Blackout

by Connie Willis

  But the alterations the net prevented were those which affected the course of history, not whether an evacuee lived through the measles. Binnie couldn’t affect what happened at D-Day or who won the war. And even if she could, Eileen couldn’t just stand here and let her die. She had to at least try to get her temperature down. But how? Rubbing her with alcohol had had no effect at all. Putting her in a tub of cold water? In her weakened state, the shock might kill her. She needed a medicine to bring down the fever, but they hadn’t any drugs like that in 1940—

  Yes, they do, she thought. If Lady Caroline didn’t take it with her. She tiptoed out of the sickroom and ran along the corridor to Lady Caroline’s rooms. Please, please don’t let her have taken her aspirin tablets with her.

  She hadn’t. The box was on her dressing table, and it was nearly full. Eileen grabbed it up, put it in her pocket, and sped back to the sickroom. Her opening of the door wakened Binnie, and she sat up, flinging her hands out wildly. “Eileen!” she sobbed.

  “I’m here,” Eileen said, grabbing her hands. They were burning up. “I’m here. I only went to fetch your medicine. Shh, it’s all right. I’m here.” She took two of the tablets out of the box and reached for Binnie’s water glass. “I’m not going anywhere. Here, take this.” She supported Binnie’s head while she took the tablet. “That’s a good girl. Now lie down.”

  Binnie clutched at her. “You can’t go! Who’ll take care of us if you leave?”

  “I won’t leave you,” Eileen said, covering Binnie’s hot, dry hands with both of hers.

  “Swear,” Binnie cried.

  “I swear,” Eileen said.

  All the world that is still free marvels at the composure and fortitude with which the citizens of London are facing and surmounting the great ordeal to which they are subjected, the end of which, or the severity of which, cannot yet be foreseen.

  —WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1940

  London—17 September 1940

  BY TUESDAY NIGHT, POLLY STILL HADN’T FOUND A JOB. There weren’t any openings “at present,” or, as the personnel manager at Waring and Gillow said, “during this uncertainty.”

  “Uncertainty” was putting it mildly. But then the contemps had been noted for understatement. Bombed buildings and people blown to bits were “incidents;” impassable wreckage-strewn streets “diversions.” The daytime air raids, which had interrupted her job search twice today, were christened “Hitler’s tea break.”

  Only one person, a junior shop assistant at Harvey Nichols, was willing to say it baldly: “They’re not taking anyone new on because they can’t see the point when the store mightn’t be there in the morning. No one’s hiring.”

  She was right. Neither Debenham’s nor Yardwick’s would grant her an interview, Dickins and Jones wouldn’t allow her to fill up an application form, and every other store was on Mr. Dunworthy’s forbidden list.

  Which is ridiculous, Polly thought as her train reached Notting Hill Gate. They’d all been hit at night, and only one—Padgett’s—had had casualties, and it hadn’t been hit till October twenty-fifth, three days after she was due to go back.

  But Mr. Dunworthy would already be furious that she hadn’t checked in yet. She’d best not do anything to upset him further, which meant she needed to be hired on at either Townsend Brothers or Peter Robinson. And hired on soon. If she didn’t check in tomorrow, Mr. Dunworthy was likely to decide something had happened to her and send a retrieval team to pull her out.

  She bought the Express and the Daily Herald from the news vendor at the top of the station stairs and hurried back to Mrs. Rickett’s, hoping tonight’s supper would be better than last night’s tinned beef hash, a watery mush of potatoes and cabbage with a few flecks of stringy red.

  It wasn’t. Tonight the flecks were gray and rubbery—halibut, according to Mrs. Rickett—and the potatoes and cabbage had been boiled to the point where they were indistinguishable. Luckily, the sirens went halfway through dinner, and Polly didn’t have to finish it.

  When she got to St. George’s, she immediately opened the Herald and looked through the “To Let’s” for somewhere else to live, but all the rooms listed had addresses on the forbidden list. She turned the page to the “Situations Vacant.” Companion wanted, upstairs maid, chauffeur. The hired help have all gone off to war, Polly thought, or to work in munitions factories. Nanny, maid of all work. Not a single ad for a shopgirl, and nothing in the Express either.

