All Clear

Croydon

MARY WAS LYING FLAT ON HER BACK.

I must have slipped on something and fallen when I came through, she thought. The shimmer must have blinded me. She remembered that the light had been much too bright, and then …

There was a sudden deafening cr-rack, and immediately after it, a second one. That was the double boom of a V-2, she thought, suddenly panicked. I’ve come through too late. And remembered where she was. She and Fairchild had heard the V-2—no, that was wrong, it had been a V-1—and they’d come back to Croydon to see if there were casualties, and Fairchild had—

Fairchild! She tried to sit up, but she couldn’t. There was something on top of her, crushing her so she couldn’t get any breath in her lungs, couldn’t—

Oh, God, don’t let it be the printing press, she thought, gasping for breath, and then, I’m buried in the rubble.

She tried to feel what was pressing down on her, but there was nothing on her chest, no fallen beams or bricks on her throat, so why …?

Somewhere far off, she heard an ambulance’s bells. Croydon, she thought, straining to hear better and, in the attempt, stopped gasping for breath. And as soon as she did, she found herself able to breathe again, able to raise her head.

She had had the breath knocked out of her, that was all, and she wasn’t buried, she was lying atop the rubble. The explosion must have knocked her flat. She drew a long, ragged breath, then stumbled to her feet, wishing there was something to lean on, but she couldn’t see the printing press, couldn’t see anything at all. The explosion must have blown out the fires. “Fairchild!” she called. “Paige! Where are you?”

She didn’t answer.

Because she’s dead, Mary thought. “Paige!” she cried frantically. “Answer me!”

No answer. No sound at all, not even the ambulance’s bells. The V-2 must have punctured my eardrums, she thought detachedly, and then, Oh, God. I won’t be able to hear Paige calling.

And remembered that Paige was dead.

She heard ambulance bells again, but from the wrong direction, from behind her, and when she turned, she saw that she had been wrong. Not all of the fires had been blown out. One was still burning, more brightly than ever. She could see their ambulance silhouetted against it.

It was moving slowly past the fire. She stared at it stupidly for a long minute, unable to make sense of what she was seeing. If it was moving, then Fairchild must not be dead, she must be driving it, but she wouldn’t leave without her, she wouldn’t …

“Fairchild, don’t leave!” she cried, and staggered forward.

“No,” a scarcely audible voice said, just off to her left.

Fairchild. Mary groped for her in the darkness, but it wasn’t her, it was the man with the severed foot. How could she have forgotten him? She had been tending him when—

“Where—?” the man asked, and his voice was hollow, as if he was speaking from the bottom of a well.

“I’m here. It was a V-2,” Mary said, and her voice sounded just as echoingly hollow.

The man’s foot had been severed. She needed to tie a tourniquet on his leg, and she’d taken off his tie to use as one.

No, I already tied it, she thought, but when she bent over him, trying to see if the tourniquet was holding, it wasn’t a tie, it was a handkerchief.

But I remember untying the tie, she thought, confused. His other leg must have been bleeding as well. And it was, but she couldn’t find the tie. She must have dropped it when the V-2 hit.

She got to her knees, pulled off her jacket, and tried to tear it. The rough cloth wouldn’t tear, but when she tried again, the lining ripped, and she was able to yank a strip free, able to tie it around his thigh. But he’d already lost a good deal of blood. She had to get him to hospital. She bent over him. “I need to go fetch the ambulance,” she said.

“Go,” he murmured. “Have to …” and then, very clearly, “leave.”

“I’ll be back straightaway,” she said, and stumbled off across the dark wreckage, over bricks and roof slates she couldn’t see, looking for the ambulance.

“Mary,” a muffled voice said at her feet. “Here.”

“Fairchild!” She’d forgotten about Fairchild. Mary groped for her in the darkness and found her hand. “Are you all right?”

“I can’t … breathe,” Fairchild gasped, clutching her hand. “… can’t catch …”

“You’ve only had the breath knocked out of you,” Mary said. “Breathe out.” She pursed her lips and exhaled, showing her how to do it. Which was ridiculous.

