Free All Clear by Connie Willis Page B

instead I ended up playing matador.”
    “With a tank as his cape,” Cess said, and launched into an account of their adventures with the bull and his charging of the tank, which Prism and Moncrieff both found highly amusing.
    “Today won’t be nearly so dangerous,” Moncrieff said. “And don’t worry, we’ll have you back to the castle in plenty of time.”
    At which point, I will no doubt be sent to blow up more tanks
.
    “Speaking of dangers,” Prism said, “you need to read this.” He handed a sheet of paper back to Ernest over the seat. “It’s a memo from Lady Bracknell.”
    “Warning us,” Cess said, “about”—he lowered his voice to a sinister whisper—“spies in our midst.”
    Ernest snatched the paper from Prism. “Spies?”
    “Yes,” Cess said. “It says we’re to look out for suspicious behavior, particularly for people who seem unfamiliar with local customs. And we’re not to discuss our mission with
anyone
, no matter how harmless and trustworthy they seem, because they might be German spies. That bull this morning, for instance.”
    “It’s not a joking matter,” Prism said. “If there’s a security breach, it could endanger the entire invasion.”
    “I know,” Cess said. “But whom exactly does Bracknell think we’d talk to? The only people we ever see are irate farmers, except for Ernest here—”
    “And the only people I talk to are irate editors who want to know why my articles are always late,” Ernest said. He needed to get thisconversation off the topic of spies. “And I doubt very much that they’ll believe I missed their deadline because I was having tea with the Queen. How are we supposed to address her, by the way? Your Majesty? Your Highness?”
    “There! You see that?” Cess said, pointing an accusing finger at him. “Unfamiliarity with local customs. Definitely suspicious behavior. And he behaved
very
oddly around that bull. Are you a spy, Worthing?” he said, and when Ernest didn’t answer, “Well,
are
you?”

We shall fight in the offices
 … 
and in the hospitals
.
    — WINSTON CHURCHILL ,
1940

London—27 October 1940
    THE MOMENT POLLY RETURNED FROM SEEING MARJORIE , Eileen said, “Mr. Fetters rang up while you were gone. He said they’d found three bodies in Padgett’s.” Which meant Polly hadn’t had to go to the hospital after all.
    She wished she hadn’t. She’d gone there to prove the number of dead wasn’t a discrepancy so that Mike could stop worrying that he’d altered events, only to find that she’d altered them.
    Don’t be ridiculous
, she thought.
Historians can’t do that
. And there were dozens of reasons why Mr. Dunworthy could have got the time of the St. Paul’s UXB’s removal wrong. The newspaper could have moved the time up to throw the Germans off. During the V-1 and V-2 attacks, they’d printed false accounts of where the rockets fell to trick the Germans into shortening their range. They might have done something like that with the UXB, to convince the Nazis the bomb was easier to defuse than it had been. Or they could simply have got the time wrong, like the nurses at Padgett’s had got the number wrong.
    Y
ou thought the number of fatalities was a discrepancy
, she reassured herself,
and it turned out it wasn’t. And look at your last assignment. For a few weeks there, you were convinced you’d altered events, but you hadn’t. Everything worked out exactly the same as it would have if you hadn’t been there
.
    And this will, too. The doctors say Marjorie’s going to make a full recovery, and it isn’t as if she married her airman or got knocked up. In a few days
she’ll be out of hospital and back at Townsend Brothers, just as if nothing had happened. And all I have to do is make certain Mike doesn’t find out what Marjorie said. And that Eileen kept the Hodbins from going on the
City of Benares.
    She wondered if she should caution Eileen again not to say anything about that, but she didn’t