All Clear

St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940

“MR. DUNWORTHY,” POLLY BREATHED. SHE GRABBED FOR THE lamppost at the end of the steps of St. Paul’s, legs suddenly wobbly. Eileen had said he would come, and he had. And this was why she hadn’t been able to get a message to John Bartholomew, because she didn’t need to. Mr. Dunworthy had found them before they found him. It was only a spike in slippage, after all, and not some horrible catastrophe that had killed everyone in Oxford, and not their having changed the outcome of the war.

And not Mr. Dunworthy—and Colin—having lied to them.

Colin. If Mr. Dunworthy’s here. Colin may be, too, she thought, her heart lifting, and glanced at the people on either side of Mr. Dunworthy, but she couldn’t see him. Mr. Dunworthy was flanked by two elderly women who were staring raptly up at the dome.

“Mr. Dunworthy!” Polly called to him, shouting over the roar of the planes and anti-aircraft guns.

He turned, looking vaguely about to see where the voice was coming from.

“Over here, Mr. Dunworthy!” she shouted, and he looked directly at her.

It wasn’t him after all, even though the man looked exactly like him—his spectacles, his graying hair, his worried expression. But the face he turned to her showed no recognition, no relief at finding her. He looked stunned and then horrified, and she turned and glanced automatically behind her to see if the fire in Paternoster Row had reached St. Paul’s.

It hadn’t, though half the Row’s buildings were now ablaze. She looked back at the man, but he’d already turned and was working his way to the rear of the crowd, away from her, away from St. Paul’s.

“Mr. Dunworthy!” she called, not quite able to believe it wasn’t him, and ran across the forecourt after him. “Mr. Dunworthy!”

But as she followed, she became even more convinced she’d been mistaken. Mr. Dunworthy had never had that defeated stoop to his shoulders, that old man’s walk. The likeness of his features must have been a trick of the red, flickering light. And of her wishful thinking, like the times she’d thought she’d seen Colin.

But she had to be absolutely certain. “Mr. Dunworthy!” she called again, plowing through the crowd.

“Look!” a man shouted, and several hands shot up, pointing at the dome. “It’s falling!”

Polly glanced up. The fiery yellow star that was the incendiary wavered and began to slide down the dome and then tumbled off and disappeared into the maze of roofs below. The crowd erupted in cheers.

She turned back to Mr. Dunworthy, but in the moment it had taken her to glance at the incendiary, he’d vanished. She pushed her way through to the back of the crowd, which was already beginning to disperse, the people hurrying away from the cathedral as if they’d suddenly realized how close the fires were and how much danger they were in.

“Mr. Dunworthy! Stop! It’s me, Polly Sebastian!” she shouted. The guns and planes and even the wind had stopped for the moment, and her voice rang out clearly in the silence, but no one turned, no one slowed.

It wasn’t him, she thought, and I’ve been wasting valuable minutes I should have spent looking for John Bartholomew. He’ll be going back into the cathedral any moment.

She turned to look at St. Paul’s, but no one was going up the steps yet, and a knot of people were still gazing up at the dome.

“Have they put it out?” a boy shouted, and Polly looked up to see the silhouettes of two helmeted men at the dome’s base, bending over the incendiary, shoveling sand on it. More men were hurrying toward them with shovels and blankets.

The fire watch hadn’t been evacuated. Of course they hadn’t. They had to be there to put out the incendiary when it fell off. John Bartholomew had been up there on the roofs the entire time.

She had to get up there. She looked around to see where the chorister was. He stood at the foot of the steps—the women and the boy gathered around him as he gave directions to the shelter—blocking the way into the nave.

Polly kept the dispersing crowd between her and the chorister and crossed the courtyard, then walked quickly over to the churchyard and in through the door to the Crypt. She hurried down the steps, through the gate, and down the length of the Crypt, running at full tilt past the sandbags and Wellington’s tomb and the fire-watch’s cots, her footsteps echoing hollowly on the stone floor.

At the foot of the stairway she paused, panting, to risk a look back, but there was no sign of the chorister. She ran up the steps he’d brought her down and out onto the cathedral floor.

The nave was as bright as day, the gold of the dome and the arches shining richly in the orange light from the windows, the transepts and the pillars and the chairs in the center of the nave lit more brightly than they were in the daytime.

