Blackout - Connie Willis

It was raining hard, but she didn’t have time to button her coat or even pull up her collar. She ran bareheaded toward Padgett’s, fighting her way through people coming out of the shops, pushing past umbrellas and people hurrying head-down against the rain and not looking where they were going. If only she’d researched exactly what time Padgett’s had been hit…

But I didn’t think I’d be here then, she thought, sidestepping a pram and trying to remember what she’d read about Padgett’s. There’d been three casualties, and the reason for that was that it had been hit early, during the first raid. And the raids tonight had begun at 6:22. Which meant the sirens might go any moment.

Two more blocks, she thought, splashing across a street, and the sirens went. People began heading for shelter. Polly zigzagged through them and arrived at Padgett’s entrance. A doorman stood under the pillared porch, arguing with a woman and a small boy.

“Hail me a taxi at once,” the woman was ordering the doorman.

“The sirens have gone, madam,” he said. “You and your son need to take shelter. Ow!” he yelped as the boy kicked him in the shins.

Polly darted past them to the revolving door and pushed on it, but it wouldn’t budge. “Sorry, miss,” the doorman said, turning from the woman. “Padgett’s is closed.”

“But I’m supposed to meet a friend here,” Polly said, trying to peer through the door into the store. “She-”

“She’ll have gone,” he said. “And, as I was telling this lady, you need to take shelter-”

“I know, but I’m not looking for a customer. My friend’s employed here. On third. She-”

“I must get to Harrods before it closes,” the woman cut in, and the little boy pulled his foot back for another kick.

The doorman sidestepped quickly and said to Polly, “You want the staff entrance.”

“Where’s that?”

“I insist you obtain a taxi for me immediately,” the woman said. “My son is leaving for Scotland on Thursday, and it’s essential he be properly outfitted-”

Polly couldn’t wait to find out where the staff entrance was. She ran down to the side of the building and around to the rear, looking for it. Shopgirls were coming out, hesitating in the doorway to see how hard it was raining and to open their umbrellas, looking anxiously up at the sky at the planes, which sounded as if they were coming closer.

“How tiresome!” one of them said as Polly darted past her. “I wanted to buy a chop for my tea on the way home. Now it will have to be shelter sandwiches. Again. Doesn’t Jerry ever take a night off?”

Townsend Brothers’ staff entrance was guarded, but Padgett’s didn’t seem to be, thank heavens. Polly pushed past the shopgirls and their umbrellas to the entrance and slipped through the door.

And collided with a guard standing just inside. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

She’d have to pretend she worked here. “I forgot my hat,” she said, hurrying past him as if she knew where she was going. She couldn’t see any stairway, only a long corridor lined with doors. Which one led to the stairs?

“Here, wait!” the guard said behind her, and the last door on the left opened, revealing a stairway and, at its foot, two young women, pulling on their gloves. Polly ducked past them through the door and ran up the stairs. As the door swung shut, she heard the guard shout, “Here! Where do you think you’re going?” and then the sound of footsteps running awkwardly after her. She raced up the stairs past the door marked Mezzanine, and up to first. He’d be coming any second. She opened the door to first and ran out onto the floor, hoping there was no one still here.

There wasn’t. The lights had been switched off and the display cases covered for the night. Polly dived behind the nearest counter and crouched there, watching the door to the stairs. After a moment, it opened and she could hear footsteps. She pressed closer behind the counter, holding her breath, and the footsteps retreated and the door closed.

She waited another long minute, listening. She couldn’t hear anything but the hum of the planes, still distant but moving steadily closer. She looked over at the lift. She could operate it-she’d watched the lift boys at Townsend Brothers do it-but the dial above its door said it was on Ground. It couldn’t come up to first without an operator. And if she went back to the stairs, and the guard had gone on up the stairwell, she’d run straight into him.

She ran across the floor, hoping there was another stairway on the far side, and there was. She darted up them, counting floors. One and a half. Two. No, mezzanine. Mezzanine and a half. Two. Why couldn’t Merope have worked on the ground floor?

The drone of the planes was substantially louder. She hoped the sound was being somehow magnified by the narrow stairwell. If it wasn’t… Two and two-thirds… three. She opened the door silently and peered out onto the floor. She couldn’t see any sign of the guard. Or of Merope anywhere on the darkened floor. The sound of the planes was less loud here than in the stairwell, but only marginally, and far off to the east Polly could hear the faint crump of a bomb.

