"Unless the retrieval team's there in Saltram-on-Sea. Or unless she doesn't know where they are. I may have to track them down after I've talked to her. I'll phone you as soon as I've found them."

"But if they're in Saltram-on-Sea, how will we get there?" Eileen asked worriedly. "You said it was a restricted area."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Mike said.

Eileen was still looking anxious.

"Don't worry. If the retrieval team's here, they can go back through to Oxford and get you all the passes and papers you need. Or they may decide it's easier to set up another drop closer to London. Look, I'll call you as soon as I know what the plan is."

"How much money do you think you'll need?" Polly asked, digging in her shoulder bag. "Never mind. Take this." She handed him some money.

"What about you two?" he asked.

"I've kept back enough for our tube fares, and we'll be paid the day after tomorrow."

She handed him a handwritten list. "Here are the raids on London and the southeast for the next week. The Luftwaffe was concentrating mostly on the Midlands and the ports in December, so it's not a very long list, and I'm sorry I don't know more about the raids on southeastern England. I didn't have those implanted. Oh, and when you get to Dover, you need to be especially careful. It was under bombardment for nearly the entire war. The list I made for you only goes to the twentieth. If you think you'll be gone longer than-"

He shook his head, folded up the paper, and put it in his pocket. "We'll be back in Oxford long before that."

"Oh! Wouldn't it be heaven if we were home by Christmas?" Eileen said rapturously.

"It would," Mike said, "but first I've got to get to Saltram-on-Sea, which means I've got to get to Victoria Station before the Underground shuts down. Are there any raids tonight, Polly?"

"Yes," she said, "but not till 10:45."

"Then if I want to be out of London before they start, I'd better get going."

"Do you want us to go with you to Victoria?" Polly asked.

"No, you need to be here where the retrieval team can find you, in case they gave up on me. Is your play group still putting on The Admirable Crichton?"

"No, now we're in rehearsals for A Christmas Carol."

"You'd better tell them you can't do it," he said.

He gave both of them a peck on the cheek, said, "I'll call as soon as I know anything," and took off. If he could get an express to Dover, he could be there by midnight and on the main road to Saltram-on-Sea by dawn and maybe be able to hitch a ride with a farmer heading up the coast early.

But Polly had been right. The trains were jammed, and as the agent informed him when he bought his ticket, military personnel were being given first priority.

"I'm willing to stand in the corridor," Mike said.

"First priority is standing in the corridor," the ticket agent said. "I can get you out on the 2:14 Tuesday."

"Tuesday?"

"Sorry, sir. It's the best I can do. The holidays, you know. And the war, of course."

Of course. "You don't have anything sooner than Tuesday?"

"No, sir. I can get you on the 6:05 to Canterbury tomorrow. You might be able to get a train to Dover from there." And after Mike had attempted unsuccessfully to buy a ticket off several people in the queue for the 9:38 to Dover, that was what he opted for, a move he regretted almost immediately.

Since the train went before the tube began running in the morning, he couldn't go back to Notting Hill Gate to spend the night, and there wasn't anywhere in Victoria to sleep. He had to sit up all night on an unbelievably uncomfortable wooden bench.

And once he got on the train, he was even sorrier. Not only did it turn out to be a local, and even more packed than the Lady Jane had been on the way back from Dunkirk, but less than five miles out of London it was shunted onto a siding while three troop trains and a freight train loaded with military equipment passed.

After nearly an hour and a half, the train started up again, went half a mile, and stopped again, this time for no reason at all. "Air raid," a soldier close to the window said, looking out. "I hope the jerries aren't out hunting trains today. We're sitting ducks, aren't we?" after which everyone spent the next few minutes looking up at the ceiling and listening for the deadly hum of approaching HE 111s.

"I'd rather be back on the front line than here," another soldier said after a few minutes. "Waiting about for the blow to fall, and not a bloody thing you can do about it."

Like Polly, Mike thought. It must have been hell for her when she realized her drop wouldn't open, and worse keeping it to herself these last weeks while he and Eileen talked about options she knew wouldn't work. But the worst must have been not being able to do anything about it. His lying there in the hospital worrying about what had happened to the retrieval team and whether he'd messed things up by saving Hardy had been bad enough. He couldn't imagine what it would have been like if he'd already been to Pearl Harbor, even if it was a year from now, or, like the day the V-1s started, three and a half years off.

