palace.
And there wouldn’t be any air raids till after the invasion, so Eileen wouldn’t be going to the tube shelter, and the chances of running into her, even in Notting Hill or Kensington, were tiny. You looked for her and Polly for weeks during the Blitz and couldn’t find them.
Right, and you managed to collide with Alan Turing not ten minutes after you’d arrived in Bletchley. And this was the time of day when she could be arriving home from work.
But she wouldn’t still be working in Oxford Street. When the National Service Act had gone into effect, she’d have been assigned to some kind of war work. She might not even still be in London.
And if you didn’t get them out, you didn’t get them out, and seeing Eileen—or not seeing her—doesn’t change whether she’s here or not, whether you’re going to be able to reach Atherton or not. It’s already happened.
But he couldn’t rid himself of the idea that now, at the very last minute, this close to contacting Atherton, he’d ruin things by catching sight of her stepping off a bus or coming down the street in her green coat, and it was a huge relief to turn down the road to the palace, to pull up to the gates.
The guard looked at their papers and said, “If you’ll just pull in there, sir, behind that staff car.” He indicated the last car in a long line stretching all the way to the palace.
“Our passenger’s ill. He can’t possibly walk that far,” Ernest said. “We need to take him to the door.”
After examining their papers again and looking in the backseat at the colonel, the guard waved them on, but Ernest wasn’t sure they’d make it through the already-parked staff cars and Rolls-Royces. It was like threading a needle. This is where Churchill or Patton steps out suddenly in front of me and I run over him, he thought, but they made it safely up to the palace.
He pulled the car up to the foot of the stairs, got out, and came around to help the colonel out of the car. It took both of them. Ernest had to hold him up, while Cess got his suitcase out and shut the car door.
“I’m sorry to cause so much trouble,” the colonel said to Ernest, and he felt a sudden pang of pity for him.
You’re going to cause them to lose the war, he thought, and not even know it.
“Sorry, sir, but you can’t park there,” a regimental guard said, hurrying up. “You’ll have to move your car.”
“It’s only till we can get the colonel inside,” he said.
“This is Colonel von Sprecht,” Cess said, holding out their papers. “We’ve just brought him all the way from Dover. We have orders to deliver him directly to General Moreland.” But the guard was shaking his head.
“Sorry, sir. You can’t leave your car here.”
“Well, then, at least let me run inside and fetch someone to assist Lieutenant Wilkerson,” Ernest said. “The colonel can’t make it up those stairs without assistance.”
“I can’t let you do that, sir. Captain’s orders. You must move it now.”
“I want to speak to the captain—” Ernest began, but Cess shook his head.
“We can’t stand here arguing,” he said. “I can manage the colonel.” He draped the colonel’s arm around his shoulder. “You go park the car, Lieutenant Abbott.”
“But—” Ernest began, and Cess nodded toward the top of the steps, where two officers were hurrying down to help. Good. “Where do you want me to park?” he asked the guard.
“At the end of this road,” he said, pointing, but that end of the narrow lane was packed with cars, too, some with young women in FANY and ATS uniforms at the wheel, waiting for the generals they’d delivered.
Oh, Christ, what if one of the drivers was Eileen? She’d talked about trying to get the National Service to assign her to be one. He glanced in the rear-vision mirror.
Two more staff cars were pulling in to the lane behind him. Jesus, it was more dangerous here than out on the streets of Kensington.
He pulled his visored cap down over his forehead and drove as fast as he dared to the end of the lane. Another guard stood there. He came over to the car. “Sir, you can’t stop here.”
“I know. Tell Lieutenant Wilkerson that Lieutenant Abbott’s taken the car round the corner to park it.” Then he drove out onto Kensington and back along the edge of Kensington Gardens, where they’d been when Polly told them she had a deadline.
Polly. She might be one of the drivers, too, only that wouldn’t be her name. It would be Mary Kent, and right now she was at an ambulance post in Oxford, waiting to be transferred to Dulwich, but he knew from the FANYs he’d run into that they were often assigned to driving officers, and it looked like every officer in England was here tonight. What if she was, too?
was here tonight. What if she was, too?
She can’t be, he told himself, because if she was, you could rap on her window and warn her, and if you warn her, she’ll go back to Oxford and tell Mr.
Dunworthy what happened, and he’d never have let them come through. Just like with Bartholomew.
It’s Atherton you need to concentrate on finding, he thought. And there’s a phone booth. And Cess isn’t here. And Lady Bracknell had sent along a purse full of money in case something went wrong while they had the colonel and they had to phone the castle. He pulled over to the curb, took the purse out of the glove compartment, and got out of the car. He went into the phone booth, dialed the operator, and gave her the number the Wren had told him. “Just one moment, please,”
the operator said.
Let it go through, let it go through, he repeated silently.
“I have that number for you, sir,” she said.
“Yes, hullo, is Major Atherton there?” he said.
Too quickly. It was still the operator. “I have your number for you, sir,” she repeated. “I’ll connect you.”
