Connie Willis - Blackout

“Have you given any thought to where you’ll be going after you’re discharged?” she asked.

He hadn’t thought of anything else. He needed to get back to Saltram-on-Sea and the drop, but he had to get there without any of the locals spotting him, especially Daphne. He couldn’t risk her getting more attached to him. She might turn down a date with the man she was supposed to marry, or feel jilted when he left and swear off reporters. Or Americans. Hundreds of English women had married American soldiers. Daphne might well have been one of them. And he’d already done enough damage as it was. He needed to get out of here without doing any more.

He’d have to go to Dover and then take the bus down to Saltram-on-Sea and hope that the driver would be willing to let him out above the beach. And that he could manage the path down to the drop.

“I thought I’d go to Dover,” he told the Assistance Board woman. “I have a reporter friend there I can stay with,” and the next morning she brought him a train ticket to Dover, a chit for lodging, and a five-pound note “to assist you till you get settled. Is there anything else you need?”

“My hospital discharge papers,” he said, and she truly was a miracle worker-the doctor signed them that afternoon. Mike promptly rang for Sister Gabriel and asked for his clothes.

“Not till Matron countersigns your papers,” she said.

“When will that be?” he asked. Today was Wednesday and, as he knew from bitter experience, the bus to Saltram-on-Sea only ran on Tuesdays and Fridays-so he had to get there by Friday.

“I’m not certain. Tomorrow, perhaps. You needn’t act so glad to leave us.”

Sister Carmody was more sympathetic. “I know what it’s like to want to get back into the war and be forced to wait. I put in for duty in a field hospital months ago,” she said, and promised to talk to Matron.

She was as good as her word. She was back in less than an hour with the package of clothes the Assistance Board had left. “You’re being discharged today,” she said. The package contained a brown tweed suit, white shirt, tie, cuff links, socks, underwear, wool overcoat, fedora, and shoes that were unbelievably painful to get onto his bad foot, let alone walk in.

They’ll never let me out of here when they see me trying to hobble in these, Mike thought, and if the hospital hadn’t had a policy of taking departing patients downstairs in a wheelchair and putting them into a taxi, they wouldn’t have. As it was, Sister Carmody handed him a pair of crutches at the last moment. “Doctor’s orders,” she said. “He wants you to keep the weight off your foot as much as possible. And here’s something for the train,” she added, giving him a brown paper parcel. “From all of us. Do write and let us know how you’re doing.”

“I will,” he lied, and told the taxi driver to take him to Victoria Station. On the way there, he opened the package. It was a book of crossword puzzles.

He took the first train to Dover he could get and, as soon as he arrived, found a pawnbroker and hocked the cuff links and overcoat for four pounds. He would have sold the crutches, too, but they had come in handy, getting him a seat in the packed-solid train. Hopefully, they’d also persuade the bus driver to let him out at the beach.

If he could find out where to catch the bus from. Nobody seemed to know, not even the stationmaster. Or the pawnbroker. He tried to think who would. The hotels should. He knew where they were, thanks to that map of Dover he’d memorized all those months ago in Oxford, but they were all too far from the pawnbroker’s to walk to with his bad foot. He hailed a taxi, wrestled his crutches into it, and got into the backseat. “Where to, mate?” the cabbie asked.

“The Imperial Hotel,” Mike said. “No, wait.” The cabbie would know where the bus went from. “I need to catch the bus to Saltram-on-Sea.”

“There’s no bus that goes there. Hasn’t been since June. The coast’s off-limits.”

“Off-limits?”

“Because of the invasion. It’s a restricted area. No civilians allowed, unless you live there or you have a pass.”

Oh, Christ. “I’m a war correspondent,” he said, pulling out his press pass. “How much would you charge to take me to Saltram-on-Sea?”

“Can’t, mate. I haven’t got the petrol coupons to go all that way, and even if I did, that coast road’s full of rocks. I’ve got to make these tires last the war.”

“Then where can I hire a car?”

The cabbie thought a moment and then said, “I know a garage that might have one,” and drove him there.

The garage didn’t have any cars. They suggested “Noonan’s, just up the street.” It was considerably farther than that. By the time Mike reached it, he was really glad he hadn’t sold his crutches.

