All Clear

by Connie Willis

“Yes,” Eileen said joyfully. “Only just think, you’re going home!”

  “But I can’t bear the thought of leaving you here all alone—”

  “I’m not alone. I have my children. And Sir Godfrey and Miss Laburnum and Winston Churchill. And Agatha Christie. And who knows what may happen? I may get to meet her properly next time and tell her how much I owe to her. She taught me to solve mysteries,” she said and turned to smile at Colin.

  “My dear boy,” she said, embracing him and then holding him out at arm’s length to look at him again, “take care of her for me.”

  “I will,” he said solemnly.

  “Now, go,” she ordered, propelling them up the aisle toward the exit.

  “Wait,” Polly said, and fished in her pocket for the letter. “Here. It’s a list of the V-1s and V-2s in London and the southeastern suburbs, but not Kent or Sussex, so stay out of them if you can.”

  “I’ll be perfectly fine,” Eileen said. “You saw me on VE-Day, remember?”

  I saw you, not Binnie and not Alf, Polly thought, and, as if she’d said his name aloud, Alf came pelting up the aisle toward them, pulling on his coat and cap as he ran.

  “Why aren’t you helping Sir Godfrey?” Eileen said sternly.

  “ ’E sent me to look for the carpenter,” he said, starting past them.

  “You can’t go outside in this,” Eileen said, blocking his way. “There’s a raid on.”

  “I won’t get killed,” Alf said, trying to get past Eileen. “I been out in lots of raids.”

  “Not this one,” Eileen said, putting her hands on his shoulders and turning him firmly around. “Go tell Sir Godfrey I’ll let him know as soon as the carpenter arrives.”

  She gave him a push to start him down the aisle, but instead he went over to Colin and said, “Are you sure you ain’t ’im?”

  “Perfectly sure,” Eileen said. “I told you, he’s Polly’s fiancé. He’s home on leave.”

  “On leave from where?” Alf said suspiciously.

  “He’s a pilot,” Polly said hastily because Colin clearly wouldn’t have had time to research troop movements and raids. “In the RAF.”

  “What sort of plane did you fly?” Alf asked.

  Out of the frying pan into the fire, Polly thought, but she had underestimated Colin.

  “A Spitfire now,” he said. “A Blenheim before I was shot down.”

  “You were shot down?” Alf said, awed.

  “Twice. I had to ditch in the Channel the second time.”

  “Are you a hero, then?”

  Yes, Polly thought.

  “Course ’e’s a hero, you dunderhead,” Binnie said, coming up the aisle in her spangled fairy gown and wings, one of which dangled brokenly behind her. She was carrying Polly’s costume, green hose trailing, the scabbard dragging behind on the aisle carpet. “All RAF pilots are heroes. Mr. Churchill said so.”

  “You’re the dunderhead!” Alf shouted, and charged head down at her midsection like a bull. Binnie began flailing at him with the scabbard.

  “You’re certain you don’t want to change your mind and come with us?” Polly whispered.

  Eileen grinned. “It’s a tempting offer,” she whispered back, and grabbed Alf by the scruff of the neck. “Alf, Binnie, stop that.” She snatched the scabbard from Binnie.

  “She started it,” Alf said.

  “I don’t care who started it. Look what you’ve done to Binnie’s wings. Binnie, go to the dressing room and take them off before you do any more damage. Alf, fetch the glue.”

  Binnie shook her head vehemently. “Miss Laburnum said I was to make you come try on your doublet for ’er so’s she can shorten it.”

  “Tell her I will as soon as I’ve said goodbye to Polly. Now go along,” she said, and gave them a push to get them moving, but Binnie resisted.

  “I want to say goodbye to them, too,” Binnie said.

  And make absolutely certain we don’t take Eileen with us, Polly thought, looking at her standing there like a determined angel, broken wings dangling, arms folded belligerently across her chest, as if she would prevent them with brute force if necessary.

  “ ’At’s right,” Alf said, planting himself firmly beside his sister. “We got a right to say goodbye to ’em same as you.”

