All Clear (90 page)

“But if there won’t be any more damage, then why do you need to be in the fire watch, Mr. Dunworthy?” Eileen persisted.

“Because
I
may be the reason there wasn’t damage,” Mr. Dunworthy said, which didn’t help his case.

“No,” Eileen said firmly. “It’s too dangerous. The incendiaries and the roofs … You might fall.”

“None of the fire watch was injured or killed in 1941,” Mr. Dunworthy told her, and Polly wondered if that was a lie, if Mr. Dunworthy was hoping to die at St. Paul’s as well as work there.

“And being in the cathedral will give me opportunities to check the drop when no one’s around,” Mr. Dunworthy said, and Eileen eventually relented, though she insisted on walking him to and from the cathedral every night he was on duty.

“St. Paul’s may be safe,” she said, “but there’s still the journey there and back again. I have no intention of letting either of you get killed five minutes before the retrieval team arrives.”

“All right,” he agreed, and let her walk him there every night, except for the seventeenth, when he sent Eileen on an errand and had Polly accompany him instead so Eileen wouldn’t see the damage from the raids the night before.

“It left a huge crater in the middle of the floor,” he told Polly. “If Eileen sees it, I fear she’ll never let me go on working with the fire watch.”

“And she’ll see you can’t get to your drop,” Polly said, guessing the real reason.

“True, I can’t.”

When they reached St. Paul’s, Mr. Humphreys was delighted to see Polly. “Miss Sebastian, you must be an excellent nurse. Mr. Hobbe looks quite recovered.”

He insisted on showing them the north transept, or, rather, the mountain of plaster and splintered timbers and broken marble that blocked access to it. “Still, though, the damage could have been worse,” he said.

Far, far worse
, Polly thought, going to the Alhambra that night, thinking of Hitler unvanquished, unstoppable, marauding and murdering his way through England and the rest of the world. And the future.

But we stopped him
, she thought.
We won the war
.

“You look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” Tabbitt said. “Did you meet a handsome doctor in hospital?”

“You’re in awfully good spirits for someone who nearly bought it,” Hattie said.

The troupe noted her lightness of mood as well. “You’re too cheery by half,” Viv said when she went to the theater for the first pantomime rehearsal.

“It’s just that I’m so happy to see all of you,” she said. Sir Godfrey and Mrs. Wyvern had not only found another theater—the Regent—for them to stage the pantomime in but had managed to talk Mr. Tabbitt into shifting Polly to matinees for the duration and had bullied the entire troupe to be in the play.

Miss Laburnum was to be the narrator, Mrs. Brightford Sleeping Beauty’s mother and the Queen, and the rector the King and one-half of the Prince’s horse. Viv was the other half, Nelson was the prince’s dog, and Miss Hibbard was helping with costumes. “We’re happy to see you, too, my dear,” she said.

“And delighted to see you looking so well after your ordeal,” the rector added.

“It’s the spring weather,” Miss Laburnum said. “I find the coming of spring always lifts one spirits.”

“I say it’s a man,” Viv said.

“Well, whatever it is, it suits you,” Mrs. Brightford said. “You look positively radiant.”

But when she went backstage with Sir Godfrey, he said, “What is this fey mood which has come now upon you? Such moods are dangerous. Are you certain you’re fully recovered from your exertions on my behalf? Perhaps we should postpone the play.”

“No, better not,” she said and, when he looked up alertly, “I only meant the theater may not be available for an additional week. And ENSA may be sending me to the provinces in May.
Not
to Bristol,” she added hastily. “There’s no need to postpone. I’m all right.”

Which was true. She was only sorry she wouldn’t get to see Colin again, and anguished over what his failure to rescue her and Mr. Dunworthy would do to him.

It wasn’t your fault
, she wished she could tell him.
I know you would have come to rescue me if you could
.

Sir Godfrey was looking worriedly at her. “Simply because you’ve cheated Death once,” he said, “doesn’t mean he will not try again. I could not bear to lose you.”

“Only because you’d have to find another principal boy,” she said, smiling.

And she seemed to have allayed his fears because he became his old tyrannical directing self again, bellowing at everyone and shouting orders at Mr. Dorming, who’d been recruited into painting sets. Mrs. Brightford’s three little girls had been enlisted, too, and, by the time rehearsals began—and over Polly’s protests—Alf and Binnie.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Polly said when Mrs. Wyvern suggested it.

