Connie Willis - Blackout

The train began to move. “Thank you,” Eileen called over the clank of the wheels. “Goodbye, Theodore!” She waved to him, but he was talking animatedly to the soldier. She turned to the vicar. “You’re a miracle worker. I could never have got him off by myself. Thank goodness you happened to be passing.”

“Actually, I was looking for the Hodbins. I don’t suppose you’ve seen them?”

That explained why they’d vanished. “What have they done now?”

“Put a snake in the schoolmistress’s gas mask,” he said, walking out to the edge of the platform and looking over it. “If you should happen to see them-”

“I’ll see that they apologize.” She raised her voice in case they were under the platform. “And that they’re punished.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t be too hard on them,” he said. “No doubt it’s difficult for them, being shipped off to a strange place, so far from home. Still, I’d best go find them before they burn down Backbury.” He took another searching look over the edge of the platform and left.

Eileen half expected Alf and Binnie to reappear as soon as he was out of sight, but they didn’t. She hoped Theodore would be all right. What if his mother wasn’t there to meet him, and the soldiers left him alone at the station? “I should have gone with him,” she murmured.

“Then who’d take care of us?” Alf said, appearing out of nowhere.

“The vicar says you put a snake in your schoolmistress’s gas mask.”

“I never did.”

“I’ll wager it crawled in there by itself,” Binnie said, popping up. “P’raps it thought it smelt poison gas.”

“You ain’t gonna tell Mrs. Bascombe, are you?” Alf asked. “She’ll send us to bed without our supper, and I ain’t ’alf starved.”

“Yes, well, you should have thought of that,” Eileen said. “Now, come along.”

They both stood stubbornly still. “We ’eard you talkin’ to them soldiers,” Alf said.

“Mrs. Bascombe says nice girls don’t talk to soldiers,” Binnie said. “We won’t tell if you don’t tell ’er what we done.”

They’ve both long since grown up and been sent to prison, Eileen told herself. Or the gallows. She looked around, half hoping the vicar would reappear to rescue her and then said, “March. Now. It will be dark soon.”

“It’s already dark,” Alf said.

It was. While she’d been wrestling Theodore onto the train and talking to the vicar, the last of the afternoon light had faded, and it was nearly an hour’s walk to the manor, most of it through the woods. “’Ow’ll we find our way ’ome in the dark?” Binnie asked. “Ain’t you got a pocket torch?”

“They ain’t allowed, you noddlehead,” Alf said. “The jerries’ll see the light and drop a bomb on you. Boom!”

“I know where the vicar keeps ’is torch,” Binnie said.

“We are not adding burglary to your list of crimes,” Eileen said. “We won’t need a torch if we walk quickly.” She took hold of Alf’s sleeve and Binnie’s coat and propelled them past the vicarage and through the village.

“Mr. Rudman says jerries ’ide in the woods at night,” Alf said. “’E says ’e found a parachute in ’is pasture. ’E says the jerries murder children.”

They’d reached the end of the village. The lane to the manor stretched ahead, already dark. “Do they?” Binnie asked. “Murder children?”

Yes, Eileen thought, thinking of the children in Warsaw, in Auschwitz. “There aren’t any Germans in the woods.”

“There is so,” Alf said. “You can’t see ’em ’cause they’re ‘idin’, waitin’ for the invasion. Mr. Rudman says ’Itler’s goin’ to invade on Christmas Day.”

Binnie nodded. “During the King’s speech, when no one’s expectin’ it, ’cause they’ll all be too busy laughin’ at the King st-st-stammerin’.”

And before Eileen could reprove her for being disrespectful, Alf said, “No, ’e ain’t. ’E’s goin’ to invade tonight.” He pointed at the trees. “The jerries’ll jump outa the woods”-he lunged at Binnie-“and stab us with their bayonets!” He demonstrated, and Binnie began kicking him.

Four months, Eileen thought, separating them. I only have to put up with them for four more months. “No one’s going to invade,” she said firmly, “tonight or any other night.”

“’Ow do you know?” Alf demanded.

“You can’t know something what ain’t ’appened yet,” Binnie said.

“Why ain’t ’e going to?” Alf persisted.

Because the British Army will get away from him at Dunkirk, Eileen thought, and he’ll lose the Battle of Britain and begin bombing London to bring the British to their knees. But it won’t work. They’ll stand up to him. It’ll be their finest hour. And it will lose him the war.

“Because I have faith in the future,” she said, and, getting a firmer grip on Alf and Binnie, set off with them into the darkness.

The best laid plans…

WHEN MICHAEL GOT BACK TO HIS ROOMS FROM WARDROBE, Charles was there. “What are you doing here, Davies?” he asked, stopping in the middle of what looked like a self-defense move, his left arm held stiffly in front of him and his right protecting his stomach. “I thought you were leaving this afternoon.”

“No,” Michael said disgustedly. He draped his dress whites over a chair. “My drop’s been postponed till Friday, which they could have told me before I went and got my American accent, so I wouldn’t have to run around Oxford sounding like a damned fool for four days.”

“You always sound like an idiot, Michael,” Charles said, grinning. “Or should I be calling you by your cover name so you can get used to it? What is it, by the way? Chuck? Bob?”

Michael handed him his dog tags. “Lieutenant Mike Davis,” Charles read.

“Yeah, I’m keeping the names as close to my own as I can since the segments of this assignment are so short. What’s your name for Singapore?”

“Oswald Beddington-Hythe.”

No wonder he’s practicing self-defense, Michael thought, setting on the bed the shoes Wardrobe had issued him. “When are you going, Oswald?”

“Monday. Why was your drop postponed?”

“I don’t know. The lab’s running behind.”

Charles nodded. “Linna says they’re simply swamped over there. Ten drops and retrievals a day. If you ask me, there are entirely too many historians going to the past. We’ll be crashing into each other soon. I hope they postpone my drop. I’ve still got masses of things to learn. You wouldn’t know anything about foxhunting, would you?”

“Foxhunting? I thought you were going to Singapore.”

“I am, but a good many of the British officers there were apparently County and spent all their time discussing their foxhunting exploits.” He picked up the dress whites Michael’d slung over the chair. “This is a naval uniform. What was the U.S. Navy doing at the Battle of the Bulge?”

“Not the Battle of the Bulge-Pearl Harbor,” Michael said. “Then the second World Trade Center bombing, then the Battle of the Bulge.”

Charles looked confused. “I thought you were going to the evacuation of Dunkirk.”

“I am. That’s fourth on the list, after which I do Salisbury and El Alamein.”

“Tell me again why you’re going all these extremely dangerous places, Davies.”

“Because that’s where heroes are, and that’s what I’m observing.”

“But aren’t all of those events tens? And I thought Dunkirk was a divergence point. How can you-?”

“I’m not. I’m going to Dover. And only parts of Pearl Harbor are a ten-the Arizona, the West Virginia, Wheeler Field, and the Oklahoma. I’m going to be on the New Orleans.”