Blackout - Connie Willis

Halfway along it was a gray metal door marked Emergency Exit and under it, No Unauthorized Admittance. A couple was sitting in front of it on a plaid rug, righting several overturned dishes and mopping up spilled tea.

Polly ran back out to Michael and Merope. “I think I’ve found something,” she said. She handed Merope her handbag.

“Why are you giving this to me?” Merope asked.

“You’ll see. Come along.” She led them into the tunnel and stopped a few yards short of the door. “Tell the couple you’re an Underground official,” she whispered to Michael, “and that you need to go inside, and then follow my lead.”

He did. “Official business.”

“We’re looking for two children,” Polly said. “They stole my bag.”

“I told you, didn’t I, Virgil?” the woman said. “They’re thieves, I said.”

“They’re not in there,” Virgil said. “They come barreling out, knocking our things all about, a bit ago.”

“Broke my plate with the pansies, they did.”

“They went that way,” Virgil said and pointed. “But you’ll never catch ’em, not those two.”

“We plan to set a trap for them,” Mike said, “if you’ll just let us through,” and the couple immediately began packing up the hamper and moving it and themselves away from the door.

“I hope when you do catch them, you lock them up,” the woman said as they opened the door and went through. “Young hooligans!”

“Why is it everywhere I go there are horrible children?” Merope said as soon as they were inside. She stopped and looked at their dimly lit surroundings. They were on a landing, and above and below it an iron staircase spiraled out of sight.

Polly crossed the landing to look up and then down the steps, but apparently no one besides the children had discovered the stairwell yet, and hopefully Virgil and his wife would keep anyone else out, at least on this level. There were obviously doors on other levels or the children couldn’t have used it as a shortcut. And if it was an emergency staircase, that meant it went all the way to the surface, hundreds of feet up.

“This is perfect,” Merope said, going up several steps and sitting down. “Now we can talk and not worry about people hearing us. I have so much to tell you-”

“Shh,” Michael said, looking up the staircase. “We need to see if anyone else is in here first. I have a feeling sound carries a long way. Polly, you check up above, and you check below,” he said to Merope, who obligingly scrambled to her feet and ran down the steps. At least no one would be able to sneak up on them. Merope’s footsteps clattered loudly down the iron treads.

Polly started up, but before she’d climbed three steps, Michael’s hand clamped round her wrist. “Shh,” he mouthed silently. “Stay here. I’ve got to talk to you.” He waited, listening, as the clank of Merope’s footsteps faded away below them.

Oh, no, he’s realized why I asked him when he left for Dover, Polly thought. He’s going to ask me if I have a deadline, and if I tell him, he’ll begin asking questions-

“Was John Lewis supposed to be bombed?” Michael said. The question was so utterly different from what she’d expected that she could only gape stupidly at him. “Was it?”

“Yes-”

“What about Buckingham Palace? Were the King and Queen supposed to have almost been killed like that?”

“Yes. Why are you-?”

“What about the other raids? Have they been where they were supposed to be?”

“Yes.” It’s a good thing we’re not having this conversation out in the station or we’d be arrested for being German spies, she thought. “Why are you asking me all this?”

“Because Dunkirk’s a divergence point.”

“But-”

“Shh.” He put his finger to his lips. Polly listened. There was a faint clanking from below them.

“She’s coming back,” Michael said. He released her wrist and motioned for her to go up the stairs, and she ran up them on tiptoe, trying not to make any noise. And to make sense of what he’d said. Had he seen something which didn’t match what he’d read about the Blitz? Or the evacuation of Dunkirk?

Could he think that his having been at Dunkirk had altered history, and that was why their drops wouldn’t open? But it was impossible, and if he weren’t so unnerved over all the bad news he’d had tonight, he’d realize how ridiculous a theory like that was.

And what about you? she thought. Is that why you’re imagining the worst, too? Because, as Miss Snelgrove would say, you’ve had a bad shock? Perhaps the situation’s not as bad as you think.

Or perhaps it was worse. She had to talk to Merope. Alone. But how? Send Michael on some errand? He’d already scolded her for going off without them.

She went up as far as the next landing with a door and opened it a tiny crack to peer out. A row of toddlers lay wrapped like cocoons in blankets in front of the door. Good, no one could get in that way.