  He was right. They had definitely earned that right, driving ambulances and providing maps and a place to meet in secret, preventing Eileen from reaching her drop, from catching John Bartholomew, from giving way to despair. Delaying Mr. Dunworthy so he could collide with a Wren, delaying the nurses so she could speak to Sir Godfrey, obstructing, interfering, stopping things. As they were stopping Eileen from going now.

  She wondered if her rescue and Mr. Dunworthy’s were part of the continuum’s plan, or if there was some other reason Eileen had to stay here, some other part she had to play in winning the war or the larger war that was history. Or if they did.

  Even if it was critical to the continuum, it didn’t make parting any easier, and Sir Godfrey’s beloved Bard didn’t know what he was talking about. There was nothing sweet about it.

  “Oh, Eileen,” Polly said, embracing her, “I don’t want to leave.”

  “And I don’t want you to,” Eileen said.

  “This is just like that day at the station,” Alf said contemptuously. “When we put Theodore on the train. ’E didn’t want to go neither. This ’ere’s just like that, ain’t it, Binnie?”

  “Except Theodore kicked ’er,” Binnie said. “And the vicar ain’t ’ere.”

  No, Polly thought, seeing the pain that flickered across Eileen’s face, the vicar’s not here, and Mike’s dead.

  And there were still four years of war and deprivation and loss to be gotten through. “You two take care of Eileen,” she said fiercely.

  “We will,” Binnie said.

  “We won’t let nothin’ ’appen to ’er,” Alf promised.

  “And both of you be good.”

  “Him good?” Binnie hooted, looking at Alf, and he promptly proved her point by kicking her in the shins. Binnie began whaling away at him.

  “Alf, Binnie,” Eileen said, and moved to intervene, but before she could there was an outraged shout from the stage.

  “Alf Hodbin!” Sir Godfrey bellowed. “Binnie!”

  “We didn’t do nothin’!” Alf said. “We was—”

  “Bramblebushes, onstage!” Sir Godfrey shouted, and Alf and Binnie said, “G’bye!” and tore off down the aisle.

  Thank goodness, Polly thought. Now we can—

  A deafening thud shook the theater. The chandeliers rattled. “We really do need to go, Polly,” Colin said, looking up at the ceiling.

  “I know,” Polly said, pressing the list of raids into Eileen’s hand.

  “I told you,” Eileen said, “we’ll be fine—”

  “How do you know the reason you were fine wasn’t that you’d memorized the list?” Polly folded Eileen’s fingers over it. “You’ve got to make certain you’re all down in the tube both the nights of the ninth and the tenth. Fifteen hundred people were killed and eighteen hundred were injured. Those will be the last big raids till the V-1s, but you’ll still need to heed the air-raid alerts—”

  “Prince Dauntless!” Sir Godfrey shouted from the stage, and Polly looked up automatically, but he wasn’t calling her. He was calling Eileen. “Miss O’Reilly! Onstage! Now!”

  “Coming!” Eileen said.

  “Keep away from Croydon,” Polly said, still not letting go of her hand, “and Bethnal Green and—”

  “I must go,” Eileen said gently.

  “I know,” Polly said, her voice breaking. “I’ll miss you terribly.”

  “I’ll miss you, too.” She leaned forward and kissed Polly on the cheek. “Don’t cry. We’ll see each other again. In Trafalgar Square, remember?” she said.

  “Prince Dauntless!” Sir Godfrey roared.

  “Here!” she called and ran lightly down the aisle. “Goodbye, Mr. Dunworthy!” she called back ov
er her shoulder. “Colin, take care of Polly! I’ll see you at the end of the war.” She pattered up the steps and onto the stage and vanished behind the safety curtain.

  “Finally,” Polly heard Sir Godfrey thunder from behind it. “Miss O’Reilly, you seem to be laboring under the notion that we are putting on a Christmas pantomime. It is not. It is only two weeks till opening night. Time is of the essence!”

  And that’s my cue, Polly thought. Half of acting is knowing when to make one’s exit.