She slipped through the door and started across the floor, looking for the notions department. “Merope!” she called. “Where are you?”

No answer. Polly remembered her saying she hadn’t recognized Polly calling her name that day in Oxford, and if anyone else was here, they’d know her by the name Eileen, too. “Eileen!”

Still no answer. She’s not here, Polly thought, running through the linen department. Or the planes are drowning out my voice. “Eileen!” she shouted more loudly. “Eileen O’Reilly!”

A hand clamped on her arm. Polly whirled, trying to think what excuse to give the guard. “I know you said the store was closed, but-” She stopped, her mouth open in astonishment.

It wasn’t the guard. It was Michael Davies.

In view of the present situation, all parents whose children are still in London are urged to evacuate them without delay. 

London-25 October 1940

“I DO BELIEVE THAT EVERY SINGLE UNPLEASANT PERSON in London has decided to shop in Padgett’s today,” Miss Peterson whispered to Eileen in the stockroom, and Eileen had to agree. She’d spent all afternoon waiting on Mrs. Sadler and her wretched son Roland, who was being belatedly evacuated to Scotland on Thursday.

And it’s too bad it’s not Australia, Eileen thought, bringing out yet another blazer for Roland to try on. He refused to extend his arm so she could get it into the sleeve and, when his mother turned away to look at the waistcoats, he kicked Eileen hard in the shins. “Ow!”

“Oh, did I knock into you?” Roland said sweetly. “I beg your pardon.”

And I thought Alf and Binnie were bad, Eileen thought. They were angels compared to Roland. “How is this, madam?” she asked Mrs. Sadler after she’d finally managed to force the jacket onto him.

“Oh, yes, the fit’s much better,” Mrs. Sadler said, “but I’m not certain of the color. Do you have it in blue?”

“I’ll see, madam.” Eileen limped into the curtained storeroom, her ankle throbbing, to fetch the blazer in blue and then brown, and wrestle them onto the resisting Roland.

Why am I always stuck dealing with horrible children? she thought. I should never have let them transfer me up here from Notions, shorthanded or not. And now it was perfectly obvious why they’d been shorthanded in Children’s Wear. When I get back to Oxford, I am never doing another assignment involving children. Even if it means giving up VE-Day.

“This blue is much nicer,” Mrs. Sadler said, fingering the lapels, “but I’m afraid it won’t be warm enough. Scotland’s winters are very cold. Have you something in wool?”

The first four blazers he tried on, Eileen thought. “I’ll see, ma’am,” she said and made another trip to the storeroom, thinking, Why couldn’t I have searched the stores on the other side of Oxford Street first? If she had, she wouldn’t have missed Polly. She’d still have been at Townsend Brothers when she went there, and they could have gone through to Oxford together. Instead, Polly was gone, and she was stuck here at Padgett’s waiting on six-year-old psychopaths till either someone came for her or she saved enough money to return to Backbury.

She’d written the vicar on the pretext of telling him she’d safely delivered the children, so he knew where she was staying and could tell the retrieval team, but if she were in Backbury, they wouldn’t have to come to London looking for her.

And it was far safer there. Stepney was bombed constantly, and Oxford Street had already been hit twice. The first time John Lewis had been gutted, which meant it hadn’t been the one Polly had mentioned. She must have got it muddled with the similar-sounding Leighton’s, and Townsend Brothers was where she’d got the idea it was a man’s name.

Thank goodness she hadn’t been hired on at John Lewis. But nowhere on Oxford Street was truly safe. If she’d been on her way to the tube station when John Lewis’s windows blew out…

But at this point she hadn’t managed to save enough money to go to Backbury. She needed not only train fare, but enough to pay her expenses once she got there. Mrs. Willett wasn’t charging her to stay since she watched Theodore at night and since they’d spent every night thus far in the Anderson. But she was charging Eileen board, and there were also her lunches and tube fare. She would have to work another full fortnight before she could afford to go.

And it looked as though it might take Mrs. Sadler that long to decide on a blazer. “No, I’m afraid that isn’t warm enough either,” she was saying. “Haven’t you anything heavier? A tweed, perhaps?”

Eileen went on yet another search, wishing Mrs. Sadler would make up her mind so she could get her purchases written up before Padgett’s closed. The air raids had been starting earlier and earlier this past week, and it was a long way to Stepney. And if she was forced to spend the night in town, Theodore would have to stay next door with Mrs. Willett’s neighbor, and Eileen didn’t trust her to take him out to the Anderson.

