Blackout - Connie Willis

Tensing was doing even better. He was walking not only in the sun-room, but the length of the wards and then up and down stairs with his doctors’ approval. “At this rate, you’ll be out of here in a week or two,” Mike told him when Tensing came down Wednesday in robe and slippers to see him in the ward.

“No,” he said, pulling over a chair. “I’m being discharged tomorrow morning. I got word this afternoon.” He sat down and leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Sorry to break up our partnership, old man, but duty calls, and you’re doing splendidly. You’ll be out of here in no time.”

“You’re going back to your old job?” Mike said, thinking, What if the War Office gets bombed? Right now London’s as dangerous as the front.

“My old job?” Tensing said, looking disconcerted.

“Yes, in the War Office.”

“Oh. Yes. It’s not a glamorous job, I know, filling up forms, but it must be done. And London’s rather exciting these days, with the raids and all.”

“Is that how you got injured before? In a raid?”

“Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. A typewriter fell on me.” He shook Mike’s hand. “I hope we meet again.”

We won’t, Mike thought, but he nodded. “Good luck.”

Tensing shook his head. “Wrong response. The correct answer is ‘nineteen across: clumsy curtain wish,’” and went out.

It took Mike ten minutes to figure out that the answer was “Break a leg.” He wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to Sister Carmody when she came over to his bed, but before he could ask her to take it to Tensing, she asked, “Are you feeling well enough for a visitor?”

“A visitor?” It couldn’t be Daphne. In her last letter she’d written that there’d been an influx of soldiers to the coast, “with the invasion coming,” and as a result, the inn was so busy she was unable to get away, which he’d decoded as meaning she’d found someone new to flirt with. Thank God.

“Yes, it’s a new patient,” Sister Carmody said. “As soon as he was admitted, he asked if you were here.”

So he’d been right about the retrieval team coming disguised as patients. “Where is he?” He started to swing his feet over the side of the bed, and then remembered he was supposed to still be bedridden.

“I’ll send him in,” Sister Carmody said, and almost immediately the ward doors swung open and a man with a freckled face, a bandaged shoulder, and a cast on his arm came striding jauntily into the ward. It was Hardy.

“Do you remember me?” he said. “Private David Hardy? From Dunkirk?”

“Yes,” Mike said, looking at his cast. I’d hoped you’d died, that you hadn’t had the chance to do any damage.

“I wouldn’t have been surprised if you didn’t remember,” Hardy was saying. “You were pretty badly off. How’s your foot? Did they have to cut it off?”

“No.”

“They didn’t? I thought it’d definitely have to come off,” he said cheerfully. “It looked like bloody hell.”

“How’d you get that?” Mike asked, pointing at Hardy’s cast.

“Dunkirk,” Hardy said. “Messerschmitt. It was coming straight at us, and I dove for the deck and came up hard against the side. Smashed my shoulder blade to bits. That’s why I’m here, to have surgery on it because it’s not healing properly, and the moment I arrived I asked, ‘Is there a patient here who mangled his foot unfouling a propeller at Dunkirk?’ and they said yes. I can’t tell you how glad I was. The hospital in Dover hadn’t any record of your ever having been admitted, even though I’d seen you into the ambulance myself, so I thought you must have died on the way to hospital. And then when they said they were sending me to Orpington, I thought perhaps that was what had happened to you, and here you are. I’m awfully glad I found you. I wanted to thank you for saving my life. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be in a German prison camp. Or worse.”

He beamed at Mike. “And I wanted you to know what a good day’s work you did when you rescued me. As soon as I’d had a hot meal and a sleep, I went back over on the Mary Rose, and then, when she was sunk, the Bonnie Lass. I made four trips altogether and personally got five hundred and nineteen men safely on board and back to Dover.” He grinned happily at Mike. “And all because I saw that light of yours.”

No ships in sight. Something must have gone wrong. 

En route to London-29 September 1940

POLLY’S JOURNEY BACK TO LONDON WAS EVEN WORSE than the one to Backbury had been. The train had no empty seats, and she had to stand squashed in the corridor-the only advantage of which was that she couldn’t fall down when the train swayed or stopped so the inevitable troop trains could pass.

When she changed trains at Daventry, she managed to snag a seat in a compartment, but at the next stop scores of soldiers poured onto the train, all with enormous kit bags which they crammed onto the overhead racks and then, when they were filled, set on the already crowded seats, squashing Polly into a smaller and smaller space.

