Connie Willis - Blackout

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.”

The air raids, Eileen thought. She’s talking about the air raids. And an Anderson was some sort of shelter. She hadn’t researched shelters. The whole point of sending the children to Backbury had been to get them away from the need for shelters. Mrs. Owens had said it was in the back garden. While she took the children upstairs to fetch pillows, Eileen ran outside to look at it.

At first she couldn’t find it and then realized the large grassy mound by the back fence was it. It was a corrugated iron hut, which had been sunk into the ground with dirt piled around it on three sides and on top of its curved roof. Grass was growing on top.

Like a grave, Eileen thought. The end that hadn’t been banked with dirt had a metal door. She opened it, and Mrs. Owens was right. It smelled damp. She peered in, but it was too dark to see anything.

I need to ask if Mrs. Willett has a torch, she thought, and went back inside, where she found Alf and Binnie whaling away at each other with the pillows. “Stop that immediately and put on your nightclothes,” she said, apologized to Mrs. Owens, and asked her about the torch. Mrs. Owens found it and a box of matches for her. “For the hurricane,” she said cryptically and made Eileen promise to come ask if she needed anything else.

“Should I take the children out to the Anderson now?” Eileen asked her anxiously at the door.

“Oh, no, there’ll be plenty of time once the sirens go. A quarter of an hour at the least.” She looked up at the darkening sky. “If they go. I’ve a premonition Hitler’s told them to stay home tonight.”

Good, Eileen thought, and went back inside to separate Alf and Binnie, who were battling over the right to sleep on the sofa. She pulled the blackout curtains together and helped Theodore into his pajamas, then trooped them all upstairs to the loo and back down to the sitting room, put Theodore on the sofa-“Because it’s his house, Alf”-made up beds for Alf and Binnie on the floor, set the torch by the back door, switched off the lamp, and sat down in the overstuffed chair, listening for the sirens and hoping she’d recognize them when she heard them. She hadn’t researched sirens either. Or bombs.

She’d only just decided it was safe to take her shoes off when she heard the sirens, and then, before she could get her shoes back on, the ominous buzz of approaching planes. And immediately after, the distant crump of a bomb. “Binnie! Alf! Wake up! We’ve got to go to the Anderson.”

“Is it a raid?” Alf said, instantly alert. He leaped up and then stood there looking up at the ceiling, listening. “That’s a Heinkel III.”

“You can do that in the Anderson. Hurry. Take your blanket with you. Theodore, wake up.”

Theodore rubbed his eyes sleepily. “I don’t want to go to the Anderson.”

Of course. She wrapped the blanket around him and picked him up in her arms. There was a boom, and then another, much louder. “They’re comin’ nearer,” Alf said happily.

“Let’s go. Hurry,” Eileen said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “Binnie, fetch the torch-”

“My name’s Spitfire.”

“Fetch the torch. Alf, open the door-no, switch off the lamp first.” She got the torch and matches from Binnie, and they ran out the back door and across the grass, the torch’s beam lighting a wobbly path in front of them.

“The ARP warden’ll get you for showin’ a light,” Alf said. “You could go to prison.”

Binnie reached the Anderson first. She opened the low door, stepped in, and backed out again. “It’s wet!”

“In,” Eileen said, “now,” and pushed her through the door. She grabbed Alf, who was standing on the grass, staring up at the dark sky, shoved him through the door, and stepped through after him. And into four inches of icy water.

It’s flooded, she thought, grabbing the torch and shining it down on the water and then along the walls to see if water was coming in somewhere. So this was what the neighbor meant by dampish.

“My shoes and socks are soaking,” Binnie said.

“I want to go back inside,” Theodore said.

“We can’t, not till the raid’s over.” She had to shout over the noise of the bombs and the Heinkel IIIs or whatever they were, their sound a heavy growl. Perhaps shutting the door would shut some of the racket out. She handed Binnie the torch and pulled the door shut and fastened it.

It didn’t help. The curved tin roof seemed to magnify and reverberate the sound, like shouting into a megaphone. How had people slept in these? She took the torch back from Binnie and shone it around the shelter. There were two very narrow bunks on each side, with shelves at the end by the door. On one sat an oil lamp with a glass chimney.

The hurricane, Eileen thought, lifting Theodore onto a top bunk, then waded over to light the lamp. It cast a dim, shadowy light.

