All Clear

by Connie Willis

  “I thought you said the Call’s deadline was at four.”

  “It is, but the editor’s sometimes there late, and if he hasn’t finished setting the type, I may be able to persuade him to put my articles in.”

  He shot along Cromwell Road and turned onto the road south.

  “What about Lady Bracknell?” Cess asked. “We were to report in.”

  “We can do it from Croydon. After we eat. If we phone him now, he’ll tell us to come straight home, and then you’ll really be starving.”

  “All right,” Cess said, “but if he loses his temper, you have to tell him this was your idea.”

  “I will. Thanks. It’s important I not miss this deadline.”

  Cess nodded, and then, after a minute, said, “Do you really think the German High Command reads the Croydon Fish and Chips Wrapper or whatever it is?”

  “The Clarion Call,” he said. “I don’t know. But we don’t know that they’re listening to our wireless messages either, or taking aerial photos of our cardboard camps and rubber tanks. Or that Colonel von Sprecht actually bought our little charade. Or, even if he did, that he’ll tell the German High Command. Or that they’ll believe him.”

  Cess nodded. “The poor devil might not even live long enough to make it to Berlin.” He sighed. “That’s the hell of doing this sort of thing. We never know whether anything we’ve done has had any effect at all.”

  And perhaps we’re better off not knowing, Ernest thought, speeding through Fulham.

  “Will we find out after the war, do you think?” Cess asked. “Whether it worked or not?”

  “If it didn’t work, we won’t have to wait that long. We’ll know next month. If the entire German Army’s waiting for us in Normandy, then it didn’t.”

  “True,” Cess said, and after a minute added, “History will sort it all out, I suppose. Will we make it into the history books, do you think? Von Sprecht and our encounter with that bull and all your letters to the editor of the Bumpkin Weekly Banner?”

  If I can’t get through to Atherton, those letters to the editor had better, Ernest thought, driving into Croydon. He turned off the high street at the cinema so Cess wouldn’t spot the phone booth and drove past the Call’s office.

  Mr. Jeppers’s bicycle stood outside it. Ernest had been lying to Cess about being able to make it to Croydon before the Call closed. He hadn’t expected the office to be open this late, but the printing press must have jammed again. Which meant he really might be able to get his articles in this week’s paper.

  “I’ll drop you at the pub,” he told Cess, stopping in front of it, “and I’ll go deliver my articles. It may take some time. Mr. Jeppers likes to talk. Order for me,” he said, and drove back to the phone booth.

  The operator put him through immediately, and the same young woman answered. “This is Lieutenant Davies,” Ernest said. “General Dunworthy’s aide. I telephoned earlier this afternoon, but we were cut off.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  “I need to speak with Major Atherton.”

  “Oh, dear, he came back, but he’s gone out again.”

  Damn.

  “Is it a medical emergency? This is his nurse. If it’s an emergency, I can try to contact Dr. Atherton.”

  Dr. Atherton. He was a doctor. Which meant he wasn’t Denys. Historians posed as lots of things, but there were no subliminals for medicine. Even Polly’s driving an ambulance had been unusual, and all she’d had was emergency first-aid training. Which she’d done here. There was no way Atherton could have got a medical degree here since February.

  “Sir?” she said. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes. I think I may have the wrong Major Atherton. I’m trying to contact Major Denys Atherton.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s Major Atherton’s name.”

  “Tall man, dark curly hair, mid-twenties?”

  “Oh, no, sir. Major Atherton’s fifty and has scarcely any hair at all. Is your Major Atherton an Army surgeon, too?”

  No, he thought grimly. He’s an historian, and he’s not here under his own name. Dunworthy would have insisted Research run a check on the names of everyone involved in the invasion buildup. Two soldiers with the same name would automatically attract attention, and historians were supposed to blend in, to avoid being noticed.

  There’s no way you’ll be able to find him if he’s here under another name, Ernest thought. He’d always known it was a long shot, but the knowledge still hit him with the force of a punch to the gut. He hung up the receiver and then just stood there.

