All Clear

London—19 April 1941

COLIN WANTED TO TAKE THE TUBE TO ST. PAUL’S, BUT POLLY, remembering the guard who’d prevented her from leaving during a raid, said, “We can’t risk getting trapped in the station. We need to walk there.”

“Is there a chance we can find a taxi?” Colin asked.

“In this? I doubt it. Where did you say the raids are tonight?”

“Over the docks,” he said, looking down the street, trying to work out which way to go.

She watched him as he stood there against the backdrop of fires and searchlights, intent on finding a way to get them to St. Paul’s. Like Stephen Lang, trying to think of a way to bring V-1s down. He looked so much like Stephen. Was that because their jobs had required the same determination and resourcefulness? Or might Stephen and Paige Fairchild have been two of his—what would they have been?—great-grandparents?

“Since most of the bombing will be near the Thames,” Colin said, “I think the best plan is to take the Strand to Fleet Street.”

Mr. Dunworthy shook his head. “It’s too easy to get lost in the maze of streets in the City.”

“He’s right,” Polly said, remembering the night they’d tried to find Mr. Bartholomew.

“The Embankment’s the most direct route,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“But that’s where the bombing is,” Polly objected.

“No, he’s right,” Colin said. “The majority of the bombs were east of Tower Bridge, and most of the raids occurred after midnight. So we need to hurry.”

“And we need to be as quiet as we can,” Polly said. “We don’t want a warden to catch us and drag us into a shelter.”

“You forget, I’m a warden,” Colin said, tapping his helmet. “If he—or she—stops us, I’ll simply tell them that I’m taking you somewhere safe. Which, as a matter of fact, I am.”

He led the way, supporting Mr. Dunworthy and keeping close to the buildings. It had rained. The pavement shone with wetness, and, even though there were still clouds, the sky directly overhead was clear. In the wake of the searchlights, she could see stars.

As they neared Trafalgar Square, Colin said, “I hope it’s less crowded than the last time I was here.”

“You came to VE-Day to find me?”

He nodded. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to find you because I hadn’t found you, but at that point I was willing to try anything. And I wanted to see you.”

“And did you?” she asked, thinking of Colin somewhere in that celebrating crowd, searching for her.

“No, some wretched child tossed a firecracker at me and nearly blew my foot off. But it wasn’t a total loss. I got kissed by a large number of pretty girls.” He grinned his crooked grin at her.

“Ah, not quite as crowded, I see,” he said as they came into the deserted square. The fountains had been shut off, and the lions slumbered in the gray and silver silence. Even the pigeons were asleep.

Sleeping Beauty’s palace, Polly thought, and its spell seemed to fall on them. They passed silently through the square and down to the Strand, moving like wraiths through the darkened, deserted streets.

They ran into several diversion barricades and had to go around, till Polly was thoroughly lost, but Colin seemed to know exactly which way to go. Twice, at crossings, he took Polly’s arm to keep her from pitching off the curb, and once, on an uneven brick pavement, he took her hand. Otherwise he didn’t touch her, though even in the blackest lanes when she couldn’t see him at all, she was sharply aware of his presence.

It grew lighter as they neared the Thames. The searchlights were blunted against the overcast sky, and the fires from the docks stained the clouds pink, and they were able to see their way more easily. The diversions had forced them farther west than their original plan. The twin spires of Westminster Abbey lay directly ahead of them, and beyond the Abbey, the tower of Big Ben.

“It’s half past eleven,” Colin said as they went down the steps to the Embankment. “We need to hurry,” and they set off quickly along the walled walk, following the curve of the river.

The air should have smelled of mud and fish, but it didn’t. It was cool and clean and smelled of rain. And once, lilacs. They walked quickly, silently, past the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge and Cleopatra’s Needle. I’m seeing all this for the last time, Polly thought.

Mr. Dunworthy halted for a moment to look at the House of Commons, which would be gutted in May, and she wondered if he felt the same way. She had worried the long journey would be too much for him, but he showed no signs of tiring, though he still leaned on Colin’s arm, so she was concerned when Colin said, “We need to stop for a moment,” and led Mr. Dunworthy over to an iron bench set against the Embankment’s wall.

