Free All Clear by Connie Willis
Authors: Connie Willis
Eileen she intended to do and go visit Marjorie. It would mean one less lie she could be caught in.
But it wasn’t ten yet, and at any rate she couldn’t go in the front door when she was supposed to be hurrying off to tell her Padgett’s friend that James Dunworthy was all right.
She knew which ward Marjorie was in from when she’d attempted to visit before, so she wouldn’t need to ask, but if the admitting nurse saw her going up …
She found the emergency entrance and waited out of sight till an ambulance pulled in, bells clanging, and began to unload patients, and then walked purposefully past them and the attendants coming out to help.
From there, she darted up the first flight of stairs she saw to the fourth floor, and into Marjorie’s ward. And found she needn’t have gone to all the trouble of inquiring after a fictitious patient to find out what she needed to know. She could have simply asked Marjorie.
“I was wrong about five people being killed. There were only three,” Marjorie said, sitting propped against her pillows, her arm in a sling. “None of them worked at Padgett’s. They’ve no idea who they were orwhat they were doing there. Like me. If I’d been killed, no one would have known what I was doing in Jermyn Street either.”
“What
were
you doing there?”
“I went to meet Tom,” she said, and at Polly’s blank look she explained, “the airman I told you about. He’d been after me to go away with him, and I wouldn’t, but then when you were nearly killed at St. George’s, I thought, why not? I might be killed tomorrow. I’ve got to snatch at life while I can.”
Polly’s heart began to pound. “You changed your mind because of me?”
“Yes. When I saw you that morning, your skirt torn and your face all covered in plaster, it brought it home to me that you might have
died
—that
I
could die at any moment. And that working at Townsend’s would have been all there was to my life. And I decided I wasn’t going to die without ever doing anything, so the next time Tom came in—it was the Friday you went to see your mother—I told him I’d go away with him.”
And when she went to meet him, she’d been hit, buried, nearly killed.
And I did it
, Polly thought.
I’m the one who put her there
.
She’d been assuring Mike that he hadn’t saved Hardy, that Hardy would have seen the boat even without Mike’s pocket torch or been rescued by some other boat, but there was no other reason why Marjorie would have been in Jermyn Street that Friday night. No other reason for her broken arm and cracked ribs, for her having spent all those hours in the rubble, for her nearly having been killed.
But that’s impossible
, Polly thought.
Historians can’t alter events. The net won’t let them
.
Unless Mike’s right
. And suddenly she thought of the UXB at St. Paul’s. What if it hadn’t been an error in the historical record that it had been removed on Saturday and not Sunday? What if the time difference was a discrepancy?
One does not conduct deceptions merely to deceive. It is a kind of game, but a kind of game played in deadly earnest for compelling reasons and with dangerous consequences
.
— WORLD WAR II BRITISH SECRET
INTELLIGENCE SERVICE MANUAL
Kent—April 1944
“THE
QUEEN
?” ERNEST SAID. “I CAN’T VISIT THE QUEEN . Cess and I have been up all night inflating tanks. I need to go to Croydon and deliver this week’s newspaper articles and letters to the
Call
. I’ve already missed the Sudbury Weekly
Shopper
’s deadline. I can’t afford to miss another one.”
“Your royal sovereign,” Prism said, “is far more important than—what is it you were writing up yesterday? A garden party?”
“Tea party. For the officers of the Twenty-first Airborne, newly arrived from Bradley Field. That’s not the point. The point is that these stories must go in on schedule or the troop movements will have to be completely redone.”
“Prism will help you,”
But it wasn’t ten yet, and at any rate she couldn’t go in the front door when she was supposed to be hurrying off to tell her Padgett’s friend that James Dunworthy was all right.
She knew which ward Marjorie was in from when she’d attempted to visit before, so she wouldn’t need to ask, but if the admitting nurse saw her going up …
She found the emergency entrance and waited out of sight till an ambulance pulled in, bells clanging, and began to unload patients, and then walked purposefully past them and the attendants coming out to help.
From there, she darted up the first flight of stairs she saw to the fourth floor, and into Marjorie’s ward. And found she needn’t have gone to all the trouble of inquiring after a fictitious patient to find out what she needed to know. She could have simply asked Marjorie.
“I was wrong about five people being killed. There were only three,” Marjorie said, sitting propped against her pillows, her arm in a sling. “None of them worked at Padgett’s. They’ve no idea who they were orwhat they were doing there. Like me. If I’d been killed, no one would have known what I was doing in Jermyn Street either.”
“What
were
you doing there?”
“I went to meet Tom,” she said, and at Polly’s blank look she explained, “the airman I told you about. He’d been after me to go away with him, and I wouldn’t, but then when you were nearly killed at St. George’s, I thought, why not? I might be killed tomorrow. I’ve got to snatch at life while I can.”
Polly’s heart began to pound. “You changed your mind because of me?”
“Yes. When I saw you that morning, your skirt torn and your face all covered in plaster, it brought it home to me that you might have
died
—that
I
could die at any moment. And that working at Townsend’s would have been all there was to my life. And I decided I wasn’t going to die without ever doing anything, so the next time Tom came in—it was the Friday you went to see your mother—I told him I’d go away with him.”
And when she went to meet him, she’d been hit, buried, nearly killed.
And I did it
, Polly thought.
I’m the one who put her there
.
She’d been assuring Mike that he hadn’t saved Hardy, that Hardy would have seen the boat even without Mike’s pocket torch or been rescued by some other boat, but there was no other reason why Marjorie would have been in Jermyn Street that Friday night. No other reason for her broken arm and cracked ribs, for her having spent all those hours in the rubble, for her nearly having been killed.
But that’s impossible
, Polly thought.
Historians can’t alter events. The net won’t let them
.
Unless Mike’s right
. And suddenly she thought of the UXB at St. Paul’s. What if it hadn’t been an error in the historical record that it had been removed on Saturday and not Sunday? What if the time difference was a discrepancy?
One does not conduct deceptions merely to deceive. It is a kind of game, but a kind of game played in deadly earnest for compelling reasons and with dangerous consequences
.
— WORLD WAR II BRITISH SECRET
INTELLIGENCE SERVICE MANUAL
Kent—April 1944
“THE
QUEEN
?” ERNEST SAID. “I CAN’T VISIT THE QUEEN . Cess and I have been up all night inflating tanks. I need to go to Croydon and deliver this week’s newspaper articles and letters to the
Call
. I’ve already missed the Sudbury Weekly
Shopper
’s deadline. I can’t afford to miss another one.”
“Your royal sovereign,” Prism said, “is far more important than—what is it you were writing up yesterday? A garden party?”
“Tea party. For the officers of the Twenty-first Airborne, newly arrived from Bradley Field. That’s not the point. The point is that these stories must go in on schedule or the troop movements will have to be completely redone.”
“Prism will help you,”