He didn’t answer.
“Sir Godfrey!” she said urgently.
“Cheer up, my lady. Things …” His voice trailed into silence.
“Sir Godfrey!” she cried, casting desperately around for something, anything, to keep him talking. “You quoted a line about my saving your life. Which play was that?”
“Tell you after the all clear,” he said drowsily.
“No! Now. Which play was it?” She couldn’t reach his shoulder to shake it, didn’t dare move her hand from the compress. “One of Barrie’s?”
“Barrie’s? It was Twelfth Night. A knock on the door and there you were … shipwrecked … the letter …” His voice died away.
“What letter?” she said, even though there was no letter, he was making no sense, but she had to keep him talking. “Who was the letter from, Sir Godfrey?”
“An old friend … we’d played together in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when we were young …”
“Do Oberon’s speech,” she urged him. “ ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme grows,’ ” but he went on as if he hadn’t heard her.
“He wrote … to offer me the lead in a touring company,” he said after a minute, his voice drowsy and slow again, “… Bath … Bristol … but then you came …”
“And you didn’t go.”
“And leave fair Viola?” he murmured, and then, barely audible, “… you knew all your lines …”
She realized now that, even now—digging him out, trying to stop the blood—she had still harbored a secret hope that this was not part of the continuum’s attempts to correct the damage they’d done, that it was, as he’d said, the Luftwaffe’s fault and not hers. But he was supposed to have gone with the touring company, he was supposed to have left London. He’d stayed because of her.
“I am so sorry,” she said.
The stench of gas was growing stronger. She should see if she could find something else to stuff into the gap, a playbill or a newspaper. There were some in the lending library at Holborn. No, that was too far.
“… killed …,” Sir Godfrey said from a long way away. Her seat must be at the very back of the stalls, but that couldn’t be right, because he was saying, “Viola!
Awake, fair maid! I hear our rescuers at hand.”
“ ‘It is the nightingale,’ ” she murmured. “ ‘We shall sing like two birds i’ the cage—’ ”
“No,” Sir Godfrey said furiously. “It is the lark. The rescue team is coming—”
“They didn’t come in time,” she said, and laid her head on the rubble and composed herself to sleep, though her hand still pressed down firmly on the compress.
“Not in time.”
When I look back over the wartime years I cannot help feeling that time is an inadequate and ever capricious measure of their duration.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL,
9 NOVEMBER 1944
Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995
“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING HERE, CONNOR?” THE woman said. He couldn’t see more than her outline in the pitch-darkness of the blackout exhibit, but it must be the fortyish-something woman whom he’d seen unloading things from her car and then going into the museum when he first arrived, though she was far too young to be Merope.
And Merope wouldn’t have called you Connor, he thought, so this woman’s clearly mistaken you for someone else. “I’m afraid you’ve—” he began, but she was plunging eagerly on.
“I saw you going into the exhibit, and I thought, that has to be Connor Cross.”
Oh, God, he thought. It’s Ann. “I’m sorry, you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” he said firmly, thanking God the room was dark. “I’m not—”
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said. “Ann Perry? We met at the British Library years ago. We were both doing research on British Intelligence in World War II. It was in 1976, just after they’d released all the classified documents. You were looking for an agent who’d rescued downed fliers—I don’t remember his name, Commander Something—”
Commander Harold.
“And I was researching the false articles they’d put in the newspapers to convince Hitler the invasion was going to be at Calais,” she said.
And you showed me an announcement in the Croydon Clarion Call in May 1944, he thought, which read, “Mr. and Mrs. James Townsend of Upper Notting announced the engagement of their daughter Polly to Flight Officer Colin Templer of the 21st Airborne Division, currently stationed in Kent. A late June wedding is planned.”
It’s because of you that I found Michael Davies, he thought, that I’m here looking for someone who worked with Polly.
But he couldn’t say that. “I—” he began, but she was still talking.
“I designed this exhibition for the museum,” she said, putting her arm in his. “I came this morning to make certain there weren’t any last-minute muck-ups, and I’m so glad I did. It gives me the chance to tell you that you were responsible for my deciding to specialize in the history of World War Two,” she went on, leading him along the white arrows toward the exit curtain. “I had the most awful crush on you, but you were completely oblivious.”
No, I wasn’t.
“I was convinced you must already have a girlfriend—”
I did.
“—or that you had some sort of tragic secret.” She pushed the curtain aside, and the light beyond spilled into the room where they were standing, revealing the chopped-off bonnet of a bus with shuttered headlamps. And Ann.
She was as pretty as ever, even though it had been nineteen years, but he couldn’t say that either.
“And I was determined to find out what your secret was—” She smiled up at him and then stopped, appalled, and jerked her hand away from his arm. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she said, blushing. “I thought you were someone I knew. You must think me a complete fool.”
“Not at all,” he said. “I’ve done the same thing myself.”
“It’s only that you look exactly like …,” she said, frowning bewilderedly at him. “You’re certain you’re not Connor Cross? No, of course you’re not. Nineteen years ago you’d have been, what, six years old?”
“Eight,” he said. But it hadn’t been nineteen years ago. It had been five, and they’d both been twenty-two. He extended his hand. “Calvin Knight. I’m a reporter for Time Out. I’m here to write an article on the exhibit.”
“How do you do, Mr. Knight,” she said, turning pink again. “You haven’t a much older brother who looks just like you, have you? Or an uncle?”
“No, sorry.”
“Or a portrait of yourself stashed away somewhere, like Dorian Gray?”
“No. You designed this blackout exhibit?” he asked, to change the subject.
“Yes, the entire Blitz exhibition, actually,” and he was afraid she’d offer to give him a tour, but she said, “I’d show you round, but I have a meeting at the British Museum. I’m doing an intelligence-war exhibit for them in August, which you’d be interested in, about Fortitude South and the deception campaign—” She stopped, looking embarrassed all over again. “No, you wouldn’t. I am so sorry. I keep forgetting you’re not Connor. You look exactly like him.”
“I’m sure it will be a very interesting exhibit. I’ll certainly come,” he lied. He couldn’t run the risk of running into her again. Ann had been a very bright girl. He might not be able to fool her twice.
“You’re very kind,” she said. “I hope my idiotic behavior won’t influence your review of the Blitz exhibit.”
“It won’t.”
“Good. Again, I am sorry,” she apologized, and hurried off before he could say anything, which was probably just as well—though he wished there was some way he could thank her for having given him the clue he’d spent the five previous years looking for. And for producing this exhibit so he could, hopefully, find the next one.