Blackout

by Connie Willis

  “Thank you,” Polly said and started up the gravel drive, even though there was no point. Merope’s assignment had obviously ended with the takeover of the manor. Unless the remaining evacuees had been transferred to another village and she’d gone with them. But Lieutenant Heffernan couldn’t tell her anything about the evacuees.

  “I didn’t arrive till after the school was in operation,” he said.

  “When did the Army take over the manor?”

  “August, I believe.”

  August. “Did any of the staff stay on here?”

  “No. Some of them may have gone with the lady of the manor. I believe she went to stay with friends.”

  In which case she’d only have taken her personal maid and chauffeur.

  “I can give you her ladyship’s address,” he said, looking through a stack of papers. “It’s here somewhere…”

  “No, that’s all right. Do you know if the evacuees who were here returned home or were billeted somewhere else?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. I believe Sergeant Tilson was here then. He might be able to help.”

  But Sergeant Tilson hadn’t been there either. “I didn’t come till September fifteenth, and the evacuees had already gone back to their parents by then.”

  “To their parents? In London?”

  He nodded.

  Then Merope definitely hadn’t gone with them. “What about the staff?”

  “From what Captain Chase said, they went home to their families as well.”

  “Captain Chase?”

  “Yes. He was in charge of setting up the school. He’d be able to tell you—he was here when they all left—but I’m afraid you just missed him. He left for London early this morning and won’t be back till Tuesday.” He frowned. “The vicar in the village might be able to tell you where they went.”

  If I can find him, Polly thought. But if she could make it back to Backbury before eleven, he’d be at the church, preparing for the service. She quickly took her leave of the sergeant—and the sentry, who solemnly raised the bar again to let her out—and hurried back along the road.

  It was already past ten. I’ll never make it walking, she thought, and it was too far to run. And just outside the gate, it began to rain in earnest, turning the lane into a muddy mire. She had to stop twice to scrape the caked mud off her shoes with a stick.

  They’ll already be in church, she thought when she finally splashed into the village. She spotted the vicar, half running, half walking along the side of the church toward the vestry door, clutching a sheaf of paper, his robe flying out behind him.

  “Vicar!” she called, running after him. “Vicar!” Or was he the vicar? Now that she grew closer, he looked awfully young. Perhaps he was the choir director, and those papers were the morning’s anthems. “Sir! Wait!”

  She caught up to him just as he was going in. “What is it, miss?” he said, his hand on the half-open vestry door. His eyes swept over her damp hair, her muddy shoes. “What’s happened? Has there been an accident?”

  “No,” she said, out of breath from running. “I’ve just been out to the manor. I came in on the bus this morning—”

  “Vicar!” A small boy poked his head out of the half-opened door. “Miss Fuller said to tell you they’ve finished the prelude.” He tugged at the vicar’s sleeve.

  “Coming, Peter,” he said, and to Polly, “Has something happened at the riflery school?”

  “No. I only wanted to ask you a question. I—”

  “It’s time for the invocation,” Peter hissed.

  “I must go,” the vicar said regretfully, “but I’ll be glad to speak with you as soon as the service is over. Would you care to join us?”

  “Vicar, it’s time!” Peter said, and dragged him into the church.

  And that’s that, Polly thought and walked out to the station to wait for the train. Unless the stationmaster knows where the evacuees have gone.

  But he’d apparently spent the last three hours drinking. “Whaddya want?” he demanded, and it was obvious he didn’t recognize her from this morning.

  “I’m waiting for the 11:19 to London.”

  “Won’t be here f’r ’ours,” he said, slurring his words. “Bloody troop trains. Always late.”

  Good. She could go back to the church, wait for the end of the service, and ask the vicar after all. And if the 11:19 was as late as every other train she’d been on, she could also ask everyone else in the village. She hurried back to the church through the rain and slipped into the back of the sanctuary.

