Blackout (48 page)

“You better not eat that,” Binnie said. “You’ll be sick.”

The soldier and the young women looked up alertly.

Alf dug another biscuit out of the packet and bit into it. “I will
not.”

“You will
so
. He’s allus sick on trains,” she said to the soldiers. “’E threw up all over Eileen’s shoes, didn’t ’e, Eileen?”

“Binnie—” Eileen began, but Alf shouted over her, “That was when I ’ad the measles. It don’t count.”

“Measles?” one of the soldiers said nervously. “They’re not contagious, are they?”

“No,” Eileen said, “and Alf isn’t going to—”

“I don’t feel well,” Alf said, clutching his middle. He made a gagging sound and bent over a cupped hand.

“I
told
you,” Binnie said triumphantly, and within moments the compartment had emptied, and Alf had scooted over to the other window. “Can I have a sandwich, Eileen?” he asked.

“I thought you got sick on trains,” Eileen said, moving Theodore off her lap and onto the seat beside her.

“I
do
, ’specially when I ain’t ’ad nothin’ to eat.”

“You just had two biscuits.”

“No, ’e ain’t,’ Binnie said. “’E ’ad
six,”
and the compartment door opened.

An elderly woman leaned in. “Oh, good, there’s room in here, Lydia,” she said, and she and two other elderly ladies came in. “Little boy,” one of them said to Alf, “you don’t mind sitting next to your sister, do you? There’s a good boy.”

“No, of course he doesn’t mind,” Eileen said quickly. “Alf, come sit here next to me.” She pulled Theodore onto her lap again.

“But what about my planespottin’?” Alf protested.

“You can look out Binnie’s window. And don’t you dare pretend to be sick again,” she whispered. “And
no
fifth columnists, or you shan’t have any lunch.”

Alf looked as if he was going to object and then reached into his pocket and said to the ladies, “Want to see my pet mouse?”

“Mouse?” one of them squeaked, and all three shrank back against the upholstered seat.

“Alf—” Eileen said warningly.

“I told ’im not to bring it,” Binnie said virtuously, and Alf took his fisted hand from his pocket. A long pink tail dangled from it. “’Is name’s Arry,” he said, holding his fist out to the ladies.

Two of them shrieked, and all three scooped up their things, and fled. “Alf—” Eileen said.

“All you said was no being sick and no fifth columnists,” he said, sticking his fist back in his pocket. “You never said nuthin’ about mice.” He shut the compartment door, sat down by the window, and pressed his nose to the glass. “Look, there’s a Wellington!”

“Alf, give me that mouse this instant.”

“But I gotta mark down where I seen the Wellington.” He pulled out the map the vicar’d given him and began to unfold it.

Eileen snatched the map away from him. “Not till you give me that mouse.” She held out her hand.

“All right,” Alf said grudgingly, bringing it out of his pocket. “It’s only a bit of string.” He held a faded pink cord out in his open palm.

It looked oddly familiar.

“Where did you get this?”

“That carpet of Lady Caroline’s,” Binnie said.

“It fell off,” Alf said.

Lady Caroline’s priceless medieval tapestry. And when she finds out…

But by then Eileen would be long gone, Lady Caroline would blame it on the Army, and Alf and Binnie would have been long since hanged for some other crime, so she settled for an admonition against frightening people and gave the three of them the sandwiches and bottles of lemonade in the basket, which they were happily drinking when a woman with iron-gray hair and a no-nonsense air opened the door.

“No,” Eileen said to Alf and Binnie.

The woman sat down across from Eileen, both hands on the handbag on her lap. “You should not allow your children to have lemonade,” she said sternly. “Or sweets of any kind.”

“Would you like to see my mouse?” Alf asked.

The woman turned a gimlet eye on him. “Children should be seen and not heard.”

“It’s to feed my snake with.” He showed her the dangling tapestry cord.

She looked coldly at it. “I have been a headmistress for thirty years,” she said, taking hold of the cord and pulling it from his fist. “Far too long to be fooled by schoolboy tricks regarding imaginary mice.” She handed the cord to Eileen.
“And
imaginary snakes. You need to be firmer with your children.”

“She isn’t my mother,” Theodore piped up, and the headmistress turned the gimlet eye on him. He shrank back against Eileen.

“They’re evacuees,” Eileen said, putting her arm around him.

“All the more reason for you to use a strong hand with them.”