Fairchild couldn’t see her. “Exhale. Blow out.”

“Can’t,” Fairchild said. “There’s something on me.”

“It only feels that way,” Mary reassured her, but when she patted around her, feeling to see if Fairchild was intact, she encountered splintered wood. She tried to lift it, but Fairchild cried out.

Mary stopped. “Where are you hurt?”

“What happened?” Fairchild asked. “Did a gas main blow up?”

“No, it was a V-2,” she said, and tried to move the piece of wood to the side.

Fairchild cried out again.

She didn’t dare try to do anything when she couldn’t see. She might make things worse. She’d have to wait for the ambulance.

But the ambulance was already here. She’d seen it pulling up. She turned to look over at it, silhouetted against the fire, and could see the driver’s door opening and someone in a helmet getting out. “Injury over here!” she shouted, and the driver started toward them and then, inexplicably, moved away across the rubble.

“No, over here!”

“I don’t think the ambulance is here yet,” Fairchild said. “Listen.”

Mary listened. She could hear more ambulance bells in the distance. Another unit, from Woodside or Norbury, must be coming. “Croydon’s already here,” she told Fairchild, “but they can’t hear us. We need to signal them. Is there a torch in the ambulance?”

“There’s one in the medical kit.”

“Where’s the kit? In the ambulance?”

“No, you sent me to fetch the kit. I was bringing it to you when …”

Mary had no memory of sending her to fetch anything. She must still be a bit dazed from the blast. “Where is it?”

“I think it must have been knocked out of my hand,” Fairchild said.

And I’ll never find it in the darkness, Mary thought, but she put her hand on it, and on the torch, almost immediately. And, amazingly, it wasn’t broken. When she pushed the switch, it lit up. She held it up and waved it back and forth so the ambulance driver would see it.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” Fairchild said. “The blackout. The jerries will …”

Will what? Hit us with a V-2? She stripped off the tape shielding the lens.

“It’s a good thing we had our … talk when we did, isn’t it?” Fairchild said.

Oh, God. “Shh. You mustn’t talk like that.” Mary shone the torch on her, afraid of what she’d see, but there didn’t seem to be any blood except for a cut on Fairchild’s arm where a broken-off slat was jabbing it. It and several planks lay crisscrossed over her chest and stomach, but there was no blood on them and nothing lying on her legs or feet.

I need to fetch the ambulance, she thought, and—

“I told you things could happen just like that, with no warning,” Fairchild said. “If anything happens to me—”

“Shh, Paige, you’ll be fine.” Mary attempted to move the pieces of wood, but they were too entangled. She needed both hands. She propped the torch against a heap of bricks so that it shone on Fairchild and set to work.

“If anything happens,” Fairchild repeated, “I want you to—oh! You’re hurt! You’re bleeding!”

“It’s printer’s ink,” Mary said, trying to extract her from the strips of wood.

It was like a child’s game. She had to carefully pull one piece out at a time, all the while not disturbing the slat stabbing into Fairchild’s arm.

There was a sudden whoosh and boom, and orange flames boiled up behind the silhouetted ambulance. “Was that another V-2?” Fairchild asked.

“No, I think that was the gas main,” Mary said, looking over at the flames. She saw two ambulances and a fire engine pull up. “The rescue squad’s here. Over here!” and heard the slamming of several doors and some voices. “Casualty here!” She stood up and waved the torch, sweeping it back and forth like a searchlight, and then knelt back down next to Fairchild. “They’ll be here in a moment.”

Fairchild nodded. “If anything happens to me—”

“Nothing’s—” she began, and thought with horror, It wasn’t Stephen who was killed. It was Paige. That’s why I was allowed to come through the net, to come between them, because nothing I did made any difference. Because Paige was killed by a V-2.

But she wouldn’t have been here in the rubble if I hadn’t come between them. She wouldn’t have switched with Camberley, she wouldn’t have stopped the car to talk to me.

