Which he needed to get on with. But he stood there in the dark for several minutes, looking at nothing, remembering those long months spent in the reading room searching for some clue as to where Michael Davies and Merope were, for some hope that Polly wasn’t dead. Ann had talked to him, asked him about his research, commiserated with him over the clumsy microfilm readers and the faulty heaters. She’d brought him sandwiches and contraband cups of tea and cheered him up, especially after he’d found the notice of an unidentified man who’d been killed by an HE on September 10, the day Mr. Dunworthy had attempted to go through to.
That had been a black day, and Ann, seeing him sitting there, staring blindly at the microfilm screen, had insisted he come out with her for supper and “a stiff drink”
and then had held his head when he vomited in the pub’s loo. I couldn’t have done it without you, he called silently after her.
And you still haven’t done it, he thought. You still haven’t found Polly, or anyone who knew her, and it’s already half past ten. And Cynthia Camberley and the rest And you still haven’t done it, he thought. You still haven’t found Polly, or anyone who knew her, and it’s already half past ten. And Cynthia Camberley and the rest were probably already halfway through the exhibit by now.
He hurried into the next room. There were sandbags piled along the walls, a door with an air-raid shelter symbol on it, and next to it a mannequin in an ARP helmet and coveralls holding a stirrup pump. The muffled sounds of sirens and bombs came from inside the shut door. The other three walls of the room were lined with display cases. Camberley was looking at one filled with ration books and wartime recipes. “Do you remember those dreadful powdered eggs?” she was asking the woman in the flowered hat.
“Yes, and Spam. I haven’t been able to look at a tin since.”
He went over to them, pretending to look at the display. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a loaf of moldy-looking gray bread.
“Lord Woolton’s National Wheatmeal Bread,” Camberley said, making a face. “It tasted of ashes. It’s my personal opinion that Hitler was behind the recipe.”
“Can I quote you on that?” he asked, pulling out his notebook. He introduced himself, then asked them their impressions of the exhibit and what they’d done in the war.
“I drove an ambulance,” Camberley said.
It was difficult to imagine her being tall enough to see over the steering wheel. “In the Blitz?” he asked.
“No, during the V-rocket attacks. I was stationed at Dulwich.”
Dulwich. That was near Croydon, which meant she might have known Polly, but that was no help. He needed someone who’d known her later, or rather, earlier, after she went to the Blitz. “Did you drive an ambulance as well?” he asked Herbaceous Border, whose name tag read “Margaret Fortis.”
“No, nothing so glamorous, I’m afraid. I spent the Blitz cutting sandwiches and pouring tea. I worked in a WVS canteen in one of the Underground shelters,” she explained. “They’re supposed to have a replica here.” She looked vaguely about.
“Which station?” he asked, trying not to sound too eager. If it was the one Polly had used as a shelter, there was a chance she might have known her.
“Marble Arch,” she said.
Marble Arch had been hit, so that didn’t help.
“You’re interested in the Blitz?” Camberley asked.
“Yes, my grandmother was in London during the Blitz.” Forgive me, Polly, he thought. “And I was hoping to find someone who knew her.”
“What did she do?”
“I don’t know. She died before I was born. I know she worked at Townsend Brothers during the first part of the Blitz and then did some sort of war work, and an uncle of mine said he thought she might have driven an ambulance.”
“Oh, then Talbot might know her.”
“Talbot?”
“Yes. Talbot—I mean, Mrs. Vernon. During the war we got in the habit of calling one another by our last names, and we still do it, even though most of us have married and those aren’t our names any longer. Mrs. Vernon was at Dulwich with me. She drove an ambulance in the East End during the Blitz.”
If Polly’d known Mrs. Vernon, or rather, Talbot, during the rocket attacks, she’d have taken care to keep out of her way during the Blitz, but he went with Camberley to find her in case she knew of other ambulance drivers he could contact.
Talbot, a formidable woman three times Camberley’s size, was listening to a BBC recording with headphones on. Camberley had to tap her on the back to get her to turn around. “This is Mr. Knight. He’s looking for someone who knew his grandmother. She was an ambulance driver.”
“What was her name?” Talbot asked.
“Polly. Polly Sebastian.”
“Sebastian…,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I don’t remember anyone by that name in the FANYs. But I know whom you should ask. Goody. Mrs. Lambert,”
she explained. “She’s our group’s historian, and she knows everyone who worked in the Blitz.”
“Which one is she?”
“I don’t see her,” Talbot said, looking round the room. “She’s medium height, gray hair, rather stout.” Which described three-quarters of the women he’d seen this morning. “I know she’s here somewhere. Browne will know.”
She dragged him over to a gray-haired woman peering through her spectacles at a parachute mine. “Browne, where’s Goody Two-Shoes, do you know?”
“She’s not here. She had to do something in the City this morning, I don’t know what, but she said she’d come as soon as she’d finished with whatever it was.”
“Oh, dear,” Talbot said. “This young man is looking for someone who might have known his grandmother.”
“Oh. What did your grandmother do in the war?” Browne asked, and he went through the entire rigamarole again.
“Were you an ambulance driver?” he asked her.
“No, an RAF plotter. So I was only in London for the first two months of the Blitz. You said your grandmother worked at Townsend Brothers. So did Pudge.
That’s her over there in the green dress,” she said, pointing at a thin, birdlike woman looking at a display of clothing ration books.
But Pudge, whose name tag read Pauline Rainsford, had worked at Padgett’s, not Townsend Brothers. “Till it was hit,” she said matter-of-factly, “at which point I decided I might as well be in the armed services, and I volunteered to be a Wren.”
“Do you know of anyone who did work at Townsend Brothers?” he asked.
“No, but I know who you should ask. Mrs. Lambert. She’s our group’s historian.”
“I was told she wasn’t here.”
“She’s not,” Pudge said, “but she’s coming. In fact, I expected her here already. I’ll let you know as soon as she arrives, and in the meantime, you can ask the others. Hatcher!” she called to an elegant elderly woman in tweeds and pearls. “You were in London during the Blitz, weren’t you?”
“No. Bletchley Park,” she said, coming over, “which was not nearly as romantic as the historians make it sound. It was mostly drudgery, sorting through thousands upon thousands of combinations, looking for one that might work.”
Like the last eight years of my life, he thought, calculating coordinate after coordinate, searching for clues, trying to find a drop that would open.
“Do you know of anyone who was in London during the Blitz?” Pudge was asking Hatcher.
“Yes,” she said, pointing at two women looking at a display of war posters. “York and Chedders were.”
But neither York nor Chedders—Barbara Chedwick, according to her name tag—remembered a Polly Sebastian, and neither did any of the other women they passed him on to.