Blackout

by Connie Willis

  Not slippage. Fog. Which meant it might be any time of day. The coal-fire fogs of 1940s London could make midday as dark as night. But she was definitely in World War II because someone had drawn a Union Jack and scrawled, “London kan take it!” in chalk on the brick wall next to the passage. And the chances were excellent that she’d come through exactly when she was supposed to have. There’d been a thick fog in the early morning hours of September tenth.

  She walked to the near end of the alley, listened a few moments for approaching footsteps, and then looked cautiously out. There was no one in either direction as far as the fog let her see, and no vehicles on the wider road that she could dimly see off to her left, which meant the all clear hadn’t gone yet. Which meant there’d been scarcely any slippage at all.

  But she still didn’t know where she was. She needed to find out—and before the all clear, if possible—but before she left the alley, she needed to make certain she could recognize it and the drop. She walked back down to the passage, committing the buildings to memory. The one nearest the street had large double doors, and the one next to it a ramshackle wooden staircase leading up two dangerous-looking flights to a door with the same black peeling paint as the door in the drop. Next to it was the passage, though if not for the chalked “London kan take it” on the wall, she’d have missed it. The barrels hid not only the recess but the passage. An air-raid warden could look straight at it and not realize it was there.

  If the wardens even checked the alley. It was as cobwebbed and leaf-strewn as the passage. Which was good.

  She walked on down the alley, looking for other identifying features, but the buildings on both sides were of featureless brick except for the one second from the end, which was a black-and-white, half-timbered Tudor. Good: Tudor, “London kan take it,” rickety staircase, brown double doors.

  Which she wouldn’t need, she realized as soon as she stepped out of the alley. A large poster was pasted on the wall next to the alley’s entrance—a cartoon of Hitler, with his trademark mustache and hank of hair over one eye, peeking round the corner of a building above the words “Be Vigilant. Report Anyone Behaving Suspiciously.”

  It was good the all clear hadn’t gone. There’d be no one out on the streets to see her behaving suspiciously as she attempted to find out where she was. Which might be a problem. The contemps had taken down or painted over all of the street names at the beginning of the war to hinder the Germans in case of invasion. She’d have to hope she could find a landmark that would tell her where she was—a church spire or an Underground station or, if this was Kensington, the gates of Kensington Gardens. Not the railings—those had been taken down and donated to the scrap drive—but, depending on where she was, the Albert Memorial or the Peter Pan statue.

  She needed to hurry. The fog was closing in, obscuring all but the nearest buildings, and shutting out what little light there was. An authentic London pea-souper, she thought, walking down to the wider road in the hopes of 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.

  “Oh, but,” she said, fumbling in her shoulder bag for her coin purse, “I need a newspaper,” but he’d already shut the door.

  “Wait!” she called through the glass. “Where—?”

  He shook his head, pulled the shade down, and locked the door. Another siren, nearer, started up. Colin had said she’d have twenty to thirty minutes before the raid began, but she could already hear the drone of planes in the distance. She needed to find a shelter. She had no business being out on the streets during a raid, especially if this was the East End. Or even if it wasn’t. Colin was right—there’d been lots of stray bombs. And every one of these shops had plate glass windows.

  There’s got to be a shelter somewhere near here, she thought. The women were going to it. She ran back up the road, looking for a notice or the red-barred symbol of an Underground station. But in the few moments she’d stood in the tobacconist’s doorway, night and fog had descended like a blackout curtain. She
couldn’t see anything. And the planes were growing steadily nearer. They’d be overhead any moment.

  Which meant this was the East End, and she needed to get back to the drop and out of here as soon as possible. But there was no way she could find her way back in this. She couldn’t even see the pavement in front of her or tell if she was about to pitch off the curb.

  She took a cautious, exploring step forward, and crashed into someone. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I didn’t see you—” And she still couldn’t. The person was only a solid mass of darkness against the more amorphous blackness of the road. She didn’t even know it was a man till he spoke.

  “Wot are you doing out in a raid, miss?” he growled. “Why aren’t you in a shelter?”

  “I was looking for it,” she said, squinting at him, trying to make out his features. It was unsettling, conversing with someone she couldn’t see. “Which way is it?”

