Blackout (76 page)

“It wasn’t.”

“How the hell do you know?”

Because I was there the day we won it
, she thought. But telling him that meant telling him she had a deadline, and he was still reeling from finding out about the drops and the retrieval teams. “Because the laws of time travel say it’s not possible,” she said. “And historians have been traveling to the past for nearly forty years. If we were altering events, we’d have seen the effects long before now.” She put her hand on his arm. “And the men you saved were British soldiers, not German pilots. They couldn’t have affected Padgett’s bombing.”

“You don’t know that,” he said angrily. “It’s a chaotic system. Every action’s connected to every other action.”

“But they don’t always have an effect,” she said, thinking of her last assignment. “Sometimes you do things that you think will alter the course of events, but in the end they don’t. And you said yourself there should be discrepancies, and there haven’t been.”

“You’re certain? There hasn’t been any event that was supposed to have happened that didn’t? Or that happened earlier or later than it was supposed to?”

“No,” she said, and thought suddenly of the UXB at St. Paul’s. Mr. Dunworthy had said it had taken the bomb squad three days to remove it, which would have been on Saturday, not Sunday. But Mr. Dunworthy could have made a mistake about the date, or there could have been an error in the newspaper reports.

“No, none at all,” she said. “And even in a chaotic system there must be connections. The butterfly flapping its wings can only cause a monsoon because both involve air movement. The lines of connection between your soldiers and the number of casualties in Padgett’s simply aren’t there. And besides, five hundred and twenty British soldiers not dead and not in prisoner-of-war camps would
help
the war effort, not hurt it.”

“Not necessarily. In chaotic systems, positive actions can cause bad results as well as good, and you know as well as I do that the war had
divergence points where any action, good
or
bad, would have changed the entire picture.”

I’m going to have to tell him about VE-Day, even if it does mean his finding out about my deadline
, she thought.
It’s the only way to convince him
. But once he found out she had a deadline, he’d—

“Polly! Mike!” Eileen’s voice called, sounding frantic, and they hurried back around the corner. “I came to tell you—”

“What is it?” Mike said. “Have they found bodies?”

“No, and everyone except Miss Miles and Miss Rainsford have been accounted for.”

“What about the guard at the staff entrance?” he asked.

“He’s here. He was the one who told them he thought I was in the building. He thought you might have been, too, Polly, but I told him that as soon as you got to fourth you realized I’d gone and left. The bomb apparently hit just after we got out.”

And if we hadn’t been able to get the lift door open
, Polly thought,
or if we’d run into the guard on the way down—
She looked anxiously at Eileen, wondering if she was thinking the same thing.

Eileen was shivering, though that could be due to her thin blouse and the damp, chill air.
We should have done that looting we were accused of and stolen that coat off the mannequin
.

“You’re sure
everybody’s
been accounted for? Even the charwomen?” Mike demanded, his voice rising the way Eileen’s had in the tube station.
He’s just as near the edge as she is
, Polly thought.
He’s in no shape to hear more bad news
. “Yes, everyone,” Eileen said, “but that isn’t what I came to tell you. It was two words.”

“What
was?” Mike asked impatiently.

“The name of the place Gerald was going. It was two words. I was speaking to Miss Varden about Miss Miles, and she said she lived in Tegley Place, and when she said it, I thought,
The airfield Gerald told me he was going to was a two-word name.”

“Middle Wallop?” Polly said.

Eileen shook her head.

“West Malling?”

“No. I’m positive one of the words began with a T. Or a P—” She stopped, looking past Polly. “Oh, thank goodness, it’s Miss Miles!” She ran to meet the young woman coming across the street.

“What happened?” Miss Miles said, staring at the scattered mannequins.

“Padgett’s was bombed last night—” Eileen began, but Mike cut in, “Was Miss Rainsford still in the building when you left last night?”

“No,” Miss Miles said, still staring blindly at the sprawled bodies.

“No, you don’t know? Or no, she wasn’t in the building?” Mike shouted, and Eileen turned to look at him incredulously, but his anger had roused Miss Miles from her trance.

She turned from staring at the mannequins and said, “She wasn’t here yesterday. Her brother was killed the night before last.”

