Blackout

by Connie Willis

  “Least that’s what the warden said yesterday morning,” the old man was saying. “It didn’t… here, now, are you all right, miss?”

  She stared blindly at him. The drop wasn’t hit last night. It was the night before last. But it can’t have been. If it was, then the—

  Her knees buckled. The old man caught her, dropping his cushion and the paper sack onto the pavement as he did. “Why don’t you sit down here on the curb for a moment,” he said, holding her up. “Till you’re feeling better, and then I’ll take you home. Where is it you live, miss?”

  He meant the boardinghouse. But Mrs. Rickett and Miss Hibbard and Mr. Dorming and Miss Laburnum were all dead. There was no one there to tell the retrieval team she lived there. And there’d been no one there yesterday, when—

  “I must go to Townsend Brothers,” Polly said.

  “That’s not a good idea, miss,” the old man said. “You’ve had a bad shock. The ARP post’s just down the way. I’ll be back in no time.”

  In no time. They’re all dead, she thought, and they can’t tell them where I am. They can’t come and get me—

  “Oh, dear,” the old man said, catching her and easing her down onto the edge of the curb. “Are you certain you aren’t injured?” and when she didn’t answer, “You sit there, and I’ll fetch the warden. He’ll know what to do.” He tucked the fringed cushion against the small of her back, trotted off down the street, and disappeared into the fog.

  Polly got to her feet and stumbled blindly off up the street. She had to get away before he came back with the warden. She had to get to Bayswater Road and find a taxi. And get to Townsend Brothers.

  But no taxis were abroad, and no buses either. Because of the fog, she thought, but that wasn’t the reason. There was a bus in the center of the road half tipped into a large crater. It was empty. I wonder what happened to the passengers, Polly thought, but she knew. They were all dead. They’d been dead since yesterday, like Miss Laburnum and Trot and Sir Godfrey. Since yesterday.

  Don’t think about that, she told herself, willing her wobbly legs to walk past it, to walk up the foggy road. Don’t think about any of it. Find a taxi.

  She finally did, after what seemed like years of walking and wreckage and craters and fog. “Townsend Brothers,” she told the cabbie as she opened the door. “On Oxford Street.”

  “Townsend Brothers?” he said, looking oddly at her.

  She’d forgotten shopgirls didn’t take taxis. But she had to. “Yes,” she said. “Take me there immediately.”

  “But you’re already there,” he said.

  “Already—?” she said, looking bewilderedly where he was pointing, and there was Townsend Brothers. She looked at the boarded-up display windows, at the doors. And at the empty pavement in front of them.

  The retrieval team wasn’t there. She’d been so certain they would be, so certain that when they couldn’t find out where she lived, they’d go to Oxford Street. They’ve been delayed, that’s all, she told herself. They couldn’t find a taxi either. Or they thought there wasn’t any point in coming till I arrived for work. They’ll be here at nine. She looked at her watch, but she couldn’t make the hands mean anything. “What time is it?” she asked the cabbie.

  “Twenty past nine,” he said, pointing up the street at Selfridges’ clock. “You all right, miss?”

  No. “Yes,” she said, and realized she was still holding on to the open passenger door. She shut it and started toward the store.

  They’ve already gone inside, she told herself, going in the staff entrance and up the stairs. They’re waiting for me in my department. But they couldn’t be. The store wasn’t open yet, and when she reached third and opened the stairway door, there was no one over by her counter.

  They’re not here, she thought, and the sick dread she’d been trying to hold at bay since she saw the wrecked church, trying to keep from herself, washed over her in a drowning wave.

  The drop had been damaged by the same parachute mine that destroyed St. George’s and killed—oh, God, Sir Godfrey and Trot and all the rest of them. They’d been killed and the shops flattened and the drop damaged all at the same time—the night before last, while she was in Holborn, standing in line at the canteen, talking to the librarian, sitting in the tunnel reading the newspaper. No, earlier than that. “Not more’n an hour after the sirens went,” the old man had said. While she was trying to convince the guard to open the gate so she could go to the drop—

  But it had already been out of commission. Already out of commission when she came to work yesterday morning. The retrieval team should have been here yesterday. They should have been waiting for her outside Townsend Brothers yesterday morning, not today. Yesterday.

