But he didn’t come. He wasn’t waiting for them outside Notting Hill Gate or at Mrs. Leary’s either. And all that was waiting for them at their boardinghouse was the news that Mrs. Rickett had taken the Christmas goose and plum pudding—purchased with her boarders’ ration points—with her when she went to her sister’s and left them turnip soup for their Christmas dinner.
“No matter,” Miss Laburnum said. “My nephew in Canada sent me a Christmas box and the convoy got safely through.” She brought down a tin of biscuits, a packet of tea, and a bag of walnuts. Eileen and Polly chipped in their emergency stash of tinned beef, marmalade, and chocolate, and Mr. Dorming produced a tin of condensed milk and one of peaches.
“In syrup,” Miss Laburnum said, as if it were ambrosia, and insisted on serving it separately in Mrs. Rickett’s sherry glasses.
They put everything else in the center of the table, “just like a picnic,” as Miss Hibbard said.
“This is a far better dinner than we would have had had Mrs. Rickett been here,” Miss Laburnum said. “Goose or no goose.”
“There is no need to call Mrs. Rickett names,” Mr. Dorming said, and they all collapsed in giggles.
After dinner, they listened to the King’s speech on the wireless. “This time we are all in the front line and the danger together,” he said in his stammering voice.
“The future will be hard, but our feet are planted on the path of victory.”
I fervently hope so, Polly thought.
After the speech, they drank the King’s health—in tea, the peach syrup having all been consumed—and then exchanged gifts. Miss Laburnum presented Polly and Eileen each with a homemade lavender sachet, and Miss Hibbard gave them knitted scarves.
“I made them for the soldiers, but after I’d finished them, I was afraid they were perhaps too bright and might endanger them.” They might indeed. They were a bright pumpkin orange, which would stand out like a target to the enemy.
Polly gave Eileen tattered secondhand paperbacks of Murder at the Vicarage, Three Act Tragedy, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which Eileen clutched rapturously to her breast. Eileen and Polly gave Mr. Dorming a packet of tobacco, Miss Hibbard a box of soaps with a picture of the King and Queen on it, and Miss Laburnum a secondhand copy of The Tempest, all wrapped in smuggled-out Townsend Brothers Christmas paper.
“Look at the frontispiece of your book,” Polly told Miss Laburnum. “Sir Godfrey signed it to you.”
“ ‘To my fellow player and costumer extraordinaire,’ ” Miss Laburnum read aloud, “ ‘the best of Christmases from your fellow thespian, Sir Godfrey Kingsman,’ ”
and burst into tears. “It is the best of Christmases,” she said. “I don’t know how I should get through this war without all of you.”
And I don’t know how we’d have got through today—and these months—without you, Polly thought, grateful that Townsend Brothers would be open on Boxing Day.
But even post-Christmas exchanges and taking down decorations and preparing for the New Year’s sales weren’t enough to take Polly’s mind off Mike, and she and Eileen raced home after work to see if he’d phoned.
He hadn’t, and he didn’t come on the twenty-seventh, or the twenty-eighth. What if he’s dead? Polly thought, taking down paper bells. What if he was killed when they shelled Dover? Or on the day he left for Saltram-on-Sea, and he’s been dead all this time? Like Mr. Dunworthy. And Colin. Or what if the retrieval team was in Plymouth or Liverpool, both of which had been bombed, and he’d gone there to find them?
There was a photo of Manchester’s ruined railway station in the Daily Mirror. I should have told him about Manchester before he left, she thought. I should have There was a photo of Manchester’s ruined railway station in the Daily Mirror. I should have told him about Manchester before he left, she thought. I should have told him about the raids tonight. And about the ones on Sunday night.
On Sunday morning Eileen said, “I’m to take Theodore to the pantomime this afternoon, but perhaps I’d better not. If Mike comes—”
“I’ll tell him where you are,” Polly said, thinking, If you’re at the pantomime, you won’t be here watching the clock and making me nervy.
She was already nervy enough for both of them. Tonight was the attack on the City and St. Paul’s. The Germans had dropped eleven thousand incendiaries and damaged half the railway lines into town. If Mike attempted to come to London tonight …
“What time is the pantomime over?” she asked Eileen.
“I’ve no idea. It begins at half past two, so I should think four. Or half past.”
“And then you must take Theodore back to Stepney?”
Eileen nodded.
“If the trains are running late and you’re still in Stepney when the sirens go, stay there. The raids will be bad tonight.”
“But I thought the East End was the hardest hit—”
“Not tonight. Tonight the City will be the target, and several of the tube stations. You’re safer in Stepney.”
Eileen nodded. “I hate to leave you.”
“I’ll be quite all right. I need to wash out some things.” And be here to warn Mike about tonight if he telephones. “If I get bored,” Polly said, “I’ll read one of the Agatha Christies I gave you and see if I can guess the murderer.”
“You can’t,” Eileen said. “She’s far too clever. I always think I know who did the murder, but it always turns out to be someone I’ve never even thought of, though the clues were right there in front of me. You realize your theory of the crime was all wrong, that something else entirely was going on.”
