Blackout - Connie Willis

There must have been damage on the line, she thought, consulting the Underground map. She’d need to take a northbound train to King’s Cross and catch the Victoria Line, but when she got there, the southbound trains weren’t running either. Which left the Circle Line. She took it, praying it hadn’t been knocked out, too.

It had, but only between Holland Park and Shepherd’s Bush. She took the train to Notting Hill Gate and hurried toward the escalators. “Oh, my God, look!” a young woman’s voice squealed from the far side of the hall as she crossed it, “It’s Polly!” and a second voice echoed, “Polly!”

Oh, thank God, she thought, relief washing over her. They’re here. Finally.

“Polly Sebastian! Over here!” they called from the direction of the escalators.

It can’t be the retrieval team, Polly thought as she turned. They’d never call attention to me or to themselves like that.

It wasn’t. It was Lila and Viv.

Never give up. No one knows what’s going to happen next. 

London-22 September 1940

“POLLY! OVER HERE!” LILA CALLED AGAIN FROM ACROSS the tube station, and Viv echoed, “Here.”

It couldn’t be them-no one could have survived in that flattened tangle of rubble-but there they were, elbowing their way toward her carrying mugs of tea and sandwiches. “Where-how-?” Polly stammered. “I thought you were dead.”

“You thought we were dead?” Lila said. “We thought you were dead! Viv, go tell them we’ve found her,” she ordered, and Viv handed Polly the sandwich and tea she was holding and took off back through the crowd.

“You said ‘they.’ Does that mean-?”

But Lila wasn’t listening. “What happened to you?” she demanded. “We were convinced you’d gone to St. George’s. Where have you been all this time? It’s been three days!”

Polly heard Viv say, “We came up to the canteen to buy a sandwich, and there she was,” and looked over at the escalator. Viv was leaning over it, chattering to someone coming up. “We couldn’t believe our eyes!” and it was the rector she was talking to.

Polly started through the crowd toward them, but the little girls-Bess and Irene and, oh, thank goodness, Trot-were already pelting toward her. Irene ran full tilt into her, and Trot hugged her legs. “You aren’t killed!” she said happily.

“I knew she wasn’t,” Bess said.

The rector came up. “Praise God you’re safe.”

Irene was tugging on her arm. “Come along,” she said. “We must show you to Mother.”

“Trot, let go,” Bess said, taking hold of her other arm. “You’ll bowl her over.” And the three of them dragged her down the escalator, Trot clinging to her skirt, and out to the northbound District Line platform, shouting, “Mother, look what we’ve found!”

And there at the end of the platform were Mrs. Brightford and Miss Laburnum and Mr. Dorming-all of them rising from where they’d been sitting to gather around her, exclaiming and smiling and talking at once in a happy jumble: “Where have you been? … gave us such a fright… so worried… Sir Godfrey refused to leave… and when you didn’t come back to Mrs. Rickett’s…”

Trot was tugging on her mother’s skirt. “She isn’t killed, Mummy.”

“No, she isn’t,” Mrs. Brightford said, beaming. “And we’re very, very glad.”

“I told you you were all worried for nothing,” Mrs. Rickett said to the rector. “Didn’t I say she’d turn up?”

“But you… I don’t understand… the man at the church-” Polly stammered. “I saw the wreckage-” And yet here came Miss Hibbard, carrying her knitting, tears streaming down her face, and, trotting toward Polly on a leash, was Nelson. “But pets aren’t allowed in public shelters,” Polly said, thinking, This must be a dream.

“The London Underground Authority’s given him a special dispensation,” Mr. Simms said, and she couldn’t be dreaming. She could never have imagined something like that.

“Oh, I’m so glad to see you! We feared you’d been killed,” Mrs. Wyvern said, stepping forward to embrace her, and she couldn’t have imagined that either.

They were really here and not buried in the rubble of the church. “You’re not dead. You’re all here,” Polly said, looking around happily at Mrs. Rickett and the rector and Nelson and-

Where was Sir Godfrey? She looked wildly around at the people on the platform. “Sir Godfrey refused to leave,” they’d said, and the old man at St. George’s had shaken his head and murmured, “Such a pity. So many killed.”

“Where’s Sir Godfrey?” Polly demanded. She darted back along the platform, pushing her way past passengers, looking for him, stepping over shelterers, thinking, Oh, God, that rescue shaft was for him-

And saw him coming through the archway from the tunnel, his Times tucked under his arm.

