She had been wrong about the play. The female roles were small, but there were a great many of them, and Polly found herself playing not only Scrooge’s lost love, Belle, but also the eldest Cratchit daughter, one of the businessmen soliciting a charitable donation from Scrooge (in a false mustache and sideburns), the boy sent to buy the turkey (in a cap and knee pants), and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

How appropriate, she thought. She hadn’t realized till now that the play was about time travel, and that Scrooge was a sort of historian, journeying to the past and then back to the future.

And he had altered events. He’d given Bob Cratchit a raise, he’d improved the lot of the poor, he’d saved Tiny Tim’s life. But in A Christmas Carol, there wasn’t the possibility that what he’d done would have a bad effect. In Dickens, good intentions always resulted in good outcomes.

And none of his characters had deadlines.

They can occupy the same time twice, Polly thought enviously, watching the rector playing the young Scrooge and Sir Godfrey playing the elder in the same scene.

When Sir Godfrey wasn’t onstage, he was berating Miss Laburnum for her failure to secure a turkey for the Christmas-morning scene.

“There are simply none to be had, Sir Godfrey,” she said. “The war, you know.”

Or he was shouting at Viv (Scrooge’s nephew’s wife) and Mr. Simms (the Ghost of Marley) for their inability to learn their lines.

“I suppose you don’t know your lines for the tombstone scene either, Viola,” he growled at Polly when she missed a cue.

“I haven’t any lines,” Polly reminded him. “All I do is point at Scrooge’s grave.”

“Bah, humbug!” he said, bellowed at Tiny Tim (Trot) to get her cane out of the way, and started them through the Scrooge-confronts-his-own-death scene.

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” he said, quailing from the pasteboard tombstone, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be only?”

I don’t know, Polly thought.

The war still seemed to be on track. Liverpool, Plymouth, and Manchester had been bombed, Victoria Station had been hit, and the British had counterattacked the Italian forces in North Africa, all on schedule.

But would they stay that way? Or would Marjorie—who’d sent Polly from Norwich, where she was doing her training, a card saying, “Wishing you anything but a Jerry Christmas!”—save the life of someone who would make a decisive error at El Alamein or on the HMS Dorsetshire?

“Spirit!” Sir Godfrey shouted. “Lady Mary! Viola! Kindly remember this is a holiday play, and you are the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, not Dark Unyielding Doom. I realize the thought of performing in Piccadilly Circus is grim, but if you look like that during the performance, you’ll terrify the children. This is a comedy, not a tragedy.”

I haven’t seen any proof of that, Polly thought. But she attempted—both onstage and off—to put on a face more in keeping with the season. Like everyone else was doing in spite of their facing a future which was just as uncertain as hers and civilian casualties which were mounting daily. The contemps entered wholeheartedly into the Christmas spirit, pinning decorations to their blackout curtains and greeting one another gaily with “Happy Christmas!”