All Clear

But it was still better than the alternative. And her dying to stop Hitler from winning the war was no different from what tens of thousands of British soldiers and civilians had done, and they’d had no guarantee that they’d be successful either.

But at least they hadn’t had to worry about endangering everyone else in the foxhole or the shelter by their mere presence. “What about the others?” she asked him.

“The contemps we’ve interacted with?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Those factors that protected the continuum for so long—the ability to absorb and diminish and cancel out effects—may be factors in the correction as well.”

Translation: It might only have to kill a few of them.

“If we separate ourselves from them and don’t have any more contact, is there a chance that will keep them from being killed?” she asked him.

“I don’t know. Perhaps.” But there was not much hope in his voice. “It’s impossible to know how far the damage has spread and if alterations have already occurred that must be counteracted.”

Were Alf and Binnie supposed to have gone on the City of Benares and drowned? Or died along with their mother near Piccadilly Circus? And was Marjorie supposed to have died in the rubble and Private Hardy at Dunkirk and Stephen Lang on the way to London from Hendon Airfield? Or would Mrs. Hodbin have torn up the letter, Private Hardy have been picked up by another boat, the others have survived and gone on to do exactly what they did do? There was no possible way to tell.

But if we haven’t altered their lives already, Polly thought, then perhaps our staying away from them from now on can protect them from being caught within our deadly blast radius. Thank goodness we’re not at Mrs. Rickett’s anymore and not staying at Notting Hill Gate. And now that she was at ENSA, she had a perfect excuse for quitting Sir Godfrey’s troupe. She went and got the ration coupons and then the eggs and a quarter pound of beef, but no soup bone. The butcher hadn’t any. She had to settle for bouillon cubes.

She took them home, made Mr. Dunworthy a soft-boiled egg, and then set out again to fetch his things from a dreary, chill room in the only part of Carter Lane which hadn’t burned on the twenty-ninth. She’d intended to go tell Mr. Humphreys that she’d got Mr. Hobbe safely home, but now she didn’t dare risk it. He had been nothing but kind to her. He didn’t deserve …

She stopped short on the pavement. That was what Mr. Dunworthy had started to say last night when he’d refused to go to St. Bart’s, that the nurses had been very kind to him and that they didn’t deserve to die for it.

She debated giving a message for Mr. Humphreys to the volunteer at the desk, but she wasn’t even sure she had any business being in St. Paul’s. Yet she didn’t want Mr. Humphreys tracking Mr. Dunworthy down out of concern. She settled for giving a note addressed to Mr. Humphreys to a woman going inside and asking her to give it to the verger. And what if even that moment-long encounter was enough to require a correction? Or her conversation with Hattie when she went to the Alhambra that afternoon?

“Did you get that rescue job you wanted?” Hattie asked her when she arrived for rehearsal.

“No,” Polly said.

“Then you can rescue the second act. Here,” she said, handing her a bathing suit with a Union Jack emblazoned on it. “Cheer up. ENSA may not be as heroic as rescue work, but we keep up the soldiers’ spirits and make them forget their troubles for a few hours, don’t we? Singing and dancing can help win the war, too.”

Mr. Tabbitt put her in the show that very night, serving as assistant to a magician. She was very bad at it, but so was the magician, and the main interest of the audience, which consisted almost entirely of soldiers, seemed to be her abbreviated costume.

“Tits and tinsel,” Hattie said. “That’s our motto.”

“I thought it was ENSA: Every Night Sexy Acts,” one of the chorus girls said, flouncing past them in an even skimpier costume as they stood in the wings.

“That’s Joyce,” Hattie said. “Nice, but a bit too fond of the boys.”

A handsome young man dressed as an RAF pilot brushed past them.

“And that’s Reggie,” Hattie said. “Also a bit too fond of the boys. That’s one thing I like about ENSA. One never has to worry about being fondled. Except by Mutchins, our beloved stage manager. Watch out for him. He’s a menace.”

So am I, Polly thought. Like one of those fiendish delayed-action bombs set to go off when someone comes too near.

It took her two days to find the courage to tell Eileen. Polly remembered how sick she’d looked when she’d found out about Polly’s deadline, remembered her refusal to budge from the foot of the escalator when she found out Mike was dead, and was afraid the same thing would happen, but she took the news with an almost frightening calmness. “I knew it had to be bad when you brought him in,” she said. “He’s certain we lost the war?”