  “Still no luck?” Lila asked. She was putting Viv’s hair up on bobby pins.

  “No, afraid not.”

  “You’ll get something,” she said, wrapping a lock of Viv’s hair around her finger, and Viv added encouragingly, “They’ll begin hiring again when the bombing’s stopped.”

  I can’t afford to wait that long, Polly thought, and wondered what they’d say if she told them “the bombing” would go on for another eight months, and that even after the Blitz ended, there’d be intermittent raids for three more years and then V-1 and V-2 attacks to contend with.

  “Have you tried John Lewis?” Lila asked, opening a bobby pin with her teeth. “I overheard a girl on the way home saying they needed someone.”

  “In Better Dresses,” Viv said. “You’ll have to be quick, though. You’ll need to be there when it opens tomorrow.”

  That’ll be too late, Polly thought. Tonight was the night it had been hit.

  She was spared from responding by the elderly gentleman, who came over to offer her his Times to her as he’d done every night thus far. She thanked him and opened it to “Situations Vacant,” but there was nothing in it either.

  Lila had finished putting up Viv’s hair, and they were looking at a film magazine and discussing the relative charms of Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier. Polly’d intended to observe shelterers in the tube stations, but St. George’s was even better. It had a diverse group of contemps—all ages, all classes—but it was small enough that she could observe everyone. And best of all, she could hear. When she’d come through Bank station Sunday on her way back from St. Paul’s, the din had been incredible, magnified by the curved ceilings and echoing tunnels.

  Here, she could hear everything even above the crump of the bombs, from the mother reading fairy tales to her three little girls—tonight it was “Rapunzel”—to the rector and Mrs. Wyvern discussing the church’s Harvest Fete. And the same people came every night.

  The mother was Mrs. Brightford, and the little girls, in descending order, were Bess, Irene, and Trot. “Her Christian name’s Deborah, but we call her Trot because she’s so quick,” Mrs. Brightford had explained to Miss Hibbard, the white-haired woman with the knitting. The younger spinster was Miss Laburnum. She and Mrs. Wyvern served on the Ladies’ Guild of St. George’s, which explained all the discussions of altar flowers and fetes. The ill-tempered stout man was Mr. Dorming. Mr. Simms’s dog was named Nelson.

  The only one whose name she hadn’t found out was the elderly gentleman who gave her his Times each night. She’d pegged him as a retired clerk, but his manners and accent were upper class. A member of the nobility? It was possible. The Blitz had broken down class barriers, and dukes and their servants had frequently ended up sitting side-by-side in the shelters. But an aristocrat would surely have somewhere more comfortable than this to go.

  He must have a particular reason for choosing this shelter—like Mr. Simms, who came here because dogs weren’t allowed in the tube. Or Miss Hibbard, who’d confided on their way over from the boardinghouse Sunday—she, Mr. Dorming, and Miss Laburnum all boarded at Mrs. Rickett’s—that she came here for the company. “So much more pleasant than sitting alone in one’s room thinking what might happen,” she’d said. “I’m ashamed to say I almost look forward to the raids.”

  The elderly gentleman’s reason obviously wasn’t the company. Except to offer Polly his Times, he almost never interacted with the shelterers. He sat in his corner quietly observing the others as they chatted, or reading. Polly couldn’t make out the t
itle of his book—it looked scholarly. But appearances could be deceiving. The ecclesiastical-looking book the rector was reading had turned out to be Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage.

  Miss Laburnum was telling Mrs. Rickett and Miss Hibbard about the bomb that had hit Buckingham Palace. “It exploded in the Quadrangle just outside the King and Queen’s sitting room,” she said. “They might have been killed!”

  “Oh, my,” Miss Hibbard said, knitting. “Were they hurt?”

  “No, though they were badly shaken. Luckily, the Princesses were safely in the country.”

  “Rapunzel was a princess,” Trot, on her mother’s lap, looked up from the fairy tale her mother was reading to say.

  “No, she wasn’t,” Irene said. “Sleeping Beauty was a princess.”