  Only the first few rows of pews had people in them—several white-haired ladies in black hats, a handful of balding men, and young mothers with children. They were just finishing singing “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Polly tiptoed in and sat down in the last pew.

  The vicar looked up from his hymnal and smiled welcomingly at her, and one of the white-haired ladies, who looked like a cross between Miss Hibbard and Mrs. Wyvern, turned around and glared. Miss Fuller, no doubt.

  She’s the person I should speak with, Polly thought. The captain had suggested the vicar, but she doubted if he were on intimate terms with the hired help at the manor. But this was a tiny village. Miss Fuller and the other elderly women would know all the comings and goings of everyone. If Polly could get past that disapproving glare.

  But even if she couldn’t, the boy Peter was likely to know about the evacuees, or could at least point out the schoolmistress to her. She’d be certain to know. And in the meantime, if it wasn’t exactly warm in the sanctuary, it was at least dry, and hopefully the vicar’s sermon wouldn’t be too long, though she doubted it from the thickness of his sheaf of papers, which he was now arranging on the top of the pulpit.

  He finished arranging them and gazed out over the congregation. “The Scriptures say that our true home is not in this world, but the next, and that we are only passing through…”

  Truer words, Polly thought.

  “Thus it is with this war,” he said. “We find ourselves stranded in an alien land of bombs and battles and blackouts, of Anderson shelters and gas masks and rationing. And that other world we once knew—of peace and lights and church bells chiming out over the land, of loved ones reunited and no tears, no partings—seems not only impossibly distant, but unreal, and we cannot quite imagine ourselves ever getting back there. We mark time here, waiting…”

  For church to be over, for the train to arrive, for the retrieval team to come, Polly thought. The vicar’s sermon was cutting a little too close to the bone. Why couldn’t he have preached on begats or something?

  “… hoping that this ordeal will pass, but secretly fearing that we shall never see that land of milk and honey—and sugar and butter and bacon—again. That we will be trapped in this dreadful place forever—”

  A whistle cut sharply across his words. Peter got onto his knees to look out the window, and Miss Fuller glared at him. Polly looked down at her watch: 11:19. The train. But the stationmaster had said it was always late.

  It’s another troop train, she thought, but she could already hear it slowing.

  “Just as we have faith that one day the war will be over,” the vicar said, “we have faith that one day we shall attain heaven. But just as we cannot hope to win this war unless we ‘do our bit’—rolling bandages, planting Victory gardens, serving in the Home Guard—so we cannot hope to attain heaven unless we also do our bit—”

  Polly hesitated, caught in an agony of indecision. This was today’s only train, and the bus wouldn’t come till after five. If it was on time.

  But someone here might know where Merope went. You know where she went, Polly thought, and you know what they’ll tell you. That all the evacuees went back to London and she left as soon as they were gone. She’s been back in Oxford for weeks. Which means her drop isn’t working anymore, and even if it was, you don’t know where it is and can’t get to it without being shot at, so there’s no point in staying here.

  And if you miss
that train, there’ll be no way you’ll make it back to London before Tuesday—or Wednesday—and Marjorie can’t cover for you forever. You’ll lose your job, and when the retrieval team comes, they won’t be able to find you.

  “We must act—” the vicar said. The whistle, much closer, blew again.

  Polly stood up, shot the vicar an apologetic glance, opened the church door, and ran for the train.

  Those in the convent are desperate.

  —CODED MESSAGE TO THE FRENCH RESISTANCE, 5 JUNE 1944

  War Emergency Hospital—September 1940

  MIKE HAD HAD NO IDEA ANYONE WAS SITTING THERE IN the high-backed wicker chair. When the voice said, “I thought you were supposed to keep your weight off that foot, Davis,” it startled him so much he let go of the chair back, came down full on his bad foot, nearly fell, and had to clutch wildly at the potted palm to stay upright.

  At the same time, a wild hope surged through him. It’s the retrieval team, he thought. Finally.