Thank God, he’s all right, Polly thought, but he wasn’t. He looked beaten, battered-as if St. George’s had crashed down on him-and years older than that night they’d done The Tempest. His face was lined and ashen.

Trot shot past her through the milling passengers, shouting, “Sir Godfrey! Sir Godfrey!” He looked down at Trot and then up. And saw Polly. “She’s not dead!” Trot said happily.

“No,” he said, his voice cracking, and took a step toward Polly.

“Sir Godfrey,” she tried to say, but nothing came out.

“‘I saw her as I thought dead,’” he murmured, “‘and have in vain said many a prayer upon her grave.’” He reached forward to take her hands and then stopped and looked questioningly at her. “‘What rich gift is this?’”

“What?” Polly said blankly and looked down at her hands. She was still holding Viv’s sandwich and tea mug. “I’ve no idea… I must have…” she stammered, and held them helplessly out to him.

He shook his head. “‘I am too far already in your gifts-’”

“Oh, good, you’ve found him, Miss Sebastian,” the rector said, coming up with Miss Laburnum and the others. They crowded around them. Nelson pushed forward, tail wagging.

“Sir Godfrey, isn’t it wonderful?” Miss Hibbard said. “Finding Miss Sebastian safe and well?”

“Indeed,” he said, looking at her solemnly. “‘It is a most high miracle. Though the seas threaten, they are merciful. I have cursed them without cause.’ Welcome, thrice drowned Viola.”

“You should have seen Sir Godfrey!” Lila said. “He was simply beside himself.”

“They had dogs and everything,” Viv said.

“What I want to know is where you’ve been all this time,” Mrs. Rickett demanded sourly.

“Yes, do make her tell us where she’s been, Sir Godfrey,” Miss Laburnum urged.

“But shouldn’t we go back to our own corner first?” Mr. Simms suggested. “Someone’s liable to take our space.”

“We are rather in the way here,” the rector said and led the way back along the crowded platform through the jostling passengers, Bess and Trot holding Polly by the hand.

“It’s not so cozy here as the shelter in St. George’s, I’m afraid,” Miss Laburnum said.

“And it’s rather noisy,” Mrs. Brightford added, “though when the trains stop, it’s a bit better.”

“I like it,” Lila whispered to Polly as they followed the rector. “There’s a canteen and-”

“And lots of nice-looking men,” Viv finished.

They reached the end of the platform. “Now, sit down,” Miss Laburnum said, gesturing to Lila and Viv to make room for Polly, “and tell us all about your adventures.”

Sir Godfrey gently took the mug and sandwich-which she was still unaccountably holding-from her and handed them to Viv. Polly sat down. So did everyone else, moving their camp stools and blankets to form a circle around her. “What happened to you?” Lila asked. “Why didn’t you come back to Mrs. Rickett’s?”

“Tell us everything,” Trot said.

“Aye, Miranda,” Sir Godfrey said. “‘Where hast thou been preserved? Where lived? How found thy father’s court?’”

“She didn’t,” Trot said. “We found her!”

“Hush, darling,” her mother said. “Let her speak.”

“‘Aye, speak, maid,’” Sir Godfrey ordered. “‘Give us particulars of thy preservation, how thou hast met us here who three days since were wrecked upon this shore.’”

She couldn’t tell them she’d spent a night in the drop. Instead, she said the sirens had gone when she was still at work, and she’d had to spend the night in Townsend Brothers’ basement shelter. “And the next morning there wasn’t time to go home before work, and that night it happened again. And when I came home Saturday morning, I saw the church, and they said people had been killed. I thought you were all dead. Who was killed?”

“Three firemen and an ARP warden,” the rector said. “And the entire bomb disposal squad.”

Miss Hibbard shook her head sadly. “Poor brave men.”

“The mine’s parachute had caught on a cornice of the building next to the vicarage,” Mr. Dorming explained. “They were trying to cut it down when it went off.”

“But I still don’t see how you-”

“We’d all been evacuated,” Mr. Simms explained.

“We’d no more than arrived at St. George’s when the ARP warden knocked on the door,” Miss Laburnum said, “and told us we had to leave immediately.”

“Sir Godfrey refused to go without you,” Lila said. “He said you wouldn’t know about the bomb and we must wait till you arrived, but the warden said they’d cordoned off the area.”

“They took us to a makeshift shelter in Argyll Road,” Miss Laburnum said, “and we were no sooner there than it went off. If we’d waited even a few minutes longer-” She shook her head.

