Connie Willis - Blackout

“Virus?” Miss Laburnum said, bewildered.

Oh, God, hadn’t viruses been discovered in 1940? “I…”

“Virus is a variety of influenza,” Sir Godfrey said. “Isn’t that right, Viola?”

“Yes,” she said gratefully.

“Oh, dear,” Miss Laburnum said. “Influenza can be dreadfully serious.”

“So it can,” Sir Godfrey said, “but not with the proper medicine. Have you given Miss Sebastian her script?”

Miss Laburnum fluttered off through the crowd to fetch it. “If she asks you what sort of medicine,” Sir Godfrey whispered to Polly, “tell her gin.”

“Gin?”

“Yes. A most efficacious remedy. Tell her your mother came to so fast she bit the bowl off the spoon.”

Which was from Shaw’s Pygmalion and meant that he knew perfectly well that she’d lied about going to see her mother. She braced herself for his asking where she had been, but Miss Laburnum was back with a stack of small blue clothbound books.

She handed one to Polly. “Alas, I was unable to locate sufficient copies of Mary Rose to enable us to perform it,” she said, leading them out to the platform, “though I’m certain I saw several in the bookshops only last week.”

They reached the group. “Miss Sebastian’s mother is much improved,” she announced, and went over to give the rector his copy.

“I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I’ve made for you,” Sir Godfrey whispered to Polly. “I spent three pounds ten buying up every copy of Mary Rose on Charing Cross Road to save you from sentimental claptrap like ‘Goodbye, little island that likes too much to be visited.’”

Polly laughed.

“Attention, everyone,” Mrs. Wyvern said, clapping her hands. “Does everyone have a script? Good. Sir Godfrey is to play the title role, Miss Sebastian is to be Mary-”

“Mary?” Polly said.

“Yes, the female lead. Is there a problem?”

“No, it’s only… I didn’t think we were doing Mary Rose.”

“We’re not. We’re doing The Admirable Crichton. You are playing Lady Mary.”

Sir Godfrey said, “Barrie was inordinately fond of the name Mary.”

“Oh,” Polly said. “I’m not certain I should be given such a large part, with my mother and everything. If I were to have to leave suddenly…”

“Miss Laburnum can act as your understudy,” Sir Godfrey said. “Go on, Mrs. Wyvern.”

Mrs. Wyvern read the rest of the cast list. “Sir Godfrey has also kindly agreed to direct. The play is about Lord Loam, his three daughters, and their fiancйs. They and their servants are shipwrecked-”

Shipwrecked, Polly thought. How appropriate.

“-on a desert island. And the only person among them with any survival skills at all is their butler, Crichton, so he becomes their leader. And then, when they’ve resigned themselves to remaining on the island forever, they’re rescued-”

Resigning myself’s not an option, Polly thought. I can’t afford to sit here and wait for rescue. If I’m not off the island when my deadline arrives…

But there was nothing to do but sit and wait for the retrieval team to come. Or for her drop to open. If the problem was a divergence point, then the drop might not have been damaged, and its failure to open was only temporary. If so, the retrieval team might not have come because it wasn’t necessary. She could go home on her own.

So when the all clear went the next morning, Polly stayed behind, saying she wanted to learn her lines. She gave them half an hour to get home and then went to the drop.

Workmen had begun clearing the site, so the passage was even more visible from Lampden Road, but there was no one about. The passage and the well looked just as they had the night she’d waited there except for a heavy coat of plaster dust, no doubt churned up by the work going on outside. There weren’t any footprints in the dust, so none of the men clearing the site had discovered the passage, which was lucky, but there weren’t any footprints on the steps leading down to the drop either, or any other sign that the team had come through the drop.

Polly sat down on the steps to wait, staring at the peeling black door and thinking about The Light of the World. And about Marjorie. It seemed so unlike her to have left when she’d promised to cover for Polly. And without telling anyone. But perhaps she’d been afraid if she told people, they’d attempt to talk her out of it-or say she’d lost her nerve and was running away-so she’d waited till Polly was gone and the store was especially busy to slip away.

If Merope had been in Backbury, you’d have disappeared just as precipitiously, Polly told herself. As you will now if your drop opens.

But it didn’t. It didn’t open the next morning either, or that night. Which meant either the divergence point was still occurring, or her drop had been damaged after all. But even if it had and the retrieval team had to come through somewhere else, they might still come here looking for clues to her whereabouts.

She scribbled her name and “Townsend Brothers” on a scrap of paper, folded it, and wedged it half under the peeling black door and, after work the next day, ran up to Alterations and stole a piece of French chalk.

It rained that night, preventing her from going back to the drop, so she went to Holborn and, on the pretext of borrowing an Agatha Christie mystery from the lending library, told the frizzy-haired librarian all about the acting troupe and The Admirable Crichton, mentioning her own name twice and Notting Hill Gate three times. “I work at Townsend Brothers in the stockings department during the day,” she said, “so acting makes a nice change. You must come see our play. We’re on the northbound District Line platform.”

