Blackout

London-25 October 1940

“HOW WILL WE GET HOME IF BOTH POLLY’S AND MY DROPS are broken?” Merope asked, trying to shout over the noise on the platform and at the same time keep the shelterers on the adjacent blankets from hearing.

“We don’t know for sure that they are broken,” Mike said. “You said there were soldiers at the manor. They might have been close enough to your drop to prevent it from opening.”

Merope shook her head. “They didn’t come till a month after the quarantine ended.”

“How far into the woods was your drop?” Michael asked. “Could it be seen from the road? Or could one of your evacuees have followed you? What about yours, Polly? Are you sure yours was damaged, or could an air-raid warden have been somewhere where he could see the shimmer? Or a firespotter?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Polly wanted to scream at him. “Don’t you understand what’s happened?”

I’ve got to get out of here, she thought, and stood up. “I have to go.”

“Go?” Michael and Merope said blankly.

“Yes. I’d promised I’d meet some of the contemps. I must go tell them I can’t come.”

“We’ll come with you,” Michael said.

“No. It’ll be faster if I go alone,” she said and fled into the crowd.

“Polly, wait!” she heard him call, and then say, “No, you stay here, Merope. I’ll go get her,” but she didn’t look back. She plowed through the crowd, around outstretched feet, over blankets and hampers, through the archway and down the tunnel, desperate to get away, to find somewhere where she could be alone, where she could absorb what Michael and Merope had just told her. But there was nowhere here that wasn’t jammed with people. The central hall was even worse than the tunnel had been.

“Polly, wait!” Michael called. She glanced back as she ran. He was gaining on her in spite of his limp, and the hall was packed so tightly she couldn’t push through. Where-?

“You there, stop!” someone shouted, and two children shot past her, darting between people with a station guard in hot pursuit. The crowd parted in their wake, and Polly took advantage of the momentary opening to run after them as they raced toward the escalators. The crowd closed in behind her.

The urchins, who looked suspiciously like the boy and girl who’d stolen that picnic basket in Holborn, racketed down the escalator to the next level and into the southbound tunnel with the guard and Polly a few steps behind.

They rounded a corner. “Stop, you two!” the guard shouted, and two men who’d been standing among a group against the wall joined the chase. Polly stepped quickly into the space the men had left, flattening herself against the wall, breathing hard.

She leaned out past the remaining men to look back the way she’d come, but Michael didn’t appear in the stairway. I’ve lost him, she thought. She was safe for the moment.

Safe, she thought dully. We’re in the Blitz, and we can’t get out. And nobody’s coming to get us. She put her hand to her stomach as if to hold the sickening knowledge in, but it was already spilling out, engulfing her.

Something terrible-no, worse than terrible-something unthinkable had happened in Oxford. It was the only possible explanation for her drop and Merope’s drop both failing to open, for their retrieval teams not being here, for Mr. Dunworthy not being here. He would never have left Michael lying wounded in hospital, never have left Merope stranded in the middle of an epidemic, never have left her here knowing she had a deadline. He’d have yanked her out the moment, the instant, he realized Merope’s drop wasn’t working, and he wouldn’t have sent a retrieval team to Mrs. Rickett’s or Townsend Brothers or Notting Hill Gate. They’d have been waiting for her in the passage when she came through that first night. And the fact that they hadn’t been could mean only one thing.

Mr. Dunworthy must be dead, she thought. She wondered numbly what had happened. Something no one had seen coming, like Pearl Harbor? Or something even worse-a terrorist with a pinpoint bomb, or a second Pandemic? Or the end of the world? It had to have been something truly catastrophic, because even if the lab and the net had been destroyed, they could have built a new one, and this was time travel. Even if it had taken them five years, or fifty, to construct a new net, to recalculate their coordinates, they could still have pulled her out that first day, could have pulled Michael and Merope out before the quarantine started, before Michael injured his foot. Unless there was no one left alive who knew they were here.

Which meant everyone was dead, Badri and Linna and Mr. Dunworthy. And, oh, God, Colin.

“Are you all right, dearie?” a round, rosy-cheeked woman across the tunnel from her said. She was looking at Polly’s hand, still pressed against her stomach. “You mustn’t be frightened. It always sounds like that.” She gestured up at the ceiling, from which the sound of bombs was very faintly audible. “The first night I was down here, I thought we were for it.”

We are, Polly thought bleakly. We’re stranded in the middle of the Blitz, and no one’s coming to get us. We’ll still be here when my deadline arrives.