  I should go take the messages to Mr. Jeppers, he thought. It’s even more important now that I get them into the Call. But he continued to stand there, staring blindly at the telephone.

  Cess was knocking on the phone-booth door.

  Oh, Christ, he hadn’t just messed up rescuing Polly and Eileen, he’d been caught by Cess. He’d demand to know who he was phoning and why he’d lied about delivering the articles. He’d tell Lady Bracknell, and Bracknell would tell Tensing, and they’d have to cancel Fortitude South. They couldn’t take a chance that a German agent had infiltrated Special Means. And Eisenhower would postpone the invasion and try to come up with a new plan. And they’d lose the war.

  Cess was still banging on the glass. Ernest opened the door. “Oh, good,” Cess said. “You remembered to phone Bracknell. I was going to tell you to, and then I forgot, so I came after you. You were right about their barmaid. Very pretty. What did Bracknell say? Were you able to reach him?”

  “No,” Ernest said. “I wasn’t able to get through.”

  I’m in this thing with you to the end, and if it fails, we’ll go down together.

  —WINSTON CHURCHILL TO DWIGHT

  D. EISENHOWER, BEFORE D-DAY

  London—Spring 1941

  POLLY RAN OUT OF THE ALHAMBRA AND THROUGH THE firelit streets to Shaftesbury, and into dense fog.

  No, not fog. Dust from the explosion. It smelled of sulphur and cordite and was completely impenetrable. I’ll never find the Phoenix in this, she thought, but as she felt her way forward, it began to thin and she could see the Phoenix’s marquee. Reggie must have been wrong—it was still standing.

  But the street in front of it was roped off. And as she came closer, she saw that half of the theater’s front was missing, exposing the lobby and the gold-carpeted staircase. An officer in a white helmet was standing next to the blue incident light, peering at a clipboard. Polly ducked under the rope and ran over to him. “Officer—”

  “This is an incident,” he said brusquely. “No civilians allowed.”

  “But I’m looking for—”

  He cut her off. “The theater was standing empty. I must ask you to leave. Warden!” He beckoned to an ARP warden. “Escort this young lady—”

  “But there’s someone inside,” she said. “Sir God—”

  “Officer Murdoch!” another warden called from up the street. “Quick!” and the incident officer hurried off.

  Polly started after him, but so did the warden he’d called to have her thrown out, and she was afraid he’d do it before she could explain. And even if he’d listen, they obviously had their hands full.

  She darted across the street and climbed over the heap of wood and plaster that had been the front of the theater and into the lobby. Scarcely any damage had been done to it. The bomb must have been only a hundred-pounder, in spite of its loudness. She tried to open the double doors to the theater proper, but they were locked.

  The mezzanine doors weren’t. She slipped through them.

  Into chaos. The balcony and boxes had collapsed onto the rows of red-plush seats below, and the seats themselves were piled atop one another as though tossed there by a wave. The walls still stood, and there was still a ceiling except for a large, jagged hole on one side. Through it, the fiery sky lit this part of the theater with a pinkish-orange light. The front part of the theater and the stage lay in shadow.

  “Sir Godfrey! Are you in here?�
�� Polly called, and started carefully across the sea of openwork metal supports, cushions spilling out stuffing, and splintered mahogany from the balcony. Some of the rows of seats were still intact and upright, with discarded playbills still on their red-plush seats. But they were unstable, threatening to topple as Polly walked across them, grabbing for seat backs as she worked her way forward, and her shoes made it worse.

  I have no business trying to do this in high-heeled shoes, she thought, stepping carefully over a curved panel which had been part of one of the theater boxes.

  Sir Godfrey had said he’d be backstage looking at sets. She looked out across the jumble of upended seats, seeking something that would tell her when she’d reached the stage—a footlight or a curtain or a fallen catwalk—but there was nothing beyond the rows of tangled seats except what looked like a huge blanket, as if the rescue squad had covered the site with a tarpaulin to hide the wreckage.