  “Polly!” she heard Marjorie say, but when she looked up, it was Miss Snelgrove, the floor supervisor, who was walking toward her. She looked appalled.

  She’s going to discharge me, Polly thought, because I didn’t get a black skirt.

  “Miss Sebastian,” Miss Snelgrove said. “What—?”

  “I couldn’t get my skirt. I tried, but it wouldn’t open—”

  “You mustn’t worry about that now,” Miss Snelgrove said, taking her arm as the old man had.

  “And it’s nearly half past nine.”

  “You mustn’t worry about that either. Miss Hayes,” Miss Snelgrove said to Marjorie, who’d come over. “Go and tell Mr. Witherill to telephone for a taxi,” but Marjorie didn’t go.

  “What happened, Polly?” she asked.

  “They’re not here,” Polly said. “They’re all dead.” She started blindly over to her counter.

  Miss Snelgrove stopped her and steered her gently back toward the lifts. “We’ll find someone to fill in for you today,” she said, patting Polly kindly on the shoulder. “You need to go home.”

  Polly looked at her bleakly. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I can’t.”

  It sounds perhaps callous—I don’t know—but it was enormously exciting and tremendous fun.

  —FLYING OFFICER BRIAN KINGCOME, ON THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN, 1940

  En Route to London—9 September 1940

  THE TRAIN WASN’T QUITE AS JAMMED AS THE ONE EILEEN had sent Theodore home on in December, but every compartment was filled, and she had to wrestle the children and their luggage through three cars before they found space in a compartment with a portly businessman, two young women, and three soldiers. Eileen had to hold Theodore on her lap and sit across from Alf and Binnie. “You two behave,” she told them.

  “We will,” Alf promised and promptly began tugging on the sleeve of the stout man who had the window seat. “I got to sit by the window so I can look for planes,” he said, but the man went on reading his newspaper, which read, “German ‘Blitz’ Tests London’s Resolve.”

  “I’m an official planespotter,” Alf said, and when the man still refused to move, Binnie bent toward Alf and whispered loudly, “Don’t talk to ’im. I’ll wager ’e’s a fifth columnist.”

  The soldiers looked up.

  “What’s a fifth columnist?” Theodore asked.

  “Here,” Eileen said, taking a packet from the basket the vicar had given them and handing it across to Alf and Binnie. “Have a biscuit.”

  “A fifth columnist’s a traitor,” Binnie said, staring hard at the man.

  He rattled his newspaper irritably.

  “They look just like me ’n’ you,” Alf said. “They pretend to be readin’ the papers, but they’re really spyin’ on people and then tellin’ ’Itler.”

  The two young women began whispering to each other. Eileen caught the word “spy,” and so, apparently, did the man, because he lowered his paper to glare at them and then at Alf, who was munching on a biscuit, and then retreat behind his newspaper again.

  “You can tell fifth columnists by the way they hate children,” Binnie told Theodore. “That’s ’cause children are ’specially good at spottin’ them.”

  Alf nodded. “’E looks exactly lik
e Göring, don’t ’e?”

  “This is intolerable!” the man exclaimed. He flung his newspaper down on the seat, stood up, yanked his valise down from the overhead rack, and stormed out. Binnie immediately moved into the now-vacant window seat, and Eileen expected an explosion from Alf, but he continued calmly munching his biscuit.

  “You better not eat that,” Binnie said. “You’ll be sick.”

  The soldier and the young women looked up alertly.

  Alf dug another biscuit out of the packet and bit into it. “I will not.”

  “You will so. He’s allus sick on trains,” she said to the soldiers. “’E threw up all over Eileen’s shoes, didn’t ’e, Eileen?”

  “Binnie—” Eileen began, but Alf shouted over her, “That was when I ’ad the measles. It don’t count.”

  “Measles?” one of the soldiers said nervously. “They’re not contagious, are they?”

