But she had to admit using the stairs was a stroke of genius. It was possible to stand inside their windowed doors and survey the entire floor before emerging. If Polly had been there, Eileen would have seen her.
But she wasn’t. Eileen searched all six floors, including the basement, part of which had been fitted up as a shelter, but there was no sign of her. “Can we have our lunch now?” Binnie begged.
“And a sweet,” Alf added.
“Yes,” Eileen said, steering them out of the store and next door to Lyons. “You’ve earned it,” though when she saw the prices she regretted agreeing to the sweet. “No, you may not have the four-course meal,” she told Alf, who had found the most expensive thing on the menu. “I said lunch.”
“But it’s already past three,” Binnie said. “We should get lunch and tea.”
“Past three?” Eileen said, looking over at the clock, but Binnie was right. It had taken the better part of the afternoon to search John Lewis. She’d planned on doing Padgett’s after the children ate, but it was even larger than John Lewis, and she had to deliver Alf and Binnie or be stuck with them for another night. And by the time she got them to Whitechapel and came back, the raids would be starting.
She hurried them through their lunch and pudding, out of Lyons, and back up the street toward Oxford Circus. “Marble Arch is nearer,” Binnie said, pointing in the other direction.
She was right. Marble Arch station was only a short distance from Lyons and an even shorter one from Padgett’s. Eileen made a mental note to use Marble Arch when she came back.
If she had time to come back. What if their mother’s still not there and I have to take them back to Theodore’s with me? Eileen thought, waiting on the platform for their train. But when they reached Gargery Lane, she was-a blowsy woman in a frayed silk kimono who’d clearly been awakened by Eileen’s knocking. Her blond pompadour was mussed and her makeup smeared.
“What’re you two doing here?” she demanded when she saw Alf and Binnie carrying the luggage Alf had just retrieved from the bombed house. “Threw you out, did they?”
Eileen explained about the manor being taken over, but Mrs. Hodbin wasn’t interested. “Have you got their ration books?”
“Yes,” Eileen said, handing them over. “They both had the measles this summer, and Binnie was very ill.”
But Mrs. Hodbin wasn’t interested in that either. She snatched the ration books, ordered Alf and Binnie inside, and banged the door shut.
Eileen stood there a moment, feeling oddly… what? Cheated, because Mrs. Hodbin hadn’t let her say goodbye to them? That was ridiculous. She’d been trying for the last three days to rid herself of them. And now you’re free to go find Polly and her drop and go home, she told herself, hurrying down the stairs and up the street, past the bombed-out tenement. I hope they’ll be all right.
She stopped short, remembering the vicar’s letter. Oh, no, she’d forgotten to give it to Mrs. Hodbin. She rummaged through her handbag, found it, and started back toward the Hodbins’, and then stopped again, trying to decide what to do. It was dangerous here in Whitechapel, but far more dangerous on board the City of Benares, and Mrs. Hodbin had looked as if she’d be glad to be rid of Alf and Binnie. If she took them to the Overseas Programme office today or tomorrow, they’d almost certainly end up on the City of Benares.
You don’t know that, she told herself. You don’t even know that she’d want them to go. She grabbed for those ration books awfully quickly. And Alf and Binnie could just as easily be killed here. But here they’d have a chance. In the dark waters of the Atlantic… Besides, if she did go back, Mrs. Hodbin might not even open the door. And she didn’t have time. She had to get to Oxford Street before Padgett’s closed.
Eileen put the envelope in her handbag, caught the tube to Marble Arch, walked to Padgett’s, and began searching it. Without Alf and Binnie to deal with, she should be able to check the floors and ask her questions much more quickly.
But by the time the closing bell rang, she’d only completed the main floor, the mezzanine, and the first floor. For a terrified moment she thought that the closing bell was a siren, and her first panicked instinct was to hurry back to Stepney and the Anderson, but she’d so hoped to be safely back in Oxford by tonight. She forced herself to go to the staff entrance at the side of the store and stand there watching the shopgirls coming out, chattering. But Polly didn’t appear, and no one she asked knew her.
The sirens went while Eileen was on her way to Marble Arch. There were people camping out in the tunnels and on the platform, and she was tempted to join them. That way she might be able to catch Polly on her way to work, but she was already too mussed and her clothes too wrinkled for the posh stores. She decided to go back to Stepney where she could tidy up, and set out again early in the morning.
But the raids damaged two of the main streets in Stepney, so that she had to walk nearly two miles to catch the bus in the morning, and just as she reached Oxford Circus, the sirens went, and she had to spend a cramped three-quarters of an hour in the basement shelter of Peter Robinson’s.
She didn’t reach Padgett’s till nearly noon. She walked purposefully in past the doorman, took the lift to the third floor, and then the stairs to the fifth and began working her way down, checking each department before she asked for Polly, in case she’d remembered her name wrong.
By half-past twelve, she’d worked her way down to the ground floor, and still hadn’t found her. If Polly’s not on this floor, I’ll have to try Selfridges, she thought, walking toward the stationery department. But as she was asking the shopgirl if Polly Sebastian worked there, two saleswomen emerged chattering from the stairwell, obviously just back from lunch, and the one behind the stationery counter began putting on her hat.
It’s lunchtime, Eileen thought. She hadn’t seen everyone after all. She’d have to search the store again after they were all back from lunch. And she might have missed Polly at John Lewis as well. She’d have to search it again, too.
But there was no sign of her at either store, and no one who knew her. That left Selfridges, which stretched for miles, with all sorts of pillars and alcoves and recesses that made it impossible to see more than one department at a time. By closing time she’d only finished searching two of its six floors and wasn’t convinced she’d seen every part of those two. She went out to find Selfridges’ staff entrance, but by the time she did, employees were already streaming out and obviously had been for some time.
A siren began its up-and-down whine nearby. I want to go home, Eileen thought, then smiled ruefully, thinking, You sound just like Theodore. At least she wouldn’t have to put up with this for weeks on end, as he would. You’ve only got to stand it one more night.
But she wasn’t certain she could. The raids were so heavy Mrs. Owens abandoned her cupboard and came out to join Theodore and Eileen in the Anderson despite the dampness, and it was only the older woman’s presence and Theodore’s trembling little body pressed against her that kept Eileen from cowering in the corner and screaming. The bombs sounded as if they were right in the garden, though when Mrs. Willett arrived home from the factory, she said Stepney had been largely spared, that most of the bombing had been over Westminster and Whitechapel.
I hope Alf and Binnie are all right, and that I did the right thing in not giving that letter to Mrs. Hodbin. Today was the thirteenth. If she sent the letter now, it probably wouldn’t arrive till after the City of Benares had sailed, and no other evacuee ship had sunk after that. And they’d be far safer in Canada than in London. Eileen borrowed a stamp from Theodore’s mother, wrote Mrs. Hodbin’s address on the envelope, intending to post the letter on the way to the tube station, and then changed her mind at the last moment. If the City of Benares hadn’t sailed…