Connie Willis - Blackout

There were several more garden sets ads, and on Friday a letter arrived from the poinsettias address, with an attached price list and seed catalog.

Mike decided to take matters into his own hands and get up on his own, but Sister Carmody caught him before he was even out of bed. “You know you mustn’t put any weight on that foot till it’s completely healed,” she told him.

“I can’t stand to stay in this bed another minute,” he said. “I’m going crazy.”

“I know just what you need-”

“A nice crossword puzzle?” he asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” she said, handing him the Herald and a pencil. “And some fresh air and sunlight.” She went out and returned in a few minutes with a cane-backed wheelchair and took him and his Herald up to the sun-room, though it wasn’t very sunny. It had tall windows, but there were black Xes of tape on the panes, sandbags were piled against them, and their green net curtains gave an underwater look to the room. The high-backed chairs were wicker, but they’d been painted dark brown and had darker green velvet cushions. In one of them sat a red-faced man with a neck brace, reading the Guardian.

In between the chairs were massive oak tables and bookcases and curio cabinets and equally massive and dark potted plants. There was barely room for Mike’s wheelchair as Sister Carmody pushed him over to the sandbagged windows. She parked him next to a massive table and opened the window. “There, some nice fresh air for you,” she said.

The red-faced man cleared his throat irritably and rattled his newspaper.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she whispered.

“No,” Mike said, looking speculatively at the heavy furniture. If he were alone in here, he might be able to lean on it and-

“Would you like me to stay and read to you?” Sister Carmody asked.

“No, I want to work on my crossword.”

She nodded and took a bell from her pocket and set it on the table with only a slight ringing, but the newspaper rattled irritably again.

“Matron’s just outside the door,” she whispered. “Ring if you need anything. If your pencil falls to the floor, you’re not to try to pick it up. You’re to ring for Matron. You’re not to get out of that chair. I’ll be back for you in time for lunch,” she said and tiptoed out.

It would take Red Face at least till lunch to read the Guardian. Mike would have to hurry him along. He opened the Herald, folded it noisily in half and then in quarters so the crossword was on top. “One across,” he said loudly. “‘Likely to make waves.’” He tapped his pencil on the table. “Make waves… betides?… no, it’s eight letters. Hurricane?”

Throat clearing and ominous rattlings.

“Sorry,” Mike called to him. “You wouldn’t know what ‘likely to make waves’ is, would you? Or ‘serving task with no end in sight’? Seven letters?”

Red Face snapped his Guardian shut, stood up, and stalked out. Mike bent intently over the crossword again for a few minutes, in case the matron came in, then rolled his wheelchair over closer to a potted palm and grabbed the trunk with one hand, testing to see if it was as sturdy as it looked.

It was. When he put his other hand around the trunk and raised himself slowly to standing, the fronds didn’t even move. He cautiously transferred some of his weight to his bad foot. So far, so good. The pain wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought it might be. He reached for the nearest bookcase, still holding on to the palm tree, and took a careful step toward it.

Oh, Christ. His nails dug into the wood of the bookcase. He balanced there, breathing out in hisses through his clenched teeth, trying to get the courage to take another step, praying the matron didn’t choose this moment to come in.

All right, next step. It’ll never get any better if you don’t do this, he told himself. He repositioned his hand on the bookcase, unclenched his teeth, and took another step. Jesus.

It took him half an hour to get two chairs’, another bookcase’s, and a curio cabinet’s length from his wheelchair, by which time he was drenched in sweat.

I shouldn’t have come this far, he thought. If he heard the matron coming, there’d be no way he could make it back to his wheelchair in time.

He began working his way back, incredibly grateful for the Victorians’ penchant for teeter-proof furniture. Bookcase, potted palm, wheelchair. He sank gratefully into it and sat there, panting for several minutes, then tackled the crossword, looking for something, anything, he could fill in quickly. “Island creature Peter Pan author shot”? What the hell could that be? “Doctor’s warning Hitler would ignore”?

He gave up and scrawled in some words. Just in time. Sister Carmody came in smiling. “Did you make progress?” she asked.

“Yes.” He tried to fold the puzzle to the inside before she could look at it, but she’d already snatched it from him. “Actually, no. I fell asleep. The fresh air made me drowsy.”

“And it’s given you a good color,” she said, pleased. “If it’s fine tomorrow, I’ll bring you up here again.” She handed him back the newspaper. “You’ve got eighteen down wrong, by the way. It’s not ‘deception.’”

That’s what you think, he said silently, but if he was going to pull this off, he couldn’t afford to have her get suspicious, so he spent the rest of the day figuring out crossword clues for the next time she took him up.

Saturday the Blitz began with the bombing of the docks and the East End, and for the next two days everyone was too busy with incoming casualties to take him up. But on Tuesday, Sister Carmody wheeled him up again, and he immediately filled in the answers he’d prepared in advance and then got out of his chair. This time he made it farther, though he still couldn’t walk more than a few steps without the furniture’s support, and every step hurt like hell.