“I can go on,” Mr. Dunworthy protested.

Colin shook his head. “You sit down, too, Polly. Before we go through, I need to tell you something.”

And she knew that look. She had seen it before—on Miss Laburnum’s face the night Mike died, on Mr. Dunworthy’s when he told her he’d destroyed the future.

You’ll only be able to get one of us out, she thought. Or you won’t be able to go with us. She stood behind the bench, bracing herself.

“I didn’t save you by myself,” Colin said. “I had help. From Michael Davies.”

“One of the messages he put in the paper got through,” Polly said.

“Yes. It was a message he wrote in 1944—”

“1944?” Polly said. “But—”

“He wrote it while working with British Intelligence on Fortitude South. He wasn’t killed that night in Houndsditch. He faked his death so he could try to find Denys Atherton and get word to Oxford.”

Mike’s not dead. But that’s good news, she thought, and looked over at Mr. Dunworthy, but the expression on his face was the same as on Colin’s. Whatever the bad news was, Colin had already told him, and she thought suddenly of them standing there in the theater’s aisle when she came back from changing her clothes, and of Eileen’s wiping away tears.

“Tell me,” she said.

“It was a newspaper engagement notice.” He smiled wryly. “Announcing the engagement of Polly Townsend to Flight Officer Colin Templer. Davies’s job was writing false newspaper articles and personal ads and letters to the editor for the local newspapers, but some of them were also coded messages to us.”

Eileen was right, she thought. There were things going on behind the scenes that we knew nothing about.

“So I began looking for other messages,” Colin said. He told them about finding out everything he could about Fortitude South, discovering what name Davies had been using and where he’d been stationed.

“And you went through to get him,” Polly said. “But you weren’t in time.”

He nodded. “We tried, but we couldn’t get the drop to open till after—” He didn’t finish what he’d been going to say. “We were too late to save him,” he said instead.

But, as on that day in the pub with Mr. Dunworthy, that wasn’t all. There was still bad news to come.

And then she knew what it was. Had on some level always known. “He was killed by a V-1,” she said, and didn’t need to see Colin’s face to confirm it. “In a newspaper office in Croydon.”

“Yes.”

“I should have stayed with him,” she murmured. “I shouldn’t have gone off to help Paige. If I’d stayed with him, I could have—”

Colin shook his head. “Even we couldn’t save him. He was too badly injured. But the tourniquets you tied kept him alive long enough to tell us that you’d still been alive when he left in January of 1941 and that Eileen was with you.”

So Colin had gone to find Eileen after the war, and she’d told him where they were. Mike had got them out, just as he’d promised he would. But at what a cost!

“I should have known it was him,” she said.

Colin shook his head. “He was doing his best to keep you from finding out. His one thought was rescuing you. And if you hadn’t gone, I couldn’t have got him out of there and back to Oxford.”

You were the person in the ambulance from Brixton, Polly thought, looking at Colin. There was nothing of the impetuous, impossible boy she’d known in the man standing in front of her now, and nothing of the careless, charming Stephen Lang.

Colin sacrificed himself, too, she thought despairingly. How much of his youth, how many years, had he given up to come and find her, to fetch her home? I am so sorry. So sorry.

“Michael insisted on telling me everything he knew about where you were before he’d let me take him through to Oxford,” Colin said. “He was afraid once he got to hospital, he wouldn’t have the chance. He would have been so glad to know he got you out.” He smiled at her. “And if I’m going to do that, we’d better go.”

She nodded wearily. Colin helped Mr. Dunworthy get slowly to his feet, and they set off again, following the rose-colored river, guided by the drone of planes and the crump of bombs and the deadly, starry sparkle of incendiaries, till they came at last to Ludgate Hill. And there above them at the end of the street stood St. Paul’s, silver against the dark sky, the ruins all around it hidden by the darkness or transformed to enchanted gardens.

“It’s beautiful,” Colin breathed. “When I came here in the seventies, it was totally hidden by concrete buildings and car parks.”

“The seventies?”