She did the same thing at work the next day on her lunch and tea breaks. After work she wrote her address and Mrs. Rickett’s phone number on the back of her sales receipt book and, although it was still misting slightly, went to the drop.

She’d forgotten about the men clearing the site. She had to crouch in the same alley in which she’d hidden from the warden till the last workman left before scrambling over what was left of the mound of rubble to the passage.

The only footprints were the ones she’d made last time, and her note was still there. Polly retrieved it and took out the piece of chalk she’d stolen, then stood there a moment, looking at the door, deciding what message to leave. She couldn’t write what she wanted-“Help! I’m stranded in 1940. Come get me.” Just because the workmen hadn’t found the passage yet didn’t mean they wouldn’t.

Instead, she chalked, “For a good time, ring Polly,” and Mrs. Rickett’s telephone number on the door, and down in the corner-where it would only be noticed by someone expressly looking for it-the barred-circle symbol of the Underground and “Notting Hill Gate.” She went out into the passage, drew an arrow on the barrel nearest the steps, then squatted down and wrote on the side facing the wall, “Polly Sebastian, Townsend Brothers,” and the address of the boardinghouse, and then sat down on the steps and waited a full hour, just in case the drop was operational now.

It apparently wasn’t. She gave it ten more minutes and then went out to the alley, rubbed out her footprints, sprinkled plaster dust over the floor, and scrawled “Sebastian Was Here” on the warehouse wall above “London kan take it,” and went to Notting Hill Gate.

Miss Laburnum met her at the top of the escalator. “Did the young woman find you?” she asked.

Polly’s heart began to thud. “What young woman?”

“She didn’t tell me her name. She said she’d come from Townsend Brothers. What do you think, white lace for Lady Mary in act one, and then blue for the shipwrecked scenes? I always think blue shows up nicely onstage-”

“Where did she go?” Polly said, looking around at the crowd. “The young woman?”

“Oh, dear, I don’t know. She… oh, there she is.”

It was Doreen. She was red-faced and out of breath. “Oh, Polly,” she gasped, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. It’s Marjorie. Her landlady telephoned Miss Snelgrove just after you left-Marjorie wasn’t in Bath after all.”

“What do you mean?” Polly demanded. “Where was she?”

“In Jermyn Street,” Doreen said, and burst into tears. “When it was bombed.”

Danger: Land Mines

HARDY STOOD THERE BY MIKE’S BED, BEAMING AT HIM. “You’ve got five hundred and nineteen lives saved to your credit,” he said, a grin on his freckled face. “That’s a war record to be proud of.”

If I didn’t lose the war, Mike thought sickly. If one of those men it’s my fault were saved didn’t alter some critical event at El Alamein or D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge and change the course of the war. And it was ridiculous to think they hadn’t. The continuum might be able to cancel out one or two changes, but there was no way it could make up for 519 soldiers-no, 520, counting Hardy-being rescued who weren’t supposed to have been.

“I didn’t mean to tire you out,” Hardy said uncertainly. “I only thought you might want cheering up. Can I do anything for you-?”

You’ve already done more than enough, Mike wanted to snap at him, but it wasn’t Hardy’s fault. He’d been trying to do the right thing when he went back to Dunkirk. He’d had no way of knowing what the consequences would be.

“I should let you get some rest,” Hardy said, but that was impossible. Mike had to get out of here. He had to get back to the drop and warn Oxford about what he’d done. If it wasn’t already too late, and that was why the retrieval team wasn’t here-because he’d lost the war and they didn’t exist.

But Hardy had said he’d thought he was dead. Maybe when the retrieval team couldn’t find any trace of him, they’d concluded that, too. Or maybe they were still looking for him in London.

And even if it was too late, he had to try. Which meant getting out of this damned hospital. But how? He couldn’t just sneak out. For one thing, he hadn’t mastered getting down stairs yet, and even if he could, he wouldn’t get two blocks in a bathrobe and slippers. Besides, he didn’t have any papers. Or money. At the very least, he had to have train fare to Dover and bus fare from there to Saltram-on-Sea. And shoes.

And he had to convince the doctors to let him out of here, which meant he had to be walking better than he was now. Mike waited till after Hardy’d gone and the night nurse had made her rounds, then got up and practiced hobbling the length of the ward for the rest of the night, and then showed the doctor his progress.

“Astonishing,” his doctor said, impressed. “You’ve made a much faster recovery than I thought possible. We should be able to operate immediately.”

“Operate?”

“Yes. To repair the tendon damage. We couldn’t till your original wound had healed.”

“No,” Mike said. “No operation. I want to be discharged.”

“I can understand your wanting to get back in the war,” the doctor said, “but you need to understand that without further operations, there’s very little chance you’ll regain the full use of your foot. You’re risking the possibility of being crippled for life.”

And I’m risking a hell of a lot more than that if I stay here, Mike thought, and spent the next several days trying to convince the doctor to discharge him and practically going crazy with waiting. It didn’t help that there were sirens and the ever closer sound of bombs every night, and that Bevins kept sobbing, “It’s the invasion. You must get out immediately.”