It didn't matter when it was. It was still heading straight at you. Like the German Army getting closer and closer to Dunkirk, and you sitting there helplessly on the beach, listening to the guns in the distance, and hoping to God a ship would show up and take you off before the Germans got there, and nothing for you to do in the meantime but wait.

Which is what all three of them would have been doing right now if he hadn't got Daphne's letter. Thank God it had come when it did. He couldn't have stood just sitting there cooling his heels. It was a hell of a lot easier to fire a machine gun at the Zeroes or hand up ammunition than to just sit there and be shot at, a hell of a lot easier to take a leaky launch over to Dunkirk than to sit on a beach waiting for the Germans to come.

Or the Japanese. He'd assumed, when he found out Gerald hadn't come through, that his roommate Charles hadn't either, but what if he had? What if he was in Singapore, and his drop wouldn't open, and the Japanese would be there any minute, and he didn't dare leave Singapore for fear he'd miss the retrieval team?

Charles won't be in Singapore, Mike told himself, because as soon as I find them, I'll tell them they've got to pull him out. I'll go with them to get him if I have to.

But that wouldn't take anywhere near as much courage as Charles having to sit there at the country club in his dinner clothes and listen to radio bulletins describing the Japanese Army's approach.

When he'd read that book Mrs. Ives had given him in the hospital, he'd thought Shackleton was the hero, taking off in a tiny boat and braving Antarctic seas to bring help, but now he wondered if it hadn't taken more courage to stay on that barren island and watch the boat disappear, and then wait as weeks and months went by, with no guarantee that anybody was ever coming, while their feet froze and the food ran out and the weather got worse and worse.

Back when he'd been scanning the newspapers, looking for the names of airfields, there'd been a story about an old woman being dug out of the wreckage of what had been her house and the rescue crew asking her if her husband was under there with her. "No, the bloody coward's at the front!" she'd said indignantly.

He'd laughed when he read it, but now he wasn't so sure it had been a joke. Maybe England was the front, and the real heroes were the Londoners sitting in those tube stations night after night, waiting to be blown to smithereens. And Fordham, lying there in the hospital in traction. And everyone on this train, waiting patiently for it to begin moving again, not giving way to panic or the impulse to call Hitler and surrender just to get it over with. He was going to have to rethink the whole concept of heroism when he got back to Oxford.

If he got back to Oxford. At this rate, he wasn't sure he'd even make it to Canterbury, let alone Saltram-on-Sea.

He did, but it took him two more days of delayed departures, waits on sidings, and fruitless trips to garages. He ended up hitching rides in a half-track, a sidecar, and a turnip truck.

The truck was driven by a pretty land girl who'd grown up in Chelsea and was now slopping hogs and milking cows on a farm a few miles west of Saltram-on-Sea.

"The work ruins your hands," she said when he asked her how she liked it, "and I despise getting up before dawn and smelling of manure, but if I didn't have something to do, I'd go mad with worry. My husband's serving in the North Atlantic, escorting convoys, and sometimes I don't hear from him for weeks at a time. And I feel as though I'm contributing something."

She smiled at him. "There are four of us girls, and we all get along famously, so that helps, and Mr. Powney's not nearly so gruff as some of the other farmers."

"Wait-you work for Mr. Powney?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I can't believe it," he said, laughing. "Does he have a bull?"

"Yes, why? Have you heard of it? It hasn't killed anyone, has it?"

"Not that I know of."

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it had. It's the worst, most ill-tempered bull in England. How do you know of it?"

He explained about having waited around for Mr. Powney to come back from buying it so he could get a ride. "And I finally have."

"Well, I wouldn't be too glad about that just yet, if I were you," she said. "This lorry has the worst tires in England."

She wasn't exaggerating. They had two flats between Dover and Folkestone, and there was no spare. They had to take the tire off both times and patch it-the second time in a driving sleet-and then reinflate it with a bicycle pump.

It was half past three and beginning to grow dark before they came within sight of Saltram-on-Sea. He could see the gun emplacement, flanked now by row after bristling row of concrete tank traps and sharpened stakes.

There was razor wire all along the top of the cliff, and signs warning, Danger: This Area Mined. He wondered what the retrieval team had thought when they'd seen all that.

"Do you mind if I drop you at the crossroads?" the land girl, whose name was Nora, asked him. "I want to get home before dark."

