Jack

by Connie Willis

  Jack

  Connie Willis

  Nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novella in 1992.

  Jack

  by Connie Willis

  The night Jack joined our post, Vi was late. So was the Luftwaffe. The sirens still hadn’t gone by eight o’clock.

  “Perhaps our Violet’s tired of the RAF and begun on the aircraft spotters,” Morris said, “and they’re so taken by her charms they’ve forgotten to wind the sirens.”

  “You’d best watch out then,” Swales said, taking off his tin warden’s hat. He’d just come back from patrol. We made room for him at the linoleum-covered table, moving our teacups and the litter of gas masks and pocket torches. Twickenham shuffled his paper into one pile next to his typewriter and went on typing.

  Swales sat down and poured himself a cup of tea. “She’ll set her cap for the ARP next,” he said, reaching for the milk. Morris pushed it towards him. “And none of us will be safe.” He grinned at me. “Especially the young ones, Jack.”

  “I’m safe,” I said. “I’m being called up soon. Twickenham’s the one who should be worrying.”

  Twickenham looked up from his typing at the sound of his name. “Worrying about what?” he asked, his hands poised over the keyboard.

  “Our Violet setting her cap for you,” Swales said. “Girls always go for poets.”

  “I’m a journalist, not a poet. What about Renfrew?” He nodded his head towards the cots in the other room.

  “Renfrew!” Swales boomed, pushing his chair back and starting into the room.

  “Shh,” I said. “Don’t wake him. He hasn’t slept all week.”

  “You’re right. It wouldn’t be fair in his weakened condition.” He sat back down. “And Morris is married. What about your son, Morris? He’s a pilot, isn’t he? Stationed in London?”

  Morris shook his head. “Quincy’s up at North Weald.”

  “Lucky, that,” Swales said. “Looks as if that leaves you, Twickenham.”

  “Sorry,” Twickenham said, typing. “She’s not my type.”

  “She’s not anyone’s type, is she?” Swales said.

  “The RAF’s,” Morris said, and we all fell silent, thinking of Vi and her bewildering popularity with the RAF pilots in and around London. She had pale eyelashes and colourless brown hair she put up in flat little pincurls while she was on duty, which was against regulations, though Mrs Lucy didn’t say anything to her about them. Vi was dumpy and rather stupid, and yet she was out constantly with one pilot after another, going to dances and parties.

  “I still say she makes it all up,” Swales said. “She buys all those things she says they give her herself, all those oranges and chocolate. She buys them on the black market.”

  “On a full-time’s salary?” I said. We only made two pounds a week, and the things she brought home to the post—sweets and sherry and cigarettes — couldn’t be bought on that. Vi shared them round freely, though liquor and cigarettes were against regulations as well. Mrs Lucy didn’t say anything about them either.

  She never reprimanded her wardens about anything, except being malicious about Vi, and we never gossiped in her presence. I wondered where she was. I hadn’t seen her since I came in.

  “Where’s Mrs Lucy?” I asked. “She’s not late as well, is she?”

  Morris nodded towards the pantry door. “She’s in her office. Olmwood’s replacement is here. She’s filling him in.”

  Olmwood had been our best part-timer, a huge out-of-work collier who could lift a house beam by himself, which was why Nelson, using his authority as district warden, had had him transferred to his own post.

  “I hope the new man’s not any good,” Swales said. “Or Nelson will steal him.”

  “I saw Olmwood yesterday,” Morris said. “He looked like Renfrew, only worse. He told me Nelson keeps them out the whole night patrolling and looking for incendiaries.”

  There was no point in that. You couldn’t see where the incendiaries were falling from the street, and if there was an incident, nobody was anywhere to be found. Mrs Lucy had assigned patrols at the beginning of the Blitz, but within a week she’d stopped them at midnight so we could get some sleep. Mrs Lucy said she saw no point in our getting killed when everyone was already in bed anyway.

  “Olmwood says Nelson makes them wear their gas masks the entire time they’re on duty and holds stirrup-pump drills twice a shift,” Morris said.