“It’s an
excellent
idea,” Mrs. Wyvern said. “The pantomime is being given to benefit the orphans of the East End. What could be better than having actual children from the East End in it? They can be in the christening scene.”

“We’re fairies,” Binnie told Mr. Dunworthy proudly.

“I ain’t,” Alf said. “
Girls
are fairies. I’m a goblin. And a bramblebush.
First
Bramblebush.”

“Liar,” Binnie said. “All the bramblebushes are the same. I’m goin’ to wear a beautiful glittery dress and wings.”

If Sir Godfrey doesn’t throttle you first
, Polly thought, which seemed highly likely. They teased Nelson, trod in paint, bounced on Sleeping Beauty’s bed, and hit each other with the fairies’ wands and the prop swords.

“Those swords were borrowed from the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre!” Sir Godfrey bellowed at them. “The next miscreant I catch with one will be strung up by his heels.”

Which had no effect on them at all. Polly had to talk Eileen into coming to rehearsals with her to keep them from destroying the theater, and Mrs. Wyvern promptly latched on to her and made her prompter.

“At least when the retrieval team comes, we’ll all be in one place,” Eileen said cheerfully.

She’d refused to give up hope, even though it was obvious by this time that no one had been able to get through. “The bombing of St. Paul’s must be a divergence point,” she said, “and the retrieval team can’t come through till it’s past.”

Nothing happened on the sixteenth or the seventeenth. On the eighteenth, Eileen said, “With us not in Oxford Street anymore and Mrs. Rickett’s house gone and the vicar not in Backbury, they’ve no way to find us. We need to go to Townsend Brothers and give them our new address. Do you think I should write to Lieutenant Heffernan at the training school at the manor?”

It doesn’t matter
, Polly thought.
If they were able to come, they’d have done it long before this. They know Mr. Dunworthy’s deadline is the first of May
. And the weather was supposed to be clear for the next three nights. Perfect bombing weather.

“I’ll write to the manor tonight when we get home,” Eileen said. “Perhaps they moved the shooting range, and we can go to Backbury and use my drop.”

It won’t open either
, Polly thought, and wished she could tell Eileen,
You mustn’t blame yourself that we weren’t able to get out in time. It’s not your fault
.

But Eileen would only say, “They’ll get us out. You’ll see. At this very moment, there are all sorts of things happening, all sorts of people working to rescue us,” and Polly didn’t think she could bear it. So instead, after Eileen left to walk Mr. Dunworthy to St. Paul’s, she wrote what she had wanted to say in a note and added a list of the dates, times, and locations of every V-1 and V-2 in her implant.

She copied it out in case the original was destroyed when she got killed and hid the copy in Eileen’s
Murder in the Calais Coach
. The original she sealed in an envelope addressed to Eileen, then sealed the envelope and the half-charred lithograph of
The Light of the World
in a second envelope, which she put in her coat pocket.

Nothing happened on the eighteenth either. On the nineteenth, Eileen said, “Tomorrow I want you to show me the drop in Hampstead Heath. If the sixteenth
was
a divergence point, it might be far enough outside London to not be affected.” She pulled on her coat. “I’ll meet you at the theater.
I need to walk Mr. Dunworthy to St. Paul’s—he’s on duty tonight. Tell Mrs. Wyvern I hid the magic wands and the bramblebush branches on top of the costume cupboard so the children can’t get at them.”

“Are Alf and Binnie going with you?”

“No,” Eileen said, but they set up such a clamor that she gave in and took them along.

Polly was relieved, even though it would make them late for rehearsal and bring Sir Godfrey’s wrath down on her. But so long as they were with Eileen, they’d be safe—or at any rate, safer than with her. And Mr. Dunworthy would be safe in St. Paul’s. The cathedral hadn’t been hit again after the sixteenth.

Which meant he would be killed on the way back from there, or at home. It seemed possible that she would be killed at the same time, but she hoped not. She would like to be able to do the pantomime for Sir Godfrey.

She loved doing it in spite of Sir Godfrey’s loathing of pantomime, perhaps because it was the last thing she would ever do. And inside the theater she forgot the days remorselessly ticking down, forgot the war and parting and death, and thought only of lines and costumes and attempting to keep Alf and Binnie from destroying everything they touched.