“You’re quite safe,” the woman was saying. “The bombs can’t get us down here-did you find them?” she broke off to ask the guard, who was coming back along the tunnel, looking disgruntled.

“No. Vanished into thin air, they did. They didn’t come back this way, did they?”

“No,” the woman said, and to Polly, “These children, left to run wild…” She clucked her tongue. “I do hope we see an end to this war soon.”

You might, Polly thought. I can’t. I’ve already seen it. And had a sudden vision of the cheering crowds in Charing Cross, of-

That was how you knew, she thought suddenly, before Eileen even told you her drop wasn’t working, how you knew that morning at St. George’s before you even went to Townsend Brothers, before you knew the retrieval team hadn’t come.

Till this moment she’d never made the connection, not even that night Marjorie took her home with her and they’d ended up at Charing Cross. She’d kept the knowledge carefully from herself, afraid to touch it, to even look at it, as if it were a UXB which might go off. Which it was. It was the final proof that in fact the terrible something had happened, that no one had come in time. Unless… oh, God, she hadn’t even thought of that possibility. She’d assumed… but that was even worse…

“Are you feeling ill, dearie?” the woman was asking. “Come, sit down.” She patted her blanket. “There’s room.”

“No, I must go,” Polly said in a strangled voice and darted back down the tunnel and across to the escalators. She had to get back to the platform and ask Merope-

“Polly!” a woman’s voice called from behind her. It was Miss Laburnum, struggling toward her through the milling mob with two carrier bags. She looked flushed and harried, her hair straggling out of its bun.

I’ll pretend I didn’t see her, Polly thought, but the crowd had closed in, cutting off escape.

“I’m so glad to see you’re late for rehearsal as well,” Miss Laburnum said. “I was afraid I was the only one. I went out to Croxley to borrow a butler’s livery from my aunt for our play. I got a lovely costume for when you’re shipwrecked. Here, hold this.” She handed Polly one of the bags and began digging through the other. “It’s in here somewhere.”

“Miss Laburnum-”

“I know, we’re already horribly late. The train back was delayed-bomb on the line,” she said, giving up her rummaging. “Never mind, I’ll show it to you at rehearsal.”

“I can’t go with you,” Polly said, and tried to hand her back the bag.

“But why not? What about rehearsal?”

“I-” What excuse could she give? My fellow time travelers are here? Hardly. Some school friends? No, Merope had already told Marjorie Polly was her cousin.

Marjorie. “My friend who was in hospital-do you remember?” she said. “You were with me the night I found out she’d been injured?”

“Yes,” Miss Laburnum said and seemed to look at her strained face for the first time. “Oh, my dear, your friend hasn’t-?”

“No, she’s much better, so much that she can have visitors now, and I promised I’d-”

“Oh, but you can’t go to see her in the midst of a raid.”

In her worry over everything else, Polly’d forgotten all about the bombs falling above them right now. “No, no, I’m not going to visit her. I promised her I’d go to St. Pancras to tell her landlady the good news, and take her a list of things Marjorie wants her to bring to her in hospital.”

“Oh, of course. I quite understand.” She took the bag from Polly. “But you’ll be there tomorrow?”

Yes. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. “Tell Sir Godfrey I’ll be at rehearsal,” Polly said and hurried away. She had to get to Merope and ask her-

A hand clamped onto her shoulder. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Michael said angrily. “Why did you run off like that?”

“I told you, I needed to tell the contemps I promised to meet that I couldn’t come,” Polly said, but he wasn’t listening.

“Don’t pull a stunt like that again! I just spent the last three and a half weeks looking all over London for you. I can’t afford to lose you again.”

“I’m sorry.” And sorry you found me before I was able to find out-

“Michael,” she said. “When did you leave for your Dover assignment?”

“Right after I saw you in Oxford.”

Thank goodness, she thought. But this was time travel. He could have gone to Pearl Harbor flash-time. “You weren’t able to persuade Mr. Dunworthy to change your schedule back?” she asked to be certain.

“No, I never even got in to see him.” He looked curiously at her. “Why?”

“I wondered, that’s all. We’d best go find Merope. She’ll be worried.” She started off through the crowd, hoping she might be able to lose him again.

“No, wait,” Michael said, clamping a hand on her arm. “I need to know-”

“Polly!” Merope shouted. They both turned to look. She was coming down the escalator, elbowing past people to reach the bottom, to get to them.

“Michael! Oh, thank goodness! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. The man whose blanket it was came back and made me leave. He said it was his spot and that his wife had been waiting in line since noon to save it, and there was nowhere else to sit so I came looking for you, but I couldn’t find either of you anywhere, and I was afraid I’d never see you again!” she said, and burst into tears.