“1976, actually,” he said. “The year they declassified the Fortitude South papers. I’d been here earlier—I mean, later—earlier and later—in the eighties. We couldn’t get anything before 1960 to open or anything after 1995, when we could have gone online, so I had to do it the hard way. I came here to search the newspaper archives and the war records for clues to what might have happened.”

Colin, who had wanted to go to the Crusades, spending—how long—in reading rooms and libraries and dusty newspaper morgues?

“And you found the engagement announcement,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“Yes. I also found your death notice. And Polly’s.”

“Mine?” Polly said. “But I checked the Times and the Herald. It wasn’t—”

“It was in the Daily Express. It said you’d been killed at St. George’s, Kensington.”

How must Colin have felt, reading that, all alone and eighty years from home? And how many years had he sat there in archives, hunched over volumes of yellowing newspapers, over a microfilm reader?

“But you didn’t stop looking,” Polly said.

“No. I refused to believe it.”

Like Eileen, Polly thought.

“I had a bit more trouble hanging on to the belief that you were alive after Michael Davies told me you and Eileen were at Mrs. Rickett’s, and it turned out it had been bombed.” He smiled at her.

“But you didn’t stop looking.”

“No, and you weren’t dead. And neither was Mr. Dunworthy. At least for the moment. But the sooner I get you both back to Oxford, the better I’ll feel. Let’s go,”

he said, and hurried them toward St. Paul’s.

Halfway there Mr. Dunworthy stopped and stood there on the pavement, his head down.

Oh, no, Polly thought. Not now, not this close. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I ran into her here,” Mr. Dunworthy said, pointing down at the pavement. “The Wren.”

“Lieutenant Wendy Armitage,” Colin said. “Currently working at Bletchley Park. One of Dilly’s girls. She helped crack Ultra’s naval code. Come along. It’s nearly midnight.”

They hurried on up the hill. “We need to go in the north door,” Colin said, and started across the courtyard.

Mr. Dunworthy pulled him back. “The watch’ll see you. They’re still up on the roofs. This way,” he whispered, and led the way around the perimeter of the Mr. Dunworthy pulled him back. “The watch’ll see you. They’re still up on the roofs. This way,” he whispered, and led the way around the perimeter of the courtyard, keeping to the shadows, till they were even with the porch.

“We still have to cross that open space,” Colin whispered, pointing to the thirty feet between them and the steps.

“We wait for the next bomber,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “They’ll look up at the sky, and we can make a dash for it. Here comes a bomber.” And he was right, Colin and Polly both instinctively looked up at the drone of its engines.

“Now,” Mr. Dunworthy said, his voice scarcely audible above the Dornier’s roar, and started off across the open space.

Colin grabbed Polly’s hand, and they shot across it after him and up the steps, past the star-shaped burn mark where the incendiary had been, past the place where she and Mike and Eileen had sat on the morning of the thirtieth, up to the porch she had darted across that first day when the rescue squad was defusing the UXB, and under the porch’s concealing shadows to the north door. He pulled the heavy handle.

It wouldn’t open. “It’s locked,” Colin said. “What about the Great West Door?”

“It’s only open on important occasions,” Mr. Dunworthy said, as if this wasn’t the most important occasion of his life.

“The side door to the Crypt should be unlocked,” Colin said, and started back toward the steps.

“No, wait,” Polly said. “Some of the fire watch may be down there. We need to try the south door first.” She ran lightly along the porch and yanked on the handle.

It wouldn’t open either. But it was only stuck, as it had been on the night of the twenty-ninth. When Colin gripped the handle, too, the door opened easily. “Mr.

Dunworthy,” he whispered, beckoning, and pushed him and then Polly through into the dark vestibule.

The cathedral, in spite of the spring weather and the nearby fires, was as cold as winter and very dark.

“Hear anything?” Colin whispered, pulling the door silently shut behind them.

“No,” Polly whispered back. Only the audible hush St. Paul’s always had. The sound of space and time. “I know the way,” she said softly, and led them up the south aisle. There was enough light from the fire-lit clouds and the searchlights to navigate by, but only just.

The long walk, and that last sprint across to the porch, had taken its toll on Mr. Dunworthy. He was badly winded and leaned heavily on Colin’s arm. Polly led them past the spiral staircase she’d fled up the night of the twenty-ninth, past the chapel where they’d held Mike’s funeral. Only he hadn’t really been dead.

