All Clear (70 page)

Cess opened the door and leaned in. He was dressed in his officer’s uniform. “Why aren’t you ready?”

“I thought we were leaving tomorrow morning.”

“No,” Cess said. “Lady Bracknell wants us to leave now.” Which made no sense—Portsmouth was only a few hours away, but Ernest didn’t object. The sooner they got there the better, and if they stopped for the night along the way, he’d have even more opportunities to ask about Atherton.

“Give me twenty minutes,” he said.

“Ten. You don’t know where our map got to, do you?”

“I thought you said Bracknell gave one to you.”

“No, a map of this area.”

“Prism had it, I think,” Ernest lied, and as soon as Cess had gone off to look for it, he dug the map out of the pile on his desk, stuck it in his pocket, and bolted down to the mess to hide it in the silverware drawer. Then he ran to throw his razor and soap into a bag, answer Cess’s “Are you
certain
you didn’t have it after Prism?” and take the bag and his officer’s uniform back to the office. He put it on and began typing madly again.

He managed to finish another message—“Schoolgirl Mary P. Cardle won the war-saving stamp competition at St. Sebastian School last week. Fourteen-year-old Mary, known to her friends as Polly, earned the money to buy the stamps by running errands. Said headmaster Dunworthy Townsend, ‘Let’s hope we can all do as much for the war effort as Mary has.’ ”—before Cess reappeared with the map, saying, “You won’t
believe
where I found this,” and demanding to know why Ernest still wasn’t ready.

Ernest stuffed the articles into an envelope, sealed it, and hurried out to where Cess had already started up the Rolls. He pulled out onto the road before Ernest even had his door shut. “We need to run these articles by the
Call
office,” Ernest said, showing the envelope to Cess.

“We’ll have to do it on the way back.”

“But Croydon’s right on the way.”

Cess shook his head. “We have to go up to Gravesend and then back down to Dover and Folkestone first.”

“What?”
If Cess had lied about Portsmouth, he’d kill him. “Why?”

“We need to write down the names of all the roads and all the villages we go through,” Cess said.

“Why? Can’t Bracknell get those off the map?”

“Yes, but not the landmarks. And the distances have to be right, in case a member of the German High Command happened to spend a holiday hiking through Kent before the war.”

“The German High …? What exactly are we picking up?”

“A German prisoner of war,” Cess said. “We’re picking him up at his prison camp and driving him to London. He’s ill, and the Red Cross has arranged to have him sent home to Germany. But first we’re driving him to Dover through the staging area in Kent so he can see our invasion preparations firsthand.”

“A few rubber tanks, wooden planes, and a sewer-pipe oil refinery?
Those were meant to fool a reconnaissance plane from twenty thousand feet up, not a—”

“No, we’re going to show him the real thing,” Cess said, “ships, aeroplanes, everything. He’s only going to
think
he’s in Kent. That’s why we have to drive to Gravesend this afternoon. We’ve got to map out a false route so the colonel can accidentally overhear us talking about where we are.”

It was a clever plan. With signposts down all over England, the colonel would only have their word for where they were, and if they could convince him he was in Kent and he went home and told the German High Command, it could help convince them the Allied attack would come at Calais.

But it played hell with his plan to find Atherton. He could hardly ask a soldier where Denys was with the colonel listening. He’d have to get away from him and Cess.

“You said we’ll be gone two days,” he said. “Where are we spending the night? At an Army camp or in Portsmouth?”

“Neither. We’re bringing him straight to London.”

“But I thought you said we wouldn’t be back in time for Chasuble’s date?”

“
Chasuble
said that. He’s convinced something will go wrong and we’ll blow the gaffe,” Cess said. “No, we’re not to stop for anything, except to go to the loo. And we’re not to let the colonel out of our sight for a moment. Lady Bracknell wants both of us with him at all times.”