She ran up two more flights, peered up into the long darkness above, then ran back down to where Merope and Michael were sitting. “All clear,” she said, sitting down on the step beside them. “Was there anyone down below, Merope?”

“No. Now, Michael, I want to hear-”

“Not Michael. And not Merope. You’re Eileen O’Reilly and I’m Mike Davis, and you’re Polly-what last name are you using?”

“Sebastian.”

“Sebastian,” he repeated. “I wish I’d known that. I’d have been able to find you a lot sooner. You’re Polly Sebastian, and those are our names for as long as we’re here. Even when we’re alone. Understood? We can’t afford to have somebody overhear us calling each other by some other name.”

Merope nodded. “Yes, Michael-I mean, Mike.”

“Good,” he said. “Now, the first thing we have to do-”

“-is get something to eat,” Polly said. “I haven’t had any supper. Have either of you?”

“I haven’t eaten since breakfast,” Merope-correction, Eileen-said. “I spent my entire lunch break waiting on Mrs. Sadler and that wretched son of hers. I’m starving!”

“Can’t this wait, Polly?” Michael-Mike said.

“No, I don’t know how long the canteen stays open.”

“Okay, but we shouldn’t all go. One of us needs to stay here. Polly, you hold down the fort, and Eileen and I’ll go,” and before she could think of a reason she needed to be the one to accompany Eileen, they’d started down the stairs.

“Oh, I just thought of something,” she heard Eileen say below. “I haven’t any money.”

And now you haven’t got a job either, Polly thought. She wondered if Mike had one. Probably not-he’d just got out of hospital. How are we going to live? she wondered.

Below her she heard the door shut and, after a moment, the clank of feet on the stairs. Was it the children who’d used this stairway before? Or a guard? she thought, remembering the No Admittance notice.

It was Mike. “I told Eileen I wasn’t sure I had enough money. I gave her two shillings and told her to go get in line, and I’d be there in a minute.”

“Oh.” Polly reached for her bag.

He stopped her. “It was just an excuse so we could finish our conversation. You didn’t answer my question before. Has anything been hit that wasn’t supposed to be?”

“No. Mike-”

“What about something that was supposed to be hit that wasn’t?” he persisted. “Or some night when there were supposed to be raids and there weren’t?”

“There were raids every night till November,” Polly said, “and they’ve all been on schedule. Is this because you were at Dunkirk?”

“I wasn’t just there. I did something that may have altered events.”

“But you know as well as I do that we can’t do that. The time travel laws won’t let us.”

“The time travel laws don’t let historians anywhere near a divergence point either, but I was right there in the middle of one.”

“And you think that’s why our drops won’t open? But that’s impossible. If your being there would have changed things, the net would have kept you from getting there.”

“That’s just it. It sent me through thirty miles from where I was supposed to be and five days late, so I missed the bus and couldn’t get to Dover.” He told her the story of how he’d ended up in Dunkirk. “The slippage was trying to stop me. If I hadn’t gotten on the Lady Jane-”

“But if your being at Dunkirk was going to alter events, it would have stopped you. It would have sent you through after the evacuation. Or to Wales or somewhere. Historians can’t change the course of history. You know that.”

“Then why did you look so horrified when I told you I’d been to Dunkirk?”

Careful, Polly thought. “Because you’d just told me none of our drops were working. And that your retrieval team hadn’t come to pull you out when you were injured. Even if it took them a long time to find you in hospital-”

“No, you don’t understand. They’d never even think to look in hospitals. Nobody knew I’d gone to Dunkirk except the captain of the boat and his grandson, and they were both killed.”

Killed? Polly thought, but he was already hurrying on. “I’d told the people in the village that I was going back to London to file my story, and nobody in the hospital knew who I was. Anyway, the point is, there was no way for the retrieval team to find me.”

“Mike, it’s time travel. No matter how long it took for them to find you, they could still have been there.”

“Not if they’re still looking for me. I’ve spent the last three and a half weeks looking for you in stores on Oxford Street and couldn’t find you. Which store do you work in?”

“Townsend Brothers.”

“I was on every floor of Townsend Brothers twice and never found you, and neither did Merope-I mean, Eileen-and she works four blocks away. And you couldn’t find Eileen even though you went to Backbury.”

