“The heel’s caught,” he said. “Can you pull your foot out of the shoe?”
No, she thought, twisting around to look at the stretcher. The rescue crew nearly had it to the opening. The explosion would come any moment. Hunter wouldn’t have time to make it out, even if he left her now.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
And he must have thought she was talking about the shoe because he said, “No matter. We’ll just have to get you out, shoe and all.” He reached his hand down through the ragged-edged plaster and fumbled with her foot. “I told you you’d get into trouble clambering about an incident in high heels, though all in all, it’s a very good thing you did.”
No, it isn’t, she thought bitterly. I got you all killed. She turned to take one last look at Sir Godfrey and the men carrying the stretcher, but they weren’t there.
“Where?” she said, and heard voices shouting, doors slamming, a motor starting up.
The ambulance, she thought. They’re transporting him to hospital.
The ambulance roared off, bells ringing. Which meant Sir Godfrey was still alive. And the rescue crew was still alive. The theater hadn’t gone up.
“They made it out,” she murmured, unable to take it in.
Hunter looked up briefly from struggling with her foot. “Good. He should be right as rain once they get him to hospital and get him stitched up. You should be proud. You saved his life.”
Like Mike saved Hardy’s life, she thought. And Eileen kept Alf and Binnie from going on the City of Benares.
“It was clever, you stopping up that hole with your clothes,” Hunter was saying. “If you hadn’t found him and known what to do, he’d have been for it.”
It’s true, she thought. If she hadn’t caught her heel and bent down to free it, she’d never have heard him calling. And if she hadn’t been wearing these shoes, her heel wouldn’t have caught.
“For want of a shoe,” she murmured, and had a sudden vision of Mike saying, “If I hadn’t come through when I did, I wouldn’t have missed the bus and been stuck in Saltram-on-Sea, I wouldn’t have fallen asleep on the Commander’s boat …”
And if I hadn’t gone to the Works Board to volunteer to be an ambulance driver, I wouldn’t have been assigned to ENSA, I wouldn’t have been performing at the Alhambra …
“Try to move your foot back and forth,” Hunter said. “That’s it.” He reached his arm down deeper. “Keep moving it. I’ve nearly got it free.”
She nodded absently, thinking, If Mrs. Sentry hadn’t seen me in A Christmas Carol, she wouldn’t have assigned me to ENSA.
But why, if the continuum was trying to repair itself, hadn’t it kept her from being here the way it had kept Mike from getting to Dover, the way it had kept her and Eileen and Mike from reaching Mr. Bartholomew the night of the twenty-ninth?
Mike pushed two firemen out of the way of a collapsing wall that night, Polly thought suddenly. And Eileen saved someone’s life, too. The man in the ambulance. And Binnie had been driving. Binnie, whom Eileen had nursed through pneumonia.
Why, if the past had sealed itself off to repair the damage Mike had caused, hadn’t it stopped Eileen from saving that bombing victim’s life? A hundred and sixty people had been killed the night of the twenty-ninth. It would have been easy to kill Mike and Eileen and her, too. Or to let them find John Bartholomew and go back to Oxford.
If they’d gone back, they wouldn’t have been here to further complicate things. She wouldn’t have been able to save Sir Godfrey, and Eileen wouldn’t have been able to save the man in the ambulance. And Eileen had had John Bartholomew in her sights. She’d run after him.
But Alf and Binnie had kept her from catching him. Alf and Binnie, whom Eileen had kept from going on the City of Benares.
“Got it,” Hunter said, and her heel, and foot, came abruptly loose.
She nearly fell. “Are you all right?” he asked, steadying her.
“Yes,” she said, righting herself and pulling her foot up out of the broken plaster, annoyed that he had interrupted her train of thought. What had she …? Alf and Binnie. They’d kept Eileen from catching John Bartholomew—
“Is your ankle injured?”
