All Clear

by Connie Willis

  “The conversations will corroborate the disinformation in our radio transmissions and newspaper articles,” Bracknell said.

  “Speaking of which,” Ernest said, “the Call’s and the Shopper’s deadlines are both tomorrow, and if I miss them, there won’t be anything about FUSAG in either paper till week after next. There’ve been planted stories about the American and Canadian troops in every issue of both papers. If they suddenly stop—and in more than one paper—the Germans may notice. And as you’re always saying, sir, in an enterprise like this, if any one piece is missing, the entire scheme will collapse.”

  “I am well aware of what I’ve said,” Bracknell snapped. “Have you written the stories?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then Cecily can deliver them for you.” And before Ernest could stop him, he shouted, “Cecily!”

  “But Cess doesn’t know the editors. It would make more sense for him to go to Dover and me to stay here. I could deliver them on my way to Camp—”

  “No, Algernon specifically requested you make this delivery.”

  He did? Why? he wondered.

  “Yes, sir?” Cess said, appearing in the doorway.

  “Ernest needs you to deliver his planted articles to the newspapers tomorrow morning. Take the Austin,” he said, adding insult to injury, and waved them out of his office.

  “Thank you,” Cess said out in the hall.

  “For what?”

  “For trying to get me out of drilling in the rain. I appreciate the attempt, even though it didn’t work.”

  “That’s the story of my life,” Ernest said, more bitterly than he meant to. And when Cess looked curiously at him, “Attempts that don’t work.”

  “Where are the articles you need me to deliver?”

  “I’ll fetch them,” Ernest said, and to get rid of Cess, asked “You wouldn’t have a pair of dungarees I could borrow, would you? These trousers of mine look too good to be a sailor’s.”

  “What about the ones you wore the day you had that run-in with the bull?” Cess said. “They surely look bad enough.”

  “You’re right,” Ernest said, and tried again. “Ask Prism if he has a knitted cap I can borrow.” As soon as Cess had gone, he shut the door, dug the envelope out of the duffel bag, and pried the sealed edge open. He took the papers halfway out and began pulling out the ones he couldn’t let Cess take.

  “Did you find your cap?” Cess’s voice said outside in the corridor.

  “Yes, it’s in fairly bad shape, though,” Prism said.

  I should have marked the coded articles somehow, Ernest thought, leafing through the papers. Or written them in red ink that would dissolve when it got wet, like the bigram books.

  There were four of them. Where the hell was the fourth one? There it was. “Lost, locket inscribed E.O.…”

  He yanked it out, jammed it and the other three sheets of paper into the duffel bag, resealed the envelope, and was putting his razor and shaving soap into the bag when Cess came in, carrying a cap even grimier and more ragged than the jumper. “Perfect,” Ernest said, handing the envelope to Cess. He tried on the cap. “What do you think?”

  “Very seamanlike. All that’s wanted is the smell of fish and a two days’ growth of beard. Which means you won’t be needing that razor,” Cess said, reaching for the duffel bag.

  Ernest jerked it out of his reach. “That’s what you think,” he said, cinching it shut. “On my way back I’m supposed to stop at assorted pubs and talk about Calais, and I wouldn’t like to frighten the barmaids.”

  “Yes, well, stay away from the Bull and Plough,” Cess said. “Chasuble doesn’t want anyone poaching on his time with Daphne.”

  “Daphne?” Ernest said sharply.

  “The barmaid. You know her. Pretty little blonde, big blue eyes. Chasuble’s head over heels about her. Where do I take these articles?”

  “The originals go to the Weekly Shopper in Sudbury and the carbons to the Croydon Clarion Call,” Ernest said, pulling on the canvas sneakers, which already hurt. “The office is just off the high street. Mr. Jeppers is the editor.” He tied the sneakers. “They’ve got to be there by four tomorrow afternoon.”

  He stood up and slung the duffel bag over his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you could run me up to Newenden? I’ll have a better chance of catching a ride from there.” And there’s a train I could catch from there to London and then take one to Dover in the morning.

