Time is the Fire

by Connie Willis

  “Even the light from the Thames? Even the light from the fires and the ack-ack guns?” Dunworthy said.

  “Yes. Anything is better than this awful darkness.” So he came closer to give me the pocket torch. It was not a pocket torch after all, but Christ’s lantern from the Hunt picture in the south nave. I shone it on the curb before me so I could find my way home, but it shone instead on the fire watch stone and I hastily put the light out.

  November 20—I tried to talk to Langby today. “I’ve seen you talking to the old gentleman,” I said. It sounded like an accusation. I meant it to. I wanted him to think it was and stop whatever he was planning.

  “Reading,” he said. “Not talking.” He was putting things in order in the choir, piling up sandbags.

  “I’ve seen you reading, then,” I said belligerently, and he dropped a sandbag and straightened.

  “What of it?” he said. “It’s a free country. I can read to an old man if I want, same as you can talk to that little WVS tart.”

  “What do you read?” I said.

  “Whatever he wants. He’s an old man. He used to come home from his job, have a bit of brandy, and listen to his wife read the papers to him. She got killed in one of the raids. Now I read to him. I don’t see what business it is of yours.”

  It sounded true. It didn’t have the careful casualness of a lie, and I almost believed him, except that I had heard the tone of truth from him before. In the crypt. After the bomb.

  “I thought he was a tourist looking for the Windmill,” I said.

  He looked blank only a second, and then he said, “Oh, yes, that. He came in with the paper and asked me to tell him where it was. I looked it up to find the address. Clever, that. I didn’t guess he couldn’t read it for himself.” But it was enough. I knew that he was lying.

  He heaved a sandbag almost at my feet. “Of course you wouldn’t understand a thing like that, would you? A simple act of human kindness?”

  “No,” I said coldly. “I wouldn’t.”

  None of this proves anything. He gave away nothing, except perhaps the name of an artificial, and I can hardly go to Dean Matthews and accuse Langby of reading aloud.

  I waited till he had finished in the choir and gone down to the crypt. Then I lugged one of the sandbags up to the roof and over to the chasm. The planking has held so far, but everyone walks gingerly around it, as if it were a grave. I cut the sandbag open and spilled the loose sand into the bottom. If it has occurred to Langby that this is the perfect spot for an incendiary, perhaps the sand will smother it.

  November 21—I gave Enola some of “Uncle’s” money today and asked her to get me the brandy. She was more reluctant than I thought she’d be, so there must be societal complications I am not aware of, but she agreed.

  I don’t know what she came for. She started to tell me about her brother and some prank he’d pulled in the Tube that got him in trouble with the guard, but after I asked her about the brandy, she left without finishing the story.

  November 25—Enola came today, but without bringing the brandy. She is going to Bath for the holidays to see her aunt. At least she will be away from the raids for a while. I will not have to worry about her. She finished the story of her brother and told me she hopes to persuade this aunt to take Tom for the duration of the Blitz but is not at all sure the aunt will be willing.

  Young Tom is apparently not so much an engaging scapegrace as a near-criminal. He has been caught twice picking pockets in the Bank tube shelter, and they have had to go back to Marble Arch. I comforted her as best I could, told her all boys were bad at one time or another. What I really wanted to say was that she needn’t worry at all, that young Tom strikes me as a true survivor type, like my own tom, like Langby, totally unconcerned with anybody but himself, well equipped to survive the Blitz and rise to prominence in the future.

  Then I asked her whether she had gotten the brandy.

  She looked down at her open-toed shoes and muttered unhappily, “I thought you’d forgotten all about that.”

  I made up some story about the watch taking turns buying a bottle, and she seemed less unhappy, but I am not convinced she will not use this trip to Bath as an excuse to do nothing. I will have to leave St. Paul’s and buy it myself, and I don’t dare leave Langby alone in the church. I made her promise to bring the brandy today before she leaves. But she is still not back, and the sirens have already gone.

  November 26—No Enola, and she said their train left at noon. I suppose I should be grateful that at least she is safely out of London. Maybe in Bath she will be able to get over her cold.

