boxes of bandages and took off for the house.

  It was obvious why they’d chosen Mofford House. It had a moat and a distinctive turreted tower that the Germans would recognize, even though his newspaper story would say only, “One of England’s stately homes, whose name cannot be disclosed for security reasons, has been converted to a military hospital.”

  He hobbled quickly across the drawbridge, hoping that since today this was supposed to be a hospital, he wouldn’t run into a butler at the door who’d demand to know
where he was going.

  He didn’t—only two soldiers attempting to wedge a hospital bed through the door. Beyond them he could see an entry hall and, off to the side, the room which was posing as the ward today. Inside it stood a cluster of older men in officers’ uniforms and several white-clad nurses.

  He squeezed past the wedged bed, keeping out of their sight, down a corridor, and into the nearest unoccupied room, which turned out to be the dining room. He shut the door, wedged chairs against it, and, using the mirror above the sideboard, began winding bandages around his head.

  He emerged ten minutes later in pajamas, robe, and slippers, his head and both hands swathed in bandages. “Where have you been?” Prism asked. “And what are you doing in that getup? You look like an escapee from an Egyptian tomb.”

  Ernest pulled him off to the side. “You said they’d be taking photographs, and my picture was already in the newspapers from the opening of Camp Omaha. If the Germans see me in more than one photo, they’ll spot a fraud.”

  “You’re right. Good show. Was Cess in the photo?”

  “He wasn’t there. He was off doing dummy landing craft.”

  “Good, then he can be the broken foot. Go help bring in the wheelchairs.”

  Ernest did and then carried two oil paintings, three watercolors, and an antique writing table upstairs for Lady Mofford, made up the hospital beds, bandaged several other “patients,” and helped lay out tea in the library.

  The tea included sandwiches, and he ate two, hid four more for Cess inside the bandages on his hands, and went to find him. Cess said, “You look like Boris Karloff in The Mummy. And don’t try to convince me you did it to keep from being recognized in the photo. I know the real reason.”

  “You do?” Ernest asked cautiously.

  “Yes. You didn’t want to be stuck in an itchy plaster cast all afternoon.”

  “You’re right. You can have my wheelchair, and I’ll do the crutches,” he offered, then regretted it. The crutches dug into his armpits, the afternoon turned beastly hot, and he began to sweat under his bandages.