“No.”
And even if you did, you wouldn’t tell me, but it was only for five weeks. She handed her the money.
Mrs. Rickett pocketed it. “No male visitors abovestairs. No smoking or drinking, and no cooking in your room. On weekdays and Saturdays, breakfast is at seven and supper at six. Sunday dinner’s at one o’clock, and there’s a cold collation for supper.” She held out her hand. “I’ll need your ration book.”
Polly handed it to her. “When is breakfast?” she asked, hoping it was soon.
“Your board doesn’t start till tomorrow,” Mrs. Rickett said, and Polly had to resist the impulse to snatch the ration book back and tell her she’d look elsewhere. “Here’s your room key.” Mrs. Rickett handed it to her. “And your latch key.”
“Thank you,” Polly said, trying to inch to the door, but she had a few more rules to deliver. “No children and no pets. I require a fortnight’s notice of departure. I hope you’re not frightened of the bombs like my last boarder.”
“No,” Polly said. Just so time-lagged I can hardly stand.
“Your blackout curtains must be pulled by five o’clock, so if you won’t be back from work by then, do them before you leave in the morning. You’ll have to pay any fines for blackout infractions,” she said and finally left.
Polly sank down on the bed. She needed to go find the drop so she’d know where it was from here and from the church, then find the tube station and go to Oxford Street to see what time the stores opened tomorrow. But she was so tired. The time-lag was even worse than last time. Then, a good night’s sleep had been all she needed to adjust. But even though she’d slept nearly eight hours last night in the shelter, she felt as exhausted as if she hadn’t had any sleep at all.
And she wasn’t likely to get much in the coming days. She couldn’t count on being able to sleep through the bombing every night. The contemps had all complained about being sleep-deprived during the Blitz.
It would be smart to catch up on sleep while I can, she thought, though she actually had no choice. She was almost too drowsy to climb into bed. She kicked her shoes off, took off her jacket and skirt so they wouldn’t get wrinkled, crawled into the creaking-springed bed, and fell instantly asleep.
She woke half an hour later and then lay there. And lay there. After what seemed like hours and was actually twenty minutes, she got up, cursing the unpredictable effects of time-lag, dressed, and went out. There was no one in the corridor and no sound from any of the rooms.
No one else seems to be having difficulty sleeping, she thought resentfully, but when she went downstairs she could hear voices from the direction of the dining room, and was suddenly starving.
Of course you’re starving, she thought, letting herself out. You haven’t eaten in a hundred and twenty years. There’d been a teashop on Lampden Road. Perhaps it was open. She walked back to St. George’s, counting streets and noting landmarks for future reference. And planning what she’d have to eat for breakfast. Bacon and eggs, she decided. It might be the last time she had the chance. Bacon was rationed, eggs were already in short supply, and she had a feeling Mrs. Rickett’s table would be spartan.
She reached the church. A woman carrying a prayer book was standing outside the front door. “I beg your pardon,” Polly said, “can you direct me to Lampden Road?”
“Lampden Road? You’re on it.”
“Oh,” Polly said, “thank you,” and walked rapidly up the road as if she knew where she were going. The woman was looking after her, her prayer book clutched to her bosom.
I hope she hasn’t read one of those “Report Anyone Behaving Suspiciously” posters, Polly thought.
The woman was right. This was definitely Lampden Road. Polly recognized its distinctive curve from the night before. The church must be nearer to the drop than she’d thought. She crossed a side street and saw the chemist’s on the next corner, and, beyond it, the teashop, which unfortunately wasn’t open. On up the street were the newsagent’s and the greengrocer’s she’d seen last night with the baskets of cabbages outside and “T. Tubbins, Greengrocer,” above the door.
Which meant the drop was only a few yards away in the next alley, even though she thought she’d come much farther in the dark. The warden must have taken her some roundabout way. She turned toward the alley, wondering if she should go through right now and give the lab her address and report on the slippage. Badri had specifically asked her to note how much there was. She wondered if he’d been half-expecting something like this. Four and a half days’ slippage had to be due to a divergence point, and the beginning of the Blitz had been rife with them. That was why she’d arranged to come through on the tenth rather than the seventh.
But if she reported in now, she’d need to go through again after she was hired on at a department store, and she didn’t want to give Mr. Dunworthy additional opportunities to cancel her assignment.
I’ll go tomorrow, after I’ve been hired on, she thought, and checked the alley to make certain it was the right one. It was-she could see the barrels and the chalked Union Jack and “London kan take it” on the wall-and then walked back to Lampden Road to look for an open restaurant.
There was nothing to the north but houses. She walked back down past St. George’s to the curve of the road, but there was nothing that way either except a shut-up confectioner’s, a tailor’s, and an ARP post with sandbags stacked on either side of the door.
I should have offered to pay extra to have my board begin today, she thought, and walked down to Notting Hill Gate Station, hoping the shelter canteens in the Underground stations had been set up by now and were open, but the only sign of food in the entire station was a currant bun being consumed by a small boy on the Central Line platform.
Surely there’ll be a canteen open in Oxford Circus, she thought. It’s a much larger station, but there wasn’t, and Oxford Street was deserted. Polly walked down the long shopping street, looking at the shut shops and department stores: Peter Robinson, Townsend Brothers, massive Selfridges. They looked like palaces rather than stores with their stately gray stone facades and pillars.
And indestructible. Except for the small printed cards in several stores’ windows announcing “safe and comfortable shelter accommodations,” and the yellow-green gas-detecting paint patches on the red pillar postboxes, there was no sign here that there was a war on. Bourne and Hollingsworth was advertising “The Latest in Ladies’ Hats for Autumn,” and Mary Marsh “Modish Dancing Frocks,” and Cook’s window was still calling itself “The Place to Make Your Travel Arrangements.”
To where? Polly wondered. Obviously not Paris, which Hitler had just occupied, along with the rest of Europe. John Lewis and Company was having a sale on fur coats. Not for long, Polly thought, stopping in front of the huge square store, trying to memorize the building and the displays in its wide-fronted windows. By Wednesday morning, it would all be reduced to a charred ruin.
She walked past it toward Marble Arch, noting the stores’ posted opening times and looking for “Shop Assistant Wanted” cards in the windows, but the only one she saw was at Padgett’s, which was on Mr. Dunworthy’s forbidden list even though it wouldn’t be hit till October twenty-fifth, three days after the end of her mission.
She also looked for somewhere to eat, but every restaurant she saw had a Closed Sundays sign, and there was no one to ask. She finally spotted a teenaged boy and girl standing outside Parson’s, but as she started over to them, Polly saw they were poring over a map, which meant they weren’t from here either. “We could go to the Tower of London,” the girl said, pointing at the map, “and see the ravens.”
The boy, who didn’t look any older than Colin, shook his head. “They’re using it for a prison, like in the old days, only now it’s German spies, not royalty.”