She’d had to stay in Padgett’s shelter the night before last, and when she reached home, Theodore’d told her they’d spent the night at Mrs. Owens’s kitchen table playing cards. “She’s teaching me to play gin rummy,” he reported proudly. “And when the bombs get very bad, we hide in the cupboard under the stairs,” and when Eileen had confronted her, Mrs. Owens had said, “That cupboard’s safer than a bit of tin, I don’t care what the government says.”

Eileen hoped Alf and Binnie’s mother didn’t have the same cavalier attitude toward shelters. Whitechapel was bombed nearly every night. She hoped she’d done the right thing in not giving Mrs. Hodbin the vicar’s letter. It was too late to give it to her now. After the City of Benares’s sinking, they’d suspended overseas evacuations, and she’d heard on the wireless this week there was a severe shortage of places for evacuees.

“No, this tweed’s much too rough,” Mrs. Sadler said. “Roland is extremely sensitive.”

Sensitive, my foot, Eileen thought.

“Haven’t you anything in camel’s hair?”

The closing bell rang while Eileen was searching for it. Thank goodness, she thought, but Mrs. Sadler remained oblivious, even though all around them customers were departing and shop assistants were covering their counters and putting on their coats and hats.

“I’m afraid Padgett’s is closing, ma’am,” Eileen said. “Would you like me to send the things you’ve purchased thus far and decide on a blazer tomorrow?”

“No, that won’t do at all,” Mrs. Sadler said. “Roland leaves next Thursday, and if it should need to be altered…”

Eileen’s supervisor, Miss Haskins, hurried up. “Is there a problem, Mrs. Sadler?”

Thank goodness, Eileen thought. Tell her the store is closing, but Mrs. Sadler had already launched into the tale of her decision to evacuate Roland to Scotland. “Everyone said I should send him to the country, but what’s to keep the Germans from bombing Warwickshire as well as London? I want to know that he’s truly safe. In my opinion, the Queen’s simply being foolhardy not to send the Princesses to Scotland. After all, one must put the safety of one’s children first, no matter how painful the separation may be.”

“Painful” is the word, Eileen thought. Roland had taken the opportunity of his mother’s not watching him to pinch Eileen hard on the arm.

“… so you can see how important it is I complete Roland’s shopping today,” Mrs. Sadler was saying.

“Yes, of course. Miss O’Reilly, you don’t mind staying, do you?” Miss Haskins didn’t wait for an answer. “Miss O’Reilly will be happy to assist you,” she said, and to Eileen, “Remember to switch off the lights in your department when you leave.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eileen said. Miss Haskins left, and a moment later, the lights on the rest of the floor went off, leaving Children’s Wear a small island of light.

Eileen managed to fight Roland into the camel’s hair blazer without suffering further injury. “It’s an excellent fit,” she said, neatly dodging Roland’s aimed foot. “And very warm-” She stopped and listened as a siren sounded.

“It is a good fit…” Mrs. Sadler said consideringly.

Eileen was constantly amazed at the coolness of Londoners during raids. They didn’t seem at all bothered by the sirens or the sound of the anti-aircraft guns, and when they went to the shelters, they strolled along as though they were window-shopping. Her first few days in London, Eileen had thought it was because they’d had more experience with them than she had. “You’ll get used to them soon,” Theodore’s mother had said when she flinched at the crump of the bombs, but she still panicked every time she heard the sirens, even when she knew she wasn’t in any danger, like here in Padgett’s.

“Madam, the sirens have gone,” she said, looking up at the ceiling. She thought she could hear the faint buzz of planes.

Roland apparently heard them, too. “Mummy, listen,” he said, tugging at Mrs. Sadler’s arm. “Bombers.”

“Yes, dear. And I do like it, but I don’t know…”

It was obvious why it had taken Mrs. Sadler over a year to evacuate her son. She’d obviously dawdled over that decision the way she was dawdling now over this blazer. You accused the Queen of being foolhardy, Eileen thought. What would you call this? For all you know, Padgett’s could be bombed at any moment.

“Madam, we can’t stay here,” she said. “It’s not safe.”

“The question is, will it be warm enough?”

For goodness’ sake, he’s not going to Antarctica.

“But it is the best we’ve seen… Very well, I’ll take it.”

Thank goodness. “Excellent, madam. I’ll have it and your other purchases sent round first thing tomorrow morning.”