“Mr. Simms has sat in that space every night,” the stout man said.
“Respecting another’s shelter arrangements is vital,” Mrs. Wyvern said to the clergyman. “Don’t you agree, Reverend?”
Help, Polly thought. Colin, you said if I got in trouble, you’d come rescue me. Well, now would be a good time.
“If she wanted a newspaper,” Mrs. Rickett said, “she should have purchased one at a newsagent’s-” and stopped, looking at the aristocratic gentleman. He’d stood up, holding his newspaper, which he’d folded in quarters, and was coming across the room.
He walked straight to Polly and held out his newspaper to her with grave courtesy. “Would you care for my Times, dear child?” he asked her. He spoke quietly-but not so quietly that everyone in the room couldn’t hear him, she noted-and his voice was as refined as his appearance.
“I-” Polly said.
“I’m quite finished with it.” He held it out.
“Thank you,” she said gratefully, and the incident was over. Mrs. Rickett retreated sullenly to the bench, the white-haired woman took out her knitting again and began counting rows, the rector went back to his book, and Lila whispered, “Don’t pay Mrs. Rickett any mind. She’s an old cat,” and went back to talking about the dance she and Viv were missing.
The gentleman had managed to completely defuse the situation, though Polly wasn’t certain how. She shot him a grateful look, but he’d retreated to his corner again and was reading a book. She looked down at the newspaper in her hand. He’d folded it open to the “Rooms to Let” section for her. She started through the listings, looking for permissible addresses. Mayfair. No, too expensive. Stepney, no. Shoreditch, no. Croydon, no, definitely not.
Here was one. Kensington. Ashbury Lane, which might work. What was the address? Please not six, nineteen, or twenty-one, she said silently. Eleven. Excellent-an allowed address, within her budget, and near Oxford Street. Now if it was only near a tube stop. “Convenient to Marble Arch,” the advertisement read. Which had taken a direct hit on September seventeenth.
She mentally crossed it off and continued down the list. Kensal Green. No, too far out. Whitechapel, no.
“The raid seems to be letting up,” Lila said.
The racket did seem to be diminishing. The explosions sounded farther off, and one of the guns had stopped firing. “Perhaps the all clear will go early tonight, Viv,” Lila said, “and we can still go to the dance,” but the moment she spoke, the barrage started up again.
“I hate Hitler,” Viv burst out. “It’s so utterly unfair, being trapped in this place on a Saturday night.”
Polly looked up sharply. Saturday? It’s Tuesday. But even as she thought it, she was seeing the evidence that had been in front of her all along-the dance Lila and Viv had been planning to go to, the guns that hadn’t started till Wednesday and that no one had remarked on, the braced ceiling, the Snakes and Ladders game, the embroidered tea cloth-all signs they’d been coming here for more than three days. The clergyman and the woman’s discussion of the order of service for Sunday. For tomorrow.
She’d misread all the clues, just as she had on the street when she’d thought it was early morning. The guns hadn’t started till the eleventh, after all, and of course the raids had sounded like they were overhead. Kensington had been bombed on Saturday. But if it’s Saturday, she thought, I’ve already missed four days. And the crucial first few days of the Blitz when the contemps were adjusting to it. That’s why they were all so calm, so settled in. They’d already adjusted.
And I missed it, she thought furiously. Badri said he expected two hours of slippage, not four and a half days. And it was actually even more than that. Tomorrow was Sunday. She wouldn’t be able to look for work till Monday.
Which means I can’t start work till Tuesday, by which time I’ll have lost an entire week of observing shopgirls, and I only have six.
It can’t be the fourteenth, she thought. She snatched up the newspaper and paged through it, looking for the front page. I didn’t have enough time to begin with.
But it was. “Saturday, 14 September 1940,” the masthead read, and below it, appropriately enough, “Late Edition.”
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the kingdom was lost.
Saltram-on-Sea-29 May 1940
IT WASN’T REALLY A FOOT OF WATER. IT WAS ONLY ABOUT four inches, but it covered the hold. Mike could see why the Commander had asked him if he could swim.
“Nothing to worry about,” the Commander said, seeing Mike’s reaction. “Just need to get the bilge pump started.” He splashed unconcernedly through the water and lifted a trapdoor. “She’s been sitting here all winter. An hour or two out in the Channel, and she’ll be as good as new.”
An hour or two out in the Channel, and she’ll be at the bottom of it, Mike thought. And she won’t need a U- boat to do it. He looked around the hold. There was a tiny galley with a Primus stove against one wall and a scarred wooden table against the other. On it were a messy heap of maps and charts, a half-empty bottle of Scotch, a flashlight, several large cork floats, and an opened can of either sardines or bait. Against the other wall were two lockers and a bunk with a tumble of gray blankets.
The Commander got down on his knees and reached down through the trap. The bilge pump coughed and then died.
There is no way I am going anywhere on this, Mike thought, even to Dover. I’ll just have to find another boat. But the men on the dock hadn’t exactly been full of suggestions. Let’s hope Powney’s driving into town right now.
Commander Harold did something else to the bilge pump, and this time it chugged for a full minute before dying. “Needs a bit of oil is all,” he said. He splashed over to the galley, lit a fire under a coffeepot, and began rummaging through the pile of charts. “The Navy’s gone soft, that’s what’s wrong with it.” He unearthed an opened can of potatoes and then a doubtful-looking mug. “You know what they feed ’em on board ship nowadays? Tea with milk and sugar! You wouldn’t see Nelson drinking tea! Rum, that’s what we drank, and hot coffee!” He poured a cup and handed it to Mike. Mike took a cautious sip. It tasted like it looked.
“You should see what they sent-now, where did I put it?” the Commander said, attacking the mess on the table again. “I know it’s here somewhere-aha!” He fished a letter out of the heap and handed it to Mike with a triumphant flourish. “The Small Vessels Pool sent that letter four weeks ago.”
The Small Vessels Pool. That was the “Smale Vises School” Mr. Tompkins had been mumbling about. And this was the letter they’d sent out at the beginning of May asking small craft owners if they’d be willing to volunteer their boats for service in case of invasion or other “military emergency.”
“Sent one of their bloody forms along with it,” the Commander said. “Six pages long! I wrote ’em back the very same day, volunteering the Lady Jane and me for service.”
I’ll bet you didn’t tell them about the broken bilge pump, Mike thought, or the four inches of water in the hold.
“And haven’t heard a word since,” the Commander was saying. “Four weeks! It took Hitler less than half that to take over Poland! If they’re running the war in France the way they’re running the Small Vessels Pool, they’ll be surrendering to Hitler a fortnight from now!”
No, they wouldn’t, thanks to a ragtag armada of motor launches and fishing smacks and pleasure boats who’d arrived to rescue them in the nick of time. But the Lady Jane wouldn’t be among them. It would never make it out of the harbor, let alone across the Channel and back. And there was no way he was going to let the
