anyway, but Mary had no intention of making it worse than it already was. “I really must go take that call from HQ,” she said, “and if it’s about what I think it is, I won’t be able to go to dinner either.”
“Then tomorrow.”
“I’m on duty, and I told you, I don’t believe in wartime attachments. There must be scores of other girls dying to go out with you.”
“None I knew in a previous life. The day after tomorrow?”
“I can’t. I really must take that call.” She started for the door.
“No, wait,” he said and grabbed her hands. “I haven’t thanked you yet.”
“I told you, I didn’t save your life. Tottenham Court Road is a very long road, and—”
“No, not for that. This is about the V-1s.”
“The V-1s?”
“Yes. Do you remember how you managed to slip out of my grasp just as I was about to kiss you before Bits and Pieces came in?”
“About to kiss—”
“Yes, of course. That was the entire point of all that Babylon rot, don’t you know?” he said, grinning. “And just as I thought it was working, you eluded my grasp, more’s the pity.”
“I thought you were going to tell me about the V-1s.”
“I was. I am. You did the same thing that day you drove me. Twice. My line of attack was working splendidly, and then suddenly I found myself totally thrown off course, even though I’d never got near enough to lay a hand on you.”
“I still don’t know what this has to do with—”
“Don’t you see?” he said, squeezing her hands. “That was where I got the notion of throwing the V-1s off course. You’re the one who gave me the idea. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have been blown up by now, trying to shoot them down.”
We are hanging on by our eyelids.
—GENERAL ALAN BROOKE
London—November 1940
AFTER POLLY FOUND OUT THAT THE REIGN OF TERROR had been over four years after the storming of the Bastille, she attempted to convince herself that there couldn’t possibly be that much slippage. The most on record for a non-divergence point had been three months and eight days. Someone had had six months’ slippage, and Mr. Dunworthy had overreacted and canceled everyone’s drops, that was all. And the fact that he hadn’t canceled hers proved it.
But the fear still nagged at her, so much so that she redoubled her efforts to find a way out. She put a new set of ads in the papers and went to Charing Cross to see if there was any spot in the sprawling station where Mr. Dunworthy could have come through on his earlier journeys. There wasn’t. Even the emergency staircase was filled with amorous couples. His drop had to have been somewhere else.
There was no sign of a younger Mr. Dunworthy either, though she wasn’t certain she’d recognize him if she saw him. The first few times he’d gone to the past, he’d been scarcely older than Colin. She tried to imagine him Colin’s age—lanky, eager, taking the escalator steps two at a time—but she couldn’t manage it, any more than she could imagine Mr. Dunworthy sending them knowingly into danger. Or not coming to get them if he could.
She wondered suddenly if it was not just an increase in slippage that was keeping him from pulling them out, but the fact that he was already here on a previous assignment and couldn’t come through till after his younger self had returned to Oxford. Which would be when?
Mike didn’t phone again on Tuesday or Wednesday, or write, which Eileen was convinced was a good sign. “It means he’s found Gerald, and they’re on their way to check his drop,” she said. “You mustn’t worry so. Just when things are in a complete mess, and you can’t see how they can possibly work out, that’s when help arrives.”
Not always, Polly thought, remembering the thousands of soldiers who hadn’t made it off Dunkirk’s beaches, or the victims who’d died in the rubble before the rescue teams reached them.
“When I took Theodore to the station on the train,” Eileen was saying, “he grabbed hold of my neck and wouldn’t let go, and the train was leaving. And just as I was about to despair, who should show up but Mr. Goode, the vicar, to rescue me.” She smiled at the memory. “And we’ll be rescued, too. You’ll see. I’m certain we’ll hear from Mike tomorrow. Or from the retrieval team.”
They heard from Mike, a scrawled note saying, “Arrived safely and am in comfortable lodgings. More later.” There was also a newspaper clipping in the envelope, of a sale on men’s suits at Townsend Brothers.
“Why did he write that? We already know it. And why did he put the clipping in?” Eileen asked. “Is he saying the jacket and waistcoat we sent him in were the wrong sort of clothes?”
“I don’t know,” Polly said, turning the clipping over, but the only thing on the back was a filled-in crossword puzzle.
When he’d phoned, he’d said he was doing crosswords as a cover while he looked for Gerald in pubs. Could he have accidentally stuck it in the envelope along with the note?
“Oh, Miss O’Reilly,” Miss Laburnum said, coming in from the parlor. “You had another letter in the afternoon post.” She handed it to her.
“Perhaps it explains this one,” Polly said, but it was from the vicar.
Eileen went up to their room to read it. Polly stayed in the vestibule, looking at the clipping. Mike had talked about sending a message in code, and she’d told him about the D-Day code words appearing in the Daily Herald puzzle. Could he have hidden some message in the crossword answers?
She grabbed a pencil, went up to the bathroom, locked the door, and sat down on the edge of the tub to decipher it. I hope the code’s not too complicated, she thought.
