All Clear

London—Spring 1941

IT TOOK THE STAFF OF THE HOSPITAL ANOTHER QUARTER of an hour to apprehend Alf and Binnie, during which time Polly was able to assure Sir Godfrey again that yes, she’d do the pantomime if he could find another theater to put it on in, hurry back down to the ward, divest herself of the Chinese robe, climb into bed, and be lying there looking nearly as innocent as Alf and Binnie did when they were dragged in by the scruff of their necks.

“Do you know these children?” the matron demanded.

“They’re my foster children,” Eileen said, coming in. “I told them to stay in the waiting room while I visited Polly. They’ve been very worried over their aunt,” she explained.

Alf nodded. “We was scared she was dead.”

“We was orphaned before, you see,” Binnie said, sniffling.

Alf patted his sister kindly. “We ain’t got nobody to take care of us ’cept Aunt Eileen and Aunt Polly.”

“I’m sorry if they attempted to come up to the ward to see me,” Polly said. “They meant well—”

“Attempted to come up to the ward?” the matron said. “They’ve turned this entire hospital upside down. They’ve been racketing through the corridors, terrorizing patients, wreaking—”

“We was only trying to catch Alf’s snake,” Binnie said, “ ’afore it frightened anyone.”

“Snake?” the matron said. “You two let a snake loose in hospital?”

“Course not,” Binnie said, her eyes wide and innocent. “ ’E got away on ’is own, didn’t ’e?”

“But don’t worry, we caught ’im,” Alf said, pulling a snake out of his pocket and dangling it in front of the matron.

The matron blanched. “I want these two children—and their reptile—out of this hospital immediately.”

“Yes, Matron,” Eileen said, and hustled the children out.

“I’m afraid they’ll only come back,” Polly said. “They’re very much attached to me.” And within a quarter of an hour she was pronounced fully recovered, discharged, and allowed to telephone someone—but not Eileen—to bring her her clothes and handbag.

Polly rang up Hattie and spent the time till Hattie got there from the Alhambra thinking of everything that had happened, trying to fit it into the puzzle.

Because she’d driven Stephen, Paige Fairchild had gone with her to Croydon and had stopped the car to confront Polly. If she hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been there when the V-1 hit, they wouldn’t have found the man with the severed foot. Had she saved his life, too?

I hope so, Polly thought, remembering how he’d clutched her hand, how he’d told her he was sorry.

Just as I told Sir Godfrey I was sorry for getting him killed. But the man at Croydon hadn’t got either of them killed. It was just the opposite. If Paige hadn’t been bringing the medical kit, she’d have been in the ambulance when the V-2 hit and been killed. So why had he said he was sorry—?

“Oh, thank goodness you’re all right!” Hattie said, bursting into the ward. “I was so afraid—I kept telling the incident officer Reggie’d seen you run into the Phoenix, but it took me an age to convince him.” She handed Polly her clothes. “Tabbitt says you’re not to come in tonight or tomorrow night.”

Good, Polly thought. That will give me time to go to St. Bart’s. But when she arrived home, Eileen wouldn’t hear of it. “You’re going to bed,” she said. “You’ve only just got out of hospital, I’ll go. What is it you want me to find out?”

“The names of the people you took to St. Bart’s on the night of the twenty-ninth, especially the officer you kept from bleeding to death. And any information you can find out about them and about what happened to them after they got out of hospital, if they did get out of hospital.”

“You think I did something to lose the war, don’t you?” Eileen said, anguished.

“No,” Polly said, “I think you may have done just the opposite, but I need proof. Where are Alf and Binnie?”

“At school.”

“What about Mr. Dunworthy?”

“He’s sleeping, finally, and you’re not to wake him. He’s been so worried.”

“But there’s something I must ask him.”

“You can do it after I come back,” Eileen said firmly, and made Polly get into bed.

“Wait, before you go, you said Alf did the navigating that night. How did he know the streets?”

“From his planespotting,” she said. “He pored over his maps of England and London for hours.”

“Where did he get them? Did you give them to him?”

“No, the vicar did. During the quarantine. Alf was driving me mad, and I asked Mr. Goode to please send over something to keep him occupied.”

And if Eileen hadn’t been there, none of it would have been able to happen. Alf wouldn’t have known the streets, and Binnie wouldn’t have known how to drive, wouldn’t even have been alive. It all fit perfectly, as if it had been planned: Steps for Saving a Bombing Victim During an Air Raid.

“You’re to rest till I get back,” Eileen said.

Polly promised, and Eileen left. Polly waited five minutes, in case she came back to check on her, and then dressed and went to Alf and Binnie’s school and told the headmistress she needed to take them home. “It’s an emergency,” she said, which was true.

The headmistress sent a student to fetch them.

“Where’s Eileen?” Binnie asked when she saw Polly.

