She knew which ward Marjorie was in from when she’d attempted to visit before, so she wouldn’t need to ask, but if the admitting nurse saw her going up …
She found the emergency entrance and waited out of sight till an ambulance pulled in, bells clanging, and began to unload patients, and then walked purposefully past them and the attendants coming out to help.
From there, she darted up the first flight of stairs she saw to the fourth floor, and into Marjorie’s ward. And found she needn’t have gone to all the trouble of inquiring after a fictitious patient to find out what she needed to know. She could have simply asked Marjorie.
“I was wrong about five people being killed. There were only three,” Marjorie said, sitting propped against her pillows, her arm in a sling. “None of them worked at Padgett’s. They’ve no idea who they were or what they were doing there. Like me. If I’d been killed, no one would have known what I was doing in Jermyn Street either.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I went to meet Tom,” she said, and at Polly’s blank look she explained, “the airman I told you about. He’d been after me to go away with him, and I wouldn’t, but then when you were nearly killed at St. George’s, I thought, why not? I might be killed tomorrow. I’ve got to snatch at life while I can.”
Polly’s heart began to pound. “You changed your mind because of me?”
“Yes. When I saw you that morning, your skirt torn and your face all covered in plaster, it brought it home to me that you might have died—that I could die at any moment. And that working at Townsend’s would have been all there was to my life. And I decided I wasn’t going to die without ever doing anything, so the next time Tom came in—it was the Friday you went to see your mother—I told him I’d go away with him.”
And when she went to meet him, she’d been hit, buried, nearly killed. And I did it, Polly thought. I’m the one who put her there.
She’d been assuring Mike that he hadn’t saved Hardy, that Hardy would have seen the boat even without Mike’s pocket torch or been rescued by some other boat, but there was no other reason why Marjorie would have been in Jermyn Street that Friday night. No other reason for her broken arm and cracked ribs, for her having spent all those hours in the rubble, for her nearly having been killed.
But that’s impossible, Polly thought. Historians can’t alter events. The net won’t let them.
Unless Mike’s right. And suddenly she thought of the UXB at St. Paul’s. What if it hadn’t been an error in the historical record that it had been removed on Saturday and not Sunday? What if the time difference was a discrepancy?
One does not conduct deceptions merely to deceive. It is a kind of game, but a kind of game played in deadly earnest for compelling reasons and with dangerous consequences.
—WORLD WAR II BRITISH SECRET
INTELLIGENCE SERVICE MANUAL
Kent—April 1944
“THE QUEEN?” ERNEST SAID. “I CAN’T VISIT THE QUEEN. Cess and I have been up all night inflating tanks. I need to go to Croydon and deliver this week’s newspaper articles and letters to the Call. I’ve already missed the Sudbury Weekly Shopper’s deadline. I can’t afford to miss another one.”
“Your royal sovereign,” Prism said, “is far more important than—what is it you were writing up yesterday? A garden party?”
“Tea party. For the officers of the Twenty-first Airborne, newly arrived from Bradley Field. That’s not the point. The point is that these stories must go in on schedule or the troop movements will have to be completely redone.”
“Prism will help you,” Moncrieff said. “And at any rate, this will only take a couple of hours. We’ll be back in plenty of time for you to deliver your stories.”
“That’s what Cess said about the tanks last night.”
“Yes, but this is quite nearby. At Mofford House, only a few miles beyond Lymbridge.”
“Can’t Chasuble go instead? Or Gwendolyn?”
“He’s already there setting up. And Chasuble’s over at Camp Omaha, rigging up a chimney for the mess tent.”
“What does the mess tent need a chimney for? There’s no one there to cook for.”
“But they must look as if they are,” Prism said. “And you must go. You’re the one who’s going to write this all up for the London papers.”
The London papers meant the story would get a good deal more notice than an article in the Call, particularly if there was an accompanying photograph, and it was a chance to meet Queen Elizabeth, which any Fortitude South agent—or any historian—would give his eyeteeth for. Plus, it looked as if he was going to go whether he wanted to or not. “Do I need to bring my camera?” Ernest asked.
“No. The London papers will have their photographers there. All you need is your pajamas,” Prism said. “Now come along, we’re late.”
“If it’s not too much to ask,” Ernest said once they were in the staff car, with Moncrieff driving, “why am I meeting the Queen in my pajamas?”
“Because you’ve been wounded,” Moncrieff said. “A broken foot would be appropriate, I think.” He looked back at Ernest in the backseat. “We’ll put you in a plaster and on crutches. Unless you’d rather have a broken neck.”
“Have you any idea what he’s babbling on about?” Ernest leaned forward to ask Prism.
“We’re attending the ribbon cutting for a hospital,” he explained. “They’ve turned Mofford House into a military hospital to deal with the soldiers who’ll be coming back wounded from the invasion.”
“Which hasn’t happened yet. So how can we be invasion casualties?”
“We’re not. We were wounded at Tripoli. Or Monte Cassino, whichever you prefer.”
