he climbed aboard. He might have gotten pneumonia and—
He was the one who told the nurses I unfouled the propeller, Mike thought suddenly. He’d assumed it had been the Commander, but Daphne’d said they’d set out again immediately, and that would explain why the hospital hadn’t known his name. But why would Hardy have gone with him to the hospital?
Because he was being admitted, too. Hardy hadn’t said anything about being injured, but he might not have realized he was.
Just like me, Mike thought, and when Sister Carmody came in to open the blackout curtains in the morning, he said, “Can you find out something for me? I need to know if a patient was admitted to the hospital in Dover the same day I was. His name was Hardy.”
She looked at him doubtfully. “You’re certain this is something you’ve remembered and not something you read about?”
“Read about?”
“Yes. Amnesia patients’ memories are often confused. And, you know, ‘Kiss me, Hardy’ and all that.”
“What?” he said, completely lost.
“Oh, I forgot, you’re an American. When Lord Nelson was fatally injured at the Battle of Trafalgar, his last words were ‘Kiss me, Hardy,’” she explained. “Hardy was his aide de camp. But if you didn’t know that, then it can’t have been something you read, can it?”
“No. Can you find out? Please. It’s important,” and his urgency must have communicated itself to her because when she brought his breakfast, she told him she’d rung up Dover, but that no one named Hardy had been admitted when he was.
Which didn’t prove anything. He could have gotten sick later. Or been injured on his way back to his unit, he thought, remembering the bombed train he’d read about. Or in Dover. The docks had been shelled. Hardy could have helped put Mike in the ambulance, told the driver about the fouled propeller, and been killed five minutes later. This was a war. There were hundreds of ways to cancel things out. But if Mike’s altering of events had been canceled out and he hadn’t lost the war, then why wasn’t the retrieval team here? He wished he’d reminded Daphne to ask her father as she left. He was afraid she’d forget.
But she didn’t. A letter arrived by the Tuesday afternoon post. “I asked Dad,” she wrote on scented paper, “but he said no one’s been in the pub asking about you.”
But that didn’t mean they hadn’t been there. She’d said there’d been lots of reporters in the town after Dunkirk, and “We all thought you’d gone back to London.” The team could have asked Mr. Tompkins or one of the fishermen and then have gone to London to look for him, with no idea they should be checking military hospitals. But, even in 1940, London had been a huge place. How would they have gone about trying to find him?
Polly Churchill will be there as soon as the Blitz starts next week, he thought. They’d try to contact her to see if he’d been in touch with her. Which meant he needed to get in touch with her. But how? She’d said she was going to work in an Oxford Street department store, but he didn’t know which one, or even what name she’d be here under. He’d have to go to London and find her.
But if he was able to get to London, then he was able to get to his drop. And the last thing he wanted to do was find himself in the middle of the Blitz. He needed a way to contact the retrieval team now, from here, before he was thrown out. When he’d asked Sister Carmody about his status, she’d said, “Matron spoke to the Admiralty, and they said, since the crews on all the small craft had to sign on for a month’s service in the Navy before they left for Dunkirk, you have a perfect right to be here.”
But that had been the small craft formed into convoys at Dover. He hadn’t signed on for anything, and it was only a matter of time before they found that out—another reason he needed to contact the retrieval team now.
Just like they’d be trying to do if they thought he was in London. They’d be trying to communicate with him. They’d send a message telling him where they were and asking him to get in touch with them. Like those personal ads he’d read: If anyone has information regarding the whereabouts of time traveler Mike Davis, last seen at