Blackout - Connie Willis

“In a car?”

He nodded. “One like Lady Caroline’s. But I wasn’t goin’ to throw rocks at it, I swear, only clods. I was practicin’ for when the jerries invade. Me’n Binnie’s gonna throw rocks at their tanks.”

She wasn’t listening. A car like Lady Caroline’s. A Bentley. The retrieval team could have practiced on one in Oxford, just as she’d done, and then come through, hired one, and driven it here to fetch her. She took off for the manor at a run.

The Bentley was drawn up to the front door. Eileen started up the steps, and then remembered she was still a servant, at least for a few more hours, and ran around to the servants’ entrance, hoping Mrs. Bascombe was in the kitchen. She was, with a bowl of batter in the crook of one arm, stirring it violently with a wooden spoon. “Who’s here?” Eileen asked, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice. “I saw a car out in front as I-”

“They’re from the War Office.”

“But…” The War Office? Why would the retrieval team tell Lady Caroline that?

“They’re here to look over the house and grounds to see if they’re suitable.”

“Clods don’t hurt nothing,” Alf said at her elbow. “It’s only dirt.”

Eileen ignored him. “Suitable for what?” she asked Mrs. Bascombe.

“For shooting,” Mrs. Bascombe said, stirring viciously. “The government’s taking over the manor for the duration. They’re turning it into a riflery training school.”

The horns are to butt with and the mouth is to moo with. 

Kent-April 1944

THE BULL STARED AT ERNEST FROM ACROSS THE PASTURE for a long, menacing moment. “Worthing! Run! There’s a bull!” Cess shouted from behind the lorry.

“Naw look wot ya done!” the farmer said. “Ya’ve upset my bull. This is his pasture-”

“Yes, I can see that,” Ernest said without taking his eye off the bull.

The bull hadn’t taken its little eyes off him either. Where the hell was the fog when you needed it?

The bull lowered its massive head. Oh, Christ, here he comes! Ernest thought, pushing his back against the tank.

The bull began to paw the ground. Ernest shot a frantic look at the farmer, who was standing by the fence with his arms folded belligerently. “Now ye’ve torn it,” he said. “He don’t like what ye’ve done to his pasture, nor do I. Look at this great mess of tracks. Ye’ve chewed up the whole meadow with your bloody tanks, and that’s made him mad.”

“I know,” Ernest said. “What do you suggest I do now?”

“Run!” Cess shouted.

The bull swung its massive head around to see who’d said that, and then turned back to Ernest. It snorted.

“Don’t-” Ernest said, putting his hand out like a traffic policeman, but the bull was already barreling across the grass straight at him.

“Run!” Cess bellowed, and Ernest took off for the end of the tank and around to the other side, as if crouching behind it was going to offer any protection.

The bull roared straight at the tank.

“Stop! Ye’ll hurt yourself,” the farmer shouted, finally moving. “Ye’re no match for a tank. Stop!”

But the bull wasn’t listening. It lowered its head and charged, its horns thrusting out like bayonets, and plowed straight into the tank. Its horns went all the way in.

There was another endless moment, and then a high, thin wail, like an air-raid siren. “Ye’ve killed him,” the farmer shouted, pelting across the pasture. “Ye bloody bast-” And stopped, his mouth open.

The bull’s mouth was open, too. It stood for a few more seconds, its horns impaled in the tank, then took a skittish step backward, freeing itself. The tank slowly shriveled and shrank into a limp gray-green mass of rubber. The wail became a squeal and then faded away, and there was another long silence.

“Bloody hell,” the farmer said softly, and the bull looked like it wanted to say the same thing. It stared, stunned, at the collapsed tank.

“Bloody hell,” the farmer said again, as if to himself. “No wonder the Panzers were able to go straight through our boys in France.”

The bull raised its head and looked straight at Ernest, then gave a low bleat and turned and bolted for the safety of the fence. “What in God’s name are ye two playin’ at?” the farmer demanded. “Is this some sort of bloody trick?”

“Yes,” Ernest said. “We’re-” and looked up at a faint droning sound.

“It’s a plane!” Cess said unnecessarily and came galloping over to grab hold of the tank’s deflated turret. “Grab the rear end! Hurry!” They began dragging the tank over the wet grass to the trees.

“I don’t know what ye two are up to-” the farmer began belligerently.

