“But I’m starving!” Cess said.
“And I must be in Croydon by four o’clock, or my articles won’t make this week’s edition.”
“Then they’ll have to go in next week’s.”
“That’s what you said last week,” Ernest said. “At this rate, they won’t go in till after the invasion, and a bloody lot of good they’ll do then.”
“Very well,” Prism said. “When we get there I’ll ring up Lady Bracknell and have Algernon take them to Croydon for you.”
Which would completely defeat the purpose. “They’re not done yet,” he said. “I’d intended to finish writing them up last night, and instead I ended up playing matador.”
“With a tank as his cape,” Cess said, and launched into an account of their adventures with the bull and his charging of the tank, which Prism and Moncrieff both found highly amusing.
“Today won’t be nearly so dangerous,” Moncrieff said. “And don’t worry, we’ll have you back to the castle in plenty of time.”
At which point, I will no doubt be sent to blow up more tanks.
“Speaking of dangers,” Prism said, “you need to read this.” He handed a sheet of paper back to Ernest over the seat. “It’s a memo from Lady Bracknell.”
“Warning us,” Cess said, “about”—he lowered his voice to a sinister whisper—“spies in our midst.”
Ernest snatched the paper from Prism. “Spies?”
“Yes,” Cess said. “It says we’re to look out for suspicious behavior, particularly for people who seem unfamiliar with local customs. And we’re not to discuss our mission with anyone, no matter how harmless and trustworthy they seem, because they might be German spies. That bull this morning, for instance.”
“It’s not a joking matter,” Prism said. “If there’s a security breach, it could endanger the entire invasion.”
“I know,” Cess said. “But whom exactly does Bracknell think we’d talk to? The only people we ever see are irate farmers, except for Ernest here—”
“And the only people I talk to are irate editors who want to know why my articles are always late,” Ernest said. He needed to get this conversation off the topic of spies. “And I doubt very much that they’ll believe I missed their deadline because I was having tea with the Queen. How are we supposed to address her, by the way?
Your Majesty? Your Highness?”
“There! You see that?” Cess said, pointing an accusing finger at him. “Unfamiliarity with local customs. Definitely suspicious behavior. And he behaved very oddly around that bull. Are you a spy, Worthing?” he said, and when Ernest didn’t answer, “Well, are you?”
We shall fight in the offices … and in the hospitals.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL,
1940
London—27 October 1940
THE MOMENT POLLY RETURNED FROM SEEING MARJORIE, Eileen said, “Mr. Fetters rang up while you were gone. He said they’d found three bodies in Padgett’s.” Which meant Polly hadn’t had to go to the hospital after all.
She wished she hadn’t. She’d gone there to prove the number of dead wasn’t a discrepancy so that Mike could stop worrying that he’d altered events, only to find that she’d altered them.
Don’t be ridiculous, she thought. Historians can’t do that. And there were dozens of reasons why Mr. Dunworthy could have got the time of the St. Paul’s UXB’s removal wrong. The newspaper could have moved the time up to throw the Germans off. During the V-1 and V-2 attacks, they’d printed false accounts of where the rockets fell to trick the Germans into shortening their range. They might have done something like that with the UXB, to convince the Nazis the bomb was easier to defuse than it had been. Or they could simply have got the time wrong, like the nurses at Padgett’s had got the number wrong.
You thought the number of fatalities was a discrepancy, she reassured herself, and it turned out it wasn’t. And look at your last assignment. For a few weeks there, you were convinced you’d altered events, but you hadn’t. Everything worked out exactly the same as it would have if you hadn’t been there.
And this will, too. The doctors say Marjorie’s going to make a full recovery, and it isn’t as if she married her airman or got knocked up. In a few days she’ll be out of hospital and back at Townsend Brothers, just as if nothing had happened. And all I have to do is make certain Mike doesn’t find out what Marjorie said. And that Eileen kept the Hodbins from going on the City of Benares.
She wondered if she should caution Eileen again not to say anything about that, but she didn’t want her inquiring why. And Eileen wasn’t likely to bring up the subject of the Hodbins to Mike for fear that he’d make her write to them and tell them where she lived. At any rate, the only thing on Eileen’s mind was what had happened at Padgett’s.
“Mr. Fetters says they were three charwomen,” Eileen said. “They didn’t work at Padgett’s. They worked at Selfridges. He said they must have been on their way to work when the raids began and took shelter in Padgett’s basement.”
Which meant Mike could also stop worrying about the fatalities being the retrieval team, and so could she. And now all I have to worry about is where the team is.
And whether it will show up before my deadline. And about the possibility that Oxford’s been destroyed.
And about Eileen, who’d been badly shaken by the knowledge that “we could have been in that basement shelter, too.”
“No, we couldn’t,” Polly had said firmly. “Because I know when and where the raids are, remember?” At any rate till January.
“You’re right.” Eileen looked reassured. “It was a tremendous comfort yesterday going to Stepney, knowing there weren’t going to be any sirens.”
Except the one which had sounded at Townsend Brothers. Had that been a discrepancy, too?
“Oh, and I wanted to ask you,” Eileen said, “Mr. Fetters said Padgett’s is reopening ‘on a limited basis’ next month, and asked me if I was interested in coming back to work there, and I wondered what I should tell him. I mean, we mightn’t be here by then …”
Or we might.
“I’ll ask Mike,” Polly said. “I’m going to check on him now and take him a blanket.”
“Can I come with you?”
“No, there are too many people about. I’ll show you tonight where the drop is. Oh, I nearly forgot. I think I found the airfield Gerald’s at. Was it Boscombe Down?”
“No,” Eileen said. She looked thoughtful. “Though the B sounds right. I’m sorry …”
“It’s all right,” Polly said, fighting back disappointment. She’d been so certain that was it. “I’ll go ask Mrs. Rickett if she has an ABC. If she does, you can look through the names while I’m gone.”
Mrs. Rickett didn’t have one. Miss Laburnum was certain she had one “somewhere” and looked through every drawer and cupboard in her room before she said,
“Oh, that’s right, I lent it to my niece when she was visiting from Cheshire.” And then insisted on showing Polly two coconuts she’d managed to scrounge up for the play and relating in detail the time she’d seen Sir Godfrey onstage when she was a girl. It was two o’clock before Polly was able to escape, by which time she was convinced that Mike would be dead from hypothermia.
He wasn’t, and even though his teeth were chattering, he refused to leave the drop. “There have been contemps in the area all day. It’ll have a much better chance of opening after the raids start tonight.”
“But it won’t help to have you freeze to death,” she said, and tried to persuade him to let her spell him long enough for him to go to Mrs. Leary’s and eat his supper, but he refused.