Connie Willis - Blackout

“Her lungs?” Eileen said. “You mean pneumonia?”

He nodded. “Yes. I want you to make a poultice of molasses, dried mustard, and brown paper for her chest.”

“But shouldn’t she be taken to hospital?”

“Hospital?”

Eileen bit her lip. Obviously people in this time didn’t go into hospital for pneumonia, and why would they? There was nothing they could do for them there-no antivirals, no nanotherapies, not even any antibiotics except sulfa and penicillin. No, they didn’t even have that. Penicillin hadn’t come into common use till after the war.

“I shouldn’t worry,” the doctor said, patting Eileen on the arm. “Binnie’s young and strong.”

“But isn’t there something you can give her for her fever?”

“You might give her some licorice-root tea,” he said. “And bathe her with alcohol three times a day.”

Teas, poultices, glass thermometers! It’s a wonder anyone survived the twentieth century, Eileen thought disgustedly. She bathed Binnie’s hot arms and legs after the doctor left, but neither that nor the tea had any effect on her, and as the evening wore on, she became more and more short of breath. She dozed fitfully, moaning and tossing from side to side. It was midnight before she finally fell asleep. Eileen tucked the covers around her and went to check on the other children.

“Don’t leave me!” Binnie cried out.

“Shh,” Eileen said, hurrying back and sitting down beside her again. “I’m here. Shh, I’m not leaving. I was only going to check on the other children.” She reached out her hand to feel Binnie’s forehead.

Binnie twisted angrily away from her. “No, you wasn’t. You was goin’ away. To London. I seen you.”

She must be reliving that day at the station with Theodore. “I’m not going to London,” Eileen said soothingly. “I’m staying right here with you.”

Binnie shook her head violently. “I seen you. Mrs. Bascombe says nice girls don’t meet soldiers in the woods.”

She’s delirious, Eileen thought. “I’m going to fetch the thermometer, Binnie. I’ll be back in just a moment.”

“I did so see her, Alf,” Binnie said.

Eileen got the thermometer, dipped it in alcohol, and came back. “Put this under your tongue.”

“You can’t leave,” Binnie said. She looked straight at Eileen. “You’re the only one wot’s nice to us.”

“Binnie, dear, I need to take your temperature,” Eileen repeated, and this time Binnie seemed to hear her. She opened her mouth obediently, lay still for the endless minutes before Eileen could remove the thermometer, then turned over and closed her eyes.

Eileen couldn’t read her temp in the near-darkness. She tiptoed over to the lamp on the table: forty. If her temperature stayed that high for long, it would kill her.

Even though it was two in the morning, Eileen rang up Dr. Stuart, but he wasn’t there. His housekeeper told her he’d just left for Moodys’ farm to deliver a baby, and, no, they weren’t on the telephone. Which meant she was on her own-and there was absolutely nothing she could do. If her presence had affected events, the net would never have let her come through to Backbury.

But the alterations the net prevented were those which affected the course of history, not whether an evacuee lived through the measles. Binnie couldn’t affect what happened at D-Day or who won the war. And even if she could, Eileen couldn’t just stand here and let her die. She had to at least try to get her temperature down. But how? Rubbing her with alcohol had had no effect at all. Putting her in a tub of cold water? In her weakened state, the shock might kill her. She needed a medicine to bring down the fever, but they hadn’t any drugs like that in 1940-

Yes, they do, she thought. If Lady Caroline didn’t take it with her. She tiptoed out of the sickroom and ran along the corridor to Lady Caroline’s rooms. Please, please don’t let her have taken her aspirin tablets with her.

She hadn’t. The box was on her dressing table, and it was nearly full. Eileen grabbed it up, put it in her pocket, and sped back to the sickroom. Her opening of the door wakened Binnie, and she sat up, flinging her hands out wildly. “Eileen!” she sobbed.

“I’m here,” Eileen said, grabbing her hands. They were burning up. “I’m here. I only went to fetch your medicine. Shh, it’s all right. I’m here.” She took two of the tablets out of the box and reached for Binnie’s water glass. “I’m not going anywhere. Here, take this.” She supported Binnie’s head while she took the tablet. “That’s a good girl. Now lie down.”

Binnie clutched at her. “You can’t go! Who’ll take care of us if you leave?”

“I won’t leave you,” Eileen said, covering Binnie’s hot, dry hands with both of hers.

“Swear,” Binnie cried.

“I swear,” Eileen said.

All the world that is still free marvels at the composure and fortitude with which the citizens of London are facing and surmounting the great ordeal to which they are subjected, the end of which, or the severity of which, cannot yet be foreseen. 

BY TUESDAY NIGHT, POLLY STILL HADN’T FOUND A JOB. There weren’t any openings “at present,” or, as the personnel manager at Waring and Gillow said, “during this uncertainty.”

“Uncertainty” was putting it mildly. But then the contemps had been noted for understatement. Bombed buildings and people blown to bits were “incidents;” impassable wreckage-strewn streets “diversions.” The daytime air raids, which had interrupted her job search twice today, were christened “Hitler’s tea break.”