  The man was wearing the hospital-issue pajamas and maroon bathrobe, but he could have gotten those from Wardrobe. “Patient” would be a perfect disguise for getting into the hospital, and he was the right age for an historian. And he’d waited till they were alone in the sun-room to speak.

  “Sorry, old man, I didn’t mean to give you a fright,” he said, leaning over the arm of the chair to smile at Mike.

  “You know my name,” Mike said.

  “Oh, right, we haven’t been properly introduced, have we?” He extended his hand. “Hugh Tensing. I’m on the third floor.”

  And you’re not the retrieval team, Mike thought. Now that he looked closer, he saw Tensing was much too thin, and he had the drawn, strained look of an invalid.

  “You’re Mike Davis, the American war correspondent,” Tensing was saying. “You repaired a broken propeller with your bare hands and single handedly rescued the entire BEF, according to Nurse Baker. She can’t stop talking about you.”

  “She’s wrong,” Mike said. “The propeller wasn’t broken. It was just fouled, and all I did was pull—”

  “Spoken like a true hero,” Tensing said. “Modest, humble even though you were injured in the line of duty—”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I see, it’s all a fabrication. You weren’t actually in Dunkirk at all,” Tensing said, smiling. “You were in your newspaper office in London when a typewriter fell on your foot. Sorry, it won’t wash. I know you’re a hero. I’ve seen you take dangerous risks.”

  “Dangerous—?”

  “Just now. Openly defying your nurse’s orders. And Matron’s wrath. You’re far braver than I am.”

  “Yes, well, I’m not brave enough to risk being caught,” Mike said, “and they may be here any minute, so I’d better make my way back to where I’m supposed to be.” He let go of the palm tree and stretched out his hand to grab the windowsill.

  “No, wait, don’t go,” Tensing said. “I wasn’t hiding from you just now. I was hiding from my nurse, hoping she’d think someone had taken me back to the ward so I could do the same thing you were doing. As a matter of fact, I was treading exactly the same circuit when your nurse wheeled you in and nearly caught me red-handed. Or is it red-footed?”

  Mike glanced down at Tensing’s feet, but there was no cast.

  “Back injury,” Tensing said. “For which they have prescribed—”

  “Bed rest,” Mike guessed.

  “Exactly. ‘You must be patient. Your recovery will take time,’ utterly failing to comprehend that the one thing I don’t have—”

  “—is time.”

  “Exactly. A man after my own heart.” He grinned. “And because you are, I’ve a proposition for you. I can see you want the same thing I do—to get back in the war.”

  You’re wrong, Mike thought. I want to get out of it. Before I do any more damage.

  “The last time I was caught trying to hasten my recovery,” Tensing went on, “I was denied sunroom privileges for three weeks, all because I lacked an adequate warning system. I therefore propose a partnership.”

  A partnership, Mike thought grimly. I shouldn’t even be talking to you, let alone helping you “hasten your recovery.” What if you get back in the war a month earlier than you would have, thanks to me, and kill somebody you’re not supposed to and change the outcome of the war?

  “I propose,” Tensing was saying, “that one of us guard the door while the other walks, and give a warning if someone comes in. It won’t require any effort. They’ll glance in the door and see you reading or—what were you doing just now?”

  “Working a crossword puzzle.”

  “They’ll see you solving a crossword and assume all’s quiet on the western front and go away again.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Then you’ll call out a warning, and I’ll sink into the nearest chair and give an excellent imitation of a patient napping. And then as soon as they’re gone, we’ll switch places, and I’ll stand guard while you walk, and we’ll both be recovered and out of here in no time. What do you say?”

  No, Mike thought, I can’t risk it.

  On the other hand, the sooner he got out of this hospital and this century, the better, for him and the century. “All right,” he said, “but how do we arrange to both be here at the same time?”

  “Leave that to me. I think half past ten’s best. Earlier than that and Colonel Walton’s likely to be in here reading the Guardian. Shall I make the rounds first, or would you rather?”

