hiking through Kent before the war.”
“The German High …? What exactly are we picking up?”
“A German prisoner of war,” Cess said. “We’re picking him up at his prison camp and driving him to London. He’s ill, and the Red Cross has arranged to have him sent home to Germany. But first we’re driving him to Dover through the staging area in Kent so he can see our invasion preparations firsthand.”
“A few rubber tanks, wooden planes, and a sewer-pipe oil refinery? Those were meant to fool a reconnaissance plane from twenty thousand feet up, not a—”
“No, we’re going to show him the real thing,” Cess said, “ships, aeroplanes, everything. He’s only going to think he’s in Kent. That’s why we have to drive to Gravesend this afternoon. We’ve got to map out a false route so the colonel can accidentally overhear us talking about where we are.”
It was a clever plan. With signposts down all over England, the colonel would only have their word for where they were, and if they could convince him he was in Kent and he went home and told the German High Command, it could help convince them the Allied attack would come at Calais.
But it played hell with his plan to find Atherton. He could hardly ask a soldier where Denys was with the colonel listening. He’d have to get away from him and Cess.
“You said we’ll be gone two days,” he said. “Where are we spending the night? At an Army camp or in Portsmouth?”
“Neither. We’re bringing him straight to London.”
“But I thought you said we wouldn’t be back in time for Chasuble’s date?”
“Chasuble said that. He’s convinced something will go wrong and we’ll blow the gaffe,” Cess said. “No, we’re not to stop for anything, except to go to the loo.
And we’re not to let the colonel out of our sight for a moment. Lady Bracknell wants both of us with him at all times.”
When peace breaks out again (as it will, do you know) and the lights come on again, we shall look back on these days and remember gratefully the things that brought us cheer and gave us heart even in the glummest hours.
—NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENT,
1941
Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995
BY FIVE TILL TEN, THE GROUP HE WAS WAITING FOR STILL hadn’t arrived at the museum, and it was pouring rain. The American couple had given up trying to set him up with their daughter and gone off to find “someplace dry” and have “a decent cup of coffee, if there is such a thing in this country, Calvin,” which was a blessing, but there was no sign of any other visitors.
What if they all went to the exhibit at St. Paul’s instead? he thought. Or what if this isn’t the right day? What if the exhibit doesn’t begin till tomorrow? Or began yesterday?
At one minute till, an elderly museum guard appeared, unlocked the doors, and let him come inside the lobby to wait. “Today is the first day of the ‘Living Through the Blitz’ exhibition, isn’t it?” he asked the guard.
“Yes, sir.”
“And it’s a special Free Day for civilians who were involved in war work?”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said warily, as if he suspected him of attempting to pass himself off as one of those survivors. “You purchase your exhibition ticket over there.”
He nodded stiffly toward the still-unoccupied ticket desk. “Admission to the museum and the permanent collections is free. The museum will be open shortly. Till then you’re welcome to go into the gift shop.” The guard pointed to where it stood just past the ticket desk.
“Thank you. I’ll just look round the lobby,” he said, pointing up at the high ceiling, where a Spitfire and a V-1 and a V-2 rocket all hung suspended. As soon as the guard had gone, he went back over to the window to see if anyone was coming.
No one was. He read the Upcoming Lecture and Events poster. “June 18—‘So Few: The Battle of Britain,’ ” it said. “June 29—‘Unsung Heroes of World War II.
A slide presentation of civilians who gave their lives to win the war, from American bandleader Glenn Miller to decoding genius Dilly Knox and Shakespearean actor Sir Godfrey Kingsman.’ ”
The car park was still nearly deserted. He looked at the clock behind the ticket desk. Ten past. They’re all at St. Paul’s, he thought, and wondered if he should give up and go there, but it would take him at least half an hour to get there by tube, and in the process he might miss them both places. He decided to give it ten more minutes.
At a quarter past they all arrived at once. Two large vans pulled up and began disgorging a score of elderly women. They were too far away for him to be able to see their faces clearly, and as they started for the steps, they opened out umbrellas and ducked under them, so he couldn’t see them till they were nearly at the top of the steps.
And what if one of them was Merope? He hadn’t thought of that possibility till this moment, he’d been so intent on finding someone who’d known Polly, who would have a clue to where she’d gone after she left Mrs. Rickett’s. If she’d left Mrs. Rickett’s. If she and Merope hadn’t been killed as well that night.
But their names hadn’t been in the casualties lists, and even if they had, it wouldn’t necessarily mean anything.
They weren’t at Mrs. Rickett’s that morning, he told himself, had been telling himself every single day since he’d stood in front of the gaping hole that had been the boardinghouse. They were safely in a shelter, and after they were bombed out, they moved to another boardinghouse. Or, if Polly joined an ambulance crew, into quarters at her post, and one of these women here today will know where.
His first impulse when he’d seen the wrack of timbers and plaster that had been Mrs. Rickett’s had been to stay there in 1941 and find them—correction, his first impulse had been to start digging through the rubble for Polly with his bare hands—but the bomb had hit days or possibly even weeks before, and every day he spent looking for them