BY FIVE TILL TEN, THE GROUP HE WAS WAITING FOR STILL
hadn’t arrived at the museum, and it was pouring rain. The American couple had given up trying to set him up with their daughter and gone off to find “someplace dry” and have “a decent cup of coffee, if there
is
such a thing in this country, Calvin,” which was a blessing, but there was no sign of any other visitors.

What if they all went to the exhibit at St. Paul’s instead
? he thought.
Or what if this isn’t the right day? What if the exhibit doesn’t begin till tomorrow? Or began yesterday
?

At one minute till, an elderly museum guard appeared, unlocked the doors, and let him come inside the lobby to wait. “Today
is
the first day of the ‘Living Through the Blitz’ exhibition, isn’t it?” he asked the guard.

“Yes, sir.”

“And it’s a special Free Day for civilians who were involved in war work?”

“Yes, sir,” the guard said warily, as if he suspected him of attempting to pass himself off as one of those survivors. “You purchase your exhibition ticket over there.” He nodded stiffly toward the still-unoccupied ticket desk. “Admission to the museum and the permanent collections is free. The museum will be open shortly. Till then you’re welcome to go into the gift shop.” The guard pointed to where it stood just past the ticket desk.

“Thank you. I’ll just look round the lobby,” he said, pointing up at the high ceiling, where a Spitfire and a V-1 and a V-2 rocket all hung suspended. As soon as the guard had gone, he went back over to the window to see if anyone was coming.

No one was. He read the Upcoming Lecture and Events poster. “June 18—‘So Few: The Battle of Britain,’ ” it said. “June 29—‘Unsung Heroes of World War II. A slide presentation of civilians who gave their lives to win the war, from American bandleader Glenn Miller to decoding genius Dilly Knox and Shakespearean actor Sir Godfrey Kingsman.’ ”

The car park was still nearly deserted. He looked at the clock behind the ticket desk. Ten past.
They’re all at St. Paul’s
, he thought, and wondered if he should give up and go there, but it would take him at least half an hour to get there by tube, and in the process he might miss them both places. He decided to give it ten more minutes.

At a quarter past they all arrived at once. Two large vans pulled up and began disgorging a score of elderly women. They were too far away for him to be able to see their faces clearly, and as they started for the steps, they opened out umbrellas and ducked under them, so he couldn’t see them till they were nearly at the top of the steps.

And what if one of them was Merope? He hadn’t thought of that possibility till this moment, he’d been so intent on finding someone who’d known Polly, who would have a clue to where she’d gone after she left Mrs. Rickett’s.
If
she’d left Mrs. Rickett’s. If she and Merope hadn’t been killed as well that night.

But their names hadn’t been in the casualties lists, and even if they had, it wouldn’t necessarily mean anything.

They weren’t at Mrs. Rickett’s that morning
, he told himself, had been telling himself every single day since he’d stood in front of the gaping hole that had been the boardinghouse.
They were safely in a shelter, and after they were bombed out, they moved to another boardinghouse. Or, if Polly joined an ambulance crew, into quarters at her post, and one of these women here today will know where
.

His first impulse when he’d seen the wrack of timbers and plaster that had been Mrs. Rickett’s had been to stay there in 1941 and find them—correction, his
first
impulse had been to start digging through the rubble for Polly with his bare hands—but the bomb had hit days or possibly even weeks before, and every day he spent looking for them then was one he wouldn’t be able to come to again. And one of those days might be the day he had to pull her out because if he didn’t, she’d be killed.

And he knew too well from being at Notting Hill Gate, on Lampden Road, and in Oxford Street, that being in the same general temporal-spatial location wasn’t enough. He had to know exactly where she was before he went to get her.

And one of these women can tell me that. They’ll have been on the same ambulance crew as Polly or shared the same air-raid shelter or the same flat
.

But what if Merope walked through those museum doors? What if he hadn’t rescued Polly and her, and she was still here fifty years later?

If she is, there’s no way she’d come to something like this
, he told himself.
The war’s the last thing she’d want to be reminded of
. But he posted himself next to the doors so he could get a good look at each woman as she came in, bracing himself as they reached the top of the steps and paused to lower their umbrellas and shake the water out of them and he could see their faces for the first time.

