then was one he wouldn’t be able to come to again. And one of those days might be the day he had to pull her out because if he didn’t, she’d be killed.
And he knew too well from being at Notting Hill Gate, on Lampden Road, and in Oxford Street, that being in the same general temporal-spatial location wasn’t enough. He had to know exactly where she was before he went to get her.
And one of these women can tell me that. They’ll have been on the same ambulance crew as Polly or shared the same air-raid shelter or the same flat.
But what if Merope walked through those museum doors? What if he hadn’t rescued Polly and her, and she was still here fifty years later?
If she is, there’s no way she’d come to something like this, he told himself. The war’s the last thing she’d want to be reminded of. But he posted himself next to the doors so he could get a good look at each woman as she came in, bracing himself as they reached the top of the steps and paused to lower their umbrellas and shake the water out of them and he could see their faces for the first time.
The first ones through were all discussing the weather. “What a pity it had to rain today!” one of them said, and the other replied, “But it will be good for my roses.
Poor things, they’ve been absolutely parched.”
He wondered if they were here for the exhibition after all. They were the correct age—in their seventies and eighties—and they were all dressed as for a special occasion in frocks and hats—including one enormous one with an entire herbaceous border on it. And one very elderly, very frail-looking lady was wearing white gloves.
But they looked as though they were going to a garden party, not a World War II reunion. And it was impossible to imagine them ever having done anything less genteel than pour tea, let alone put out incendiaries, dig bodies out of rubble, or man anti-aircraft guns.
This isn’t them, he thought. They’re all at St. Paul’s, and this is the Women’s Institute of Upper Matchings on their monthly outing. He was about to turn away when the frail-looking one pointed a white-gloved finger up at the V-1 and said, “Oh, my God, look at that! It’s a doodlebug. One of those chased me all the way down Piccadilly.”
“I do hope it isn’t armed,” the woman who’d come in with her said, and then squealed, “Whitlaw!” and flung her arms around a grim-looking woman. “It’s me!
Bridget Flannigan. We were in the same WAAF brigade!”
“Flanners! Oh, my God! I don’t believe it!” And the grim-looking woman broke into a broad smile.
They were clearly the women he was looking for, after all. But another van had arrived, and they were pouring into the lobby too quickly for him now, shaking out They were clearly the women he was looking for, after all. But another van had arrived, and they were pouring into the lobby too quickly for him now, shaking out their umbrellas, shedding raincoats, talking excitedly. He stood by the door till they were all inside and then made a circuit of the noisy lobby, scanning the faces of the ones he’d missed as they called to one another across the room and greeted each other with cries of delight, oblivious to him as he worked his way through the crowd, searching their faces, looking for Eileen.
He caught snatches of their conversations as he moved among them:
“No, she couldn’t come, poor dear. Her rheumatism, you know …”
“Are you still married to your American—what was his name? Jack?”
“Jack? Lord, no, I’ve had two husbands since then …”
“… were not, you were a dreadful driver. Remember that poor American admiral you ran over?”
“He wasn’t an admiral! He was only a commander, and he had no business looking the wrong way like that. If Americans drove on the proper side of the road, they’d know which way to look when they were crossing …”
“Ladies!” a large, florid-faced woman with iron-gray hair in front of the door to the museum shouted. “Ladies!” She was holding name badges and a sheet of gold stars. “Ladies! Attention please!” she cried, to no avail. The women were intent on locating old friends, finding familiar faces.
Like I am, he thought, working his way past the name-badge woman and over to the corner where the four women he hadn’t got a close look at yet were passing around snapshots, he assumed of children and grandchildren. He pulled out his notebook and pretended to take notes on the V-1 and the Spitfire while he scanned their faces.
Don’t let any of them be Merope, he prayed.
They were all huddled over the snapshots, their faces hidden, and it took several moments before they raised them again and he was able to see their faces.
Merope wasn’t here. That meant he hadn’t failed, at least not yet, that there was still time to find someone who could tell him where Polly was after March 1941, and he could find her and Merope and pull them both out. And this was the place to find that someone. These women had all done war work, and most of them would have been in London during the Blitz. One of them was bound to have known Polly.
Beginning with the group he’d just been watching. They’d finished looking at the snapshots and were discussing the war.
He edged nearer to hear what they were saying and to find a way to insinuate himself into the conversation. “Do you remember when we went to that dance at Biggin Hill?” the one who’d been passing around the snapshots was asking the woman next to her. “And that RAF pilot—what was his name?”
“Flight Officer Boyd. I certainly do. He kept begging me to go out to see his plane,” she said, even though it was difficult to believe any man had ever begged her to go anywhere. She was a stout, washed-out-looking woman, and her face was a railway map of wrinkles. “And I said good girls didn’t go out alone in the dark with men they’d only just met, and he said there was a war on and we might both be dead by tomorrow—”
“Original,” the woman next to her said.
“My particular favorite was ‘It’s your patriotic duty,’ ” a third woman said, and the others nodded. “Think of it as doing your bit.”
