There was ominous music from the orchestra pit, and a Nazi officer goose-stepped onstage and stopped under her tower. “Sieg heil, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” he barked in a German accent. “Zhat’s an order!”
Rapunzel dumped a huge mass of yellow yarn hair on him, knocking him flat, and then brushed her hands together briskly. The audience erupted in cheers and laughter, and above the deafening roar floated Theodore’s clear, piercing voice. “I don’t like the pantomime. I want to go home!”
“That’s our cue,” Polly whispered. She grabbed Mike’s hand and hustled him up the aisle and down the stairs to the lobby.
Eileen was already there, an impatient Theodore tugging on her hand. “I told you it would be all right,” she said.
“I want to go home!” Theodore declared.
“So do we,” Polly said, grabbing his other hand, and they hurried out of the theater, the glaring usher holding the door open for them.
“What’s happened?” Eileen asked as soon as they were outside. “You said you didn’t find the retrieval team. Did you find some other historian?”
“Yes,” Mike said. “John Bartholomew.”
“Mr. Bartholomew?” Eileen said, looking from him to Polly. “But didn’t you tell Mike he’s already gone back?”
“He hasn’t,” Mike said. “You heard wrong. He was here for the attack on St. Paul’s, which is tonight.”
Theodore was listening avidly to them.
“Shouldn’t we discuss this after we see Theodore home?” Polly said.
“Yes, we need a taxi,” Mike said, looking down the street for one. “You know his address, don’t you, Eileen? We can pay the driver up front and tell him to—”
“We can’t send him home alone,” Eileen said. “His mother’s not there. She’s at work. That’s why I had to bring him to the pantomime.”
“Well, there must be a relative or a neighbor—”
“There’s Mrs. Owens, but she may not be home either, and I can’t send him off not knowing whether there’ll be anyone at the other end,” Eileen said. “He’s six years old.”
“You don’t understand,” Mike said. “We’ve only got today to find Bartholomew. He leaves tomorrow.”
“But we’re not going with him, are we?” Eileen said. “We’re only sending a message telling Oxford where we are. So couldn’t you two go and I’ll take Theodore home and you tell the retrieval team to come get me at Mrs. Rickett’s tomorrow? Like Shackleton. And that way you’ll be certain to get Polly back, since she’s the one with the deadline.”
“Polly doesn’t know what Bartholomew looks like, and you do,” Mike said. “And tonight’s”—he glanced at Theodore and lowered his voice—“one of the worst raids of the war, and Bartholomew’s going to be right in the middle of it. Which means we need to be out of here before it starts. We need to find him, get him to take us to his drop and go through with a message telling them to pick us up this afternoon.”
“I know,” Eileen said, “but Theodore’s my responsibility. I can’t leave him.”
“Perhaps we could find someone to take him,” Polly suggested. “Didn’t you say you sent him home from Backbury in the care of a soldier?”
“Yes, but I knew his mother would be waiting for him at the station. And I can’t turn him over to a perfect stranger.”
“Not a stranger,” Polly said. “We could go back to Mrs. Rickett’s and see if Miss Laburnum—”
“Are you sure she’ll be there?” Mike asked.
“No.”
He frowned a moment, thinking, and then said, “It looks like it’ll be faster to take him ourselves. Do you think you’ll be able to find someone in the neighborhood to leave him with if we do?”
“Yes, I’m certain we can.”
“Then let’s go. Where’s the best place to find a taxi?”
“The tube will be faster,” Eileen said. “There are so many diversions between here and Stepney.”
And now let’s hope the trains to Stepney are running, Polly thought, and that Theodore doesn’t suddenly announce that he doesn’t want to go on the train. But he boarded the car eagerly, peeled a corner of the blackout paper back from the window, pressed his nose against the glass, and gazed happily out, even though they’d still be underground for several more stops and there was nothing to see.
The three of them moved over to the opposite seats so they could talk. “What if we don’t reach him before the raids begin?” Eileen asked.
“Then we get him to tell us where his drop is,” Mike said, “and we go there and wait for him to come when the raid’s over. I figure his drop’s got to be outside London to have been able to open the morning after the twenty-ninth.”
“And you’re certain it will open?” Eileen asked.
“It already did open,” Mike said. “Six years ago.”
“Oh, that’s right, I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I thought he went back in October. I should have listened more closely to his lecture.”
“And I should’ve told you both about Bartholomew when I thought of him,” Mike said.
And I should have told Eileen what Mike said about trying to think of historians who’d been here earlier, Polly thought. But I didn’t want her to ask me about my last drop or my last assignment. So here we all are, making a last-minute dash to find an historian who was here six years ago.
And if we succeed, Mr. Bartholomew will take a message through to Mr. Dunworthy, and he will wait six years and then send us through, he will lie to us for six years and then send us through to Dunkirk and an epidemic and the Blitz, knowing full well Mike will lose half his foot, knowing full well how terrified of the raids Eileen will be.
She refused to believe it, in spite of the extra money he’d made her bring, the limitations he’d placed on where she could live. He wouldn’t lie to them like that.
How do you know he wouldn’t? she thought. You’ve been lying to Eileen and Mike for weeks.
What if, like her, Mr. Dunworthy had had a good reason for lying? What if he was trying to protect them, too? What if lying to them was the only way to save them?
Save us from what? she thought. And even if he was convinced lying was the only way, there’d have been no way he could have kept it from Colin, and Colin Save us from what? she thought. And even if he was convinced lying was the only way, there’d have been no way he could have kept it from Colin, and Colin would never have gone along with it. He’d have warned her.
Perhaps he had. He’d said, “If you get in trouble, I’ll come rescue you.” But he’d seemed boyishly earnest when he’d said it, not worried she might be in actual danger.
If he thought you were, he’d have stopped you. Or moved heaven and earth to come fetch you. And he wouldn’t let a little thing like an increase in slippage stop him.
Which means we didn’t find Mr. Bartholomew, we didn’t get a message through. We didn’t get there in time. Mike’s wrong, and Mr. Bartholomew went home in October or won’t be here till May. Or we won’t be able to find anyone to leave Theodore with. Or the train back to St. Paul’s will be delayed. It will jerk to a stop, and we’ll sit in a tunnel for hours and won’t be able to get to St. Paul’s.
Or perhaps the delay’s already happened, she thought, remembering the fatal minutes they’d spent arguing with the usher, that they’d spent arguing over how to get Theodore home. We’re already too late.
But they had to find Mr. Bartholomew. It was the only chance they had of getting out before her deadline.
And not just her chance, but theirs. Mike and Eileen would never be able to find Denys Atherton among the hundreds of thousands of soldiers preparing for D-Day.