  “Stirrup-pump drills!” Swales exploded. “How difficult does he think it is to learn to use one? Nelson’s not getting me on his post, I don’t care if Churchill himself signs the transfer papers.”

  The pantry door opened. Mrs Lucy poked her head out. “It’s half past eight. The spotter’d better go upstairs even if the sirens haven’t gone,” she said. “Who’s on duty tonight?”

  “Vi,” I said, “but she hasn’t come in yet.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “Perhaps someone had better go look for her.”

  “I’ll go,” I said, and started pulling on my boots.

  “Thank you, Jack,” she said. She shut the door.

  I stood up and tucked my pocket torch into my belt. I picked up my gas mask and slung it over my arm in case I ran into Nelson. The regulations said they were to be worn while patrolling, but Mrs Lucy had realized early on that you couldn’t see anything with them on. Which is why, I thought, she has the best post in the district, including Admiral Nelson’s.

  Mrs Lucy opened the door again and leaned out for a moment. “She usually comes by underground. Sloarie Square,” she said. “Take care.”

  “Right,” Swales said. “Vi might be lurking outside in the dark, waiting to pounce!” He grabbed Twickenham round the neck and hugged him to his chest.

  “I’ll be careful,” I said and went up the basement stairs and out on to the street.

  I went the way Vi usually came from Sloane Square Station, but there was no one in the blacked-out streets except a girl hurrying to the underground station, carrying a blanket, a pillow, and a dress on a hanger.

  I walked the rest of the way to the tube station with her to make sure she found her way, though it wasn’t that dark. The nearly full moon was up, and there was a fire still burning down by the docks from the raid of the night before.

  “Thanks awfully,” the girl said, switching the hanger to her other hand so she could shake hands with me. She was much nicer-looking than Vi, with blonde, very curly hair. “I work for this old stewpot at John Lewis’s, and she won’t let me leave even a minute before closing, will she, even if the sirens have gone.”

  I waited outside the station for a few minutes and then walked up to the Brompton Road, thinking Vi might have come in at South Kensington instead, but I didn’t see her, and she still wasn’t at the post when I got back.

  “We’ve a new theory for why the sirens haven’t gone,” Swales said. “We’ve decided our Vi’s set her cap at the Luftwaffe, and they’ve surrendered.”

  “Where’s Mrs Lucy?” I asked.

  “Still in with the new man,” Twickenham said.

  “I’d better tell Mrs Lucy I couldn’t find her,” I said and started for the pantry.

  Halfway there the door opened, and Mrs Lucy and the new man came out. He was scarcely a replacement for the burly Olmwood. He was not much older than I was, slightly built, hardly the sort to lift house beams. His face was thin and rather pale, and I wondered if he was a student.

  “This is our new part-timer, Mr Settle,” Mrs Lucy said. She pointed to each of us in turn. “Mr Morris, Mr Twickenham, Mr Swales, Mr Harker.” She smiled at the part-timer and then at me. “Mr Harker’s name is Jack, too,” she said. “I shall have to work at keeping you straight.”

  “A pair of jacks,” Swales said. “Not a bad hand.”

 
The part-timer smiled.

  “Cots are in there if you’d like to have a lie-down,” Mrs Lucy said, “and if the raids are close, the coal cellar’s reinforced. I’m afraid the rest of the basement isn’t, but I’m attempting to rectify that.” She waved the papers in her hand. “I’ve applied to the district warden for reinforcing beams. Gas masks are in there,” she said, pointing at a wooden chest, “batteries for the torches are in here” — she pulled a drawer open—“and the duty roster’s posted on this wall.” She pointed at the neat columns. “Patrols here and watches here. As you can see, Miss Western has the first watch for tonight.”

  “She’s still not here,” Twickenham said, not even pausing in his typing.

  “I couldn’t find her,” I said.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “I do hope she’s all right. Mr Twickenham, would you mind terribly taking Vi’s watch?”

  “I’ll take it,” Jack said. “Where do I go?”

  “I’ll show him,” I said, starting for the stairs.

  “No, wait,” Mrs Lucy said. “Mr Settle, I hate to put you to work before you’ve even had a chance to become acquainted with everyone, and there really isn’t any need to go up till after the sirens have gone. Come and sit down, both of you.” She took the flowered cozy off the teapot. “Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Settle?”