“No.” She set out across the wreckage again so he’d stop talking, so he wouldn’t break the fragile thread of thought she was following. If Alf and Binnie hadn’t kept Eileen from catching John Bartholomew …
They kept her from going back to Oxford the last day of her assignment, too, Polly thought, by getting the measles. If Alf hadn’t fallen ill, Eileen wouldn’t have been caught by the quarantine, and she wouldn’t have been there to take them back to London and keep the letter from Mrs. Hodbin. And if the net had sent Mike through on the right day, he would have been able to catch the bus to Dover, and he would never have ended up in Dunkirk, never have ended up saving Hardy.
And if the net had sent me through at six in the morning instead of the evening, I wouldn’t have been caught out during a raid and ended up at St. George’s. I wouldn’t have met Sir Godfrey.
But the slippage was supposed to prevent historians from altering events. It was supposed to—
“Wrong way,” Hunter said, taking her arm.
“What?”
“You can’t get out that way. It’s blocked. Through here,” he said, leading her over a fallen pillar and down a broken staircase. “That’s it, only a few more steps.”
“What did you say?” Polly asked him, pulling back against his hand on her arm, trying to make him stop.
“I said, ‘only a few more steps.’ We’re nearly there.”
“No, before that,” she said. “You said—”But they were down the stairs and out of the theater and he was handing her over to two FANYs.
“She needs to be taken to hospital,” Hunter said. “Possible internal injuries and exposure to gas. She’s a bit muddled.”
“Over here!” a man in a helmet called from across the street, and Hunter started toward him.
“Wait!” Polly called after him.
She had nearly had it, the knowledge which had been hovering just out of reach since he’d told her she’d saved Sir Godfrey’s life. “I need to speak to him,” she said to the FANYs, but he was already gone, she was already being wrapped in a blanket, being bundled into the back of an ambulance. “I need to ask him—”
“The man you saved has already been taken to hospital. You can speak to him there,” the FANY said, putting a mask over her nose and mouth. “Take a deep breath.”
“No,” Polly said, pushing it violently away, “not Sir Godfrey. Hunter, the man who brought me out.” But the doors were already shut, the ambulance was already moving. “Driver, you’ve got to go back. He said something when we were coming out of the theater. I must ask him what it was!”
“She’s confused,” the attendant called up to the driver. “It’s the effects of the gas.”
No, it’s not, Polly thought. It’s a clue.
He had said … something, and when she’d heard the words, they’d set up an echo of someone else, saying the same words … and for an instant it had all made sense—Alf and Binnie blocking Eileen’s way, and Mike unfouling the propeller, and the measles and the slippage and A Christmas Carol. If she could only remember …
Hunter had said, “You can’t get out that way. It’s blocked.” Like their drops. Hers had been bombed, and Mike’s had a gun emplacement on it, and Eileen’s had been fenced off and turned into a riflery range, blocking their way back. Like Alf and Binnie had blocked Eileen’s way, like the station guard had kept Polly from leaving Notting Hill Gate and going to the drop the night St. George’s was destroyed—
It has something to do with that night, Polly thought. The guard wouldn’t let me leave, and I went to Holborn—
“This won’t hurt,” the attendant said, clamping the oxygen mask down over her nose and mouth and holding it there. “It’s only oxygen. It will help clear your head.”
I don’t want it cleared,
Polly thought. Not till she remembered what he’d said, not until she’d worked it out. It was a puzzle, like one of Mike’s crosswords. It had something to do with Holborn and Mike’s bus and ENSA and her shoe.
No, not her shoe—the shoe the horse had lost. “For want of a horse, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the war …”
The ambulance jolted to a stop, and they were opening the doors, carrying her inside the hospital past a woman at a desk.
Like Agatha Christie that night at St. Bart’s, Polly thought, and for an instant she nearly had it. It was something to do with Agatha Christie. And that night she’d gone to Holborn. The sirens had gone early, and the guard wouldn’t let her go to the drop, and so she hadn’t been there when the parachute mine exploded, she had thought they were all dead and had staggered into Townsend Brothers, and Marjorie had seen her and decided to elope with her airman—
“Let’s get you out of those clothes,” the nurse said, and they were taking her bloody swimsuit off, putting her into a hospital gown and a bed, bombarding her with questions so that she couldn’t concentrate. She had to keep explaining that her name wasn’t Viola, it was Polly Sebastian, that she wasn’t a chorus girl at the Windmill, that she wasn’t injured.
