Blackout - Connie Willis

The sound of the motorcycle grew deafeningly loud and then shut off abruptly. That’s not a motorcycle. That’s a V-1, Mary thought.

And then, It can’t be, it’s only a quarter past four.

And then, What if my implant data’s wrong after all?

And then, Oh, God, I’ve only got fifteen seconds.

“And what if he doesn’t fall into Fairchild’s arms as planned?” Talbot said, leaning toward the window to appraise the effect. “Or his aeroplane crashes?”

Oh, God, the glass! Mary thought. She’ll be cut to ribbons. “Talbot!” she shouted and made a running dive at her, tackling her, flinging her off the curb. The lipstick flew out of her hand.

“Ow! Kent, what do you think you’re-?” Talbot said.

“Stay down!” She pushed Talbot’s head down into the gutter, flattened herself on top of her, and closed her eyes, waiting for the flash.

The girls won’t leave without me, and I won’t leave without the King. And the King will never leave. 

Warwickshire-May 1940

THE ASPIRIN TABLETS EILEEN GAVE BINNIE BROUGHT HER fever down partway and kept it down, but she was still gravely ill. With each passing hour her breathing was more labored, and by morning she was calling wildly for Eileen, even though she was there next to her. Eileen telephoned Dr. Stuart.

“I think you’d best write her mother and ask her to come,” he said.

Oh, no, Eileen thought.

She went to ask Alf their address. “Is Binnie dyin’, then?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she said firmly. “It’s only that she’ll get well faster if your mother’s here to care for her.”

Alf snorted. “I’ll wager she don’t come.”

“Of course she will. She’s your mother.”

But she didn’t. She didn’t even reply. “Wicked,” Mrs. Bascombe said when she brought Binnie a cup of tea. “No wonder they’ve turned out the way they have. Is she breathing any easier?”

“No,” Polly said.

“This tea has hyssop in it,” Mrs. Bascombe said. “It will loosen her chest,” but Binnie was too weak to drink more than a few sips of the bitter-tasting tea and, worse, too weak to refuse to drink it.

That was the most frightening aspect of Binnie’s illness. She didn’t resist what Eileen did or even protest. All the fight had gone out of her, and she lay listlessly as Eileen bathed her, changed her nightgown, gave her the aspirin. “Are you sure she ain’t dyin’?” Alf asked her.

No, Eileen thought. I’m not sure at all. “Yes, I’m certain,” she said. “Your sister’s going to be fine.”

“If she did die, what’d ’appen to ’er?”

“You’d better worry over what’ll happen to you, young man,” Mrs. Bascombe said, coming in from the pantry. “If you want to get into heaven, you must change your ways.”

“I ain’t talking about that,” Alf said and then hesitated, looking guilty. “Would they bury ’er in the churchyard in Backbury?”

“What have you done to the churchyard?” Eileen demanded.

“Nuthin’,” he said indignantly. “I was talkin’ about Binnie,” and stomped off, but the next day when the vicar brought the post, Alf called down to him, “If Binnie dies, will she ’ave to ’ave a tombstone?”

“You mustn’t worry, Alf,” the vicar said. “Dr. Stuart and Miss O’Reilly are taking very good care of Binnie.”

“I know. Will she?”

“What’s all this about, Alf?” the vicar asked.

“Nuthin’,” Alf said and ran off again.

“Perhaps I’d best check the churchyard when I get home,” the vicar told Eileen. “Alf may have decided tombstones would make excellent roadblocks when the Germans invade.”

“No, it’s something else,” Eileen said. “If it were anyone but Alf, I’d think he was worried about his sister being”-her voice caught-“buried so far away from home.”

“There’s no improvement?” he asked kindly.

“No.” And if there hadn’t been two floors separating them, she’d have laid her head on his shoulder and sobbed.

He gave her a comforting smile and said, “I know you’re doing your best.”

But I’m afraid it’s not good enough, she thought, and went to bathe Binnie’s hot limbs and coax more aspirin into her, though she worried she might be making things worse, not better. But the next night when she didn’t wake her to give the tablets to her-deciding it was better to let her sleep-her temp immediately shot up again. Eileen resumed giving it to her, wondering what she’d do when the tablets ran out.

I’ll have to tell the vicar and hope he doesn’t tell Dr. Stuart, she thought. Or tie my sheets together and go out the window after some, but it wasn’t necessary. That afternoon Binnie’s temp abruptly went down, leaving her bathed in sweat.