“At St. Bart’s,” Polly said, and Binnie went ashen.

“She’s dead, ain’t she?” Alf said hoarsely.

“No,” Polly said. “She’s perfectly fine. I sent her there to find out something for me.”

“You swear?”

“I swear,” Polly said, and Binnie’s color began to come back.

“Then what are you doin’ ’ere?” Alf asked.

“I came to take you out for a sweet to thank you for helping me at the hospital.”

“What sort of sweet?” Alf asked suspiciously.

She hadn’t thought that far, but the Hodbins knew exactly where to go. Polly bought them both ices and then asked, “This autumn did you ever go to St. Paul’s Station?”

Binnie, her mouth full, began to say no, but Alf was already blurting out, “That guard was lyin’. We didn’t do nothin.’ ’E give me that shilling. For tellin’ ’im what station it was, and then the guard come along and said we picked ’is pocket, but we never. ’E ain’t gonna put us in jail, is ’e?”

“I don’t know,” Polly said consideringly. “If the guard says you did … Do you remember what the gentleman looked like who gave you the shilling? Perhaps if we could find him, he’d be willing to speak to the police—”

“It weren’t no gent,” Alf said. “ ’E was a boy.”

“How old?”

Alf shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Older ’n us,” Binnie said. “Maybe seventeen.”

“And where were you when he gave you the shilling?”

“By the map,” Binnie said. “ ’E was standin’ there, and we come up to look at it. There ain’t no law says we can’t look at a map, is there? ’Ow else do you find out which line to take?”

“And then what happened?”

“The guard come up,” Binnie said, sounding outraged, “and told ’im ’e’d better check ’is money and papers.”

“We didn’t do nothin’,” Alf said.

Except delay him in the tunnel for a critical few minutes. If it was him.

Binnie was frowning at her thoughtfully.

I need to change the subject before she puzzles it out, Polly thought. “It was very clever of you to think of the snake at the hospital, Binnie,” she said.

“It was my idea,” Alf said, offended.

“It was not, you slowcoach.”

“Well, it was my snake. D’you want to see ’im?” He reached for his pocket.

“No,” Polly said, bought them both a lollipop, delivered them back to the headmistress, and hurried home. Eileen wasn’t there yet, and Mr. Dunworthy’s door was still shut. Polly rapped gently on it and went in.

Mr. Dunworthy wasn’t in bed. He was sitting by the window, looking out, and she was struck all over again by how weary and defeated he seemed. “Mr.

Dunworthy,” she said gently.

“Polly!” he cried and held out his hands to her. “Last night when you didn’t come home, I was afraid—”

He stopped and gave her a searching look. “What is it? Has something happened to Eileen?”

“No,” Polly said. She pulled a stool over in front of his chair and sat down facing him. “I need to ask you some questions. Mike said the night of the twenty-ninth, Mr. Bartholomew saved the life of the firewatcher who was injured. Is that right?”

“You think he contributed to what’s happened, too?”

“Yes, but not in the way you think. Did he? Save his life?”

“I don’t know. He said Langby had fallen on an incendiary and was badly burned. He might have.”

“I thought so,” Polly said. “Now, I need you to tell me exactly what happened that first time you came through to the Blitz, when you collided with the Wren. You came through into the emergency staircase and went out into the station—”

“Yes, to ascertain my temporal-spatial location, and when I found I was near St. Paul’s, I ran up to see—”

“No, before that. In the station.”

“I went to look at the Underground map, but there was nothing on it to indicate where I was, so I asked two children who’d come over, and the boy—it was a boy and a girl—said they’d only tell me if I paid them.”

Of course, Polly thought.

“So I gave them a shilling,” Mr. Dunworthy went on, “and they told me I was at St. Paul’s. And then a station guard came up and asked if they were giving me trouble and told me to check to make certain they hadn’t picked my pocket. And then he hauled them off, I think, or they ran off—I can’t remember. It was so long ago.”

“Do you remember what they looked like?”

“No, aside from their being extremely grubby.” He squinted, attempting to call up a picture. “The boy might have been seven and the girl—”

He stopped and looked at Polly. “You believe it was Alf and Binnie, don’t you?”

“No, I know it was. They told me,” she said, and at Mr. Dunworthy’s doubtful look, “You forget, it only happened seven months ago as far as they’re concerned, not fifty years. They don’t know it was you they ran into, though. How long did you stand there, speaking to them and the guard?”

“Five minutes, perhaps. Not long.”

“But long enough that if they’d told you straight out where you were instead of trying to get money out of you, you wouldn’t have collided with the Wren.” She leaned forward. “On the night we were looking for John Bartholomew, Eileen saw him and ran after him, but she wasn’t able to catch him because Alf and Binnie leaned forward. “On the night we were looking for John Bartholomew, Eileen saw him and ran after him, but she wasn’t able to catch him because Alf and Binnie jumped in front of her. And they were what kept her from going back to Oxford on the last day of her assignment.”