Only one person, a junior shop assistant at Harvey Nichols, was willing to say it baldly: “They’re not taking anyone new on because they can’t see the point when the store mightn’t be there in the morning. No one’s hiring.”

She was right. Neither Debenham’s nor Yardwick’s would grant her an interview, Dickins and Jones wouldn’t allow her to fill up an application form, and every other store was on Mr. Dunworthy’s forbidden list.

Which is ridiculous, Polly thought as her train reached Notting Hill Gate. They’d all been hit at night, and only one-Padgett’s-had had casualties, and it hadn’t been hit till October twenty-fifth, three days after she was due to go back.

But Mr. Dunworthy would already be furious that she hadn’t checked in yet. She’d best not do anything to upset him further, which meant she needed to be hired on at either Townsend Brothers or Peter Robinson. And hired on soon. If she didn’t check in tomorrow, Mr. Dunworthy was likely to decide something had happened to her and send a retrieval team to pull her out.

She bought the Express and the Daily Herald from the news vendor at the top of the station stairs and hurried back to Mrs. Rickett’s, hoping tonight’s supper would be better than last night’s tinned beef hash, a watery mush of potatoes and cabbage with a few flecks of stringy red.

It wasn’t. Tonight the flecks were gray and rubbery-halibut, according to Mrs. Rickett-and the potatoes and cabbage had been boiled to the point where they were indistinguishable. Luckily, the sirens went halfway through dinner, and Polly didn’t have to finish it.

When she got to St. George’s, she immediately opened the Herald and looked through the “To Let’s” for somewhere else to live, but all the rooms listed had addresses on the forbidden list. She turned the page to the “Situations Vacant.” Companion wanted, upstairs maid, chauffeur. The hired help have all gone off to war, Polly thought, or to work in munitions factories. Nanny, maid of all work. Not a single ad for a shopgirl, and nothing in the Express either.

“Still no luck?” Lila asked. She was putting Viv’s hair up on bobby pins.

“No, afraid not.”

“You’ll get something,” she said, wrapping a lock of Viv’s hair around her finger, and Viv added encouragingly, “They’ll begin hiring again when the bombing’s stopped.”

I can’t afford to wait that long, Polly thought, and wondered what they’d say if she told them “the bombing” would go on for another eight months, and that even after the Blitz ended, there’d be intermittent raids for three more years and then V-1 and V-2 attacks to contend with.

“Have you tried John Lewis?” Lila asked, opening a bobby pin with her teeth. “I overheard a girl on the way home saying they needed someone.”

“In Better Dresses,” Viv said. “You’ll have to be quick, though. You’ll need to be there when it opens tomorrow.”

That’ll be too late, Polly thought. Tonight was the night it had been hit.

She was spared from responding by the elderly gentleman, who came over to offer her his Times to her as he’d done every night thus far. She thanked him and opened it to “Situations Vacant,” but there was nothing in it either.

Lila had finished putting up Viv’s hair, and they were looking at a film magazine and discussing the relative charms of Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier. Polly’d intended to observe shelterers in the tube stations, but St. George’s was even better. It had a diverse group of contemps-all ages, all classes-but it was small enough that she could observe everyone. And best of all, she could hear. When she’d come through Bank station Sunday on her way back from St. Paul’s, the din had been incredible, magnified by the curved ceilings and echoing tunnels.

Here, she could hear everything even above the crump of the bombs, from the mother reading fairy tales to her three little girls-tonight it was “Rapunzel”-to the rector and Mrs. Wyvern discussing the church’s Harvest Fete. And the same people came every night.

The mother was Mrs. Brightford, and the little girls, in descending order, were Bess, Irene, and Trot. “Her Christian name’s Deborah, but we call her Trot because she’s so quick,” Mrs. Brightford had explained to Miss Hibbard, the white-haired woman with the knitting. The younger spinster was Miss Laburnum. She and Mrs. Wyvern served on the Ladies’ Guild of St. George’s, which explained all the discussions of altar flowers and fetes. The ill-tempered stout man was Mr. Dorming. Mr. Simms’s dog was named Nelson.

The only one whose name she hadn’t found out was the elderly gentleman who gave her his Times each night. She’d pegged him as a retired clerk, but his manners and accent were upper class. A member of the nobility? It was possible. The Blitz had broken down class barriers, and dukes and their servants had frequently ended up sitting side-by-side in the shelters. But an aristocrat would surely have somewhere more comfortable than this to go.

He must have a particular reason for choosing this shelter-like Mr. Simms, who came here because dogs weren’t allowed in the tube. Or Miss Hibbard, who’d confided on their way over from the boardinghouse Sunday-she, Mr. Dorming, and Miss Laburnum all boarded at Mrs. Rickett’s-that she came here for the company. “So much more pleasant than sitting alone in one’s room thinking what might happen,” she’d said. “I’m ashamed to say I almost look forward to the raids.”

The elderly gentleman’s reason obviously wasn’t the company. Except to offer Polly his Times, he almost never interacted with the shelterers. He sat in his corner quietly observing the others as they chatted, or reading. Polly couldn’t make out the title of his book-it looked scholarly. But appearances could be deceiving. The ecclesiastical-looking book the rector was reading had turned out to be Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage.