Blackout - Connie Willis

“All of them,” he said, and the next several days scanned them for the number of planes downed, which were posted like baseball scores-Luftwaffe 19, RAF 6; Luftwaffe 12, RAF 9; Luftwaffe 11, RAF 8.

The hell with the names of the small craft, he thought. I should’ve memorized the daily stats for the Battle of Britain. Without them, the numbers meant nothing, though they were worryingly large, and he read the other news feverishly, looking for something, anything that would prove events were still on course. But he only knew the events up to Dunkirk. Had the Germans blown up a passenger train? Had they shelled Dover? Had Hitler announced he intended to have completed the conquest of England by the end of summer?

He didn’t know. All he knew was that the news over the next week was uniformly bad: “Convoy Sunk,” “British Troops Abandon Shanghai,” “Airfields Sustain Major Damage.” Had things really gone that badly or was this a sign that the war had gone off-track, that he’d altered the course of-

“You mustn’t fret about the war,” Sister Carmody said severely, taking the Express he was reading away from him. “It’s not good for you. Your fever’s back up. You must concentrate all your energy on getting well.”

“I am,” he protested, but she must have instructed Mrs. Ives not to let him have any more newspapers because when he asked her for the Herald the next day, Mrs. Ives chirped, “How about a nice book instead? I’m certain you’ll find this interesting,” and handed him a masssive biography of Ernest Shackleton.

He read it, figuring if he did, Mrs. Ives might relent and let him have a newspaper, and that even a boring biography had to be better than lying there worrying, but it wasn’t. Shackleton and his crew had gotten stranded in the middle of the Antarctic with no way to let a rescue team know where they were and the polar winter closing in fast. And one of Shackleton’s crew had frostbitten his foot and had to have part of it cut off.

And even after Mike had finished it and lied to Mrs. Ives about how much he’d liked it and how much better he was feeling, she still wouldn’t let him have a newspaper. And he had to get his hands on one soon because today was the twenty-fourth, and the twenty-fourth had been one of the war’s major divergence points.

It was one he’d learned about when he was studying time travel theory. Two Luftwaffe pilots had gotten lost in the fog and been unable to find their target, so they’d jettisoned their bombs over what they thought was the English Channel and was actually Cripplegate in London. They’d hit a church and a historic statue of John Milton and killed three civilians and injured twenty-seven others, and as a result, Churchill had ordered the bombing of Berlin, and an enraged Hitler had called a halt to the battle with the RAF and begun bombing London.

In the nick of time. The RAF had had fewer than forty planes left, and if the pilots hadn’t gotten lost, the Luftwaffe could have wiped out the remaining air forces in two weeks flat-some historians said within twenty-four hours-and marched unopposed into London. And with Britain out of the way, Hitler would have been able to concentrate all his military might on Russia, and the Russians would never have been able to hold Stalingrad. “For want of a nail…”

If Cripplegate was bombed, it might not prove conclusively that he hadn’t altered events, but it would prove he hadn’t knocked the war off course, that history was still on track. The story wouldn’t be in the papers till tomorrow, or possibly today’s late editions, but the weather forecast would be. He could at least see if fog was predicted. It was clear right now.

But it’ll come in in the late afternoon, he thought, waiting anxiously for Mrs. Ives’s arrival.

But she didn’t come, Fordham didn’t have the Herald, and the sky was still clear when Sister Gabriel pulled the blackout curtains shut.

Even if saving Hardy did alter events, it can’t have affected the weather, he told himself. But in chaotic systems everything affected everything else in complicated and unpredictable ways. If a butterfly flapping its wings in Montana could cause a monsoon in China, then saving a soldier at Dunkirk could affect the weather in southeast England.

There were no sirens during the night, and the next morning the sky was still clear.

The fog could have been limited to London, he told himself.

When Sister Gabriel brought his breakfast, he asked her, “What happened last night? I thought I heard bombs.”

It was impossible to hear a bomb in Cripplegate from Dover, of course, but he hoped she’d say, “No, but London got it last night,” and then elaborate.

She didn’t. She gave him the same look she always gave Bevins and took his temperature. She looked at the thermometer, frowning. “Try to rest,” she said and left him to wait anxiously for Mrs. Ives. What if Mrs. Ives didn’t come again today? What if she never came back, like Mr. Powney?

She did, but not till late afternoon. “I’ve been down on first since yesterday morning,” she said, “assisting with the new patients. Nearly a dozen pilots. One of them crash-landed, and he-” she caught herself. “Oh, but you don’t want to hear about that. How about a nice book?”