And if she hadn’t stopped the car, they wouldn’t have heard the V-1—

“No, listen, Mary,” Fairchild said. “If anything happens to me, I want you to take care of Stephen. He—”

There was the sound of running feet, and a girl in a St. John’s Ambulance coverall ran up and knelt over her.

“Not me,” Mary said, “she’s the one who’s hurt. Her arm—”

“I’ll need a stretcher!” the girl shouted, and someone else raced up to them.

“Oh, heavens, is that Fairchild?” the new arrival said, and Mary saw that it was Camberley. “It’s Fairchild and Douglas! Get over here quickly!” and instantly Reed was there with the first-aid kit, and Parrish and the stretcher were right behind her.

“What are you doing here, DeHavilland?” Reed asked, bending down beside Mary. “I thought you’d gone to Streatham.”

She was right, they were supposed to have gone to Streatham. Why hadn’t they? She couldn’t remember.

“You’re supposed to go to the incident after the flying bomb hits, Douglas, not before,” Camberley said cheerfully, squatting down next to Mary.

“We did,” she said. “There was a V-1, and then—”

“I was joking, dear,” Camberley said. “Here, let me have a look at your temple.”

“Don’t bother about me. Paige’s arm—” she said, trying to see past her to where Parrish and the St. John’s girl were working on Fairchild, lifting the wood off her, lifting her onto the stretcher, covering her with a blanket.

“Is she all right?” Mary asked. “Her arm—”

“You let us worry about her,” Camberley said, holding Mary’s chin and turning her head to the side. “I need iodine,” she said to Reed, “and bandages.”

“They’re in the ambulance,” Mary said, and Camberley and Reed exchanged glances.

“What is it?” Mary asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Let me see that head.”

Parrish and the St. John’s girl lifted Fairchild’s stretcher and started across the rubble with it.

Mary attempted to go with her, but Reed wouldn’t let her. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s not blood,” she said, but Reed ignored her and began to bandage her head.

“It’s not blood,” she repeated. “It’s printer’s ink.” And remembered the man whose leg she’d tied the tourniquet on. “You need to go fetch him,” she said.

“Hold still,” Reed ordered.

“He’s bleeding,” Mary said, attempting to get to her feet.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Camberley said, pushing her back down to sitting. “We need a stretcher over here!” she called.

“No, he’s over there,” Mary said, pointing across the dark rubble.

“We’ll see to him,” Camberley said. “Where the bloody hell is that stretcher?”

“Can you walk, do you think, Douglas?” Reed asked.

“Of course I can walk,” Mary said. “He was bleeding badly. I tied a tourniquet on one leg, but—”

“Put your arm round my neck,” Reed said, “there’s a good girl. Here we go,” and began to walk her slowly across the rubble, and it was a good thing she was holding on to her. The ground was very rough. It was difficult to keep one’s balance.

“He was over by the fire,” Mary said, but the fire was in the wrong place. It was near the ambulances, in the road.

That’s not the right fire, she thought, stopping to look around at the rubble, trying to see where he was, but Camberley wouldn’t let her, she kept urging her along.

“His foot had been severed,” Mary said. “You need—”

“Stop worrying about everyone else and concentrate on this last bit. You can do it. Only a bit farther.”

“He was over there,” Mary said, pointing, and saw two FANYs carrying a laden stretcher from that direction.

Oh, good, they got him out, she thought, and let Camberley walk her the rest of the way to the ambulance. Two ambulances were already driving away. One of them was from Brixton. She could read its lettering in the firelight. And here was Bela Lugosi. But where was their ambulance? “Did you take Paige to hospital in the new—?”

“Here we are, then,” Camberley said, opening up the back of Bela Lugosi. Mary sat down on the edge, suddenly very tired.

“I need some help over here,” Camberley called.

Two FANYs Mary didn’t know came over, helped her into the ambulance and onto a cot, covered her with a blanket, and hooked up a plasma bag.

“It’s not blood,” she told them. “Was he all right?” But they were already shutting the doors, the ambulance was already moving, and then they were at the hospital and she was being unloaded, carried in, deposited in a bed.

“Concussion, shock, bleeding,” Camberley told the nurse.