  “Sorry. Chasuble just left,” Cess said, “and Moncrieff won’t be back with the Austin till tonight. Here.” He handed Ernest a tin of pilchards.

  “What’s this for?”

  “I thought you could pour a bit on your trousers for authenticity.”

  “I’ll wait till I get there,” Ernest said, eager to get away. London was out, but with luck he could catch a ride to Hawkhurst in time to make the bus to Croydon and get his articles in before Cess delivered the others, though how exactly would he explain the necessity of two separate deliveries to Mr. Jeppers?

  I’ll work that out later, he thought, after I’ve caught the bus. And a ride.

  But after half an hour of limping along the road in the too-tight sneakers, no one at all had come along. It’s too bad the First Army’s not really here. I could hitch a ride with one of them.

  He was finally picked up by an elderly clergyman going to the next village to substitute for the local vicar. “He’s volunteered to go over with the troops as a chaplain,” he leaned out the window to tell Ernest. “The village is only two miles on. Are you certain you don’t want to wait for a better ride?”

  Ernest wasn’t certain at all, but by then his feet hurt so badly, he climbed in, only to immediately have a Jeep with a pretty WAC driving it appear out of nowhere and shoot past them. So when the clergyman let him out, he turned down a ride in another lumbering farm truck—a truck that turned out to be the last vehicle on the road for three hours.

  He didn’t make it to Hawkhurst till nearly ten that night, which, when he reflected on it—and he’d had hours to reflect on it—was probably just as well. There was no way to guarantee that Mr. Jeppers wouldn’t mention his having been there to Cess when he got to Croydon, and if he did, Cess would want to know what was in those articles that was so important. And he was already too interested in what Ernest was typing.

  Ernest was too bone-weary to sit in the pub room nursing a watered-down pint and spreading false rumors about the invasion. He hardly had enough energy to wrench the sneakers off his blistered feet, fall into bed, and sleep through his best chance of a ride to Dover. “You just missed Mr. Hollocks,” the barmaid told him when she served him breakfast. “He was going all the way to Dover.”

  The story of my life, he thought, and spent the next day inching toward Dover in lorries filled with chickens, pig muck, and a bull he was convinced was the same one he’d faced down in that pasture. He was glad when the farmer turned down a muddy lane and let him out, though he was still “some way” from Dover and it looked like it was going to rain.

  It did. By the time he reached Dover in midafternoon, on the back of an army corporal’s Douglas motorcycle, it was pouring, with a blustery wind that drove the rain straight into his face.

  Poor Cess, he thought, heading for the docks. On the other hand, Captain Doolittle would still be here. No one would take a boat out in this.

  He made his way along the rain-slick dock between wooden crates and coils of rope and tins of petrol, reading the names painted on the boats’ bows—the Valiant, the King George, the Dreadnought. No Mary Roses or Sea Sprites here, he thought. The war had changed all that. They all had either militant or patriotic names, and their decks were hung with camouflage netting. The Union Jack, the Dauntless …

  The damned Mlle. Jeannette was going to be the very last one. He’d be drenched by the time he got there. The Fearless, the Britannia …

  Here it was. The Mlle. Jeannette.

  But it couldn’t be the boat he was looking for. Its h
ull was covered in barnacles, and its paint was peeling. It didn’t look like it could stay afloat long enough to make it out of the harbor, let alone do a mission for British Intelligence. It looked almost as unseaworthy as—

  “Ahoy, there,” a tough-looking young man called from the bow. “You got business ’ere?” He was wearing a jersey and denim trousers and had evidently been working on the engine. His face and hands were streaked with black, and he was holding an oily wrench as if it was a weapon.

  “I’m looking for Captain Doolittle,” Ernest shouted up to him. “Is this his boat?”

  “Aye.” He motioned Ernest aboard. “ ’E’s below. Cap’n!” When there was no response, he went over to the hatch and shouted down it, “Cap’n Doolittle! Sommun’ ’ere to see ya!” and returned to the engine.