The garageman wasn’t there. “You’ll find ’im at the pub,” a grease-covered boy of ten told him, but that was easier said than done. The pub was as crammed as the boat coming back from Dunkirk. There was no way to get through the crush on his crutches. Mike left them at the door and hobbled into the mass of workmen, soldiers, and fishermen. They were all arguing about the invasion. “It’ll ’appen this week,” a stout man with a red nose said.

“No, not till they’ve softened up London a bit more,” his friend said. “It won’t be for at least another fortnight.”

The man next to him nodded. “They’ll send in spies first to get the lay of the land.”

Which one of these was the garage owner? “Excuse me,” Mike said. “I’m looking for the man who owns the garage next door. I need to hire a car.”

“A car?” the stout man said. “’Aven’t you ’eard there’s a war on?”

“What do you want to hire a car for?” his friend asked.

“I need to drive down to Saltram-on-Sea.”

“To do what?” he said suspiciously, and his friend asked, narrowing his eyes, “Where are you from?”

Oh, Christ, they thought he was a spy. “The States,” he said.

“A Yank?” the man snorted. “When are you lot going to get in the war?”

And a tiny, timid-looking man in a bowler hat said belligerently, “What the bloody hell are you waiting for?”

“If you could just point out the garage owner-”

“’E’s over there, at the bar,” the stout man said, pointing. “’Arry! This Yank wants to talk to you about hirin’ a car.”

“Tell him to try Noonan’s!” he shouted back.

“I already did,” Mike called, but the garageman had already turned back to the bar.

This was hopeless. He’d have to see if he could find a farmer he could get a lift with. Maybe Mr. Powney’s in town buying another bull, he thought, and started for the door and his crutches.

“Hold on there,” the stout man said, and pointed at Mike’s foot. “How’d you get that?”

“Stuka,” Mike said. “At Dunkirk,” and felt the unfriendliness go out of the room.

“Which ship?” the little man in the bowler asked, no longer belligerent, and the garageman left the bar and was coming over.

“The Lady Jane,” Mike said. “It wasn’t a ship. It was a motor launch.”

“Did she make it back?”

“The trip I was on, yes, but not the next one,” he tried to say, but before he could get it out, they were bombarding him with questions:

“Torpedo sink her?”

“How many men were you able to take off?”

“When were you there?”

“Did you see the Lily Belle?”

“Give him a chance,” the garageman shouted. “And a pint. And let him sit down, will you? Nice lot you are, makin’ a hero of Dunkirk stand and not even offering him a drink.”

Someone produced a bench for him to sit on and someone else a glass of ale. “Going ’ome, are you?” the stout man asked.

“Yes,” Mike said. “I just got out of the hospital.”

“I wish I could help,” the garageman said, “but all I’ve got are a Morris without a carburetor and a Daimler without a magneto, and no way to get either one.”

“He can borrow my car,” the tiny man who’d been so belligerent volunteered. “Wait here,” he said, and was back in a few minutes with an Austin.

“Here’s the ignition key. There’s an extra tin of petrol in the boot if you run out.” He looked doubtfully at Mike’s foot. “Are you certain you can work the pedals?”

“Yes,” Mike said quickly, afraid the little man would offer to drive him down. “I can pay you for the gas. And the hire of the car.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t think of it,” he said. “The registration papers are in the glove box, in case you need to show them at a checkpoint. You can leave the car here at the pub when you come back.”

I’m not coming back, Mike thought guiltily. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you,” he said. “You saved my life.”

“Don’t give it another thought,” the man said, patted the hood of the car, and started back into the pub. “I was there, too. At Dunkirk. On the Marigold.”

He went inside. Mike put his crutches in the backseat, got in, and drove off, incredibly grateful the little man hadn’t stayed to watch him try to start the car or struggle with the gearshift.

He never would have loaned it to me if he’d seen this, he thought, lurching onto the coast road. I should have taken driving lessons like Merope.

He drove south, looking out at the beaches he passed. If he had been a spy, he’d have had a discouraging report to make to Hitler. The beaches bristled with razor wire and sharpened stakes and rows of concrete pylons and large signs reading, This Area Mined: Enter at Your Own Risk. He hoped they hadn’t mined the beach at Saltram-on-Sea or put in obstacles like the ones he saw as he neared Folkestone.