“Her fever’s broken,” Dr. Stuart said. “Thank God. I feared the worst, but sometimes, with Providence’s help-and good nursing,” he patted Eileen’s hand, “the patient pulls through.”

“So she will recover?” Eileen said, looking down at Binnie. She looked so thin and pale.

He nodded. “She’s through the worst of it now.”

And she seemed to be, though she didn’t rally as quickly as the other children. It was three days before her breathing eased and a full week before she was able to sip a little broth on her own. And she was so… docile. When Eileen read her fairy stories, which Binnie usually despised, she listened quietly.

“I’m worried,” Eileen told the vicar. “The doctor says she’s better, but she just lies there.”

“Has Alf been in to see her?”

“No. He’s liable to give her a relapse.”

“Or shake her out of her apathy,” he said.

“I think I’ll wait till she’s stronger,” Eileen said, but that afternoon, watching Binnie lying in her cot, gazing listlessly at the ceiling, Eileen sent Una to fetch Alf.

“You look ’xactly like a corpse,” he said.

Well, this was a good idea, Eileen thought, and was about to escort him out when Binnie pushed herself up against the pillows.

“I do not,” she said.

“You do so. Everybody said you was goin’ to die. You was out of your ’ead and everything.”

“I was not.”

Just like old times, Eileen thought and, for the first time since Binnie had fallen ill, felt a loosening of the tightness around her heart.

“She did almost die, didn’t she, Eileen?” Alf said and turned back to Binnie. “But you ain’t goin’ to now.”

Which seemed to reassure Binnie, but that night as Eileen put her into a fresh nightgown, she asked, “Are you certain I ain’t going to die?”

“Positive,” Eileen said, tucking her in. “You’re growing stronger every day.”

“What ’appens to people who die, when they ’aven’t got no name?”

“You mean, when no one knows who they were?” Eileen asked, puzzled.

“No. When they ain’t got a name to put on the tombstone. Do they still get to get buried in the churchyard?”

She’s illegitimate, Eileen thought suddenly. Having an unmarried mother had been a true stigma for children in this era, with the child branded a bastard.

But the stigma hadn’t extended as far as tombstones. “Binnie, your name is your name, no matter whether your mother is married or not…”

Binnie made a sound of complete disgust, and Eileen was certain that if she hadn’t still been too weak to get out of bed, she’d have stomped from the room like her brother. As it was, she turned over onto her side and faced the wall.

Eileen wished the vicar was here. She racked her brain to recall any customs involving names and tombstones in 1940, but she couldn’t think of anything. Alf, she thought. He knows what this is all about, and hastily gathered up the dirty linen. “I’m taking these downstairs,” she told Binnie. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

No response. Eileen dumped the linens in the laundry and went to the ballroom, where Alf was wrapping Rose in bandages. “I’m practicin’ for the ambulance,” he said.

“Alf, come with me,” Eileen said. “Now,” and took him into the music room and shut the door. “I want to know why Binnie’s worried over her name being on a tombstone, and don’t say you don’t know.”

Something in her tone must have convinced him she meant business, because he muttered, “She ain’t got one.”

“A tombstone?”

“No, a name,” and at Eileen’s bewildered look, “Binnie ain’t a real name. It’s just short for ’Odbin.”

“Can you believe he told Binnie she didn’t have a first name?” she told the vicar when he arrived the next day. “And she apparently believed him.”

“Did you ask Binnie?” he said.

“What do you mean? You can’t seriously think… everyone has a first name. Just because they come from a poor-”

He was shaking his head. “The Evacuation Committee’s run into more than one slum child without a name, and the billeting officer’s had to make one up on the spot. I’m not certain you realize how hard some of the children’s lives were at home. Many of them had never slept in a bed before they came here-”

Or used a toilet, Eileen thought, remembering her prep. Some evacuees from the slums had urinated on the floors of their foster homes or squatted in a corner. And Mrs. Bascombe had told her several of the evacuees at the manor had had to be taught to use a knife and fork when they’d first come. But a name! “Alf has a name,” she argued, but the vicar wasn’t convinced.

“Perhaps their father felt differently about a boy. Or perhaps it wasn’t the same father. And you must admit, Mrs. Hodbin-if she is a Mrs.-hasn’t shown much maternal instinct.”

“True. But still…” she said, and when she went in to talk to Binnie, tried to reassure her. “I’m certain your name’s not short for Hodbin,” Eileen told Binnie. “That’s only Alf teasing. I’m certain it’s a nickname-”

“For what?” Binnie said belligerently.