  “No, thank you,” he said.

  She put the cozy back on and smiled at him. “You’re from Yorkshire, Mr Settle,” she said as if we were all at a tea party. “Whereabouts?”

  “Whitby,” he said politely.

  “What brings you to London?” Morris said.

  “The war,” he said, still politely.

  “Wanted to do your bit, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what my son Quincy said. ‘Dad,’ he says. ‘I want to do my bit for England. I’m going to be a pilot.’ Downed twenty-one planes, he has, my Quincy,” Morris told Jack, “and been shot down twice himself. Oh, he’s had some scrapes, I could tell you, but it’s all top secret.”

  Jack nodded.

  There were times I wondered whether Morris, like Violet with her RAF pilots, had invented his son’s exploits. Sometimes I even wondered if he had invented the son, though if that were the case he might surely have made up a better name than Quincy.

  “ ‘Dad,’ he says to me out of the blue, ‘I’ve got to do my bit,’ and he shows me his enlistment papers. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. Not that he’s not patriotic, you understand, but he’d had his little difficulties at school, sowed his wild oats, so to speak, and here he was, saying, ‘Dad, I want to do my bit.’ ”

  The sirens went, taking up one after the other. Mrs Lucy said, “Ah, well, here they are now,” as if the last guest had finally arrived at her tea party, and Jack stood up.

  “If you’ll just show me where the spotter’s post is, Mr Harker,” he said.

  “Jack,” I said. “It’s a name that should be easy for you to remember.”

  I took him upstairs to what had been Mrs Lucy’s cook’s garret bedroom, unlike the street a perfect place to watch for incendiaries. It was on the fourth floor, higher than most of the buildings on the street so one could see anything that fell on the roofs around. One could see the Thames, too, between the chimneypots, and in the other direction the searchlights in Hyde Park.

  Mrs Lucy had set a wing-backed chair by the window, from which the glass had been removed, and the narrow landing at the head of the stairs had been reinforced with heavy oak beams that even Olmwood couldn’t have lifted.

  “One ducks out here when the bombs get close,” I said, shining the torch on the beams. “It’ll be a swish and then a sort of rising whine.” I led him into the bedroom. “If you see incendiaries, call out and try to mark exactly where they fall on the roofs.” I showed him how to use the gunsight mounted on a wooden base that we used for a sextant and handed him the binoculars. “Anything else you need?” I asked.

  “No,” he said soberly. “Thank you.”

  I left him and went back downstairs. They were still discussing Violet.

  “I’m really becoming worried about her,” Mrs Lucy said. One of the ack-ack guns started up, and there was the dull crump of bombs far away, and we all stopped to listen.

  “ME 109s,” Morris said. “They’re coming in from the south again.”

  “I do hope she has the sense to get to a shelter.” Mrs Lucy said, and Vi burst in the door.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, setting a box tied with string on the table next to Twickenham’s typewriter. She was out of breath and her face was suffused with blood. “I know I’m supposed to be on watch, but Harry took me out to see his plane this afternoon, and I had a horrid time getting back.” She heaved herself out of her coat and hung it over the back of Jack’s chair. “You’ll never believe what he’s named it! The Sweet Violet!” She untied the string on the box. “We were so late we hadn’t time for tea, and he said, ‘You take this to your post and have a good tea, and I’ll keep the jerries busy till you’ve finished.’ ” She reached in the box and lifted out a torte with sugar icing. “He’s painted the name on the nose and put little violets in purple all round it,” she said, setting it on the table. “One for every jerry he’s shot down.”

  We stared at the cake. Eggs and sugar had been rationed since the beginning of the year and they’d been in short supply even before that. I hadn’t seen a fancy torte like this in over a year.

  “It’s raspberry filling,” she said, slicing through the cake with a knife. “They hadn’t any chocolate.” She held the knife up, dripping jam. “Now, who wants some then?”

  “I do,” I said. I had been hungry since the beginning of the war and ravenous since I’d joined the ARP, especially for sweets, and I had my piece eaten before she’d finished setting slices on Mrs Lucy’s Wedgwood plates and passing them round.

