Connie Willis - Blackout

“I knew it. Appointment, my eye.” Doreen set the boxes down and leaned her elbows on the counter. “I want to hear all about him. Is he good-looking?”

“Yes, but there’s not much to tell. His leave was up, and he was on his way back to his airfield. We were only able to talk for a few moments, but he asked me to write him, only I can’t remember which airfield he was stationed at. It began with a D, I think, or a T.”

“Tempsford?” Doreen said. “Debden?”

“I’m not certain,” Polly said. “The name might have had two words.”

“Two words?” Doreen said thoughtfully. “High Wycombe? No, that doesn’t begin with a T or a D. Oh, look out, here comes Miss Snelgrove.” She scooped up her boxes and scurried into the stockroom.

Polly tore off a scrap of brown wrapping paper, jotted the names down so she wouldn’t forget them, and stuck the list in her pocket. With any luck, she’d be able to get others from the shopgirls at lunch, and one of them would ring a bell with Eileen. She and Mike should be here soon. Stepney was less than three-quarters of an hour away, and she doubted if Eileen had much to pack.

But they still weren’t there by eleven, and Polly realized belatedly that she didn’t know Mike’s address or the name of the people Eileen was staying with. And Padgett’s employee records had just been blown to bits. Where are they? she thought. It shouldn’t take four hours to go to Stepney and back.

She watched the clock and the stairways and the lifts, trying not to worry, trying to believe they would walk in any moment, safe and sound, that they were going to find Gerald Phipps, and his drop was going to open and they would go back to Oxford where Mr. Dunworthy would let Eileen go to VE-Day. To believe their retrieval teams were going to walk in any moment and say, “Where have you been? We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

But as the minutes crept by, and Mike and Eileen still didn’t come, doubts began to drift back in like the fog that first night she’d come through. Even if the measles epidemic had been a divergence point and kept the retrieval team from coming for Eileen till after she’d left for London, Lieutenant Heffernan would have said they’d been there. And if the measles had been a divergence point, why had Eileen been allowed to come through in the first place?

And this was time travel. Polly might have failed to find out where Eileen was from the vicar because she had a train to catch, but the retrieval team wouldn’t have. They had literally all the time in the world.

And if Oxford hadn’t been destroyed, if Colin wasn’t dead, where was he? He had promised to come rescue her if she got in trouble.

“If you can,” Polly murmured. “If you’re not killed.”

The arrow above the lift door stopped at three, and she looked over at the lift, half expecting to see Colin standing there. But it wasn’t him. Or Mike and Eileen. It was Marjorie. “Oh, Polly!” she cried. “Thank goodness! I heard Padgett’s was hit, and I was so afraid… is your cousin all right?”

“Yes,” Polly said, grabbing her arm quickly to support her. She looked even whiter and more ill than yesterday.

“Oh, thank heavens,” Marjorie breathed. “No, I’m all right. It was just that I was afraid… I mean, I sent you there, and if something had happened to you…”

“It didn’t,” Polly assured her. “I’m quite all right, and so is she. You’re the one we’re concerned about,” she said reprovingly. “You can’t keep escaping from hospital and dashing over here. You’re an invalid, remember.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” Marjorie said. “It was only… when I heard people had been killed-”

“Killed?” Polly said, thinking, Thank goodness. I can tell Mike that, and he’ll stop worrying.

“Yes,” Marjorie said. “One of them died on the way to hospital. That’s how I found out about it. I heard the nurses talking. The other four were dead when they found them.”

Way Out

THE SHIMMER BLINDED HIM FOR A MOMENT, AND HE TOOK a stumbling step forward. And nearly killed himself. He was on a narrow spiral staircase, and only a last-moment grab for the iron railing kept him from pitching down it. He cracked his knee hard, barked both shins, and made a clanging, echoing racket in the process.

A brilliant beginning, he thought, nursing his bruised knee and looking at his surroundings. The staircase was in a narrow windowless shaft that extended up-and down-for farther than he could see, and he was apparently the only person in it, or at any rate no one had come to investigate the noise he’d made. And now that its echoes had stopped, he couldn’t hear anything.

Nothing could get through those walls, he thought, looking at the dimly lit stone. If the railing hadn’t been of iron, he’d have thought he was in the tower of a castle. Or the dungeon. In which case he should climb up to get out. But hopefully going either direction would bring him to some clue as to where-and when-this was, and down was easier than up, especially since his knee hurt.

He started down the stairs. Three turns down brought him to a bare lightbulb set in a wall socket, which meant he was in the correct century, but there was nothing to indicate what the staircase was a part of or where it led. If anywhere. He’d already come down a hundred steps, and there was still no end in sight.

I should have gone up, he thought, making another turn in the spiral, and there below him was a door. “Let’s hope it’s not locked,” he said, his voice echoing in the narrow space, and opened the door.