There was a checkpoint at Folkestone, and another at Hythe, both manned by armed guards who questioned him and examined his papers before letting him through. “Have you seen any suspicious strangers on the road?” they asked him at the second checkpoint, and when he told them no, said, “If you see any unauthorized persons on a beach or behaving suspiciously, asking questions or taking photographs, contact the authorities.”

That’s why the retrieval team hasn’t come, Mike thought as he drove, because Badri hasn’t been able to find a drop site. The whole coast had been crawling with soldiers, coastwatchers, and aircraft spotters ever since Dunkirk. Not only that, but every single farmer and driver and pub-frequenter was watching for paratroopers and spies. There was no way the retrieval team could have come through anywhere inside the restricted area without being noticed, and if they’d come through outside it, they’d have run into the same problems getting to Saltram-on-Sea he was having. No wonder they hadn’t found him yet.

I didn’t alter the future, he thought jubilantly. I didn’t lose the war. And if I can just get to the drop without changing anything else, I’ll be home free.

If I can get down to the beach, he amended, looking at the chalk cliffs, which were getting steeper with every mile. On the plus side, the military was apparently counting on those cliffs being enough to stop the tanks. The only defenses on the beaches below were two lines of stakes and some barbed wire.

It had begun to rain just outside Hythe. Mike peered through the windshield at the white road and occasional glimpses of gray ocean beyond the cliffs, looking for landmarks he recognized. The road moved away from the Channel again and then back, climbing. He had to be getting close-

There it was. The road went up a small hill, and at the top he could see all the way to Saltram-on-Sea and past it. He pulled the car off onto the grass and got out, scowling for the benefit of anybody who might be watching, and slammed the door angrily. He yanked up the hood and bent over it. He wished he knew how to make steam billow up, so it would look like the car had overheated, but he had no idea how a gasoline engine worked, and he didn’t dare risk its really conking out.

He pretended to adjust a few things, and then smacked the fender hard with his hand as if fed up and limped over to the edge of the cliff and looked disgustedly out at the gray Channel, the gray sky, and then down at the beach. A sharp jut in the cliffs blocked his view of the drop, but he could see most of the rest of the beach. There were the same stakes and barbed wire here, but no machine-gun nests, no guard posts, no razor wire. Good.

Unless the beach was mined. But the drop was only a little way from the cliff’s edge, and mines were much more likely to be near the water’s edge, or in between the tank traps. They were expecting an invasion from the beach, not from the land.

It was windy here on top of the hill, and freezing standing in the misty rain. He pulled the collar of his jacket up around his neck, wishing he hadn’t sold his overcoat. Especially if it took a while for the drop to open. But it shouldn’t. The good thing about all this barbed wire and the wretched weather was that he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone being out in it, including coastwatchers. And if there were any boats out in that choppy water, which he doubted, their crews’ eyes would be trained on the Channel, not on the beach. So he should have a clear shot.

If he could get to the drop. He walked a little farther, trying to see around the jutting cliff, but it was still in the way. He went back to the car, got in, pretended to try the ignition, then got out again and limped north along the road as if looking for a house where he could ask for help. When he judged he was past the jutting cliff, he hobbled out to the edge again.

The drop was clearly visible from here. He could see the rock’s two sides sticking jaggedly up out of the sand. And between them in the middle, right on top of the drop site, a six-inch artillery gun.

And there sprang up all around the park briars and brambles, twined one within the other, so that no one could pass through. 

London-October 1940

POLLY STARED SICKLY AT DOREEN, STANDING THERE SOBBING in the middle of the bustling tube station, oblivious to the people pushing past them. “Hit?” she repeated, thinking, Marjorie’s dead. That’s why she didn’t tell anyone she was leaving.

“And the worst part…” Doreen said, trying to talk through her tears, “oh, Polly, she was in the rubble for three days before they found her!”

Marjorie’s poor mangled body had lain there for three days. Because no one knew she was there. Because no one even knew she was missing. “But her landlady said she’d left,” Polly said, “that she’d taken her things. Why-?”

“I don’t know,” Doreen said. “I asked her, but she said they won’t let her in to see Marjorie-”

“Let her-she’s alive?” Polly said, grabbing both of Doreen’s arms. “Where is she?”

“In hospital. Mrs. Armentrude-that’s her landlady-said she’s very badly hurt… her insides…”