“Don’t cry,” Michael said, putting his arm around her. “It’s all right. You did find us.”

“I know,” she said, pulling away from him and wiping at her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I haven’t cried the entire time I’ve been here, not even when I found out you’d gone back to Oxford, Polly. I mean, I know you didn’t, but I thought you had, and that I was all alone here…” She began to cry again.

“You’re not alone now,” Michael said, handing her a handkerchief.

“Thank you,” she said. “I know. It’s ridiculous to cry now. It must be reaction. I’m sorry I lost our place to sit-”

“It’s all right, we’ll find another one,” Michael said. “What about the next level up, Polly?”

“We can try it,” Polly said and started toward the escalator.

“Wait!” Merope said, clutching Polly’s hand. “What if we get separated?”

“She’s right,” Michael said. “We need to decide on a meeting place. What about at the foot of the escalators?”

“Can it be the farthest level down?” Merope asked nervously, glancing up to where the muffled crump of bombs could be heard.

“Fine,” he said. “If we get separated again or anything happens, we go straight to the foot of the escalators on the lowest level and wait there for the others. Right?”

Merope and Polly nodded, and they got on the escalator. But the level above was just as crowded. “After the trains stop, we might be able to sneak up to the surface,” Polly said. “There shouldn’t be anyone in the station but the guard.”

“But what about the raids?” Merope asked fearfully.

“Oxford Circus wasn’t hit-”

“You said Padgett’s wasn’t hit either,” Merope said accusingly, and Mike shook his head in warning at Polly and said, “I don’t think upstairs is a good idea. Isn’t there anywhere down here?”

“No,” Polly said, looking around at the entrances to the tunnels, trying to think which platform might-

She frowned. There, emerging from the southbound tunnel, were the two urchins the guard had been chasing. How had they got up here? The guard had said they’d vanished into thin air. “Hang on, I have an idea. Stay there,” she said and, before the other two could object, darted into the tunnel.

Halfway along it was a gray metal door marked Emergency Exit and under it, No Unauthorized Admittance. A couple was sitting in front of it on a plaid rug, righting several overturned dishes and mopping up spilled tea.

Polly ran back out to Michael and Merope. “I think I’ve found something,” she said. She handed Merope her handbag.

“Why are you giving this to me?” Merope asked.

“You’ll see. Come along.” She led them into the tunnel and stopped a few yards short of the door. “Tell the couple you’re an Underground official,” she whispered to Michael, “and that you need to go inside, and then follow my lead.”

He did. “Official business.”

“We’re looking for two children,” Polly said. “They stole my bag.”

“I told you, didn’t I, Virgil?” the woman said. “They’re thieves, I said.”

“They’re not in there,” Virgil said. “They come barreling out, knocking our things all about, a bit ago.”

“Broke my plate with the pansies, they did.”

“They went that way,” Virgil said and pointed. “But you’ll never catch ’em, not those two.”

“We plan to set a trap for them,” Mike said, “if you’ll just let us through,” and the couple immediately began packing up the hamper and moving it and themselves away from the door.

“I hope when you do catch them, you lock them up,” the woman said as they opened the door and went through. “Young hooligans!”

“Why is it everywhere I go there are horrible children?” Merope said as soon as they were inside. She stopped and looked at their dimly lit surroundings. They were on a landing, and above and below it an iron staircase spiraled out of sight.

Polly crossed the landing to look up and then down the steps, but apparently no one besides the children had discovered the stairwell yet, and hopefully Virgil and his wife would keep anyone else out, at least on this level. There were obviously doors on other levels or the children couldn’t have used it as a shortcut. And if it was an emergency staircase, that meant it went all the way to the surface, hundreds of feet up.

“This is perfect,” Merope said, going up several steps and sitting down. “Now we can talk and not worry about people hearing us. I have so much to tell you-”

“Shh,” Michael said, looking up the staircase. “We need to see if anyone else is in here first. I have a feeling sound carries a long way. Polly, you check up above, and you check below,” he said to Merope, who obligingly scrambled to her feet and ran down the steps. At least no one would be able to sneak up on them. Merope’s footsteps clattered loudly down the iron treads.

Polly started up, but before she’d climbed three steps, Michael’s hand clamped round her wrist. “Shh,” he mouthed silently. “Stay here. I’ve got to talk to you.” He waited, listening, as the clank of Merope’s footsteps faded away below them.

