Connie Willis - Blackout

He was right. They’d have no way of knowing Eileen was working at Padgett’s, and if the hospital hadn’t known who Mike was, they could easily have lost the trail. “But what about all those weeks when Eileen was quarantined?” she asked. “They knew exactly where she was then.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the quarantine was some kind of divergence point. Measles can kill people, right? Maybe the retrieval team wasn’t allowed to come through because they’d have caught the measles and infected some general who played a critical role at D-Day.”

It sounded just like the arguments she’d used these last few weeks as she’d tried to convince herself they’d be here any day. She wondered if that was what Mike was doing, trying to convince himself. And it still didn’t explain the drops.

“I never said mine wasn’t working,” Mike said. “I just said I couldn’t get to it. And the same goes for Eileen’s. If there were evacuees in the woods, they could have kept it from opening, or someone from the village could have-”

There was a pounding on the door below them. “Stay here,” Mike said and ran down to see who was knocking.

It was Eileen. “I only had enough money for sandwiches and two teas,” Polly heard her say. “But I thought we could share.” She heard them start up the stairs. “The queue was endless.”

Polly waited where she was, thinking over what Mike had said. If there’d been two or three days’ slippage on her team’s drop, they’d have come through before she found a job, and when they went to Townsend Brothers, they’d have been told she didn’t work there. And they wouldn’t have been able to find her at night because she was at St. George’s rather than a tube shelter. Mike was right. They might still be looking for her.

Eileen came up the stairs, carrying oiled-paper-wrapped sandwiches, followed by Mike with cartons of tea. “Cheese sandwiches were the cheapest thing they had,” she said, passing them out. “What happened to you, Mike? Why didn’t you come?”

“Polly and I were discussing what we’re going to do.”

“Which is what?” Eileen said, unwrapping her sandwich and taking a huge bite out of it.

“Well, first we’re going to eat our supper.” He took the lid off the carton of tea.

“And you’re going to tell me how you got shanghaied,” Eileen said, “and, Polly, you’re going to tell me why you told me Padgett’s was safe.”

She did, and then they recounted their adventures. Polly was horrified to find out that Mike had been living in Fleet Street and that Eileen had been living in Stepney. “Stepney?” she said. “It had one of the highest casualty rates of all of London. No wonder you’re frightened of the bombs.”

“We have to get you out of there immediately,” Mike said.

“She can move in with me,” Polly said. “My room’s a double.”

“Good. And ask your landlady if she has any vacant rooms. It’ll make it a lot easier for us to be found if we’re all at the same address.”

And safer, Polly thought. She didn’t say that. Eileen was looking better now that she’d had something to eat, but as she told them about her attempts to find Polly, it was clear she’d had a bad time these last few weeks, and when Mike said she needed to go fetch her things first thing in the morning, she looked absolutely stricken. “Alone?” she said. “But what if we get separated again?”

“We won’t,” Polly reassured her and wrote out Mrs. Rickett’s address for her and Mike. “I work on the third floor of Townsend Brothers. And if I’m not there-”

“I know,” Eileen said. “I’m to go to the foot of the escalator on the lowest level of Oxford Circus.”

Mike laid out what they were to do. Polly was to make a list for him and Eileen of when and where the raids were for the next week, and Eileen was to write the manor and everyone she’d known there and give them Mrs. Rickett’s address. “So if your retrieval team comes, they’ll know where you are,” Mike said. “And write the postmistress in Backbury. And the stationmaster.”

“I’ve met the stationmaster,” Polly said. “I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by writing him.”

“Well, the local clergyman then.”

“I wrote the vicar as soon as I arrived in London to tell him I’d delivered the children to their parents,” Eileen said.

The vicar knew Eileen was in London, Polly thought. And if that wretched train had been late like the stationmaster said it always was and she’d been able to stay till after the service, she’d have found Eileen a month ago, and Eileen would never have been in danger of being killed at Padgett’s.

“Write him again,” Mike was saying. “And contact the parents of the other evacuees you delivered.”

“Alf and Binnie?” Eileen said, sounding horrified.

“Yes, and whoever was in charge of the evacuation. We need every contact we can think of. And we need to find a drop-”

He stopped, listening. A door opened somewhere above them and then slammed, and someone rattled down the steps. Whoever it was must be running. The footsteps clanked down toward them at an enormous rate, and Polly could hear giggling.

Those children who were running from the guard, Polly thought. “I do hope the raids won’t last very long tonight,” she said loudly.

The footsteps halted abruptly and then clanked back up the steps. The door opened and slammed again. “They’re gone,” Mike said. “Now where were we?”

“You said we need to find a drop,” Eileen said.

“Right, preferably one that isn’t under the gun, so to speak,” he said cheerfully.

He was sounding and looking much better, too. She must have convinced him that he hadn’t altered events. I wish he’d managed to convince me that nothing’s happened to Oxford, she thought.

