Blackout

by Connie Willis

  Dulwich, Surrey—14 June 1944

  BY WEDNESDAY MORNING, MARY WAS BEGINNING TO WORRY. There’d still been no mention of Bethnal Green railroad bridge or the other V-1s that had fallen the night of the twelfth. If the first four V-1s had hit when her implant said they had, they should have heard something by now.

  But even though the last two FANYs—Parrish and Sutcliffe-Hythe—had returned with a box of sticking plaster from Platt, which was only four miles from where the first V-1 had fallen, and Talbot had rung up Bethnal Green to ask them to save back any dancing pumps that came in for her, there’d still been no mention of explosions or of odd-looking planes with yellow flames coming out of their tails.

  There was nothing in the newspapers either, but Mary’d expected that. The government had kept the V-1s secret till after the fifteenth, when more than a hundred rockets had come over and made their existence impossible to keep quiet. But she’d thought there might be something about a gas explosion, which was the story they’d put out.

  But there were no stories at all in the London papers, and the big news in the South London Gazette was the engagement of Miss Betty Buntin to Joseph Morelli, PFC, of Brooklyn, New York. And the FANYs’ only topic of conversation was who got to wear the pink net frock first. If she’d been dropped into the post without any historical prep, she wouldn’t even have been able to deduce there was a war on, let alone that they were under attack. And the next rockets wouldn’t be launched till tomorrow night, so there was no way to introduce the subject.

  She attempted it anyway. “I was actually supposed to be here on Monday,” she said. “Did I miss anything?”

  “The invasion of Normandy,” Reed said, polishing her nails.

  “And the applecart upset,” said Camberley, who was trying on the pink frock. “We’d have got you that ecru lace if we’d known you were coming.” She turned to Grenville. “I’ll never be able to eat and breathe in this. It will have to be let out again.” She turned back to Mary. “I say, Kent, you wouldn’t happen to have any evening frocks, would you?”

  “Don’t tell them yes unless you’re prepared to share them,” Fairchild said.

  “But if you share yours with us, we’ll share ours with you,” Camberley said.

  Parrish rolled her eyes. “I’m certain she’s simply panting for a chance to wear the Yellow Peril.”

  “It might actually look nice on her, with her fair hair,” Camberley said.

  “The Yellow Peril doesn’t look nice on anyone,” Maitland said, but Camberley ignored her.

  “Have you a frock, Kent?”

  “Yes,” Mary said, opening the duffel she still hadn’t had a chance to unpack. “Actually, I have two, and I’d be glad to share.” She lifted them out.

  And knew instantly that she’d made a mistake. The FANYs were gaping at the frocks openmouthed. When she’d got them from Wardrobe, she’d purposely chosen ones that looked worn so she wouldn’t stand out here, but next to the pink net, with its torn hem and obviously let-out seams, the light-green silk and the blue organdy looked brand-new.

  “Where on earth did you get such heavenly things?” Fairchild asked, fingering the green silk.

  “You’re not having an affair with some rich American general, are you?” Reed said.

  “No. My cousin gave them to me when she went out to Egypt. She’s in the medical corps,” she said, hoping no one would say they knew a nurse in Egypt who constantly went to dances. “I haven’t had any occasion to wear them,” she added honestly.

  “Obviously,” Parrish said, and Camberley looked as if she was going to cry.

  “You’re certain you’re willing to share these with us?” she asked reverently. Which showed how much the war had changed these young women’s lives. They came from wealthy families, they’d been debutantes, they’d been presented at court, and now they were overjoyed at the prospect of wearing out-of-style secondhand frocks. “I haven’t seen silk like this since before the war!” Sutcliffe-Hythe said, fingering the fabric. “I do hope it doesn’t end before I have a chance to wear this.”

  It won’t, Mary thought.

  And much of the worst of it was still to come, but all the FANYs were convinced the war would be over by autumn. They’d even got up a betting pool on what day it would end.

  “Oh, speaking of the war ending,” Fairchild said, “you never did say what date you wanted for the pool, Kent.”

