Blackout

Ten days ago, the Germans had shot down Malcolm's Lancaster and he was currently missing; hovering somewhere between life and death, like Schrodinger’s cat...

Rita settled into a corner of an empty carriage. She knew she was alone because the guard had shone his torch around it and asked if she wouldn’t prefer company. The answer was no. As an officer in the WAAF, she spent her days surrounded by company. Jolly girls and frightened young men with death perched expectantly on their shoulders. Men like her Malcolm. Ten days ago, the Germans had shot down his Lancaster and he was currently missing; hovering somewhere between life and death, like Schrodinger’s cat.

Malcolm had told her about the cat. A sadistic thought experiment where a cat is placed in a box with something that might kill it. According to Schrodinger, until you opened the box, the cat was simultaneously dead and alive and it was the act of looking that determined the final outcome. Rita felt sorry for the hypothetical animal, but Malcolm loved that kind of thing, he said it was the most exciting break through in their lifetime and he wanted to study quantum mechanics at Cambridge after the war.

‘You’ll be the next Einstein,’ Rita joked, as he pushed her onto the bed and kissed her.

There were no lights in the train, nothing to attract the bombers, just a few tendrils of moonlight filtering through the window and forming luminescent puddles on the floor. Rita pressed her nose to the glass as the train pulled out of the station. It was perishingly cold, and she was grateful for the ill-fitting greatcoat that came almost to her ankles. Last night, when the pot-bellied stove in her Nissen hut was emitting even less heat than usual, she’d worn the coat to bed along with the socks she’d borrowed from Malcolm.

Where was he now? In a POW camp? In hospital? Dead? She pushed the thought away. Catastrophising wouldn’t help. Her mind drifted, as it often did, to the night when he asked her to marry him. They were in The Bull and Bear and Malcolm seemed edgy, so she knew something was up. He didn’t go down on one knee; it wasn’t his style, but he’d bought a ring and the moment she said yes, he slipped it on her finger as if he was afraid she might change her mind. She touched it now, a gold band with five tiny diamonds. She hadn’t taken it off since, not even to wash.

Her breath fogged the window turning the landscape into a featureless, grey blur. Not that there was much to see. Even in daylight, the countryside around Birmingham was nondescript. A patchwork of muddy fields and wind-blasted hedgerows.

‘Bloody, bloody war.’ As she turned away from the window, she realised she was no longer alone. Someone had snuck into the carriage when she wasn’t looking. A man judging by the large, slightly hairy hand resting in a shaft of moonlight on the arm of the seat opposite. Disconcertingly, his face and body were hidden in shadow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t realise there was anyone here.’

The man didn’t reply. Perhaps he didn’t approve of women swearing. Well, tough. If he didn’t like it, he could sit somewhere else. She fished in her pocket for her cigarettes and hesitated before offering him the packet. He probably wouldn’t approve of that either, but she could hardly light up and ignore him. It was unnerving not being able to see his face, although judging by the splodges on the back of his hand; he was middle-aged or older.

When again he didn’t respond, she retracted the packet. Suit yourself. The lighter was a present from her father, a silver Dunhill engraved with her initials. The flame flickered as she held it to the paper and a distant boom signalled the bombing had begun.

It was only then she noticed his breath, or rather, its absence. Whereas hers formed a vapour trail in the frigid air, on his side of the carriage there was nothing. Tentatively, she leaned towards him holding the lighter aloft.

‘Are you alright, sir?’

Was he dead? That was the last thing she needed. Then she would have to explain to the guard that someone had crept into her carriage before promptly dying. There would be questions, the police would be called and she wouldn’t get to the base until the early hours of the morning.

The flame was so anaemic that at first she thought she was mistaken. The hand was clear enough, but beyond the wrist there was only darkness. She forced herself nearer until she could make out the armrest and the seat with its grubby antimassacar hanging limply where a man’s head should have been. Shit. She jumped backwards dropping the lighter which went out at the precise moment the train entered a tunnel, thereby erasing the moon and with it the hand. Was it a sick joke? An accident? Perhaps the hand had been blown off in an explosion, but if so what the hell was it doing there?

Rita groped for the door, not daring to turn her back on the carriage and the thing on the seat. What if it came scuttling towards her across the floor like T.S. Elliot’s ragged claws? Her nails snagged at the wood and her heart was pounding so fiercely she could hear the beats reverberating in her chest. There was another noise too, a dull thud as if something fallen off a seat. She told herself it was her book. Normally she was good in a crisis, but panic had taken hold. Where the hell was the handle?

‘Help.’ She pounded on the door. ‘Help me please.’

And then the door opened and she fell into the astonished arms of a man who was making his way to the dining car. Breathlessly she blurted out her story and the man went to fetch the guard, while a motherly woman in the next carriage comforted her with a flask of stewed tea. The woman clearly thought she had lost her mind and Rita couldn’t blame her.

When the guard appeared, she repeated her story. It sounded ridiculous, but unlike the woman, the guard seemed to take her her seriously.

‘Shall we have a look? See if it’s still there?’

Rita hesitated. If it was she didn’t want anything to do with it, but she could hardly say no. Not when she was wearing her uniform.

The guard went first and when they reached the carriage, he told her to wait, before emerging seconds later.

‘All clear.’

Rita felt like a fool.

‘I must have imagined it.’

The guard switched off the torch.

‘You’re not the first to see him and you probably won’t be the last. Not as long as the blackouts last, anyway.’

Rita stared at him in confusion.

‘What do you mean, him?’

‘Was the hand hairy?’

‘A bit.’

The guard nodded.

‘That’s Eric. He was a guard too. Had a heart attack in this carriage when he was checking the passenger’s tickets. I should probably have warned you, but it’s been six months since anyone saw him. They say it’s good luck, although I don’t fancy it myself.’

‘Why just his hand?’

‘No idea.’ The guard shrugged. ‘The bigger question is why does he come back at all?’

There was no answer to that.

***

The telegram arrived the next morning. Rita’s batswoman, Betty, brought it with her morning cup of tea.

‘I think it might be news about Sergeant Williams, Mam.’ Betty hesitated. ‘Would you like me to stay?’

Rita shook her head. Some things were best kept private and she’d made enough of a fool of herself the previous evening. As she took the envelope from Betty’s outstretched hand. She imagined Schrodinger’s cat stirring in its box. Would it be lucky or unlucky this time?

She waited for the door to close before she ripped the telegram open. The message was brief and wonderful. Malcolm was alive, uninjured, and residing in Stalag IVB.

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