Read Online Blackout by Connie Willis - Free Book Online Page B

frowning.
    “Had my heart set on going? That doesn’t matter two pins to Mr. Dunworthy. I met with him this morning, and he told me VE-Day was already part of another assignment, and having two historians in the same temporal and spatial location was too dangerous, which is ridiculous. It isn’t as if we’d run into each other—there were thousands of people in Trafalgar Square on VE-Day. And even if we did, what does he think we’d do? Shout, ‘Oh, my, another time traveler!’ or something? I don’t suppose you know whose assignment he was talking about, Polly? I thought I might be able to persuade them to switch if they haven’t already gone. Who else is doing World War II?”
    “What?” Polly said blankly. She clearly hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
    “I said, who else has an assignment in World War II?”
    “Oh,” Polly said. “Rob Cotton, and I believe Michael Davies does.”
    “Do you know what he’s observing?”
    “No, why?”
    “I want to know who’s going to VE-Day.”
    “Oh. I think he said something about Pearl Harbor.”
    “When was Pearl Harbor?”
    “The seventh of December, 1941. If it’s not VE-Day, where are you going that you need to learn how to drive?”
    “Back to Warwickshire and the manor. I still have
months
to go on my assignment.”
    “I wish
I
could have months. Mr. Dunworthy’s only allowing me to go to the Blitz for a few weeks. But I thought you were a maid. Servants didn’t usually drive, did they?”
    “No, Lady Caroline’s insisting the staff learn so we can drive an ambulance if there’s an incident.”
    “But Backbury wasn’t bombed, was it?”
    “No, but Lady Caroline’s determined to do her bit—or, rather, to make her staff do it for her. She’s also made us learn to administer first aid and put out incendiaries. Next week she’ll have us all learning to fire an anti-aircraft gun.”
    “You sound better prepared for the Blitz than I am. I should have done my prep in Backbury.”
    “No, you shouldn’t have,” Eileen said. “You’d have had to deal with the Horrible Hodbins.”
    “What are Horrible Hodbins? Some sort of weaponry?”
    “That’s exactly what they are. A deadly secret weapon. They’re the worst children in history.” She told Polly about the haystack fire and trying to put Theodore on the train and about Alf and Binnie’s painting white stripes on Mr. Rudman’s Black Angus cows, “‘So’s ’e can see ’em in the blackout.’”
    “It’s a pity they couldn’t have been evacuated to Berlin instead of Backbury,” Eileen said. “Two weeks of coping with Alf and Binnie, and Hitler would be
begging
to surrender.” They’d reached King Edward Street. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I must get to Transport. You don’t know when it closes, do you, Polly?”
    “No. What automobile are you planning to learn on? A Daimler?”
    “No, a Bentley. That’s what Lady Caroline—or, rather, her chauffeur—drives. Why?”
    “Nothing. I was going to warn you about the Daimler’s gearbox, that’s all—one has to yank the gear stick very hard to shift into reversegear—but you’re not going to be driving an actual ambulance, so it doesn’t matter. Does Transport
have
a period Bentley?”
    “I don’t know, I haven’t been there yet. I only came though this morning.”
    “Do you have your driving authorization form?”
    “Driving authorization?” Eileen said blankly.
    “Yes. You must get it from Props before you go to Oriel.”
    “You mean I’ve got to go all the way back to Queen’s—?”
    “No, I mean you’ve got to go to Balliol and get approval from Mr. Dunworthy, and
then
you must go to Props.”
    “But that will take all afternoon,” Eileen protested, “and I only have two days. I’ll never learn to drive in one day.”
    “I don’t understand. I thought the vicar was going to teach you to drive.”
    “He is, but I’ve never even been in a 1940s automobile. I’ve got to learn how to open the