  “No,” Eileen said, “and Alf isn’t going to—”

  “I don’t feel well,” Alf said, clutching his middle. He made a gagging sound and bent over a cupped hand.

  “I told you,” Binnie said triumphantly, and within moments the compartment had emptied, and Alf had scooted over to the other window. “Can I have a sandwich, Eileen?” he asked.

  “I thought you got sick on trains,” Eileen said, moving Theodore off her lap and onto the seat beside her.

  “I do, ’specially when I ain’t ’ad nothin’ to eat.”

  “You just had two biscuits.”

  “No, ’e ain’t,’ Binnie said. “’E ’ad six,” and the compartment door opened.

  An elderly woman leaned in. “Oh, good, there’s room in here, Lydia,” she said, and she and two other elderly ladies came in. “Little boy,” one of them said to Alf, “you don’t mind sitting next to your sister, do you? There’s a good boy.”

  “No, of course he doesn’t mind,” Eileen said quickly. “Alf, come sit here next to me.” She pulled Theodore onto her lap again.

  “But what about my planespottin’?” Alf protested.

  “You can look out Binnie’s window. And don’t you dare pretend to be sick again,” she whispered. “And no fifth columnists, or you shan’t have any lunch.”

  Alf looked as if he was going to object and then reached into his pocket and said to the ladies, “Want to see my pet mouse?”

  “Mouse?” one of them squeaked, and all three shrank back against the upholstered seat.

  “Alf—” Eileen said warningly.

  “I told ’im not to bring it,” Binnie said virtuously, and Alf took his fisted hand from his pocket. A long pink tail dangled from it. “’Is name’s Arry,” he said, holding his fist out to the ladies.

  Two of them shrieked, and all three scooped up their things, and fled. “Alf—” Eileen said.

  “All you said was no being sick and no fifth columnists,” he said, sticking his fist back in his pocket. “You never said nuthin’ about mice.” He shut the compartment door, sat down by the window, and pressed his nose to the glass. “Look, there’s a Wellington!”

  “Alf, give me that mouse this instant.”

  “But I gotta mark down where I seen the Wellington.” He pulled out the map the vicar’d given him and began to unfold it.

  Eileen snatched the map away from him. “Not till you give me that mouse.” She held out her hand.

  “All right,” Alf said grudgingly, bringing it out of his pocket. “It’s only a bit of string.” He held a faded pink cord out in his open palm.

  It looked oddly familiar.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “That carpet of Lady Caroline’s,” Binnie said.

  “It fell off,” Alf said.

  Lady Caroline’s priceless medieval tapestry. And when she finds out…

  But by then Eileen would be long gone, Lady Caroline would blame it on the Army, and Alf and Binnie would have been long since hanged for some other crime, so she settled for an admonition against frightening people and gave the three of them the sandwiches and bottles of lemonade in the basket, which they were happily drinking when a woman with iron-gray hair and a no-nonsense air opened the door.

  “No,” Eileen said to Alf and Binnie.

  The woman sat down across from Eileen, both hands on the handbag on her lap. “You should not allow your children to have lemonade,” she said sternly. “Or sweets of any kind.”

  “Would you like to see my mouse?” Alf asked.

  The woman turned a gimlet eye on him. “Children should be seen and not heard.”

  “It’s to feed my snake with.” He showed her the dangling tapestry cord.

  She looked coldly at it. “I have been a headmistress for thirty years,” she said, taking hold of the cord and pulling it from his fist. “Far too long to be fooled by schoolboy tricks regarding imaginary mice.” She handed the cord to Eileen. “And imaginary snakes. You need to be firmer with your children.”

  “She isn’t my mother,” Theodore piped up, and the headmistress turned the gimlet eye on him. He shrank back against Eileen.

  “They’re evacuees,” Eileen said, putting her arm around him.

  “All the more reason for you to use a strong hand with them.”

  Alf put his hand on his stomach. “I don’t feel well, Eileen.”

  “Alf allus gets sick on trains,” Binnie said.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” the headmistress said to Eileen. “This is what comes of giving them lemonade. A dose of castor oil will cure them.”

  Alf promptly removed his hand from his stomach, and he and Binnie both scooted over to the corner.

