Polly must have called out his name because the nurse hurried over. “He’s resting comfortably. Now try to sleep.”
I can’t, Polly thought groggily. I have to be there. “If you aren’t, there will be no one there to avert the inevitable disaster,” Hunter had said. No, that was Sir Godfrey, talking about Mrs. Wyvern and the pantomime. Hunter had said, “It was lucky you knew what to do.”
I learned it in Oxford, she thought, so I could pose as an ambulance driver and observe the V-1s and V-2s. But the Major sent us to Croydon to find John Bartholomew. No, not to Croydon, to St. Paul’s. But the streets were roped off because of the UXB, and I sneaked past the barrier and up the hill, but it was a cul-de- sac. I’d gone the wrong way—
Wrong way. That was what Hunter had said.
“Wrong way,” Polly murmured, and saw the ginger-haired librarian at Holborn holding an Agatha Christie paperback, heard her saying, “I’m convinced I know who the murderer is, and then, when I’m nearly to the end, I realize I’ve been looking at the entire situation the wrong way round, that something else entirely is going on.”
No, the librarian hadn’t said that, Eileen had, that day in Oxford. No, that wasn’t right either. But it didn’t matter. Because Polly had it—the idea she’d been pursuing all the way across the wrecked theater. And it all—Talbot and Marjorie and St. Paul’s and the measles and the stiff strap on her gilt shoe—fit together. It all made sense, and she knew it was vital to hold on to it, not to let it drift away, but it was impossible, the sedative was already closing in like fog, obliterating everything.
“Like the spell in Sleeping Beauty,” she tried to say, but she couldn’t. She was already asleep.
There just isn’t any way we’re gonna live through this thing.
—NAVIGATOR LIEUTENANT LOU BABER,
467TH BOMBARDMENT GROUP
Croydon—October 1944
“WE WEREN’T KILLED,” ERNEST TRIED TO SAY TO MR. JEPPERS. “The V-1 didn’t kill us.” But he couldn’t find the editor in the smoke. It billowed up blackly around him.
They must have hit the Arizona, he thought, coughing, trying to see out across the deck of the New Orleans.
But that couldn’t be right. I never got to Pearl Harbor, he thought. Dunworthy changed the order of my assignments. Oh, God, I’m still at Dunkirk. My foot …
But that wasn’t right either, because he was lying down. There hadn’t been room on the boat to lie down. He’d had to stand up, mashed against the rail the whole way. And the smoke was too thick for it to be Dunkirk.
He couldn’t see anything. It was completely dark. He must be belowdecks. He could see flames through the smoke and hear fire bells. They’re going to an incident, he thought, and remembered the V-1. I hope it didn’t damage the printing press. I’ve got to get that picture of St. Anselm’s in. And take a photo of this incident.
He looked around, trying to see if the name on the newspaper office was still there. If it was, Cess could crop off the word “Croydon,” and they could say it was the Cricklewood Clarion Call. But the fire wasn’t bright enough to light more than the few feet beyond him, and there were no landmarks there, only bricks and broken timbers shrouded by orangish dust. It hadn’t been smoke. It was plaster dust. That was why it was so choking, why he couldn’t stop coughing. He had to try several times before he managed to say, “Mr. Jeppers! I need a flashlight so I can look at your sign!”
Mr. Jeppers didn’t answer. He can’t hear me for the fire bells, Ernest thought. They got very loud and then stopped, and he could hear doors slamming, and voices.
Perhaps they had a flashlight. “Hullo!” he called to them, and stopped to cough. “Do you have a flashlight?”
But they must not have heard him because they were walking away from him. “No, over here!” he shouted—a mistake. It caused him to suck in a huge amount of plaster dust and choke.
“I thought I heard someone coughing,” one of the girls said, and he could hear the crack of wood and the slither of dirt as they came toward him. “Where are you?”
“Here,” he said. “Jeppers, it’s all right. Someone’s coming.”
“Where are you? Keep talking,” the second girl called after a moment, but he didn’t answer her. He was listening to her voice. It sounded somehow familiar.
“Here he is!” the first one shouted from what seemed like far away. He heard a scrabbling sound, and then, “I found him,” and he could tell from the tone of her voice that he was dead.
But I’m not, he thought. We survived the V-1—
“There’s another one here somewhere,” the second voice said, and something else—he couldn’t make out what. More scrabbling. “Over here!” she called, closer.
Then she was there, bending over him. “Are you all right?”
He looked up at her, but the light from the fires wasn’t bright enough for him to see her face. All he caught was a glimpse of fair hair under the tin helmet. “You mustn’t worry,” she said. “We’ll get you out of here straightaway. Fairchild!” she called sharply. “Over here!” and moved down to his legs and began tossing aside bricks and pieces of wood. “I need a light!”
The girl she’d called Fairchild arrived. “Is he alive?” she asked, stooping down next to him, and the fire must have been growing brighter. He could see her face clearly. She looked very young. “How bad is he?”
“His foot—”
“That wasn’t the V-1,” he said. “It happened at Dunkirk.” But they didn’t hear him.
“I’ve tied a tourniquet. Go get the medical kit,” the first girl said to Fairchild. “And a stretcher. Is Croydon here yet?” she asked, and her voice sounded just like Polly’s.
“No,” Fairchild said. “Are you certain we should move him?”
