And I might be, Polly thought. I might be.
“I feel the least you can do,” Sir Godfrey went on, “for consigning me to what is, quite literally, a fate worse than death, is to keep me company during my ordeal.”
“Yes, all right. I promise. I’ll do the pantomime, if you’ll only tell me—”
“Excellent. ‘We shall sing like two birds i’ the cage,’ as soon as I’ve located another theater. I wonder if the Windmill would lend us their stage for a month. We could send you to ask them, in your eloquent bloomers—”
“You promised you’d tell me if I paid the forfeit,” Polly said. “How did I save your life, if I did save it?”
“You did, you have, sweet Viola, every day and every night since first you entered my life. And what an entrance! Worthy of the divine Sarah—a knock upon the door, and there you stood in the doorway—frightened, beautiful, lost. A creature from another country, washed up on the shores of St. George’s. And the embodiment of everything I thought the war had destroyed.”
He smiled at her. “During those first nights of the Blitz, it seemed to me that not only the theaters but theater itself and the Bard had become casualties of war. That Shakespeare’s quaint notions of honor and courage and virtue were all dead, murdered by Hitler and his Luftwaffe. And I felt as though I had been murdered along with them.
“And then you came,” he said, “looking like all of Shakespeare’s lovely heroines and loving daughters combined in one—Miranda and Rosalind and Cordelia and Viola combined into one—and restored my faith.”
She had been wrong. When he’d said she’d saved his life, he had been speaking figuratively, not literally, and her theory hadn’t been right after all.
“What is it?” Sir Godfrey said, frowning at her with concern. “Why do you look so disappointed? Do you regret saving an old man from despair?”
“No,” she said. “No, of course not. I only thought you meant I’d really saved your life.”
“But you had. There are a hundred ways a man can bleed to death. And he can be pulled from the rubble of bitterness, of despair, as well as from the wreckage of the Phoenix. And which rescue is the more real? Which mattered more at Agincourt, the longbows or Henry’s St. Crispin’s Day speech? Which matters more in this war, panzers or courage, HEs or love? Nothing you could have done for me, dear child, was more important than the restoration of my hope.”
She tried to smile through her disappointment.
“But you were the salvation of my corporeal being as well. That night when first I saw you—”
“There you are,” the nurse said to Polly, flinging the door open. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“This young lady saved my life,” Sir Godfrey said. “I was thanking her for—”
Another nurse appeared, looking fierce. “Sir Godfrey is not to have visitors,” she said to Polly’s nurse.
“Please, I only need another moment,” Polly said.
“Who’s this?” Sir Godfrey’s nurse demanded of Polly’s nurse. “A patient? What’s she doing out of bed? Why weren’t you watching her?”
Polly’s nurse looked defensive. “She got out of bed without my permission, and—”
“Silence!” Sir Godfrey shouted. “Begone, varlets. I would speak with this lady.” But Sir Godfrey’s nurse wasn’t impressed.
“Take this patient back down to her ward immediately,” she said to Polly’s nurse.
“Please,” Polly said. “You don’t understand—”
“Help!” a voice called from the end of the ward. “Oh, help!”
Binnie! Polly thought. Thank heavens.
“Come quick!” Binnie sobbed. “My mum’s bleedin’. Hurry!”
Both nurses took off at a run.
“Quick,” Polly said, gripping the railing at the foot of the bed with both hands. “Tell me how I saved your life.”
He nodded. “That night you stumbled into St. George’s, I had received a letter from an old friend of mine, offering me a role in a repertory company. It was to tour the provinces—Salisbury, Bristol, Plymouth. It was a dreadful program, no Shakespeare at all. Barrie, Galsworthy, Charley’s Aunt”—he grimaced—“and rep is even worse than pantomime. But all the theaters in the West End were shut, and it would have been a chance to get away from London and the bombs. And it scarcely mattered which play I did, or where. It was all for naught, ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ ”
We haven’t got time for you to do Macbeth, Polly thought desperately. They’ll be back any minute.
“And then you came, and I knew that was a lie. That beauty, courage, meaning still lived.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” Polly heard Sir Godfrey’s nurse shout from the end of the corridor. “Children aren’t allowed up here.”
“And then,” he said, “when you knew your lines, I realized I could not possibly leave.”
“Come back here, you wretched child!” the nurse shouted, but Polly scarcely heard her.
“The next morning,” Sir Godfrey said, “I wrote to him, turning his offer down.”
Polly waited, afraid to speak, afraid to breathe.
“The theater in Bristol was bombed during the second act of Sentimental Tommy. A direct hit. The entire company was killed.”
Miranda: What foul play had we that we came from thence? Or blessed was’t we did?
Prospero: Both, both.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE TEMPEST
London—Spring 1941
IT TOOK THE STAFF OF THE HOSPITAL ANOTHER QUARTER of an hour to apprehend Alf and Binnie, during which time Polly was able to assure Sir Godfrey again that yes, she’d do the pantomime if he could find another theater to put it on in, hurry back down to the ward, divest herself of the Chinese robe, climb into bed, and be lying there looking nearly as innocent as Alf and Binnie did when they were dragged in by the scruff of their necks.
“Do you know these children?” the matron demanded.
“They’re my foster children,” Eileen said, coming in. “I told them to stay in the waiting room while I visited Polly. They’ve been very worried over their aunt,” she explained.
Alf nodded. “We was scared she was dead.”
“We was orphaned before, you see,” Binnie said, sniffling.
Alf patted his sister kindly. “We ain’t got nobody to take care of us ’cept Aunt Eileen and Aunt Polly.”
“I’m sorry if they attempted to come up to the ward to see me,” Polly said. “They meant well—”
“Attempted to come up to the ward?” the matron said. “They’ve turned this entire hospital upside down. They’ve been racketing through the corridors, terrorizing patients, wreaking—”
“We was only trying to catch Alf’s snake,” Binnie said, “ ’afore it frightened anyone.”
“Snake?” the matron said. “You two let a snake loose in hospital?”
“Course not,” Binnie said, her eyes wide and innocent. “ ’E got away on ’is own, didn’t ’e?”
“But don’t worry, we caught ’im,” Alf said, pulling a snake out of his pocket and dangling it in front of the matron.
The matron blanched. “I want these two children—and their reptile—out of this hospital immediately.”
“Yes, Matron,” Eileen said, and hustled the children out.
“I’m afraid they’ll only come back,” Polly said. “They’re very much attached to me.” And within a quarter of an hour she was pronounced fully recovered, discharged, and allowed to telephone someone—but not Eileen—to bring her her clothes and handbag.
Polly rang up Hattie and spent the time till Hattie got there from the Alhambra thinking of everything that had happened, trying to fit it into the puzzle.