No, that was wrong. He’d died that night in Croydon, before she ever came to the Blitz.

Up the aisle, past the blown-out windows to the bay where she’d found Mr. Dunworthy. She looked toward the niche where The Light of the World hung, as if she expected the golden-orange lantern to be glowing in the darkness, but it was too dark to see it, or the painting.

No, there it was. She could just make out the white robe, insubstantial as a ghost, and the pale gold of the flame within the lantern. And then, as if the flame was growing brighter, lighting the air around it, she began to be able to see the door and Christ’s crown of thorns, and finally his face.

He looked resigned, as though he knew that wretched door—to where? Home? Heaven? Peace?—would never open, and at the same time he seemed resolved, ready to do his bit even though he couldn’t possibly know what sacrifices that would require. Had he been kept here, too—in a place he didn’t belong, serving in a war in which he hadn’t enlisted, to rescue sparrows and soldiers and shopgirls and Shakespeare? To tip the balance?

“What’s that light?” Mr. Dunworthy whispered as the aisle grew brighter, and after a moment’s tense waiting, “It’s someone with a pocket torch.”

“No, it’s not,” Colin said. “It’s the drop. It’s opening.” He hurried them up the aisle to the dome.

We should have more than enough time, Polly thought. The shimmer was just beginning to brighten.

But she’d forgotten about the damage from the bomb. The huge crater in the center of the transept was still there, and piled around it, heaps of splintered wood, broken columns, and smashed masonry. Which they would have to climb over to reach the drop.

An attempt had been made to begin the cleanup, but it had only made it worse. They’d taken the sandbags which had protected the statues and piled them and stacks of wooden folding chairs across the entrance to the transept as a barricade and tossed the broken timbers and splintered rafters to the sides of the crater, in just the place where they needed to cross.

And the shimmer was beginning to grow and spread, filling the transept. None of the fire watch must still be down in the Crypt, or they’d have seen the shimmer.

When Polly leaned over the edge of the hole, she could see all the way down to the Crypt’s floor.

Colin climbed up on the wreckage and turned to reach for Polly’s hand.

“No, Mr. Dunworthy needs to go first,” she said. “His deadline’s sooner than mine.”

Colin nodded. “Sir?” he said, but Mr. Dunworthy wasn’t listening. He’d turned and was looking back out at the dome, now golden in the growing light of the shimmer, and at the shadowy reaches of St. Paul’s beyond.

He can’t bear to leave it, Polly thought, knowing he’ll never see it again. Like I can’t bear to leave Eileen and Sir Godfrey and Miss Laburnum and all the rest of them.

But when Colin said, “Mr. Dunworthy, we need to hurry,” and he turned back to them, he was smiling fondly. Like Mr. Humphreys, leading her around the cathedral, showing her all the treasures which had been removed for safekeeping.

Perhaps that’s how I should think of them, Polly thought, the troupe and Miss Snelgrove and Trot. And Sir Godfrey. Not as lost to her, but as removed to this moment in time for safekeeping.

Which was fine for them, and for Mr. Humphreys and Hattie and Nelson, who belonged here. But not for Eileen, who’d only stayed here to save her. I can’t bear to think of her sacrificing her life for me.

“Mr. Dunworthy?” Colin said. “Polly? It’s time.”

“I know,” Mr. Dunworthy said, and let Colin help him over the barricade and across the rubble, Polly clambering after them in case Mr. Dunworthy slipped, in case something went wrong.

“Be careful,” Colin called back to her as they climbed over the wreckage. “I nearly killed myself on this when I came through. It’s unstable.”

Like history, she thought. Balanced always on a knife’s edge, threatening always to come tumbling down at the slightest misstep, to pitch us into the abyss.

They had only a few yards to go, but it seemed to take forever. The rubble slanted down toward the hole, and they had to grab for the statues and use them as handholds as they went. Polly clutched at a statue of an Army officer and then at the memorial to Captain Faulknor that Mr. Humphreys had talked so much about.

The ships Faulknor had bound together stood in bas-relief behind him as he slumped forward into the arms of Honour, dying. Unaware that he’d won the battle.

