All Clear

London—Spring 1941

POLLY RAN OUT OF THE ALHAMBRA AND THROUGH THE firelit streets to Shaftesbury, and into dense fog.

No, not fog. Dust from the explosion. It smelled of sulphur and cordite and was completely impenetrable. I’ll never find the Phoenix in this, she thought, but as she felt her way forward, it began to thin and she could see the Phoenix’s marquee. Reggie must have been wrong—it was still standing.

But the street in front of it was roped off. And as she came closer, she saw that half of the theater’s front was missing, exposing the lobby and the gold-carpeted staircase. An officer in a white helmet was standing next to the blue incident light, peering at a clipboard. Polly ducked under the rope and ran over to him. “Officer—”

“This is an incident,” he said brusquely. “No civilians allowed.”

“But I’m looking for—”

He cut her off. “The theater was standing empty. I must ask you to leave. Warden!” He beckoned to an ARP warden. “Escort this young lady—”

“But there’s someone inside,” she said. “Sir God—”

“Officer Murdoch!” another warden called from up the street. “Quick!” and the incident officer hurried off.

Polly started after him, but so did the warden he’d called to have her thrown out, and she was afraid he’d do it before she could explain. And even if he’d listen, they obviously had their hands full.

She darted across the street and climbed over the heap of wood and plaster that had been the front of the theater and into the lobby. Scarcely any damage had been done to it. The bomb must have been only a hundred-pounder, in spite of its loudness. She tried to open the double doors to the theater proper, but they were locked.

The mezzanine doors weren’t. She slipped through them.

Into chaos. The balcony and boxes had collapsed onto the rows of red-plush seats below, and the seats themselves were piled atop one another as though tossed there by a wave. The walls still stood, and there was still a ceiling except for a large, jagged hole on one side. Through it, the fiery sky lit this part of the theater with a pinkish-orange light. The front part of the theater and the stage lay in shadow.

“Sir Godfrey! Are you in here?” Polly called, and started carefully across the sea of openwork metal supports, cushions spilling out stuffing, and splintered mahogany from the balcony. Some of the rows of seats were still intact and upright, with discarded playbills still on their red-plush seats. But they were unstable, threatening to topple as Polly walked across them, grabbing for seat backs as she worked her way forward, and her shoes made it worse.

I have no business trying to do this in high-heeled shoes, she thought, stepping carefully over a curved panel which had been part of one of the theater boxes.

Sir Godfrey had said he’d be backstage looking at sets. She looked out across the jumble of upended seats, seeking something that would tell her when she’d reached the stage—a footlight or a curtain or a fallen catwalk—but there was nothing beyond the rows of tangled seats except what looked like a huge blanket, as if the rescue squad had covered the site with a tarpaulin to hide the wreckage.

As if it were a dead body, Polly thought, and realized what the tarpaulin was. The asbestos safety curtain. It had collapsed backward, draping the entire stage. At least it can’t catch fire, she thought, but if Sir Godfrey was under it, there was no way she’d be able to lift it off him. The one at the Alhambra weighed a ton.

She started toward the shrouded stage, calling, “Sir Godfrey! Where are you?” and stepping gingerly from seat to seat as if across stepping-stones. She remembered the governess at the pantomime telling her charges, “No, no, you mustn’t stand on the seats. You’ll tear the cloth,” and even as she thought it, her gilt heel went through the plush upholstery, her ankle twisted, and she fell sideways.

She grabbed for the back of the chair, which threatened to go over, steadied herself, and attempted to free her foot. The shoe’s heel was caught on something. One of the springs. She jerked her foot sharply upward, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Blast these heels,” she said, and tried to tear the upholstery further so she could see what she was caught on, but it was much stronger than it looked. She would have to take off the shoe. She tried to slide her foot out of it. No good. She bent awkwardly over to unstrap it. The stiff buckle wouldn’t budge either, and she bent over farther, struggling with it.

And heard a faint sound from the direction of the balcony. “Sir Godfrey?” she called, and thought she heard an answering groan. “I’m coming!” she said. “My shoe—” She yanked viciously up on the end of the gilt strap. It came away in her hand, and she pulled her foot out of the shoe and reached back into the seat’s stuffing for it, wrenching the shoe from side to side to free it. It wouldn’t come.

“Wait, I’m coming!” she called, abandoning the shoe, and scrambled back toward where the sound had come from. “Sir Godfrey?”

“Here,” a man’s voice answered so faintly she couldn’t tell if it was Sir Godfrey’s.

“Are you injured?” she called, moving in its direction. “Keep talking so I can find you!”

“ ‘Here I lie and thus I bear my point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me,’ ” he said, and it was most certainly Sir Godfrey. Who else would quote Shakespeare at a time like this?