  “Here,” he said, and apparently he could see her because he grabbed her by the arm and hustled her round the corner and down a side street.

  And I hope this isn’t one of the muggers Mr. Dunworthy was talking about, she thought, clutching her shoulder bag as he dragged her down the narrow side street. Or was it an alley, which he was taking her into to rob her? Or worse. If I get murdered my first night out, Mr. Dunworthy will kill me.

  Her abductor hurried her through the dark for what seemed like miles and then stopped abruptly. “Down there,” he ordered and gave her a push forward. As he did, there was a thud and an explosion, and the sky to the south lit momentarily, outlining the buildings around them in a garish yellow-white light and illuminating a flight of stone steps directly in front of her, leading down into darkness.

  Was there a shelter at the bottom? Or waiting accomplices? There was no shelter symbol on the wall next to the stairs.

  There was a second explosion. She turned to face him, hoping it would illuminate the street behind him—and a path of escape. It did. It also illuminated the white letters on his tin hat.

  An ARP warden. And seventy-five if he was a day. “Down there,” he ordered her again, pointing down the now-invisible stairs. “Quick.”

  Polly obeyed, groping for the railing and feeling her way down the narrow, steep steps. There was another explosion, too close, but no corresponding light, and by the time she was halfway down she couldn’t see anything. She glanced back up the steps, but it was just as dark up there. She couldn’t even tell if the warden was still standing there to make certain she’d obeyed, or if he’d gone off to waylay someone else and drag him to a shelter.

  If that was what was at the foot of these stairs. If there even was a foot—the steps seemed to go on and on. She worked her way down them, feeling for the edge of each one with her foot. After an eternity, she reached solid pavement and patted her way to a door. It was wooden, with an old-fashioned iron latch. She tried to open it, but it seemed to be locked. She knocked.

  No response.

  They didn’t hear me, she thought and knocked again, harder.

  Still no answer.

  What if the warden got disoriented in the darkness and brought me to the wrong place? What if this is an alley, and this is a side door in a warehouse? she thought, remembering the cobwebbed black door in the drop. What if there’s no one on the other side?

  There was another explosion. I can’t stay here, she thought, and began to grope her way back over to the stairs. A bomb hit nearly at the head of the stairs, and then two more, in rapid succession.

  She turned back to the door. “Let me in!” she called, pounding on the door with both fists, and then, when there was still no answer, taking off a shoe and pounding on the door with it, trying to make herself heard over the din of the raid.

  The door opened. The sudden brightness from inside blinded her, and she put up her hand, still holding her shoe, to shield her eyes, and stood there squinting at the tableau inside. People sat against the walls on blankets and rugs, and a dog lay at the feet of one of the men. Three older women sat side by side on a high-backed bench, the middle one knitting—or rather, she had been knitting. Now she, like all the others, was staring at the door and at Polly. An aristocratic-looking elderly gentleman in the far corner had lowered the letter he was reading to look at her, and three fair-haired little girls had stopped in the middle of a game of Snakes and Ladders to stare at her.

  There was no expression on any of their faces, no welcoming smiles—even from the man who’d let her in. No one moved or made a sound. They were frozen, as if they’d suddenly stopped in midsentence, and there was a feeling of fear, of danger in the room.

  The thought flashed through her mind, This isn’t a shelter. The man who brought me here wasn’t a real warden. He could have stolen that ARP helmet, and these people are only pretending to be shelterers. But that was ridiculous. The man who’d let her in was obviously a clergyman. He was wearing a clerical collar and spectacles, and this wasn’t Dickens’s London. It was 1940.

  It’s me. There must be something wrong with the way I look, she thought, and realized she was still holding her shoe in her hand. She bent to slip it on, then looked back up at the assembly, and what she’d seen before must have been a trick of the light or her overactive imagination because now the scene looked perfectly normal. The white-haired woman smiled pleasantly at her and took up her knitting; the aristocratic gentleman folded his letter, returned it to its envelope, and put it in his inside coat pocket; the little girls returned to their game; and the dog lay down and put its head on its paws.

  “Do come in,” the clergyman said, smiling.

