“We’re from Indianapolis,” Brenda was saying. “Do you live here in London?”
If he said yes, she was likely to demand tourist information from him, and he had no idea what had been in London in 1995. “No, I’m from Oxford.”
An estate wagon was pulling in to the car park. He’d be able to ask whoever was in it about the opening.
“The museum should be opening shortly,” he told Brenda. “There are some interesting exhibits in the courtyard that you and your husband might like to look at in the meantime.” But she wasn’t listening.
“You’re from Oxford?” she cried. “We’re going there on Wednesday. You’ve got to tell us what we should see while we’re there.”
He glanced out at the car park. The woman stepping out of the estate wagon and going round to open the back was too young to be one of the women he was looking for. She couldn’t be more than forty, and she was wearing a business suit and high-heeled shoes and was getting an armload of books and papers out of the back. Someone who worked here. She would definitely know whether the opening was today.
“We want to see the university,” Brenda was saying, “but I couldn’t find it on the map, only a lot of colleges.”
He explained that the colleges were the university, and told her to go see Balliol. “And Magdalen,” he said, trying to think what would have been in Oxford in 1995. “And the Ashmolean Museum.”
“Is that where they have the dodo?” she asked. “I’m dying to see the dodo and all the other Alice in Wonderland stuff.”
“No, the dodo’s at the Natural History Museum,” he said.
“Oh, where’s that?” she asked, digging in her tote bag. “Bob!” she called. “Do you have the guidebook?” But Bob had gone down into the courtyard to look at the anti-aircraft gun and either couldn’t hear her or was ignoring her. “He’s got the guidebook,” she said. “Can you show me where the—what did you say it was? The Nature Museum?”
“The Natural History Museum.” He glanced quickly out toward the car park, but the woman in the business suit was still unloading things from her car, and no one else had pulled in. He went down the stairs and into the courtyard with Brenda.
Bob didn’t have the guidebook. “I thought you had it.”
“No, I gave it to you, remember? Right before we left the hotel?” she said, but after digging some more, she found it and got it open to the section on Oxford, and he showed her where the museum was and went back to the steps. Just in time to see the business-suited woman disappear up them and inside, which meant the doors must be open. But when he tried them, they were still locked, and there were still no cars pulling in to the car park. And it was beginning to rain.
He turned his collar up and ducked under the cover of the doorway, and Brenda came scampering up the steps, holding the guidebook open over her head, her husband behind her, saying, “I told you we needed to bring an umbrella.”
“I can’t get used to how much it rains here, Calvin,” Brenda said. “It said on the sign down by the anti-aircraft gun that it had been in Kensington Gardens. That’s not the same Kensington Gardens where they have the Peter Pan statue, is it?”
“Yes, it is,” he said.
“Oh, I want to go there. I love Peter Pan,” she said, and began leafing through the guidebook again. “And to the house where Barrie lived as a child in Scotland.”
“We’re only here for ten days,” Bob said, “not six months.”
“Oh, I know, it’s just that there are so many things I’m dying to see. There just isn’t enough time.”
You’re right, Calvin thought, looking at the door. There isn’t.
“Is that the museum schedule?” Bob asked, pointing at the brochure he was holding.
“Yes.” He handed it to him, and he and Brenda pored over it.
“ ‘The Battle of Britain’ looks good,” she said. “Oh, dear, it doesn’t open till July first. We won’t be here. ‘The Secret That Won the War,’ ” she read aloud.
“What’s that one about?”
“I don’t know,” Bob said impatiently.
“I believe it’s about Ultra and Bletchley Park,” Calvin said.
“Ultra?”
“The secret project to decode the Nazis’ coded messages,” he said.
“Oh.” Brenda turned to her husband. “I thought you said the American forces were what won the war.”
Bob had the good grace to look embarrassed.
“There were all kinds of things that won the war,” Bob said. “Radar and the atom bomb and Hitler’s deciding to invade Russia—”
“And the evacuation from Dunkirk,” Calvin said, “and the Battle of Britain, and the way Londoners stood up to the Blitz—”
Brenda beamed at him. “You’re obviously as big a fan of World War Two as my husband is.”
A fan. Of World War II. “Actually, I’m a journalist,” he said. “I’m here to cover the opening of the Blitz exhibit.”
“Really?” she said. “Our daughter Stephanie teaches journalism. You’d be perfect for each other. Are you married?”
“Brenda,” her husband said. “It’s none of our business—”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said. “Are you?”
He shook his head.
“Girlfriend?”
“Not yet.”
“You see?” she said, turning triumphantly to her husband and then back to him. “How old are you? Thirty?”
“Brenda! This young man is not interested in—”
“Stephanie’s twenty-six,” she said. “She teaches at—”
“Let’s go look at the tank,” Bob said, and took her arm.
“It’s raining—” she began.
“It’s stopped,” Bob said firmly.
“Oh, all right,” she said, starting down the steps, and then said to Calvin, “Would you mind taking our picture in front of the tank?”
She handed him her camera, and he went down with them and took their picture in front of the anti-aircraft gun and the boat. “The Lily Maid,” she said. “It’s not a very warlike name, is it?”
“They didn’t know they were going into a war,” Bob said impatiently. “Did they, Calvin?”
No, he thought. They didn’t know they were going into a war.
We didn’t know where we were going, so we just scribbled little notes and flung them out at stations as we passed.
—SERGEANT MAJOR MARTIN MCLANE,
RECALLING HIS ARRIVAL HOME
FROM DUNKIRK
Dover—April 1944
“KANSAS!” COMMANDER HAROLD BAWLED IN ERNEST’S EAR, hugging him and pounding him on the back. “I can’t believe it’s you!” And for the space of perhaps thirty seconds, Ernest wondered if he could convince him he was mistaken—if his two-day stubble and Cornish accent might create just enough doubt that he could look bewildered and say, “I’m sorry, I’m afraid you’ve confused me with someone else.”
But it was too late. The Commander had already seen the look on his face when he’d realized this was the Lady Jane. And now what the hell was he going to do?
If the Commander told Lady Bracknell …
He suddenly remembered Bracknell saying, “Algernon specifically requested you for this delivery.” Tensing already knows I know the Commander, he thought.
That’s why he sent me. But how had he known that? And what was the Commander—
“What are you doing here, Kansas?” Commander Harold was saying.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here? I thought the Lady Jane had been sunk at Dunkirk—”
“Sunk?” he bellowed, outraged. “The Lady Jane?”
Jesus, the sailor up on deck will hear him, he thought. “Shouldn’t we—” he cautioned, pointing at the hatch.
“You’re right, lad,” the Commander said, and waded over to the hatch, reached up, and pulled the trapdoor shut. “You should know nothing can sink the Lady Jane, not even a Nazi U-boat.”