seeing a bit farther. But the fog was even thicker here, and growing gloomier by the minute. She could scarcely see down to where the road curved off to the right. And she’d been wrong about the all clear having gone, because two women emerged out of the fog like ghosts and crossed the road ahead of her, obviously on their way home from a shelter; one of them was carrying a pillow. They walked quickly down the road and were swallowed by the darkness.
Polly started down the road past the buildings that faced the alley where the drop was: a bakery, a knitting shop, and on the corner, a bay-windowed chemist’s. They all looked shabby and in need of repair. She hoped that was due to war shortages and not because slippage had sent her through to the East End.
I need to make certain I’m not in Whitechapel or Stepney, she thought. That was where the raids on the tenth had been, and if there’d been locational slippage, and she was in the East End, she needed to go straight back to the alley and Oxford, Mr. Dunworthy or no Mr. Dunworthy.
She peered in the shops’ windows, looking for a notice that would give her a clue to her location. There weren’t any, but the presence of windows confirmed she was when she was supposed to be. None of them were broken, and only one shopkeeper had pasted crisscrossing strips of paper onto the glass to reinforce it. The Blitz couldn’t have been going on more than a few days.
A ghostly black taxi went by, and a man in a bowler hurried across the road ahead of her, walking even more rapidly than the women. Late for work, Polly thought, which meant it was even later than she’d thought. He had a newspaper under his arm. There must be an open newsagent’s nearby. She could buy the Times and confirm this was the tenth, at the least. And ask the newsagent what road this was. She would need a newspaper, at any rate, to look for a flat.
But there was no newsagent she could see on this side of the road. She stepped to the edge of the pavement and peered into the gloom. If a bus came by, it would have a destination board, though the fog was making it so dark she wasn’t certain she’d be able to read it. She might be able to hail it, though, and tell the conductor she’d got lost in the fog and ask where this was.
But no buses—or taxis, or automobiles—came by. She waited several minutes in the thickening darkness, listening for engine sounds, and then gave up and crossed the street. And wasn’t even to the curb before a bus roared by.
Idiot, she thought. If Mr. Dunworthy had seen that, he’d have yanked her out of the Blitz so quickly it would have made her head spin. And in her attempt to leap out of its way, she’d missed seeing its destination board.
There was no newsagent’s on this side of the road either—only a butcher shop and next to it a greengrocer’s. T. Tubbins, Greengrocer, the lettering on the appropriately green awning read, and baskets full of cabbages stood on both sides of the door. It wasn’t open yet, but on the right-hand window was an official notice of some sort.
Polly went closer to squint at it, hoping it was air-raid instructions that would tell the address of the nearest shelter, or at the least have “Borough of Marylebone” printed at the bottom, but it was merely a list of rationing rules.
Two shops farther on was a tobacconist’s, and it was not only open, but on the counter lay an array of newspapers. Behind it, a man with an appropriately tobacco-stained mustache said, “May I help you, miss?”
“Yes,” she said, stepping into the doorway. “I—” and an air-raid siren began to wind up into its distinctive wail. Polly turned and looked back out the door, bewildered.
“Earlier every night,” the man said bitterly.
“Earlier?” she repeated blankly.
He nodded. “Last night it was half past seven. And now tonight the alert…”
The alert. That was the up-and-down wail of the air-raid alert, not the all clear. And at the realization, everything she had seen clicked suddenly into place. It wasn’t morning, it was evening, and the women she’d seen hadn’t been coming home from a shelter, they’d been going to one.
“Better go along home,” the shopkeeper said, taking hold of the door.