He was only four rows back, under a tumble of seats. She could see his arm in the space between them. “Sir Godfrey,” she said, squatting down, but it was too dark under there to see him. “Is that you?”

“Yes. As you can see, my attempt to avert disaster was unsuccessful.”

“What are you doing out here in the theater? I thought you’d be backstage.” She was babbling in her relief that he was alive. “If I hadn’t caught my shoe, I’d never have heard you.” And as she said it, something echoed in the back of her brain: Eileen saying at Padgett’s, “If Marjorie hadn’t told you where I was …”; saying, “If Alf and Binnie hadn’t delayed me, I’d have caught Mr. Bartholomew.”

Polly stopped, struck by the sudden sense that this was important, that it held the key to something, if she could—

“I heard the bombs,” Sir Godfrey said, “and was on my way to find you.”

And if you hadn’t done that, she thought with that same sense of being on the verge of something vital, you’d have been underneath that asbestos fire curtain when it came crashing down.

“I was worried that you—” Sir Godfrey began.

“You mustn’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right. Can you move?”

“No. There’s something on my legs. ‘All the world’s a stage,’ and at the moment it seems to be atop me.”

“Can you feel your legs? Are they injured?”

“No.”

Thank goodness. “Are you injured anywhere else?”

“No.” The pause again. “ ‘Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’ ”

Oh, God.

“I’ll have you out of there in a moment.” She raised her head and shouted, “There’s an injured man in here! We need a stretcher!” She stood up and began pulling the seats off him. The row of seats had broken apart, which was a good thing. If they were still connected, she’d never have been able to shift them.

Sir Godfrey murmured something. “What is it?” she asked, crouching down to hear.

“Leave me,” he said. “Go find Viola. She’s at the Alhambra. The bombs—”

“I’m here, Sir Godfrey. It’s me, Polly—Viola.”

“No,” he said. “ ‘Thou art a soul in bliss. You do me wrong to take me out o’ the grave.’ ”

He’s only quoting Lear, she told herself fiercely. It doesn’t mean anything.

“Don’t try to move,” she said, looking back toward the doors. “Help’s coming.” But it wasn’t—there was no sign of the incident officer or rescue workers.

They didn’t hear me, she thought, and cupped her hands around her mouth. “There’s an injured man in here! We need a stretcher and a jack! Hurry!” She went back to shifting the seats and then a piece of the balcony.

Oh, God, it was too heavy to lift. She put both hands against the end and gave a mighty shove, and there he was, a foot below her in a narrow hole, lying on his back across a row of upended seat backs, his legs under a piece of the balcony which she could see at a glance was far too heavy for her to lift.

“ ‘She lives,’ ” he said, smiling up at her. “ ‘If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.’ ”

Polly bit back tears. “Where are you hurt?” she asked, but she could already see. A red stain covered the top half of his shirt.

She stretched out over the edge of the hole so she could reach down to the wound. He didn’t flinch, but her hand came away wet. She tore open his shirt. The wound was an inch wide and above his heart, but it was bleeding badly, and there was no way to put a tourniquet on it. And no time to go for help. By the time she clambered back over the wreckage to the front of the theater, he’d have bled to death. She needed to stop the bleeding now.

Direct pressure. She replaced the torn shirt over the wound and pressed down with the palm of her hand while she looked about for something better. His coat—No, it was twisted under him so she couldn’t get at it. The upholstery from the seat cushions might work, but she knew from trying to free her foot that it was too tough to tear.

If that woman at the Works Board had let me become a rescue worker, she thought, I’d have had a medical kit and bandages with me.

She hoisted herself to her knees and wrenched off her skirt. “Help! Casualty over here!” she shouted, folding it into a not-nearly-thick-enough compress.

ENSA’s costumes are much too skimpy, she thought, wriggling out of her bolero and bloomers and folding them and the skirt into a thick square. She stretched out flat again, clad only in the bathing suit, laid the pad against the wound, and pressed down as hard as she could with the heel of her hand.

Sir Godfrey grimaced. “Did you come to tell me you’ve decided to do the pantomime after all?” he asked.

“Shh,” Polly said, “you mustn’t try to talk.”

“Nonsense. How else shall I do my death scene?”

Her heart twisted. “You’re not dying,” she said firmly. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

“You always were a wretched actress, Viola,” he said, shaking his head against the timbers he lay on. “This isn’t quite the farewell I’d imagined. I’d always hoped to die onstage. Halfway through the second act of a Barrie play so I would be spared from doing Act Three.”

He could always make her laugh, even here in the rubble, with him bleeding to death and no sign of a rescue squad.

What’s taking them so long? she thought. They’re as bad as the retrieval team.

Blood was soaking through the compress. She wasn’t applying enough pressure. She inched forward, trying to get into a better position, and pushed down as hard as she could on it.