  “No, you go. I can only manage a few minutes at a time,” Mike said and began hobbling back to his wheelchair. “What should our code be? ‘The dog barks at midnight’? Isn’t that what spies always use?”

  Tensing didn’t answer.

  Mike looked back, wondering if he’d already walked off to the other side of the room and couldn’t hear him, but he was still sitting in the wicker chair, frowning. “Tensing? I said—”

  “Yes. Sorry. I was trying to think of an appropriate code. Just call out one of your crossword clues. Tell me when you reach your chair.”

  “I’m there,” Mike said, lowering himself into it. He picked up his crossword, rolled himself over by the door, and then looked over at Tensing beginning his circuit. Tensing didn’t have to hold on to the furniture, but twice he had to stop, his hands tightening into white-knuckled fists.

  What if he has internal injuries, Mike worried, and has no business doing this? What if my helping him walk makes his injury worse?

  Tensing made two halting trips around the edges of the room and then said, “Your turn,” and took his place at the door while Mike worked his way over to the windows and back.

  “How did you come to take up crosswords?” he asked as Mike grabbed for a bookcase. “I thought Americans preferred baseball.”

  “They wouldn’t let me have the newspaper otherwise, and I wanted to read the war news,” Mike said, reaching for a chair back. “I’m not really very good at your crosswords.”

  “Most Americans can’t solve them at all.” There was a silence and then he said, “Six across: barrage.”

  “What?” Mike said, stopping.

  “Nightly gunfire full of anger.”

  “Is that the code? Do you hear someone coming?”

  “No, it’s the answer to six across.”

  “Oh,” Mike said, limping over to the potted palm.

  “‘Rage’ is a synonym for ‘anger.’”

  “Is that the code?”

  “No, sorry. Perhaps we’d better go with ‘the dog barks at midnight’ after all. I was explaining the clue. ‘Rage’ is a synonym for ‘anger,’ and ‘full of’ means one word inside another. ‘Going the wrong way’ means it’s an anagram, and so does ‘muddled.’” His voice changed. “Thirty-eight down: caught in the act.”

  That had to be the code. Mike pushed off violently from the bookcase to the potted palm, clamping his jaw against the pain, and flung himself into his wheelchair. “Go,” he said, pro
pelling his chair rapidly to the door, and Tensing rolled his into the wilderness of wicker—handing off Mike’s crossword as he went by—and disappeared behind a curio cabinet.

  Mike barely had time to reach for his pencil before a nurse appeared. She scanned the room suspiciously. “Have you seen Lieutenant Tensing?” she asked Mike.

  “He’s over there,” Mike whispered, nodding toward the far end. “Why don’t you come back later? I think he’s asleep.”

  “Good,” she said. “He needs rest. You haven’t seen him trying to get out of his chair, have you?”

  “No,” Mike said and would have asked her about his injury, but Sister Gabriel came to take him back before he could.

  He spent all afternoon worrying about it. What if there was a bullet lodged in Tensing’s spine, or a piece of shrapnel, and walking would dislodge it? Or what if Tensing was shell-shocked, like Bevins, and likely to hurl himself off a cliff as soon as he was walking well enough to get to one?

  “I met a patient named Tensing today in the sunroom,” he said to Sister Carmody when she came with his tea. “What’s he in for?”

  “You make us sound like a prison,” she scolded. “We’re not allowed to discuss patients’ injuries.”

  “Was he a pilot?”

  “No, he’s something to do with the War Office,” she said, wringing out the sponge in the basin.

  “The War Office?” Mike said. “How’d he get injured working a desk job?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps he was in an automobile accident or something. He’s got five cracked ribs and a sprained back,” she said and then looked appalled. “Please don’t tell Matron I told you that. I could get in trouble.”

  So could I, he thought. But if Tensing worked in the War Office, at least Mike wouldn’t be helping him go back into battle. And walking wouldn’t hurt a sprained back and cracked ribs.