Good. It will make the door to the roofs easier to find, she thought.

She heard someone running up the north aisle. The chorister, she thought, ducking into the south aisle and behind a pillar. He’d seen her come in and intended to intercept her before she could get to the roofs. He’d head straight for the door that led up to them, and all she had to do was see where he went.

And keep from being caught, which would be difficult with so much light in here. She waited, pressed against the pillar, listening intently. His footsteps echoed, paused, echoed again.

Oh, no, he was checking in every bay and behind each pillar. She couldn’t stay here. There was nowhere to hide. She leaned against the pillar, took off her shoes, stuck them in her coat pockets, and waited for the pause that meant he was checking in one of the bays.

When it came, she ran silently down the south aisle to the chapel where she’d hidden before. She lifted the latch up slowly, trying not to make any noise, opened the gate, and slipped silently through. She debated leaving the gate open, decided that would be a dead giveaway, and pulled it shut. It clanked, but not loudly, and the chorister’s footsteps didn’t slow at the sound.

He was at the far end of the nave. Go to the door, she willed him, but he was crossing the nave to this side and coming quickly this way, pausing, coming again.

Polly retreated farther into the chapel, looking for a hiding place. Not the prayer stalls—there was too much light to hide in their shadow.

Under the altar cloth? she thought, and ran stocking-footed up the chapel’s aisle to the back row of stalls, and into the narrow, shadowed space between them and the wall behind them.

She crouched down out of sight, thinking, This is ridiculous. I’ve been here over two hours, and I’m no nearer the roofs than I was when I started. And this was a dreadful hiding place. She couldn’t hear his footsteps from here. All she could hear was the planes, which were coming over again.

She was about to abandon her hiding place when she heard the chorister at the gate. He rattled the latch, satisfied himself it was fastened, and went on.

He’s going into the vestibule, she thought, and then he’ll go check the door, but instead she heard the rattle of another gate, and then a clank, and footsteps ascending a staircase. The Wren Geometrical Staircase.

But it’s boarded up, she thought, and then remembered Mr. Humphreys saying they were debating whether to open it again, in spite of its fragility. Because the staircase led to the roofs.

I must have gone straight past it in the darkness when I ran into the church, she thought, cursing herself. If she’d remembered it, she could have found John Bartholomew by now.

The chorister climbed up a few more steps and then walked back down. She heard him latch the gate, and head up the aisle toward the dome.

It took every ounce of self-control she had not to plunge out of the chapel and over to the staircase. She waited till the chorister’s footsteps had died away, counted to ten, squeezed out of her hiding place, and tiptoed over to the gate. The south aisle and the nave beyond were full of smoke. It stung her eyes and made her want to cough. She forced the cough back, holding her breath, and looked up the nave toward the dome—and saw flames.

Oh, God, the roofs caught fire after all, she thought, and then saw that the flames were from scraps of burning paper and pieces of wood swirling in the air below the dome.

They must be blowing in through the shattered stained-glass windows from the fires in Paternoster Row. The air was full of them. A burning order of worship danced down the nave and sank to the stone floor, still alight and dangerously close to the Christmas tree which stood next to the desk where she’d bought her guidebook. And even here, in the south aisle, the air was full of ash and glowing sparks. One landed on Polly’s coat, and she batted at it as she ran toward the spiral staircase. She opened the gate and started up the curving steps.

And heard flames crackling. The tree, she thought, and darted back down the steps and out into the nave, but it wasn’t the Christmas tree. It was the visitors’ desk.

Flame and smoke curled up from the counter.

Perhaps it’s only the guidebooks, she thought. But as she watched, the wooden rack caught fire, the postcards Mr. Humphreys had shown her of the Wellington Monument and the Whispering Gallery going up like struck matches.

Where’s the fire watch? she thought. This is their job. I have to find John Bartholomew.

But by the time they found it, the fire might have spread. Scraps from the burning postcards were floating, still aflame, up the nave toward the wooden chairs, the wooden pulpit.

And what if this was a discrepancy, the result of Mike’s having saved Hardy or of her having influenced Marjorie to go meet her airman? What if, thanks to us, St.

Paul’s did burn down? she thought.