Colin warned me about the dangers of blast and shrapnel, but not about the possibility of being smothered. Or stabbed to death, she thought, attempting to shift the kit bag on her right, which appeared to have a bayonet in it from the way it was poking her in the side.

And why had the train had to arrive in Backbury on time, today of all days? No other train had been on time during the entire war. If it had been put onto a siding by even a single troop train, she’d have had time to speak to the vicar and find out for certain if Merope had gone back to Oxford.

Of course she’s gone back, she argued. She left when the Army took over the manor. Her assignment had obviously been designed to end then. With everyone leaving, her disappearance wouldn’t even have been noticed. They’d have assumed she’d taken another job or gone home to her family, like the sergeant said. But what if she hadn’t left for Oxford? What if the evacuees had been sent to another village, and Merope’d gone with them?

No, the sergeant had said the children had gone back to London, and even if they’d been sent to another manor, it would have had its own staff to care for them. And the last thing Merope would have wanted to do was to go with the Hodbin children. And to leave her drop. If she’d been told to accompany them, she’d have made some excuse and gone to the drop and through to Oxford as soon as possible.

Either way, she was gone, which meant Polly was stuck here till someone came to fetch her. But it also meant she could stop imagining that the net was broken, or worse, and that they wouldn’t be able to come get her before her deadline. Merope’s drop was obviously working or she couldn’t have gone back.

Which meant the problem had to be a divergence point-or a series of them-and the team would be here as soon as they were over. Or they might already be over, and the team was waiting for her at Townsend Brothers, though it was highly unlikely they’d have come on the one day she’d been gone.

If it was only one day. At this rate it would take her a week to get back to London. The train from Daventry had been so late and there’d been so many delays that by six o’clock they still hadn’t reached Hereford, which meant she might as well have stayed till the service was over, talked to everyone in Backbury, and taken the bus back. But after Reading they made better time, and by ten one of the soldiers reported, “We’re coming into Ealing. We should be in London soon.”

The train pulled out of the station and then stopped. And sat. “Is it another troop train?” Polly asked.

“No. Air raid.”

Polly thought of the vicar’s sermon. “We fear we will be trapped in this dreadful place forever,” he’d said. Truer words, she thought, leaning her head against the kit bag and trying to catch a little sleep.

It was a good thing Marjorie had said she’d cover for her if she wasn’t there at the opening bell. They didn’t make it to Euston Station till half past eight the next morning, after which she still had to run the obstacle course of London-After-a-Big-Raid. The Piccadilly, Northern, and Jubilee Lines weren’t running; the bus she needed to take was lying on its side in the middle of the road; and there were notices saying Danger UXB barring access to every other street.

It was half past eleven before she reached Townsend Brothers. Marjorie would almost certainly have told Miss Snelgrove about Polly’s ailing mother by now. She’d have to ask Marjorie exactly what she had told her, so they could coordinate their stories.

But Marjorie wasn’t there. When Polly got to the floor, Doreen hurried over to her and demanded, “Where have you been? We thought you’d gone off with Marjorie.”

“Gone off?” Polly said, glancing over at Marjorie’s counter, but a plump brunette she didn’t recognize was standing behind it. “Where?”

“No one knows. Marjorie didn’t say a word to anyone. She simply didn’t come in this morning. Miss Snelgrove was livid, what with not knowing whether you’d be in and us so busy. Customers have been coming in in droves.” She pointed at the brunette. “They had to send Sarah Steinberg down from Housewares to fill in till they can hire someone.”

“Hire someone? But just because Marjorie didn’t come in doesn’t mean she’s given her notice. She might have had difficulty getting here. I had a dreadful time coming from the station. Or something might have happened to her.”

“That was the first thing we thought of, what with the raids last night,” Doreen said. “And when Miss Snelgrove rang her landlady, she said Marjorie hadn’t come in last night, and she’d rung the hospitals. But she rang back a bit ago and said she’d checked Marjorie’s room, and all her things were gone. Marjorie was always on about going to Bath to live with her flatmate, but I never thought she’d actually do it, did you?”

“No,” Polly said. Marjorie hadn’t said a word about leaving. She’d promised to cover for her and to tell the retrieval team where she was. What if they’d been here this morning?

“Did anyone come in-?” she began, but Doreen cut her off.