  Tonight one of the ARP girls breezed in to borrow half our cots and tell us about a mess over in the East End where a surface shelter was hit. Four dead, twelve wounded. “At least it wasn’t one of the tube shelters!” she said. “Then you’d see a real mess, wouldn’t you?”

  November 30—I dreamed I took the cat to St. John’s Wood. “Is this a rescue mission?” Dunworthy said.

  “No, sir,” I said proudly. “I know what I was supposed to find in my practicum. The perfect survivor. Tough and resourceful and selfish. This is the only one I could find. I had to kill Langby, you know, to keep him from burning down St. Paul’s. Enola’s brother has gone to Bath, and the others will never make it. Enola wears open-toed shoes in the winter and sleeps in the tubes and puts her hair up on metal pins so it will curl. She cannot possibly survive the Blitz.”

  Dunworthy said, “Perhaps you should have rescued her instead. What did you say her name was?”

  “Kivrin,” I said, and woke up cold and shivering.

  December 5—I dreamed Langby had the pinpoint bomb. He carried it under his arm like a brown-paper parcel, coming out of St. Paul’s Station and up Ludgate Hill to the west doors.

  “This is not fair,” I said, barring his way with my arm. “There is no fire watch on duty.”

  He clutched the bomb to his chest like a pillow. “That is your fault,” he said, and before I could get to my stirrup pump and bucket, he tossed it in the door.

  The pinpoint was not even invented until the end of the twentieth century, and it was another ten years before the dispossessed communists got hold of it and turned it into something that could be carried under your arm. A parcel that could blow a quarter-mile of the City into oblivion. Thank God that is one dream that cannot come true.

  It was a sunlit morning in the dream, and this morning when I came off watch the sun was shining for the first time in weeks. I went down to the crypt and then came up again, making the rounds of the roofs twice more, then of the steps and the grounds and all the treacherous alleyways between where an incendiary could be missed. I felt better after that, but when I got to sleep I dreamed again, this time of fire and Langby watching it, smiling.

  December 15—I found the cat this morning. Heavy raids last night, but most of them over toward Canning Town and nothing on the roofs to speak of. Nevertheless the cat was quite dead. I found him lying on the steps this morning when I made my own private rounds. Concussion. There was not a mark on him anywhere except the white blackout patch on his throat, but when I picked him up, he was all jelly under the skin.

  I could not think what to do with him. I thought for one mad moment of asking Matthews if I could bury him in the crypt. Honorable death in war or something. Trafalgar, Waterloo, London, died in battle. I ended by wrapping him in my muffler and taking him down Ludgate Hill to a building that had been bombed out and burying him in the rubble. It will do no good. The rubble will be no protection from dogs or rats, and I shall never get another muffler. I have gone through nearly all of Uncle’s money.

  I should not be sitting here. I haven’t checked the alleyways or the rest of the steps, and there might be a dud or a delayed incendiary or something that I missed.

  When I came here, I thought of myself as the noble rescuer, the savior of the past. I am not doing very well at the job. At least Enola is out of it. I wish there were some way I could send St. Pa
ul’s to Bath for safekeeping. There were hardly any raids last night. Bence-Jones said cats can survive anything. What if he was coming to get me, to show me the way home? All the bombs were over Canning Town.

  December 16—Enola has been back a week. Seeing her, standing on the west steps where I found the cat, sleeping in Marble Arch and not safe at all, was more than I could absorb. “I thought you were in Bath,” I said stupidly.

  “My aunt said she’d take Tom but not me as well. She’s got a houseful of evacuated children, and what a noisy lot. Where is your muffler?” she said. “It’s dreadful cold up here on the hill.”

  “I . . .” I said, unable to answer, “I lost it.”

  “You’ll never get another one,” she said. “They’re going to start rationing clothes. And wool, too. You’ll never get another one like that.”

  “I know,” I said, blinking at her.

  “Good things just thrown away,” she said. “It’s absolutely criminal, that’s what it is.”

  I don’t think I said anything to that, just turned and walked away with my head down, looking for bombs and dead animals.