“You’d best tell Mr. Fetters that,” Eileen said, and to Mike and Polly, “I’ll be back straightaway,” and led Miss Miles off toward the others.

“Well?” Mike said before the two girls were even out of earshot. “You heard her. Everybody’s been accounted for. Which means there weren’t any fatalities.”

“It doesn’t mean that at all,” Polly said. “They could have been passersby. On my way to Padgett’s I saw a woman and her little boy insisting the doorman get them a taxi. They might still have been waiting for it when the bomb hit,” she said, though if that were the case, their bodies would have been blown out onto the pavement like the mannequins. “No one knew
we
were in Padgett’s. There might have been other people who—”

“Or the continuum might have been altered,” Mike said, looking like he was going to be sick, “and we’re going to lose the war. And don’t tell me it’s impossible.”

It
is
impossible
, she thought, but she said, “If England lost the war, then Ira Feldman’s parents would have died in Auschwitz or Buchenwald, and he’d never have invented time travel, and Oxford would never have built the net, and we couldn’t have come through.”

“You’re forgetting something,” he said bitterly.

“What?”

“We came through the net before I saved Hardy.”

And I was at VE-Day before he saved Hardy
, she thought,
but—

“Why else would there be a discrepancy?” he said.

“You don’t
know
that it’s a discrepancy. You don’t know you saved Hardy, either.”

“What do you mean? I told you—”

“Perhaps it wasn’t your light he saw. Perhaps it was a light from some other boat, or a reflection off the water. Or a flare.”

“A flare,” he said, and some of the color came back into his face. “I hadn’t thought of that. There
were
flares.”

“In any case, we can’t know anything for sure till we’ve found Gerald and seen whether his drop is working.”

“Or yours is,” he said.

Now was no time to tell him of her multiple trips to the drop. “I’ll take you there tonight after work,” she said. “I think right now you should go with Eileen to Stepney. She’s had too many shocks to deal with to go by herself,” and before he could object, called “Eileen!” and walked briskly over to where she stood talking to Miss Miles. Eileen’s teeth were chattering, and she was hugging her arms tightly to herself. “Here, take my coat,” Polly said, unbuttoning it.

“But—”

“I won’t need it. I’m going to Mrs. Rickett’s to see about your moving in with me, so I can get my suit jacket.” She put the coat on Eileen. “I’ll see you when you return from Stepney. Come to Townsend Brothers, and we’ll plan our next move.”

Now she was the one shivering in the chill predawn air. “I’d best go if I’m to get to Mrs. Rickett’s and back in time for work. I’ll see you in a bit. I’m on third,” she reminded her. “The stockings counter. Take care,” and hurried off toward the tube station.

The train to Notting Hill Gate was empty, and she was grateful. She needed time to think what to do. If she told Mike why she was positive they’d won the war, it would stop him worrying about having altered events.

But she’d have to tell him all of it. Saying she’d been at VE-Day wouldn’t convince him. He’d just say the continuum hadn’t changed till later, after he’d rescued Hardy. She’d have to tell him why that wasn’t true. And both of them had had as many shocks as they could take for one night.

Eileen had already broken down once, and when the knowledge of how narrowly she’d escaped death in Padgett’s sank in, she might give way altogether.

And Mike, for all his Admirable Crichton–like taking charge, was in worse shape than Eileen. He’d obviously been brooding for weeks over the possibility of having lost the war. Telling him about VE-Day might send him right over the edge.

But so could thinking he’d caused the nightmare the world would have become if Hitler and his monstrous Third Reich had won—concentration camps and gas chambers and ovens and who knew what other horrors. Hitler had planned to set up a gallows outside the Houses
of Parliament and execute Churchill and the King and Queen. And Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, aged fourteen and ten.

I’m going to have to tell him
, she thought.
I’ll do it as soon as he and Eileen get back from Stepney
, and the train immediately jerked and slowed.

Are we coming into the station?
she wondered, peering forward out the window, but she couldn’t see anything. The train ground to a halt and sat there. And sat there.