Oh, no, he’s realized why I asked him when he left for Dover, Polly thought. He’s going to ask me if I have a deadline, and if I tell him, he’ll begin asking questions-

“Was John Lewis supposed to be bombed?” Michael said. The question was so utterly different from what she’d expected that she could only gape stupidly at him. “Was it?”

“Yes-”

“What about Buckingham Palace? Were the King and Queen supposed to have almost been killed like that?”

“Yes. Why are you-?”

“What about the other raids? Have they been where they were supposed to be?”

“Yes.” It’s a good thing we’re not having this conversation out in the station or we’d be arrested for being German spies, she thought. “Why are you asking me all this?”

“Because Dunkirk’s a divergence point.”

“But-”

“Shh.” He put his finger to his lips. Polly listened. There was a faint clanking from below them.

“She’s coming back,” Michael said. He released her wrist and motioned for her to go up the stairs, and she ran up them on tiptoe, trying not to make any noise. And to make sense of what he’d said. Had he seen something which didn’t match what he’d read about the Blitz? Or the evacuation of Dunkirk?

Could he think that his having been at Dunkirk had altered history, and that was why their drops wouldn’t open? But it was impossible, and if he weren’t so unnerved over all the bad news he’d had tonight, he’d realize how ridiculous a theory like that was.

And what about you? she thought. Is that why you’re imagining the worst, too? Because, as Miss Snelgrove would say, you’ve had a bad shock? Perhaps the situation’s not as bad as you think.

Or perhaps it was worse. She had to talk to Merope. Alone. But how? Send Michael on some errand? He’d already scolded her for going off without them.

She went up as far as the next landing with a door and opened it a tiny crack to peer out. A row of toddlers lay wrapped like cocoons in blankets in front of the door. Good, no one could get in that way.

She ran up two more flights, peered up into the long darkness above, then ran back down to where Merope and Michael were sitting. “All clear,” she said, sitting down on the step beside them. “Was there anyone down below, Merope?”

“No. Now, Michael, I want to hear-”

“Not Michael. And not Merope. You’re Eileen O’Reilly and I’m Mike Davis, and you’re Polly-what last name are you using?”

“Sebastian.”

“Sebastian,” he repeated. “I wish I’d known that. I’d have been able to find you a lot sooner. You’re Polly Sebastian, and those are our names for as long as we’re here. Even when we’re alone. Understood? We can’t afford to have somebody overhear us calling each other by some other name.”

Merope nodded. “Yes, Michael-I mean, Mike.”

“Good,” he said. “Now, the first thing we have to do-”

“-is get something to eat,” Polly said. “I haven’t had any supper. Have either of you?”

“I haven’t eaten since breakfast,” Merope-correction, Eileen-said. “I spent my entire lunch break waiting on Mrs. Sadler and that wretched son of hers. I’m starving!”

“Can’t this wait, Polly?” Michael-Mike said.

“No, I don’t know how long the canteen stays open.”

“Okay, but we shouldn’t all go. One of us needs to stay here. Polly, you hold down the fort, and Eileen and I’ll go,” and before she could think of a reason she needed to be the one to accompany Eileen, they’d started down the stairs.

“Oh, I just thought of something,” she heard Eileen say below. “I haven’t any money.”

And now you haven’t got a job either, Polly thought. She wondered if Mike had one. Probably not-he’d just got out of hospital. How are we going to live? she wondered.

Below her she heard the door shut and, after a moment, the clank of feet on the stairs. Was it the children who’d used this stairway before? Or a guard? she thought, remembering the No Admittance notice.

It was Mike. “I told Eileen I wasn’t sure I had enough money. I gave her two shillings and told her to go get in line, and I’d be there in a minute.”

“Oh.” Polly reached for her bag.

He stopped her. “It was just an excuse so we could finish our conversation. You didn’t answer my question before. Has anything been hit that wasn’t supposed to be?”

“No. Mike-”

“What about something that was supposed to be hit that wasn’t?” he persisted. “Or some night when there were supposed to be raids and there weren’t?”

“There were raids every night till November,” Polly said, “and they’ve all been on schedule. Is this because you were at Dunkirk?”

“I wasn’t just there. I did something that may have altered events.”

“But you know as well as I do that we can’t do that. The time travel laws won’t let us.”

“The time travel laws don’t let historians anywhere near a divergence point either, but I was right there in the middle of one.”

“And you think that’s why our drops won’t open? But that’s impossible. If your being there would have changed things, the net would have kept you from getting there.”

