“Here then, let her go. That’s a good chap,” a man’s voice said, and she felt herself grabbed by the waist and plucked neatly out of the conga line. The marine and the rest of the line danced past her and away.

“Thank you,” she said, turning to look at her rescuer, but before she got a good look at his face—she scarcely had time to register the fact that he was a soldier and that he was wearing a clerical collar—there was a loud explosion over by the fountain.

“Sorry, I believe I know who did that,” he said, and strode off through the crowd, presumably to rescue someone else.

“Thank you again, whoever you are,” Mary said, and set off for the tube station again, this time keeping to the very edge of the square and the street.

The little man in the bowler was still standing outside leading cheers. “Three cheers for Dowding!” he shouted.

He’s going to run out of heroes to cheer, she thought, squeezing past him to the entrance, but she was wrong. As she ran down the stairs, she heard him shout, “Three cheers for the firespotters! Three cheers for the ARP! Three cheers for all of us! Hip hip hurrah!”

Father, we thought we should never see you again.

—SIR J. M. BARRIE, THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON

London—Winter 1941

THEY LASTED LESS THAN A FORTNIGHT AT MRS. RICKETT’S, even though Alf and Binnie had proved quite adept at keeping their parrot out of sight—and earshot—of the landlady. Mrs. Bascombe was a quick study, and it only took Alf a day to teach her not to do her air-raid imitations except when the actual sirens were going and not to screech, “ ’Itler’s a bloody bastard!” at anyone who came near her cage.

But she was, unfortunately, also quick to pick up whatever she happened to overhear and to repeat it in a dead-on imitation of their voices—which explained how Alf and Binnie had been able to keep the masquerade of their mother’s still being alive going for so long.

But that skill also led to Mrs. Rickett’s hearing what she thought was Binnie saying, “What is this swill? It tastes bloody awful,” and using her key to get in, expecting to find, as she told Eileen, cooking going on in the room. And finding herself instead face-to-face with the beady-eyed Mrs. Bascombe.

“Not to worry,” the parrot had said in a spot-on imitation of Alf’s voice. “We’ll ’ide ’er. The old witch’ll never find out,” and all five of them had found themselves out of a place to live and forced to take up residence in Notting Hill Gate Station for the next two nights.

Polly told the station guard that Mrs. Bascombe was a prop in the troupe’s new play, and Sir Godfrey, coming in behind them, exclaimed, “Good God! Don’t tell me they’ve decided to do Treasure Island!”

And when Miss Laburnum saw it, she said, “Oh, it would be perfect for Peter Pan!”