Connie Willis - Blackout

“The retrieval team? No.”

I should have known, Polly thought dully. All the clues were there: his injured foot, his not knowing Merope was here, his remark that he’d been searching for her for almost a month.

“Wait, I don’t understand,” Merope said, looking bewilderedly from one to the other. “Neither of you is the retrieval team? But then what are you doing here, Michael?”

“I can’t get to my drop,” he said. “I came to London to find Polly so I could use hers-”

“So did I,” Merope said, “but when I went to Townsend Brothers, they told me you’d gone back, Polly, so I-”

“Look, we can discuss all this in Oxford,” Michael said impatiently. “Right now we need to get to your drop, Polly. How far-?”

“It’s in Kensington,” Polly said, “but we can’t use it either. Why can’t you get to your drop?”

An HE crashed down up the street, spewing glass everywhere. The three of them instinctively put their hands up to shield their faces. “We’ve got to get to a shelter,” Michael said. “Which one’s nearest?”

“Oxford Circus,” Polly said and led them at a trot along the street to the entrance and down the steps. The iron grille had already been pulled across. The guard had to open it for them. “You lot are cutting it close,” he said as they ran in. “You’d best get below straightaway.”

They didn’t need any encouraging. They ran for the turnstiles. “I haven’t any money,” Merope said. “My handbag-”

Polly fumbled in her bag for extra tokens. Another HE thudded nearby, shaking the station.

“Are you certain it’s safe in here?” Merope said, looking nervously up at the ceiling.

“Yes,” Polly said, handing her and Michael tokens. “Oxford Circus wasn’t hit till the end of the Blitz.” She pushed through the turnstile and ran over to the escalators.

“Oh, that’s right,” Merope said, behind her. “I forgot. You know where all the bombs fell.”

Till the first of January, Polly thought, stepping onto the long escalator. Which means we’d better have got to Michael’s drop by then.

What did he mean, he couldn’t get to it? She turned to ask him, but he was several steps above them, limping down to where they were, leaning heavily on the moving rubber rail. “Are you all right?” Merope asked. “You didn’t sprain your ankle chasing me in Padgett’s, did you?”

“No,” Michael said, coming down onto the step with Merope, “I-it was hit by shrapnel. At Dunkirk.”

Dunkirk? Polly felt a twinge of panic. Was that why he couldn’t get to his drop, because it was in Dunkirk? If it was, they wouldn’t be able to reach it till the end of the war, and that was too late. But his drop couldn’t be in Dunkirk. And he couldn’t have been there either.

“What were you doing in Dunkirk?” Merope was asking.

“Shh,” Michael said, pointing below them. They were to the foot of the escalator, which was so jammed with people they had difficulty getting off, and once they did, even more difficulty getting through the crowd. The entire hall was packed solid with people. Everyone on Oxford Street-and Regent Street and New Bond Street-had fled down here when the bombing began, and they all had parcels and shopping bags and wet umbrellas to add to the crush.

The tunnels were just as bad, and Polly knew from experience that the platforms would be even worse. “This is impossible,” Michael said. “We’ve got to find a place where we can talk. What about another tube station? The trains are still running, aren’t they?”

She nodded and led them through the crowd, saying over and over, “Sorry, we’re trying to get to our train, sorry…”

“No use going out to the platform, dearie,” a woman in the archway to the Central Line platform said. “The Central Line trains aren’t running.”

“What about the Bakerloo Line?” Polly asked.

The woman shrugged. “No idea, dearie.”

“We’ll have to go back upstairs,” Polly told Michael and Merope. If they could get there, if they could even get out of this entryway and into the tunnel-

“There’s a space!” Merope cried and, before Polly could stop her, ran out onto the platform. When Polly and Michael caught up to her, she was standing happily on a blue blanket held down at each corner by a shoe.

“We can’t sit here,” Polly said, remembering that first night at St. George’s when she’d got in trouble with everyone for-

The troupe. She’d completely forgotten about them. When she didn’t come, they’d think something had happened to her, and Sir Godfrey would-

“Why can’t we sit here?” Merope said. “Whoever was sitting on it before has gone off to the canteen or the loo or something, and it’ll take them hours to get back in this crowd.”

“And this is as good a place to talk as we’re going to get,” Michael said.

He was right. The people on both sides were deep in conversation and didn’t even notice when Merope sat down on the blanket and curled her legs up under her. Mike eased himself down, putting his hand on her shoulder for support, and wincing as he crossed his legs. “Now,” he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice, “I want to hear about your drop, Polly. Why isn’t it-?”

Merope cut in, “No, first you must tell us what happened to your foot. What were you doing at Dunkirk? I thought you were going to Dover.”