“Don’t just stand there. Help us!” Ernest shouted over the drone, which was growing steadily louder. “It’s a German reconnaissance plane. We can’t let them see this!”

The farmer glanced up at the clearing sky and then back at the tank and seemed, finally, to grasp the situation. He ran clumsily over and took hold of the tank’s right tread and began helping them drag it over to the copse.

It was like trying to shift jelly. There was nothing solid to grab hold of, and it weighed a ton. The muddy, wet grass should have made the unwieldy mass easier to move, but the only thing it made slipperier was their footing, and when Ernest tried to yank the tank over a hillock, he slipped and fell flat in one of the tracks he’d just made. “Hurry!” Cess shouted at him as he struggled to his feet. “It’s nearly overhead!”

It was, and all it would take was one photo of the deflated mass of rubber to blow Fortitude South wide open. Ernest planted his mud-caked boots, gave another mighty heave, and the three of them pushed, pulled, manhandled it in under the trees.

Cess looked up. “It’s one of ours,” he said. “A Tempest.”

It was. Ernest could make out the distinct outline. “This time,” he said. “But next time it won’t be.”

Cess nodded. “We’d best get this on the lorry before another one shows up. Go bring the lorry over here.”

“Not across this pasture,” the farmer said. “Ye’ve already torn it up bad enough already. To say nothin’ of putting my bull off his feed.” He gestured toward the bull, which was over by the fence, placidly chewing two or three mouthfuls of grass. “And who knows what other damage ye done to him? I’m supposed to take him down to Sedlescombe next week to breed him, and now look at him.”

Since the bull had stopped chewing and was eyeing one of the cows beyond the fence, Ernest doubted that would be a problem, but the farmer was determined. “I won’t have him more upset than he already is,” the farmer said. “You’ll have to take that tank back over to your lorry the same way you brought it over here.”

“We can’t,” Cess said. “If a German reconnaissance plane sees us-”

“It won’t see anythin’,” the farmer said. “Fog’s coming back in.”

It was, drifting thickly across the pasture to hide the grazing bull, the lorry, the tank tracks.

“And when you’re done doin’ that, you can take those tanks with you, as well,” the farmer said, pointing to the ghostly outlines of the tanks sticking out from under the trees, and they spent the next quarter of an hour trying to explain the necessity of the tanks staying there till a German reconnaissance plane had photographed them.

“You’ll be helping to defeat Hitler,” Cess told him.

“With a lot of bloody balloons?”

“Yes,” Ernest said firmly. And a bunch of wooden planes and old sewer pipes and fake wireless messages.

“His Majesty’s Army will be glad to reimburse you for the damage to your field,” Cess said, and the farmer immediately perked up. “And to your bull’s psyche.”

Don’t bring up the bull, Ernest thought, but the farmer smiled. “I never seen anythin’ like the look on his face when he gored that tank,” he said, shaking his head. He began to laugh, slapping his thigh. “I can’t wait to tell ’em down t’ the pub-”

“No!” they cried in unison.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Ernest said.

“It’s top secret,” Cess said.

“Top secret, is it?” the farmer said, looking even more pleased than he had at the prospect of being reimbursed. “This is to do with the invasion, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” Cess said, “and it’s terribly important, but we can’t tell you anything more than that.”

“Ye don’t have to. I can puzzle it out on my own. Invadin’ at Normandy, are you then? I thought so. Owen Batt said Calais, but I said no, that’s what the Germans were expecting, and we’re smarter than that. Wait till I-”

“You can’t tell Owen Batt or anyone else,” Cess said.

“If you do, you could lose us the war,” Ernest said, and they spent another quarter of an hour standing there in the clammy fog getting the farmer to agree to keep the story to himself.

“I’ll keep it dark,” he finally promised grudgingly, “though it’s a pity. The look on that bull’s face-” He brightened. “I can tell it after the invasion, can’t I?”

“Yes,” Ernest said, “but not till three weeks after.”

“Why not?”

“We can’t tell you that either,” Cess said. “It’s top top secret.”

“And we can leave the tanks?” Ernest asked. “We promise we’ll come back for them as soon as they’ve been photographed.”

The farmer nodded. “If it means doin’ my bit to win the war.”

“It does,” Cess said, and started for the lorry.

“Now, wait just a minute. I said ye could leave the tanks, not drive all over my pasture. Ye’ll have to take that bust balloon back the way you brought it over here.”

