Alf tugged at her sleeve. “The vicar said, ‘What’s ’appenin’ tomorrow?’ ” he shouted over the cheering crowd.
“I have no idea,” Eileen said, and smiled up at the vicar.
Well, come on. Let’s see if there’s still a war going on.
—GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON,
6 July 1944
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—”