“As soon as the raid let up, they sent us here,” Lila said, “and the tube authorities wouldn’t let Nelson in-”

“And Mr. Simms said he couldn’t just leave him outside in the middle of a raid,” Viv put in eagerly.

“Sir Godfrey told the guard he was an official member of our acting troupe,” Mr. Simms said, “so then they had to let him in.” He patted Nelson’s head affectionately.

“We were certain you’d be here,” Mrs. Brightford said.

And she had been, but then she’d gone to Holborn to observe the shelterers.

“Sir Godfrey went to Bayswater and Queensway stations to see if you might have been sent there,” Miss Hibbard said, “but you hadn’t.”

“And then,” Miss Laburnum said, “when you didn’t come back to the boardinghouse the next morning…”

The boardinghouse. She’d told herself the retrieval team hadn’t been able to find her because they’d been killed, that there’d been no one at Mrs. Rickett’s to tell them she lived there. But they weren’t dead. They would have been there to tell the retrieval team. So where were they?

“We feared the worst,” Miss Laburnum said.

So do I, Polly thought, and felt the panic begin to stir again.

“We were afraid there were areas which hadn’t been cordoned off and you hadn’t seen the Danger-Keep Out notices in the dark,” the rector said, “and had come along to the church.”

“And been killed,” Trot said.

“Sir Godfrey insisted the rescue squad search through the wreckage of the entire church,” Lila said.

That rescue shaft I saw wasn’t for them, Polly thought. It wasn’t for Sir Godfrey. They were looking for me.

“They told him it was no use,” Viv said, “that the entire weight of the sanctuary and the roof had collapsed directly onto the shelter, and no one could have survived under there, but Sir Godfrey refused to give up. He was determined to find you, no matter how long it took.”

Like Colin, Polly thought. The problem wasn’t only that the retrieval team hadn’t come, it was that Mr. Dunworthy and Colin hadn’t. They’d have moved heaven and earth to find her. “Mrs. Rickett, did anyone come to the boardinghouse looking for me?” she asked.

“Everyone was looking for you,” Mrs. Rickett said reprovingly. “Sir Godfrey spent all day yesterday and today searching the hospitals for you. You could at least have attempted to notify us that you were unharmed.”

“How could she have notified us?” Lila said. “She thought we were dead.”

Mrs. Rickett glared at her.

“What matters is that you’re alive and safe and we’re all here together,” the rector said in his peacemaking voice. “All’s well that ends well, isn’t that right, Sir Godfrey?”

“Indeed. ‘And if it end so meet, the bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.’ Or to quote our fair Trot, ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’”

“Except for the fact that Hitler was trying to kill them,” Mr. Dorming said dourly.

And except for the fact that the retrieval team hasn’t been to the boarding-house. Where are they? What if something terrible’s happened? But she had thought something terrible had happened to the group, and here they all were, safe and sound.

You were foolish to panic, she told herself. There could be lots of reasons why the retrieval team hasn’t found you yet. Perhaps they’d gone to the boardinghouse before Mrs. Rickett and the others had got back home. Or perhaps the streets around it had been cordoned off, and only residents had been allowed through. Or Badri had had difficulty finding a drop site for the team. It had taken him six weeks to find her one.

But she kept coming back to the fact that this was time travel. No matter how long it took Oxford to locate another drop or check every department store and Underground station, they could still have returned to Oxford, sent a second team through, and had them waiting for her outside Townsend Brothers that first morning.

Unless they couldn’t get there, she thought, remembering how much difficulty she’d had getting to St. Paul’s that Sunday and to Oxford Street the day after John Lewis, and how the indomitable Miss Snelgrove hadn’t made it into work that same day. If Badri had had difficulty locating a new drop site and, as a result, the retrieval team had had to come through in the East End or Hampstead Heath, or somewhere outside London altogether, they might still be there, unable to get into the city because the trains and buses weren’t running. Or they might have made the mistake of entering a roped-off area or trying to cross a mound of rubble and had been arrested for looting.

Or, more likely, it had taken them two full days of dealing with daytime raids and diversions and damage on the Underground lines to reach Oxford Street, by which time she’d have gone home with Marjorie. And rather than face the trek back, they’d decided to simply wait till Monday. In which case they’d be at Townsend Brothers tomorrow morning.

But they weren’t, even though Polly stayed at her counter through her lunch and tea breaks to make certain she didn’t miss them.