Like Mike.

The shimmer was growing rapidly brighter, filling the entire end of the transept, illuminating the smashed doors, the broken columns, the shattered glass as Colin The shimmer was growing rapidly brighter, filling the entire end of the transept, illuminating the smashed doors, the broken columns, the shattered glass as Colin helped Mr. Dunworthy over the last few feet of rubble. It began to flare.

We’ll never make it in time, Polly thought, stepping quickly onto a rafter. It broke, and she lurched forward, hands out, and her other foot plunged through the stacked, splintered wood. And caught.

No. Not now.

She leaned against the dying Faulknor, grabbed on to Honour’s arm, and twisted her ankle, trying to free her foot. Her shoe was stuck fast. It’s the Phoenix all over again, she thought.

Colin had leapt lightly down off a chunk of broken stone and had helped Mr. Dunworthy—who looked like he might not make it—down off the pile of rubble, and was leading him over to the brightness in front of the door. He glanced back at Polly, saw her, and started back toward her.

“Go with him!” Polly called softly across the rubble. “I’ll come next time. Go!”

He shook his head, said something to Mr. Dunworthy, and stepped back away from the shimmer, out of its reach.

“Colin, go—”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” he said, and the shimmer brightened to a white-hot flame.

It looks exactly like an incendiary, Polly thought. It lit Mr. Dunworthy’s face and then hid it, obliterating it, and the light began to fade, to shrink. Mr. Dunworthy was no longer there.

He made it, Polly thought. He’s safely home. A weight seemed to lift off her. But Mike didn’t make it. Eileen didn’t. They both sacrificed themselves for you. And so did Colin.

He was already clambering back over the wreckage to her. “Stay there,” he whispered.

“I haven’t any choice,” she said. “My foot’s stuck.”

“And you’d have let me go through and leave you here?” he said angrily. “Is your foot injured?”

“No, it’s only my shoe. It’s caught. Careful,” she warned as he hurried to her.

He knelt beside her and began shifting timbers aside. “Take care you don’t get stuck,” Polly said.

“You’re a fine one to talk.” He broke off the end of a wooden slat, pried another rafter up with it, reached down into the hole, and took hold of her ankle. “Do you care about your shoe, Cinderella?”

“No.”

“Good.” She could feel him yanking on her foot and then pulling up on whatever was holding it down, and her bare foot came suddenly free.

He straightened. “All right now, let’s go before anything else—” he said, and the rafter he’d pushed aside went clattering suddenly down the pile of rubble with an unholy crash and into the crater.

“Oh, Christ! Hurry! No, not that way.” He pushed her back across the rubble in the direction of the transept’s entrance. “If someone comes, there’s nowhere to hide in the transept.”

They clambered quickly across the wood and broken stone. And please don’t let one of us get caught again, she thought.

The shimmer was fading rapidly. By the time they were safely back down on the floor—which, thankfully, wasn’t as strewn with glass on this side—and over the barricade, the light was nearly gone.

“What’s the best place to hide?” Colin whispered. “The choir?”

“No,” she said. “There’s no way out.” She grabbed his hand, and they darted across the nave and down the south aisle. They could hide in the Chapel of St.

Michael and St. George, behind the prayer stalls—

Colin grabbed her around the waist and thrust her behind a pillar. “Shh,” he whispered against her ear. “I hear footsteps.”

She listened. “I don’t—” she began, and then did hear them. Footsteps from inside the main stairway. And a flash from a pocket torch.

They ducked farther behind the pillar and pressed against it, listening. The sound of footsteps came out onto the floor, into the north transept, and then there was another flash of light.

He’s looking at the wreckage, Polly thought.

More footsteps and a wide sweep of light as he shone the torch slowly around the transept.

“How much longer till the drop opens again?” Polly whispered to Colin.

“Twelve or thirteen minutes.” It wouldn’t open if the firewatcher was still there, of course, but they were running out of time. When the all clear went, the men would come down from the roofs, and from then on there’d be men in the Crypt and going off duty. She remembered the firewatchers on the morning after the twenty-ninth walking out through the nave, standing on the steps talking. And Mr. Dunworthy had said they made morning rounds, checking for incendiaries and damage.

