All Clear

“Mary,” she said, but that wasn’t right. This was the Blitz, not the V-1s. “Viola.”

“Viola, listen, my name’s Hunter. I want you to stay here a moment while I go fetch some oxygen to help you breathe, all right?”

She nodded.

“I’ll be back straightaway,” he said, and went to meet two men coming across the wreckage with a stretcher. He said something and took the stretcher from them, and they clambered back across the rubble. He took it over to the hole, where they were lifting out the section of balcony wall.

So they can remove Sir Godfrey’s body, she thought, watching them. You should wait till the gas is shut off.

“Fetch me a plasma drip,” someone called from the hole, and one of the men bounded off like a deer across the tangle of wreckage.

Why is he hurrying? Polly thought, bewildered. Sir Godfrey’s already dead.

Why is he hurrying? Polly thought, bewildered. Sir Godfrey’s already dead.

She limped over to the hole. They were lifting him out and onto the stretcher. His chest was bandaged, a pad of white gauze taped to the wound, and there was a bandage on his wrist and a line of tubing running up his arm to a glass bottle full of plasma one of them was holding.

“Easy, don’t jar him,” the man holding the bottle said as they lifted the stretcher. “You’ll set him bleeding again.”

He isn’t dead, she thought wonderingly.

But that didn’t mean she’d saved his life. She’d only delayed his death. He’d die on the way to hospital. Or on the way to the ambulance, as they carried him across the wreckage on the stretcher. “I’m so sorry,” she said, and the men looked over at her.

“What the bloody hell’s she still doing here?” the one holding the plasma said. “She needs medical attention.”

Hunter hastened over to her. “Viola, I’m going to take you to the ambulance now,” he said. “Put your arm round my neck.”

“Careful,” one of the stretcher-bearers warned as they started across the wreckage with it. “If you strike a spark, you’ll send us all up.”

“We must go, Viola,” Hunter said urgently. “The theater could go up any moment.”

Of course, the gas. One of the stretcher-bearers’ hobnailed boots will scrape against the iron leg of a seat, and the gas will explode in a fireball and envelop us all.

Including Hunter, who stayed behind to try to help me.

She had to get away from him. Perhaps if he wasn’t near her or the stretcher when the theater went up, he’d only be injured. “I’m all right. I can walk on my own,”

she said, and struck out away from him across the tangle of seats, going as quickly as she could with one shoe and one bare foot.

“Careful, slow down!” Hunter called behind her. “You’ll fall.”

She clambered across a row of seats and over a mahogany railing. The men carrying the stretcher were halfway across the theater, the bottle of plasma held aloft like a lantern.

Polly stepped down onto what had been a wall, painted with masks of Comedy and Tragedy. She glanced back at Hunter. He was only a few steps behind her.

Go away, she thought frantically, hobbling across Tragedy, across Comedy, I’m deadly, and her single heel went through the plaster, all the way up to her ankle.

She fell forward onto her hands and knees.

“What happened?” Hunter said, and before she could warn him to keep away, he jumped down beside her and helped her to stand. “Are you hurt?”

“No, my foot—”

“I need some help here!” Hunter called after the stretcher-bearers. “She’s—”

“No,” Polly said. “You need to leave me here and go fetch a crowbar.” But he was already on one knee beside her, pulling on her ankle.

“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.