“Look,” Binnie said, pointing. “There are spiders.”

“Where?” Theodore cried.

“In the water.”

Eileen replaced the glass chimney over the flame and switched off the torch. “It’s all right. They’ve all drowned.”

“Drowned?” Theodore wailed.

“I think the water’s gettin’ deeper,” Binnie said.

“No, it isn’t,” Eileen said firmly. “Get in your bunks. Binnie, you take that one.” She pointed to a lower bunk. “Alf, you climb up on top.”

“I want to go back inside,” Theodore said. “I’m cold.”

“Here’s your blanket,” Eileen said, picking it up. It was sopping wet. The tail must have dragged in the water. She took off her coat and tucked it around him.

“There’s no room in ’ere,” Binnie said from her bunk. “I can’t even sit up.”

“Then lie down and go to sleep,” Eileen said.

“With all that goin’ on?” Alf asked.

He had a point. The noise of engines and explosions was growing louder. There was a whoosh and then an explosion that shook the Anderson. The hurricane lamp rattled.

“Are we going to drown?” Theodore asked.

No, we’re going to be blown to bits, Eileen thought. And Binnie was right, there was no room in these bunks. She curled up on the lower one, shivering, her feet in their wet stockings tucked under her.

I should have knocked on Mrs. Owens’s door and run and left them standing there, she thought, her teeth chattering. I could have been home by now.

“I gotta go to the loo again,” Alf said.

Think of the Wounded 

War Emergency Hospital-August 1940

MIKE STARED AT SISTER GABRIEL. “I’M IN ORPINGTON?” he repeated stupidly. Orpington was just south of London. It was miles from Dover.

“Yes, you were brought here from Dover for surgery,” Sister Gabriel explained.

“When?”

“I’m not certain.” She picked up his chart to look.

“I am,” Fordham said. “It was the sixth of June.”

D-Day, Mike thought. Oh, God, it’s 1944. I’ve been here four years.

“I remember because it was only two days after I was admitted,” Fordham went on, “and the orderlies kept banging against my traction wires as they got you into bed.”

“Yes, the sixth,” Sister Gabriel said, looking at his chart, and it was obvious the date meant nothing to them. It wasn’t 1944, it was still 1940. Thank God. June sixth. That meant he’d been brought here a week after Dunkirk, so that by the time the retrieval team had talked to the Commander and then come to Dover looking for him, he’d have been long gone, and with no name to trace him by.

That’s why the retrieval team’s not here, he thought jubilantly, and then, I’ve got to let them know where I am. He grabbed the blankets to fling them off and get out of bed.

“I say, what do you think you’re doing?” Fordham said, startled, and Sister Gabriel rushed over to stop him.

“Oh, you mustn’t try to get out of bed,” she said, putting her hand on his chest. “You’re still far too weak.” She pulled the covers back up. “What is it? Have you remembered something about your coming here?”

“No, I… I didn’t realize I wasn’t in Dover.”

“It must be difficult, not being able to remember,” Sister Gabriel said sympathetically. “Could you have been in the RAF?”

Oh, no, had his L-and-A implant stopped working again?

“There are lots of American flyers in the RAF,” she went on. “You could have been shot down, and that’s why you were in the water.”

He shook his head, frowning. “It’s all so foggy.”

“Never mind. You’re in very good hands here.” She handed him his crossword puzzle and pencil. “And you’re much safer here than in Dover.”

No, I’m not, he thought. And I have to get word to them. But how? He couldn’t send a telegram to 2060. The only way to get a message to Oxford was via the drop, and if he could get there to send it, he wouldn’t need to send a message. He could go through himself.

He tried to think what the retrieval team would have done when they couldn’t find him in Dover. They’d have gone back to Saltram-on-Sea. It, and the Commander, would be their only lead. I have to get word of where I am to him so he can tell them. But how? The Commander obviously didn’t have a phone or he wouldn’t have had to use the one at the inn to call the Admiralty.

Maybe I could call the inn, he thought, and leave a message with the barmaid-what was her name? Dolores? Dierdre? He couldn’t just call and ask for the brunette with the trick of glancing flirtatiously over her shoulder, not with her father there. And besides, he didn’t trust her to remember to deliver the message. She hadn’t been able to remember that the Commander had a car, even when he’d been in desperate need of one.

