Blackout - Connie Willis

Oh, God, Polly thought. She has internal injuries.

“Mrs. Armentrude said she had a ruptured spleen…”

Polly felt a surge of hope. They’d known how to deal with a ruptured spleen, even in 1940. “Did she say anything about infection?”

Doreen shook her head. “She said some of her ribs were broken and… and… her arm!” And broke down completely.

People didn’t die from broken arms in any century, and if peritonitis hadn’t set in, Marjorie might be all right. “Here, my dear,” Miss Laburnum was saying, offering Doreen a lace-edged handkerchief. “Miss Sebastian, would you like me to fetch your friend a cup of tea from the canteen?”

“No, I’m all right,” Doreen said, wiping at her cheeks. “I’m sorry. It’s only that I feel so dreadful that I was angry at her for going off and leaving us shorthanded, when all the time…” She began to cry again.

“You didn’t know,” Polly said, thinking, We should have. I should have known she wouldn’t have gone off to Bath without telling me, that she wouldn’t have let me down when she’d said she’d cover for me-

“That’s what Miss Snelgrove said,” Doreen sniffled, “that it was no one’s fault. That even if we’d known Marjorie was still in London, we wouldn’t have known where she was. I don’t know what she was doing in Jermyn Street. She must have been on her way to the railway station when the raid began.”

But Jermyn Street’s nowhere near Waterloo Station, Polly thought. It’s in the opposite direction.

“Imagine, thinking you’ll be safely out of London soon, and then…” Doreen began to cry again. “I only wish there were something we could do, but Mrs. Armentrude said she’s not allowed any visitors.”

“Perhaps you could send her flowers,” Miss Laburnum suggested, “or some nice grapes.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Doreen said, cheering up. “Marjorie always liked grapes. Oh, Polly, she’ll be all right, won’t she?”

“Yes, of course she will,” Miss Laburnum said, and Polly looked gratefully at her. “She’s in good hands now, and you mustn’t worry. Doctors can do marvelous things. Why don’t you stay here in the shelter with us tonight?”

“I can’t, thank you,” Doreen said to Miss Laburnum and turned to Polly. “Miss Snelgrove asked me to tell everyone, and Nan still doesn’t know. I must find her and tell her.”

“But you can’t,” Polly said. “The sirens will be going any minute now, and you’ve no business being out in a raid.”

“It’s all right. Nan’s usually at Piccadilly,” Doreen said, and looked vaguely around at the notices painted on the wall. “Does the Piccadilly Line run from here?”

“You take the District to Earl’s Court and change from there,” Polly said. “I’ll go with you. Miss Laburnum, tell Sir Godfrey I’ve gone to help a friend locate someone.”

“Oh, but we were to rehearse the shipwreck scene tonight,” Miss Laburnum said. “Sir Godfrey will be so cross.”

She was right. He’d thrown himself into the role not only of butler, but of director, and bellowed at everyone, including Nelson. And if she missed a rehearsal-

“No, no, you needn’t go with me,” Doreen was saying. “I’m much better now. Thank you both.” She handed Miss Laburnum back her handkerchief and hurried off.

“How dreadful!” Miss Laburnum said, looking after her. “To be trapped like that without anyone knowing where you are. You mustn’t feel badly, Miss Sebastian. It wasn’t your fault.”

Yes, it was. I should have known something was wrong, but I was too busy worrying about whether she’d spoken to the retrieval team. I am so sorry, Marjorie.

She went to the hospital the next morning, but all they would tell her was that “the patient is stable,” and that she wouldn’t be able to have visitors “for some time.”

“Perhaps Miss Snelgrove will be able to find out more from the doctors,” Doreen said, passing round a card for everyone to sign with cheerful comments like “Hitler 0, Marjorie 1.”

Polly was doubtful, given Miss Snelgrove’s less-than-charming manner, but she returned full of information. They had operated successfully to remove Marjorie’s spleen; there appeared to be no other damage except for the arm and four broken ribs, and she was expected to make a full recovery, though it would be at least a fortnight before she was able to return to work. She’d lost a good deal of blood.

“She was under several feet of rubble,” Miss Snelgrove said. “It took the rescue squad nearly a day to dig her out after they found her. She was lucky to have been found at all. The house was listed as empty in the ARP ward records. The elderly woman who owned it had shut it up and gone to the country when the bombings began.”

And what was Marjorie doing in an abandoned house? Polly wondered.

“-so the rescuers hadn’t even looked for anyone. If an air-raid warden making his rounds hadn’t heard her calling from under a section of collapsed wall-” Miss Snelgrove shook her head. “She was very lucky. She was apparently in a sort of recessed doorway.”