The sixpenny print of The Light of the World caught fire, the edges curling up, the shut door in the picture burning away to black, to ash. Polly darted down the aisle to the nearest pillar, snatched up one of the pails of water, heaved the contents over the desk and the burning print, and then ran back to fill it again from the tin tub.

But the first pailful had put the fire out. She poured the second pail over the counter and the card rack for good measure, then pulled the postcards out of the rack and threw them and The Light of the World onto the floor several feet from the desk in case the fire wasn’t completely out.

She set the bucket down and ran back to the staircase and up the twisting steps, round and round, to the gallery above.

It was even more full of smoke and ash and cinders. And it will get worse as you go up, Polly thought, ducking her head to protect it from the embers as she ran along the gallery, trying doors, searching for a stairway which would take her farther up. A library. A closet, filled with choir robes.

The stairway must be in the transept, she thought, and hurried toward the dome.

It was in the transept, just past the corner of the gallery. It led up to a dark and stiflingly hot corridor roofed with low wooden beams that she had to duck under and huge bumps in the floor she had to edge around or crawl over. The tops of the arches’ vaults?

But she must be going the right way, because coils of hose and tubs of sand and water stood every few yards against the walls and, in one case, in the middle of the corridor. She splashed into it as she tried to step over a hump, and it was only then that she realized she was still in her stocking feet and her shoes were still in her pockets. She sat down next to the tub, put her shoes on and went on, looking for a stairway leading farther up.

She finally found one. It led up to a maze of even lower-roofed, narrower, and smokier passages that had to be just beneath the roofs. She could hear planes and anti-aircraft guns through the ceiling.

And voices, coming from farther along the passage and above her. “Easy, easy,” she heard one voice say, and then a second voice from a bit below the first, saying,

“Watch the turning.”

They’re coming down a flight of stairs, Polly thought. And they were no more than a few feet away, which meant this passage had to connect to the stairs. She scuttled along the passage, trying not to crack her head against ceiling beams she could only half see in the dimness, straining to spot the doorway to the stairs.

“No, no, you’ll—” the first voice said.

“Come back this way.”

And the other said, “Wait, I haven’t got a good grip.”

They must be carrying something between them. They were nearly even with her. She needed to hurry or she’d miss them. She rushed toward their voices.

And straight into a wall. The stairway lay on the other side of it—she could hear the two men only inches from her—but there was no door, no connecting link. The passage she was in dead-ended. And in the meantime, the men had already passed below her with their burden, their voices still repeating, “Easy” and “Careful,” as they got farther away. And now she had the entire maze to crawl back along, hoping she could remember the way she’d come and find a way out.

She was so focused on retracing her steps that she nearly missed the door. It stood behind an angled beam and was so narrow that she had to squeeze through it and up the shallow stone steps, not certain she wouldn’t get stuck as she did. The stairs ended in a trapdoor, which she had to push up mightily on with both hands to budge. It fell back, opening on the suddenly deafening roar of planes and a rush of heat and wind that blew her hat off. She grabbed for it, but the hat was already gone, caught in an updraft.

But it didn’t matter. She was through it and finally, finally, out on the roof.

On one of the roofs, she amended, pushing her blowing hair out of her eyes and looking at the long, flat roof and the stone wall and steep slant above her.

In spite of the distance she’d climbed, this was only one of the lower aisle roofs which ran the length of the nave. The pitched central roof and the dome were still a full story above her, and she had no way to get to them.

I’ll need to go all the way back down and find another way up, she thought despairingly.

But if an incendiary fell down here, they had to have a way to get to it quickly. There must be something here to make that possible—ropes or a ladder or something.

A ladder. It stood against the wall, hidden by the shadows of the transept roofs above it. She began to climb it.

Blustery as it had been on the aisle roof, the surrounding walls had protected her from the brunt of the wind. And from the cold. As she climbed higher, freezing gusts whipped around her, flapping the tail of her coat and blowing her hair across her face. She leaned forward to grab at the leaded gutter and then the parapet. Her foot accidentally kicked the side of the ladder as she pulled herself over the edge, and it fell away and down with a muffled clang.

Polly clutched at the parapet with both hands, squinting against the driving wind, and pulled herself up over it and onto the roof. The wind was even icier up here, though it shouldn’t have been. It was filled with darting sparks and flecks of fire and ash. She slitted her eyes against them and pulled herself to standing, holding on to a stone projection, and looked out over the edge of the roof.

