London, and the area in between. But not the area between Dulwich and Dover.
Mr. Dunworthy will have a fit when he finds out I’ve been in Bomb Alley, she thought. But they would only be doing this till the V-1s began coming over. After that they’d have their hands full dealing with the incidents in their immediate area.
The route to Dover wove through a series of twisting lanes and tiny villages. She did her best to memorize it, but there were no signposts to go by, and on the return trip she had to devote all her attention to the patient they’d picked up. “He’s to have surgery on his leg,” the nurse said as he was loaded into the ambulance. She lowered her voice so he wouldn’t hear, “I’m afraid amputation may be necessary. Gangrene.” And when Mary climbed in the back with him, she could smell a sickening sweet smell.
“He’s been sedated,” the nurse had told her, but before they were five miles out of Dover, he opened his eyes and asked, “They’re not going to cut it off, are they?” and what had nurses in 1944 said in answer to a question like that? What could anyone in any era say?
“You mustn’t think about that now,” she said. “You must rest.”
“It’s all right. I already know they are. It’s queer, isn’t it? I made it through Dunkirk and El Alamein and the invasion without getting injured, and then a bloody lorry turned over on me.”
“You shouldn’t talk. You’ll tire yourself out.”
He nodded. “Soldiers getting killed all round me on Sword Beach, and I didn’t get so much as a scratch. Lucky all the way. Did I ever tell you about Dunkirk, Sister?”
He must think she was his nurse in hospital at Dover. “Try to sleep,” she murmured.
“I thought I wasn’t going to make it off. I thought I was going to be left behind on the beach-the Germans were coming up fast-but my luck held. The chap who took me aboard had been pulled off Dunkirk two days before, and had come back to help get the rest of us off. He’d made three crossings already and the last one they’d nearly been torpedoed.”
He was still talking when they reached the War Emergency Hospital in Orpington. “I nearly drowned, and he jumped in and saved me, hauled me aboard. If it hadn’t been for him-”
Talbot opened the doors, and two attendants came out to unload the stretcher. Mary scrambled out, holding the plasma bottle aloft. An attendant took it from her. “Good luck, soldier,” she said as they started into the hospital with him.
“Thank you,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for him, and for your listening to me-”
“Wait!” Fairchild said, leaping past Mary and inside. “You can’t take that blanket. It’s ours.”
“Oh, no,” Mary said to Talbot. “I completely forgot to ask in Dover if they had any blankets.”
“I did. They didn’t.”
Fairchild came back, triumphantly carrying the blanket. “Did you ask if they had any extras to spare?” Talbot asked her.
“They don’t. I nearly had to wrestle them to get this one back.”
“What about Bethnal Green?” Mary suggested. “Could we go by the post there on the way home and check to see if they-?”
“No, we already asked them, the day of the applecart upset,” Talbot said.
Which meant she’d have to think of some other way to get to Bethnal Green to confirm the attack. Perhaps she could borrow a bicycle after she went off duty. But the Major sent her and Reed to Bromley after sticking plaster and rubbing alcohol, and early the next morning they set out for Dover again.
“And then you bear left at the bridge,” Fairchild said, teaching her the route. “And then right just past those trees.” She pointed ahead to where two tanks sat in a pasture. “That’s odd. I thought all our tanks were in France.”
Mary wondered if they were real tanks. British Intelligence had used inflatable rubber tanks as part of their plan to deceive the Germans into thinking the invasion would be launched from southeast England. Perhaps they were left over from that.
A horrible thought struck her. British Intelligence had also attempted to fool the Germans as to where their V-1s had landed. They’d planted false stories and photos in the newspapers to make them alter their launch trajectories so the rockets would fall short of London. Which was why Dulwich and Croydon and Bomb Alley had been hit more than anywhere else.
What if Research had mistakenly put the falsified data into her implant instead of the actual times and locations? That would explain why no one had said anything about Bethnal Green-because the V-1 hadn’t actually hit there. If that were the case, she was in trouble. Her safety depended on her knowing exactly where and when every V-1 and V-2 had landed.
As soon as we get back to the post, I’ve got to find out if that railway was damaged, she thought, but the moment they reached the post, the Major sent her and Fairchild off to Woolwich for the extra blankets she’d finally managed to procure, and it was dark before they got back. Which meant she’d have to wait and go to Bethnal Green tomorrow-unless the V-1s that hit tonight were on time. If they were, then the data in her implant was correct, and she could stop worrying. Unless of course one of them hit the post.
She fidgeted through the evening, waiting for 11:43, when the first one was supposed to have hit. The siren was supposed to have sounded at 11:31. She listened impatiently to the FANYs argue over who got to wear the green silk first, trying not to look at her watch every five minutes. She was immeasurably glad when eleven o’clock and lights-out came. She retired under the covers with a pocket torch to read her watch by and a magazine she’d borrowed from the common room. If anyone noticed the light, she’d say she was reading.
She propped the magazine on top of the torch to shield the light and waited. Ten past eleven. A quarter past. The girls continued to argue in the dark. “But Donald’s never seen you in the Yellow Peril,” Sutcliffe-Hythe said, “and Edwin’s already seen me in it twice.”
“I know,” Maitland said, “but I’m hoping Donald will propose.”
Twenty past. Twenty-five. Six more minutes, Mary thought, listening for the wail of the siren starting up, for the drone of the V-1. She wished she’d listened to a recording of one in the Bodleian so she’d know exactly what they sounded like. Their distinctive rattle, which was supposed to sound like a backfiring automobile engine, had been loud enough that it had been possible to dive for the nearest gutter when one heard it and save oneself.
Twenty-nine. Half-past. 11:31. My watch must be fast, she thought, and held it up to her ear. Oh, do come on. Sound the alert. I don’t want to have to go back through to Oxford. What will I tell the Major? And Mr. Dunworthy. If he finds out I’ve not only been driving Bomb Alley, but have a faulty implant, he’ll never let me come back.
11:32. 11:33…
They’d make a beautiful target, wouldn’t they?
The English Channel-29 May 1940
MIKE LURCHED TO THE REAR OF THE BOAT. “WHAT DO YOU mean, we’re halfway across the Channel?” he shouted, peering out over the stern. There was no land in sight, nothing but water and darkness on all sides. He groped his way back to the helm and the Commander. “You have to turn back!”
“You said you were a war correspondent, Kansas,” the Commander shouted back at him, his voice muffled by the wind. “Well, here’s your chance to cover the war instead of writing about beach fortifications. The whole bloody British Army’s trapped at Dunkirk, and we’re going to rescue them!”
But I can’t go to Dunkirk, Mike thought. It’s impossible. Dunkirk’s a divergence point. Besides, this wasn’t the way the evacuation had operated. The small craft hadn’t set off on their own. That had been considered much too dangerous. They’d been organized into convoys led by naval destroyers.