“No, reading books makes my head ache. Can’t I have a newspaper? Please.”

“Oh, dear, I really shouldn’t. The nurses said you weren’t to read anything troubling…”

Troubling. “I don’t want to read the war news,” he lied. “I just want to work the crossword puzzle.”

“Oh,” she said, relieved, “well, in that case…” and handed him the Herald and a yellow lead pencil, and then stood there while he opened it to the puzzle. He’d have to at least pretend to work it. He started reading the clues. Six across: “The man between two hills is a sadist.”

What? Fifteen across: “This sign of the Zodiac has no connection with the fishes.” What kind of clues were these? He’d worked crosswords when he’d studied the history of games, but they’d had straightforward clues like “Spanish coin” and “marsh bird,” not, “The well brought-up help these over stiles.”

“Do you need any help?” Mrs. Ives asked kindly.

“No,” he said and quickly filled in the first set of spaces with random letters. Mrs. Ives moved on down the ward with her cart. As soon as she left, Mike quickly flipped to the front page. “London Church Bombed,” the headline read. “3 Killed, 27 Injured,” and there was a photo of the half-destroyed Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, complete with the toppled statue of Milton.

Thank God, he thought, though he couldn’t be certain till he’d seen what the response to the bombing was, which meant convincing Mrs. Ives to keep on giving him the paper.

But when he asked the next day, she said, “Oh, the crossword’s done you good. Your color’s much improved,” and handed over the Express without any argument.

On the twenty-seventh the headline read, “RAF Bombs Berlin!” and the next day, “Hitler Vows Revenge for Berlin Bombing.” He breathed a massive sigh of relief. But if he hadn’t altered events, then what had happened to the retrieval team?

They don’t know where I am, he thought. It was the only explanation. But why not? Even if they hadn’t been able to find out anything in Saltram-on-Sea, they’d known he’d intended to go to Dover. They’d have scoured the town, checked the police station and the morgue and all the hospitals. How many were there? He hadn’t had time to research that because of wasting that afternoon waiting for Dunworthy. “How many hospitals are there here?” he asked Sister Gabriel when she brought his medicine.

“Here?” she said blankly. “In England?”

“No, here in Dover.”

“I say, you have been out of it,” Fordham said from his bed. “You’re not in Dover.”

“Not in-? Where am I? What hospital is this?”

“The War Emergency Hospital,” Sister Gabriel said. “In Orpington.”

This Way to the Air Raid Shelter? 

London-10 September 1940

IT TOOK EILEEN UNTIL TWO THE NEXT DAY SHUFFLED from bus to train to bus again-to get the children to London, by which time she’d spent over half of the money the vicar had given her on sandwiches and orange squash and reached the end of her patience with Alf and Binnie.

I am delivering them to their mother, and then I never want to see them again, she thought when they finally arrived at Euston Station. “Which bus do we take to get to Whitechapel?” she asked the station guard.

“Stepney’s closer than Whitechapel,” Binnie said. “You should take Theodore home first and then us.”

“I’m taking you to your house first, Binnie,” Eileen said.

“Not Binnie. I told you, my name’s Spitfire. Any rate, our mum won’t be there.”

“And if you take Theodore first,” Alf said, “we could help you find his street. You’ll likely get lost on your own.”

“I don’t want to go-” Theodore began.

“Not one word,” Eileen said. “Out of any of you. We’re going to Whitechapel. Which bus do we take for Whitechapel?” she asked the guard.

“I don’t know as you can get there at all, miss,” he said. “It was hit hard again last night.”

“I told you we should go to Stepney,” Binnie said.

“What sort of bombers were they?” Alf inquired.

“Shh,” Eileen said and asked the guard for the bus number.

He told her. “Though I doubt they’re running. And even if they are, the streets’ll be blocked off.”

He was right. They had to take three different buses and then get out and walk, and by the time they reached Whitechapel, it was half past four. Whitechapel looked like something out of Dickens-narrow, dark lanes and soot-blackened tenements. A pall of smoke hung over the area, and off in the distance Eileen could see flames. She felt guilty at the idea of abandoning Alf and Binnie to this, and even guiltier when she saw a tenement that had been bombed. One wall still stood, curtains at its blown-out windows, but the rest of it was a mound of timbers and plaster. Part of an upended kitchen chair stuck out of the mound, and she could see pieces of broken crockery and a shoe. Alf whistled. “Will ya look at that!” he said and would have climbed onto it-in spite of the rope barrier-if Eileen hadn’t caught hold of his shirt collar.