“It’s not my blood,” she insisted. “It’s Sir Godfrey’s.”
She’d nearly forgotten about Sir Godfrey, she had been so fixed on remembering what Hunter had said, but if he’d died on the way to hospital, it didn’t matter. If she hadn’t saved his life …
“Is he here?” she asked. “Is he all right?”
“I’ll send someone to see,” the nurse promised, taking her pulse, pulling the blankets up over her. “This will help you to sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep,” Polly said, but it was too late. The needle was already in her arm.
“Marjorie,” she murmured, determined not to lose her train of thought. Marjorie had decided to elope with her airman, and so she’d been in Jermyn Street when it was hit, and so she’d …
But the sedative was already working, her thoughts already breaking up like fog into wisps of thought, already drifting from her grasp. She couldn’t remember what Marjorie … no, not Marjorie. Agatha Christie. And the measles and a horse and that night at Holborn. There hadn’t been anywhere to sit, so she’d stood in line at the canteen waiting for the escalators to stop, and Alf and Binnie had run by, had stolen the woman’s picnic basket. Alf and Binnie, who’d kept Eileen from going to St. Paul’s … no, that wasn’t Eileen, it was Mr. Dunworthy. They’d kept Mr. Dunworthy from going to St. Paul’s, and he’d collided with Alan Turing. No, Mike had collided with Alan Turing. Mr. Dunworthy had collided with Talbot, and her lipstick had rolled into the street, and Sir Godfrey …
Polly must have called out his name because the nurse hurried over. “He’s resting comfortably. Now try to sleep.”
I can’t, Polly thought groggily. I have to be there. “If you aren’t, there will be no one there to avert the inevitable disaster,” Hunter had said. No, that was Sir Godfrey, talking about Mrs. Wyvern and the pantomime. Hunter had said, “It was lucky you knew what to do.”
I learned it in Oxford, she thought, so I could pose as an ambulance driver and observe the V-1s and V-2s. But the Major sent us to Croydon to find John Bartholomew. No, not to Croydon, to St. Paul’s. But the streets were roped off because of the UXB, and I sneaked past the barrier and up the hill, but it was a cul-de-sac. I’d gone the wrong way—
Wrong way. That was what Hunter had said.
“Wrong way,” Polly murmured, and saw the ginger-haired librarian at Holborn holding an Agatha Christie paperback, heard her saying, “I’m convinced I know who the murderer is, and then, when I’m nearly to the end, I realize I’ve been looking at the entire situation the wrong way round, that something else entirely is going on.”
No, the librarian hadn’t said that, Eileen had, that day in Oxford. No, that wasn’t right either. But it didn’t matter. Because Polly had it—the idea she’d been pursuing all the way across the wrecked theater. And it all—Talbot and Marjorie and St. Paul’s and the measles and the stiff strap on her gilt shoe—fit together. It all made sense, and she knew it was vital to hold on to it, not to let it drift away, but it was impossible, the sedative was already closing in like fog, obliterating everything.
“Like the spell in Sleeping Beauty,” she tried to say, but she couldn’t. She was already asleep.
There just isn’t any way we’re gonna live through this thing.
—NAVIGATOR LIEUTENANT LOU BABER,
467TH BOMBARDMENT GROUP
Croydon—October 1944
“WE WEREN’T KILLED,” ERNEST TRIED TO SAY TO MR. JEPPERS. “The V-1 didn’t kill us.” But he couldn’t find the editor in the smoke. It billowed up blackly around him.
They must have hit the Arizona, he thought, coughing, trying to see out across the deck of the New Orleans.
But that couldn’t be right. I never got to Pearl Harbor, he thought. Dunworthy changed the order of my assignments. Oh, God, I’m still at Dunkirk. My foot …
But that wasn’t right either, because he was lying down. There hadn’t been room on the boat to lie down. He’d had to stand up, mashed against the rail the whole way. And the smoke was too thick for it to be Dunkirk.