“That’s just it. It sent me through thirty miles from where I was supposed to be and five days late, so I missed the bus and couldn’t get to Dover.” He told her the story of how he’d ended up in Dunkirk. “The slippage was trying to stop me. If I hadn’t gotten on the Lady Jane-”

“But if your being at Dunkirk was going to alter events, it would have stopped you. It would have sent you through after the evacuation. Or to Wales or somewhere. Historians can’t change the course of history. You know that.”

“Then why did you look so horrified when I told you I’d been to Dunkirk?”

Careful, Polly thought. “Because you’d just told me none of our drops were working. And that your retrieval team hadn’t come to pull you out when you were injured. Even if it took them a long time to find you in hospital-”

“No, you don’t understand. They’d never even think to look in hospitals. Nobody knew I’d gone to Dunkirk except the captain of the boat and his grandson, and they were both killed.”

Killed? Polly thought, but he was already hurrying on. “I’d told the people in the village that I was going back to London to file my story, and nobody in the hospital knew who I was. Anyway, the point is, there was no way for the retrieval team to find me.”

“Mike, it’s time travel. No matter how long it took for them to find you, they could still have been there.”

“Not if they’re still looking for me. I’ve spent the last three and a half weeks looking for you in stores on Oxford Street and couldn’t find you. Which store do you work in?”

“Townsend Brothers.”

“I was on every floor of Townsend Brothers twice and never found you, and neither did Merope-I mean, Eileen-and she works four blocks away. And you couldn’t find Eileen even though you went to Backbury.”

“But this is-”

“I know, time travel. And part of time travel is slippage.”

“Five months’ worth?”

“No, just enough for our retrieval teams to lose the trail. If they came through after I was moved from the hospital in Dover or Eileen left for London-”

He was right. They’d have no way of knowing Eileen was working at Padgett’s, and if the hospital hadn’t known who Mike was, they could easily have lost the trail. “But what about all those weeks when Eileen was quarantined?” she asked. “They knew exactly where she was then.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the quarantine was some kind of divergence point. Measles can kill people, right? Maybe the retrieval team wasn’t allowed to come through because they’d have caught the measles and infected some general who played a critical role at D-Day.”

It sounded just like the arguments she’d used these last few weeks as she’d tried to convince herself they’d be here any day. She wondered if that was what Mike was doing, trying to convince himself. And it still didn’t explain the drops.

“I never said mine wasn’t working,” Mike said. “I just said I couldn’t get to it. And the same goes for Eileen’s. If there were evacuees in the woods, they could have kept it from opening, or someone from the village could have-”

There was a pounding on the door below them. “Stay here,” Mike said and ran down to see who was knocking.

It was Eileen. “I only had enough money for sandwiches and two teas,” Polly heard her say. “But I thought we could share.” She heard them start up the stairs. “The queue was endless.”

Polly waited where she was, thinking over what Mike had said. If there’d been two or three days’ slippage on her team’s drop, they’d have come through before she found a job, and when they went to Townsend Brothers, they’d have been told she didn’t work there. And they wouldn’t have been able to find her at night because she was at St. George’s rather than a tube shelter. Mike was right. They might still be looking for her.

Eileen came up the stairs, carrying oiled-paper-wrapped sandwiches, followed by Mike with cartons of tea. “Cheese sandwiches were the cheapest thing they had,” she said, passing them out. “What happened to you, Mike? Why didn’t you come?”

“Polly and I were discussing what we’re going to do.”

“Which is what?” Eileen said, unwrapping her sandwich and taking a huge bite out of it.

“Well, first we’re going to eat our supper.” He took the lid off the carton of tea.

“And you’re going to tell me how you got shanghaied,” Eileen said, “and, Polly, you’re going to tell me why you told me Padgett’s was safe.”

She did, and then they recounted their adventures. Polly was horrified to find out that Mike had been living in Fleet Street and that Eileen had been living in Stepney. “Stepney?” she said. “It had one of the highest casualty rates of all of London. No wonder you’re frightened of the bombs.”

“We have to get you out of there immediately,” Mike said.

“She can move in with me,” Polly said. “My room’s a double.”

“Good. And ask your landlady if she has any vacant rooms. It’ll make it a lot easier for us to be found if we’re all at the same address.”

And safer, Polly thought. She didn’t say that. Eileen was looking better now that she’d had something to eat, but as she told them about her attempts to find Polly, it was clear she’d had a bad time these last few weeks, and when Mike said she needed to go fetch her things first thing in the morning, she looked absolutely stricken. “Alone?” she said. “But what if we get separated again?”

“We won’t,” Polly reassured her and wrote out Mrs. Rickett’s address for her and Mike. “I work on the third floor of Townsend Brothers. And if I’m not there-”

“I know,” Eileen said. “I’m to go to the foot of the escalator on the lowest level of Oxford Circus.”