And gasped. There were flames below her as far as she could see, building after building, roof after roof on fire.

Oh, God, Mike and Eileen are down there somewhere in that, she thought.

Off to the right, a church spire was blazing like a torch. One of the Wren churches? Beyond it a scattering of just-fallen incendiaries sparkled like stars. It had no business being beautiful, but it was, the white searchlights piercing the billows of crimson and orange and gold smoke, the shining pink curve of the Thames, the burning windows glowing like row after row of Chinese lanterns. And nearer in, a solid ring of fire, closing inexorably on St. Paul’s.

“It can’t possibly survive,” Polly murmured, looking down at the flames. Pails of water and sandbags and stirrup pumps and a score of firewatchers can’t stop that.

“Where is it?” a man shouted behind her, and she whirled around.

One of the firewatchers was standing there. It was too dark to make out his features. “Where’d the incendiary fall?” he shouted at her over the wind. “Down there?”

He peered over the edge at the roof she’d just climbed up from.

“Are you John Bartholomew?” she shouted at him.

“What?” He straightened and looked at her, astonished. “You’re a girl. What the bloody hell are you doing up here?”

“I’m looking for—”

“How did you get up here? Civilians aren’t allowed on the roofs!”

“Peters!” he shouted, grabbed her arm, and pushed her ahead of him, the two of them half walking, half crawling over the steep roof to the base of the dome, where half a dozen men were flailing at the roof with wet burlap bags. Sparks sizzled as the sopping bags smothered them. The firewatcher pushed her toward the nearest man. “Peters! Look what I found over on the pocket roof.”

“How’d you get up here?” Peters demanded, looking about for someone to blame. “Who the bloody hell let her up here?”

“No one,” Polly said. “Is any of you John Bartholomew?” she called over to the other men, but the wind carried her words away, and a new batch of planes was approaching, droning off to the east.

The men all looked up alertly. “You can’t stay up here!” Peters bellowed at her. “You’re in danger.”

“I’m not leaving till I speak with John Bartholomew!”

He ignored her. “Nickleby, take her down and see that she stays there.”

Nickleby pulled on her arm.

She wrenched away from him. “Please,” she said to Peters. “It’s an emergency.”

“Emergency,” he repeated, looking out at the burning City, the encroaching fires. “Bartholomew’s not here. He’s gone.”

“Gone?” she echoed. “He can’t have gone yet. He—when did he leave?”

“A quarter of an hour ago. He took one of the watch who was injured to hospital.”

And I heard him carrying the man down, Polly thought sickly. He was just on the other side of the wall.

“Then let me speak to Mr. Humphreys,” she said.

She could at least give him a message to give John Bartholomew when he returned. If he returned. Eileen had said he’d left immediately after he’d been injured.

She’d had it wrong—he wasn’t the one injured—but she might have got the part about his leaving then right. He might have gone to hospital and then not been able to get back to St. Paul’s because of the fires.

“Humphreys went with them.”

“To which hospital?”

“I don’t know.”

“St. Bart’s, I think,” Nickleby said.

“Where is that?” Polly asked.

“Over there,” the first firewatcher said, and pointed over the northern edge of the roof at a sea of smoke and flame. “But you’ve no business going out there. You need to be in a shelter.”

An anti-aircraft battery just below them started up. “Nickleby, take her down to the Crypt,” he shouted over it, “and then get back up here!” He looked up at the smoky sky, listening to the planes, now nearly overhead. “We’re due for another round.”

Polly let Nickleby lead her over to a doorway at the base of the dome, then wrenched free of him and ran down the spiraling stone steps to the Whispering Gallery—oh, God, those stairs do go all the way up! If I’d only come that way!—and the telephone post of the watch just below it.

She shot past the startled fire-watch volunteer on the phone and on down the steps and out into the nave. And down it, through the whirlwind of burning cinders She shot past the startled fire-watch volunteer on the phone and on down the steps and out into the nave. And down it, through the whirlwind of burning cinders and orders of worship, past the visitors’ desk, past the charred sixpenny print of Light of the World, and fled out the door and down the steps into the fire.

Not a hope. Nothing can get through.

—BUS DRIVER TO A NURSE TRYING

TO REACH HER HOSPITAL,

29 December 1940