All Clear

“I should have started at the beginning,” she said. “I’m Binnie Hodbin. My brother, Alf, and I were evacuees. We were sent to the manor where M—where Eileen worked as a maid.”

Alf and Binnie Hodbin, the children everyone had remembered because they were such terrors. And apparently Alf still was, since he was “detained” at the Old Bailey. Was that merely a polite way of saying he was under arrest? Or worse?

But this made no sense. Binnie had been a child during the war. “But the women said you drove an ambulance,” he said.

“I did. During the V-1 and V-2 attacks.”

“But you’d only have been—”

“Fifteen,” she said. “I lied about my age.”

And that certainly went with what he’d been told about the Hodbins. And now that he looked more closely at her, she was obviously younger than the other women. “But you said your name was Eileen—”

“It is. Binnie wasn’t a real name—it was short for Hodbin. So, since I hadn’t any name of my own, Eileen said I could choose any name I wanted, and that’s the name I chose. And then after the war, when Mum—I mean, Eileen—and Dad legally adopted us, that was the name that was put down.”

After the war. Oh, God. “You called her Mum.”

“I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you don’t know any of this yet. After we went back to London at the beginning of the Blitz, Eileen took us in and raised us. Our mother had died, and we were living in the Underground, and Eileen found us and …”

He wasn’t listening. Eileen had raised them. He hadn’t got them out. That was why Binnie was here. Eileen had sent her to tell him he’d failed, that she’d spent the last fifty-five years waiting for him to come rescue her. To no avail. “She doesn’t want to see me, does she?” he asked. “I don’t blame her.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Binnie said. She took a deep breath. “Mum died eight years ago.”

If an air raid warning be received during the performance the audience will be informed from the stage.

—NOTICE IN THEATER PROGRAM,

1940

Kent—October 1944

“DUNWORTHY, JAMES,” ERNEST TYPED. “DIED SUDDENLY. At his home in Notting Hill. Of injuries incurred in a V-2 rocket attack.”

Cess leaned in the door. “Have you seen Chasuble?”

“No,” Ernest said, typing, “Mr. Dunworthy, originally of Oxford—Did you check the mess?”

“No, I’ll do that,” he said, and, amazingly, left. Ernest went back to typing. “—is survived by his children, Sebastian Dunworthy and Eileen Ward—”

“Hullo,” Chasuble said, coming in with several photographs. “Is that the caption for the church in Hampstead you’re typing?”

“No, here it is.” Ernest handed it to him. “Check the time, will you? I couldn’t decipher your handwriting,” and while Chasuble was reading it, he typed hastily,

“The funeral will be held at St. Mary-at-the-Gate in Cardle 20 October at ten o’clock,” ripped it out of the typewriter, and laid it face down on the desk. “Is that the right time?”

“No,” Chasuble said. “It should be 3:19 P.M., not 2:19.” He handed it back to Ernest, who rolled the sheet in, Xed out the time, and typed “3:19” above it.

“Where did it actually hit?”

“Charing Cross Road,” Chasuble said, and handed Ernest several photographs. “Here are last week’s incidents, but I don’t think there’s anything we can use. Only one church and one shopping street, and they were both totally demolished. Nothing identifiable. The V-2’s simply too good at what it does.”

Ernest leafed through the photos. “What about this one?” He held up a photo of a demolished school with a dozen uniformed students clambering happily over the wreckage.

Chasuble shook his head. “Photo’s already been in the Daily Express.”

“I thought they’d been told they had to run it by us first.”

“They were, but they failed to tell the reporter that, and it slipped through.” He shuffled through the photos and handed Ernest one of a tangle of timbers. “See that?” he said, pointing to a broken sign in one corner.

Ernest squinted at the tiny letters. “Dentist?” he guessed.

“Dental surgeon,” Chasuble said. “Or, rather, ‘dental surg—’ I know it’s small, but I thought perhaps a personal-interest story—‘Extreme Cure for Toothache,’ or something, about a man who was on his way to the dentist when the V-2 hit, and the blast knocking the offending tooth out.”

Ernest nodded. “Where’s this supposed to be?”

“Brixton,” he said. “It’s actually a street in Walworth, but I was able to crop out the village hall. The bomb fell at”—he consulted his list—“4:05 A.M. on the eleventh.”

“4:05? That won’t work. The dentist wouldn’t be open at that hour, not even for an emergency root canal.”

“Oh, right,” Chasuble said, taking the picture back. “I’ll see what else I’ve got.” But he still didn’t leave.