She raised her arm to wave at her.
There won’t be any next time if this war is lost.
—EDWARD R. MURROW,
17 June 1940
London—26 October 1940
FOR A MOMENT AFTER THE SIREN BEGAN ITS UP-AND-DOWN warble, Polly simply stood there with the stockings box still in her hand, her heart pounding. Then Doreen said, “Oh, no, not a raid! I thought for certain we’d get through today without one.”
We did, Polly thought. There must be some mistake.
“And just when we were finally getting some customers,” Doreen added disgustedly. She pointed at the opening lift.
Oh, no, what a time for Mike and Eileen to finally arrive. Polly hurried over to intercept them, but it wasn’t them after all. Two stylish young women stepped out of the lift. “I’m afraid there’s a raid on,” Miss Snelgrove said, coming over, too, “but we have a shelter which is very comfortable and specially fortified. Miss Sebastian will take you down to it.”
“This way,” Polly said, and led them through the door and down the stairs.
“Oh, dear,” one of the young women said, “and after what happened to Padgett’s last night—”
“I know,” the other one replied. “Did you hear? Five people were killed.”
Thank goodness Mike and Eileen aren’t here, Polly thought. But they could easily have been on their way up when the siren sounded and would be down in the shelter when they got there, and there would be no way to avoid the subject. And no way to convince Mike this didn’t confirm the fact that there was a discrepancy.
“Were the people who were killed in Padgett’s shelter?” the first young woman was asking worriedly. She had to shout over the siren. Unlike at Padgett’s, where the staircase had muffled the sirens’ sound, the enclosed space here magnified it so that it was louder than it had been out on the floor.
“I’ve no idea,” the other shouted back. “Nowhere’s safe these days.” She launched into a story about a taxi that had been hit the day before.
They were nearly down to the basement. Please don’t let Mike and Eileen be there, Polly thought, only half listening to the young women. Please …
“If I hadn’t mistaken my parcel for hers,” the young woman was saying, “we’d both have been killed—”
The siren cut off. There was a moment of echoing silence, and then the all clear sounded.
“False alarm,” the other young woman said brightly. They started back upstairs. “They must have mistaken one of our boys for a German bomber,” which sounded likely, but it wouldn’t necessarily convince Mike. Polly hoped he and Eileen hadn’t been within earshot of the siren.
But the fact that the women knew about the five fatalities must mean it was in the papers, and if it was, it would be chalked on news boards and newsboys would be shouting it, and there’d be no way to keep it from him. And there was no way a shopgirl could ask a customer, “How did you find out about the fatalities?”
Polly hoped the young women might bring it up again, but now they were solely focused on buying a pair of elbow-length gloves. It took them nearly an hour to decide on a pair, and when they left, Mike and Eileen still weren’t there. Which is good, Polly thought. It means the chances that they didn’t hear the siren are excellent. But it was after two. Where were they?
Mike heard a newsboy shouting the headline “Five Killed at Padgett’s” and went to the morgue to see the bodies, she thought worriedly, but when Mike and Eileen arrived half an hour later, they didn’t say anything about fatalities or Padgett’s. They had been delayed at Theodore’s.
“Theodore didn’t want me to go,” Eileen explained. “He threw such a tantrum I had to promise to stay and read him a story.”
“And then on the way back we went to the travel shop Eileen had seen, to try to find a map,” Mike said, “but it was hit last night.”
“The owner was there,” Eileen said, “and he said there was another shop on Charing Cross Road, but—”
Miss Snelgrove was eyeing them disapprovingly from Doreen’s counter. “You can tell me when I get home,” Polly said. She gave them the coats, her latchkey, and Mrs. Leary’s address. “I may be late,” she added.
“Should we go to the tube station if the raids begin before you come home?” Eileen asked nervously.
“No. Mrs. Rickett’s is perfectly safe,” Polly whispered. “Now go. I don’t want to lose my job. It’s the only one we’ve got.”
She watched them depart, hoping they’d be too busy settling in to their new accommodations to discuss Padgett’s or daytime raids with anyone. She’d planned to go to the hospital tomorrow to try to find out if there really had been five fatalities, but if the deaths were in the newspapers, it couldn’t wait. She’d have to go tonight, and poor Eileen would have to face her first supper at Mrs. Rickett’s alone.
But she might as well have gone straight home. She couldn’t get in to see Marjorie or find out anything from the stern admitting nurse, and when she reached the boardinghouse, Eileen was sitting in the parlor with her bag, even though Polly could hear the others in the dining room. “Why aren’t you in there eating supper?”
Polly asked.
“Mrs. Rickett said I had to give her my ration book, and when I told her about Padgett’s, she said I couldn’t begin boarding till I got a new one, and Mike wasn’t here—”
“Where is he? At Mrs. Leary’s?”
“No. He arranged things with her and then went to check a travel shop in Regent Street and then fetch his clothes from his old rooms, but he said he’d be late and not to wait for him, to go ahead to Notting Hill Gate and meet him there. When do the raids begin tonight?” she asked nervously.
“Shh,” Polly whispered. “We shouldn’t be talking about this here. Come up to the room.”
“I can’t. Mrs. Rickett said I wasn’t allowed to till I’d paid her.”
“Paid her? Didn’t you tell her you were moving in with me?”
“Yes,” Eileen said, “but she said not till I’d given her ten and six.”
“I’ll speak to her,” Polly said grimly, picking up Eileen’s bag. She took her up to the room, left her there, and went down to the kitchen to confront Mrs. Rickett.
“When I moved in, you said I had to pay the full rate for a double,” Polly argued. “It shouldn’t be extra for—”
“There’s plenty as wants the room if you don’t,” Mrs. Rickett said. “I had three Army nurses here today looking for a room to let.”
And I suppose you plan to charge them three times the rate for a double, Polly almost snapped, but she couldn’t risk getting them evicted. Eileen would already have given Theodore’s mother this address, and Mrs. Rickett wasn’t the type to tell a retrieval team where they’d gone if they did show up. Polly paid the additional ten and six and went back upstairs.
Miss Laburnum was just coming out of her room, carrying a bag full of coconut shells and an empty glass bottle. “For Ernest’s message in a bottle,” she explained.
“Sir Godfrey said to get a whiskey bottle, but with Mrs. Brightford’s little girls there, I thought perhaps orange squash would be more suitable—”
Polly cut her off. “Would you tell Sir Godfrey I may not be at rehearsal tonight? I must help my cousin get settled in.”
“Oh, yes, poor thing,” Miss Laburnum said. “Did she know any of the five who were killed?”
Oh, no, Miss Laburnum knew about the deaths, too. Now she’d have to keep Mike and Eileen away from the troupe as well.
“Were they shop assistants?” Miss Laburnum asked.
“No,” Polly said, “but the incident’s left her badly shaken, so I’d rather you didn’t say anything to her about it.”