Alf put his hand on his stomach. “I don’t feel well, Eileen.”

“Alf allus gets sick on trains,” Binnie said.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” the headmistress said to Eileen. “This is what comes of giving them lemonade. A dose of castor oil will cure them.”

Alf promptly removed his hand from his stomach, and he and Binnie both scooted over to the corner.

“It’s clear all three of your charges have been pampered and indulged far too much,” she said, glaring at Theodore.

Theodore. Who’s had a luggage tag pinned to his coat and been handed over to strangers and shipped off to a strange place how many times?

“Coddling is not what children need,” the headmistress said. She turned to glower momentarily at Alf and Binnie, who were whispering in the corner. “They need discipline and a firm hand, particularly during times like these.”

I’d have thought they needed
more
“coddling” during a war
, Eileen thought,
not less
.

“Being nice to children only makes them dependent and weak,” which weren’t exactly the words Eileen would have used to describe Alf and Binnie. “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

“You mean
beating?”
Theodore asked tremulously, burrowing into Eileen’s side.

“When necessary,” the headmistress said, looking over at Alf and Binnie with an expression that clearly indicated she thought it was necessary now.

Alf had stepped up on the seat to reach the luggage rack and Binnie was standing below to catch him. “Alf, sit down,” Eileen said.

“I’m lookin’ for my planespotter log,” he said, “so I can write down the planes I seen.”

“Children should not be allowed to talk back to their elders,” the headmistress said. “Or to clamber about like monkeys. You there,” she shouted to them, “sit down at once,” and, amazingly, they both obeyed her. They sat down next to her, their hands folded on their laps.

“You see?” she said. “Firmness is all that is required. These modern notions of allowing children to do whatever they—yowp!” She shot to her feet, flung her handbag at Eileen, and brushed madly at her lap as if it had caught fire.

“Alf, what did you do?” Eileen said, but he and Binnie were already on their knees scrabbling to retrieve something off the floor. Alf jammed it in his pocket.

“Nuthin’,” he said, standing up and holding out his empty hands.

“We was just sittin’ there,” Binnie said innocently.

“Horrid children,” the headmistress said furiously and wheeled on Eileen. “You are obviously unfit to have children in your care.” She snatched her handbag out of Eileen’s hands. “I intend to report you to the Evacuation Committee.
And
the conductor.” She snatched up her suitcase and her parcels and turned on Alf and Binnie. “I predict you two will come to a bad end.” She swept out of the compartment.

“I only wanted to show her it wasn’t ’maginary,” Alf said, pulling a green garter snake out of his pocket.

“And it served ’er right,” Binnie added darkly.

Yes, it did
, Eileen thought, but she said, “You had no business bringing a snake on the train.”

“I couldn’t leave ’im all alone at the manor,” Alf said. “’E might’ve got shot. ’Is name’s Bill,” he added fondly.

“Will we be thrown off the train?” Theodore asked fearfully, and as if in answer, the train began to slow. Alf and Binnie dived for the window.

“It’s awright,” Binnie said, “we’re comin’ into a station.” But at the end of ten minutes, the train hadn’t started up again, and when Eileen went out in the corridor (after warning the children not to
move
while she was gone) she saw the headmistress out on the platform shaking her finger at the stationmaster, who was looking anxiously at his pocket watch.

Eileen retreated hastily back inside the compartment. “Alf, you must get rid of that snake this minute.”

“Get rid of Bill?” Alf said, appalled.

“Yes.”

“’Ow?”

“I don’t care,” she began to say, then had a horrible image of it slithering down the corridor. “Put it out the window.”

“Out the
window?
’E’ll be run over!” and Theodore began to cry.

One more day
, Eileen thought,
and I will never have to see these children again
.

The train was beginning to move. The stationmaster must have persuaded the headmistress to allow them to stay on board. Or perhaps she’d stormed off to take a later train. “You can’t throw Bill out now we’re movin’,” Binnie said. “It’d kill ’im for sure.”

“It ain’t Bill’s fault ’e’s ’ere,” Alf argued. “You wouldn’t like it if you was somewhere you wasn’t s’posed to be and somebody tried to kill you.”

Which is exactly the situation I’ll be in when I reach London
, Eileen thought. “Very well,” she said, “but you must put him out the next time we stop. And till then, he stays in your haversack. If you take him out, it’s out the window.”

