Blackout (57 page)

The National Gallery had been hit, but an historian couldn’t affect where bombs fell. An incendiary bomb had started a small fire in the
House of Lords that a few minutes’ delay could have turned into a major blaze. An historian could have affected that, but the retrieval team would have had no reason to be there or at St. Thomas’s Hospital, which was hit the same night. A land mine had landed on Whitehall’s Hungerford Bridge. If it had gone off, it would have killed everyone in the War Office, including Churchill. That was a possibility, though that divergence point would only have lasted for the time it took to remove the bomb. Polly couldn’t find anything which would keep the net from opening for the five days since her drop had been damaged.

Though the event wouldn’t have to be the sort of thing that made the papers. In London now, a few minutes’ delay in getting to a shelter or in boarding a train could make a life-or-death difference. And it could be the sort of action that set a domino-like chain of events in motion that would take several days or weeks to play out. And in the meantime, there was nothing she could do but wait.

Or find some other historian who was here—and
not
in the Blitz—and use his drop. Who might be here now? Merope had said Gerald Phipps was doing something in World War II, but she hadn’t said what or when. Michael Davies was doing Dunkirk. He might be here. But Dunkirk had been over for nearly four months. He was probably in Pearl Harbor by now, or at the Battle of the Bulge, neither of which did her any good. He’d mentioned his roommate, but he’d been doing Singapore, also of no help. Polly frowned, trying to remember if he and Merope had mentioned anyone else who—

Merope. Might she still be in Backbury? When Polly’d seen her in Oxford, she’d said she still had months left on her assignment, but that might mean anything. She tried to remember if Merope had said anything else about how long her assignment was. Most of the children had been evacuated in September and October 1939. If Merope had been on a yearlong assignment, there was a chance she might still be there.

I need to write her immediately
, Polly thought. But what was her name? Eileen Something. An Irish name. O’Reilly or O’Malley. Or Rafferty. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember the name of the manor either. Had Merope even mentioned it?

There would scarcely be more than one manor near Backbury. But what if there were? And even if there was only one, she couldn’t send a letter addressed only to “Eileen the Irish Maid at the Manor near Backbury.”

I’ll have to go up to Backbury and find her
, she thought. She’d need to go
up there to use her drop at any rate, and going would be quicker than writing and then waiting for a letter back.

But what if she’s not there?
Polly thought.
I’ll have given up my job—and the best chance the retrieval team has of locating me—for naught. And what if it
is
a divergence point that’s standing in their way, and they come the moment I’m gone?
She’d better stay here.

But every day that went by increased the chance of Merope’s going back to Oxford and Polly’s missing her. And she needn’t quit her job to go find her—she could show Miss Snelgrove Props’s letter saying that her mother was gravely ill and that she needed to come at once. Miss Snelgrove could scarcely refuse to let her go in that sort of situation, and she’d been extremely understanding the day the shelter had been destroyed. And as far as the retrieval team went, Polly could tell Marjorie to tell anyone who came in asking for her that she worked there and when she’d be back.

And making the journey to Backbury would be better than sitting here fretting over what would happen if the retrieval team didn’t come by her deadline. But, given her recent run of luck, they’d arrive as soon as she left. Especially if the divergence point they were being kept from interfering with was the big attack on Fleet Street, which would happen Wednesday night.

I’ll give it till Thursday
, she thought.
Surely they’ll be here by then
. But they weren’t.

“COMMANDER HAROLD AND JONATHAN WERE KILLED AT
Dunkirk?” Mike said to Daphne. “No, they weren’t. They made it safely back to Dover. I was with them. The Commander helped put me on the stretcher—”

“That’s when you were hurt?” Daphne asked. “On that first journey?”

“Yes—first journey?”

She nodded. “When the
Lady Jane
turned up missing, the Commander’s granddaughter—Jonathan’s mum—was afraid they’d gone to Dunkirk. She asked Dad to go down to Dover to find out what he could, and the Admiralty told him they’d gone to Dunkirk on their own and brought troops back and then set off again immediately, but that they didn’t make it back that time. They didn’t know what had happened to them, but we do know they made it over to Dunkirk that second time. Mr. Powney saw them.”