The first ones through were all discussing the weather. “What a pity it had to rain today!” one of them said, and the other replied, “But it will be good for my roses. Poor things, they’ve been absolutely parched.”

He wondered if they were here for the exhibition after all. They were the correct age—in their seventies and eighties—and they were all dressed as for a special occasion in frocks and hats—including one enormous one with an entire herbaceous border on it. And one very elderly, very frail-looking lady was wearing white gloves.

But they looked as though they were going to a garden party, not a World War II reunion. And it was impossible to imagine them ever having done anything less genteel than pour tea, let alone put out incendiaries, dig bodies out of rubble, or man anti-aircraft guns.

This isn’t them
, he thought.
They’re all at St. Paul’s, and this is the Women’s Institute of Upper Matchings on their monthly outing
. He was about to turn away when the frail-looking one pointed a white-gloved finger up at the V-1 and said, “Oh, my God, look at that! It’s a doodlebug. One of those chased me all the way down Piccadilly.”

“I do hope it isn’t armed,” the woman who’d come in with her said, and then squealed, “Whitlaw!” and flung her arms around a grim-looking woman. “It’s me! Bridget Flannigan. We were in the same WAAF brigade!”

“Flanners! Oh, my God! I don’t believe it!” And the grim-looking woman broke into a broad smile.

They
were
clearly the women he was looking for, after all. But another van had arrived, and they were pouring into the lobby too quickly for him now, shaking out their umbrellas, shedding raincoats, talking excitedly.
He stood by the door till they were all inside and then made a circuit of the noisy lobby, scanning the faces of the ones he’d missed as they called to one another across the room and greeted each other with cries of delight, oblivious to him as he worked his way through the crowd, searching their faces, looking for Eileen.

He caught snatches of their conversations as he moved among them:

“No, she couldn’t come, poor dear. Her rheumatism, you know …”

“Are you still married to your American—what was his name? Jack?”

“Jack? Lord, no, I’ve had two husbands since then …”

“… were not, you were a dreadful driver. Remember that poor American admiral you ran over?”

“He wasn’t an admiral! He was only a commander, and he had no business looking the wrong way like that. If Americans drove on the proper side of the road, they’d
know
which way to look when they were crossing …”

“Ladies!” a large, florid-faced woman with iron-gray hair in front of the door to the museum shouted. “Ladies!” She was holding name badges and a sheet of gold stars. “Ladies! Attention please!” she cried, to no avail. The women were intent on locating old friends, finding familiar faces.

Like I am
, he thought, working his way past the name-badge woman and over to the corner where the four women he hadn’t got a close look at yet were passing around snapshots, he assumed of children and grandchildren. He pulled out his notebook and pretended to take notes on the V-1 and the Spitfire while he scanned their faces.

Don’t let any of them be Merope
, he prayed.

They were all huddled over the snapshots, their faces hidden, and it took several moments before they raised them again and he was able to see their faces.

Merope wasn’t here. That meant he hadn’t failed, at least not yet, that there was still time to find someone who could tell him where Polly was after March 1941, and he could find her and Merope and pull them both out. And this was the place to find that someone. These women had all done war work, and most of them would have been in London during the Blitz. One of them was bound to have known Polly.

Beginning with the group he’d just been watching. They’d finished looking at the snapshots and were discussing the war.

He edged nearer to hear what they were saying and to find a way to insinuate himself into the conversation. “Do you remember when we went to that dance at Biggin Hill?” the one who’d been passing around
the snapshots was asking the woman next to her. “And that RAF pilot—what was his name?”

“Flight Officer Boyd. I certainly do. He kept begging me to go out to see his plane,” she said, even though it was difficult to believe any man had ever begged her to go anywhere. She was a stout, washed-out-looking woman, and her face was a railway map of wrinkles. “And
I
said good girls didn’t go out alone in the dark with men they’d only just met, and
he
said there was a war on and we might both be dead by tomorrow—”