of the Times and tried again. And again, cursing the uncooperative string and wondering why Townsend Brothers couldn’t use cellophane tape instead. She knew it had been invented. She’d used it when—
A bomb exploded nearby with a sudden cellar-shaking crash, and Nelson leaped up, barking wildly. Polly jumped, and the newsprint tore across.
“What was that?” Miss Laburnum demanded sleepily.
“Stray five-hundred-pounder,” Mr. Simms said, stroking his dog’s head.
Mr. Dorming listened and then nodded. “They’re on their way home,” he said and lay back down, but after a few minutes of silence, the raids abruptly started up again, the anti-aircraft guns beginning to pound, the planes roaring overhead.
Mr. Dorming sat up again, and then the rector and Lila, who said disgustedly, “Oh, not again!” The others, one by one, were waking up and staring nervously at the ceiling. Polly kept wrapping, determined to nail the skill down before morning. There was a clatter, like hail hitting the street above them.
“Incendiaries,” Mr. Simms said.
A crump, and then a long, screaming whoosh, and a pair of explosions. It wasn’t as deafening as it had been the night before, but the rector walked over to Sir Godfrey, who was reading a letter, and said quietly, “The raids seem to be bad again tonight. Would you mind terribly, Sir Godfrey, gracing us with another performance?”
“I should be honored,” Sir Godfrey said, folding up his letter, putting it in his coat pocket, and standing up. “What will you have? Much Ado? Or one of the tragedies?”
“Sleeping Beauty,” Trot, on her mother’s lap, said.
“Sleeping Beauty?” he roared. “Out of the question. I am Sir Godfrey Kingsman. I do not do pantomime,” which should have reduced Trot to tears, but didn’t.
“Do the one about the thunder again,” she said.
“The Tempest,” he said. “A far better choice,” and Trot beamed.
He truly is wonderful, Polly thought, wishing she had time to watch him instead of having to practice wrapping.
“Oh, no, do Macbeth, Sir Godfrey,” Miss Laburnum said. “I’ve always longed to see you in—”
Sir Godfrey had drawn himself up to his full height. “Do you not know calling the Scottish play by its name brings bad luck?” he boomed at her, then looked up at the ceiling and listened for a moment to the crashing and thud of bombs as if he expected one to come down on them in retribution. “No, dear lady,” he said more calmly. “We have had enough this fortnight of overreaching ambition and violence. There are fog and filthy air enough abroad tonight.”
He bowed sweepingly to Trot. “‘The thunder one’ it shall be, ‘full of sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.’ But if I am to be Prospero, I must have a Miranda.” He strode over to Polly and extended his hand to her. “As forfeit for having mutilated my Times,” he said, looking down at the torn newspaper, “Miss…?”
“Sebastian,” she said, “and I’m sorry I—”
“No matter,” he said absently. He was looking at her thoughtfully. “Not Sebastian, but his twin Viola.”
“I thought you said her name was Miranda,” Trot said.
“It is,” he said, and under his breath, “We shall do Twelfth Night another time.”
He pulled her to standing. “‘Come, daughter, attend, and I shall relate how we came unto this island beset by strange winds.’” He produced his book from his breast pocket and handed it to her. “Page eight,” he whispered. “Scene two. ‘If by your art, dearest father—’”
She knew the speech, but a shopgirl in 1940 wouldn’t, so she took the book and pretended to read her line. “‘If by your art, dearest father, you have put the wild waters in this roar,’” she read, “‘allay them. The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch—’”
“‘Can’st thou remember a time before we came unto this cell?’” he asked.
“‘’Tis far off,’” she said, thinking of Oxford, “‘and rather like a dream than an assurance that my remembrance warrants—’”
“‘What seest thou else,’” he said, looking into her eyes, “‘in the dark backward and abysm of time?’”
Why, he knows I’m from the future, she thought, and then, He’s only speaking his lines, he can’t possibly know, and completely missed her cue. “‘What foul play… ’” he prompted.
She had no idea what part of the page they were on. “‘What foul play had we that we came from thence?’” she said. “‘Or blessed was’t we did?’”
“‘Both, both, my girl! By foul play, as thou sayst, were we heav’d thence, but blessedly holp hither,’” he said, taking hold of her hands, which still held