“But if she were, Colin would already be here.”
“Yes,” he said, “and the fact that he isn’t very likely means our part in this is not over.”
“I know,” Polly said, thinking of how Major Denewell had told her and the other FANYs the war could still be lost even during that last year.
“More may be required of us before the end,” Mr. Dunworthy told her.
Including our lives, Polly thought.
She had nearly died rescuing Sir Godfrey. The next time she might not make it. Like the countless rescue workers and ARP wardens and firemen who’d died digging people out of the rubble or taking people to shelter or defusing bombs. Or she might simply be killed outright by an HE, as Mike had been, and all the other people who’d died in the Blitz and in hospitals and prison camps and newspaper offices. Casualties of war.
But still even in death, doing their bit. Like Mike. It was his death that had made her go to the Works Board and volunteer to be an ambulance driver and be assigned to ENSA and save Sir Godfrey.
“I know there’s a good chance we won’t make it back,” she told Mr. Dunworthy, and as she did, it struck her that that was what soldiers said when they were leaving for the front.
“But it doesn’t matter,” she said, and meant it. “All that matters is that Sir Godfrey didn’t die and I’m not responsible for losing the war, and that I can see Miss Laburnum and Doreen and Trot without getting them killed. And if I’m killed, I won’t be the only one to die in World War Two. I’m only sorry I got you into this.”
“We got each other into it. And we may yet get out.”
“And if not, we still stopped Hitler in his tracks.” She smiled at him.
“We did indeed,” he said, and looked suddenly years younger. “And we, like St. Paul’s, are still standing, at least for the moment. Speaking of which, when I go there to check the drop, I intend to ask to be taken on as a volunteer. I have always wanted to serve on the fire watch and help save St. Paul’s—”
He stopped, an odd look on his face.
“What is it?” Polly asked. “Are you feeling ill?”
“No,” he said. “It’s just occurred to me … I think I may already have saved it. The night I came through, I crashed into a stirrup pump, and two of the fire watch came down to investigate and found an incendiary which had burned through the roof. If I hadn’t been there—”
“They might not have discovered it till too late, and the fire—” Polly said, and stopped as well, thinking of the fire on the desk which she had put out the night they’d been trying to find John Bartholomew.
“And if my being there did save it, then it may do so again,” Mr. Dunworthy was saying, “even if I can only be at St. Paul’s for two weeks. But you will need to help me persuade them. And convince Eileen.”
Convincing Eileen proved to be the more difficult of the two. “But it’s dangerous,” she said. “The north transept—”
“Won’t be bombed till April sixteenth,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “I’ll phone in and tell them I’m ill that night.”
“What about the big raids on May tenth and eleventh? You said the entire city—”
“St. Paul’s wasn’t hit either of those nights,” he reassured her.
And it doesn’t matter, Polly wanted to shout at her. He won’t be here. His deadline will already have passed. And the chances are I’ll only have two weeks after that. If she had another task, it almost certainly lay between now and the end of the Blitz. There would be only occasional raids after that, but they’d had far fewer casualties. Which meant her deadline wasn’t the end of 1943. It was May eleventh.
But she couldn’t tell Eileen that. In the first place, she wouldn’t believe her. And in the second place, the task at hand was to convince her to allow Mr. Dunworthy to join the fire watch. So instead Polly said, “St. Paul’s won’t suffer any more damage till 1944 and the V-1 and V-2 attacks.”
“But if there won’t be any more damage, then why do you need to be in the fire watch, Mr. Dunworthy?” Eileen persisted.
“Because I may be the reason there wasn’t damage,” Mr. Dunworthy said, which didn’t help his case.
“No,” Eileen said firmly. “It’s too dangerous. The incendiaries and the roofs … You might fall.”
“None of the fire watch was injured or killed in 1941,” Mr. Dunworthy told her, and Polly wondered if that was a lie, if Mr. Dunworthy was hoping to die at St.
Paul’s as well as work there.
“And being in the cathedral will give me opportunities to check the drop when no one’s around,” Mr. Dunworthy said, and Eileen eventually relented, though she insisted on walking him to and from the cathedral every night he was on duty.
“St. Paul’s may be safe,” she said, “but there’s still the journey there and back again. I have no intention of letting either of you get killed five minutes before the retrieval team arrives.”
“All right,” he agreed, and let her walk him there every night, except for the seventeenth, when he sent Eileen on an errand and had Polly accompany him instead so Eileen wouldn’t see the damage from the raids the night before.
“It left a huge crater in the middle of the floor,” he told Polly. “If Eileen sees it, I fear she’ll never let me go on working with the fire watch.”
“And she’ll see you can’t get to your drop,” Polly said, guessing the real reason.
“True, I can’t.”
When they reached St. Paul’s, Mr. Humphreys was delighted to see Polly. “Miss Sebastian, you must be an excellent nurse. Mr. Hobbe looks quite recovered.”
He insisted on showing them the north transept, or, rather, the mountain of plaster and splintered timbers and broken marble that blocked access to it. “Still, though, the damage could have been worse,” he said.
Far, far worse, Polly thought, going to the Alhambra that night, thinking of Hitler unvanquished, unstoppable, marauding and murdering his way through England and the rest of the world. And the future.
But we stopped him, she thought. We won the war.
“You look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” Tabbitt said. “Did you meet a handsome doctor in hospital?”
“You’re in awfully good spirits for someone who nearly bought it,” Hattie said.
The troupe noted her lightness of mood as well. “You’re too cheery by half,” Viv said when she went to the theater for the first pantomime rehearsal.
“It’s just that I’m so happy to see all of you,” she said. Sir Godfrey and Mrs. Wyvern had not only found another theater—the Regent—for them to stage the pantomime in but had managed to talk Mr. Tabbitt into shifting Polly to matinees for the duration and had bullied the entire troupe to be in the play.
Miss Laburnum was to be the narrator, Mrs. Brightford Sleeping Beauty’s mother and the Queen, and the rector the King and one-half of the Prince’s horse. Viv was the other half, Nelson was the prince’s dog, and Miss Hibbard was helping with costumes. “We’re happy to see you, too, my dear,” she said.
“And delighted to see you looking so well after your ordeal,” the rector added.
“It’s the spring weather,” Miss Laburnum said. “I find the coming of spring always lifts one spirits.”
“I say it’s a man,” Viv said.
“Well, whatever it is, it suits you,” Mrs. Brightford said. “You look positively radiant.”
But when she went backstage with Sir Godfrey, he said, “What is this fey mood which has come now upon you? Such moods are dangerous. Are you certain you’re fully recovered from your exertions on my behalf? Perhaps we should postpone the play.”
“No, better not,” she said and, when he looked up alertly, “I only meant the theater may not be available for an additional week. And ENSA may be sending me to the provinces in May. Not to Bristol,” she added hastily. “There’s no need to postpone. I’m all right.”