“But it’ll take half an hour, and one of their planes might see us while we’re doing it,” Cess argued. “This fog might clear at any moment.”

“It won’t,” the farmer said, and it didn’t. It settled over the pasture and the woods like a heavy gray blanket that made it impossible to gauge direction, which resulted in their dragging, pushing, and manhandling the deflated tank an extra hundred yards trying to find the lorry, during which effort Ernest fell down two more times.

“Well, at least it can’t get any worse,” Cess said as they tried to shove the flopping mass up over the back of the lorry. At which point it began to rain again-a thin, bone-chilling rain that continued for the entire duration of their stowing the tank, loading the cutter and the pump and the phonograph, and thanking the farmer, who, along with the bull, had watched the entire proceedings with interest. By the time they got back to Cardew Castle, they were drenched, frozen, and starving.

“Oh, no, we missed breakfast,” Cess said, lifting the phonograph out. “I’ll never make it to luncheon. I could sleep for a week. What are you going to do, sleep or eat?”

“Neither,” Ernest said. “I have to write up my news stories.”

“Can’t that wait?”

“No, I’ve got to get them over to Croydon by four o’clock.”

“I thought you said they were due this morning.”

“They were, but as I missed the Sudbury Weekly Shopper’s deadline because I was nearly being killed by an angry bull, they’ll now have to go in the Croydon Clarion Call instead.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right. The ordeal wasn’t entirely a loss. Our farmer friend back there gave me an idea for a letter to the editor.” He took the stack of phonograph records Cess handed him. “‘Dear Sir, I woke Tuesday morning to find that a-’ Whose tank brigade is supposed to be here now? American or British?”

“Canadian. The Canadian Fourth Infantry Brigade.”

“‘To find that a squadron of Canadian tanks had destroyed my best pasture. They’d mashed the grass flat, frightened my prize bull-’”

“Not as much as it frightened you,” Cess said, handing him the bicycle pump.

“‘-and left muddy tank tracks everywhere, all without so much as a by-your-leave.’” He stuck the records under his arm and shifted the pump to his left hand so he could open the door. “‘I realize we must all pull together to defeat the Germans, and that in wartime some sacrifice is necessary,’” He opened the door. “‘But-’”

“Where have you two been?” Moncrieff demanded. “We’re late.”

“For what?” Ernest asked.

“Oh, no,” Cess said. “Don’t tell me we’ve got to go blow up more tanks. We’ve been up all night.”

“You can sleep in the car,” Moncrieff said, and Prism came in, dressed in tweeds and a tie.

“You can’t go to the ball like that, Cinderella,” Prism said, taking the records and pump away from Ernest. “Go on, get showered and dressed. You’ve got five minutes.”

“But I need to take my news stories over to-”

“You can do that later,” Prism said, dumping the records on the desk and propelling him toward the bathroom.

“But the Sudbury Shopper’s deadline-”

“This is more important. Go wash that mud off and get dressed,” he said. “And bring your pajamas.”

“My pajamas-?”

“Yes,” he said. “We’re going to see the Queen.”

I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds, but the white crest of an enormous wave. 

London-19 September 1940

MISS LABURNUM RAVED ABOUT SIR GODFREY ALL THE way back to the boardinghouse in the chill dawn. “How thrilling it must have been for you, Miss Sebastian, performing with a great actor like Sir Godfrey!” she gushed. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of my favorite plays!”

Since they’d been doing The Tempest, Polly was glad Sir Godfrey wasn’t there to hear that.

“It’s been such an exciting night,” Miss Laburnum said. “I won’t be able to sleep!”

I will, Polly thought, but she didn’t have time. She washed out her Times-stained blouse, wishing she had a second one to put on. She’d need to get one from Wardrobe when she went to get her skirt.

She ironed her blouse more or less dry, ate a hasty breakfast of badly scorched porridge, and set out for work, hoping the Central Line had reopened-it had-and that Miss Snelgrove would believe her story about being unable to go home because of the raids, but when Polly arrived at Townsend Brothers, she wasn’t there. “She’s filling in up on fourth today,” Marjorie told her. “For Nan in Housewares. And she said for me to tell you that Townsend Brothers is moving up its closing time from six to half-past five because of the raids, starting tonight.”

Good, Polly thought. That will give me more time to reach the drop.