Mike laid out what they were to do. Polly was to make a list for him and Eileen of when and where the raids were for the next week, and Eileen was to write the manor and everyone she’d known there and give them Mrs. Rickett’s address. “So if your retrieval team comes, they’ll know where you are,” Mike said. “And write the postmistress in Backbury. And the stationmaster.”

“I’ve met the stationmaster,” Polly said. “I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by writing him.”

“Well, the local clergyman then.”

“I wrote the vicar as soon as I arrived in London to tell him I’d delivered the children to their parents,” Eileen said.

The vicar knew Eileen was in London, Polly thought. And if that wretched train had been late like the stationmaster said it always was and she’d been able to stay till after the service, she’d have found Eileen a month ago, and Eileen would never have been in danger of being killed at Padgett’s.

“Write him again,” Mike was saying. “And contact the parents of the other evacuees you delivered.”

“Alf and Binnie?” Eileen said, sounding horrified.

“Yes, and whoever was in charge of the evacuation. We need every contact we can think of. And we need to find a drop-”

He stopped, listening. A door opened somewhere above them and then slammed, and someone rattled down the steps. Whoever it was must be running. The footsteps clanked down toward them at an enormous rate, and Polly could hear giggling.

Those children who were running from the guard, Polly thought. “I do hope the raids won’t last very long tonight,” she said loudly.

The footsteps halted abruptly and then clanked back up the steps. The door opened and slammed again. “They’re gone,” Mike said. “Now where were we?”

“You said we need to find a drop,” Eileen said.

“Right, preferably one that isn’t under the gun, so to speak,” he said cheerfully.

He was sounding and looking much better, too. She must have convinced him that he hadn’t altered events. I wish he’d managed to convince me that nothing’s happened to Oxford, she thought.

“We need to find one of the other historians who’s here besides us,” Mike went on.

“There was someone who was going to the Battle of the Bulge,” Eileen said.

“That was me,” Mike said. “And I’m glad this didn’t happen while I was there. The Ardennes in winter would have been a nasty place to be stuck.”

“Whereas this…” Polly said, spreading her hands to indicate the dim stairwell.

“At least no one’s shooting prisoners here,” he said, “and it’s not snowing.”

“It might as well be,” Eileen said, hugging her arms to herself. “I wish I had my coat. It’s simply freezing in here.”

Mike took off his suit jacket and draped it around her shoulders. “Thank you,” Eileen said. “But won’t you be cold-? Oh, I just thought of something,” she said, sounding dismayed. “How am I going to buy another coat? And pay Theodore’s mother the room and board I owe her? All the money I had was in my handbag. I was supposed to collect my pay packet tomorrow, but if Padgett’s-”

“Was the store totally destroyed?” Mike asked. “Maybe-”

Polly shook her head. “Direct hit. A thousand-pound HE.”

“Has it already been hit?” Eileen asked, glancing up at the stairs spiraling above them.

“Yes, I don’t know exactly when. I wasn’t supposed to still be here when it hit, so I don’t know the details. Only that it was early this evening and that there were three fatalities.”

“But if it had already been hit, wouldn’t we have heard it?” Eileen asked. “Or the fire bells or something?”

“Not in here,” Polly said. “Don’t worry about the coat. Mrs. Wyvern-she’s one of the people I sit with in the shelter-helps distribute clothing to people who’ve been bombed out. I’ll see if I can arrange a coat for you from her.”

“Do you think you could talk her out of one for me, too?” Mike asked. “I hocked mine.”

Polly nodded. “You’ll both need one-1940 was one of the coldest and rainiest winters on record.”

“Then let’s try not to spend more time in it than we have to,” Mike said. “There’s at least one historian here now. Both times I was in the lab, Linna was on the phone giving someone a list of historians currently on assignment. I only heard snatches, but one of them was October 1940.”

“Are you certain it wasn’t me?” Polly asked. “I was supposed to go back October twenty-second.”

He shook his head. “October was the arrival date. The departure date was December eighteenth.”

“Which means whoever it is is here right now,” Eileen said. “You didn’t hear the name?”

“No, but I also met a guy in the lab. He was there doing a recon and prep drop. I don’t know the date of his assignment, but the recon and prep was to Oxford on July second, 1940. His name was Phillips or Phipps-”

“Gerald Phipps?” Eileen said.

“I didn’t hear his first name. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Eileen said, making a face. “He’s insufferable. When I first told him about my assignment, he said, ‘A maid? Is that the most exciting assignment you could find? You won’t get to see the war at all.’”