  May eighth, 1945, she thought. But the calendar they were using only went through this October and most of the dates already taken were in late June and early July, even though the invasion had been less than two weeks ago.

  “You can have the eighteenth,” Fairchild said, looking at the calendar.

  The eighteenth was the day a V-1 had hit the Guards Chapel during a church service and killed 121 contemps. If that date and location weren’t an error, too.

  “Or August fifth.”

  The day one had hit the Co-op Stores in Camberwell. But she had to choose something. “I’ll take August thirtieth,” Mary said, and as Fairchild wrote her name in the square, “Yesterday, on my way here, I heard someone say something about hearing an explosion in—”

  “Kent,” Parrish said, leaning in the door, “the Major wants to see you in her office.”

  “Don’t say anything about the pool,” Fairchild warned her. “Or about the war being nearly over. She’s an absolute bear on the subject.” She thrust the calendar into a drawer.

  Parrish walked her to the Major’s office. “The Major’s convinced the war can still be lost, though it’s difficult to imagine how. I mean, we’ve already taken the beaches and half the coast of France, and the Germans are on the run.”

  But the Major was right. The Allied forces would shortly be bogged down in the hedgerows of France, and if they hadn’t stopped the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge—

  “You needn’t look so nervy,” Parrish said, stopping outside the Major’s door. “The Major’s actually not bad unless you’re attempting to put one over on her.” She knocked on the door, opened it, and said, “Lieutenant Kent is here, Major.”

  “Send her in, Lieutenant,” the Major said. “Have you found any blankets yet?”

  “No, Major,” Parrish said. “Neither Croydon nor New Cross has any they can spare. I have a call in to Streatham.”

  “Good. Tell them it’s an emergency. And send in Grenville.”

  She does know about the V-1s, Mary thought. That’s why she’s been so determined to stock up on supplies.

  Parrish left.

  “What medical training have you had, Lieutenant?” the Major asked.

  “I hold certificates in first aid and emergency nursing.”

  “Excellent.” She picked up Mary’s transfer papers. “I see you were stationed in Oxford. With an ambulance unit?”

  “Yes, Major.”

  “Oh, then you will have met—what is it?” she asked as Parrish leaned in the door.

  “Headquarters on the telephone, Major.”

  The Major nodded and reached for the receiver. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment…” she said, and into the telephone, “Major Denewell here.” There was a pause. “I am fully aware of that, but my unit needs those blankets. We begin transporting the wounded this afternoon.” She rang off and smiled at Mary. “Now, where were we? Oh, yes, your previous assignments,” she said, looking through her papers. “And I see you drove an ambulance in London during the Blitz. Which part of London?”

  “Southwark.”

  “Oh, well, then you must know—”

  There was a knock on the door. “Yes, come in,” the Major said, and Grenville poked her head in.

  “You wanted me, Major?”

  “Yes, I want an inventory of all our medical supplies.”

  Grenville nodded and left.

  “Now, where were we?” the Major said, picking up the transfer papers again.

  You were about to ask me about someone I knew in London during the Blitz, Mary thought, b
racing herself, but the Major said, “I see your transfer authorization is dated June seventh.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I had difficulty obtaining transport. The invasion—”

  The Major nodded. “Yes, well, the important thing is that you’re here now. We shall have our hands full over the next few days. Bethnal Green and Croydon will eventually also be transporting patients from hospital in Dover to Orpington, but for now we are the only unit assigned to transport duty. I’m sending you to Dover with Talbot and Fairchild this afternoon. They’ll teach you the route. Has Fairchild shown you the schedule and the duty rosters?”

  “Yes, Major.”

  “Our job here is extremely important, Lieutenant. This war is not yet won. It can still be lost, unless every one of us does our part. I expect you to do yours.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I will.”

  “You’re dismissed, Lieutenant.”

  She saluted smartly, and started for the door, doing her best not to look like she was escaping. She put her hand on the doorknob. “Just a moment, Lieutenant. You said you were stationed in Oxford—”

  Mary held her breath.

  “I don’t suppose they have any blankets they can spare?”

