All Clear

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Polly said when Mrs. Wyvern suggested it.

“It’s an excellent idea,” Mrs. Wyvern said. “The pantomime is being given to benefit the orphans of the East End. What could be better than having actual children from the East End in it? They can be in the christening scene.”

“We’re fairies,” Binnie told Mr. Dunworthy proudly.

“I ain’t,” Alf said. “Girls are fairies. I’m a goblin. And a bramblebush. First Bramblebush.”

“Liar,” Binnie said. “All the bramblebushes are the same. I’m goin’ to wear a beautiful glittery dress and wings.”

If Sir Godfrey doesn’t throttle you first, Polly thought, which seemed highly likely. They teased Nelson, trod in paint, bounced on Sleeping Beauty’s bed, and hit each other with the fairies’ wands and the prop swords.

“Those swords were borrowed from the Royal Shakespeare!” Sir Godfrey bellowed at them. “The next miscreant I catch with one will be strung up by his heels.”

Which had no effect on them at all. Polly had to talk Eileen into coming to rehearsals with her to keep them from destroying the theater, and Mrs. Wyvern promptly latched on to her and made her prompter.

“At least when the retrieval team comes, we’ll all be in one place,” Eileen said cheerfully.

She’d refused to give up hope, even though it was obvious by this time that no one had been able to get through. “The bombing of St. Paul’s must be a divergence point,” she said, “and the retrieval team can’t come through till it’s past.”

Nothing happened on the sixteenth or the seventeenth. On the eighteenth, Eileen said, “With us not in Oxford Street anymore and Mrs. Rickett’s house gone and the vicar not in Backbury, they’ve no way to find us. We need to go to Townsend Brothers and give them our new address. Do you think I should write to Lieutenant Heffernan at the riflery school at the manor?”

It doesn’t matter, Polly thought. If they were able to come, they’d have done it long before this. They know Mr. Dunworthy’s deadline is the first of May. And the weather was supposed to be clear for the next three nights. Perfect bombing weather.

“I’ll write to the manor tonight when we get home,” Eileen said. “Perhaps they moved the riflery range, and we can go to Backbury and use my drop.”

It won’t open either, Polly thought, and wished she could tell Eileen, You mustn’t blame yourself that we weren’t able to get out in time. It’s not your fault.

But Eileen would only say, “They’ll get us out. You’ll see. At this very moment, there are all sorts of things happening, all sorts of people working to rescue us,”

and Polly didn’t think she could bear it. So instead, after Eileen left to walk Mr. Dunworthy to St. Paul’s, she wrote what she had wanted to say in a note and added a list of the dates, times, and locations of every V-1 and V-2 in her implant.

She copied it out in case the original was destroyed when she got killed and hid the copy in Eileen’s Murder in the Calais Coach. The original she sealed in an envelope addressed to Eileen, then sealed the envelope and the half-charred lithograph of The Light of the World in a second envelope, which she put in her coat pocket.

Nothing happened on the eighteenth either. On the nineteenth, Eileen said, “Tomorrow I want you to show me the drop in Hampstead Heath. If the sixteenth was a divergence point, it might be far enough outside London to not be affected.” She pulled on her coat. “I’ll meet you at the theater. I need to walk Mr. Dunworthy to St.

Paul’s—he’s on duty tonight. Tell Mrs. Wyvern I hid the magic wands and the bramblebush branches on top of the costume cupboard so the children can’t get at them.”

“Are Alf and Binnie going with you?”

“No,” Eileen said, but they set up such a clamor that she gave in and took them along.

Polly was relieved, even though it would make them late for rehearsal and bring Sir Godfrey’s wrath down on her. But so long as they were with Eileen, they’d be safe—or at any rate, safer than with her. And Mr. Dunworthy would be safe in St. Paul’s. The cathedral hadn’t been hit again after the sixteenth.

Which meant he would be killed on the way back from there, or at home. It seemed possible that she would be killed at the same time, but she hoped not. She would like to be able to do the pantomime for Sir Godfrey.

She loved doing it in spite of Sir Godfrey’s loathing of pantomime, perhaps because it was the last thing she would ever do. And inside the theater she forgot the days remorselessly ticking down, forgot the war and parting and death, and thought only of lines and costumes and attempting to keep Alf and Binnie from destroying everything they touched.

The two of them had managed not only to wreak havoc backstage every night since they joined the cast but to corrupt every other child in the pantomime.