“Which tells us he would,” Polly said.

“And that his assignment was exciting,” Mike added. “Did he tell you where he was going?”

“Yes. It began with a D, I think. Or a P. Or possibly a T. I wasn’t really listening.”

“And he didn’t tell you what he’d be observing?” Mike asked, and when Eileen shook her head, “Polly, what was happening in July?”

“In England? The Battle of Britain.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it. He was wearing tweeds, not an RAF uniform.”

“But you said it was a setup,” Polly argued. “Perhaps he had to arrange for a transfer to an airfield.”

“He did say he’d posted some letters and made a trunk call,” Mike said. “What airfields begin with a D?”

“Detling?” Polly suggested. “Duxford?”

“No,” Eileen said, frowning. “It might have been a T.”

“T?” Mike said. “You said a D or a P.”

“I know.” She bit her lip thoughtfully. “But I think it may have been a T.”

“Tangmere?” Polly said.

“No… I’m sorry. I’d know it if I heard it.”

“We need a list of English airfields,” Mike said.

“But I can’t imagine Gerald as a pilot,” Eileen said.

“Yeah, I know,” Mike said. “He’s scrawny, and when I saw him, he was wearing spectacles.”

“And he’s a dreadful grind,” Eileen said. “Maths and-”

“He might be posing as a course plotter or a radio operator,” Polly suggested. “That’s much more likely than his being a pilot. The life expectancy for pilots during the Battle of Britain was three weeks. Mr. Dunworthy would never have allowed it. And if he was a course plotter or a dispatcher he could observe the Battle of Britain without being in as much danger, though the airfields and sector stations were bombed as well. But if he was here to observe the Battle of Britain, then he may already have gone back.” She turned to Eileen. “He didn’t say how long he was staying?”

“No. At least I don’t think so,” she said, frowning in concentration. “I was late for my driving lesson, and, as I said, he’s insufferable. All I was thinking about was getting away from him. If I’d known this was going to happen, I’d have listened more carefully.”

“Yes, well, if we’d known we were going to be stuck here, we’d all have behaved differently,” Mike said grimly. “Never mind, we can easily find out the airfields. Do either of you know who this other person who’s here from October to December could be? Or do you know of anyone else who might be here?”

“Robert Glabers said he was doing World War II,” Polly said.

“He is,” Mike said. “The testing of the atomic bomb in New Mexico in 1945, which doesn’t help us.”

Yes, it does, Polly thought. It gives me the chance to ask Eileen the question I need to. “Nineteen forty-five,” she said thoughtfully. “Nineteen forty-five. What about the person who did VE-Day whom you were going to switch with, Eileen? Did you persuade Mr. Dunworthy to let you go?”

“We need someone right now,” Mike said impatiently. “Why are you two talking about 1945?”

“Did you?” Polly persisted.

“No, I couldn’t ever get in to see him. And now, with all this, he probably won’t even consider letting me go.”

Thank God, Polly thought. She didn’t go to VE-Day. She doesn’t have a deadline, thank God. And neither does Mike. But then-

“Do you think this October person could be here in London?” Mike asked.

“No, if Badri’d had to find two drops in London, I’m certain he’d have mentioned it; he had so much difficulty finding mine. But I can’t think of anything else besides the Blitz an historian would be doing in October, at least in England.”

“Then it sounds like Gerald’s a better bet,” Mike said. “If we can just figure out which airfield he’s at. Tomorrow we’ll get a map-”

He stopped again at muffled sounds from below.

The children again, Polly thought, but there were no clanking footsteps or giggling. “False alarm,” Mike said.

“Wait.” Polly clattered down the steps and opened the door. The couple that’d been in front of it had gone, and across the tunnel people were folding blankets and putting dishes and empty bottles into baskets. Polly opened the door a bit wider and called to a young girl sitting on the floor putting on her shoes, “Has the all clear gone?”

The girl nodded, and Polly ducked back inside the stairwell and ran up to tell Mike and Eileen.

“Jesus,” Mike said, looking at his watch, “it’s nearly six. We’ve stayed up all night talking.”

“And I’ve got to be at work in three hours.” Polly stretched and brushed off her skirt.

Eileen took Mike’s coat from around her shoulders and gave it back to him. “Okay,” Mike said. “Eileen, you’re going to go get your belongings and try to remember which airfield Gerald told you.” He gave her money for her tube fare. “Polly, you make that list of raids for us, and I want you to show me where the drop is before you go to work.”