He couldn’t see anything. It was completely dark. He must be belowdecks. He could see flames through the smoke and hear fire bells. They’re going to an incident, he thought, and remembered the V-1. I hope it didn’t damage the printing press. I’ve got to get that picture of St. Anselm’s in. And take a photo of this incident.
He looked around, trying to see if the name on the newspaper office was still there. If it was, Cess could crop off the word “Croydon,” and they could say it was the Cricklewood Clarion Call. But the fire wasn’t bright enough to light more than the few feet beyond him, and there were no landmarks there, only bricks and broken timbers shrouded by orangish dust. It hadn’t been smoke. It was plaster dust. That was why it was so choking, why he couldn’t stop coughing. He had to try several times before he managed to say, “Mr. Jeppers! I need a flashlight so I can look at your sign!”
Mr. Jeppers didn’t answer. He can’t hear me for the fire bells, Ernest thought. They got very loud and then stopped, and he could hear doors slamming, and voices.
Perhaps they had a flashlight. “Hullo!” he called to them, and stopped to cough. “Do you have a flashlight?”
But they must not have heard him because they were walking away from him. “No, over here!” he shouted—a mistake. It caused him to suck in a huge amount of plaster dust and choke.
“I thought I heard someone coughing,” one of the girls said, and he could hear the crack of wood and the slither of dirt as they came toward him. “Where are you?”
“Here,” he said. “Jeppers, it’s all right. Someone’s coming.”
“Where are you? Keep talking,” the second girl called after a moment, but he didn’t answer her. He was listening to her voice. It sounded somehow familiar.
“Here he is!” the first one shouted from what seemed like far away. He heard a scrabbling sound, and then, “I found him,” and he could tell from the tone of her voice that he was dead.
But I’m not, he thought. We survived the V-1—
“There’s another one here somewhere,” the second voice said, and something else—he couldn’t make out what. More scrabbling. “Over here!” she called, closer. Then she was there, bending over him. “Are you all right?”
He looked up at her, but the light from the fires wasn’t bright enough for him to see her face. All he caught was a glimpse of fair hair under the tin helmet. “You mustn’t worry,” she said. “We’ll get you out of here straightaway. Fairchild!” she called sharply. “Over here!” and moved down to his legs and began tossing aside bricks and pieces of wood. “I need a light!”
The girl she’d called Fairchild arrived. “Is he alive?” she asked, stooping down next to him, and the fir
e must have been growing brighter. He could see her face clearly. She looked very young. “How bad is he?”
“His foot—”
“That wasn’t the V-1,” he said. “It happened at Dunkirk.” But they didn’t hear him.
“I’ve tied a tourniquet. Go get the medical kit,” the first girl said to Fairchild. “And a stretcher. Is Croydon here yet?” she asked, and her voice sounded just like Polly’s.
“No,” Fairchild said. “Are you certain we should move him?”
“He’ll bleed to death if we don’t,” the girl who sounded like Polly said, and he could hear Fairchild run off across the rubble. “Telephone Croydon. And Woodside,” she called after her. “Tell them we need help.”
It can’t be Polly, he thought as she tried to free him. The deadline’s passed.
“You mustn’t worry, we’ll have you out of here in no time,” she said, bending so close he could see her face in the light of the fire, and it was Polly. He would know her anywhere.
No, oh, no, no. She was still here, and it was too late. Her deadline was already past. He hadn’t gotten her out. “I’m so sorry,” he croaked.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
But it was his fault. He hadn’t been able to find Denys Atherton, and none of his messages had got through to Oxford. If they had, she wouldn’t be here. “I am so sorry,” he tried to say, choking on dust, on despair. It had all been useless—all those personal ads and wedding announcements and letters to the editor. His messages hadn’t got through. No one had come. She’d still been here when her deadline arrived.
“I thought if I left, I could get you and Eileen out,” he said, looking up at her, but the fire must have burned out, he couldn’t see her face, though he knew she was still there. He could hear her scrabbling at the bricks and wood, pushing them off his chest, freeing his arm.
“I didn’t think you’d be here—”
“Don’t try to talk.” She crawled over him to reach his other arm.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he tried to say. “You were supposed to be in Dulwich.”