All Clear

by Connie Willis

  The cathedral, in spite of the spring weather and the nearby fires, was as cold as winter and very dark.

  “Hear anything?” Colin whispered, pulling the door silently shut behind them.

  “No,” Polly whispered back. Only the audible hush St. Paul’s always had. The sound of space and time. “I know the way,” she said softly, and led them up the south aisle. There was enough light from the fire-lit clouds and the searchlights to navigate by, but only just.

  The long walk, and that last sprint across to the porch, had taken its toll on Mr. Dunworthy. He was badly winded and leaned heavily on Colin’s arm. Polly led them past the spiral staircase she’d fled up the night of the twenty-ninth, past the chapel where they’d held Mike’s funeral. Only he hadn’t really been dead.

  No, that was wrong. He’d died that night in Croydon, before she ever came to the Blitz.

  Up the aisle, past the blown-out windows to the bay where she’d found Mr. Dunworthy. She looked toward the niche where The Light of the World hung, as if she expected the golden-orange lantern to be glowing in the darkness, but it was too dark to see it, or the painting.

  No, there it was. She could just make out the white robe, insubstantial as a ghost, and the pale gold of the flame within the lantern. And then, as if the flame was growing brighter, lighting the air around it, she began to be able to see the door and Christ’s crown of thorns, and finally his face.

  He looked resigned, as though he knew that wretched door—to where? Home? Heaven? Peace?—would never open, and at the same time he seemed resolved, ready to do his bit even though he couldn’t possibly know what sacrifices that would require. Had he been kept here, too—in a place he didn’t belong, serving in a war in which he hadn’t enlisted, to rescue sparrows and soldiers and shopgirls and Shakespeare? To tip the balance?

  “What’s that light?” Mr. Dunworthy whispered as the aisle grew brighter, and after a moment’s tense waiting, “It’s someone with a pocket torch.”

  “No, it’s not,” Colin said. “It’s the drop. It’s opening.” He hurried them up the aisle to the dome.

  We should have more than enough time, Polly thought. The shimmer was just beginning to brighten.

  But she’d forgotten about the damage from the bomb. The huge crater in the center of the transept was still there, and piled around it, heaps of splintered wood, broken columns, and smashed masonry. Which they would have to climb over to reach the drop.

  An attempt had been made to begin the cleanup, but it had only made it worse. They’d taken the sandbags which had protected the statues and piled them and stacks of wooden folding chairs across the entrance to the transept as a barricade and tossed the broken timbers and splintered rafters to the sides of the crater, in just the place where they needed to cross.

  And the shimmer was beginning to grow and spread, filling the transept. None of the fire watch must still be down in the Crypt, or they’d have seen the shimmer. When Polly leaned over the edge of the hole, she could see all the way down to the Crypt’s floor.

  Colin climbed up on the wreckage and turned to reach for Polly’s hand.

  “No, Mr. Dunworthy needs to go first,” she said. “His deadline’s sooner than mine.”

  Colin nodded. “Sir?” he said, but Mr. Dunworthy wasn’t listening. He’d turned and was looking back out at the dome, now golden in the growing light of the shimmer, and at the shadowy reaches of St. Paul’s beyond.

  He can’t bear to leave it, Polly thought, knowing he’ll never see it again. Like I can’t bear to leave Eileen and Sir Godfrey and Miss Laburnum and all the rest of them.

  But when Colin said, “Mr. Dunworthy, we need to hurry,” and he turned back to them, he was smiling fondly. Like Mr. Humphreys, leading her around the cathedral, showing her all the treasures which had been removed for safekeeping.

  Perhaps that’s how I should think of them, Polly thought, the troupe and Miss Snelgrove and Trot. And Sir Godfrey. Not as lost to her, but as removed to this moment in time for safekeeping.

  Which was fine for them, and for Mr. Humphreys and Hattie and Nelson, who belonged here. But not for Eileen, who’d only stayed here to save her. I can’t bear to think of her sacrificing her life for me.

  “Mr. Dunworthy?” Colin said. “Polly? It’s time.”

  “I know,” Mr. Dunworthy said, and let Colin help him over the barricade and across the rubble, Polly clambering after them in case Mr. Dunworthy slipped, in case something went wrong.

  “Be careful,” Colin called back to her as they climbed over the wreckage. “I nearly killed myself on this when I came through. It’s unstable.”

  Like history, she thought. Balanced always on a knife’s edge, threatening always to come tumbling down at the slightest misstep, to pitch us into the abyss.