"No, that's fine," he told her, but was sorry from the moment she let him out. The wind coming off the Channel was bitter, and the sleet was turning to snow.

Damn it, the retrieval team had better be here after all this, he thought, limping down into the village, his head bent against the wind, his coat collar pulled up around his neck. And the drop they'd come through had better be here, too.

At least Daphne will be, he thought, going into the inn, but she wasn't behind the bar. Her father was.

"I'm looking for Daphne," Mike said.

"You're that American reporter, aren't you?" her father said. "The one who went to Dunkirk with the Commander?" and when Mike nodded, "Sorry, lad. You're too late."

"Too late?"

"Aye, lad," he said. "She's already married."

I pray you tell me, hath anybody enquir'd for me today?

-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Saltram-on-Sea-December 1940 "DAPHNE'S MARRIED?" MIKE SAID, PUSHING HIMSELF AWAY from the pub's counter.

"Aye," her father said, placidly toweling a glass dry. "To one of the lads what was putting in the beach defenses."

I obviously didn't need to worry about accidentally breaking her heart and keeping her from marrying anybody else, Mike thought ruefully.

"Beach defenses," the pipe-smoking fisherman he'd talked to on the quay snorted. "Didn't know much about defenses, if you ask me. Couldn't defend himself against your Daphne, could he now?" He nudged Mike. "Looks like you couldn't either, eh, lad?"

There was general laughter, under cover of which Mike asked, "Can you tell me where I can find her?"

Daphne's father frowned. "I don't know as that's a good idea, lad. She's Mrs. Rob Butcher, and there's naught you can do about it."

"I don't want to," Mike said.

Her father scowled.

"I mean, I don't want to make trouble. I just need to talk to her about something. She wrote me a letter-about some men who were asking for me-and I need to ask her if she knows where I can get in touch with them. Or maybe you can help me. Daphne said they came in-"

Her father shook his head. "I know nothing about any men, and as for Daphne, she's in Manchester with her husband."

Manchester? That was more than two hundred miles from Saltram. It would take him at least two days to get there by train. If he could even get on one. They'd be jammed with soldiers going home on leave for Christmas.

"I don't suppose you have a phone number where she can be reached?" Mike asked. "Or an address?"

"You're not thinkin' of goin' there to make mischief, are you?"

"No, I just want to write to her," Mike lied, hoping the address wouldn't be a post office box.

It wasn't. It was an address on King Street. "Though I had a letter from her yesterday saying their lodgings were very unsatisfactory," Daphne's father told him, "and they were hopin' to find somethin' better."

Let's hope they didn't, Mike thought, writing the address down.

"If anyone comes in asking for me, tell them I can be reached here," he said, giving him Mrs. Leary's address and telephone number. He congratulated him on his daughter's marriage, then set out for Manchester.

It didn't take two days. It took nearly four of fully booked trains, delayed departures, missed connections, and compartments crammed full not only of soldiers but of civilians with packages, plum puddings, and, on one leg of the journey, an enormous unplucked Christmas goose. Apparently no one in England was obeying the government order posted in every station to "avoid unnecessary travel."

He didn't reach Manchester till late afternoon on December twenty-second-by which time Daphne and her new husband had found "something better." He limped all the way to King Street, only to be sent back across town to Whitworth. And then the landlady, who looked exactly like Mrs. Rickett, wasn't sure Daphne was in. "I'll go and see," she said, and left him standing at the door.

Please let her be in, he thought, leaning against the doorjamb to take the weight off his aching foot.

She was. She came halfway down the stairs and stopped, just like she had that first day in Saltram-on-Sea. "Why, Mike," she said, her eyes widening, "I never expected to see you in Manchester. Whatever are you doing here?"

"I came to find you, to ask you-"

"But didn't Dad tell you? Oh, dear, this is dreadful! I didn't mean for you to find out like this! You're a lovely boy, and now you've come all this way, but the thing is, I was married last week."

"I know. Your father told me," he said, trying to get the right mixture of heartbreak and resignation into his voice. "I really came about your letter."

"My letter?" she said, bewildered. "But I didn't ... I thought about writing and telling you about Rob, but I didn't know where you were or what you were doing, and I thought if you were off covering the war, it would be unkind-"

"No, the letter you wrote me about the men who came in asking about me," he said, pulling it out of his coat. "There was a mix-up with the mail, and I just got it."