  Ernest hurried up the gangplank and then stopped, staring around at the unvarnished deck in bewilderment. This couldn’t be … she’d been sunk. But the ship’s wheel, the lockers, even the hatch looked exactly like it.

  Oh, my God, he thought. The Mlle. Jeannette. I should have recognized the name.

  “What in tarnation are you bellowing about now?” a voice from below shouted, and there was no mistaking that voice, that yachting cap, or, as he emerged from the hatch, those bright eyes and that grizzled beard.

  You’re alive, Ernest thought wonderingly.

  “Who are you? And what the bloody hell do you want?”

  He doesn’t recognize me, Ernest thought, thanking God for the knitted cap and the stubble on his face. “Are you Captain Doolittle?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Seaman—”

  “Come below out of this rain,” he said, and motioned Ernest to follow him down the ladder.

  Ernest climbed down it after him. The hold looked exactly the same—the littered galley, the bunk with its heap of gray blankets, the same four inches of brackish water on the floor. And the dim, flickering hurricane lamp over the table, which, hopefully, wouldn’t illuminate his face too much. If he could deliver the package and get out of here quickly enough …

  He descended the last two rungs and started across the hold, but before he’d waded two steps, the Commander had him in a bear hug. “You’re a sight for sore eyes!” he bellowed, pounding him on the back. “What the bloody hell are you doing here, Kansas?”

  For many years the prince wandered until at last he came to the lonely place where the witch had left Rapunzel.

  RAPUNZEL

  Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995

  IT WAS A QUARTER PAST NINE WHEN HE REACHED THE museum. It didn’t open till ten, but he’d come through early, hoping they’d arrive early, too, and he’d be able to talk to them before they went in.

  But there was no one standing outside the doors or on the steps, and no one in the courtyard, where a tank, an anti-aircraft gun, and a motor-boat were on display. He tried the main doors on the off chance that the lobby was open, but they were locked, and he couldn’t see anyone at the ticket desk yet.

  He walked down to the courtyard and looked at the tank, wishing they’d get here. There was a “St. Paul’s in the Blitz” exhibit opening at St. Paul’s Cathedral today as well. He’d debated going to that one instead, then decided his chances were better at this one, since there’d be more attendees here. But he’d hoped that by coming early, he could make it to both. And now there wasn’t a soul here.

  He wandered over to the boat. It had Lily Maid stenciled on its bow. There was an impressive array of machine-gun bullet holes in its stern, and a placard on it reading, “One of the many small craft manned by civilians which participated in the evacuation of over 340,000 British and other Allied soldiers from Dunkirk.”

  He examined the bullet holes and then retrieved a museum brochure someone had jammed in the windscreen of the boat and went back to sit on the steps and read it. “FINEST HOURS: A Fiftieth-Anniversary World War II Tribute,” it read, and listed the museum’s upcoming special events and exhibitions: “The Battle of Britain,” “The War in North Africa,” “Women at War,” “The Secret That Won the War,” “The Evacuation of the Children.” If he didn’t find anyone here or at St. Paul’s, he definitely needed to attend that last one.

  If he could get here. Badri and Linna hadn’t been able to get a drop to open anywhere near “Women at War” ’s opening date, even though they’d labored over it for months and gone as far afield as Yorkshire. When was “The Evacuation of the Children”? If it was soon, he might be able to stay till its opening. It wasn’t till September. He couldn’t waste four months on the off chance that he could find an evacuee who’d had contact with Merope after she went to London. Or who knew what other children had been at Denewell Manor.

  The Evacuation Committee’s files had been destroyed by the same pinpoint bomb which had vaporized St. Paul’s, and all he’d learned from local records was that the evacuees hadn’t been so much assigned to a particular family or house as dumped on them. A committee head he’d interviewed in 1960 had only been able to name three of the thirty children who’d been at Denewell Manor, and the only reason she’d remembered two of them was that they’d been such hellions.

  “Alf and Binnie Hodbin were dreadful children. Lady Denewell was an absolute saint to have them there,” she’d told him. “They stole things, tormented livestock, damaged people’s property. And then they’d stand there and tell you the most outrageous lies.” And when he’d asked her if she’d had any contact with them since the war, she’d said, “No, thank heavens. I shouldn’t be surprised if they were in prison.”