“Which speech will you have?” Sir Godfrey asked. “Hamlet? ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.’ ”

No, it isn’t a divinity. I caused this. But he’s not going to die if I can help it, she thought, pressing down with all the force she could muster. The continuum was going to have to correct itself some other way.

She raised her head and shouted for help again, trying to remember everything Sir Godfrey had taught her about projecting to the very back of the stalls. “In here!

Help!” And as if in answer there was the sound of planes in the distance.

“They’re coming round again,” Sir Godfrey said, looking up at the ceiling. “You must get to a shelter—”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“You must, Viola. Your young man would never forgive me if I got you killed.”

My young man. “I lied to you back there at the theater,” she said. “There’s no young man.”

“Of course there is. He’s why I never had the ghost of a chance with you,” he said, and after a minute he asked, “Was he killed?”

“I think he must have been, or he’d be here by now.”

“He may yet come,” Sir Godfrey said gently. “Which is why you must go, Miranda. ‘Fly, Fleance, fly.’ ”

She shook her head. “ ‘If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.’ ”

“Shakespeare!” he said contemptuously. “I have always loathed actors who quote the Bard. ‘Go, get you gone, foul varlet.’ I will not have your death on my hands.”

“You have it the wrong way round,” she said bitterly. “This is my fault. I did this to you.”

“I fail to see how, unless you abandoned your air-raid duties with ENSA and enlisted in the Luftwaffe within the last hour. I fear the guilt is mine. I shouldn’t have come to ask you to be in the pantomime,” he said, and then murmured, as if to himself, “I should have told Greenberg yes. I should have gone to Bristol.”

He closed his eyes in pain. “ ‘We are not the first who with best meaning have incurred the worst.’ ”

“No, we’re not, “she said. “None of us meant to do any harm.”

But Sir Godfrey wasn’t listening to her. “What’s that?” he asked, moving his head slightly as if trying to catch a sound. “I thought I heard something.”

“The planes seem to be moving away,” she said, but he shook his head, still with that attentive look. She raised her head, straining to catch the clang of ambulance bells, of voices.

The raiders’ drone faded away, but she still couldn’t hear anything except a creak as a piece of the wreckage gave way. And the faint hiss of escaping gas.

And why had she ever thought she stood a chance against the entire space-time continuum? Why had she ever believed she could save Sir Godfrey’s life, could stop history in its blind attempt to correct itself?

I am so sorry, Sir Godfrey, she thought. I am so sorry, Colin, and she must be crying. Hot drops were splashing onto the back of her hand, onto the compress, onto Sir Godfrey’s already soaked chest.

“ ‘Boy, why are you crying?’ ” he said, and at any other time that line from the play he most despised would have made her laugh, but not now. Not now.

“Because I couldn’t save”—her voice broke—“your life.”

“What?” he said, and his voice regained some of its old strength. “ ‘You lie! Thrice now hast thou plucked me from the jaws of death. And in repayment of that solemn debt, would I save your life now.’ ”

She no longer knew what play he was quoting from, but it didn’t matter. You can’t save it, she thought. We’re both done for. And she remembered the man looking up at the incendiary halfway up St. Paul’s dome saying, “She’s done for.”

But it hadn’t been. The fire watch had saved it. And it might look as though they were done for, but she didn’t have to put out twenty-eight incendiaries, didn’t have to keep putting them out night after night. All she had to do was keep Sir Godfrey alive and conscious till help came.

“We shall never give in,” she murmured, “never surrender,” and bent over the hole to see if she could do something to stop the gas.

The hiss was louder from the left. She told Sir Godfrey to turn his head to the right and to breathe shallowly, wishing she’d obeyed all those government directives to “carry your gas mask with you at all times,” and tried to pinpoint the source of the gas. It was coming from a narrow gap between two of the seats. If she could block the gap with something …

All that was left of her costume was the bathing suit. It wouldn’t be enough to fill the space, and at any rate, she didn’t think she could wriggle out of it with only one hand free. And she couldn’t go fetch something. He’d begin bleeding again. But she had to block the space up somehow, and quickly, before the gas rendered him unconscious.

If it hadn’t already. “Sir Godfrey?”

“What is it?” His voice was already drowsy, blurred.

You need to keep him talking, she thought.

“Sir Godfrey, you asked me which speech I wanted. Do the one from that first night we acted together—Prospero’s speech. ‘Our revels now are ended—’ ” she prompted.

“My dear, our revels now are ended,” he said.

“I still want to hear it. ‘These our actors—’ ”

“ ‘These our actors,’ ” he said, “ ‘as I foretold you, were all spirits …’ ”

Good, that should keep him going for a bit, she thought, looking about for something to stuff the gap with. The stuffing from a seat would do it, but all of the ones within her reach were intact, with the playbills still lying on them.