  December 20—Langby isn’t a Nazi. He’s a communist. I can hardly write this. A communist.

  One of the chars found The Worker wedged behind a pillar and brought it down to the crypt as we were coming off the first watch.

  “Bloody communists,” Bence-Jones said. “Helping Hitler, they are. Talking against the king, stirring up trouble in the shelters. Traitors, that’s what they are.”

  “They love England same as you,” the char said.

  “They don’t love nobody but themselves, bloody selfish lot. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they were ringing Hitler up on the telephone,” Bence-Jones said. “’Ello, Adolf, here’s where to drop the bombs.”

  The kettle on the gas ring whistled. The char stood up and poured the hot water into a chipped teapot, then sat back down. “Just because they speak their minds don’t mean they’d burn down old St. Paul’s, does it now?”

  “Of course not,” Langby said, coming down the stairs. He sat down and pulled off his boots, stretching his feet in their wool socks. “Who wouldn’t burn down St. Paul’s?”

  “The communists,” Bence-Jones said, looking straight at him, and I wondered if he suspected Langby, too.

  Langby never batted an eye. “I wouldn’t worry about them if I were you,” he said. “It’s the jerries that are doing their bloody best to burn her down tonight. Six incendiaries so far, and one almost went into that great hole over the choir.” He held out his cup to the char, and she poured him a cup of tea.

  I wanted to kill him, smashing him to dust and rubble on the floor of the crypt while Bence-Jones and the char looked on in helpless surprise, shouting warnings to them and the rest of the watch. “Do you know what the communists did?” I wanted to shout. “Do you? We have to stop him.” I even stood up and started toward him as he sat with his feet stretched out before him and his asbestos coat still over his shoulders.

  And then the thought of the Gallery drenched in gold, the communist coming out of the tube station with the package so casually under his arm, made me sick with the same staggering vertigo of guilt and helplessness, and I sat back down on the edge of my cot and tried to think what to do.

  They do not realize the danger. Even Bence-Jones, for all his talk of traitors, thinks they are capable only of talking against the king. They do not know, cannot know, what the communists will become. Stalin is an ally. Communists mean Russia. They have never heard of the USSR or Karinsky or the New Russia or any of the things that will make “communist” into a synonym for “monster.” They will never know it. By the time the communists become what they became, there will be no fire watch. Only I know what it means to hear the name “communist” uttered here, so carelessly, in St. Paul’s.

  A communist. I should have known. I should have known.

  December 22—Double watches again. I have not had any sleep and I am getting very unsteady on my feet. I nearly pitched into the chasm this morning, only saved myself by dropping to my knees. My endorphin levels are fluctuating wildly, and I know I must get some sleep soon or I will become one of Langby’s walking dead, but I am afraid to leave him alone on the roofs, alone in the church with his communist party leader, alone anywhere. I have taken to watching him when he sleeps.

  If I could just get hold of an artificial, I think I could induce a trance in spite of my poor condition. But I cannot even go out to a pub. Langby is on the roofs constantly, waiting for his chance. When Enola comes again, I must convince her to get the brandy for me. There are only a few days left.

  December 28—Enola came this morning while I was on the west porch, picking up the Christmas tree. It has been knocked over three nights running by concussion. I righted the tree and was bending down to pick up the scattered tinsel when Enola appeared suddenly out of the fog like some cheerful saint. She stooped quickly and kissed me on the cheek. Then she straightened up, her nose red from her perennial cold, and handed me a box wrapped in colored paper.

  “Merry Christmas,” she said. “Go on, then, open it. It’s a gift.”

  My reflexes are almost totally gone. I knew the box was far too shallow for a bottle of brandy. Nevertheless, I believed she had remembered, had brought me my salvation. “You darling,” I said, and tore it open.

  It was a muffler. Gray wool. I stared at it for fully half a minute without realizing what it was. “Where’s the brandy?” I said.

  She looked shocked. Her nose got redder and her eyes started to blur. “You need this more. You haven’t any clothing coupons and you have to be outside all the time. It’s been so dreadful cold.”

