Dorming, who’d taken on Mr. Simms’s job as a firespotter, and Doreen, who’d given her notice at Townsend Brothers and signed up for the ATA.
“I’m going to be an Atta Girl and fly a Tiger Moth,” she said proudly.
Her departure for the ATA and Sarah Steinberg’s—she was going to do her National Service as an RAF plotter—left the third floor terribly shorthanded, and Miss Snelgrove told Polly that Townsend Brothers was applying for an Employer Hardship Exemption for her so she could remain in her job.
Eileen was overjoyed. “I’ve been ever so worried about how the retrieval team would find you after you left to do your National Service.”
“I told Miss Snelgrove no,” Polly said. “I’m going to try to get assigned to a rescue squad.”
“A rescue squad?” Eileen said. “But why?”
Because I have a deadline, and if I simply sit here waiting for it, I’ll go mad. And I keep thinking of Marjorie, lying there in that rubble with no one coming to dig her out. I know exactly how that feels. I can’t bear to think of anyone else going through that. And if Colin was here—if he was the one who was trapped—that’s what he would do.
She didn’t say any of that to Eileen. She said, “If they don’t get the waiver, I’ll almost certainly be assigned to somewhere outside of London. I need to sign up now.”
“But a rescue squad,” Eileen said. “It’s so dangerous. Couldn’t you drive an ambulance instead? That’s what you did before, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I can’t risk it. I might be assigned to a unit with one of the FANYs I knew and create a paradox. And rescue work’s not that dangerous. We don’t go to the incident till after the bomb falls. And you heard Binnie. Bombs never fall in the same place twice.”
“But what about the retrieval team? How will they find us?”
“I’ll tell Miss Snelgrove which unit I’ve been assigned to,” Polly said. The next morning Polly gave her notice at work and went to the Works Board. She filled up a registration form and eventually had her name called by a stern woman with a pince-nez.
“I’m Mrs. Sentry. Please be seated,” the woman said without looking up from the form. “I see your last employment was as a shop assistant with a department store.
I assume you can do sums. Can you type?”
If she said yes, she would end up in Whitehall, typing requisition forms for the War Office. “No, ma’am,” she said. “I was hoping to be assigned to a rescue squad.”
Mrs. Sentry shook her head. “You’re far too slight to do the lifting involved.”
“Well, then, some other sort of Civil Defence work.”
Mrs. Sentry looked at her over her pince-nez. “My job is to match you with the job for which you’re best suited. Are you married?”
“No, ma’am.”
Mrs. Sentry wrote “single” on the form below “good at sums.” “Are you good at puzzles?” she asked. “Acrostics, crosswords, that sort of thing?”
Oh, God, Polly thought, she’s planning to send me to Bletchley Park. That’s why she asked me if I was married. I can’t go to Bletchley Park. It’s the last place I should be.
“I’m not good at puzzles at all,” she said, “or sums, really. My supervisor at Townsend Brothers was always having to correct my sales slips. And I’m not married, but I do have obligations. My cousin and I have two war orphans living with us.”
“How old are the children?”
How old do they have to be to keep me from going to Bletchley Park? Polly thought, wondering if she dared lie about their ages, but Mrs. Sentry looked the type who’d check. “Alf’s seven and Binnie’s twelve,” she said. “Their mother was killed in a raid.”
And it was a good thing she’d told the truth because Mrs. Sentry was looking suspiciously at her. “What did you say your name was?”
Oh, no, she knows Alf and Binnie. They’ve tried to steal her handbag in the tube station.
“Polly Sebastian,” she said.
“Sebastian,” Mrs. Sentry said thoughtfully. “You look extremely familiar. Have we met before?”
It was Stephen Lang all over again. What if she knew me as a FANY? Polly thought. She didn’t look familiar, but …
But this wasn’t 1944. Even if I did meet her then, it hasn’t happened yet.
“I’m almost certain we’ve met before,” Mrs. Sentry was saying, “but I can’t think where … It was at Christmas …”
I hope she wasn’t at the pantomime, Polly thought, recalling that episode with Theodore.
“Could it have been when you were at Townsend Brothers Christmas shopping?” she asked to throw her off the scent.
“No, I shop at Harrods. It was something to do with a theater …” She frowned, trying to remember.
Polly had to get her to assign her to a job before she did. If she remembered Theodore’s screaming, “I don’t want to go home!” she was likely to decide Polly was an unfit mother and ship her off to Bletchley Park after all. “If I could be assigned to an ARP post or an anti-aircraft gun crew—”
“I know where I saw you. In a play in the tube station at Piccadilly Circus. A Christmas Carol. When you said ‘anti-aircraft gun,’ I remembered you having to shout over them. You played Belle, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Polly said, relieved that at least it hadn’t been the pantomime.
“You were simply wonderful,” Mrs. Sentry said, beaming at Polly through her pince-nez, no longer stern. “I can’t tell you how much the play meant to me. I’d been feeling rather glum about the war and everything, but seeing it brought back the Christmases of my girlhood—the family all together, reading Dickens round the fire. It gave me hope that we’ll see Christmases like that again when this war is over. And it made me determined to do my bit to see that we do. Why didn’t you say on your application that you were an actress?”
“I’m not,” Polly said. “That was only an amateur troupe. We put on plays in the shelters, but they weren’t—”
But Mrs. Sentry wasn’t listening. “I have just the job for you. Wait here.” She stood up, hurried over to a file cabinet, extracted a sheet of paper, and hurried back.
“It’s perfect. And you’ll be able to stay here in London with your family. Let me just write down the address for you,” she said, and printed “ENSA” on a card.
ENSA was the Entertainments National Service Association. It put on shows and musical revues for the soldiers.
Mrs. Sentry handed the address to her. “You’re to go to the Alhambra and report to Mr. Tabbitt. It’s just off Shaftesbury Avenue, near the Phoenix.”
Which was the theater where the pantomime had been.
“I’m so glad I remembered where I’d seen you,” Mrs. Sentry said. “If you hadn’t given that performance in Piccadilly …”
I’d have the address of an ARP post to report to instead of a theater, Polly thought disgustedly.
But there was no point in trying to talk Mrs. Sentry out of this. She was looking far too pleased with herself. She’d have to come back and speak to someone else and, in the meantime, hope Mr. Tabbitt wouldn’t want her.
Which I doubt he will, she thought. ENSA does musical revues, not plays, and I can’t sing or dance. But when she told that to Mr. Tabbitt, who turned out to be a large, beefy man who looked like he belonged on a rescue squad, he said, “Neither can anyone else in this cast.”
She’d interrupted a rehearsal, and the chorus girls standing hands on hips on the stage above them hooted derisively when Mr. Tabbit said that, and one of them—
with a mop of black curls—retorted, “We’re only trying to live up to our name, ducks. ENSA: Every Night Something Awful.”
Mr. Tabbitt ignored her. “What professional stage experience have you had?” he asked Polly.