  But she still stood there, looking at the curtained stage.

  Behind her, Colin said, “Polly, we need—”

  “I know,” Polly said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that there’s not much time. Mr. Dunworthy?”

  Mr. Dunworthy nodded and started up the aisle toward the exit.

  “Polly?” Colin said gently. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Let’s go home,” and started up the aisle with him.

  “Wait!” Sir Godfrey called. “I would speak with thee ere you go.”

  Polly and Colin turned in the doorway and looked down at the stage. Sir Godfrey stood in front of the curtain, still in his Hitler uniform and his ridiculous mustache.

  “My lord?” she said, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Colin, and he wasn’t Duke Orsino or even Crichton. He was Prospero, just as he had been that first night they had acted together in St. George’s cellar.

  “ ‘I have given you here a third of mine own life,’ ” he said, “ ‘or that for which I live.’ ”

  Colin nodded.

  “ ‘I promise you calm seas,’ ” Sir Godfrey called, and raised his hands in benediction, “ ‘auspicious gales, and sail so expeditious that shall catch your royal fleet far off.’ ”

  She lives. If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR

  Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995

  I MANAGED TO COME THROUGH AND FIND POLLY AND MEROPE, Colin thought, but I came too late to rescue them. “I was too late, wasn’t I?” he asked Binnie, and, as if on cue, the sound effects of the bombs started in again.

  “No,” Binnie said when they’d diminished to where she could be heard.

  “What? I got Polly and Mr. Dunworthy out before their deadlines?”

  “I don’t know. I know you left with them for the drop, and Mum—I mean, Eileen—said you must have got through because—”

  “But if I left to take them to the drop, why didn’t Merope, I mean Eileen, go with us?”

  “Because of us,” Binnie said. “Alf and me. She’d promised she wouldn’t leave us. And she needed to be here to tell you where Polly and Mr. Dunworthy were.”

  And so she’d sacrificed herself and stayed behind. But there must be some other way, especially since she wasn’t the one who’d told him; Binnie was. But he could deal with that later. Just now, he needed to find out where they were.

  “Binnie,” he said eagerly, “we’ve got to come up with times when they were together in one place. You said Eileen made the decision to stay—which means she must have been there as well—so it has to be a time when all three of them were together. Before the first of May. That’s when Mr. Dunworthy’s deadline is. I’m assuming the best time for them to be together is during a raid. Did they go to a tube shelter during the raids?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you need to tell me where they’re living and what times they’re likely to all be at home. I know about Mrs. Rickett’s. Are they still in Kensington? If they are, then that may mean the drop Polly used will open—”

  Binnie was frowning at him.

  “I know this was a long time ago,” he said, “and it’s difficult to remember exactly where they were at any given time, but this is critical. If you can’t remember an exact date, then if you can just tell me which tube shelter, I can look up the dates when there were raids and—”

  She shook her head, still frowning.

  “Why won’t that work?” he said. “Did they not always go to the tube station when there were raids?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether they did or not,” Binnie said. “That isn’t where they were.”

  “Where they—”

  “When you came.” She smiled at his uncomprehending look. “You’re forgetting, this all happened already. Over fifty years ago. Mum stayed behind so she could be here to make it happen, to tell you where they were.” She smiled ruefully. “And when she couldn’t be—”

  “She sent you.”

  “Yes.”

  “She told you who she was?” he said, trying to process all this.

  “Yes, but we’d worked it out on our own ages before that. When we were at the manor, we followed her out to the drop.”

  “You saw her go through?” The drop wasn’t supposed to have opened if anyone was nearby.

  “No, but we saw her just after she’d come back, and there were lots of other clues, mistakes and things, and then when you came and took Polly and Mr. Dunworthy, we were dead certain. Only there’s still a good deal we don’t know. Like why it took you so long to get here.”

  “None of the drops in England in 1940 would open,” he said. “When Mr. Dunworthy didn’t return, we tried every possible temporal and spatial location, and nothing would work. At first, we thought it was every drop, but the ones in other places and times weren’t affected, just those in England and Scotland and the first three months of 1941. We could get a few drops to open after mid-March, but by then we had no idea where they were. Polly’d left Townsend Brothers, and they weren’t at Notting Hill Gate.”