What was causing the delay? A bomb on the line like the one on Miss Laburnum’s train from Croxley, or a tunnel collapse? Or a simple mechanical problem? There was no way to tell, any more than the three of them could tell if their drops’ failure was due to a catastrophe in Oxford or Mike’s having rescued a soldier at Dunkirk. Or only something minor, like slippage or their retrieval teams having difficulty finding them.

The train started up, gathered speed, racketed along for perhaps a minute, and halted again.
I’ll never get out of here
, she thought and smiled bitterly. Mike had already convinced himself that he was responsible for all this. What if she told him and he still didn’t believe her? What if it only made matters worse? And what if he told Eileen? Surely there was some other way to convince him he couldn’t have altered events besides telling him about VE-Day.

But by the time the train reached Notting Hill Gate three quarters of an hour later, she hadn’t thought of one. She walked quickly along the tunnel and onto the escalator, glancing at her watch. Half past eight. She scarcely had time to get to Mrs. Rickett’s and back, let alone go see Mrs. Wyvern about coats. She hurried over to the turnstile.

“Finally bringing the curtain down, are they?” the guard asked as she started through.

“What? Is the troupe still down there rehearsing?”

He nodded.

“Thank
you,” she said fervently and ran back down to the District Line. With luck, Mrs. Rickett
and
Mrs. Wyvern would both be there, but when she reached the platform, she couldn’t see either of them. The rest of the troupe was still doing a scene. “No, no,
no,”
Sir Godfrey was saying to Lila. “Not like that. You need to sound more cheerful.”

“Cheerful?
” Lila said. “I thought you said we were supposed to play this scene like we didn’t know what was going to happen to us.”

“I did,” Sir Godfrey said, “but that is no reason to convince the audience you will all be dead by the final curtain. This is a comedy, not a tragedy.”

That remains to be seen
, Polly thought.

“Miss Laburnum,” Sir Godfrey said. “Kindly give Lady Agatha her cue.”

“‘Here comes Ernest,’” Miss Laburnum read from the script and caught sight of Polly. “Miss
Sebastian,”
she said, hurrying over. “Did you find her?”

For a moment Polly had no idea what she was talking about—so much had happened since she’d seen Miss Laburnum at Oxford Circus—and then remembered she’d told her she had to deliver a message to Marjorie’s landlady. “Yes, I mean… no,” she stammered. It obviously couldn’t have taken her all night to deliver a message. “Something happened. Has Mrs. Rickett gone home?”

“Yes, she went ahead to cook breakfast.”

“Breakfast,” Mr. Dorming snorted. “Is that what you call it?”

“Miss Laburnum, do you know if she has any rooms to let?” Polly asked.

“Lady Mary, here at last!” Sir Godfrey said, his voice rich with sarcasm. “May I remind you that this is
The Admirable Crichton
, not
Mary Rose
, and that, consequently, vanishing for long periods of time and then reappearing is not—” His face changed. “Something’s happened. What is it, Viola?”

She couldn’t say “Nothing.” He wouldn’t believe her. And she’d have to tell the troupe something to account for Eileen’s moving in with her.

“She was delivering a message for a friend in hospital,” Miss Laburnum was whispering to Sir Godfrey. “I’m afraid something may have happened to her friend.”

“No,” Polly said. “It isn’t Marjorie. It’s Padgett’s. It was bombed last night.”

“Padgett’s?” Miss Laburnum said. “The department store?” And the others instantly gathered round, asking questions: “When?” “How badly?” “You weren’t injured, were you?”

“But I thought you worked at Townsend Brothers,” Lila said.

“I do, but my cousin works—worked at Padgett’s, and she and I were to meet there after work—”

“Oh, my
dear,”
Miss Laburnum said. “I do hope she wasn’t—”

“No, she’s all right, but the store was bombed just after closing, and we’d only just left—” Which hopefully accounted for the fear Sir Godfrey had seen in her face. “It was completely destroyed.”

More questions. Was it incendiaries or an HE? How big an HE? Were there any casualties?

Polly answered them the best she could, keenly aware of how much time this was taking and of Sir Godfrey’s searching look. She spent a full quarter of an hour assuring them she was all right before they began to gather up their things.

Polly looked at her watch, trying to decide if she had enough time to get to Mrs. Rickett’s and back.