  They had only a few yards to go, but it seemed to take forever. The rubble slanted down toward the hole, and they had to grab for the statues and use them as handholds as they went. Polly clutched at a statue of an Army officer and then at the memorial to Captain Faulknor that Mr. Humphreys had talked so much about. The ships Faulknor had bound together stood in bas-relief behind him as he slumped forward into the arms of Honour, dying. Unaware that he’d won the battle.

  Like Mike.

  The shimmer was growing rapidly brighter, filling the entire end of the transept, illuminating the smashed doors, the broken columns, the shattered glass as Colin helped Mr. Dunworthy over the last few feet of rubble. It began to flare.

  We’ll never make it in time, Polly thought, stepping quickly onto a rafter. It broke, and she lurched forward, hands out, and her other foot plunged through the stacked, splintered wood. And caught.

  No. Not now.

  She leaned against the dying Faulknor, grabbed on to Honour’s arm, and twisted her ankle, trying to free her foot. Her shoe was stuck fast. It’s the Phoenix all over again, she thought.

  Colin had leapt lightly down off a chunk of broken stone and had helped Mr. Dunworthy—who looked like he might not make it—down off the pile of rubble, and was leading him over to the brightness in front of the door. He glanced back at Polly, saw her, and started back toward her.

  “Go with him!” Polly called softly across the rubble. “I’ll come next time. Go!”

  He shook his head, said something to Mr. Dunworthy, and stepped back away from the shimmer, out of its reach.

  “Colin, go—”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you,” he said, and the shimmer brightened to a white-hot flame.

  It looks exactly like an incendiary, Polly thought. It lit Mr. Dunworthy’s face and then hid it, obliterating it, and the light began to fade, to shrink. Mr. Dunworthy was no longer there.

  He made it, Polly thought. He’s safely home. A weight seemed to lift off her. But Mike didn’t make it. Eileen didn’t. They both sacrificed themselves for you. And so did Colin.

  He was already clambering back over the wreckage to her. “Stay there,” he whispered.

  “I haven’t any choice,” she said. “My foot’s stuck.”

  “And you’d have let me go through and leave you here?” he said angrily. “Is your foot injured?”

  “No, it’s only my shoe. It’s caught. Careful,” she warned as he hurried to her.

  He knelt beside her and began shifting timbers aside. “Take care you don’t get stuck,” Polly said.

  “You’re a fine one to talk.” He broke off the end of a wooden slat, pried another rafter up with it, reached down into the hole, and took hold of her ankle. “Do you care about your shoe, Cinderella?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” She could feel him yanking on her foot and then pulling up on whatever was holding it down, and her bare foot came suddenly free.

  He straightened. “All right now, let’s go before anything else—” he said, and the rafter he’d pushed aside went clattering suddenly down the pile of rubble with an unholy crash and into the crater.

  “Oh, Christ! Hurry! No, not that way.
” He pushed her back across the rubble in the direction of the transept’s entrance. “If someone comes, there’s nowhere to hide in the transept.”

  They clambered quickly across the wood and broken stone. And please don’t let one of us get caught again, she thought.

  The shimmer was fading rapidly. By the time they were safely back down on the floor—which, thankfully, wasn’t as strewn with glass on this side—and over the barricade, the light was nearly gone.

  “What’s the best place to hide?” Colin whispered. “The choir?”

  “No,” she said. “There’s no way out.” She grabbed his hand, and they darted across the nave and down the south aisle. They could hide in the Chapel of St. Michael and St. George, behind the prayer stalls—

  Colin grabbed her around the waist and thrust her behind a pillar. “Shh,” he whispered against her ear. “I hear footsteps.”

  She listened. “I don’t—” she began, and then did hear them. Footsteps from inside the main stairway. And a flash from a pocket torch.

  They ducked farther behind the pillar and pressed against it, listening. The sound of footsteps came out onto the floor, into the north transept, and then there was another flash of light.

  He’s looking at the wreckage, Polly thought.

  More footsteps and a wide sweep of light as he shone the torch slowly around the transept.

  “How much longer till the drop opens again?” Polly whispered to Colin.

  “Twelve or thirteen minutes.” It wouldn’t open if the firewatcher was still there, of course, but they were running out of time. When the all clear went, the men would come down from the roofs, and from then on there’d be men in the Crypt and going off duty. She remembered the firewatchers on the morning after the twenty-ninth walking out through the nave, standing on the steps talking. And Mr. Dunworthy had said they made morning rounds, checking for incendiaries and damage.