Onto a mob scene. Scores of people scurrying past in both directions, women in knee-length frocks, men in Burberry, uniformed soldiers, sailors, WAAFs, Wrens, all of them walking quickly, purposefully down a brightly lit, low-ceilinged tunnel. There was an arrow painted on the wall and the words “To the trains,” and below it, with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction, “Way Out.”

This is an Underground station, he thought, and started down the tunnel toward a poster on the wall. “Do your bit for the war effort,” it read. “Buy Victory Bonds. Defeat Hitler.”

I made it. I’m actually here in London in World War II, he thought, grinning from ear to ear-an expression which was completely inappropriate for an air raid (and a war), but he couldn’t seem to help himself. And at any rate no one was paying any attention to him. They pushed past him, totally intent on getting wherever it was they were going-workmen in coveralls, businessmen with toothbrush mustaches and furled umbrellas, mothers with children in tow. And every one of them was wearing a hat. The men all had bowlers, fedoras, woolen caps.

He should have worn a hat. The rest of his clothes seemed all right, but he hadn’t realized how universal hats had been in this era. Even the little boys were wearing cloth caps. I’ll stand out like the impostor I am, he thought, searching the crowd for anyone with a bare head.

There was one-a blonde in a WVS uniform-and walking just behind her was a gray-haired man. He began to relax a bit. The man was carrying a pillow under his arm.

He must be one of the shelterers, he thought, though no one was sitting down or lying along the tunnel. Perhaps they only sleep out on the platforms, or this isn’t one of the stations they used for a shelter. Or they haven’t started using the stations yet.

Whenever this was. He’d set the net so he’d come through at 7 p.m. on September 16, 1940. I need to make certain I did, he thought, hurrying down the tunnel, and then remembered he’d need to be able to find his way back to the drop and went back to take a hard look at the door he’d come through. It was black-painted metal, stenciled in white: Stairs to Surface. To Be Used in Case of Emergency Only, which explained the seemingly endless number of steps. And the reason it had been empty.

Near the foot of the door someone had scratched “E.H.+ M.T.” He made a mental note of the initials, of a peeling corner on the Victory Bonds poster, and of a second poster reading Don’t Leave It to Others: Enroll Today. And a notice at the end of the tunnel that said Central Line.

But no mention of what station it was. He needed to find that out, and the date and time of day, before he did anything else. The time should be easy. Nearly everyone was wearing a watch, and he could ask about the station at the same time, but just as he was about to tap a man with an ARP armband on the shoulder, he saw a notice: “Be alert for spies. Report all suspicious behavior.”

Did asking what station one was in count as suspicious behavior? He didn’t see why it would be-he could claim he’d got off at the wrong stop or something-but he’d already made an error about the hat. What if there was something else suspicious about his clothes? He’d better not do anything to attract attention to himself.

And it was more important to find out the date and the station. The name would be posted out on the platform. He started in the direction of the To the Trains arrow, and then stopped and elbowed his way back to a bench, where an elderly man sat snoring, the newspaper he’d been reading open on his chest. “London Damaged by Bombs,” the headline read. He leaned closer to see the date. September seventeenth. Not the sixteenth. He must have made an error in the settings.

And the seventeenth was the day Marble Arch had been hit. He needed to find out what station this was immediately. He hurried on toward the platform.

Halfway down the tunnel was an Underground map. Perhaps it had a You Are Here arrow marked on its crisscrossing multicolored lines.

It didn’t. He was going to have to go on out to the platform. Two children had come up next to him to look at the map-a small boy with a dirty face and an older girl with a half-untied sash and hair ribbon. Children usually took questions, no matter how odd, in stride. He said to the boy, “Can you tell me-?”

“I didn’t do nuthin’,” the boy said defensively and backed away. “I was only standin’ ’ere, lookin’ at the map.”

“We was seein’ which train to take,” the girl said.

So much for not attracting attention. “I only wanted to know what station this is.”

“Coo, ’e don’t know where ’e is,” the girl crowed, and the boy regarded him through narrowed eyes.

“’Ow much’ll you pay us if we tell you?”

“Pay?” How much did one pay an urchin in 1940 for information? Tuppence? No, that was Dickens. Sixpence?

“We’ll tell you for a shilling,” the girl said.

“All right,” he said and fumbled in his pocket for coins, hoping he could recognize a shilling, but he didn’t need to, the boy instantly plucked it out of the coins in his open hand.

“This ’ere’s St. Paul’s,” he said.

Good. This wasn’t Marble Arch. But if it was St. Paul’s Station, that meant he was just along the street from the cathedral itself. From St. Paul’s! I must go see it, he thought. Just for a moment.

If he could. During raids, they’d shut the gates to keep people from going outside. “Do you know what time it is?” he asked.

“’Ow much’ll you pay if-?” the boy began to say, but the girl poked him on the arm, pointing up the tunnel, and both of them took off at a dead run.

He turned to see what had spooked them and saw a uniformed guard coming. “Was them two giving you trouble, lad?”

“No,” he said. “I was only asking them for directions.”

The guard nodded grimly. “I’d check my money if I was you, lad. And your ration book.”