  “It’s clear all three of your charges have been pampered and indulged far too much,” she said, glaring at Theodore.

  Theodore. Who’s had a luggage tag pinned to his coat and been handed over to strangers and shipped off to a strange place how many times?

  “Coddling is not what children need,” the headmistress said. She turned to glower momentarily at Alf and Binnie, who were whispering in the corner. “They need discipline and a firm hand, particularly during times like these.”

  I’d have thought they needed more “coddling” during a war, Eileen thought, not less.

  “Being nice to children only makes them dependent and weak,” which weren’t exactly the words Eileen would have used to describe Alf and Binnie. “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

  “You mean beating?” Theodore asked tremulously, burrowing into Eileen’s side.

  “When necessary,” the headmistress said, looking over at Alf and Binnie with an expression that clearly indicated she thought it was necessary now.

  Alf had stepped up on the seat to reach the luggage rack and Binnie was standing below to catch him. “Alf, sit down,” Eileen said.

  “I’m lookin’ for my planespotter log,” he said, “so I can write down the planes I seen.”

  “Children should not be allowed to talk back to their elders,” the headmistress said. “Or to clamber about like monkeys. You there,” she shouted to them, “sit down at once,” and, amazingly, they both obeyed her. They sat down next to her, their hands folded on their laps.

  “You see?” she said. “Firmness is all that is required. These modern notions of allowing children to do whatever they—yowp!” She shot to her feet, flung her handbag at Eileen, and brushed madly at her lap as if it had caught fire.

  “Alf, what did you do?” Eileen said, but he and Binnie were already on their knees scrabbling to retrieve something off the floor. Alf jammed it in his pocket.

  “Nuthin’,” he said, standing up and holding out his empty hands.

  “We was just sittin’ there,” Binnie said innocently.

  “Horrid children,” the headmistress said furiously and wheeled on Eileen. “You are obviously unfit to have children in your care.” She snatched her handbag out of Eileen’s hands. “I intend to report you to the Evacuation Committee. And the conductor.” She snatched up her suitcase and her parcels and turned on Alf and Binni
e. “I predict you two will come to a bad end.” She swept out of the compartment.

  “I only wanted to show her it wasn’t ’maginary,” Alf said, pulling a green garter snake out of his pocket.

  “And it served ’er right,” Binnie added darkly.

  Yes, it did, Eileen thought, but she said, “You had no business bringing a snake on the train.”

  “I couldn’t leave ’im all alone at the manor,” Alf said. “’E might’ve got shot. ’Is name’s Bill,” he added fondly.

  “Will we be thrown off the train?” Theodore asked fearfully, and as if in answer, the train began to slow. Alf and Binnie dived for the window.

  “It’s awright,” Binnie said, “we’re comin’ into a station.” But at the end of ten minutes, the train hadn’t started up again, and when Eileen went out in the corridor (after warning the children not to move while she was gone) she saw the headmistress out on the platform shaking her finger at the stationmaster, who was looking anxiously at his pocket watch.

  Eileen retreated hastily back inside the compartment. “Alf, you must get rid of that snake this minute.”

  “Get rid of Bill?” Alf said, appalled.

  “Yes.”

  “’Ow?”

  “I don’t care,” she began to say, then had a horrible image of it slithering down the corridor. “Put it out the window.”

  “Out the window? ’E’ll be run over!” and Theodore began to cry.

  One more day, Eileen thought, and I will never have to see these children again.

  The train was beginning to move. The stationmaster must have persuaded the headmistress to allow them to stay on board. Or perhaps she’d stormed off to take a later train. “You can’t throw Bill out now we’re movin’,” Binnie said. “It’d kill ’im for sure.”

  “It ain’t Bill’s fault ’e’s ’ere,” Alf argued. “You wouldn’t like it if you was somewhere you wasn’t s’posed to be and somebody tried to kill you.”

  Which is exactly the situation I’ll be in when I reach London, Eileen thought. “Very well,” she said, “but you must put him out the next time we stop. And till then, he stays in your haversack. If you take him out, it’s out the window.”