“Mr. Powney? The farmer who’d gone to buy the bull?”

“Yes. That’s why he didn’t come back that day. He never made it to Hawkhurst. On his way there he found out about the rescue effort and went to Ramsgate to volunteer. They put him on a coast guard cutter, and he made three journeys and rescued ever so many soldiers.”

“And he saw the Commander and Jonathan?”

“Yes, in Dunkirk. On the thirtieth. They were loading troops onto the
Lady Jane
under heavy fire. He hailed them, but they were too far
away to hear him. And the
Daffodil
saw them leaving the east mole, but they weren’t seen after that. The officer who talked to Dad said it was likely a torpedo got them on the way back. Or a mine.”

Or a Stuka
, Mike thought, remembering the shriek of the diving plane.
Or another corpse in the propeller
.

“When your letter for him came, Miss Fintworth—she’s our postmistress—didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t give it to Jonathan’s mum—she’d gone to her people in Yorkshire after she got the bad news—and she didn’t like to send it back since it was plain you didn’t know what had happened, so she brought it to Dad to ask him what to do. I hope you don’t think we did wrong by opening it, but Dad said it might be urgent, being from a hospital and all, and when we read it and found out you’d been injured at Dunkirk, we thought you must have been with them. We knew you didn’t know”—she gave the gloves another twist—“how things had ended, or you wouldn’t have written the Commander, but we thought perhaps you were there when the
Lady Jane
was hit and then got separated from them somehow and been rescued, and that you knew what had happened.”

No, but I know why they died
, he thought. Because he’d untangled their propeller. He’d made it possible for them to go back again.

Daphne was looking questioningly at him.

“No, I was injured on that first run,” he managed to say. “I didn’t know they’d gone over there again. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said, looking down at her gloves. “Dad says it was the Commander’s foolhardiness got them killed. The Small Vessels Pool had turned the
Lady Jane
down, you see. Dad says he should have listened to them.”

“He wanted to help,” Mike said. “A lot of boats went over on their own, and it was a good thing. The Army was in a pretty bad spot.”

“And you went along to help them. I think it was marvelous of you to do that, being a Yank and everything. It was very brave. The officer told Dad that the Commander and Jonathan brought home nearly a hundred of our boys. He said they were true heroes.”

They were
, he thought.
You wanted to observe heroism, and you got your wish
. “Absolutely. They showed a lot of courage.”

Daphne nodded solemnly. “You were a hero as well. The nurse told me about your untangling the propeller and all that. She said you should have a medal.”

A medal
, he thought bitterly, for being where he wasn’t supposed to
be, for murderously altering events.
If I hadn’t unfouled that propeller, that bomb would have hit the
Lady Jane
and damaged her rudder. They wouldn’t have been able to make that second trip—

Daphne was looking worriedly at him. “I’ve tired you out,” she said, standing up and beginning to pull on her gloves. “I should go.”

“No, you can’t.” He hadn’t been able to ask her about the retrieval team yet. “Can’t you stay a little longer?”

She hesitated, looking uncertainly in the direction of the doors. “The nurse said I was only to stay a quarter of—”

“Please.” He reached for her hand. “It’s so nice having a visitor. Tell me what’s been happening in Saltram-on-Sea.”

“Oh, all right then,” she said, looking pleased. “We did have a bit of excitement last week. The Germans dropped a bomb in Mr. Damon’s field. We thought it was the invasion starting. Mr. Tompkins was all for ringing the church bells, but the vicar wouldn’t let him till we knew for certain. Mr. Tompkins said it would be too late by then—that they’d already have sent in saboteurs and spies, and they’d be landing soon—and they had a grand row, standing in front of the church.”

Spies. That gave him the opening he needed. “I suppose you’re all on the lookout for strangers, then?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. The Home Guard patrols the fields and the beach every night, and the mayor sent round a notice telling us to report any strangers in town to him immediately.”

