right,” she said. She turned to Michael. “Let’s go to the drop.”
“Great,” he said. “Where is it?”
“What?”
“Your drop. Where is it? Is it far from here?”
They were both looking at her expectantly. “You’re not the retrieval team, Michael?” Polly said.
“The retrieval team? No.”
I should have known, Polly thought dully. All the clues were there: his injured foot, his not knowing Merope was here, his remark that he’d been searching for her for almost a month.
“Wait, I don’t understand,” Merope said, looking bewilderedly from one to the other. “Neither of you is the retrieval team? But then what are you doing here, Michael?”
“I can’t get to my drop,” he said. “I came to London to find Polly so I could use hers—”
“So did I,” Merope said, “but when I went to Townsend Brothers, they told me you’d gone back, Polly, so I—”
“Look, we can discuss all this in Oxford,” Michael said impatiently. “Right now we need to get to your drop, Polly. How far—?”
“It’s in Kensington,” Polly said, “but we can’t use it either. Why can’t you get to your drop?”
An HE crashed down up the street, spewing glass everywhere. The three of them instinctively put their hands up to shield their faces. “We’ve got to get to a shelter,” Michael said. “Which one’s nearest?”
“Oxford Circus,” Polly said and led them at a trot along the street to the entrance and down the steps. The iron grille had already been pulled across. The guard had to open it for them. “You lot are cutting it close,” he said as they ran in. “You’d best get below straightaway.”
They didn’t need any encouraging. They ran for the turnstiles. “I haven’t any money,” Merope said. “My handbag—”
Polly fumbled in her bag for extra tokens. Another HE thudded nearby, shaking the station.
“Are you certain it’s safe in here?” Merope said, looking nervously up at the ceiling.
“Yes,” Polly said, handing her and Michael tokens. “Oxford Circus wasn’t hit till the end of the Blitz.” She pushed through the turnstile and ran over to the escalators.
“Oh, that’s right,” Merope said, behind her. “I forgot. You know where all the bombs fell.”
Till the first of January, Polly thought, stepping onto the long escalator. Which means we’d better have got to Michael’s drop by then.
What did he mean, he couldn’t get to it? She turned to ask him, but he was several steps above them, limping down to where they were, leaning heavily on the moving rubber rail. “Are you all right?” Merope asked. “You didn’t sprain your ankle chasing me in Padgett’s, did you?”
“No,” Michael said, coming down onto the step with Merope, “I—it was hit by shrapnel. At Dunkirk.”
Dunkirk? Polly felt a twinge of panic. Was that why he couldn’t get to his drop, because it was in Dunkirk? If it was, they wouldn’t be able to reach it till the end of the war, and that was too late. But his drop couldn’t be in Dunkirk. And he couldn’t have been there either.
“What were you doing in Dunkirk?” Merope was asking.
“Shh,” Michael said, pointing below them. They were to the foot of the escalator, which was so jammed with people they had difficulty getting off, and once they did, even more difficulty getting through the crowd. The entire hall was packed solid with people. Everyone on Oxford Street—and Regent Street and New Bond Street—had fled down here when the bombing began, and they all had parcels and shopping bags and wet umbrellas to add to the crush.
The tunnels were just as bad, and Polly knew from experience that the platforms would be even worse. “This is impossible,” Michael said. “We’ve got to find a place where we can talk. What about another tube station? The trains are still running, aren’t they?”
She nodded and led them through the crowd, saying over and over, “Sorry, we’re trying to get to our train, sorry…”
“No use going out to the platform, dearie,” a woman in the archway to the Central Line platform said. “The Central Line trains aren’t running.”
“What about the Bakerloo Line?” Polly asked.
The woman shrugged. “No idea, dearie.”
“We’ll have to go back upstairs,” Polly told Michael and Merope. If they could get there, if they could even get out of this entryway and into the tunnel—
“There’s a space!” Merope cried and, before Polly could stop her, ran out onto the platform. When Polly and Michael caught up to her, she was standing happily on a blue blanket held down at each corner by a shoe.