  “I’m afraid not. Our post was always short.”

  “Oh, well, ask in Dover if they have any. And tell Lieutenant Fairchild I know all about the pool and that I will not allow any premature declarations of victory at my post.”

  “Yes, Major,” she said and went to find Fairchild, who wasn’t at all alarmed that the Major knew.

  “At least she didn’t forbid us to have it,” she said, shrugging. “Come along, we’re leaving.”

  They drove south through Croydon and then turned east, straight down the middle of what in two days would be Bomb Alley.

  I should have had all the rocket times and locations implanted instead of just the ones in southeast London, Mary thought, even though that wouldn’t have been possible. There’d been far too many—nearly ten thousand V-1s and eleven hundred V-2s—so she’d focused on the ones which had hit the area around Dulwich, those that had hit London, and the area in between. But not the area between Dulwich and Dover.

  Mr. Dunworthy will have a fit when he finds out I’ve been in Bomb Alley, she thought. But they would only be doing this till the V-1s began coming over. After that they’d have their hands full dealing with the incidents in their immediate area.

  The route to Dover wove through a series of twisting lanes and tiny villages. She did her best to memorize it, but there were no signposts to go by, and on the return trip she had to devote all her attention to the patient they’d picked up. “He’s to have surgery on his leg,” the nurse said as he was loaded into the ambulance. She lowered her voice so he wouldn’t hear, “I’m afraid amputation may be necessary. Gangrene.” And when Mary climbed in the back with him, she could smell a sickening sweet smell.

  “He’s been sedated,” the nurse had told her, but before they were five miles out of Dover, he opened his eyes and asked, “They’re not going to cut it off, are they?” and what had nurses in 1944 said in answer to a question like that? What could anyone in any era say?

  “You mustn’t think about that now,” she said. “You must rest.”

  “It’s all right. I already know they are. It’s queer, isn’t it? I made it through Dunkirk and El Alamein and the invasion without getting injured, and then a bloody lorry turned over on me.”

  “You shouldn’t talk. You’ll tire yourself out.”

  He nodded. “Soldiers getting killed all round me on Sword Beach, and I didn’t get so much as a scratch. Lucky all the way. Did I ever tell you about Dunkirk, Sister?”

  He must think she was his nurse in hospital at Dover. “Try to sleep,” she murmured.

  “I thought I wasn’t going to make it off. I thought I was going to be left behind on the beach—the Germans were coming up fast—but my luck held. The chap who took me aboard had been pulled off Dunkirk two days before, and had come back to help get the rest of us off. He’d made three crossings already and the last one they’d nearly been torpedoed.”

  He was still talking when they reached the War Emergency Hospital in Orpington. “I nearly drowned, and he jumped in and saved me, hauled me aboard. If it hadn’t been for him—”

  Talbot opened the doors, and two attendants came out to unload the stretcher. Mary scrambled out, holding the plasma bottle aloft. An attendant took it from her. “Good luck, soldier,” she said as they started into the hospital with him.

  “Thank you,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for him, and for your listening to me—”

  “Wait!” Fairchild said, leaping past Mary and inside. “You can’t take that blanket. It’s ours.”

  “Oh, no,” Mary said to Talbot. “I completely forgot to ask in Dover if they had any blankets.”

  “I did. They didn’t.”

  Fairchild came back, triumphantly carrying the blanket. “Did you ask if they had any extras to spare?” Talbot asked her.

  “They don’t. I nearly had to wrestle them to get this one back.”

  “What about Bethnal Green?” Mary suggested. “Could we go by the post there on the way home and check to see if they—?”

  “No, we already asked them, the day of the applecart upset,” Talbot said.

  Which meant she’d have to think of some other way to get to Bethnal Green to confirm the attack. Perhaps she could borrow a bicycle after she went off duty. But the Major sent her and Reed to Bromley after sticking plaster and rubbing alcohol, and early the next morning they set out for Dover again.

  “And then you bear left at the bridge,” Fairchild said, teaching her the route. “And then right just past those trees.” She pointed ahead to where two tanks sat in a pasture. “That’s odd. I thought all our tanks were in France.”

