All Clear (99 page)

“I should have known it was him,” she said.

Colin shook his head. “He was doing his best to keep you from finding out. His one thought was rescuing you. And if you hadn’t gone, I couldn’t have got him out of there and back to Oxford.”

You were the person in the ambulance from Brixton
, Polly thought, looking at Colin. There was nothing of the impetuous, impossible boy she’d known in the man standing in front of her now, and nothing of the careless, charming Stephen Lang.

Colin sacrificed himself, too
, she thought despairingly. How much of his youth, how many years, had he given up to come and find her, to fetch her home?
I am so sorry. So sorry
.

“Michael insisted on telling me everything he knew about where you
were before he’d let me take him through to Oxford,” Colin said. “He was afraid once he got to hospital, he wouldn’t have the chance. He would have been so glad to know he got you out.” He smiled at her. “And if I’m going to do that, we’d better go.”

She nodded wearily. Colin helped Mr. Dunworthy get slowly to his feet, and they set off again, following the rose-colored river, guided by the drone of planes and the crump of bombs and the deadly, starry sparkle of incendiaries, till they came at last to Ludgate Hill. And there above them at the end of the street stood St. Paul’s, silver against the dark sky, the ruins all around it hidden by the darkness or transformed to enchanted gardens.

“It’s beautiful,” Colin breathed. “When I came here in the seventies, it was totally hidden by concrete buildings and car parks.”

“The seventies?”

“1976, actually,” he said. “The year they declassified the Fortitude South papers. I’d been here earlier—I mean, later—earlier
and
later—in the eighties. We couldn’t get anything before 1960 to open or anything after 1995, when we could have gone online, so I had to do it the hard way. I came here to search the newspaper archives and the war records for clues to what might have happened.”

Colin, who had wanted to go to the Crusades, spending—how long—in reading rooms and libraries and dusty newspaper morgues?

“And you found the engagement announcement,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“Yes. I also found your death notice. And Polly’s.”

“Mine?” Polly said. “But I checked the
Times
and the
Herald
. It wasn’t—”

“It was in the
Daily Express
. It said you’d been killed at St. George’s, Kensington.”

How must Colin have felt, reading that, all alone and eighty years from home? And how many years had he sat there in archives, hunched over volumes of yellowing newspapers, over a microfilm reader?

“But you didn’t stop looking,” Polly said.

“No. I refused to believe it.”

Like Eileen
, Polly thought.

“I had a bit more trouble hanging on to the belief that you were alive after Michael Davies told me you and Eileen were at Mrs. Rickett’s, and it turned out it had been bombed.” He smiled at her.

“But you didn’t stop looking.”

“No, and you weren’t dead. And neither was Mr. Dunworthy. At least
for the moment. But the sooner I get you both back to Oxford, the better I’ll feel. Let’s go,” he said, and hurried them toward St. Paul’s.

Halfway there Mr. Dunworthy stopped and stood there on the pavement, his head down.

Oh, no
, Polly thought.
Not now, not this close
. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I ran into her here,” Mr. Dunworthy said, pointing down at the pavement. “The Wren.”

“Lieutenant Wendy Armitage,” Colin said. “Currently working at Bletchley Park. One of Dilly’s girls. She helped crack Ultra’s naval code. Come along. It’s nearly midnight.”

They hurried on up the hill. “We need to go in the north door,” Colin said, and started across the courtyard.

Mr. Dunworthy pulled him back. “The watch’ll see you. They’re still up on the roofs. This way,” he whispered, and led the way around the perimeter of the courtyard, keeping to the shadows, till they were even with the porch.

“We still have to cross that open space,” Colin whispered, pointing to the thirty feet between them and the steps.

“We wait for the next bomber,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “They’ll look up at the sky, and we can make a dash for it. Here comes a bomber.” And he was right, Colin and Polly both instinctively looked up at the drone of its engines.

“Now,” Mr. Dunworthy said, his voice scarcely audible above the Dornier’s roar, and started off across the open space.

Colin grabbed Polly’s hand, and they shot across it after him and up the steps, past the star-shaped burn mark where the incendiary had been, past the place where she and Mike and Eileen had sat on the morning of the thirtieth, up to the porch she had darted across that first day when the rescue squad was defusing the UXB, and under the porch’s concealing shadows to the north door. He pulled the heavy handle.

It wouldn’t open. “It’s locked,” Colin said. “What about the Great West Door?”

“It’s only open on important occasions,” Mr. Dunworthy said, as if this wasn’t the most important occasion of his life.

“The side door to the Crypt should be unlocked,” Colin said, and started back toward the steps.

“No, wait,” Polly said. “Some of the fire watch may be down there. We need to try the south door first.” She ran lightly along the porch and yanked on the handle. It wouldn’t open either. But it was only stuck, as it
had been on the night of the twenty-ninth. When Colin gripped the handle, too, the door opened easily. “Mr. Dunworthy,” he whispered, beckoning, and pushed him and then Polly through into the dark vestibule.

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.