  As if it were a dead body, Polly thought, and realized what the tarpaulin was. The asbestos safety curtain. It had collapsed backward, draping the entire stage. At least it can’t catch fire, she thought, but if Sir Godfrey was under it, there was no way she’d be able to lift it off him. The one at the Alhambra weighed a ton.

  She started toward the shrouded stage, calling, “Sir Godfrey! Where are you?” and stepping gingerly from seat to seat as if across stepping-stones. She remembered the governess at the pantomime telling her charges, “No, no, you mustn’t stand on the seats. You’ll tear the cloth,” and even as she thought it, her gilt heel went through the plush upholstery, her ankle twisted, and she fell sideways.

  She grabbed for the back of the chair, which threatened to go over, steadied herself, and attempted to free her foot. The shoe’s heel was caught on something. One of the springs. She jerked her foot sharply upward, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Blast these heels,” she said, and tried to tear the upholstery further so she could see what she was caught on, but it was much stronger than it looked. She would have to take off the shoe. She tried to slide her foot out of it. No good. She bent awkwardly over to unstrap it. The stiff buckle wouldn’t budge either, and she bent over farther, struggling with it.

  And heard a faint sound from the direction of the balcony. “Sir Godfrey?” she called, and thought she heard an answering groan. “I’m coming!” she said. “My shoe—” She yanked viciously up on the end of the gilt strap. It came away in her hand, and she pulled her foot out of the shoe and reached back into the seat’s stuffing for it, wrenching the shoe from side to side to free it. It wouldn’t come.

  “Wait, I’m coming!” she called, abandoning the shoe, and scrambled back toward where the sound had come from. “Sir Godfrey?”

  “Here,” a man’s voice answered so faintly she couldn’t tell if it was Sir Godfrey’s.

  “Are you injured?” she called, moving in its direction. “Keep talking so I can find you!”

  “ ‘Here I lie and thus I bear my point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me,’ ” he said, and it was most certainly Sir Godfrey. Who else would quote Shakespeare at a time like this?

  He was only four rows back, under a tumble of seats. She could see his arm in the space between them. “Sir Godfrey,” she said, squatting down, but it was too dark under there to see him. “Is that you?”

  “Yes. As you can see, my attempt to avert disaster was unsuccessful.”

  “What are you doing out here in the theater? I thought you’d be backstage.” She was babbling in her relief that he was alive. “If I hadn’t caught my shoe, I’d never have heard you.” And as she said it, something echoed in the back of her brain: Eileen saying at Padgett’s, “If Marjorie hadn’t told you where I was …”; saying, “If Alf and Binnie hadn’t delayed me, I’d have caught Mr. Bartholomew.”

  Polly stopped, struck by the sudden sense that this was important, that it held the key to something, if she could—

  “I heard the bombs,” Sir Godfrey said, “and was on my way to find you.”

  And if you hadn’t done that, she thought with that same sense of being on the verge of something vital, you’d have been underneath that asbestos fire curtain when it came crashing down.

  “I was worried that you—” Sir Godfrey began.

  “You mustn’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right. Can you move?”

  “No. There’s something on my legs. ‘All the world’s a stage,’ and at the moment it seems to be atop me.”

  “Can you feel your legs? Are they injured?”

  “No.”

  Thank goodness. “Are you injured anywhere else?”

  “No.” The pause again. “ ‘Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’ ”

  Oh, God.

  “I’ll have you out of there in a moment.” She raised her head and shouted, “There’s an injured man in here! We need a stretcher!” She stood up and began pulling the seats off him. The row of seats had broken apart, which was a good thing. If they were still connected, she’d never have been able to shift them.

  Sir Godfrey murmured something. “What is it?” she asked, crouching down to hear.

  “Leave me,” he said. “Go find Viola. She’s at the Alhambra. The bombs—”

  “I’m here, Sir Godfrey. It’s me, Polly—Viola.”