“It’s printer’s ink,” Mary said, but when she held out her hands to show them, they were covered in red, not black. Paige’s arm must have bled more than she thought.

“Has Lieutenant Fairchild been brought in yet?” she asked the nurse. “Lieutenant Paige Fairchild?”

“I’ll ask,” she said, and went across the ward to another nurse.

“Internal bleeding,” she heard the other nurse whisper and shake her head.

She’s dead, Mary thought. And it’s my fault. If I hadn’t pushed Talbot down, I’d never have met Stephen, he’d never have come to the post.

But that couldn’t be right. Historians couldn’t alter events. But I must have, she thought, unable to work it out because her head hurt too badly. Because Paige is dead.

But just after dawn Fairchild was brought in and put in the bed next to her, pale and unconscious, and in the morning Camberley, covered in dirt and brick dust, sneaked in to see how Mary was doing and to tell her Fairchild had been in surgery most of the night for a ruptured spleen, but that the doctors had assured her she’d recover completely.

“Thank goodness,” Mary said, looking over at Fairchild, who lay with her eyes closed and her hands folded across her breast, like Sleeping Beauty. She had a bandage on her arm.

“I feel so guilty,” Camberley said, “knowing I should be the one who was in that ambulance instead of Fairchild. It’s my fault—”

No, it isn’t, Mary thought. It’s mine.

“It was so lucky you were on the far side of the incident when the V-2 hit,” she said.

I was tying off the man’s leg, she thought. “Did he make it?” she asked, and when Camberley looked blankly at her, she said, “The man we were working on. With the severed foot.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We didn’t bring him in. I’ll ask the nurse.” But the nurse said the only other patients who’d been admitted the night before were a woman and her two little boys.

“He may have been taken to some other hospital,” Camberley said, and promised to ring up Croydon and ask.

But she didn’t return, and when Talbot came during visiting hours with flowers and grapes, she said, “Camberley said to tell you the man you asked about wasn’t taken to St. Francis’s, and that Croydon said the only person they transported was Fairchild. But Camberley said he must be somewhere because she checked with the mortuary van, which was there, and the only person they’d transported had died instantly.”

The man we found who’d been cut in half, Mary thought. “Tell her to ring up Brixton and ask them if they transported him,” she said. “They had an ambulance there.”

Talbot looked over at Fairchild. She still hadn’t come out of the ether, though now she looked like she was only sleeping, and her color was better. She looked even younger and more childlike than usual.

“What about Flight Officer Lang?” Talbot asked. “Shall I ring him up and tell him what happened?”

“Not till after I’ve been discharged,” Mary said.

Talbot nodded approvingly. “When will they let you go home, do you think?”

“This afternoon, I should imagine.”

And then I’ll go look for the missing man myself, Mary thought. But the doctor refused to let her go due to her possibly having a concussion, and when she attempted to explain about the man to her nurse, the nurse told her to “try to rest.” Which was impossible when there was a chance that no one had transported him, that they’d missed him in the darkness and he was still lying there in the rubble.

She wished she’d asked Talbot to bring her her bag. If she had some money she could ring up Brixton herself. If the nurses would let her anywhere near a telephone. Thus far they wouldn’t even let her out of bed. They’d even reprimanded her for walking the two feet over to Fairchild’s bed when she woke and called for telephone. Thus far they wouldn’t even let her out of bed. They’d even reprimanded her for walking the two feet over to Fairchild’s bed when she woke and called for her.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she’d said groggily, clutching Mary’s hand. “I was so afraid—”

“So was I,” Mary had said, “but the doctors say we’re both going to be perfectly fine, though a bit banged up.”

And it’s a good thing I’m going to be here through VE-Day, she thought. If I went back to Oxford looking like this, Mr. Dunworthy would never let me go to the Blitz.

Camberley came late that afternoon as Mary was about to be taken up for X-rays, on her way home from a run. “Did you ring up Brixton?” Mary asked.

“Yes,” Camberley said, “but they said they weren’t at the incident. Might the ambulance have been from Bromley?”

“I suppose so.” She could have misread the name in the flickering firelight.