They left the stairwell. Everyone in the tunnel had packed up and gone except for two very dirty urchins picking over the left-behind food scraps, and they fled the moment Polly opened the door.

The main hall was nearly deserted as well. “What train do you take to Stepney, Eileen?” Polly asked.

“Bakerloo to District and Circle.”

“We take the Central Line,” Polly said, and at Eileen’s worried expression, “We’ll walk you to your platform.”

That was easier said than done. The people on the Bakerloo platform were still in the process of packing up. One group had gathered around an ARP warden who’d obviously just come in from outside. He was covered in soot, and his coverall was torn. “How bad is it?” a woman asked him as they started past. “Did Marylebone get it again?”

He nodded. “And Wigmore Street.” He took off his tin hat to wipe his face with a sooty handkerchief. “Three incidents. One of the firemen said it was pretty bad out Whitechapel way, too.”

“What about Oxford Street?” Mike asked.

“No, it was lucky this time. Not a scratch on her.”

The color drained from Mike’s face.

“Are you certain-?” Eileen began, but Mike was already limping down the tunnel. He was nearly to the escalators before Polly caught up with him.

“That warden wouldn’t necessarily have seen Padgett’s,” she said. “You heard him, he was on Wigmore Street all night. That’s north of here, and it’s still dark. And when there’s an incident, there’s all this smoke and dust. One can’t see anything.”

“Or there isn’t anything to see,” he said, starting up the escalator.

“I don’t understand,” Eileen said, catching up to them as they reached the top. “Wasn’t Padgett’s hit?”

Mike didn’t answer her. He limped across the station to the exit and up to the street.

It was still dark out, but not dark enough that Polly couldn’t see the black roofs of Oxford Street’s stores against the inky sky. There was no sign of destruction, and no broken glass in the dark street. “It’s freezing out here,” Eileen said, shivering in her thin blouse as they stood looking down the street. “If it was hit, wouldn’t it be burning?”

Yes, Polly thought, but there was no sign of flames, no reddened sky, not even any smoke. The air was damp and clean.

“Are you certain you got the name of the store right?” Eileen asked, her teeth chattering. “It wasn’t Parmenter’s that was hit? Or Peter Robinson?”

“I’m certain,” Polly said.

“Perhaps you got the date wrong,” Eileen suggested, “and it won’t be hit till tomorrow night. Which means I can fetch my coat. And my handbag.” She set off down the dark street.

“Did you?” Mike asked. “Get the date wrong?”

“No. All the Oxford Street raids were implanted. We just can’t see it from here.” Which was true, but they’d be able to see the fire engines and hear the ambulance bells. And see the blue light of the incident officer. “When we get a bit farther down, we’ll see it,” she said firmly and set off after Eileen.

“Or I changed the course of events somehow so it didn’t get hit,” Mike said, limping alongside her. “I didn’t tell you what I did at Dunkirk-”

“It doesn’t matter what you did; historians can’t alter events. Padgett’s was hit by an HE, not an incendiary. They don’t necessarily cause fires, and if it happened early last night, the fire could have been out for hours-”

Ahead of them, Eileen called, “Padgett’s is still there. I can see it,” and Mike took off toward her at an awkward, hobbling run.

It can’t be, Polly thought, racing after and then past him, but it was. Before she’d run halfway she could make out Lyons Corner House in the darkness, still intact, and beyond it the first of Padgett’s pillars.

Eileen was nearly there. Polly ran after her, straining to see through the darkness. There were the rest of Padgett’s pillars, and the building beyond it. No, she thought. It can’t still be there.

It wasn’t. Before she was even to Lyons Corner House, she could see the side wall of the building beyond Padgett’s, half destroyed, and the empty space between it and Lyons.

Eileen had reached the front of the store. “Oh, no,” Polly heard her gasp.

She turned to call back to Mike, “It’s all right. It was hit,” and ran on to the store. Or the space where it had been. The pillars-and beyond them a deep pit-were all that was left. The HE had totally vaporized the department store, which meant it had been a thousand-pounder. And when we read the newspapers tomorrow, it will say that, and that there were three fatalities.

They had strung up rope at the edge of the pavement, blocking off the incident, and Eileen stood motionless just outside it, staring. In relief or shock? Polly couldn’t tell-it was too dark to see the expression on her face.

Polly reached her side. “Look,” Eileen said, pointing, and Polly saw she wasn’t staring at what was left of Padgett’s. She was staring at the glass-strewn pavement between the pillars. And at what Polly hadn’t seen before because it was too dark.

The pavement was strewn with bodies, and there were at least a dozen of them.