There was another mound of rubble on the corner and, at the end of the next street they crossed, the blackened skeleton of an entire row of houses.

What if when we get there, Alf and Binnie’s home has been hit? Eileen thought worriedly, but when they turned in to Gargery Lane, all the houses were intact, though they looked as if a good, hard push could topple them, let alone a bomb. “We can find our way from ’ere,” Alf said. “You needn’t go with us.”

She was sorely tempted, but she’d promised the vicar she’d hand them over to their mother personally. “Which one is yours?” Eileen asked him, and Alf pointed cheerfully at the flimsiest-looking tenement of all.

And it must be theirs because when she knocked on the front door, the woman who answered growled, “I thought we’d got rid of the two of you. You stay away from my Lily.”

When Eileen asked if Mrs. Hodbin was home, she snorted. “Mrs. Hodbin? That’s rich, that is. She’s no more a missus than I’m the Queen.”

“Have you any idea when she might be home?”

She shook her head. “She never come home last night.”

Oh, no, what if she’d been killed in the bombing? But neither the woman nor Alf and Binnie seemed worried. “I told you you should take Theodore home first,” Binnie said.

“I’ve brought Alf and Binnie home-” Eileen began.

“Spitfire,” Binnie corrected.

“-Alf and his sister home from Warwickshire for the Evacuation Committee,” Eileen said to the woman. “Can I leave them with you till their mother returns?”

“Oh, no, you’re not going to land me with them two. For all I know, she’s gone off with some soldier again, and then where would I be?”

In exactly the same position I am, Eileen thought. “Well, is there someone who could watch-?”

“We ain’t babies,” Alf protested.

“We can stay by ourselves till Mum comes back,” Binnie said. “If this old cow’ll give us our key-”

“A good beating, that’s what I’ll give you,” the woman said, “both you and that brother of yours. And if you was mine, I’d give you a lot worse.” She shook her fist at Eileen. “And don’t you try goin’ off and leavin’ ’em, or I’ll call a policeman,” she said, and slammed the door in their faces.

“I ain’t afraid of no police,” Alf said staunchly.

“And we don’t need no key,” Binnie said. “We got lots of ways of getting’ in ’thout that old cow knowin’.”

I can imagine, Eileen thought. “No, I promised the vicar I’d deliver you to your mother. Come along. We’re going to Stepney.” And please let Theodore’s mother be home.

She wasn’t. When they reached Stepney, after an even longer and more roundabout trek, her neighbor, Mrs. Owens, said, “She’s left for the night shift. You’ve only just missed her.”

Oh, no. “When do you expect her home?”

“Not till the morning. They’re working double shifts at the factory.”

Worse and worse.

“But Theodore’s welcome to stay the night with me,” Mrs. Owens said. “Have you had your tea?”

“No,” Binnie said vehemently.

“We’re not ’alf-starved,” Alf said.

“Oh, you poor lambs,” she said and insisted on making them toasted cheese and pouring Eileen a cup of tea. “Theodore’s mother will be so glad to see him. She’s been that worried, what with all the bombings. She’s been expecting him since yesterday afternoon,” and listened, clucking sympathetically, as Eileen told her what had happened.

It was wonderful, sitting there in the warm, tidy kitchen, but it was growing late. “We must be going,” she said when Mrs. Owens urged a second cup of tea on her. “I must get Alf and Binnie home to Whitechapel.”

“Tonight? Oh, but you can’t. The sirens may go any minute. You’ll have to leave that till the morning.”

“But-” Eileen said, her heart quailing at the thought of setting out with Alf and Binnie to find a hotel, if Stepney even had such a thing. And the cost!

“You must all stay here,” Mrs. Owens said.

Eileen gave a sigh of relief.

“Theodore’s mother gave me her key,” Mrs. Owens went on. “I’d have you here, but there’s no Anderson, only that cupboard.” She pointed at a narrow door under the stairs.

What is she talking about? Eileen wondered, following her next door with the children in tow. And who’s Anderson?

“The children can sleep in here,” Mrs. Owens said, showing them into the sitting room. “That way you won’t have to get them down the stairs.” She opened a linen closet and brought out blankets. “It’s a bit dampish for my old bones. That’s why I didn’t have one put in. Still, going out to the back garden’s better than going all the way to Bethnal Green in the blackout. Mrs. Skagdale, two doors down, fell off the curb and broke her ankle night before last when the sirens went.”