“Or might he have been examined and discharged?” Camberley asked, but the hospital wouldn’t even discharge her, and she only had a few cuts and bruises.

“No,” she said, “he was much too badly injured. Did you check the morgue here and at St. Francis’s? He might have died on the way to hospital, and that’s why they don’t show him as being admitted.”

“I’ll check,” Camberley said, and hesitated. “Are you certain you saw him last night? You were rather badly concussed. You might have been muddled—”

“I wasn’t muddled. He—”

“You were muddled about Brixton’s being there. You might have got someone you administered first aid to at some other incident confused with—”

“No, I saw him, too,” Fairchild said from the other bed, and Mary could have kissed her. “That’s who I was fetching the medical kit for.”

The orderly arrived with a wheelchair to take Mary to X-ray. “When you come again, bring my bag,” she told Camberley. “It’s in the ambulance.”

On the way to the X-ray she looked for a telephone box. There was one just outside the ward. Good. And luckily, their beds were just inside the ward’s doors. As soon as she got her bag, she’d sneak out and ring up Croydon and ask them to go check the incident again. But when she got back, Fairchild was crying.

Dread gripped her. “Did they find him?” Mary asked.

Fairchild shook her head, unable to speak for the tears spilling down her cheeks.

“What is it?” Mary asked. Oh, God, it’s Stephen. “What happened?”

“Camberley …,” she said, and broke down.

“What about Camberley? Has something happened to her?”

“No,” she sobbed. “To the ambulance.”

“What ambulance? The one from Brixton?” Oh, God, they’d been transporting the man to hospital, and there’d been another rocket—

“No, our ambulance. Camberley said the V-2 hit it.”

Mary’s first thought was, My bag was in it. Now how will I get the coins to phone Croydon?

And then, That was the second explosion I heard, the fire I saw. It hadn’t been a gas main, after all. It had been the ambulance’s petrol tank blowing up.

If I hadn’t called Paige to leave the stretcher and bring the first-aid kit, she’d have still been in the ambulance when it hit. But if that was the case—

“We’d only just got it,” Fairchild said, sobbing, “and we’ll never be able to get another one.”

“Nonsense,” Mary said. “This is the Major we’re talking about. If anyone can talk HQ out of another ambulance, she can. I don’t suppose you’ve any money with you, have you?”

“Yes,” Fairchild said, wiping at her eyes. “At least, I do if my shoes made it with me to hospital. Mother insists I always carry a half crown in my shoe. She says I might get in a sticky situation and need to telephone.”

“And she was right,” Mary said, hoping the shoes were in the cupboard between their beds.

They were, and so was the half crown. Mary hid it under her pillow and got back into bed, and the next time the nurse left the ward, she tiptoed out to the telephone box. She rang up Brixton.

“We weren’t in Croydon last night,” they told her.

“But I saw—”

“It must have been Bethnal Green’s ambulance you saw.”

No, it wasn’t, Polly thought, but she rang them up. They hadn’t been at the incident either.

She rang up Croydon, and they promised to go recheck the area where the newspaper office had been, “though the rescue crew went over every inch of it,” the FANY said. Mary asked them what other ambulances had been at the incident, and she said, “Norbury,” but Norbury hadn’t transported anyone of that description either, or seen an ambulance from any other post.

“Except yours,” the Norbury FANY said. “It was difficult to miss. Could this man you’re looking for have been military? If he was, he might have been taken to Orpington.”

He’d been wearing civilian clothes, but she rang Orpington and then the morgue there and the one at St. Mark’s to make certain he hadn’t died on the way to hospital.

He hadn’t, which meant he had to have been taken to some other hospital. Unless he was still lying in the wrecked newspaper office.

She rang up Croydon again. “We looked where you told us to,” the FANY who answered assured her, “but there was no one there. He must have been taken to St.

Bart’s or Guy’s Hospital for some reason.”

And those were trunk calls, so she’d have to wait and ring them from the post. At any rate, she needed to get back before the nurse came looking for her. She stood up and opened the door of the telephone box.

