All Clear

Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995

COLIN SAT THERE IN THE SHELTER REPLICA WITH BINNIE, not hearing the siren sound effects, not seeing the red flashes, not doing anything but attempting to take in what Binnie had just told him. Eileen was dead. She’d died eight years ago. Which meant Polly had died in December 1943.

There was a poster on the wall behind Binnie with a picture of a housewife, a nurse, and an ARP warden on it. You Can Win the Battle, it read.

I didn’t win it, he thought numbly. I was too late. Eileen’s been dead nearly a decade. I wasn’t able to rescue her. Or Polly.

“I’m so sorry,” Binnie said. “I should have told you that first thing. It was a cancer.”

A cancer which could have been cured easily if Eileen had been home in Oxford where she belonged. Which they still might be able to cure if he could go back and get her out in time. If she had been alone when she died, he might still be able to …

“Did she die in hospital?” he asked urgently. “Was anyone with her?”

Binnie looked at him, frowning. “Of course. All of us were.”

Which meant there was no way to rescue her at the last moment, no way to whisk her off in a stolen ambulance and send her back through. He sank back down on the bench beside Binnie and put his head in his hands.

“We all got to tell her goodbye,” Binnie said. “The end was very peaceful.”

Peaceful, he thought bitterly. Dying stranded in the past like Polly before her, waiting in vain for rescue. Only Eileen must surely have given up waiting, given up hoping, years before. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s a pity,” she said, nodding. “She would have loved to see you again. But at least we found you.” She beamed at him. “When you didn’t find Mum, we were afraid something had gone wrong. Or at least I was. But Alf said we had to have found you, because if we hadn’t, you couldn’t have come to fetch Polly and—”

“Fetch—?” He grabbed her by the shoulders. “What are you talking about?”

“Your coming to take them back through the drop.”

“But you just said I wasn’t able to find Eileen.”

“I didn’t say that,” she replied, surprised. “I meant you didn’t find her now, not then.”

“I found Eileen and Polly?”

She nodded. “And Mr. Dunworthy.”

“Mr. Dunworthy? He’s alive?”

Binnie nodded. “Polly found him at St. Paul’s.”

“He’s alive,” Colin murmured, unable to take it all in. “I thought he was dead. His death notice was in the newspapers.”

“No, he was only injured.”

“And I was able to come through to get them out?” he asked.

She nodded.

But if he had succeeded, Eileen wouldn’t still have been here. She wouldn’t have died still trying to find him. “What happened?” he asked, but he already knew the answer. “I came too late to be able to get them out, didn’t I?”

Journeys end in lovers meeting.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, TWELFTH NIGHT