All Clear

“Thank you. I’ll just look round the lobby,” he said, pointing up at the high ceiling, where a Spitfire and a V-1 and a V-2 rocket all hung suspended. As soon as the guard had gone, he went back over to the window to see if anyone was coming.

No one was. He read the Upcoming Lecture and Events poster. “June 18—‘So Few: The Battle of Britain,’ ” it said. “June 29—‘Unsung Heroes of World War II.

A slide presentation of civilians who gave their lives to win the war, from American bandleader Glenn Miller to decoding genius Dilly Knox and Shakespearean actor Sir Godfrey Kingsman.’ ”

The car park was still nearly deserted. He looked at the clock behind the ticket desk. Ten past. They’re all at St. Paul’s, he thought, and wondered if he should give up and go there, but it would take him at least half an hour to get there by tube, and in the process he might miss them both places. He decided to give it ten more minutes.

At a quarter past they all arrived at once. Two large vans pulled up and began disgorging a score of elderly women. They were too far away for him to be able to see their faces clearly, and as they started for the steps, they opened out umbrellas and ducked under them, so he couldn’t see them till they were nearly at the top of the steps.

And what if one of them was Merope? He hadn’t thought of that possibility till this moment, he’d been so intent on finding someone who’d known Polly, who would have a clue to where she’d gone after she left Mrs. Rickett’s. If she’d left Mrs. Rickett’s. If she and Merope hadn’t been killed as well that night.

But their names hadn’t been in the casualties lists, and even if they had, it wouldn’t necessarily mean anything.

They weren’t at Mrs. Rickett’s that morning, he told himself, had been telling himself every single day since he’d stood in front of the gaping hole that had been the boardinghouse. They were safely in a shelter, and after they were bombed out, they moved to another boardinghouse. Or, if Polly joined an ambulance crew, into quarters at her post, and one of these women here today will know where.

His first impulse when he’d seen the wrack of timbers and plaster that had been Mrs. Rickett’s had been to stay there in 1941 and find them—correction, his first impulse had been to start digging through the rubble for Polly with his bare hands—but the bomb had hit days or possibly even weeks before, and every day he spent looking for them then was one he wouldn’t be able to come to again. And one of those days might be the day he had to pull her out because if he didn’t, she’d be killed.

And he knew too well from being at Notting Hill Gate, on Lampden Road, and in Oxford Street, that being in the same general temporal-spatial location wasn’t enough. He had to know exactly where she was before he went to get her.

And one of these women can tell me that. They’ll have been on the same ambulance crew as Polly or shared the same air-raid shelter or the same flat.

But what if Merope walked through those museum doors? What if he hadn’t rescued Polly and her, and she was still here fifty years later?

If she is, there’s no way she’d come to something like this, he told himself. The war’s the last thing she’d want to be reminded of. But he posted himself next to the doors so he could get a good look at each woman as she came in, bracing himself as they reached the top of the steps and paused to lower their umbrellas and shake the water out of them and he could see their faces for the first time.

The first ones through were all discussing the weather. “What a pity it had to rain today!” one of them said, and the other replied, “But it will be good for my roses.

Poor things, they’ve been absolutely parched.”

He wondered if they were here for the exhibition after all. They were the correct age—in their seventies and eighties—and they were all dressed as for a special occasion in frocks and hats—including one enormous one with an entire herbaceous border on it. And one very elderly, very frail-looking lady was wearing white gloves.

But they looked as though they were going to a garden party, not a World War II reunion. And it was impossible to imagine them ever having done anything less genteel than pour tea, let alone put out incendiaries, dig bodies out of rubble, or man anti-aircraft guns.

This isn’t them, he thought. They’re all at St. Paul’s, and this is the Women’s Institute of Upper Matchings on their monthly outing. He was about to turn away when the frail-looking one pointed a white-gloved finger up at the V-1 and said, “Oh, my God, look at that! It’s a doodlebug. One of those chased me all the way down Piccadilly.”

“I do hope it isn’t armed,” the woman who’d come in with her said, and then squealed, “Whitlaw!” and flung her arms around a grim-looking woman. “It’s me!

Bridget Flannigan. We were in the same WAAF brigade!”

“Flanners! Oh, my God! I don’t believe it!” And the grim-looking woman broke into a broad smile.