Alf nodded, climbed on the seat, stowed the snake away, and jumped down. “Can I ’ave some chocolate?”

“No,” Eileen said, looking anxiously at the door, but when the guard appeared, it was only to punch their tickets, and there were no other intrusions, not even when the train stopped at Reading and passengers swarmed aboard.

Word must have spread
, she thought, wondering how long it would take the Hodbins to become notorious throughout London. A week.

But in the meantime, Theodore could sit beside her instead of on her lap, and she didn’t have to listen to the headmistress’s lectures, so when the train butcher came through, she relented and bought them peppermints.

She should have known better. They immediately demanded sandwiches, followed by boiled sweets and sausage rolls.
I’ll be bankrupt before we reach London
, she thought,
and let’s hope Alf doesn’t really get sick on trains
, but he was busy marking Xes on his map and pointing out nonexistent planes to Theodore.

“Look, there’s a Messerschmitt! ME’s have got five-hundred-pound bombs on ’em. They can blow up a whole train. If they dropped one on you, they wouldn’t be able to find your body or nuthin’. Ka-bloom! You’d disappear, just like that.”

The two of them pressed their noses to the window to search for more planes. Binnie was engrossed in a film magazine one of the young women must have left behind. Eileen picked up the stout man’s newspaper
to see if there was an ad for John Lewis or Selfridges which would give their addresses.

Both stores were open till six. Good. With luck, she’d be able to deliver the children and make it to both before they closed. But what if Polly didn’t work at either department store? Eileen scanned the ads, looking for the other name Polly’d mentioned. Dickins and Jones? No. Parker and Co.? No, but she was more convinced than ever the name had begun with a P. Was it P. D. White’s?

No, here it was. Padgett’s.
I knew I’d remember it when I saw it
. Padgett’s was open till six, too, and from the addresses, it looked as if they were only a few blocks apart. With luck, she could check all three before closing. She hoped there wasn’t a raid tonight. Or if there was, that it wasn’t over Oxford Street. The idea of being in an air raid was terrifying.
I should have researched the Blitz so I’d know where and when they were
, she thought. But it had never occurred to her that she would need to know those things.

Polly had said the Underground stations had been used as shelters. She could go there if there was a raid. But not all of them were safe—she remembered Colin giving Polly a list of the ones which had been hit, but she couldn’t remember which ones he’d said.

Once I find Polly, I’ll be all right
, Eileen thought.
She knows everything about the Blitz
. Thank goodness she knew what name Polly was using and could ask for Miss Sebastian instead of—

“Polly,” Binnie said.

“What?” Eileen asked sharply, thinking for an awful moment that she’d spoken her thoughts aloud.

“What about
Polly
? For my
name
. Polly ’Odbin. Or Molly. Or Vronica.” She shoved the magazine at Eileen and pointed at a photo of Veronica Lake. “Do I look like a Vronica?”

“You look like a toad,” Alf said.

“I do
not,”
Binnie said and whacked him with the magazine. “Take it back.”

“I won’t!” Alf shouted, shielding his head with his arms. “Toad ’Odbin! Toad ’Odbin!”

One more day
, Eileen thought, separating them.
I’ll never make it
. “Alf, do your planespotting,” she ordered. “Binnie, read your magazine. Theodore, come here and I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a princess. A wicked witch locked her in a tiny room with two evil monsters—”

“Look,” Alf said. “A barrage balloon!”

“Where?” Theodore asked.

“There.” Alf pointed out the window. “That big silver thing. They use ’em to keep the jerries from dive-bombing.”

That meant they must be nearing London, but when Eileen looked out the window, they were still in the country, and she couldn’t see anything that remotely resembled a barrage balloon.

“You seen a cloud,” Binnie said, but the only clouds were faint, feathery lines crisscrossing the expanse of vivid blue. Looking out at the sky and the passing fields and trees and quaint villages, with their stone churches and thatched cottages, it was difficult to imagine they were in the middle of a war.

Or that they would ever get to London. The afternoon wore on. Alf marked nonexistent Stukas and Bristol Blenheims on his map, Binnie murmured, “Claudette… Olivia… Katharine ’Epburn ’Odburn,” and Theodore fell asleep. Eileen went back to reading the paper. On page four, there was an ad encouraging parents to enroll their children in the Overseas Programme. “Have the comfort of knowing they’re safe,” it read.