But it’ll come in in the late afternoon, he thought, waiting anxiously for Mrs. Ives’s arrival.
But she didn’t come, Fordham didn’t have the Herald, and the sky was still clear when Sister Gabriel pulled the blackout curtains shut.
Even if saving Hardy did alter events, it can’t have affected the weather, he told himself. But in chaotic systems everything affected everything else in complicated and unpredictable ways. If a butterfly flapping its wings in Montana could cause a monsoon in China, then saving a soldier at Dunkirk could affect the weather in southeast England.
There were no sirens during the night, and the next morning the sky was still clear.
The fog could have been limited to London, he told himself.
When Sister Gabriel brought his breakfast, he asked her, “What happened last night? I thought I heard bombs.”
It was impossible to hear a bomb in Cripplegate from Dover, of course, but he hoped she’d say, “No, but London got it last night,” and then elaborate.
She didn’t. She gave him the same look she always gave Bevins and took his temperature. She looked at the thermometer, frowning. “Try to rest,” she said and left him to wait anxiously for Mrs. Ives. What if Mrs. Ives didn’t come again today? What if she never came back, like Mr. Powney?
She did, but not till late afternoon. “I’ve been down on first since yesterday morning,” she said, “assisting with the new patients. Nearly a dozen pilots. One of them crash-landed, and he-” she caught herself. “Oh, but you don’t want to hear about that. How about a nice book?”
“No, reading books makes my head ache. Can’t I have a newspaper? Please.”
“Oh, dear, I really shouldn’t. The nurses said you weren’t to read anything troubling…”
Troubling. “I don’t want to read the war news,” he lied. “I just want to work the crossword puzzle.”
“Oh,” she said, relieved, “well, in that case…” and handed him the Herald and a yellow lead pencil, and then stood there while he opened it to the puzzle. He’d have to at least pretend to work it. He started reading the clues. Six across: “The man between two hills is a sadist.”
What? Fifteen across: “This sign of the Zodiac has no connection with the fishes.” What kind of clues were these? He’d worked crosswords when he’d studied the history of games, but they’d had straightforward clues like “Spanish coin” and “marsh bird,” not, “The well brought-up help these over stiles.”
“Do you need any help?” Mrs. Ives asked kindly.
“No,” he said and quickly filled in the first set of spaces with random letters. Mrs. Ives moved on down the ward with her cart. As soon as she left, Mike quickly flipped to the front page. “London Church Bombed,” the headline read. “3 Killed, 27 Injured,” and there was a photo of the half-destroyed Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, complete with the toppled statue of Milton.
Thank God, he thought, though he couldn’t be certain till he’d seen what the response to the bombing was, which meant convincing Mrs. Ives to keep on giving him the paper.
But when he asked the next day, she said, “Oh, the crossword’s done you good. Your color’s much improved,” and handed over the Express without any argument.
On the twenty-seventh the headline read, “RAF Bombs Berlin!” and the next day, “Hitler Vows Revenge for Berlin Bombing.” He breathed a massive sigh of relief. But if he hadn’t altered events, then what had happened to the retrieval team?
They don’t know where I am, he thought. It was the only explanation. But why not? Even if they hadn’t been able to find out anything in Saltram-on-Sea, they’d known he’d intended to go to Dover. They’d have scoured the town, checked the police station and the morgue and all the hospitals. How many were there? He hadn’t had time to research that because of wasting that afternoon waiting for Dunworthy. “How many hospitals are there here?” he asked Sister Gabriel when she brought his medicine.
“Here?” she said blankly. “In England?”
“No, here in Dover.”
“I say, you have been out of it,” Fordham said from his bed. “You’re not in Dover.”
“Not in-? Where am I? What hospital is this?”
“The War Emergency Hospital,” Sister Gabriel said. “In Orpington.”
This Way to the Air Raid Shelter?
London-10 September 1940
IT TOOK EILEEN UNTIL TWO THE NEXT DAY SHUFFLED from bus to train to bus again-to get the children to London, by which time she’d spent over half of the money the vicar had given her on sandwiches and orange squash and reached the end of her patience with Alf and Binnie.
I am delivering them to their mother, and then I never want to see them again, she thought when they finally arrived at Euston Station. “Which bus do we take to get to Whitechapel?” she asked the station guard.
“Stepney’s closer than Whitechapel,” Binnie said. “You should take Theodore home first and then us.”
“I’m taking you to your house first, Binnie,” Eileen said.
“Not Binnie. I told you, my name’s Spitfire. Any rate, our mum won’t be there.”
“And if you take Theodore first,” Alf said, “we could help you find his street. You’ll likely get lost on your own.”
“I don’t want to go-” Theodore began.
“Not one word,” Eileen said. “Out of any of you. We’re going to Whitechapel. Which bus do we take for Whitechapel?” she asked the guard.
“I don’t know as you can get there at all, miss,” he said. “It was hit hard again last night.”
“I told you we should go to Stepney,” Binnie said.
“What sort of bombers were they?” Alf inquired.
“Shh,” Eileen said and asked the guard for the bus number.
He told her. “Though I doubt they’re running. And even if they are, the streets’ll be blocked off.”
He was right. They had to take three different buses and then get out and walk, and by the time they reached Whitechapel, it was half past four. Whitechapel looked like something out of Dickens-narrow, dark lanes and soot-blackened tenements. A pall of smoke hung over the area, and off in the distance Eileen could see flames. She felt guilty at the idea of abandoning Alf and Binnie to this, and even guiltier when she saw a tenement that had been bombed. One wall still stood, curtains at its blown-out windows, but the rest of it was a mound of timbers and plaster. Part of an upended kitchen chair stuck out of the mound, and she could see pieces of broken crockery and a shoe. Alf whistled. “Will ya look at that!” he said and would have climbed onto it-in spite of the rope barrier-if Eileen hadn’t caught hold of his shirt collar.
There was another mound of rubble on the corner and, at the end of the next street they crossed, the blackened skeleton of an entire row of houses.
What if when we get there, Alf and Binnie’s home has been hit? Eileen thought worriedly, but when they turned in to Gargery Lane, all the houses were intact, though they looked as if a good, hard push could topple them, let alone a bomb. “We can find our way from ’ere,” Alf said. “You needn’t go with us.”
She was sorely tempted, but she’d promised the vicar she’d hand them over to their mother personally. “Which one is yours?” Eileen asked him, and Alf pointed cheerfully at the flimsiest-looking tenement of all.
And it must be theirs because when she knocked on the front door, the woman who answered growled, “I thought we’d got rid of the two of you. You stay away from my Lily.”
When Eileen asked if Mrs. Hodbin was home, she snorted. “Mrs. Hodbin? That’s rich, that is. She’s no more a missus than I’m the Queen.”