The people near them began to sing along with her and then were drowned out by the man in the bowler, shouting, “Three cheers for the RAF!” which was in turn drowned out by a brass band playing “Rule, Britannia.”
The jolly mob was pushing her and Paige apart. “Paige, wait!” she shouted, grabbing for her sleeve, but before she could catch hold, she was abruptly grabbed by a British Army private who swung her into a dip, planted a wet kiss on her lips, swung her back to standing, and grabbed another girl.
The entire episode had taken less than a minute, but it had been long enough. Paige was nowhere to be seen. She attempted to find her, heading in the direction she’d last seen her going, and then gave up and struck out across the square toward the National Gallery.
Trafalgar Square was, if possible, even more crowded than the station and the street had been. Huge numbers of people were sitting on the base of Nelson’s monument, astride the lions, on the sides of the fountain, on a Jeep full of American sailors that was, impossibly, trying to drive through the center of the square, horn honking continuously.
As she passed it, one of the sailors leaned down and grabbed her arm. “Want a ride, gorgeous?” he asked, and hauled her up and into the Jeep. He called to the driver in an exaggerated British accent, “Buckingham Palace, my good man, and make it snappy! Does that please you, milady?”
“No,” she said. “I need to get to the National Gallery.”
“To the National Gallery, Jeeves!” the sailor ordered, though the Jeep clearly wasn’t going anywhere. It was completely surrounded. She scrambled up onto its bonnet to try to spot Paige. “Hey, beautiful, where you goin’?” he said, grabbing at her legs as she stood up.
She swatted his hands away and looked back toward Charing Cross, but there was no sign of Paige or Reardon. She turned, holding on to the windscreen as the Jeep began to crawl forward, to look toward the National Gallery steps.
“Get down, honey!” the sailor who was driving shouted up at her. “I can’t see where I’m going.”
The Jeep crept a few feet and stopped again, and more people swarmed onto the bonnet. He leaned on the horn, and the crowd parted enough for the Jeep to creep a few more feet.
Away from the National Gallery. She needed to get off. When the Jeep stopped again, blocked by the conga line writhing past, she took the opportunity to slip off.
She waded on toward the National Gallery, scanning the steps for Paige or Reardon. A clock chimed, and she glanced back at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. A quarter past ten. Already?
If she was going to go back tonight, she needed to be back in the tube station by eleven, or she’d never make it to the drop, and it could take longer than that just to reach the National Gallery steps. She needed to turn back now.
But she hated to leave without saying goodbye to Paige. She couldn’t actually tell her goodbye, since her cover story was that she’d been called home because her mother had been taken ill. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to leave without permission, but with the war over, she’d have been demobbed in the next few days anyway.
She’d intended to go back tonight because, with everyone from the post in London, it would be easier to slip away. But if she went tomorrow—even though it would be more difficult to effect her escape—it would give her a chance to see everyone one last time. And she didn’t want Paige to wait for her, miss the last train, and get into trouble.
But surely Paige would realize she’d failed to show up because of the crowds and go on without her. Now that the war was over, it wasn’t as if her absence would mean that she’d been blown up by a V-2. And even if she did stay, there was no guarantee she could find Paige in this madness. The National Gallery steps were jammed with people. She’d never be able to spot … no, there Paige was, leaning over the stone railing, anxiously peering out at the crowd.
She waved at Paige—a totally useless gesture amongst the hundreds of people waving Union Jacks—and elbowed her way determinedly toward the steps, veering left when she heard the “dunh duh dunh” of the conga line off to the right.
The steps were packed. She pushed over to the end of them, hoping it might be less crowded there.
It was, marginally. She began to work her way up, stepping between and over people. “Sorry … I beg your pardon … sorry.”
There was the sudden heart-stopping, high-pitched whine of a siren, and the entire square fell silent, listening, and then—as they realized it was the all clear—
erupted into cheers.
Directly in front of her, a burly workman sat on a step, his head in his hands, sobbing as if his heart would break. “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously, putting her hand on his shoulder.
He looked up, tears streaming down his ruddy face. “Right as rain, dearie,” he said. “It was the all clear what did it.” He stood up so she could pass, wiping at his cheeks. “The most beautiful thing I ever ’eard in me ’ole life.”
He took her arm to help her up to the next step. “ ’Ere you go, dearie. Let ’er through, blokes,” he called to the people above him.
“Thank you,” she said gratefully.
“Douglas!” Paige shouted from above, and she looked up to see her waving wildly. They worked their way toward each other. “Where did you go?” Paige demanded. “I turned round and you were gone! Have you seen Reardon?”
“No.”
“I thought perhaps I might spot her or some of the others from up here,” Paige said. “But I haven’t had any luck.”
She could see why as she looked out over the crowd. Ten thousand people were supposed to have gathered in Trafalgar Square on VE-Day, but it looked like there were already that many here tonight, laughing and cheering and throwing their hats in the air. The conga line, at the far corner, was weaving off toward the Portrait Gallery, replaced by a line of middle-aged women dancing an Irish jig.
She tried to take it all in, to memorize every detail of the amazing historical event she was witnessing: The young woman splashing in the fountain with three officers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment. The stout woman passing out poppies to two tough-looking soldiers, who each kissed her on the cheek. The bobby trying to drag a girl down off the Nelson monument and the girl leaning down and blowing a curled-paper party favor in his face. And the bobby laughing. They looked not so much like people who had won a war as people who had been let out of prison.
Which they had been.
“Look!” Paige cried. “There’s Reardon.”
“Where?”
“By the lion.”
“Which lion?”
“That lion.” Paige pointed. “The one with part of his nose missing.”
There were dozens of people surrounding the lion and on the lion, perched on its reclining back, on its head, on its paws, one of which had been knocked off during the Blitz. A sailor sat astride its back, putting his cap on the lion’s head.
“Standing in front of it and off to the left,” Paige directed her. “Can’t you see her?”
“No.”
“By the lamppost.”
“The one with the boy shinning up it?”
“Yes. Now look to the left.”
She did, scanning the people standing there: a sailor waving his cap in the air, two elderly women in black coats with red, white, and blue rosettes on their lapels, a blonde teenaged girl in a white dress, a pretty redhead in a green coat—
Good Lord, that looks just like Merope Ward, she thought. And that impossibly bright green coat was exactly the sort of outfit those idiot techs in Wardrobe would have told her was what the contemps wore to the VE-Day celebrations.
And the young woman wasn’t cheering or laughing. She was looking earnestly at the National Gallery steps, as if trying to memorize every detail. It was definitely Merope.