  There was still a quarter left. “Who’s upstairs taking my watch?” she said, sucking a bit of raspberry jam off her finger.

  “The new part-timer,” I said. “I’ll take it up to him.”

  She cut a slice and eased it off the knife and on to the plate. “What’s he like?” she asked.

  “He’s from Yorkshire,” Twickenham said, looking at Mrs Lucy. “What did he do up there before the war?”

  Mrs Lucy looked at her cake, as if surprised that it was nearly eaten. “He didn’t say,” she said.

  “I meant, is he handsome?” Vi said, putting a fork on the plate with the slice of cake. “Perhaps I should take it up to him myself.”

  “He’s puny. Pale,” Swales said, his mouth full of cake. “Looks as if he’s got consumption.”

  “Nelson won’t steal him any time soon, that’s certain,” Morris said.

  “Oh, well, then,” Vi said, and handed the plate to me.

  I took it and went upstairs, stopping on the second floor landing to shift it to my left hand and switch on my pocket torch.

  Jack was standing by the window, the binoculars dangling from his neck, looking out past the rooftops towards the river. The moon was up, reflecting whitely off the water like one of the German flares, lighting the bombers’ way.

  “Anything in our sector yet?” I said.

  “No,” he said, without turning round. “They’re still to the east.”

  “I’ve brought you some raspberry cake,” I said.

  He turned and looked at me.

  I held the cake out. “Violet’s young man in the RAF sent it.”

  “No, thank you,” he said. “I’m not fond of cake.”

  I looked at him with the same disbelief I had felt for Violet’s name emblazoned on a Spitfire. “There’s plenty,” I said. “She brought a whole torte.”

  “I’m not hungry, thanks. You eat it.”

  “Are you sure? One can’t get this sort of thing these days.”

  “I’m certain,” he said and turned back to the window.

  I looked hesitantly at the slice of cake, guilty abou
t my greed but hating to see it go to waste and still hungry. At the least I should stay up and keep him company.

  “Violet’s the warden whose watch you took, the one who was late,” I said. I sat down on the floor, my back to the painted baseboard, and started to eat. “She’s full-time. We’ve got five full-timers. Violet and me and Renfrew — you haven’t met him yet, he was asleep. He’s had rather a bad time. Can’t sleep in the day — and Morris and Twickenham. And then there’s Petersby. He’s part-time like you.”

  He didn’t turn around while I was talking or say anything, only continued looking out the window. A scattering of flares drifted down, lighting the room.

  “They’re a nice lot,” I said, cutting a bite of cake with my fork. In the odd light from the flares the jam filling looked black. “Swales can be rather a nuisance with his teasing sometimes, and Twickenham will ask you all sorts of questions, but they’re good men on an incident.”

  He turned around. “Questions?”

  “For the post newspaper. Notice sheet, really, information on new sorts of bombs, ARP regulations, that sort of thing. All Twickenham’s supposed to do is type it and send it round to the other posts, but I think he’s always fancied himself an author, and now he’s got his chance. He’s named the notice sheet Twickenham’s Twitterings, and he adds all sorts of things—drawings, news, gossip, interviews.”

  While I had been talking, the drone of engines overhead had been growing steadily louder. It passed, there was a sighing whoosh and then a whistle that turned into a whine.

  “Stairs,” I said, dropping my plate. I grabbed his arm, and yanked him into the shelter of the landing. We crouched against the blast, my hands over my head, but nothing happened. The whine became a scream and then sounded suddenly further off. I peeked round the reinforcing beam at the open window. Light flashed and then the crump came, at least three sectors away. “Lees,” I said, going over to the window to see if I could tell exactly where it was. “High explosive bomb.” Jack focused the binoculars where I was pointing.

  I went out to the landing, cupped my hands, and shouted down the stairs, “HE. Lees.” The planes were still too close to bother sitting down again. “Twickenham’s done interviews with all the wardens,” I said, leaning against the wall. “He’ll want to know what you did before the war, why you became a warden, that sort of thing. He wrote up a piece on Vi last week.”