Now the firewatcher was shining the torch up at the ceiling to see if something had fallen.

Leave, Polly said silently, but it was forever before the torch finally switched off and the footsteps went back upstairs.

They faded away, but Colin still didn’t move. He went on standing there, pressing her against the stone, his arm still around her, waiting. She could feel his breath against her cheek, feel his heart beating.

“I think he’s gone,” he whispered finally, his mouth against her hair. “More’s the pity.” And she felt her heart lift.

But how could even love repay him for the years, the youth he’d sacrificed for her?

“I wish we could stand here forever,” he said, pulling away from her, “but we’d better—” There was a flicker of light. “He’s back.” Colin pushed her behind the pillar. And a moment later he said, “That’s not a torch. It’s the shimmer. The drop’s already opening again.”

“No, it isn’t,” Polly said. “It’s from outside. A flare, I think.” But it must have been an incendiary because a yellow-orange light began to fill the aisle.

She hadn’t realized they were in the bay that held The Light of the World. As the light grew, as golden as the light inside the lantern, she could see the painting more clearly than she ever had. And Mr. Humphreys was right. There was something new to see every time you looked at it.

She had been wrong in thinking Christ had been called up against his will to fight in a war. He didn’t look—in spite of the crown of thorns—like someone making a sacrifice. Or even like someone determined to “do his bit.” He looked instead like Marjorie had looked telling Polly she’d joined the Nursing Service, like Mr.

Humphreys had looked filling buckets with water and sand to save St. Paul’s, like Miss Laburnum had looked that day she came to Townsend Brothers with the coats.

He looked like Captain Faulknor must have looked, lashing the ships together. Like Ernest Shackleton, setting out in that tiny boat across icy seas. Like Colin helping Mr. Dunworthy across the wreckage.

He looked … contented. As if he was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do.

Like Eileen had looked, telling Polly she’d decided to stay. Like Mike must have looked in Kent, composing engagement announcements and letters to the editor.

Like I must have looked there in the rubble with Sir Godfrey, my hand pressed against his heart. Exalted. Happy.

To do something for someone or something you loved—England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history—wasn’t a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.

She turned to look at Colin. He was looking uncertainly at her, and his soot-smudged face was as open to her as hers had been to Sir Godfrey. “Colin, I—” she said, and stopped, amazed.

She hadn’t seen him clearly either. She’d been so intent on finding in his face echoes of the seventeen-year-old boy she’d known, so entranced by his resemblance to Stephen Lang, that she hadn’t seen what was so obviously there. Though Eileen clearly had.

No wonder Eileen had said, “You know I didn’t go back.” And no wonder Colin had looked at her after she’d said, “Colin knows I stayed, don’t you?” for that long, silent moment before he’d said, “Yes, I know.”

How could Polly not have seen the resemblance before? It was right there. No wonder, at the last, that Eileen had hugged Polly and said, “It’s all right. I’ll always be with you.” No wonder she’d called Colin “my dear boy.”

Oh, my dear friend, Polly thought, and the light in Christ’s face seemed to deepen, to grow more bright—

“The shimmer’s starting,” Colin said gently. “We need to go.”

Polly nodded and turned back to The Light of the World for one last look. She kissed her fingers and pressed them gently against the picture, and then she and Colin ran hand in hand up the aisle and across the nave.

Colin helped her over the barricade, and they clambered onto the wreckage, and across the precarious timbers, holding on to Faulknor, on to Honour and each other, picking their way over broken masonry and plaster, and climbing down again to the stained-glass-strewn floor.

“Careful,” Colin said, and she nodded and followed him into the shimmer.

“Where do we need to stand?” she asked.

“Here.” He reached for her hand, and a sound cut suddenly across the silence. He looked up alertly.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s the all clear.”

He shook his head. “ ‘It is the lark,’ ” he said, and her breath caught.

“ ‘The herald of the morn,’ ” she said.

The shimmer began to brighten, to flare. She took his hand and stepped into the midst of the light with him.

“Almost there,” he said.

She nodded. “ ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock,’ ” she said, and the drop opened.