The playbills. Keeping her right hand clamped down on Sir Godfrey’s chest, she shimmied carefully backward and reached behind and around for them with her free hand.

They weren’t booklets. They were only single sheets. The bloody paper shortage, she thought, wadding them up and pushing them into the space one after the other. She could smell the gas now.

“ ‘Are melted into air, into thin air,’ ” Sir Godfrey said, “ ‘and like …’ ” His voice trailed off.

“ ‘And like the baseless fabric,’ ” she prompted, stretching her arm out again, this time in front of her.

“ ‘And like the baseless fabric of this vision,’ ” Sir Godfrey said. “ ‘The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces …’ ”

The tips of her fingers touched something wide and flat. A piece of wood, or plaster. She leaned farther forward, stretching her arm out till it hurt, but it wasn’t enough to do more than touch it.

Of course not, she thought, trying from another angle. This is the correction.

She felt something shift under her hand. It was a snapped-off piece of one of the openwork chair supports, too small to cover the space even if it were solid. But large enough that it might bring the chunk of wood within reach.

She jabbed the end awkwardly into the wood, like a fork, and dragged it toward her till it was close enough to grasp. She let go of the support so she could grab the wood and then thought better of it and laid the support on Sir Godfrey’s chest while she picked it up.

“ ‘And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,’ ” he murmured, “ ‘leave not a wrack behind.’ ”

She shoved the wood up tight against the space the gas was issuing from. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it should stop most of the gas.

I hope, she thought. When she leaned down to jam it more tightly against the space, she could still smell gas. Which meant they must get out of here.

But at least she had bought them a bit of time. She resumed feeling about the space next to the hole, this time for another chair support or something else metal.

A piece of pipe, sticking out of the debris. The gas line? she wondered. She picked the openwork support up off Sir Godfrey’s chest.

He was still reciting Prospero’s speech. “ ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on,’ ” he said, “ ‘and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’ ”

She began banging on the pipe with her free hand as hard as she could. The metal made an unholy racket, loud even over the drone of the planes, which seemed to She began banging on the pipe with her free hand as hard as she could. The metal made an unholy racket, loud even over the drone of the planes, which seemed to be coming round again. In between clangs she shouted, “Help!” and “Inhere!”

“Someone must have heard that,” she said, pausing to rest a moment to make certain she was still pressing down on the compress hard enough. “Don’t you think, Sir Godfrey?”

He didn’t answer.

“Sir Godfrey!” she said urgently.

“Cheer up, my lady. Things …” His voice trailed into silence.

“Sir Godfrey!” she cried, casting desperately around for something, anything, to keep him talking. “You quoted a line about my saving your life. Which play was that?”

“Tell you after the all clear,” he said drowsily.

“No! Now. Which play was it?” She couldn’t reach his shoulder to shake it, didn’t dare move her hand from the compress. “One of Barrie’s?”

“Barrie’s? It was Twelfth Night. A knock on the door and there you were … shipwrecked … the letter …” His voice died away.

“What letter?” she said, even though there was no letter, he was making no sense, but she had to keep him talking. “Who was the letter from, Sir Godfrey?”

“An old friend … we’d played together in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when we were young …”

“Do Oberon’s speech,” she urged him. “ ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme grows,’ ” but he went on as if he hadn’t heard her.

“He wrote … to offer me the lead in a touring company,” he said after a minute, his voice drowsy and slow again, “… Bath … Bristol … but then you came …”

“And you didn’t go.”

“And leave fair Viola?” he murmured, and then, barely audible, “… you knew all your lines …”

She realized now that, even now—digging him out, trying to stop the blood—she had still harbored a secret hope that this was not part of the continuum’s attempts to correct the damage they’d done, that it was, as he’d said, the Luftwaffe’s fault and not hers. But he was supposed to have gone with the touring company, he was supposed to have left London. He’d stayed because of her.

“I am so sorry,” she said.

The stench of gas was growing stronger. She should see if she could find something else to stuff into the gap, a playbill or a newspaper. There were some in the lending library at Holborn. No, that was too far.

“… killed …,” Sir Godfrey said from a long way away. Her seat must be at the very back of the stalls, but that couldn’t be right, because he was saying, “Viola!

Awake, fair maid! I hear our rescuers at hand.”

“ ‘It is the nightingale,’ ” she murmured. “ ‘We shall sing like two birds i’ the cage—’ ”

“No,” Sir Godfrey said furiously. “It is the lark. The rescue team is coming—”

“They didn’t come in time,” she said, and laid her head on the rubble and composed herself to sleep, though her hand still pressed down firmly on the compress.

“Not in time.”

When I look back over the wartime years I cannot help feeling that time is an inadequate and ever capricious measure of their duration.

—WINSTON CHURCHILL,

9 NOVEMBER 1944