“But this is-”

“I know, time travel. And part of time travel is slippage.”

“Five months’ worth?”

“No, just enough for our retrieval teams to lose the trail. If they came through after I was moved from the hospital in Dover or Eileen left for London-”

He was right. They’d have no way of knowing Eileen was working at Padgett’s, and if the hospital hadn’t known who Mike was, they could easily have lost the trail. “But what about all those weeks when Eileen was quarantined?” she asked. “They knew exactly where she was then.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the quarantine was some kind of divergence point. Measles can kill people, right? Maybe the retrieval team wasn’t allowed to come through because they’d have caught the measles and infected some general who played a critical role at D-Day.”

It sounded just like the arguments she’d used these last few weeks as she’d tried to convince herself they’d be here any day. She wondered if that was what Mike was doing, trying to convince himself. And it still didn’t explain the drops.

“I never said mine wasn’t working,” Mike said. “I just said I couldn’t get to it. And the same goes for Eileen’s. If there were evacuees in the woods, they could have kept it from opening, or someone from the village could have-”

There was a pounding on the door below them. “Stay here,” Mike said and ran down to see who was knocking.

It was Eileen. “I only had enough money for sandwiches and two teas,” Polly heard her say. “But I thought we could share.” She heard them start up the stairs. “The queue was endless.”

Polly waited where she was, thinking over what Mike had said. If there’d been two or three days’ slippage on her team’s drop, they’d have come through before she found a job, and when they went to Townsend Brothers, they’d have been told she didn’t work there. And they wouldn’t have been able to find her at night because she was at St. George’s rather than a tube shelter. Mike was right. They might still be looking for her.

Eileen came up the stairs, carrying oiled-paper-wrapped sandwiches, followed by Mike with cartons of tea. “Cheese sandwiches were the cheapest thing they had,” she said, passing them out. “What happened to you, Mike? Why didn’t you come?”

“Polly and I were discussing what we’re going to do.”

“Which is what?” Eileen said, unwrapping her sandwich and taking a huge bite out of it.

“Well, first we’re going to eat our supper.” He took the lid off the carton of tea.

“And you’re going to tell me how you got shanghaied,” Eileen said, “and, Polly, you’re going to tell me why you told me Padgett’s was safe.”

She did, and then they recounted their adventures. Polly was horrified to find out that Mike had been living in Fleet Street and that Eileen had been living in Stepney. “Stepney?” she said. “It had one of the highest casualty rates of all of London. No wonder you’re frightened of the bombs.”

“We have to get you out of there immediately,” Mike said.

“She can move in with me,” Polly said. “My room’s a double.”

“Good. And ask your landlady if she has any vacant rooms. It’ll make it a lot easier for us to be found if we’re all at the same address.”

And safer, Polly thought. She didn’t say that. Eileen was looking better now that she’d had something to eat, but as she told them about her attempts to find Polly, it was clear she’d had a bad time these last few weeks, and when Mike said she needed to go fetch her things first thing in the morning, she looked absolutely stricken. “Alone?” she said. “But what if we get separated again?”

“We won’t,” Polly reassured her and wrote out Mrs. Rickett’s address for her and Mike. “I work on the third floor of Townsend Brothers. And if I’m not there-”

“I know,” Eileen said. “I’m to go to the foot of the escalator on the lowest level of Oxford Circus.”

Mike laid out what they were to do. Polly was to make a list for him and Eileen of when and where the raids were for the next week, and Eileen was to write the manor and everyone she’d known there and give them Mrs. Rickett’s address. “So if your retrieval team comes, they’ll know where you are,” Mike said. “And write the postmistress in Backbury. And the stationmaster.”

“I’ve met the stationmaster,” Polly said. “I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by writing him.”

“Well, the local clergyman then.”

“I wrote the vicar as soon as I arrived in London to tell him I’d delivered the children to their parents,” Eileen said.

The vicar knew Eileen was in London, Polly thought. And if that wretched train had been late like the stationmaster said it always was and she’d been able to stay till after the service, she’d have found Eileen a month ago, and Eileen would never have been in danger of being killed at Padgett’s.

“Write him again,” Mike was saying. “And contact the parents of the other evacuees you delivered.”