  “So you came here to find someone who might have known her, so they could tell you where she was,” Binnie said.

  “Yes.” He didn’t mention all the months he’d spent searching National Service and Civil Defence records looking for their names after Michael had told him Polly and Eileen had been planning to sign up, or all the years before that that he’d spent sitting in libraries and newspaper morgues trying to find out if they were still alive, and calculating coordinates for drop after failed drop, and attempting to convince Badri and Linna that rescue was possible, and meeting with Dr. Ishiwaka and every other time-travel theorist he could corner, trying to find out what the bloody hell had gone wrong.

  “Alf said he was certain it had happened at one of the anniversary celebrations,” Binnie was saying.

  “Wait,” Colin said. “Didn’t Eileen tell you I’d be here today?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand,” Colin said. “Why not?”

  “Because she didn’t know where you’d be. All she knew was that at some point she’d told you where they were, and that that was how you’d known where to come.”

  “But—”

  “She said she didn’t need to know, that she’d be able to find you because she had found you,” Binnie said, and smiled. “Mum was always rather an optimist. Even when she found out about the cancer, she told us, ‘You mustn’t worry. It will all come right in the end.’ When she died I was afraid something had gone wrong, but Alf said it couldn’t have because then you couldn’t have come, so it was up to us to make it happen.” She beamed at him. “And we did.”

  “But I still don’t understand. How did you and your brother know I’d be here on this particular date?”

  “We didn’t. We’ve been looking for you ever since Mum died.”

  “Ever since—”

  She nodded. “At first we concentrated on Notting Hill Gate Underground Station and Oxford Street, and, of course, Denewell Manor—it’s a school now—but it was too much territory to cover, even with Michael and Mary—”

  “Who?”

  “Michael’s my son, and Mary’s my sister—half-sister really, though I never think of her that way.”

  “She’s Eileen’s daughter?”

  “I’m sorry, I keep thinking you know all this. Mum—Eileen—married the—
”

  There was a loud screaming swish and the sound of an explosion. The shelter walls shook, and a bright white light flashed on, simulating the flash from the bomb. It went to yellow and then red, bathing the shelter and Binnie’s face in an eerie light.

  “Eileen married—?” Colin prompted her, shouting over the noise.

  Binnie didn’t answer. She was staring at him with an odd look on her face, as if she’d just realized something.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” he said, wondering if the sounds had triggered some traumatic memory. “Are you all right?”

  “How strange,” she murmured. “I wonder if she …? That would explain …”

  “You wonder if she what? Who? Eileen? What is it?”

  She shook her head, as if to clear it. “Nothing. I keep forgetting you don’t know anything that’s happened. Eileen married shortly after the war, and they had two children. Besides Alf and me, I mean. Godfrey, that’s her son, assisted us as well, but even with all of us looking, we hadn’t any luck, and then Alf said, ‘We’ve got to think about this from Colin’s point of view. Where would he look?’ And that was when it occurred to us that you’d go where people who were in the Blitz were likely to be, and luckily that was just before the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s beginning, and—”

  “You’ve been doing this since 1990?”

  “No. 1989. The war actually began in ’39, you know, though there weren’t any battles for nearly a year. But there were several evacuated-children’s reunions, and then in the spring there were all the Battle of Britain exhibitions, and of course every year the VE-Day parades. Those were the most difficult. So many cities had their own, and all on the same day—”

  “Do you mean to tell me you’ve been going to parades and anniversary celebrations and museum exhibitions for six years?” There must have been scores, even hundreds. “How many have you gone to?”

  “All of them,” she said simply.

  All of them.

  “It’s not so bad as it might have been,” Binnie said. “It’s only May. Since it’s the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s end, there will be celebrations all year, including a special memorial service for the fire watch at St. Paul’s on December twenty-ninth.” She grinned mischievously at him. “At least you didn’t go to that.”