  Now the firewatcher was shining the torch up at the ceiling to see if something had fallen.

  Leave, Polly said silently, but it was forever before the torch finally switched off and the footsteps went back upstairs.

  They faded away, but Colin still didn’t move. He went on standing there, pressing her against the stone, his arm still around her, waiting. She could feel his breath against her cheek, feel his heart beating.

  “I think he’s gone,” he whispered finally, his mouth against her hair. “More’s the pity.” And she felt her heart lift.

  But how could even love repay him for the years, the youth he’d sacrificed for her?

  “I wish we could stand here forever,” he said, pulling away from her, “but we’d better—” There was a flicker of light. “He’s back.” Colin pushed her behind the pillar. And a moment later he said, “That’s not a torch. It’s the shimmer. The drop’s already opening again.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Polly said. “It’s from outside. A flare, I think.” But it must have been an incendiary because a yellow-orange light began to fill the aisle.

  She hadn’t realized they were in the bay that held The Light of the World. As the light grew, as golden as the light inside the lantern, she could see the painting more clearly than she ever had. And Mr. Humphreys was right. There was something new to see every time you looked at it.

  She had been wrong in thinking Christ had been called up against his will to fight in a war. He didn’t look—in spite of the crown of thorns—like someone making a sacrifice. Or even like someone determined to “do his bit.” He looked instead like Marjorie had looked telling Polly she’d joined the Nursing Service, like Mr. Humphreys had looked filling buckets with water and sand to save St. Paul’s, like Miss Laburnum had looked that day she came to Townsend Brothers with the coats. He looked like Captain Faulknor must have looked, lashing the ships together. Like Ernest Shackleton, setting out in that tiny boat across icy seas. Like Colin helping Mr. Dunworthy across the wreckage.

  He looked … contented. As if he was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do.

  Like Eileen had looked, telling Polly she’d decided to stay. Like Mike must have looked in Kent, composing engagement announcements and letters to the editor. Like I must have looked there in the rubble with Sir Godfrey, my hand pressed against his heart. Exalted. Happy.

  To do something for someone or something you loved—England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history—wasn’t a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.

  She turned to look at Colin. He was looking uncertainly at her, and his soot-smudged face was as open to her as hers had been to Sir Godfrey. “Colin, I—” she said, and stopped, amazed.

  She hadn’t seen him clearly either. She’d been so intent on finding in his face echoes of the seventeen-year-old boy she’d known, so entranced by his resemblance to Stephen Lang, that she hadn’t seen what was so obviously there. Though Eileen clearly had.

  No wonder Eileen had said, “You know I didn’t go back.” And no wonder Colin had looked at her after she’d said, “Colin knows I stayed, don’t you?” for that long, silent moment before he’d said, “Yes, I know.”

  How could Polly not have seen the resemblance before? It was right there. No wonder, at the last, that Eileen had hugged Polly and said, “It’s all right. I’ll always be with you.” No wonder she’d called Colin “my dear boy.”

  Oh, my dear friend, Polly thought, and the light in Christ’s face seemed to deepen, to grow more bright—

  “The shimmer’s starting,” Colin said gently. “We need to go.”

  Polly nodded and turned back to The Light of the World for one last look. She kissed her fingers and pressed them gently against the picture, and then she and Colin ran hand in hand up the aisle and across the nave.

  Colin helped her over the barricade, and they clambered onto the wreckage, and across the precarious timbers, holding on to Faulknor, on to Honour and each other, picking their way over broken masonry and plaster, and climbing down again to the stained-glass-strewn floor.

  “Careful,” Colin said, and she nodded and followed him into the shimmer.

  “Where do we need to stand?” she asked.

  “Here.” He reached for her hand, and a sound cut suddenly across the silence. He looked up alertly.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s the all clear.”

  He shook his head. “ ‘It is the lark,’ ” he said, and her breath caught.

  “ ‘The herald of the morn,’ ” she said.

  The shimmer began to brighten, to flare. She took his hand and stepped into the midst of the light with him.

  “Almost there,” he said.

  She nodded. “ ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock,’ ” she said, and the drop opened.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CONNIE WILLIS has received six Nebula Awards and ten Hugo awards for science fiction, and her novel Passage was nominated for both. Her other works include Doomsday Book, Lincoln’s Dreams, Bellwether, Impossible Things, Remake, Uncharted Territory, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Fire Watch, Miracle and Other Chrisimas Stories, and Blackout. Connie Willis lives in Colorado with her family.