  “No,” he said. “ ‘Thou art a soul in bliss. You do me wrong to take me out o’ the grave.’ ”

  He’s only quoting Lear, she told herself fiercely. It doesn’t mean anything.

  “Don’t try to move,” she said, looking back toward the doors. “Help’s coming.” But it wasn’t—there was no sign of the incident officer or rescue workers.

  They didn’t hear me, she thought, and cupped her hands around her mouth. “There’s an injured man in here! We need a stretcher and a jack! Hurry!” She went back to shifting the seats and then a piece of the balcony.

  Oh, God, it was too heavy to lift. She put both hands against the end and gave a mighty shove, and there he was, a foot below her in a narrow hole, lying on his back across a row of upended seat backs, his legs under a piece of the balcony which she could see at a glance was far too heavy for her to lift.

  “ ‘She lives,’ ” he said, smiling up at her. “ ‘If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.’ ”

  Polly bit back tears. “Where are you hurt?” she asked, but she could already see. A red stain covered the top half of his shirt.

  She stretched out over the edge of the hole so she could reach down to the wound. He didn’t flinch, but her hand came away wet. She tore open his shirt. The wound was an inch wide and above his heart, but it was bleeding badly, and there was no way to put a tourniquet on it. And no time to go for help. By the time she clambered back over the wreckage to the front of the theater, he’d have bled to death. She needed to stop the bleeding now.

  Direct pressure. She replaced the torn shirt over the wound and pressed down with the palm of her hand while she looked about for something better. His coat—No, it was twisted under him so she couldn’t get at it. The upholstery from the seat cushions might work, but she knew from trying to free her foot that it was too tough to tear.

  If that woman at the Works Board had let me become a rescue worker, she thought, I’d have had a medical kit and bandages with me.

  She hoisted herself to her knees and wrenched off her skirt. “Help! Casualty over here!” she shouted, folding it into a not-nearly-thick-enough compress.

  ENSA’s costumes are much too skimpy, she thought, wriggling out of her bolero and bloomers and folding them and the skirt into a thick square. She stretched out flat again, clad only in the bathing suit, laid the pad against the wound, and pressed down as hard as she could with the heel of her hand.

  Sir Godfrey grimaced. “Did you come to tell me you’ve decided to do the pantomime after all?” he asked.

  “Shh,” Polly said, “you mustn’t try to talk.”

  “Nonsense. How else shall I
do my death scene?”

  Her heart twisted. “You’re not dying,” she said firmly. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

  “You always were a wretched actress, Viola,” he said, shaking his head against the timbers he lay on. “This isn’t quite the farewell I’d imagined. I’d always hoped to die onstage. Halfway through the second act of a Barrie play so I would be spared from doing Act Three.”

  He could always make her laugh, even here in the rubble, with him bleeding to death and no sign of a rescue squad.

  What’s taking them so long? she thought. They’re as bad as the retrieval team.

  Blood was soaking through the compress. She wasn’t applying enough pressure. She inched forward, trying to get into a better position, and pushed down as hard as she could on it.

  “Which speech will you have?” Sir Godfrey asked. “Hamlet? ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.’ ”

  No, it isn’t a divinity. I caused this. But he’s not going to die if I can help it, she thought, pressing down with all the force she could muster. The continuum was going to have to correct itself some other way.

  She raised her head and shouted for help again, trying to remember everything Sir Godfrey had taught her about projecting to the very back of the stalls. “In here! Help!” And as if in answer there was the sound of planes in the distance.

  “They’re coming round again,” Sir Godfrey said, looking up at the ceiling. “You must get to a shelter—”

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  “You must, Viola. Your young man would never forgive me if I got you killed.”

  My young man. “I lied to you back there at the theater,” she said. “There’s no young man.”

  “Of course there is. He’s why I never had the ghost of a chance with you,” he said, and after a minute he asked, “Was he killed?”

  “I think he must have been, or he’d be here by now.”

  “He may yet come,” Sir Godfrey said gently. “Which is why you must go, Miranda. ‘Fly, Fleance, fly.’ ”