worried about the cast, with whom she still had far too much contact. ENSA mounted a new production every fortnight, so they were perpetually in rehearsal.
When Polly arrived they’d been doing ENSA Stirs the Pudding. The following week, ENSA Pulls the Crackers opened, and a fortnight later, ENSA Springs Toward Victory, though Polly had difficulty telling them apart. They all consisted of patriotic songs, chorus lines, comedians, and assorted war-related skits.
Polly played, in rapid succession and very short skirts, an anti-aircraft gunner, a gum-chewing American WAC, a debutante in a munitions factory (complete with tiara, ball gown, and spanner), and a girl saying goodbye to a soldier in a railway station.
“But I’m being shipped out,” Reggie, in a BEF uniform, said, attempting to put his arm around her. “Can’t you give me just one tiny kiss?”
Polly shook her head coyly, and he stuck his hand out for her to shake. She looked at it, then at the audience (who were shouting, “Aw, come on, give him a kiss!”
and making loud smooching noises), then grabbed his hand, swung him into a dip, and planted a torrid kiss on him.
“Zowee!” he said, doing a double take. “I thought you said you wouldn’t kiss me goodbye.”
“I did, but then I remembered Mr. Churchill said we must do everything we can for the war effort.”
“And that was what you were doing?”
“No,” she said and batted her eyes. “But it’s everything I can do in a railway station.”
It was also her job to come out on the stage in a very short skirt when the sirens sounded, turn her back to the audience, bend over, and flip up the back of her skirt to reveal satin bloomers on which were sewn red flannel letters spelling out, “Air Raid in Progress.”
The bit was wildly popular, and by the end of her fifth week with ENSA, Mr. Tabbitt had put her photograph (smiling, hands on hips, not bent over) with the caption “Air Raid Adelaide” up on the display board at the lobby entrance and told her glumly that ENSA’s head wanted her to go on tour to the RAF’s airfields starting the third week of April.
“It’s more money,” he said. “And you’ll have top billing.” And it would get her away from Eileen and Alf and Binnie, whom she still held out hope might survive.
But Hattie, who had never done her any harm, had already agreed to the tour, and they would have to share a room and spend hours on crowded buses together, so Polly turned it down.
“Oh, marvelous,” Mr. Tabbitt said, and the next night had her put on her Air Raid Adelaide costume and went out in front of the curtain. “I have an official announcement,” he said. “If the Luftwaffe attacks tonight, the ‘Air Raid in Progress’ notice will be displayed.”
Whistles, applause.
“I repeat, if the Luftwaffe attacks tonight, and only if the Luftwaffe attacks tonight—”
Cheers, applause, and a long, low “woo-oo-ooh” from the second row, rising to the up-and-down wail of the alert as several others and finally the entire audience joined in.
Mr. Tabbitt cupped his hand to his ear. “Hark, is that an air-raid alert I hear?” he said, and Polly walked out (cheers, whistles, hoots), turned to face the curtain, and bent over.
He was so pleased he decided to make the bit a regular feature of the show, and by the end of the week Polly was doing it up to six times a show and getting bouquets and boxes of candy addressed to “My Favorite Siren.”
Don’t notice me, Polly thought in despair, and asked Mr. Tabbitt to let Hattie do it instead, but he refused. “You’re bringing them in in droves,” he said.
I am so sorry, she thought, looking out at the soldiers’ eager faces. But at least here she wasn’t endangering Alf and Binnie or the girls at Townsend Brothers or Sir Godfrey and the troupe.
Godfrey and the troupe.
The next night at intermission, the stage manager, Mutchins, stuck his head into the dressing room.
“You were told to knock!” Cora said, outraged, and Hattie clutched a towel to her front.
He knocked on the open door. “Visitor to see you, Adelaide,” he said. “Gentleman.”
“What happened to no men allowed backstage?” Cora demanded.
Mutchins shrugged. “Talk to Tabbitt. He said to come ask was you decent and if you was, to send him up,” he said, addressing Polly. “Are you?”
“Yes.” She abandoned her effort to fasten the stiff strap on her gilt shoe and pulled on a wrapper. “Who is it?”
“Never saw him before. Some old gent.” He turned to the other girls. “Tabbitt said to tell the lot of you to clear out—”
“Clear out?” Cora said. “Well, I like that! And where are we supposed to go?”
“He didn’t say. Just that you was to leave and give Adelaide here some privacy.”
Oh, God, Polly thought. Something’s happened, and Mr. Dunworthy’s here to tell me—
But it was Sir Godfrey. “Ah, Viola,” he said, coming into the dressing room. “ ‘Thus she sleeping here is found, on the dank and dirty ground.’ ”
You weren’t supposed to find me, she thought frightenedly.
“Sir Godfrey, what are you doing here?” she said, and from down the corridor heard excited whispers:
“Sir Godfrey Kingsman?”