“We need to find one of the other historians who’s here besides us,” Mike went on.

“There was someone who was going to the Battle of the Bulge,” Eileen said.

“That was me,” Mike said. “And I’m glad this didn’t happen while I was there. The Ardennes in winter would have been a nasty place to be stuck.”

“Whereas this…” Polly said, spreading her hands to indicate the dim stairwell.

“At least no one’s shooting prisoners here,” he said, “and it’s not snowing.”

“It might as well be,” Eileen said, hugging her arms to herself. “I wish I had my coat. It’s simply freezing in here.”

Mike took off his suit jacket and draped it around her shoulders. “Thank you,” Eileen said. “But won’t you be cold-? Oh, I just thought of something,” she said, sounding dismayed. “How am I going to buy another coat? And pay Theodore’s mother the room and board I owe her? All the money I had was in my handbag. I was supposed to collect my pay packet tomorrow, but if Padgett’s-”

“Was the store totally destroyed?” Mike asked. “Maybe-”

Polly shook her head. “Direct hit. A thousand-pound HE.”

“Has it already been hit?” Eileen asked, glancing up at the stairs spiraling above them.

“Yes, I don’t know exactly when. I wasn’t supposed to still be here when it hit, so I don’t know the details. Only that it was early this evening and that there were three fatalities.”

“But if it had already been hit, wouldn’t we have heard it?” Eileen asked. “Or the fire bells or something?”

“Not in here,” Polly said. “Don’t worry about the coat. Mrs. Wyvern-she’s one of the people I sit with in the shelter-helps distribute clothing to people who’ve been bombed out. I’ll see if I can arrange a coat for you from her.”

“Do you think you could talk her out of one for me, too?” Mike asked. “I hocked mine.”

Polly nodded. “You’ll both need one-1940 was one of the coldest and rainiest winters on record.”

“Then let’s try not to spend more time in it than we have to,” Mike said. “There’s at least one historian here now. Both times I was in the lab, Linna was on the phone giving someone a list of historians currently on assignment. I only heard snatches, but one of them was October 1940.”

“Are you certain it wasn’t me?” Polly asked. “I was supposed to go back October twenty-second.”

He shook his head. “October was the arrival date. The departure date was December eighteenth.”

“Which means whoever it is is here right now,” Eileen said. “You didn’t hear the name?”

“No, but I also met a guy in the lab. He was there doing a recon and prep drop. I don’t know the date of his assignment, but the recon and prep was to Oxford on July second, 1940. His name was Phillips or Phipps-”

“Gerald Phipps?” Eileen said.

“I didn’t hear his first name. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Eileen said, making a face. “He’s insufferable. When I first told him about my assignment, he said, ‘A maid? Is that the most exciting assignment you could find? You won’t get to see the war at all.’”

“Which tells us he would,” Polly said.

“And that his assignment was exciting,” Mike added. “Did he tell you where he was going?”

“Yes. It began with a D, I think. Or a P. Or possibly a T. I wasn’t really listening.”

“And he didn’t tell you what he’d be observing?” Mike asked, and when Eileen shook her head, “Polly, what was happening in July?”

“In England? The Battle of Britain.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it. He was wearing tweeds, not an RAF uniform.”

“But you said it was a setup,” Polly argued. “Perhaps he had to arrange for a transfer to an airfield.”

“He did say he’d posted some letters and made a trunk call,” Mike said. “What airfields begin with a D?”

“Detling?” Polly suggested. “Duxford?”

“No,” Eileen said, frowning. “It might have been a T.”

“T?” Mike said. “You said a D or a P.”

“I know.” She bit her lip thoughtfully. “But I think it may have been a T.”

“Tangmere?” Polly said.

“No… I’m sorry. I’d know it if I heard it.”

“We need a list of English airfields,” Mike said.

“But I can’t imagine Gerald as a pilot,” Eileen said.

“Yeah, I know,” Mike said. “He’s scrawny, and when I saw him, he was wearing spectacles.”

“And he’s a dreadful grind,” Eileen said. “Maths and-”

“He might be posing as a course plotter or a radio operator,” Polly suggested. “That’s much more likely than his being a pilot. The life expectancy for pilots during the Battle of Britain was three weeks. Mr. Dunworthy would never have allowed it. And if he was a course plotter or a dispatcher he could observe the Battle of Britain without being in as much danger, though the airfields and sector stations were bombed as well. But if he was here to observe the Battle of Britain, then he may already have gone back.” She turned to Eileen. “He didn’t say how long he was staying?”

“No. At least I don’t think so,” she said, frowning in concentration. “I was late for my driving lesson, and, as I said, he’s insufferable. All I was thinking about was getting away from him. If I’d known this was going to happen, I’d have listened more carefully.”