“I don’t understand. You think Alf and Binnie are somehow responsible for that, and for what I did? That it’s their fault and not mine? But if I hadn’t come through, if I hadn’t decided to go see St. Paul’s, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Exactly,” Polly said. “Listen. Because they kept Eileen from going back through to Oxford, she was there to save their lives at least once and possibly more than that.” She told him about the measles and the City of Benares.

“And they repaid her by keeping her from catching John Bartholomew?”

“Yes,” Polly said eagerly. “And because they delayed her, when she did go after him she was waylaid by a fire captain and forced into driving a bombing victim to St. Bart’s. She saved that bombing victim’s life, and Mike saved Hardy’s life, and last night I saved Sir Godfrey’s.”

“And you think those people went on to do something important in the war?” Mr. Dunworthy asked. “What?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps someone went to see the pantomime Sir Godfrey’s going to put on, and their house was bombed while they were at the theater. Or your Wren’s RAF plotting saved some pilot’s life, and he went on to do bombing runs over Berlin. Or the naval officer who stopped to help your Wren torpedoed a U-boat or captured the Enigma codebooks or sank the Bismarck. Or one of them affected someone else who did something. We know Hardy brought back five hundred and nineteen soldiers from Dunkirk. And those soldiers could each have—”

“And you think this is all part of some grand plan?”

“Yes. No. Not a plan, but … the thing is, it wasn’t an accident that I was performing at the Alhambra, and it wasn’t an accident that Sir Godfrey was at the Phoenix.” She told him about her shoe and ENSA and Mrs. Sentry at the Works Board seeing her in A Christmas Carol and what Sir Godfrey had told her about his decision not to join the touring company and go to Bristol.

“I was able to save his life because I was here, because none of our drops would open. I think we may have been wrong about why they’re not opening, and about the slippage. What if it’s not to prevent us from altering the course of history? What if it’s to put us where we can? To keep us here until we do?”

She reached forward and took his hands in hers. “What if by colliding with the Wren, you saved her life instead of causing her death? What if she was on the way to meet the Wren who was killed, and because you delayed her, she wasn’t there when the bomb hit? Or what if you saved the life of the naval officer? Or the man in the black suit? Was he going toward St. Paul’s or coming from it?”

“Toward St. Paul’s.”

“Then he might have been a member of the fire watch going on duty, and on the twenty-ninth he found one of the incendiaries and put it out, and if you hadn’t run into him, St. Paul’s would have burned down. And Alf and Binnie were what made you run into him.”

“But—”

“Mike saved Private Hardy’s life because the slippage caused him to arrive in Saltram-on-Sea too late for the bus. And I met Sir Godfrey because the net sent me through in the evening instead of the morning.” She told him about being caught by the warden and taken to St. George’s. “And because of the slippage that first time you came through, you ended up at St. Paul’s Station. Where you needed to be to run into the Wren.”

“So you’re saying slippage’s function is to bring about alterations, not prevent them? That it kept us here intentionally?”

“I know what you’re going to say, that a chaotic system isn’t a conscious entity—”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to say.”

“But it wouldn’t have to be. You thought the shutting of our drops was a defense mechanism. Perhaps it is, only not to shut off interference from the future, but to enlist it when the continuum’s threatened. If Hitler’d won the war, he’d have had time to develop the atomic bomb, and he wouldn’t have hesitated to use it against the United States and all the other non-Aryan peoples. He already had a plan in place for wiping out Africa’s ‘mud people,’ and he wouldn’t have stopped there. He could have ended by wiping out—”

“Everything,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Gotterdämmerung, the twilight of the gods. But if that’s the case, and the continuum wanted to protect itself, why didn’t it simply let us come through and shoot Hitler?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps the system only allows minor changes. Or unintentional ones. Or perhaps something else is going on in those divergence points which makes it impossible to alter them. Or perhaps we came into the picture too late. Like the Good Fairy in Sleeping Beauty—”

“The Good Fairy?”

“Yes,” she said earnestly. “She couldn’t undo the spell, she could only make it less terrible. Time travel wasn’t invented till long after the start of the continuum.

Perhaps we’re too late to completely repair it, but we can still—”

“But even if that’s true, and even if you saved Sir Godfrey’s life and Mike saved Hardy’s and I saved the Wren’s, we still altered events, and history’s a chaotic system where a good action, done with the best intentions, can have the opposite effect. How can you be certain that even if the continuum intended us to make repairs, we did? That we didn’t make things worse instead?”

“Because they were already worse.”

“Worse? What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if we’ve been looking at the war the wrong way round? What if the disaster had already occurred, and the outcome we were altering was a bad outcome?”

“A bad outcome?” Mr. Dunworthy said, bewildered.

