All Clear

by Connie Willis

  “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.”

  We are hanging on by our eyelids.

  —GENERAL ALAN BROOKE

  London—November 1940

  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 pla
ced 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.

  Unless Oxford’s been destroyed, and he’s dead, she thought. Or there was an increase in locational slippage as well, and the net sent him through to Bletchley Park. Or Singapore.

  She sat there as long as she could stand it, and then wrote her name and Mrs. Rickett’s address and phone number on the paper ice cream horn, took an Underground ticket stamped Notting Hill Gate out of her pocket, wrote “Polly Churchill” on it, stuck it under the lemonade bottle, and went to St. Paul’s, even though the retrieval team wouldn’t be there either.

  The journey back into London took forever. There were three separate delays due to air raids, and she was glad she’d refused to trade with Eileen and go to the concert. She didn’t reach St. Paul’s Station till after noon, and it was pouring outside. By the time she made it to the cathedral, she was drenched.

  On the porch lay an order of worship someone had dropped. She picked it up. She could show it to Eileen as proof that she’d spent the entire morning here. The sermon this morning had apparently been on the subject “Seek and Ye Shall Find.”

  If only that were true.

  She shook out her wet, clinging skirts and went inside. The partition in front of the Geometrical Staircase was still up. The fire watch must have decided that preserving the stairway was more important than having access to the west end.

  She walked out into the nave. It was dim and gloomy today, gray instead of golden, and so dark she couldn’t even see the far end of it. And cold. The elderly volunteer selling guidebooks at the desk had her coat on.

  A guidebook was a good idea. She could pretend to be reading it while she looked for the retrieval team. She went over to the desk.

  The volunteer was helping a middle-aged woman choose a postcard like the ones Mr. Humphreys had shown her. “This one of the Wellington Monument is very nice,” she said. “It shows Truth Plucking Out the Tongue of Falsehood.”

  “You haven’t any of the High Altar?” the woman asked.

  “I’m afraid not. They went very quickly.”

  “Of course,” the woman said, shaking her head, “such a shame,” and began browsing through the rack of postcards again. “Have you any of the Tijou gates?”

  They’ve been removed for safekeeping, Polly thought, blowing on her numb hands and wishing the woman would make up her mind. It was even colder in here than it had been on Hampstead Heath, and there was an icy draft from somewhere.

  She looked up. Two of the gallery’s stained-glass windows had been blown out, and fairly recently. No attempt had been made to cover them, and jagged edges of red and blue and gold still lined the frames. A bomb must have exploded near the cathedral, and the blast had broken them.

  “What about The Light of the World?” the woman was asking. “Have you any postcards of it?”

  “No, but we’ve a lovely lithograph,” the volunteer said, indicating it on its stand. “It’s sixpence.”

  Polly looked at the print. Its color was slightly bluer than the painting, and Christ looked as chilled as she was, his face pinched with cold.

  It’s too bad that lantern he’s holding isn’t real, she thought, gazing at its warm glow. Mr. Humphreys was right about seeing something new each time one looked at it. She hadn’t noticed before that the door Christ was about to knock on was medieval. Neither it nor the lantern he was carrying could possibly have existed in 33 A.D.

  He must be a time traveler like us, Polly thought. And now he’s trying to get back home, and his drop won’t open either.

  The woman had finally made up her mind and paid. Polly stepped up to buy her guidebook. “Three pence,” the volunteer said, and Polly reached into her purse for the coins, but her hands were so stiff with cold, she dropped them. They made an unholy, echoing clatter on the marble floor.

  Well, thought Polly, if the retrieval team is here, this is one way to get their attention, but no one turned around.

  “Sorry,” she said, gathering up the coins and paying for the guidebook.

  The volunteer handed it to her. “I’m afraid the Crypt and the choir are closed today.”

  The choir? Polly thought, wondering why, but asking would mean continuing to stand there in the draft from the windows.

  She thanked the volunteer and walked up the nave. No one approached her, and she didn’t see anyone who seemed to be there to meet someone. Several people knelt praying in the middle of the nave. Two Wrens stood in front of the bricked-up Wellington Monument, looking puzzledly up at it, and a pair of soldiers stood a few f
eet away, looking at the Wrens.

  Just past the next pillar, a young woman stood, wearing a pair of open-toed shoes that looked like one of Wardrobe’s bright ideas for an icy 1940 November and gazing around as though searching for someone. But before Polly could make her way around the chairs and across the nave to her, a member of the fire watch came up to the woman, and it was obvious from his smile, and hers, that they knew each other.

  So clearly not the retrieval team, Polly thought. She turned to go see if anyone was in the transept. And nearly collided with a beaming Mr. Humphreys.

  “I thought you’d come when you heard about our incident,” he said. “We’ve had any number of people come to see the damage.”

  “Yes, it’s dreadful about the windows,” Polly said.

  “It is,” he agreed, looking back at them. “They should have been taken to Wales for safekeeping along with the other treasures. Still, it may turn out to have been a blessing in disguise. Sir Christopher Wren designed St. Paul’s to have clear panes of glass in the windows, and now there is a good chance he will see his dream realized.”

  He would. At the end of the Blitz, there’d only be one intact window left in the entire cathedral, and that would be broken in 1944 by a V-1 that had exploded nearby, and all the replacement windows would be of clear glass.

  “In the case of the altar, however,” Mr. Humphreys went on, “I’m afraid it’s another matter.”

  The altar?

  “Luckily, the bomb damage was confined to it and the choir.”

  The choir. That’s why the volunteer at the desk had said it was closed today.

  Mr. Humphreys walked across the space under the dome and to the choir. The entrance was blocked off with a sawhorse. He moved it aside and led Polly through. “And the bomb went through to the Crypt, unfortunately just at the spot where our fire watch sleeps …”

  She wasn’t listening. She was staring at the choir. And the destruction beyond.