All Clear

“MR. DUNWORTHY,” POLLY BREATHED. SHE GRABBED FOR THE lamppost at the end of the steps of St. Paul’s, legs suddenly wobbly. Eileen had said he would come, and he had. And this was why she hadn’t been able to get a message to John Bartholomew, because she didn’t need to. Mr. Dunworthy had found them before they found him. It was only a spike in slippage, after all, and not some horrible catastrophe that had killed everyone in Oxford, and not their having changed the outcome of the war.

And not Mr. Dunworthy—and Colin—having lied to them.

Colin. If Mr. Dunworthy’s here. Colin may be, too, she thought, her heart lifting, and glanced at the people on either side of Mr. Dunworthy, but she couldn’t see him. Mr. Dunworthy was flanked by two elderly women who were staring raptly up at the dome.

“Mr. Dunworthy!” Polly called to him, shouting over the roar of the planes and anti-aircraft guns.

He turned, looking vaguely about to see where the voice was coming from.

“Over here, Mr. Dunworthy!” she shouted, and he looked directly at her.

It wasn’t him after all, even though the man looked exactly like him—his spectacles, his graying hair, his worried expression. But the face he turned to her showed no recognition, no relief at finding her. He looked stunned and then horrified, and she turned and glanced automatically behind her to see if the fire in Paternoster Row had reached St. Paul’s.

It hadn’t, though half the Row’s buildings were now ablaze. She looked back at the man, but he’d already turned and was working his way to the rear of the crowd, away from her, away from St. Paul’s.

“Mr. Dunworthy!” she called, not quite able to believe it wasn’t him, and ran across the forecourt after him. “Mr. Dunworthy!”

But as she followed, she became even more convinced she’d been mistaken. Mr. Dunworthy had never had that defeated stoop to his shoulders, that old man’s walk. The likeness of his features must have been a trick of the red, flickering light. And of her wishful thinking, like the times she’d thought she’d seen Colin.

But she had to be absolutely certain. “Mr. Dunworthy!” she called again, plowing through the crowd.

“Look!” a man shouted, and several hands shot up, pointing at the dome. “It’s falling!”

Polly glanced up. The fiery yellow star that was the incendiary wavered and began to slide down the dome and then tumbled off and disappeared into the maze of roofs below. The crowd erupted in cheers.

She turned back to Mr. Dunworthy, but in the moment it had taken her to glance at the incendiary, he’d vanished. She pushed her way through to the back of the crowd, which was already beginning to disperse, the people hurrying away from the cathedral as if they’d suddenly realized how close the fires were and how much danger they were in.

“Mr. Dunworthy! Stop! It’s me, Polly Sebastian!” she shouted. The guns and planes and even the wind had stopped for the moment, and her voice rang out clearly in the silence, but no one turned, no one slowed.

It wasn’t him, she thought, and I’ve been wasting valuable minutes I should have spent looking for John Bartholomew. He’ll be going back into the cathedral any moment.

She turned to look at St. Paul’s, but no one was going up the steps yet, and a knot of people were still gazing up at the dome.

“Have they put it out?” a boy shouted, and Polly looked up to see the silhouettes of two helmeted men at the dome’s base, bending over the incendiary, shoveling sand on it. More men were hurrying toward them with shovels and blankets.

The fire watch hadn’t been evacuated. Of course they hadn’t. They had to be there to put out the incendiary when it fell off. John Bartholomew had been up there on the roofs the entire time.

She had to get up there. She looked around to see where the chorister was. He stood at the foot of the steps—the women and the boy gathered around him as he gave directions to the shelter—blocking the way into the nave.

Polly kept the dispersing crowd between her and the chorister and crossed the courtyard, then walked quickly over to the churchyard and in through the door to the Crypt. She hurried down the steps, through the gate, and down the length of the Crypt, running at full tilt past the sandbags and Wellington’s tomb and the fire-watch’s cots, her footsteps echoing hollowly on the stone floor.

At the foot of the stairway she paused, panting, to risk a look back, but there was no sign of the chorister. She ran up the steps he’d brought her down and out onto the cathedral floor.

The nave was as bright as day, the gold of the dome and the arches shining richly in the orange light from the windows, the transepts and the pillars and the chairs in the center of the nave lit more brightly than they were in the daytime.

Good. It will make the door to the roofs easier to find, she thought.