“I don’t know,” Polly said. “I fear they’ll only make things worse.”
“Hush,” Mrs. Brightford said. “And then the good fairy said, ‘The spell is already cast, and I cannot undo it, but I will do what I can.’ ” And Polly wanted to stay and listen to the end of the story, but she was late, she had to get to Dulwich before the twenty-ninth. She ran through tunnels and corridors and up stairs which were sometimes in Holborn and sometimes in Padgett’s, and she couldn’t run very fast because she was carrying the answer that she had puzzled out, clenched in her fist like a subway token.
She didn’t dare let go of it. She had to hold it tight against her stomach till she had the string wrapped round it, till she had all the ends tucked in. She had been late getting to Dulwich and missed hearing the first V-1s, so she hadn’t known what they sounded like, so she had knocked Talbot into the gutter and wrenched her knee and had had to drive Stephen, and if she hadn’t, he and Talbot would have been killed in Tottenham Court Road, and he wouldn’t have come up with the idea of tipping the V-1s …
But it wasn’t a V-1, it was a siren, and Polly had to go out onstage and bend over and flip up her skirt, but her knickers didn’t say, “Air Raid in Progress,” they said
“Wrong Way Round,” and when she tried to look over her shoulder to read the message, a V-1 came over, rattling like a motorcycle, and she had to run downstairs to the shelter in Padgett’s basement, holding the answer tight in her hand, the answer that made it all make sense—Eileen’s driving lessons and Stephen and the Wren and Alf and Binnie’s parrot and the library at Holborn.
But she wasn’t in Holborn, she was in St. Paul’s, trying to find a way up to the roofs. But she couldn’t. It was too dark. She needed a torch.
Mike had it, he was swinging it back and forth, trying to see what was fouling the propeller. “Shine it over here,” she said, but Mike said, “I can’t. There’s no time.
The U-boats will be here any minute.” And when she looked up at the boat looming above them, she saw it wasn’t the Lady Jane, it was the City of Benares.
“Get the lantern!” Mike shouted.
“What lantern?”
“In the painting,” he said, and she ran back down the curving staircase, past the masks of Comedy and Tragedy, her hands cupped protectively around the answer, through the north transept and under the dome to the south aisle …
And full tilt into Alf and Binnie, colliding with them, her hands reaching out instinctively to break her fall, opening, spilling all of it—the slippage and Agatha Christie and the Lady Jane and the air-raid warden and her bloomers—like pennies, like Crimson Caress lipstick onto the pavement and into the road. “Oh, no,” she said, bending to pick it up. “Oh, no.”
“Shh, it’s all right,” someone said, and she opened her eyes. A nurse in a wimple and a starched white apron was bending over her, taking her pulse. “You’re in hospital.”
“I lost—” Polly murmured.
“Whatever it is, you can find it later,” the nurse said. “You must try to sleep.”
“No,” Polly said, thinking, It had something to do with detective novels. And Sleeping Beauty. And a horse. “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse …”
“I must see Sir Godfrey,” she said.
“Sir Godfrey?” the nurse said blankly, and Polly thought, They’ve taken him to some other hospital, like the man I tied the tourniquet on in Croydon. Or to the morgue.
He died on the way to hospital, Polly thought. I didn’t save his life after all.
But the nurse was saying, “It was lucky you found him in time. And lucky you knew what to do.”
But we weren’t lucky, Polly thought. I was late getting to Dulwich. Mike missed the bus to Dover. He missed Daphne in Saltram-on-Sea and had to follow her all the way to Manchester, and Eileen came to Townsend Brothers the one day I was gone. And the night of the twenty-ninth, everything had conspired against them—the air-raid warden who stopped them just as they were going into St. Paul’s and the doctor who waylaid Eileen and the fires and falling walls and blocked-off streets.
And Alf and Binnie.
“Why is it everywhere I go there are horrible children?” Eileen had asked, but if it hadn’t been for the Hodbins, Eileen wouldn’t have survived after Mike died. And if she hadn’t insisted on taking them in, if they hadn’t insisted on bringing their parrot, Alf and Binnie wouldn’t have got them thrown out of the boardinghouse. They all might have died along with Mrs. Rickett.
“It’s lucky we got thrown out, ain’t it?” Alf had said, and Mr. Humphreys had said, “What luck you came to Saint Paul’s today. He’s here, the man I told you about.” And Mike had said, “It’s lucky that was the only available room in Bletchley, or I’d never have found out what happened to Gerald Phipps.”
“It was lucky the warden heard me in the rubble,” Marjorie had said, and that night in Padgett’s, Eileen had said, “It’s lucky I heard you calling.”
And at some point Polly must have fallen asleep, must have murmured Eileen’s name, because Eileen said, “I’m here,” and when Polly opened her eyes, she was And at some point Polly must have fallen asleep, must have murmured Eileen’s name, because Eileen said, “I’m here,” and when Polly opened her eyes, she was there, and it was morning. A nurse was pulling back the blackout curtains from the tall windows, and sunlight was streaming into the ward.
Polly held her hands up in the light and looked at them. They were open, empty of anything, but it didn’t matter. She hadn’t lost the answer she’d been holding carefully cupped in them. It had been there all along. She had just been looking at it the wrong way round.
“Are you all right?” Eileen asked.
“Yes,” she said wonderingly. “I am.” If I’m right. If Alf and Binnie—
“Oh, thank goodness,” Eileen said, and Polly saw that she had been crying. “Mr. Dunworthy and I have been so worried … When you didn’t come home last night … The warden told us there’d been bombs all over the West End, and then when I rang the theater and the stage manager said you’d run out during the performance into the middle of a raid and hadn’t come back, I …”
Eileen broke off, blew her nose, and attempted to smile. “The matron said they found you inside the Phoenix Theatre. What on earth were you doing there?”
“Saving Sir Godfrey’s life,” Polly said. “Eileen, how ill was Binnie?”
“How ill? What—?”
“With the measles. Would she have died if you hadn’t been there?”
“I don’t know. Her fever was dreadfully high. But you’re not going to die, Polly. The nurse said you’d be fine—”
“What happened to the firewatcher?”
“The fire—”
“The one who was injured, who John Bartholomew took to St. Bart’s? Did Mr. Bartholomew save his life?”
“Polly, you’re not making any sense. The doctor said you breathed in a good deal of gas. I think you may still—”
“On the last day of your assignment, why didn’t you go back to Oxford?”
“I told you, the quarantine.”
“No, I need to know exactly what happened,” Polly said, clutching Eileen’s hand. “Please. It’s important.”
Eileen looked at her as if trying to decide whether to call the nurse, and then said, “I was leaving to go to the drop when some new evacuees arrived. Theodore was one of them.”
Theodore, who had prevented them from going straight to St. Paul’s to find John Bartholomew. They had had to take him home to Stepney, and by the time they reached St. Paul’s, the sirens had gone and the ARP warden—
“I had to get the new evacuees settled,” Eileen was saying, “and then as I was leaving, the vicar asked me to help him get out of giving Una, Lady Caroline’s kitchen maid, her driving lesson, and when I drove round the curve, Alf and Binnie were standing in the middle of the lane.”