Oh, God, it’s the Germans. I didn’t get off Dunkirk in time.
The German shone a flashlight full in his face, and he flinched away from it. They’ve captured me, and they’re interrogating me. If they find out about Fortitude South, they’ll know we’re going to invade at Normandy.
But it was an English soldier. “How badly are you hurt?” he was asking, bending over Ernest, and his helmet was the tin hat of an ARP warden. “What’s your name?”
He thinks I’m Cess, Ernest thought. Thank goodness he’s not here, and tried to tell the warden about Cess’s having traded duties with Chasuble, and his having traded with Cess, and about the harvest fete and Daphne at the Crown and Anchor.
No, that wasn’t right. That was the other Daphne, and she wasn’t there. She was in Manchester, and she was married …
The warden was shaking him. “Davies?” he asked, wiping the plaster dust from his face. “Michael?”
Yes, he thought. But he wasn’t sure, it had been so long since he’d heard his real name, and he’d had so many names since he was killed …
The warden was shaking him and saying urgently, “Can you hear me, Davies? Michael?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, thank God. Michael, listen, I’m here to take you back to Oxford. I’m Colin Templer.”
But he couldn’t be. Colin was only a boy. “You’re too old,” he murmured.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
“You got my messages,” Ernest said, feeling sick with relief. They were here, they could warn Polly not to go to the Blitz. And they could …
“You have to get Charles out,” he said, trying to raise himself by his elbows. “He’s in Singapore. You have to get him out before the Japanese—”
“We did,” he said. “He’s safe. He’s waiting for you in the lab. Do you think you can stand up?”
He shook his head. “You have to tell Polly—”
“She’s alive? She was alive when you left her?”
Ernest nodded.
“Oh, thank God,” Colin breathed.
It was Colin after all. “You have to tell her—”
“I’ll find her and get her out,” Colin said, “but first I’ve got to get you out of here.”
“No, she’s here,” he tried to say, but he was coughing too hard.
“Can you tell me where you’re hurt?”
“My foot,” he said. “I was unfouling the propeller,” but Colin wasn’t listening. He was digging someone out of the rubble.
It must be Mr. Jeppers, he thought. “Is he all right?” he asked, and heard a siren.
“We need to get to a shelter,” he said.
“We need to get to a shelter,” he said.
“That’s the ambulance. I’ve got to get you out of here before they arrive,” Colin said, stooping to lift him. “We can’t let them see us.”
“No, wait, you have to tell Polly not to go,” he tried to say, but he was overcome with a spasm of coughing. It was all the plaster Colin had stirred up digging out Mr. Jeppers. It was making him choke, and all he could get out was her name.
“I’ll go fetch Polly, I promise, as soon as I get you back to Oxford.”
Oxford, Ernest thought, and could see the spires of Christ Church and St. Mary’s, and Magdalen Tower, and Balliol’s quad green in the April sunshine.
“This’ll hurt,” Colin said, reaching his arms around him. “Sorry.” And the V-2 hit, ripping the world apart.
No, that wasn’t right, the V-2 had already hit, and he wasn’t in the wreckage, he was on a cot and an orderly was covering him with a blanket. “Am I in hospital?”
he asked.
“Not yet,” the orderly said. “I’m taking you there now.”
“You can’t,” Ernest said, struggling. He had passed out on the way to hospital. He had been unconscious for over a month, and when he’d come to, nobody had known who he was. “I can’t go to Orpington. The retrieval team won’t know where I am.”
“I’m the retrieval team, old man,” the orderly said. “It’s Colin. Colin Templer. You’re in Croydon, in an ambulance. I’m taking you back to Oxford.”
Ernest clutched Colin’s arm. “But I have to tell you about Polly,” and some of his desperation must have got through because Colin nodded.
“All right. When did you see her last, Michael?”
Had it been a few minutes or longer than that? “I don’t know. She”—he tried to raise his hand to show Colin where she’d gone—“left.”
“When did you leave?” Colin asked. “On January eleventh? That’s when the Times said you died.”