  “What about the Queen’s dogs?” Mr. Simms asked. “Were they at the palace?”

  “The Times didn’t say,” Miss Laburnum said.

  “Of course not. Nobody thinks of the dogs.”

  “There was an advertisement in the Daily Graphic last week for a gas mask for dogs,” the rector said.

  “I think Basil Rathbone’s handsome, don’t you?” Viv said.

  Lila made a face. “No, he’s much too old. I think Leslie Howard’s handsome.”

  An anti-aircraft gun started up. “There goes the Strand,” Mr. Dorming said, and, as it was followed by the heavy crump of a bomb off to the east, and then another, “The East End’s getting it again.”

  “Do you know what the Queen said after the palace was hit?” Miss Laburnum said. “She said, ‘Now I can look the East End in the face.’”

  “She’s an example to us all,” Mrs. Wyvern said.

  “They say she’s wonderfully brave,” Miss Laburnum said, “that she isn’t afraid of the bombs at all.”

  Neither were they. Polly’d hoped to observe their adaptation to the Blitz as they progressed from fear to a determination not to give in to the nonchalant courage American correspondents arriving in mid-Blitz had been so impressed by. But they’d already passed those stages and reached the point where they ignored the raids completely. In eleven days flat.

  They didn’t even seem to hear the crashes and bangs above them, only occasionally glancing up when an explosion was particularly loud and then going back to whatever they’d been talking about. Which was often the war. Mr. Simms reported the count of downed German and RAF aircraft every night; Miss Laburnum followed the royal family, recounting every visit “our dear Queen” made to bombed-out neighborhoods, hospitals, and ARP posts; and Miss Hibbard was knitting socks for “our boys.” Even Lila and Viv, who spent most of their time discussing film stars and dances, talked about joining the WRENs. And Leslie Howard, who Lila thought was so handsome, was in the RAF. He’d be killed in 1943 when his plane was shot down.

  Mrs. Brightford’s husband was in the Army, the rector had a son who’d been injured at Dunkirk and was in hospital in Orpington, and they all had relatives and acquaintances who’d been called up or bombed out—all of which they discussed in a cheerful, gossipy tone, oblivious to the raids, which came in waves, intensifying, subsiding, then intensifying again. Not even Mr. Simms’s terrier, Nelson, seemed particularly bothered by them, though dogs’ ability to hear high-pitched noises was supposed to make it worse for them.

  “Oh, that’s silly,” Lila was saying. “Leslie Howard’s far handsomer than Clark Gable.”

  “‘… and the witch said, “You must give Rapunzel to me,” ’” Mrs. Brightford read. “‘And she took the child from her parents…’”

  Polly wondered if Mrs. Brightford had refused to be separated from her little girls or if they’d been evacuated and then come home again. Merope had said more than 75 percent of them had been back in London when the Blitz began.

  “Sounds like it’s moving off to the north,” Mr. Simms said.

  It did seem to be moving off. The nearest of the anti-aircraft guns had stopped, and the roar of the planes had diminished to a low hum.

  “And the cruel witch locked Rapunzel in a high tower without any door,’” Mrs. Brightford read to Trot, who was nearly asleep. “‘And Rapunzel—’”

  There was a sudden, sharp knock on the door. Trot sat up straight.

  It’s someone else caught out on the street by the warden, Polly thought, looking over at the door and then at the rector, expecting him to let them in.

  He didn’t move. No one moved. Or breathed. They all, even little Trot, stared at the door, their eyes wide in their white faces, their bodies braced as if for a blow.

  That’s how they looked when I was standing outside knocking that first night, Polly thought. That’s the expression they had on their faces in the moment before the door opened, and they saw it was me.

  She’d been wrong about their having adjusted to the raids. This terror had been there all along, just beneath the surface. She thought suddenly of the painting The Light of the World in St. Paul’s. I wonder if that’s why whoever’s on the other side of the door isn’t opening it. Because they’re too frightened.

  More knocks, louder. Trot climbed straight up her mother’s body and buried her face in her neck. Mrs. Brightford pulled her other girls closer to her. Miss Laburnum pressed her hand against her bosom, the elderly gentleman reached for his umbrella, and he and Mr. Dorming both stood up.