“I was,” he said, “but I came through on a beach thirty miles south of it-”

Oh, thank God. His drop wasn’t in Dunkirk. It was on this side of the Atlantic.

“-and before I could get to Dover I was shanghaied-”

“Shanghaied?”

“It’s a long story. Anyway, I ended up taking part in the evacuation from Dunkirk, where I got this.” He pointed at his foot. “They did surgery and managed to save it, but the tendons are damaged, which is why I’ve got the limp.”

“But why didn’t you go back to Oxford to have it repaired?” Merope asked.

“I told you, I can’t get to my drop.”

“Why not?” Polly asked. “Is the beach patrolled?” If that was the only problem, the three of them should be able to come up with some way to distract the guard.

“No, it doesn’t have to be. There’s an artillery gun emplacement right on top of the drop site.”

Which will be there till the end of the war, Polly thought.

“But then why didn’t they send a retrieval team for you?” Merope whispered.

“They may have and couldn’t find me. I was unconscious when I was brought in and didn’t have any papers on me, so the hospital didn’t know who I was, and before I could tell them I was moved to Orpington.”

Polly looked up at him. “Orpington?”

“Yeah, it’s in southeast London. They’d never have thought to look for me there. Listen, we can discuss what happened to me later.” He lowered his voice. “Right now we need to figure out what to do about a drop. Polly, are you sure yours isn’t working?”

“Yes.” She told them about the incident.

“Blast can do odd things,” Michael agreed. “I know that from my prep. It can kill people without leaving a mark on them. Which leaves yours, Merope,” he said, turning to her. “What did you mean when you said you can’t get to your drop either? And please don’t say there’s an artillery gun on it.”

“No, but the military’s taken over the manor for a riflery school.”

“Was the drop on the manor grounds?”

“No, in the woods, but the Army’s conducting riflery practice in them.”

“And they’ve strung barbed wire all round it,” Polly said.

Merope looked at her, surprised. “How do you know that?”

“I went to Backbury to look for you. That’s where I was the day you came to Townsend Brothers. We just missed each other.”

“But why did they say you’d gone to Northumbria? I thought-”

“Later,” Michael said impatiently. “Is the fence guarded? Do you think we’d be able to cut through it? Or crawl under?”

“Possibly,” Merope said. “But that’s not the only problem. I think my drop must have been somehow damaged, too. It wouldn’t open, even before the Army came. After the quarantine, I tried to go through over a dozen times, but-”

“After the quarantine?” Michael said.

“Yes, my assignment was supposed to be over the second of May, but Alf got the measles, and the manor was quarantined for nearly three months-”

Her assignment had ended the second of May? Polly’d assumed it had ended when the Army took over the manor. “When did you leave the manor?” she asked.

“The ninth of September.”

May second to September ninth. That was four months. She’d been at the manor for four months after her assignment had ended. “And no retrieval team came for you?” Michael asked.

“No, unless they came while we were quarantined and Samuels wouldn’t let them in.”

But even if they’d been unable to get to her during the quarantine-and surely they could have managed that-they’d had more than a month after that to pull her out, and there wasn’t the excuse of their not knowing where Merope was, as there was with her and Michael. Oxford had known exactly where to find her.

But it wasn’t just that. Mr. Dunworthy would never have left Merope to cope with an epidemic, and he definitely wouldn’t have left Michael here with an injured foot.

And this was time travel. Even if it had taken them months to locate Michael in hospital, Oxford could have sent a second team to be there when he landed in Dover and take him to the new drop site and back to Oxford.

“But my drop can’t have been damaged by blast,” Merope said. “The manor wasn’t bombed. So what can have happened?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said.

I do, Polly thought sickly. She’d known it from that morning at St. George’s when she’d realized the retrieval team should have been outside Townsend Brothers the day before. That was why her knees had buckled-because she knew what their not being there meant. But she’d kept inventing excuses to keep from facing the truth. Which was that something terrible had happened in Oxford, and the retrieval team wasn’t coming.

Nobody’s coming, she thought.

“But if we can’t use any of our drops,” Merope was saying, “what do we do now?”

Alone 

“HOW WILL WE GET HOME IF BOTH POLLY’S AND MY DROPS are broken?” Merope asked, trying to shout over the noise on the platform and at the same time keep the shelterers on the adjacent blankets from hearing.

“We don’t know for sure that they are broken,” Mike said. “You said there were soldiers at the manor. They might have been close enough to your drop to prevent it from opening.”

Merope shook her head. “They didn’t come till a month after the quarantine ended.”

“How far into the woods was your drop?” Michael asked. “Could it be seen from the road? Or could one of your evacuees have followed you? What about yours, Polly? Are you sure yours was damaged, or could an air-raid warden have been somewhere where he could see the shimmer? Or a firespotter?”