through till it’s past.”
Nothing happened on the sixteenth or the seventeenth. On the eighteenth, Eileen said, “With us not in Oxford Street anymore and Mrs. Rickett’s house gone and the vicar not in Backbury, they’ve no way to find us. We need to go to Townsend Brothers and give them our new address. Do you think I should write to Lieutenant Heffernan at the riflery school at the manor?”
It doesn’t matter, Polly thought. If they were able to come, they’d have done it long before this. They know Mr. Dunworthy’s deadline is the first of May. And the weather was supposed to be clear for the next three nights. Perfect bombing weather.
“I’ll write to the manor tonight when we get home,” Eileen said. “Perhaps they moved the riflery range, and we can go to Backbury and use my drop.”
It won’t open either, Polly thought, and wished she could tell Eileen, You mustn’t blame yourself that we weren’t able to get out in time. It’s not your fault.
But Eileen would only say, “They’ll get us out. You’ll see. At this very moment, there are all sorts of things happening, all sorts of people working to rescue us,”
and Polly didn’t think she could bear it. So instead, after Eileen left to walk Mr. Dunworthy to St. Paul’s, she wrote what she had wanted to say in a note and added a list of the dates, times, and locations of every V-1 and V-2 in her implant.
She copied it out in case the original was destroyed when she got killed and hid the copy in Eileen’s Murder in the Calais Coach. The original she sealed in an envelope addressed to Eileen, then sealed the envelope and the half-charred lithograph of The Light of the World in a second envelope, which she put in her coat pocket.
Nothing happened on the eighteenth either. On the nineteenth, Eileen said, “Tomorrow I want you to show me the drop in Hampstead Heath. If the sixteenth was a divergence point, it might be far enough outside London to not be affected.” She pulled on her coat. “I’ll meet you at the theater. I need to walk Mr. Dunworthy to St.
Paul’s—he’s on duty tonight. Tell Mrs. Wyvern I hid the magic wands and the bramblebush branches on top of the costume cupboard so the children can’t get at them.”
“Are Alf and Binnie going with you?”
“No,” Eileen said, but they set up such a clamor that she gave in and took them along.
Polly was relieved, even though it would make them late for rehearsal and bring Sir Godfrey’s wrath down on her. But so long as they were with Eileen, they’d be safe—or at any rate, safer than with her. And Mr. Dunworthy would be safe in St. Paul’s. The cathedral hadn’t been hit again after the sixteenth.
Which meant he would be killed on the way back from there, or at home. It seemed possible that she would be killed at the same time, but she hoped not. She would like to be able to do the pantomime for Sir Godfrey.
She loved doing it in spite of Sir Godfrey’s loathing of pantomime, perhaps because it was the last thing she would ever do. And inside the theater she forgot the days remorselessly ticking down, forgot the war and parting and death, and thought only of lines and costumes and attempting to keep Alf and Binnie from destroying everything they touched.
The two of them had managed not only to wreak havoc backstage every night since they joined the cast but to corrupt every other child in the pantomime.
Especially Trot. After a week of being with the Hodbins, her hair ribbons were untied, her rosy cheeks were streaked and dirty, and when Polly arrived at the Regent, she was shouting, “I ain’t a dunderhead!” and whaling away at her sisters with her magic wand while Nelson barked wildly.
“I gave the wand to her,” an unhappy Miss Laburnum admitted, “so she could become used to using it, but perhaps that wasn’t a good idea.”
She had also given Mrs. Brightford (the Queen) her royal robes for the same reason and had forced Sir Godfrey (the Bad Fairy) to put on his Hitler-style mustache
“in case it shows a tendency to fall off.”
“Madam, I have had over fifty years of experience putting on false mustaches with spirit gum! I have never had one fall off!” he was shouting, and didn’t even note Alf and Binnie’s absence.
Half an hour later, Polly saw them come in through the doorway at the back of the house. They were alone. “Where’s Eileen?” Polly called to them, squinting out across the footlights. “Didn’t she come back with you?”
“Hunh-unh,” Alf said, slouching down the center aisle.
“Why not?”
“She said she had to do something,” Binnie said, “and for us to come ’ere so we wouldn’t be late.”
“And not to follow ’er,” Alf put in.
“And did you?”
“No,” Alf said with his best outraged-innocence air.
“We tried,” Binnie said, “but she was too quick for us, so we come ’ere.”
She’s gone to my drop again, Polly thought, wishing Eileen hadn’t. The sirens had gone while Polly was on her way here, and she could hear the drone of planes and the thud of distant bombs. Logic told her nothing could happen to Eileen, that she’d survived all the way to VE-Day, but she couldn’t help listening anxiously to the buzzing planes, trying to gauge whether they were over Kensington.
They seemed to be over the East End thus far. Polly went backstage, where Miss Laburnum gave her her principal-boy costume, belt, and scabbard, “so you can They seemed to be over the East End thus far. Polly went backstage, where Miss Laburnum gave her her principal-boy costume, belt, and scabbard, “so you can become used to wearing your sword.”
And when Polly protested that she needed to get onstage, she said, “There’s more than enough time. The fire- safety curtain’s stuck. They’ve been attempting to get it up for half an hour. Sir Godfrey’s absolutely livid.”