Like the drop, Polly thought, remembering that night with the bombs falling all around. If the wall had collapsed on the passage, no one would have known she was there either.

“Did they let you in to see her?” Sarah Steinberg, who’d been sent down to fill in for Marjorie, asked.

“No, she’s still much too ill to have visitors,” Miss Snelgrove said. “I gave the matron your grapes and your card, and she promised to deliver them to her.”

“And you’re certain she’s going to be all right?” Doreen asked.

“Quite sure,” Miss Snelgrove said briskly. “She’s in excellent hands, and nothing can be gained by worrying. We must concentrate on the task at hand.”

For the next week, Polly tried to do just that-concentrating on selling stockings, wrapping parcels, learning her lines and her blocking-but she kept seeing Marjorie buried in the rubble: frightened, bleeding, waiting for someone, anyone, to come dig her out. And if she’d been unconscious or unable to call for help, she’d still be there, and no one would ever have known what happened to her.

“Lady Mary!” Sir Godfrey roared at her. “That’s your cue!”

“Sorry.” She said her line.

“No, no, no!” Sir Godfrey bellowed. “You are not on a picnic. You have been shipwrecked. Your vessel has been blown off-course, and no one has any idea where you are. Now, try it again.”

She did, but her mind was on what Sir Godfrey’d said: “No one has any idea where you are.”

They’d thought Marjorie’d gone to Bath when she was actually buried under a wall in Jermyn Street. Could the same thing have happened with Polly’s retrieval team? Could they have seen or heard something that made them reach an erroneous conclusion about where she was? Could they be off looking for her on Regent Street or in Knightsbridge? Or another city?

But she hadn’t gone off without telling anyone where she was going, like Marjorie, and she hadn’t been blown off-course. She was exactly where she’d told the lab-and Colin-she’d be: working in a department store on Oxford Street and sleeping in a tube station that had never been hit. And Doreen’s having come to Notting Hill Gate to tell her about Marjorie proved that Townsend Brothers knew how to find her if the retrieval team asked for her. And this was time travel-

“Wrong, wrong, wrong!” Sir Godfrey bellowed. Polly scrambled to find her place, but this time he was yelling at the rest of the cast. “Your chances of rescue are nearly nonexistent. You’re far from the shipping lanes, and when word of the loss of your ship reaches England, you will almost certainly be given up for dead.”

Given up for dead. What if, rather than thinking she was somewhere else, the retrieval team thought she was dead? When Doreen had first told her about Marjorie, she’d thought she was dead, and when she’d seen the wreckage of St. George’s, she’d thought Sir Godfrey and the others were. And they’d thought she was dead, too. Sir Godfrey had insisted that the rescue squad dig for her. What if, during that time the retrieval team had come, and the rector had told them she was dead? Or what if he’d-?

“Miss Laburnum,” she whispered, “after St. George’s was destroyed, did you-?”

“Lady Mary, did you have some comment on this scene?” Sir Godfrey asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“No. I’m sorry, Sir Godfrey.”

“As. I. Was. Saying,” Sir Godfrey said, emphasizing each word, “only the butler, Crichton, and Lady Mary,” he glowered at her, “have realized the gravity of their plight at this point, and it is that which provides the humor, such as it is, in this scene. Lady Agatha, you stand here,” he said, taking Lila by the arm and moving her to the end of the platform, “and Lord Brocklehurst, you’re seated here in front of her on the sand.”

Polly took advantage of his repositioning the cast to ask Miss Laburnum, “When I was missing, did the rector send my name to the newspaper for the casualties list?”

Miss Laburnum shook her head. “Mrs. Wyvern thought it was our duty to send in a death notice,” she whispered, “but Sir Godfrey wouldn’t hear of it. He-”

“Mary!” Sir Godfrey thundered. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to rehearse this scene before the end of the war.”

“Sorry.”

They started through the scene. Polly forced herself to concentrate on saying her lines and getting through her blocking without incurring Sir Godfrey’s wrath again, but as soon as rehearsal was over, she took the tube to Holborn’s lending library to look at its old newspapers. Mrs. Wyvern might not have notified officials of her death, but that didn’t mean the incident officer-or one of the ARP wardens-hadn’t. Or she might have been mentioned in the account of the church’s destruction. And if the retrieval team had seen “Polly Sebastian, died suddenly of enemy attack” in the Times-”

But the oldest paper the library had was three days old. “You haven’t any from farther back?” she asked the librarian.

“No,” she said apologetically. “Some children came round several days ago collecting for the scrap paper drive.”