  “I needed the brandy,” I said angrily.

  “I was only trying to be kind,” she started, and I cut her off.

  “Kind?” I said. “I asked you for brandy. I don’t recall ever saying I needed a muffler.” I shoved it back at her and began untangling a string of colored lights that had shattered when the tree fell.

  She got that same holy martyr look Kivrin is so wonderful at. “I worry about you all the time up here,” she said in a rush. “They’re trying for St. Paul’s, you know. And it’s so close to the river. I didn’t think you should be drinking. I . . . it’s a crime when they’re trying so hard to kill us all that you won’t take care of yourself. It’s like you’re in it with them. I worry someday I’ll come up to St. Paul’s and you won’t be here.”

  “Well, and what exactly am I supposed to do with a muffler? Hold it over my head when they drop the bombs?”

  She turned and ran, disappearing into the gray fog before she had gone down two steps. I started after her, still holding the string of broken lights, tripped over it, and fell almost all the way to the bottom of the steps.

  Langby picked me up. “You’re off watches,” he said grimly.

  “You can’t do that,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, I can. I don’t want any walking dead on the roofs with me.”

  I let him lead me down here to the crypt, make me a cup of tea, put me to bed, all very solicitous. No indication that this is what he has been waiting for. I will lie here till the sirens go. Once I am on the roofs he will not be able to send me back without seeming suspicious. Do you know what he said before he left, asbestos coat and rubber boots, the dedicated fire watcher? “I want you to get some sleep.” As if I could sleep with Langby on the roofs. I would be burned alive.

  December 30—The sirens woke me yesterday, and old Bence-Jones said, “That should have done you some good. You’ve slept the clock round.”

  “What day is it?” I said, going for my boots.

  “The twenty-ninth,” he said, and as I dived for the door, “No need to hurry. They’re late tonight. Maybe they won’t come at all. That’d be a blessing, that would. The tide’s out.”

  I stopped by the door to the stairs, holding on to the cool stone. “Is St. Paul’s all right?”

  “She’s still standing,”
he said. “Have a bad dream?”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering the bad dreams of all the past weeks—the dead cat in my arms in St. John’s Wood, Langby with his parcel and his Worker under his arm, the fire watch stone garishly lit by Christ’s lantern. Then I remembered I had not dreamed at all. I had slept the kind of sleep I had prayed for, the kind of sleep that would help me remember.

  Then I remembered. Not St. Paul’s, burned to the ground by the communists. A headline from the dailies. “Marble Arch hit. Eighteen killed by blast.” The date was not clear except for the year. 1940. There were exactly two more days left in 1940. I grabbed my coat and muffler and ran up the stairs and across the marble floor.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Langby shouted to me. I couldn’t see him.

  “I have to save Enola,” I said, and my voice echoed in the dark sanctuary. “They’re going to bomb Marble Arch.”

  “You can’t leave now,” he shouted after me, standing where the fire watch stone would be. “The tide’s out. You dirty . . .”

  I didn’t hear the rest of it. I had already flung myself down the steps and into a taxi. It took almost all the money I had, the money I had so carefully hoarded for the trip back to St. John’s Wood. Shelling started while we were still in Oxford Street, and the driver refused to go any farther. He let me out into pitch-blackness, and I saw I would never make it in time.

  Blast. Enola crumpled on the stairway down to the Tube, her open-toed shoes still on her feet, not a mark on her. And when I try to lift her, jelly under the skin. I would have to wrap her in the muffler she gave me, because I was too late. I had gone back a hundred years to be too late to save her.

  I ran the last blocks, guided by the gun emplacement that had to be in Hyde Park, and skidded down the steps into Marble Arch. The woman in the ticket booth took my last shilling for a ticket to St. Paul’s Station. I stuck it in my pocket and raced toward the stairs.

  “No running,” she said placidly. “To your left, please.” The door to the right was blocked off by wooden barricades, the metal gates beyond pulled to and chained. The board with names on it for the stations was X-ed with tape, and a new sign that read all trains was nailed to the barricade, pointing left.