Like the last eight years of my life, he thought, calculating coordinate after coordinate, searching for clues, trying to find a drop that would open.
“Do you know of anyone who was in London during the Blitz?” Pudge was asking Hatcher.
“Yes,” she said, pointing at two women looking at a display of war posters. “York and Chedders were.”
But neither York nor Chedders—Barbara Chedwick, according to her name tag—remembered a Polly Sebastian, and neither did any of the other women they passed him on to.
“There was a Polly in our troupe,” a large woman whose name tag read “Cora Holland” said.
“In your troop?” he asked. “You were in the WAACs?”
“No, not troop, troupe.” She spelled the word out. “We were in an ENSA show together. We were both chorus girls.” He must not have succeeded in hiding his astonishment because she snapped, “I realize you may find that difficult to believe, but I had quite a good figure in those days. What did you say her last name was?”
“Sebastian.”
“Sebastian,” Cora repeated. “No, that doesn’t ring a bell, I’m afraid, though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I might not have ever heard her last name. Mr.
Tabbitt called us all by our stage names. Polly’s was Air Raid Adelaide. If her name was Polly. It might have been Peggy.”
Well, and Polly wouldn’t have been a chorus girl in any case. But he couldn’t afford to leave any stone unturned. “Do you know what happened to her?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said apologetically. “It’s so easy to lose track of people in a war, you know.”
Yes.
“I seem to remember having heard that she’d been assigned to one of the groups touring airfields and Army camps.”
So, definitely not his Polly. And neither was the Polly who’d worked with Miss Dennehy on a barrage-balloon crew, even though Miss Dennehy was certain her last name had been Sebastian. “She was killed in August of ’40,” Miss Dennehy said.
By half past eleven he’d interviewed the entire group except for another white-haired woman too deaf to understand anything he’d said to her, and Mrs. Lambert still wasn’t there. And if he waited any longer, he’d miss the ones at St. Paul’s.
He went to find Pudge to ask for Mrs. Lambert’s address and telephone number, but she’d disappeared. He checked the blackout room, holding the curtain aside so he could see, and then the mockup of a tube shelter.
Pudge wasn’t in there, but Talbot was, looking at a “Report Suspicious Behavior” poster on the tiled tunnel wall. “Did you find Lambert?” she asked. “Did she know what your grandmother did during the Blitz?”
“No,” he said. “She’s not here yet, and I’m afraid I must go. I was wondering if you—”
“She’s not here yet? I can’t imagine what’s keeping her,” she said, and dragged him off to find the woman who’d been too deaf to interview.
“Rumford,” Talbot said, “did Goody Two-Shoes tell you what she had to do before she came here?”
“What?” Rumford said, cupping her hand to her ear.
“I said,” Talbot shouted, “did Goody Two-Shoes—Mrs. Lambert—tell you what she had to do before she came here? Mrs. Lambert!”
“Lantern?”
“No. Lambert. Do you know where she was going this morning before she came here?”
Rumford looked round vaguely. “Isn’t she here yet?”
“No. And this young man wants to speak to her. Do you know where she went?”
“Yes,” she said. “To St. Paul’s.”
St. Paul’s, where he could already be if he hadn’t waited here for her.
“St. Paul’s?” Talbot said. “Why did she need to go there?”
“What?” Rumford cupped her hand to her ear again.
“I said, why did—oh, good, she’s here,” Talbot said, pointing at the far side of the exhibit where a plump, friendly-looking woman was rummaging in her handbag.
“Goody Two-Shoes!” Talbot called, and when she didn’t look up, “Lambert! Over here. Eileen!”
Do you know why they’re waving as we come along? We’re all bloody heroes.
—SERGEANT LESLIE TEARE ON
ARRIVING IN ENGLAND AFTER BEING
EVACUATED FROM DUNKIRK
Kent—June 1944
“28 JUNE 1944,” ERNEST TYPED. “DEAR EDITOR, I LIVE IN Sellindge, near Folkestone, and our little village has always been a charming, tranquil place. For the past fortnight, however, that tranquility has been destroyed by a constant stream of troop transports. I’ve been forced to hang my washing inside because of the dust, and my cat, Polly Flinders, has nearly been run over twice. How long will this continue? When I spoke to Captain Davies, he said it might last until—”
He paused, wondering what date he was supposed to use for the invasion. Immediately after they’d invaded at