  “Shut the door,” a woman shouted, and someone else said, “The blackout—”

  “Oh,” Polly said, “sorry,” and turned to shut the door.

  “You’ll get us all fined,” a stout man said grumpily.

  Polly pushed the door shut, and the clergyman barred it, but apparently not fast enough. “What are you trying to do?” a scrawny woman with a sour expression demanded. “Show the jerries where we are?”

  And so much for the fabled cheerful camaraderie of the Blitz, Polly thought. “Sorry,” she said again, looking around the shelter for a place to sit. There was no furniture except for the bench. Everyone else sat on the stone floor or on blankets, and the only vacant spot was between the stout man who’d growled at her to shut the door and two young women in sequin-adorned dresses and bright red lipstick, who were busily gossiping. “I beg your pardon, may I sit here?” she asked them.

  The man looked annoyed, but grunted assent, and the young women nodded, scooted closer together, and went on chatting. “… and then he asked me to meet him at Piccadilly Circus and go dancing with him!”

  “Oh, Lila, he didn’t!” her friend said. “You’re not going to, are you?”

  “No, of course not, Viv. He’s far too old. He’s thirty.”

  Polly thought of Colin and suppressed a smile.

  “I told him, you need to find someone your own age.”

  “Oh, Lila, you didn’t,” Viv said.

  “I did. I wouldn’t have gone out with him at any rate. I only go out with men in uniform.”

  Polly took off her coat, spread it out, sat down on it, and looked around at the room. It was obviously one of the shop or warehouse cellars pressed into service as a shelter when the Blitz began, though it didn’t look as makeshift as she’d expected, considering the Blitz had begun only three days ago. Its contents, except for the high-backed bench, had been pushed to the far end, and the ceiling had been braced with heavy lengths of lumber. A stirrup pump, a bucket of water, and an axe stood on one side of the door. On the other was a table holding a gas ring and a kettle, cups and saucers, and spoons.

  The shelterers’ arrangements didn’t look makeshift either. The knitter had brought her yarn, a shawl, and her reading glasses with her; the table was covered with an embroidered tea cloth; and the three little girls—whom Polly estimated as being three, four, and five—had not only their
board game, but several dolls, a teddy bear, and a large book of fairy tales, which they were clamoring to have their mother read to them. “Read us ‘Sleeping Beauty,’” the eldest one said.

  “No,” the littlest one piped up. “The one with the clock.”

  The clock? Polly wondered. Which one is that?

  And apparently her sisters didn’t know either. “What’s the clock story?” the eldest one asked.

  “‘Cinderella,’” the littlest one said as if it were self-evident.

  The middle girl took her thumb out of her mouth. “That’s the one with the shoe,” she said, and pointed at Polly.

  And Polly supposed she had looked a bit like Cinderella, standing there in one shoe. And, just like Cinderella, she’d failed to ascertain her space-time location, with nearly as disastrous results. Except that no one had been dropping bombs on Cinderella.

  And Badri had said there might be two hours of slippage, not twelve. The morning of the tenth must have been a divergence point for there to have been so much slippage. Or perhaps, in spite of its deserted appearance, someone had been in the alley or in a position where they could see the shimmer and kept it from opening. Whichever it was, she’d lost a full day of her already too short assignment.

  She looked around at the others. The middle-aged woman sitting next to the knitter was the image of an early twentieth-century spinster, with her laced brown shoes and her graying hair pulled back into a bun and held in place with tortoiseshell combs. They could all have been taken from one of Merope’s murder mysteries—the frail, white-haired old woman, the clergyman, the sour-faced, sharp-tongued woman, the gruff stout man who looked as if he might have been in the military. Colonel Mustard in the air-raid shelter with the service revolver. Perhaps that was why they’d struck her as sinister when she first saw them.

  Or perhaps it was their calm self-possession. These were the fabled Londoners, of course, who’d faced the Blitz with legendary courage and humor, who hadn’t even been fazed by the V-1 and V-2 attacks. But they’d had four and a half years of being accustomed to bombing before the rocket attacks. This was only the fourth night of the Blitz, and all the research she’d done had said they’d been terrified all that first week, especially till the anti-aircraft guns had started up on the eleventh, and that they’d only gradually learned to master their fear of the bombs.