Maybe he could send the Commander a telegram. But he had no idea how to go about it. And no money. And if he asked Fordham or one of the nurses if they could send one for him, they’d conclude he’d regained his memory and ask all kinds of inconvenient questions.

Maybe I can ask Mrs. Ives, he thought. She doesn’t know I’m supposed to have amnesia. Fordham goes down for X-rays this afternoon. I’ll ask her then.

But when she arrived, Fordham was still there. “Anything else you need?” Mrs. Ives asked cheerily after she’d given Mike his newspaper.

Yes, Mike thought, I need an attendant to come take Fordham. “Can you help me with this crossword clue?” he asked, picking one at random. “‘Mount where the PM goes on Sunday mornings.’ Nine letters. I can’t figure it out.”

“Oh, that’s Churchill,” she said.

“Churchill?”

“Yes, our new prime minister.”

And here, finally, was the attendant with the gurney. He and the nurse began unhooking Fordham from his pulleys. “But how is Churchill the name of a mount?” Mike asked to stall.

“A mount is a hill…”

“Careful,” Fordham said as they put him on the gurney. “Don’t-Christ!-sorry, Mrs. Ives.”

“I quite understand,” she said and returned to the puzzle. “And the place one goes on Sunday mornings is ‘church,’ and together they spell out Church-hill. Churchill.”

“So the clues are riddles?” Mike said.

Mrs. Ives nodded.

Fordham yelped in pain. “Sorry, just a momentary twinge. Go ahead, driver. To the photographer’s studio!” and was finally wheeled off toward the ward’s double doors.

“I need to get word to someone,” Mike said as soon as the gurney was out of earshot, “and I was wondering if you-”

“Could write a letter for you?” Mrs. Ives said. “I’d be delighted.” She began gathering stationery from her cart.

“No, I wanted to send a telegram-”

“Oh, dear, no. Telegrams are such horrid things, always bringing bad news, especially now with the war. You don’t want to frighten the poor person you’re sending it to. A letter’s much better.” She picked up a fountain pen. “I’ll be glad to post it for you.”

“But I need to get word to this person right away-”

“A letter will be nearly as quick as a telegram,” she said, sitting down beside the bed. “Now, to whom is it to be sent?”

“I can write it myself. I just need-”

“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s my way of doing my bit for the war effort. And you mustn’t tire yourself out. You must conserve your strength toward getting well.”

There wasn’t time to argue with her. Fordham might be back any minute. “It’s to Commander Harold,” he said.

She wrote, “Dear Commander Harold,” in a neat, spidery hand.

“I am in the War Emergency Hospital in Orpington,” Mike dictated. “I was brought here from Dover for surgery on my foot.” And now what? He needed to phrase it so it didn’t give away the fact that he’d been feigning his amnesia, or that he was a civilian. If they found that out and moved him to another hospital, it would defeat the whole point of writing.

Mrs. Ives was looking up at him expectantly.

“I’m too tired to write any more right now,” he said, rubbing his hand across his forehead. “Just leave it, and I’ll finish it later.”

“I’ll be glad to come back,” she said, folding the letter and sticking it in her pocket.

No, Fordham would be there then, listening. “Just put, ‘Please write,’” Mike told her. The important thing was to tell the Commander where he was, and hopefully he’d write back and tell him if anyone had been there, looking for him. “And sign it ‘Mike Davis.’”

She wrote that, folded the letter in thirds, put it in an envelope, licked the flap, tore a stamp off a sheet, licked that, and pressed it onto a corner of the envelope. And it was just as well she’d written the letter for him-he’d have had no idea how to get the envelope shut or the stamp on. She wrote Mike’s name and the hospital’s address in the left-hand corner and “Commander Harold” in the center. “What’s the Commander’s address?” she asked.

“I need you to find that out for me. He lives in a village called Saltram-on-Sea. It’s in Kent. Or possibly in Sussex.”

“The postmaster will know,” she said. “Saltram-on-Sea will get it to him.” She wrote “Saltram-on-Sea” and, under it, “England,” and stuck it in her uniform pocket. “I’ll post it when I leave tonight.”

I hope she knows what she’s doing, Mike thought. “How long do you think it will take to get there?”