“Quick, Miss Snelgrove’s coming,” she whispered. She scuttled off to her own counter, and Polly started toward hers, but too late. Miss Snelgrove was already bearing down on her.

“Well?” she demanded. “I trust you have a good reason for being two and a half hours late?”

That all depends on what Marjorie told you on Saturday, Polly thought. Had she said she was ill or visiting her mother?

“Well?” Miss Snelgrove said, folding her arms belligerently across her chest. “I trust you’re feeling better.”

She’d told her she was ill, then. I hope. “No, actually, I’m still a bit gippy. I rang up to say I wouldn’t be in today, but they said you were dreadfully shorthanded, so I thought I’d best try to come in.”

Miss Snelgrove was not impressed. “To whom did you speak?” she demanded. “Was it Marjorie?”

“No, I don’t know who it was. I didn’t know about Marjorie till I got here. I was so surprised-”

“Yes, well, go and tell Miss Steinberg she can go back to her department. And I believe you have a customer.”

“Oh, yes, sorry,” Polly said and went over to her counter, but Miss Snelgrove continued to watch her like a hawk, so she didn’t have a chance to ask Sarah if anyone had come in asking about her this morning, and no chance to talk to Doreen either till Miss Snelgrove went on her lunch break.

As soon as she was out of sight, Polly darted over to Doreen’s counter and asked her, “Marjorie didn’t say whether anyone had come in asking for me before she left, did she?”

“No, I didn’t even have a chance to talk to her,” Doreen said. “We were swamped, what with you being out ill and all, and then, just before closing, Miss Snelgrove said I’d made a mistake in my sales receipts, and I had to tote them all up again and by the time I’d finished, Marjorie’d gone.” She looked speculatively at Polly. “Who were you expecting? Did you meet someone?”

“No,” Polly said. She repeated the story she’d told Marjorie about her cousin coming to London. “And you didn’t see her talking to anyone?”

“No, I told you, we were frightfully busy. There was a story in the Saturday morning papers about the government rationing silk because the RAF needed it for parachutes, and everyone in London came in to buy up nightgowns and knickers. She could at least have said goodbye,” Doreen said indignantly. “Or left a note or something.”

A note. Polly went back to her counter and searched its drawers and her sales book and then, pretending to rearrange the merchandise, the drawers of stockings and gloves, but all she found was a scrap of brown wrapping that read cryptically “6 bone, 1 smoke”-presumably a reminder of stocking colors to be ordered. Or the description of a bomb site. But no note.

Even though it was unlikely Sarah would have seen the note and pocketed it, Polly ran upstairs to Housewares on her tea break to ask her. She hadn’t, and no, no one had come in asking for Polly this morning before she got there. Sarah hadn’t talked to Marjorie on Saturday either. Neither had any of the other girls except Nan, and Marjorie hadn’t mentioned anyone inquiring about her.

“Face it, luv, he’s not coming,” Doreen said as they covered their counters.

“What?” Polly said, startled. “Who?”

“This boyfriend you’ve asked everyone in the entire store about. What’s his name?”

“I haven’t got a boyfriend. I told you, my cousin-”

Doreen didn’t look convinced. “This chap didn’t… you’re not in trouble, are you?”

Yes, Polly thought, but not the sort you mean. “No,” she said. “I told you, I haven’t got a boyfriend.”

“Well, you haven’t one now, that’s certain. He’s left you in the lurch.”

No, they haven’t, Polly thought, but there was no one standing outside the staff entrance, and no one in front of Townsend Brothers. Polly waited as long as she could, hoping the team didn’t know about the earlier closing hour, but darkness-and, consequently, the raids-were coming earlier now that it was nearly October. In another week, the raids would begin before people left work.

Sir Godfrey was waiting for her at Notting Hill Gate when she stepped off the train. He took her arm. “Viola! I have tragic news. You weren’t here to vote with me last night, and so we are condemned to do that sentimental ass Barrie.”

“Oh, dear. Not Peter Pan?”

“No, thank God,” he said, escorting her to the escalator and down, “though it was a near thing. Mr. Simms not only voted for it but demanded Nelson be allowed to vote as he would be playing Nana. And after I intervened to get the wretched dog allowed down here in the first place! Foul traitor!”

He smiled at her and then frowned. “Don’t look so heartbroken, child. All is not lost. If we must do Barrie, The Admirable Crichton’s at least amusing. And the heroine shows great courage in adversity.”