All Clear (88 page)

Alf nodded. “We was scared she was dead.”

“We was orphaned before, you see,” Binnie said, sniffling.

Alf patted his sister kindly. “We ain’t got nobody to take care of us ’cept Aunt Eileen and Aunt Polly.”

“I’m sorry if they attempted to come up to the ward to see me,” Polly said. “They meant well—”

“Attempted to come up to the
ward
?” the matron said. “They’ve turned this entire hospital upside down. They’ve been racketing through the corridors, terrorizing patients, wreaking—”

“We was only trying to catch Alf’s snake,” Binnie said, “ ’afore it frightened anyone.”

“Snake?”
the matron said. “You two let a snake loose in hospital?”

“Course not,” Binnie said, her eyes wide and innocent. “ ’E got away on ’is own, didn’t ’e?”

“But don’t worry, we caught ’im,” Alf said, pulling a snake out of his pocket and dangling it in front of the matron.

The matron blanched. “I want these two children
—and
their reptile—out of this hospital
immediately.
”

“Yes, Matron,” Eileen said, and hustled the children out.

“I’m afraid they’ll only come back,” Polly said. “They’re very much attached to me.” And within a quarter of an hour she was pronounced fully recovered, discharged, and allowed to telephone someone—but not Eileen—to bring her her clothes and handbag.

Polly rang up Hattie and spent the time till Hattie got there from the Alhambra thinking of everything that had happened, trying to fit it into the puzzle.

Because she’d driven Stephen, Paige Fairchild had gone with her to Croydon and had stopped the car to confront Polly. If she hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been there when the V-1 hit, they wouldn’t have found the man with the severed foot. Had she saved his life, too?

I hope so
, Polly thought, remembering how he’d clutched her hand, how he’d told her he was sorry.

Just as I told Sir Godfrey I was sorry for getting him killed
. But the man at Croydon hadn’t got either of them killed. It was just the opposite. If Paige hadn’t been bringing the medical kit, she’d have been in the ambulance when the V-2 hit and been killed. So why had he said he was sorry—?

“Oh, thank goodness you’re all right!” Hattie said, bursting into the ward. “I was so afraid—I kept telling the incident officer Reggie’d seen you run into the Phoenix, but it took me an
age
to convince him.” She handed Polly her clothes. “Tabbitt says you’re not to come in tonight or tomorrow night.”

Good
, Polly thought.
That will give me time to go to St. Bart’s
. But when she arrived home, Eileen wouldn’t hear of it. “You’re going to bed,” she said. “You’ve only just got out of hospital, I’ll go. What is it you want me to find out?”

“The names of the people you took to St. Bart’s on the night of the twenty-ninth, especially the officer you kept from bleeding to death. And any information you can find out about them and about what happened to them after they got out of hospital, if they did get out of hospital.”

“You think I did something to lose the war, don’t you?” Eileen said, anguished.

“No,” Polly said, “I think you may have done just the opposite, but I need proof. Where are Alf and Binnie?”

“At school.”

“What about Mr. Dunworthy?”

“He’s sleeping, finally, and you’re not to wake him. He’s been so worried.”

“But there’s something I must ask him.”

“You can do it after I come back,” Eileen said firmly, and made Polly get into bed.

“Wait, before you go, you said Alf did the navigating that night. How did he know the streets?”

“From his planespotting,” she said. “He pored over his maps of England and London for hours.”

“Where did he get them? Did you give them to him?”

“No, the vicar did. During the quarantine. Alf was driving me mad, and I asked Mr. Goode to
please
send over something to keep him occupied.”

And if Eileen hadn’t been there, none of it would have been able to happen. Alf wouldn’t have known the streets, and Binnie wouldn’t have known how to drive, wouldn’t even have been alive. It all fit perfectly, as if it had been planned: Steps for Saving a Bombing Victim During an Air Raid.

“You’re to rest till I get back,” Eileen said.

Polly promised, and Eileen left. Polly waited five minutes, in case she came back to check on her, and then dressed and went to Alf and Binnie’s school and told the headmistress she needed to take them home. “It’s an emergency,” she said, which was true.

The headmistress sent a student to fetch them.

“Where’s Eileen?” Binnie asked when she saw Polly.

“At St. Bart’s,” Polly said, and Binnie went ashen.