She’d have to go to the Times office herself. But when? The newspaper morgue wasn’t open Sundays, her only day off, and her lunch break wasn’t long enough for her to go all the way to Fleet Street and back. And Polly didn’t dare phone in again and say she was ill. Miss Snelgrove was convinced anyone who asked for time off was decamping like Marjorie.

But she had to see those casualties lists, so after rehearsal the next night she borrowed Sir Godfrey’s Times to find a death notice she could use, borrowed a handkerchief from Miss Laburnum, and waited for Friday night when the raids over Clerkenwell would hopefully prevent Miss Snelgrove from getting to work on time the next morning.

They did. Polly grabbed the handkerchief and ran upstairs to Personnel to ask Mr. Witherill if she could be gone for the morning. “To attend my aunt’s funeral.”

“You must obtain permission from your floor supervisor.”

“Miss Snelgrove’s not here.”

He glanced over at his secretary, who nodded confirmation. “She telephoned to say the trains weren’t running, and she was going to attempt to take a bus.”

“Oh. Your aunt, you say?”

“Yes, sir. My Aunt Louise. She was killed in a raid.” She dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief.

“My condolences. When is the funeral?”

“Eleven o’clock at St. Pancras Church,” Polly said, and if Mr. Witherill (or, more likely, Miss Snelgrove) checked the funeral notices, they would find “Mrs. James (Louise) Barnes, aged 53, St. Pancras Church. 11 A.M. No flowers.”

“Very well,” he said, “but I expect you to return immediately after the funeral.”

“Yes, sir, I will,” Polly said and ran down to tell Doreen where she was going and to tell anyone who inquired after her that she’d be back by one, took the tube to Fleet Street, and walked quickly to the Times office, hoping ordinary people were allowed access to the morgue.

They were. She asked for the morning and evening editions from September twentieth through the twenty-second and was shocked to be handed the actual newspapers-though this was of course before digital copying or even microfilm. She paged through the large sheets, looking for the death notices and reading down through them-“Joseph Seabrook, 72, died suddenly of enemy action. Helen Sexton, 43, died suddenly. Phyllis Sexton, 11, died suddenly. Rita Sexton, 5, died suddenly.”

Polly’s name wasn’t on any of the lists, and the news article was only a brief paragraph headed “Beloved Eighteenth-Century Church Blitzed”. There were no details, no photo, not even the name of the church.

Good, she thought. She returned the papers to the desk and went on to the Daily Herald, checking the news story about St. George’s-“Fourth Historic Church Destroyed by Luftwaffe in Failed Campaign to Demoralize Brits”-and the death notices. Her name wasn’t there either, or in the Standard, which was all she had time to check. She would have to check the others later.

She raced back to Townsend Brothers, stopping at Padgett’s to rub a bit of rouge around her eyes in the ladies’ lounge and splash water on her eyelashes, cheeks, and handkerchief. And a good thing she had. Miss Snelgrove had arrived and clearly did not believe she’d been to a funeral.

And Colin wouldn’t believe I was dead either, she thought, even if he did see my death notice. Colin would refuse to give up. He’d insist they continue looking for her just as Sir Godfrey had.

Then where are they? she thought, writing up purchases and waiting for Miss Snelgrove to leave so she could ask Doreen whether anyone had asked for her while she was gone. Why aren’t they here? It had been nearly four weeks since the drop was damaged and five since she should have checked in.

She had to wait till after the closing bell to speak to Doreen. Doreen told her no one had come in and asked her about Marjorie. “Miss Snelgrove said she won’t be well enough to have visitors for at least a fortnight,” she said. “You don’t think it means she’s getting worse, do you?”

“No, of course not,” Polly lied.

“I keep thinking about her lying in that rubble and us not knowing what had happened,” Doreen said, “thinking she was safely in Bath when all the time… I feel so guilty not sensing she was in trouble.”

“You had no way of knowing,” Polly said, which seemed to reassure her. She went off to cover her counter, but Polly stood there, lost in thought.

No way of knowing. What if the reason the retrieval team hadn’t come wasn’t divergent points or their thinking she was dead or any of the other things she’d imagined? What if it was simply because the lab didn’t know they needed to send a team? That they didn’t know anything was wrong? Like I didn’t know Marjorie was lying in the rubble.

The lab had been swamped with retrievals and drops and schedule changes, and Mr. Dunworthy had been busy as well, meeting with people and going off to London. Could they all have been so busy and distracted they’d forgotten she was supposed to check in? Or could something have happened to Michael Davies at Dover or Pearl Harbor, and everyone’s attention was on pulling him out, and they’d put every other retrieval on hold?