All Clear

It’s too bad that lantern he’s holding isn’t real, she thought, gazing at its warm glow. Mr. Humphreys was right about seeing something new each time one looked at it. She hadn’t noticed before that the door Christ was about to knock on was medieval. Neither it nor the lantern he was carrying could possibly have existed in 33

A.D.

He must be a time traveler like us, Polly thought. And now he’s trying to get back home, and his drop won’t open either.

The woman had finally made up her mind and paid. Polly stepped up to buy her guidebook. “Three pence,” the volunteer said, and Polly reached into her purse for the coins, but her hands were so stiff with cold, she dropped them. They made an unholy, echoing clatter on the marble floor.

Well, thought Polly, if the retrieval team is here, this is one way to get their attention, but no one turned around.

“Sorry,” she said, gathering up the coins and paying for the guidebook.

The volunteer handed it to her. “I’m afraid the Crypt and the choir are closed today.”

The choir? Polly thought, wondering why, but asking would mean continuing to stand there in the draft from the windows.

She thanked the volunteer and walked up the nave. No one approached her, and she didn’t see anyone who seemed to be there to meet someone. Several people knelt praying in the middle of the nave. Two Wrens stood in front of the bricked-up Wellington Monument, looking puzzledly up at it, and a pair of soldiers stood a few feet away, looking at the Wrens.

Just past the next pillar, a young woman stood, wearing a pair of open-toed shoes that looked like one of Wardrobe’s bright ideas for an icy 1940 November and gazing around as though searching for someone. But before Polly could make her way around the chairs and across the nave to her, a member of the fire watch came up to the woman, and it was obvious from his smile, and hers, that they knew each other.

So clearly not the retrieval team, Polly thought. She turned to go see if anyone was in the transept. And nearly collided with a beaming Mr. Humphreys.

So clearly not the retrieval team, Polly thought. She turned to go see if anyone was in the transept. And nearly collided with a beaming Mr. Humphreys.

“I thought you’d come when you heard about our incident,” he said. “We’ve had any number of people come to see the damage.”

“Yes, it’s dreadful about the windows,” Polly said.

“It is,” he agreed, looking back at them. “They should have been taken to Wales for safekeeping along with the other treasures. Still, it may turn out to have been a blessing in disguise. Sir Christopher Wren designed St. Paul’s to have clear panes of glass in the windows, and now there is a good chance he will see his dream realized.”

He would. At the end of the Blitz, there’d only be one intact window left in the entire cathedral, and that would be broken in 1944 by a V-1 that had exploded nearby, and all the replacement windows would be of clear glass.

“In the case of the altar, however,” Mr. Humphreys went on, “I’m afraid it’s another matter.”

The altar?

“Luckily, the bomb damage was confined to it and the choir.”

The choir. That’s why the volunteer at the desk had said it was closed today.

Mr. Humphreys walked across the space under the dome and to the choir. The entrance was blocked off with a sawhorse. He moved it aside and led Polly through.

“And the bomb went through to the Crypt, unfortunately just at the spot where our fire watch sleeps …”

She wasn’t listening. She was staring at the choir. And the destruction beyond.

Where the altar had been was a tumbled heap of timbers and shattered stone. Polly looked up. There was a gigantic jagged hole in the ceiling. A gray tarpaulin half covered it, water dripping from its edges onto a rickety-looking scaffold beneath.

But St. Paul’s wasn’t hit, she thought, staring unseeing at the gaping hole, at the rubble. It survived the war.

“When did this happen?” she demanded.

“The morning of October tenth, just as we were making one last round of the roofs. I was—” he said, and must have seen her face. “Oh, I am sorry. I thought from what you said that you knew. I should have prepared you. It gives one a shock, I know, seeing it for the first time.”

Mr. Dunworthy hadn’t said a word about a bomb hitting the altar. He’d spoken of the UXB and the incendiaries on the twenty-ninth of December, but nothing about an HE on October tenth. “The altar was entirely destroyed, and these two windows were broken,” Mr. Humphreys explained.

“And the windows in the nave,” Polly said. It hadn’t been blast from a bomb the next street over which had broken them. It had been this bomb. Which Mr.

Dunworthy had never mentioned.

“Yes. The bomb brought down more of the lower courses there.” Mr. Humphreys pointed up at the edges of the hole. “Which hit the reredos. You can see where it’s chipped, and where St. Michael’s nose was broken off.”