“She’s dead, ain’t she?” Alf said hoarsely.

“No,” Polly said. “She’s perfectly fine. I sent her there to find out something for me.”

“You swear?”

“I swear,” Polly said, and Binnie’s color began to come back.

“Then what are you doin’ ’ere?” Alf asked.

“I came to take you out for a sweet to thank you for helping me at the hospital.”

“What sort of sweet?” Alf asked suspiciously.

She hadn’t thought that far, but the Hodbins knew exactly where to
go. Polly bought them both ices and then asked, “This autumn did you ever go to St. Paul’s Station?”

Binnie, her mouth full, began to say no, but Alf was already blurting out, “That guard was lyin’. We didn’t do nothin.’ ’E
give
me that shilling. For tellin’ ’im what station it was, and then the guard come along and said we picked ’is pocket, but we never. ’E ain’t gonna put us in jail, is ’e?”

“I don’t know,” Polly said consideringly. “If the guard says you did … Do you remember what the gentleman looked like who gave you the shilling? Perhaps if we could find him, he’d be willing to speak to the police—”

“It weren’t no gent,” Alf said. “ ’E was a boy.”

“How old?”

Alf shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Older ’n us,” Binnie said. “Maybe seventeen.”

“And where were you when he gave you the shilling?”

“By the map,” Binnie said. “ ’E was standin’ there, and we come up to look at it. There ain’t no law says we can’t look at a map, is there? ’Ow else do you find out which line to take?”

“And then what happened?”

“The guard come up,” Binnie said, sounding outraged, “and told ’im ’e’d better check ’is money and papers.”

“We didn’t do
nothin’
,” Alf said.

Except delay him in the tunnel for a critical few minutes. If it was him.

Binnie was frowning at her thoughtfully.

I need to change the subject before she puzzles it out
, Polly thought. “It was very clever of you to think of the snake at the hospital, Binnie,” she said.

“It was
my
idea,” Alf said, offended.

“It was
not
, you slowcoach.”

“Well, it was my
snake
. D’you want to see ’im?” He reached for his pocket.

“No,” Polly said, bought them both a lollipop, delivered them back to the headmistress, and hurried home. Eileen wasn’t there yet, and Mr. Dunworthy’s door was still shut. Polly rapped gently on it and went in.

Mr. Dunworthy wasn’t in bed. He was sitting by the window, looking out, and she was struck all over again by how weary and defeated he seemed. “Mr. Dunworthy,” she said gently.

“Polly!” he cried and held out his hands to her. “Last night when you didn’t come home, I was afraid—”

He stopped and gave her a searching look. “What is it? Has something happened to Eileen?”

“No,” Polly said. She pulled a stool over in front of his chair and sat down facing him. “I need to ask you some questions. Mike said the night of the twenty-ninth, Mr. Bartholomew saved the life of the firewatcher who was injured. Is that right?”

“You think he contributed to what’s happened, too?”

“Yes, but not in the way you think.
Did
he? Save his life?”

“I don’t know. He said Langby had fallen on an incendiary and was badly burned. He might have.”

“I thought so,” Polly said. “Now, I need you to tell me exactly what happened that first time you came through to the Blitz, when you collided with the Wren. You came through into the emergency staircase and went out into the station—”

“Yes, to ascertain my temporal-spatial location, and when I found I was near St. Paul’s, I ran up to see—”

“No, before that. In the station.”

“I went to look at the Underground map, but there was nothing on it to indicate where I was, so I asked two children who’d come over, and the boy—it was a boy and a girl—said they’d only tell me if I paid them.”

Of course
, Polly thought.

“So I gave them a shilling,” Mr. Dunworthy went on, “and they told me I was at St. Paul’s. And then a station guard came up and asked if they were giving me trouble and told me to check to make certain they hadn’t picked my pocket. And then he hauled them off, I think, or they ran off—I can’t remember. It was so long ago.”

“Do you remember what they looked like?”

“No, aside from their being extremely grubby.” He squinted, attempting to call up a picture. “The boy might have been seven and the girl—”

He stopped and looked at Polly. “You believe it was Alf and Binnie, don’t you?”