The two of them had managed not only to wreak havoc backstage every night since they joined the cast but to corrupt every other child in the pantomime. Especially Trot. After a week of being with the Hodbins, her hair ribbons were untied, her rosy cheeks were streaked and dirty, and when Polly arrived at the Regent, she was shouting, “I
ain’t
a dunderhead!” and whaling away at her sisters with her magic wand while Nelson barked wildly.

“I gave the wand to her,” an unhappy Miss Laburnum admitted, “so she could become used to using it, but perhaps that wasn’t a good idea.”

She had also given Mrs. Brightford (the Queen) her royal robes for the same reason and had forced Sir Godfrey (the Bad Fairy) to put on his Hitler-style mustache “in case it shows a tendency to fall off.”

“Madam, I have had over fifty years of experience putting on false mustaches with spirit gum! I have
never
had one
fall off
!” he was shouting, and didn’t even note Alf and Binnie’s absence.

Half an hour later, Polly saw them come in through the doorway at the back of the house. They were alone. “Where’s Eileen?” Polly called to them, squinting out across the footlights. “Didn’t she come back with you?”

“Hunh-unh,” Alf said, slouching down the center aisle.

“Why not?”

“She said she had to do something,” Binnie said, “and for us to come ’ere so we wouldn’t be late.”

“And not to follow ’er,” Alf put in.

“And did you?”

“
No
,” Alf said with his best outraged-innocence air.

“We tried,” Binnie said, “but she was too quick for us, so we come ’ere.”

She’s gone to my drop again
, Polly thought, wishing Eileen hadn’t. The sirens had gone while Polly was on her way here, and she could hear the drone of planes and the thud of distant bombs. Logic told her nothing could happen to Eileen, that she’d survived all the way to VE-Day, but she couldn’t help listening anxiously to the buzzing planes, trying to gauge whether they were over Kensington.

They seemed to be over the East End thus far. Polly went backstage, where Miss Laburnum gave her her principal-boy costume, belt, and scabbard, “so you can become used to wearing your sword.”

And when Polly protested that she needed to get onstage, she said, “There’s more than enough time. The fire-safety curtain’s stuck. They’ve been attempting to get it up for half an hour. Sir Godfrey’s absolutely livid.”

He was. When Polly came onstage in her doublet and hose, he was yelling at the rector—a scene made worse by the fact that Miss Laburnum had insisted Sir Godfrey try on his costume. In his Führer’s uniform and Hitler mustache, he looked positively dangerous.

“Vivien Leigh will be here at ten o’clock tonight to rehearse her scenes, and not only will they not be ready, but she will not even be able to get
onstage
!” he shouted. “Alf and Binnie had better not be behind this.”

“They only just got here,” Polly said, though that was hardly proof of their innocence. They could easily have booby-trapped the fire-safety curtain last night.

They’re a force for good
, she told herself.
They saved Captain Westbrook’s life. And Eileen’s. They won the war
. But she had difficulty persuading herself of it, particularly when she found them dueling backstage with her sword and one of Mr. Dorming’s wet paintbrushes.

The rector and Mr. Dorming finally got the fire-safety curtain to work, but when they tried to raise the painted scrim with the forest and the castle on it for the transformation scene,
it
stuck. “Perhaps we should send for a carpenter,” Miss Laburnum suggested timidly.

“And where exactly will we find one this time of night,
and
in the middle of a raid?” Sir Godfrey said, gesturing with his riding crop at the ceiling. “We might just as well send for the walrus!” His mustache quivered. “Or the March Hare, who would be entirely appropriate in this madhouse.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” he said to the cowering Miss Laburnum. “ ‘Go and catch a falling star! Get with child a mandrake root!’ ”

Miss Laburnum scurried off to find a carpenter, and Sir Godfrey turned to Polly. “I knew I should never have agreed to do pantomime, Viola.”

“I think we should’ve done
Rapunzel
,” Trot piped up. “It’s got a tower.”

Sir Godfrey, his Hitler mustache quivering, raised his riding crop threateningly.

“And a witch,” Trot said.

“Trot, go fetch the other children, there’s a good girl,” Polly said, shooing her out of Sir Godfrey’s reach. And to him, “We can do the prologue and most of the first act in front of the scrim, and then, when the carpenter comes, we can do the transformation scene.”