Kensington? Jesus. “Where’s this dinner being held?”
“Kensington Palace. It’s at the western end of Kensington Gardens. Just before Notting Hill Gate.”
Just waiting, waiting, waiting till your number came up …
—WAR CORRESPONDENT IN A
HOLDING CAMP BEFORE D-DAY
London—Spring 1941
TWO OF MRS. RICKETT’S OTHER BOARDERS WHO’D DECIDED to stay at home that night had been killed along with her. The bomb, a five-hundred-pound HE, had hit several minutes before three. The raids had been fairly heavy early in the evening (as Polly knew—she’d had to shout over the bombs during ENSA’s evening performance) and then tapered off. By midnight, it had looked like the Germans were done for the night, and at half past two, Mrs. Rickett had announced she was going home to sleep in her own bed, but she hadn’t made it. She’d been killed on her doorstep, by flying glass.
Luckily Miss Laburnum and Miss Hibbard hadn’t gone with her—they were arguing with Mr. Dorming and the rest of the troupe over whether to do a dramatic reading from A Kiss for Cinderella or from Dear Brutus.
Polly had spent far more time with them than with Mrs. Rickett, and yet the wounded, flailing continuum had still killed her. So what chance did the troupe or Marjorie or Mr. Humphreys have? Or Hattie and the rest of the ENSA cast, with whom she had to be in contact every day and who were all friendly and eager to show her the ropes?
You don’t want to have anything to do with me, Polly wanted to scream at them. The continuum’s going to vainly keep on trying to correct itself, and next time it will get me and all of you.
But there was no avoiding them. The entire cast and crew were onstage together every afternoon rehearsing and in the crowded wings every night, and the girls shared a single dressing room.
Polly did the best she could. She came in early to do her makeup, turned down all offers to go out for a drink or supper afterward, and spent most of her time backstage “with her nose in a book,” which she’d borrowed from the shelter library at Leicester Square—not Holborn, where the ginger-haired librarian who’d been so kind to her worked.
The book was a mystery by Agatha Christie. “You’ll never guess the ending,” Hattie said, and she didn’t. She stared blindly at the pages and thought about losing the war and Mr. Dunworthy’s deadline and all the innocent people she might be responsible for killing—the ones Stephen Lang’s tipped V-1s had landed on, the customers who’d had to wait till she’d fumbled to wrap their purchases and consequently been late getting to the shelter, the soldiers, many of them no older than Colin, who hung about the stage door waiting for her to come out and were caught by their commanding officer sneaking in late and punished by being shipped off to North Africa or the North Atlantic.
But making the soldiers late back to camp was safer for them than going out with them, and she was far more worried about the cast, with whom she still had far too much contact. ENSA mounted a new production every fortnight, so they were perpetually in rehearsal.
When Polly arrived they’d been doing ENSA Stirs the Pudding. The following week, ENSA Pulls the Crackers opened, and a fortnight later, ENSA Springs Toward Victory, though Polly had difficulty telling them apart. They all consisted of patriotic songs, chorus lines, comedians, and assorted war-related skits.
Polly played, in rapid succession and very short skirts, an anti-aircraft gunner, a gum-chewing American WAC, a debutante in a munitions factory (complete with tiara, ball gown, and spanner), and a girl saying goodbye to a soldier in a railway station.
“But I’m being shipped out,” Reggie, in a BEF uniform, said, attempting to put his arm around her. “Can’t you give me just one tiny kiss?”
Polly shook her head coyly, and he stuck his hand out for her to shake. She looked at it, then at the audience (who were shouting, “Aw, come on, give him a kiss!” and making loud smooching noises), then grabbed his hand, swung him into a dip, and planted a torrid kiss on him.
“Zowee!” he said, doing a double take. “I thought you said you wouldn’t kiss me goodbye.”
“I did, but then I remembered Mr. Churchill said we must do everything we can for the war effort.”
“And that was what you were doing?”
“No,” she said and batted her eyes. “But it’s everything I can do in a railway station.”
It was also her job to come out on the stage in a very short skirt when the sirens sounded, turn her back to the audience, bend over, and flip up the back of her skirt to reveal satin bloomers on which were sewn red flannel letters spelling out, “Air Raid in Progress.”
The bit was wildly popular, and by the end of her fifth week with ENSA, Mr. Tabbitt had put her photograph (smiling, hands on hips, not bent over) with the caption “Air Raid Adelaide” up on the display board at the lobby entrance and told her glumly that ENSA’s head wanted her to go on tour to the RAF’s airfields starting the third week of April.
“It’s more money,” he said. “And you’ll have top billing.” And it would get her away from Eileen and Alf and Binnie, whom she still held out hope might survive.
But Hattie, who had never done her any harm, had already agreed to the tour, and they would have to share a room and spend hours on crowded buses together, so Polly turned it down.
“Oh, marvelous,” Mr. Tabbitt said, and the next night had her put on her Air Raid Adelaide costume and went out in front of the curtain. “I have an official announcement,” he said. “If the Luftwaffe attacks tonight, the ‘Air Raid in Progress’ notice will be displayed.”
Whistles, applause.
“I repeat, if the Luftwaffe attacks tonight, and only if the Luftwaffe attacks tonight—”
Cheers, applause, and a long, low “woo-oo-ooh” from the second row, rising to the up-and-down wail of the alert as several others and finally the entire audience joined in.
Mr. Tabbitt cupped his hand to his ear. “Hark, is that an air-raid alert I hear?” he said, and Polly walked out (cheers, whistles, hoots), turned to face the curtain, and bent over.
He was so pleased he decided to make the bit a regular feature of the show, and by the end of the week Polly was doing it up to six times a show and getting bouquets and boxes of candy addressed to “My Favorite Siren.”
Don’t notice me, Polly thought in despair, and asked Mr. Tabbitt to let Hattie do it instead, but he refused. “You’re bringing them in in droves,” he said.
I am so sorry, she thought, looking out at the soldiers’ eager faces. But at least here she wasn’t endangering Alf and Binnie or the girls at Townsend Brothers or Sir Godfrey and the troupe.
The next night at intermission, the stage manager, Mutchins, stuck his head into the dressing room.
“You were told to knock!” Cora said, outraged, and Hattie clutched a towel to her front.
He knocked on the open door. “Visitor to see you, Adelaide,” he said. “Gentleman.”
“What happened to no men allowed backstage?” Cora demanded.
Mutchins shrugged. “Talk to Tabbitt. He said to come ask was you decent and if you was, to send him up,” he said, addressing Polly. “Are you?”
“Yes.” She abandoned her effort to fasten the stiff strap on her gilt shoe and pulled on a wrapper. “Who is it?”
“Never saw him before. Some old gent.” He turned to the other girls. “Tabbitt said to tell the lot of you to clear out—”
“Clear out?” Cora said. “Well, I like that! And where are we supposed to go?”
“He didn’t say. Just that you was to leave and give Adelaide here some privacy.”