Stephen was at the far end of the corridor, in front of the matron’s desk, shouting at the matron, who was attempting to block his way. “You’re not allowed on the floor, sir!” she said. “Visiting hours are over.”

“I don’t bloody care when visiting hours are. I intend to see Lieutenant Fairchild.”

Mary ducked quickly back into the telephone box and pulled the door shut behind her. She sat down, put the receiver to her ear, and turned toward the back wall so Stephen wouldn’t see her as he charged past with the nurse in pursuit.

“This is most irregular,” she heard the nurse say, and then the double doors of the ward banged open and shut again. She waited for the sound of Stephen’s being ejected or of the nurse going angrily for help, but she couldn’t hear anything.

She ventured a cautious look out, then crept out and over to the doors to the ward and peeked through the small glass pane. Fairchild was sitting up in bed, looking very young and absolutely radiant. Stephen was sitting on the side of the bed.

Mary glanced back down the corridor and then pushed half the door open a crack so she could hear.

“I only just heard you were here,” Stephen was saying. “A chap I know who’s seeing a FANY in Croydon, Whitt’s his name, told me, and I came as soon as I could. Are you certain you’re all right, Paige?”

“Yes,” she said. “Did they tell you Mary was hurt, too? She has a concussion.”

Oh, don’t mention me, Mary thought, but he said, “Whitt told me. He said it was a miracle you weren’t killed when the V-2 hit.”

“Mary saved my life,” Fairchild said loyally. “If she hadn’t called to me to bring the medical kit, I’d still have been in the ambulance when it hit.”

“Remind me to thank her,” he said, gripping Paige’s hands. “When I think … I might have lost you …”

Mary eased the door silently shut and then stood there, staring wonderingly at it. She’d been so afraid that the reason the net had let her come through and inadvertently muck up their romance was that it had already been star-crossed. That Stephen—or Paige, or both of them—had been killed. It had never occurred to her that it might have been because they had got together in spite of what she’d done.

She should have known she couldn’t have affected events, even if it had seemed for a time that that was what she was doing. She should have known it would all come right in the end.

“And he simply barged in,” a woman’s voice said behind her. A nurse, coming round the corner of the corridor. And if they saw her, they’d take her back in to bed, to Paige and Stephen.

She dove for the telephone box, reaching to pull its door shut, but she needn’t have bothered. The nurse, flanked by the matron and the orderly, marched past without noticing her and pushed open the ward’s double doors.

“You mustn’t worry, darling,” she heard Stephen say. “I’ll see to it that no other rocket ever gets near you, if I have to shoot every last one of them down myself.”

“Officer Lang,” the matron said sternly. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“In a minute,” he said. “Paige, when I heard what had happened, all I could think of was what an idiot I’d been for not realizing how much you mean to me. You know that bit in the Bible about the scales falling from one’s eyes? Well, that was exactly it.”

The doors swung shut, cutting off the rest of what he was saying. Mary pulled the door of the telephone box shut and sat down to wait for Stephen to be escorted out so she could go back to the ward and her bed. Even if historians couldn’t affect events, she wasn’t going to run the risk of coming between them again and somehow mucking things up. Not when things had worked out so well for everyone.

The FANYs would all be delighted, and the Major would change the schedule back to the way it had been. Reed and Grenville would stop being angry with her, the discussion would go back to who had to wear the Yellow Peril and how to get Donald to propose to Maitland, and she could go back to doing what she’d come here to do: observe an ambulance post during the V-1 and V-2 attacks.

And there was no reason at all for her to feel so … bereft. It was ridiculous. She should be overjoyed. It must be some sort of delayed reaction to shock, like Paige’s being so upset over the ambulance. There was certainly no reason to cry. He was a lovely boy, and that crooked smile of his was admittedly devastating, but it could never have worked out. He had died before she was born.

“But not in the war,” she murmured, and then, thinking of the nine months and the thousands of V-1s and V-2s still to come, “I hope.”

Whatever happens at Dunkirk, we shall fight on.

—WINSTON CHURCHILL,

26 May 1940