Wednesday a foursome was playing bridge, and Thursday he was taken down for X-rays, but on Friday the sunroom was deserted. It had turned cold and threatened rain. “Are you positive you’ll be warm enough in here?” Sister Carmody asked, draping a wool blanket around his shoulders and another one over his knees. “It’s dreadfully cold.”

“I’ll be fine,” he insisted, but she still hesitated.

“I don’t know. If you were to catch cold-”

“I won’t. I’ll be fine.” Go.

She went, after extracting a promise that he would “ring for Matron” if he felt the slightest chill, and he scrawled in the crossword answers he’d worked out the night before-4 across: divebomber, 28 down: cathedral, 31 across: escape-pushed the blankets aside, listened a moment to make sure she wasn’t coming back, and started his circuit.

Bookcase, window-his foot had stiffened up over the last three days. He had to force himself to put his weight on it. Clock, potted palm, high-backed chair.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” a voice said from the depths of the chair. “I thought you were supposed to keep your weight off that foot, Davis.”

There are no civilians. 

EILEEN REFUSED TO TAKE ALF BACK INTO THE HOUSE TO use the loo. “They’re dropping bombs out there,” she said. “You’ll simply have to wait till it’s over.” And when he predictably declared he couldn’t, she felt about in the water under the bunks to see if the Anderson shelter was provided with a chamber pot.

It was, but Alf refused to use it. “In front of you ’n’ Binnie?” he said, at which point Binnie said she had to go, too, and Theodore said, his teeth chattering, that he was cold. Eileen was shivering, too, and her wet feet felt like ice.

I was wrong, she thought. We won’t be blown to bits, we’ll freeze to death, and as soon as there was a lull in the bombing, darted back into the house with the children. She took the torch, but they didn’t need it. The garden was bright from the fires around them. Even inside the house there was more than enough light to find their way.

How could Polly have wanted to observe this? Eileen wondered, rummaging for blankets and attempting to hurry the children along. “The bombers will be back soon,” she said, hustling them down the stairs, but the planes were already here. A bomb whistled down, shaking the house, as they hurried through the kitchen to the back door.

“I’m scared,” Theodore said.

So am I, Eileen thought, handing the blankets to Binnie and scooping Theodore up and running with him to the Anderson and into the shock of the icy water. “Binnie, hold the blankets up so they don’t get wet-where’s Alf?”

“Outside.”

Eileen dumped Theodore on the upper bunk and ran back outside. Alf was standing in the middle of the grass, gazing up at the red sky. “What are you doing?” she shouted over the drone of the bombers.

“Tryin’ to see what sort of planes they are,” he said, and there was a shuddering boom up the street and a flickering red glow. “A fire!” he shouted and started to run toward it.

Eileen grabbed him by the shirttail, shoved him through the door, and yanked it shut as another thunderous boom shook the shelter. “That’s it,” she said. “Now go to sleep,” and amazingly, they did.

But not before Binnie complained about her blanket being scratchy and Alf argued, “It’s a spotter’s job to find out whether they’re Dorniers or Stukas.” But once they were wrapped in the dry blankets, they-and Eileen-slept till another siren went.

This one had an even, high-pitched tone which she was afraid signaled a poison gas attack. She shook Binnie awake to ask her. “That’s the all clear,” Binnie said. “Don’t you know nuthin’?” and there was a loud, reverberating knock on the door.

“I’ll wager it’s the warden, come to arrest you now the raid’s over,” Alf said, emerging from his blanket. “I told you you ain’t s’posed to shine a torch in the blackout.”

But it wasn’t a warden. It was Theodore’s mother, overjoyed to see Theodore and oblivious to the water, though when they’d all trooped back inside, she insisted Eileen take off her wet stockings and put on a pair of her own slippers. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for bringing my dear boy all this way to me,” she said, making Horlick’s for all of them. “Do you live in London, then?”

Eileen told her her cousin had just come to London to work in an Oxford Street department store. “But she didn’t say which one. I wrote to ask her, but her answer hadn’t arrived when we left, so I don’t know where she lives or works.”

The neighbor, Mrs. Owens, came in then and said the Browns had been bombed out. “Was anyone hurt?” Mrs. Willett asked.

“Only Mrs. Brown’s littlest, Emily. She was a bit cut up, but the house is a complete ruin,” she said, and Eileen shivered, remembering that irresponsible trip back to the house.

“You’ve caught a chill,” Mrs. Willett said to her. “You must lie down. What a time of it you’ve had, your first night in London. You must stay and make up the sleep you lost.”

“I can’t. I must take Alf and Binnie to their mother and then go find my cousin,” Eileen said. So I won’t have to spend another night in that Anderson. Or this century.