  Mary wondered if they were real tanks. British Intelligence had used inflatable rubber tanks as part of their plan to deceive the Germans into thinking the invasion would be launched from southeast England. Perhaps they were left over from that.

  A horrible thought struck her. British Intelligence had also attempted to fool the Germans as to where their V-1s had landed. They’d planted false stories and photos in the newspapers to make them alter their launch trajectories so the rockets would fall short of London. Which was why Dulwich and Croydon and Bomb Alley had been hit more than anywhere else.

  What if Research had mistakenly put the falsified data into her implant instead of the actual times and locations? That would explain why no one had said anything about Bethnal Green—because the V-1 hadn’t actually hit there. If that were the case, she was in trouble. Her safety depended on her knowing exactly where and when every V-1 and V-2 had landed.

  As soon as we get back to the post, I’ve got to find out if that railway was damaged, she thought, but the moment they reached the post, the Major sent her and Fairchild off to Woolwich for the extra blankets she’d finally managed to procure, and it was dark before they got back. Which meant she’d have to wait and go to Bethnal Green tomorrow—unless the V-1s that hit tonight were on time. If they were, then the data in her implant was correct, and she could stop worrying. Unless of course one of them hit the post.

  She fidgeted through the evening, waiting for 11:43, when the first one was supposed to have hit. The siren was supposed to have sounded at 11:31. She listened impatiently to the FANYs argue over who got to wear the green silk first, trying not to look at her watch every five minutes. She was immeasurably glad when eleven o’clock and lights-out came. She retired under the covers with a pocket torch to read her watch by and a magazine she’d borrowed from the common room. If anyone noticed the light, she’d say she was reading.

  She propped the magazine on top of the torch to shield the light and waited. Ten past eleven. A quarter past. The girls continued to argue in the dark. “But Donald’s never seen you in the Yellow Peril,” Sutcliffe-Hythe said, “and Edwin’s already seen me in it twice.”

 
“I know,” Maitland said, “but I’m hoping Donald will propose.”

  Twenty past. Twenty-five. Six more minutes, Mary thought, listening for the wail of the siren starting up, for the drone of the V-1. She wished she’d listened to a recording of one in the Bodleian so she’d know exactly what they sounded like. Their distinctive rattle, which was supposed to sound like a backfiring automobile engine, had been loud enough that it had been possible to dive for the nearest gutter when one heard it and save oneself.

  Twenty-nine. Half-past. 11:31. My watch must be fast, she thought, and held it up to her ear. Oh, do come on. Sound the alert. I don’t want to have to go back through to Oxford. What will I tell the Major? And Mr. Dunworthy. If he finds out I’ve not only been driving Bomb Alley, but have a faulty implant, he’ll never let me come back.

  11:32. 11:33…

  They’d make a beautiful target, wouldn’t they?

  —GENERAL SHORT, COMMENTING ON THE BATTLESHIPS LINED UP AT PEARL HARBOR, 6 DECEMBER 1941

  The English Channel—29 May 1940

  MIKE LURCHED TO THE REAR OF THE BOAT. “WHAT DO YOU mean, we’re halfway across the Channel?” he shouted, peering out over the stern. There was no land in sight, nothing but water and darkness on all sides. He groped his way back to the helm and the Commander. “You have to turn back!”

  “You said you were a war correspondent, Kansas,” the Commander shouted back at him, his voice muffled by the wind. “Well, here’s your chance to cover the war instead of writing about beach fortifications. The whole bloody British Army’s trapped at Dunkirk, and we’re going to rescue them!”

  But I can’t go to Dunkirk, Mike thought. It’s impossible. Dunkirk’s a divergence point. Besides, this wasn’t the way the evacuation had operated. The small craft hadn’t set off on their own. That had been considered much too dangerous. They’d been organized into convoys led by naval destroyers.

  “You’ve got to go back to Dover,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard against the sound of the chugging engine and the wet, salt-laden wind. “The Navy—”