  “Is it the Germans?” Bess asked in her piping voice.

  “No, of course not,” Mrs. Brightford said, but it was obvious that was what they were all thinking.

  The rector took a deep breath and then crossed the room, unbolted the door, and opened it. Two young girls in ARP coveralls and carrying tin helmets and gas masks tumbled through it.

  “Shut the door!” Mrs. Rickett said, and Mrs. Wyvern echoed, “Mind the blackout,” exactly as they had with Polly.

  The girls shut the door, and Miss Laburnum smiled in welcome. Trot let go of her mother, Irene took her thumb out of her mouth to give the newcomers the once-over, and Viv scooted over closer to Lila to give them a place to sit. Mrs. Rickett continued to glare suspiciously, but then she had done that to Polly, too.

  The young women looked around the room at everyone. “Oh, dear, this isn’t it either,” one said, disappointed.

  “We were going to our post, and I’m afraid we’ve got lost in the blackout,” the other one said. “Is there a telephone here we might use?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the rector said apologetically.

  “Then can you tell us how to get to Gloucester Terrace?”

  “Gloucester Terrace?” Mr. Dorming said. “You are lost.”

  They certainly were. Gloucester Terrace was all the way over in Marylebone.

  “It’s our first night on duty,” the first young woman explained, and the rector began to draw them a map.

  “Are they Germans?” Trot whispered to her mother.

  Mrs. Brightford laughed. “No, they’re on our side.”

  The rector gave them the map. “Shouldn’t you stay till this lets up?” the rector asked, but they shook their heads.

  “The warden will have our heads for being late as it is,” the first one said, raising her voice to be heard above the din.

  “But thanks awfully,” the other one shouted, and they opened the door and ducked out.

  Michael Davies should have come here, not Dunkirk, if he wanted to observe heroes, Polly thought, looking after them. She’d just seen them in action. And it wasn’t only the young women and their willingness to go out on the streets in the middle of a raid. How much courage had it taken for the rector to cross the basement and open that door, knowing it might be the Germans? Or for all of them to sit here night after night, waiting for imminent invasion or a direct hit, not knowing whether they’d live till the next all clear?

  Not knowing. It was the one thing historians could never understand. They could observe the contemps, live with them, try to put themselves in their place, but they couldn’t truly experience what they were experiencing. Because I
know what’s going to happen. I know Hitler didn’t invade England, that he didn’t use poison gas or destroy St. Paul’s. Or London. Or the world. That he lost the war.

  But they didn’t. They’d lived through the Blitz and D-Day and the V-1s and V-2s, with no guarantee of a happy ending.

  “Then what happened to Rapunzel?” Trot asked as if nothing had happened.

  “Tell us the rest of the story,” Bess and Irene chimed in and were both asleep before their mother had read a page, and Trot was struggling to keep her eyes open. They were too young to understand what was going on, of course, or what might happen. Polly was glad.

  And the others must feel the same protectiveness toward them that she did. Mrs. Wyvern and Miss Laburnum dropped their voices to a whisper, and Mr. Simms reached over to pull the blanket up over Bess’s shoulders. Mrs. Brightford smiled at him and went on reading. “… ‘and after many years of searching, the prince heard Rapunzel’s voice…’”

  “Mummy,” Trot said, sitting up and tugging at her mother’s sleeve. “What if the Germans in vade?” she asked, pronouncing it as two words.

  “They won’t,” Mrs. Brightford said. “Mr. Churchill won’t let them.” She went on reading. “‘And Rapunzel’s tears, falling on the prince’s eyes, restored his sight, and they lived happily ever after.’”

  “But what if they do? In vade?”

  “They won’t,” her mother said firmly. “I’ll always keep you safe. You know that, don’t you, darling?”

  Trot nodded. “Unless you’re killed.”

  Meanwhile, it is important not to give the enemy any information which would help him in directing his shooting by telling him where his missiles have landed.

  —HERBERT MORRISON, HOME SECRETARY, 16 JUNE 1944