  She had known where the third evacuee—Edwina Barry, née Driscoll—was, but Mrs. Barry had been sent to another home before Eileen had left the manor, and she hadn’t known what had happened to the Hodbins either, though she knew they were from Whitechapel. He’d spent the next six months scouring prison rosters and Whitechapel’s housing records. He’d found out their address, but their tenement had been destroyed in February of 1941. Their names hadn’t been on the casualty list for the bombing, but a list of casualties for the entire Blitz had confirmed that their mother had been killed, which meant they probably had been, too.

  He wrote down the opening date of the children’s evacuation exhibit and perused the rest of the brochure for any other possibly useful exhibitions, then glanced up.

  Someone was coming. It was only a pair of tourists. They were in their fifties and, from the look of it, American. They both wore white plimsolls and had large cameras round their necks. The wife was wearing sunglasses even though it looked like it might rain at any moment, and the husband was grumbling, “I told you it wouldn’t be open yet.”

  “It’s better to be too early than too late,” the wife said, and started up the steps. “Is the museum open?”

  “If it was open,” the man growled, “he wouldn’t be sitting out here.”

  “I’m Brenda,” she said, “and this is my husband, Bob.”

  He stood up and shook her hand. “I’m Calvin Knight.”

  “Oh, I just love English accents!”

  There was no good answer to that, so he asked, “Are you here for the opening of the ‘Living Through the Blitz’ exhibition?”

  “No, is that what’s on? We didn’t know anything about it. Bob just wanted to come because he’s interested in World War Two. We’ve already been to the RAF Museum and the Cabinet War Rooms. Did you hear that, honey?” she called down to her husband. “Calvin says they’re opening a thing here on the Blitz today.”

  I hope, he thought. Bob and Brenda didn’t know about it, and there was no one here yet. Could he have the wrong day? There hadn’t been any slippage. This was definitely May seventh, but the article he’d read in the Times might have got the date of the opening wrong.

  I should have checked it against other historical records, he thought, wondering how he could check it now. With the museum still shut …

  “We’re from Indianapolis,” Brenda was saying. “Do you live here in Lon
don?”

  If he said yes, she was likely to demand tourist information from him, and he had no idea what had been in London in 1995. “No, I’m from Oxford.”

  An estate wagon was pulling in to the car park. He’d be able to ask whoever was in it about the opening.

  “The museum should be opening shortly,” he told Brenda. “There are some interesting exhibits in the courtyard that you and your husband might like to look at in the meantime.” But she wasn’t listening.

  “You’re from Oxford?” she cried. “We’re going there on Wednesday. You’ve got to tell us what we should see while we’re there.”

  He glanced out at the car park. The woman stepping out of the estate wagon and going round to open the back was too young to be one of the women he was looking for. She couldn’t be more than forty, and she was wearing a business suit and high-heeled shoes and was getting an armload of books and papers out of the back. Someone who worked here. She would definitely know whether the opening was today.

  “We want to see the university,” Brenda was saying, “but I couldn’t find it on the map, only a lot of colleges.”

  He explained that the colleges were the university, and told her to go see Balliol. “And Magdalen,” he said, trying to think what would have been in Oxford in 1995. “And the Ashmolean Museum.”

  “Is that where they have the dodo?” she asked. “I’m dying to see the dodo and all the other Alice in Wonderland stuff.”

  “No, the dodo’s at the Natural History Museum,” he said.

  “Oh, where’s that?” she asked, digging in her tote bag. “Bob!” she called. “Do you have the guidebook?” But Bob had gone down into the courtyard to look at the anti-aircraft gun and either couldn’t hear her or was ignoring her. “He’s got the guidebook,” she said. “Can you show me where the—what did you say it was? The Nature Museum?”

  “The Natural History Museum.” He glanced quickly out toward the car park, but the woman in the business suit was still unloading things from her car, and no one else had pulled in. He went down the stairs and into the courtyard with Brenda.