“I don’t know. Belinda? Barbara?”

“There ain’t no ‘n’ in Barbara.”

“Nicknames don’t always have the same letters,” Eileen said. “Look at Peggy. Her real name’s Margaret. And there are all sorts of nicknames for Mary-Mamie and Molly and-”

“If Binnie’s short for somethin’, why ain’t nobody ever said what?” she said, and was so skeptical Eileen wondered if their mother had made some comment that had put the idea in their heads. Whatever had, it was the last thing Binnie needed while she was recovering. After a fortnight her eyes had a shadowed look and she hadn’t gained back any of the weight she’d lost.

Eileen said briskly, “If you haven’t got a name, then you must choose one.”

“Choose one?”

“Yes, like in ‘Rumpelstiltskin.’”

“That wasn’t choosin’. It was guessin’.”

Why did I think this would work? Eileen wondered, but after a minute, Binnie said, “If I chose a name, you’d call me it?”

“Yes,” Eileen said, and was immediately sorry. Binnie spent the next few days trying on names like hats and asking Eileen what she thought of Gladys and Princess Elizabeth and Cinderella. But as maddening as the parade of names was, it did the trick. Binnie began to make rapid progress, growing rounder and more pink-cheeked by the day.

In the meantime, the Magruders proved conclusively they hadn’t had the measles before, no matter what their mother had said, and Eddie and Patsy also broke out. By the evacuation of Dunkirk, Eileen had nineteen patients in varying degrees of spottiness and/or recovery.

Alf was thrilled about the ongoing rescue. “The vicar says they’re going over in fishing boats and rowboats to get our soldiers,” he reported happily. “I wish I could go.”

I wish I could, too, Eileen thought. Michael Davies is in Dover reporting on the evacuation right now.

“They’re gettin’ strafed and bombs dropped on ’em and everything,” Alf said, which at this point seemed infinitely preferable to caring for a score of feverish, fretful, molting children. Once the rash went away, their skin developed brownish, peeling patches. “Now you really look like a corpse,” Alf told Binnie. “If you was at Dunkirk, they’d think you was dead and leave you behind on the beach, and the jerries’d kill you.”

“They would not!” Binnie shrieked.

“Out,” Eileen ordered.

“I can’t go out,” Alf said reasonably. “We’re under quarantine.”

He was quite literally bouncing off the walls. Eileen found several portraits askew and Lady Caroline and her hunting dogs sprawled flat on the floor, and when she ordered them out of the ballroom, they retreated to Lady Caroline’s bathroom, a fact Eileen didn’t discover till water began dripping from the library ceiling.

“Alf and us were playing Evacuation from Dunkirk,” a sopping-wet Theodore explained.

The next time the vicar called up to the nursery window to ask if there was anything they needed, Eileen said yes rather desperately. “Something to amuse the ones who aren’t ill. Games or puzzles or something.”

“I’ll see what the Women’s Institute can come up with,” he said, and the next day delivered a basket full of donated books (Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Child’s Book of Martyrs), jigsaw puzzles (St. Paul’s Cathedral and “The Cotswolds in Spring”), and a Victorian board game called Cowboys and Red Indians, which inspired the Hodbins to lead the children on a whooping war-painted rampage through the corridors.

“And yesterday I caught Alf playing Burned at the Stake,” she called down to the vicar on his next visit, “with Lady Caroline’s Louis Quinze hat stand and a box of matches.”

He laughed up at her. “I can see stronger measures are required.”

He was as good as his word. The next day the basket he brought contained ARP armbands, a logbook, and an official RAF chart showing the distinctive silhouettes of Heinkels, Hurricanes, and Dornier 17s. Alf promptly became an ace aeroplane spotter, lecturing everyone on the difference between a Dornier 17 and a Spitfire-“See, it’s got eight machine guns on the wings”-and hanging out in the ballroom window and shouting, “Enemy aircraft at three o’clock,” every time a plane appeared and diving to record the number, type, and altitude in the logbook. The only plane most days was the plane carrying the post to Birmingham, but that didn’t discourage him, and comparative peace reigned for several days.

It was, of course, too good to last. Soon, Alf began flying bombing sorties through the kitchen. And the sickroom, and torturing Binnie. When she suggested Beauty for her name-“You know, like in Sleeping Beauty”-Alf hooted, “Beauty? Beast, more like! Or Baby, ’cause that’s what you are, bawlin’ when you was ill and beggin’ Eileen not to leave. You made ’er swear and everythin’.”