“And have you had any? Strangers?”

“No. There were a good many reporters in town just after Dunkirk to speak to Mr. Powney and the others—”

“Did any of them come in the pub and talk to you?”

“You sound as though you’re jealous,” she said, cocking her head flirtatiously at him.

“No, I…” he stammered, caught off guard, “… I thought someone might have come looking for me from my newspaper. I told my editor I was going to Saltram-on-Sea and that I’d send him a story about the invasion preparations, and I thought when he didn’t hear from me, he might—”

“What does he look like, your editor?”

“Brown hair, medium height,” he improvised, “but he may have sent someone, another reporter or—has anyone asked about me?”

“No. They might have spoken to Dad, I suppose. If they did, he very likely told them you’d gone back to London. That’s what we thought you’d done.”

Which might mean the team was looking for him in London. “Daphne, if my editor or anyone else does come, will you tell them where I am and what’s happened? And ask your father if anyone inquired about me. If they did, write and tell me.”

“Oh, I will. I’ll write you even if no one comes. And I’ll come visit you again if Dad can spare me.” Again that flirtatious glance at him. “Next time I’ll manage a cake, I promise.”

The matron came in and announced that visiting hours were over. Daphne stood up. “Thank you for coming,” Mike said, “and for the grapes. And for telling me about the Commander and Jonathan. I’m so sorry.”

She nodded, her made-up face suddenly sad. “Miss Fintworth says not to give up hope, that they may still be alive, but if they are, why haven’t they come home or written to us or anything?”

“Time,” the matron said sternly.

“Goodbye. I’ll come again soon, and you needn’t worry, I won’t go out with anyone but you,” Daphne said, planted a lipsticky kiss on his cheek, and hurried out to more whistles.

“You lucky devil,” one of the patients called out.

Lucky. I killed an old man and a fourteen-year-old boy
. Here he’d been worried about saving Private Hardy’s life, and instead—
I should have refused to go in the water. I should have told the Commander I’d lied before, that I couldn’t swim
. Instead, he’d unfouled the propeller, and it had affected events, all right. It had gotten the Commander and Jonathan killed. And what else had it affected? What other damage had he done?

He lay awake well into the night, going over and over it, like an animal pacing its cage, and when he closed his eyes, trying to shut it out, he saw Jonathan and the Commander, heard the Stuka diving and the water splashing up where they’d been only moments before. If he hadn’t unfouled the propeller, the bomb would have hit the bow. They’d have begun taking on water, and one of the other boats would have come over to take everyone off and transfer them to—

But there hadn’t been any boats anywhere nearby, and there’d been dozens of Stukas. And with a damaged bow, they’d have been a sitting duck. On its next pass, the Stuka would have hit them amidships and killed everybody on board. Was that what was supposed to have happened? What
would
have happened if he hadn’t been there?

He sat up in bed, considering the implications of that possibility. If they were supposed to have been killed, if the
Lady Jane
had had an asterisk next to it on that list he hadn’t memorized, then he’d altered events not by getting them killed, but by saving them.

And a chaotic system had built-in mechanisms for countering alterations. It had negative loops that could tamp down effects or cancel them out altogether. History was full of examples. Assassins missed, guns misfired, bombs failed to go off. Hitler had survived an attempt on his life because the bomb had been put on the wrong side of a table leg. A telegram warning of the Pearl Harbor attack had been sent in time to have the ships take defensive measures, but it had gotten put in the wrong decoding pile and hadn’t arrived till after the attack.

And if the Commander and Jonathan weren’t supposed to have been rescued, that would have been easy to correct. Had their deaths on that second trip been part of a negative loop, of a cancellation? If it was, then he might not have done any damage after all. And that was why he’d been allowed to go to Dunkirk, because his actions hadn’t had a lasting effect on the outcome. But it still left Jonathan and the Commander dead. And what about Private Hardy?

Unless his saving of him had been canceled out, too. Hardy’d been drenched when he climbed aboard. He might have gotten pneumonia and—