“Yes. What if the Allies lost the war? You said there were dozens of times when the outcome balanced on a knife’s edge, like in that old saying, ‘For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe—’ ”

“—the horse was lost.”

“Yes, and because of that, the rider and the battle and the war were lost. There were scores of times in World War Two like that, when if things had gone even slightly differently, we’d have lost. Well, what if we did lose?” she asked. “What if your Wren was killed in Ave Maria Lane and Sir Godfrey was killed in Bristol and Eileen’s bombing victim died in the back of the ambulance because they couldn’t find a driver and Hardy ended up in a German POW camp and they lost the war?”

“But then time travel would never have been invented. Ira Feldman—”

“No, because the continuum’s a chaotic system, which means time travel was already a part of it, and they hadn’t lost it. Because you’d come and run into a Wren and set a cascade of events in motion. And Mike was part of that cascade, and our being stranded here.”

“We’re the horseshoe, in other words.”

“Yes—”

“And you’re saying we waltzed in, tightened a few nuts and bolts, and won the war?” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Historians as Little Miss Fix-Its? My dear, history’s a chaotic system. It’s far more complicated than—”

“I know it’s complicated. I’m not saying we won it. And I’m not saying your Wren or Hardy or Sir Godfrey or Alf and Binnie or whoever it is they and Eileen treated on the twenty-ninth was who won it either. Or even that saving them was what tipped the balance. It may have been something else altogether—Marjorie’s deciding to become a nurse, or one of the FANYs I worked with borrowing my dance frock, or Mike’s nearly colliding with Alan Turing. Or something we don’t even know we did—our stepping ahead of someone onto an escalator or hailing a taxi or asking for directions. Mike might have done something in hospital, or Eileen might have affected one of her evacuees. Or I might have taken too long to wrap a customer’s parcel and delayed her five minutes, so that she missed her bus, or got caught in the tube when the sirens went.”

“But you think whatever that action was, one of us did it,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “And it was one of us who won the war.”

“No,” she said, frustrated. “I’m not saying that either. No one person or thing won the war. People argue over whether it was Ultra or the evacuation from Dunkirk or Churchill’s leadership or fooling Hitler into thinking we were invading at Calais that won the war, but it wasn’t any one of them. It was all of them and a thousand, a million, other things and people. And not just soldiers and pilots and Wrens, but air-raid wardens and planespotters and debutantes and mathematicians and weekend sailors and vicars.”

“Doing their bit,” Mr. Dunworthy murmured.

“Yes. Canteen workers and ambulance drivers and ENSA chorus girls. And historians. You said no one can be in a chaotic system and not affect events. What if your—our—coming to the past added another weapon to the war, a secret weapon like the French Resistance or Fortitude South?”

“Or Ultra.”

“Yes,” Polly said. “Like Ultra. Something which operated behind the scenes, and which, combined with everything else, was enough to avert disaster, to tip the balance.”

“And win the war,” Mr. Dunworthy said softly.

There was a long silence, and then he said, almost longingly, “But there’s no proof …”

No, she thought, except that so many lives saved and so many sacrificed— so much courage, kindness, endurance, love—must count for something even in a chaotic system.

“No,” she said. “I haven’t any proof.”

There was a knock, and Eileen leaned in the door, her red hair windblown and her cheeks rosy. “What are you two doing sitting here in the dark?” she said, and switched on the light. “You look as if you could both do with some tea. I’ll put the kettle on.”

“No, wait,” Polly said. “Did you find out who the man you saved was?”

“Yes.” She took off her hat. “The admitting nurse wouldn’t tell me anything, and neither would the matron, so then I hit on the idea of going to the men’s ward and telling the nurse that Mrs. Mallowan had sent me to find out.”

“Mrs. Mallowan?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“That’s Agatha Christie’s married name.” She unbuttoned her green coat. “The nurse and I chatted a bit about Murder in the Calais Coach, and I told her about Agatha Christie’s new book, which hasn’t come out yet. It’s all right, Polly, I told her I had an editor friend who’d let me look at it. And as a result, she let me look at the ambulance log.”

“And the man you saved was—?”

“There were three people, actually, or at any rate the nurse said she doubted they’d have survived if they hadn’t been brought immediately to hospital. I wrote them down,” Eileen said, taking a sheet of paper out of her handbag and reading from it. “Sergeant Thomas Brantley, Mrs. Jean Cuttle—that was the ambulance driver—

and Captain David Westbrook.”

Mr. Dunworthy made an involuntary sound.

“Do you know who Captain Westbrook is?” Polly asked him.

Mr. Dunworthy nodded. “He was killed on D-Day, after single-handedly holding a critical crossroads till reinforcements arrived.”

For there is nothing lost that may not be found, if sought.

—EDMUND SPENSER, THE FAERIE QUEENE