“No, I know it was. They told me,” she said, and at Mr. Dunworthy’s doubtful look, “You forget, it only happened seven months ago as far as they’re concerned, not fifty years. They don’t know it was you they ran into, though. How long did you stand there, speaking to them and the guard?”

“Five minutes, perhaps. Not long.”

“But long enough that if they’d told you straight out where you were instead of trying to get money out of you, you wouldn’t have collided
with the Wren.” She leaned forward. “On the night we were looking for John Bartholomew, Eileen saw him and ran after him, but she wasn’t able to catch him because Alf and Binnie jumped in front of her. And they were what kept her from going back to Oxford on the last day of her assignment.”

“I don’t understand. You think Alf and Binnie are somehow responsible for that, and for what I did? That it’s their fault and not mine? But if I hadn’t come through, if I hadn’t decided to go see St. Paul’s, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Exactly,” Polly said. “Listen. Because they kept Eileen from going back through to Oxford, she was there to save their lives at least once and possibly more than that.” She told him about the measles and the
City of Benares
.

“And they repaid her by keeping her from catching John Bartholomew?”

“Yes,” Polly said eagerly. “And because they delayed her, when she did go after him she was waylaid by a fire captain and forced into driving a bombing victim to St. Bart’s. She saved that bombing victim’s life, and Mike saved Hardy’s life, and last night I saved Sir Godfrey’s.”

“And you think those people went on to do something important in the war?” Mr. Dunworthy asked. “What?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps someone went to see the pantomime Sir Godfrey’s going to put on, and their house was bombed while they were at the theater. Or your Wren’s RAF plotting saved some pilot’s life, and he went on to do bombing runs over Berlin. Or the naval officer who stopped to help your Wren torpedoed a U-boat or captured the Enigma codebooks or sank the
Bismarck
. Or one of them affected someone else who did something. We know Hardy brought back five hundred and nineteen soldiers from Dunkirk. And those soldiers could each have—”

“And you think this is all part of some grand plan?”

“Yes. No. Not a plan, but … the thing is, it wasn’t an accident that I was performing at the Alhambra, and it wasn’t an accident that Sir Godfrey was at the Phoenix.” She told him about her shoe and ENSA and Mrs. Sentry at the Works Board seeing her in
A Christmas Carol
and what Sir Godfrey had told her about his decision not to join the touring company and go to Bristol.

“I was able to save his life because I was here, because none of our drops would open. I think we may have been wrong about why they’re not opening, and about the slippage. What if it’s not to prevent us from
altering the course of history? What if it’s to put us where we can? To keep us here until we do?”

She reached forward and took his hands in hers. “What if by colliding with the Wren, you saved her life instead of causing her death? What if she was on the way to meet the Wren who was killed, and because you delayed her, she wasn’t there when the bomb hit? Or what if you saved the life of the naval officer? Or the man in the black suit? Was he going toward St. Paul’s or coming from it?”

“Toward St. Paul’s.”

“Then he might have been a member of the fire watch going on duty, and on the twenty-ninth he found one of the incendiaries and put it out, and if you hadn’t run into him, St. Paul’s would have burned down. And Alf and Binnie were what made you run into him.”

“But—”

“Mike saved Private Hardy’s life because the slippage caused him to arrive in Saltram-on-Sea too late for the bus. And I met Sir Godfrey because the net sent me through in the evening instead of the morning.” She told him about being caught by the warden and taken to St. George’s. “And because of the slippage that first time you came through, you ended up at St. Paul’s Station. Where you needed to be to run into the Wren.”

“So you’re saying slippage’s function is to
bring about
alterations, not prevent them? That it kept us here intentionally?”

“I know what you’re going to say, that a chaotic system isn’t a conscious entity—”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to say.”

“But it wouldn’t have to be. You thought the shutting of our drops was a defense mechanism. Perhaps it is, only not to shut off interference from the future, but to enlist it when the continuum’s threatened. If Hitler’d won the war, he’d have had time to develop the atomic bomb, and he wouldn’t have hesitated to use it against the United States and all the other non-Aryan peoples. He already had a plan in place for wiping out Africa’s ‘mud people,’ and he wouldn’t have stopped there. He could have ended by wiping out—”

“Everything,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “
Götterdämmerung
, the twilight of the gods. But if that’s the case, and the continuum wanted to protect itself, why didn’t it simply let us come through and shoot Hitler?”