But not until I’ve had a chance to read your names, he thought.
“Which names should we put?” a woman in a pink feathered hat asked. “Our name now or our name during the war?”
“Both,” the organizer said. “And write the name of the service you were with below it.”
Thank you, he thought, and followed in her wake, reading the women’s names as they printed them. Pauline, Deborah, Jean. Netterton, Herley, York. No Eileen, no O’Reilly, though the woman in charge evidently hadn’t given all of the women the same instructions. Several had printed only one name, and only a few had listed the service they’d been in. ARP, WAAF, WVS.
They were beginning to drift out of the lobby into the museum. He needed to purchase his ticket, but there were still several ladies who hadn’t put their tags on yet.
Walters, Redding …
The third woman’s hand shook with palsy when she wrote her name, and when she pinned it to her breast, he couldn’t decipher it, though the first letter might be an O. He’d have to corner her once they got inside and find out.
The fourth woman, a tiny creature who looked like she might break in two, still hadn’t finished printing her name, though he didn’t see how she could possibly be Merope, whom he remembered as being taller. But he’d grown since then, and people had still shrunk with age in this era, hadn’t they? “Did she say we were supposed to put what unit we were in?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Walters and the one with the unreadable name tag said in unison and then laughed, and Unreadable Name Tag said, “Walters? Is that you?”
Walters gaped at her. “Oh, my goodness!” she cried. “I can’t believe this!” She flung her arms around her. “Geddes!”
Geddes. Good. It had been a G, not an O.
“We were stationed at Eastleigh together,” Geddes was telling Redding. “We were Atta Girls.”
“Air Transport Auxiliary,” Walters explained. “We ferried new planes to their airfields for the RAF.” And if they’d been stationed at Eastleigh, they hadn’t been anywhere near London and couldn’t have known Polly.
“What did you do in the war?” Walters was asking Redding.
“Nothing so romantic, I’m afraid,” she said. “I was a land girl. I spent the war shoveling pig muck in Shropshire.”
Which eliminated her too. That left the tiny woman who’d finally finished printing her name and pinned her badge on. “Mrs. Donald Davenport,” it read, and below it, “Lt. Cynthia Camberley.”
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Merope wasn’t here.
Thank God. But he still had no idea where Polly had been, and he still hadn’t found anyone who might know. And Camberley, who hadn’t said if she’d been in London during the Blitz, was already going in with the others. He started after her, remembered he hadn’t bought a ticket, and raced over to the desk, but by the time he got it and went in, they’d vanished.
Directly inside the door was a bright red signpost with arrows pointing to various exhibits: “The Battle of the North Atlantic,” “The Holocaust,” “Living Through the Blitz.” He followed the last arrow down a corridor to a doorway piled high with sandbags. A bucket of water stood in front of the sandbags with a stirrup pump in it. Above the door was written, “ ‘This was their finest hour.’ Winston Churchill,” and, as he passed through the doorway, an air-raid siren began to warble.
He was in a short corridor lined with framed black-and-white photographs: a burnt-out church, rows and rows of barrage balloons over London, a street of bombed houses, the dome of St. Paul’s floating above a sea of smoke and flames. At the end of the corridor was another doorway, across which hung a heavy black curtain.
From somewhere beyond it, he could hear a drone of planes and the crump of bombs. He went through the curtain.
Into total blackness. “Look out in the blackout,” a recorded voice said. He peered into the darkness, searching for Camberley. He couldn’t see her, but as his eyes adjusted, he could make out two round white lights with black bars across them which must be an automobile’s headlamps, and on the floor, a white-lined pathway leading to another curtained door, dimly illuminated by the headlamps. And just going through it, Camberley. He started toward her.
“Connor?” a woman’s voice called from behind him. He turned around and then remembered his name wasn’t Connor here and stopped, hoping the darkness had hidden his involuntary reaction. That was how the Nazis caught British spies, he thought, by suddenly calling them by their real name.
He continued following Camberley.
“Connor?” the woman’s voice said again, and he felt a hand on his arm. “I thought that was you. What a lucky coincidence! What are you doing here?”
Nothing could be seen but the tops of the towers of the palace, and even those only from a good way off.
—SLEEPING BEAUTY
Wales—May 1944
THE PRISON CAMP WASN’T NEAR PORTSMOUTH. IT WAS IN Gloucestershire, and Ernest and Cess ended up driving all night to get there. They got lost twice, once because of their inability to see anything in the blackout and the second time because of the lack of signposts. “Which is a good thing, really,” Cess said, struggling with the map. “If there were signposts, we wouldn’t be able to pull this off.”
If we can’t find the colonel, we won’t be able to pull it off either, Ernest thought irritably. He hadn’t felt this tired since that endless day in Saltram-on-Sea. If the Lady Jane were available, he’d gladly curl up in her hold, but they were nowhere near water. Or anything else. “Have you any idea at all where we are?” he asked Cess.
“No. I can’t find—oh, bloody hell, I’ve got the wrong map.” Cess unfolded the other one, peered at it, and then looked out at the road. “Go back to that last crossroads,” he said, and as Ernest backed the car around, he added, “I’ve just had an idea. I think we should get lost.”
