It’s true, she thought. If she hadn’t caught her heel and bent down to free it, she’d never have heard him calling. And if she hadn’t been wearing these shoes, her heel wouldn’t have caught.
“For want of a shoe,” she murmured, and had a sudden vision of Mike saying, “If I hadn’t come through when I did, I wouldn’t have missed the bus and been stuck in Saltram-on-Sea, I wouldn’t have fallen asleep on the Commander’s boat …”
And if I hadn’t gone to the Works Board to volunteer to be an ambulance driver, I wouldn’t have been assigned to ENSA, I wouldn’t have been performing at the Alhambra …
“Try to move your foot back and forth,” Hunter said. “That’s it.” He reached his arm down deeper. “Keep moving it. I’ve nearly got it free.”
She nodded absently, thinking, If Mrs. Sentry hadn’t seen me in A Christmas Carol, she wouldn’t have assigned me to ENSA.
But why, if the continuum was trying to repair itself, hadn’t it kept her from being here the way it had kept Mike from getting to Dover, the way it had kept her and Eileen and Mike from reaching Mr. Bartholomew the night of the twenty-ninth?
Mike pushed two firemen out of the way of a collapsing wall that night, Polly thought suddenly. And Eileen saved someone’s life, too. The man in the ambulance.
And Binnie had been driving. Binnie, whom Eileen had nursed through pneumonia.
Why, if the past had sealed itself off to repair the damage Mike had caused, hadn’t it stopped Eileen from saving that bombing victim’s life? A hundred and sixty people had been killed the night of the twenty-ninth. It would have been easy to kill Mike and Eileen and her, too. Or to let them find John Bartholomew and go back to Oxford.
If they’d gone back, they wouldn’t have been here to further complicate things. She wouldn’t have been able to save Sir Godfrey, and Eileen wouldn’t have been able to save the man in the ambulance. And Eileen had had John Bartholomew in her sights. She’d run after him.
But Alf and Binnie had kept her from catching him. Alf and Binnie, whom Eileen had kept from going on the City of Benares.
“Got it,” Hunter said, and her heel, and foot, came abruptly loose.
She nearly fell. “Are you all right?” he asked, steadying her.
“Yes,” she said, righting herself and pulling her foot up out of the broken plaster, annoyed that he had interrupted her train of thought. What had she …? Alf and Binnie. They’d kept Eileen from catching John Bartholomew—
“Is your ankle injured?”
“No.” She set out across the wreckage again so he’d stop talking, so he wouldn’t break the fragile thread of thought she was following. If Alf and Binnie hadn’t kept Eileen from catching John Bartholomew …
They kept her from going back to Oxford the last day of her assignment, too, Polly thought, by getting the measles. If Alf hadn’t fallen ill, Eileen wouldn’t have been caught by the quarantine, and she wouldn’t have been there to take them back to London and keep the letter from Mrs. Hodbin. And if the net had sent Mike through on the right day, he would have been able to catch the bus to Dover, and he would never have ended up in Dunkirk, never have ended up saving Hardy.
And if the net had sent me through at six in the morning instead of the evening, I wouldn’t have been caught out during a raid and ended up at St. George’s. I wouldn’t have met Sir Godfrey.
But the slippage was supposed to prevent historians from altering events. It was supposed to—
“Wrong way,” Hunter said, taking her arm.
“What?”
“You can’t get out that way. It’s blocked. Through here,” he said, leading her over a fallen pillar and down a broken staircase. “That’s it, only a few more steps.”
“What did you say?” Polly asked him, pulling back against his hand on her arm, trying to make him stop.
“I said, ‘only a few more steps.’ We’re nearly there.”
“No, before that,” she said. “You said—”But they were down the stairs and out of the theater and he was handing her over to two FANYs.
“She needs to be taken to hospital,” Hunter said. “Possible internal injuries and exposure to gas. She’s a bit muddled.”
“Over here!” a man in a helmet called from across the street, and Hunter started toward him.
“Wait!” Polly called after him.
She had nearly had it, the knowledge which had been hovering just out of reach since he’d told her she’d saved Sir Godfrey’s life. “I need to speak to him,” she said to the FANYs, but he was already gone, she was already being wrapped in a blanket, being bundled into the back of an ambulance. “I need to ask him—”
“The man you saved has already been taken to hospital. You can speak to him there,” the FANY said, putting a mask over her nose and mouth. “Take a deep breath.”
“No,” Polly said, pushing it violently away, “not Sir Godfrey. Hunter, the man who brought me out.” But the doors were already shut, the ambulance was already moving. “Driver, you’ve got to go back. He said something when we were coming out of the theater. I must ask him what it was!”
“She’s confused,” the attendant called up to the driver. “It’s the effects of the gas.”
No, it’s not, Polly thought. It’s a clue.
He had said … something, and when she’d heard the words, they’d set up an echo of someone else, saying the same words … and for an instant it had all made sense—Alf and Binnie blocking Eileen’s way, and Mike unfouling the propeller, and the measles and the slippage and A Christmas Carol. If she could only remember …
Hunter had said, “You can’t get out that way. It’s blocked.” Like their drops. Hers had been bombed, and Mike’s had a gun emplacement on it, and Eileen’s had been fenced off and turned into a riflery range, blocking their way back. Like Alf and Binnie had blocked Eileen’s way, like the station guard had kept Polly from leaving Notting Hill Gate and going to the drop the night St. George’s was destroyed—
It has something to do with that night, Polly thought. The guard wouldn’t let me leave, and I went to Holborn—
“This won’t hurt,” the attendant said, clamping the oxygen mask down over her nose and mouth and holding it there. “It’s only oxygen. It will help clear your head.”
I don’t want it cleared, Polly thought. Not till she remembered what he’d said, not until she’d worked it out. It was a puzzle, like one of Mike’s crosswords. It had something to do with Holborn and Mike’s bus and ENSA and her shoe.
No, not her shoe—the shoe the horse had lost. “For want of a horse, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the war …”
The ambulance jolted to a stop, and they were opening the doors, carrying her inside the hospital past a woman at a desk.
Like Agatha Christie that night at St. Bart’s, Polly thought, and for an instant she nearly had it. It was something to do with Agatha Christie. And that night she’d gone to Holborn. The sirens had gone early, and the guard wouldn’t let her go to the drop, and so she hadn’t been there when the parachute mine exploded, she had thought they were all dead and had staggered into Townsend Brothers, and Marjorie had seen her and decided to elope with her airman—
“Let’s get you out of those clothes,” the nurse said, and they were taking her bloody swimsuit off, putting her into a hospital gown and a bed, bombarding her with questions so that she couldn’t concentrate. She had to keep explaining that her name wasn’t Viola, it was Polly Sebastian, that she wasn’t a chorus girl at the Windmill, that she wasn’t injured.
“It’s not my blood,” she insisted. “It’s Sir Godfrey’s.”
She’d nearly forgotten about Sir Godfrey, she had been so fixed on remembering what Hunter had said, but if he’d died on the way to hospital, it didn’t matter. If she hadn’t saved his life …