Ambulance Girls Under Fire

by Deborah Burrows

  ‘You stop that right now. No defeatism. Don’t you dare give up hope. It bloody well comes with the morning.’ It sounded like David’s voice in my head, the drawl he adopted when he was supremely annoyed and refused to show it.

  ‘David,’ I murmured. Words drifted into my mind: Weeping may endure for a night but hope cometh in the morning. David was right. I must pull myself together. No defeatism! So I made a desperate effort to stop myself sinking any further into the abyss of loneliness and self-pity.

  ‘Celia? Are you there, Ashwin?’

  It was a woman’s voice, coming from far up above me. I opened my eyes. A thin finger of light had pierced the darkness and I had a sharp tug of fear. I tried to call to her, ‘Turn out the lights. They’ll bring the raiders back,’ but I was convulsed with another coughing fit. That caused the hammering in my head to become almost intolerable.

  The woman said, ‘I think she’s down there. I hear coughing.’

  With that, the fog in my brain cleared. They must have set up arc lights under tarpaulins. All rescue work had to be done under cover or risk the German raiders seeing the light and bombing the area again. Or was it sunshine? I couldn’t hear the drone of aeroplanes. How long had I been trapped?

  There was a scraping noise. Then sounds of careful movement, as if someone was cautiously removing rubble, stone by stone. The beam of bright light suddenly shifted to shine directly upon me and I winced and closed my eyes so now there was a red haze against my eyelids. My head was throbbing violently and with each throb an intense pain shot into my neck and shoulder. I felt flattened, swamped by the heaviness of the mud and plaster above me.

  ‘She’s here. We’ve found her.’ The woman’s voice held a note of triumph, but cracked to finish in a sob.

  I recognised the voice. It belonged to Maisie Halliday.

  ‘Bobby is a parrot,’ I called to her, ignoring the pain it caused me to do so.

  Maisie’s pretty laugh floated down. Although it ended in another sob, it lightened the gloom.

  ‘We know. The old lady told us just after you bolted inside. Then the house fell down.’ There was another laugh, shakier. ‘Bobby saved you. When we heard him calling out we knew where to look for you.’

  ‘Hurrah for Bobby,’ I said. My tone was mocking, but the parrot’s name dissolved into a cough that seemed to split my head in two.

  ‘How are you?’ Maisie asked. ‘You fell through into the cellar.’

  ‘I’m a trifle hemmed in by masonry.’

  ‘Try not to worry. We’ll get you out. And the doctor’s on his way.’

  The cautious sounds of removing rubble began again. Voices, muttering and grumbling, became men’s recognisably ferocious swearing at something that wouldn’t budge. The sounds formed a backdrop to my struggle to keep conscious.

  From what seemed to be a long way off Maisie shouted, ‘Careful. Careful.’ And then, ‘Celia?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered.

  Maisie’s voice sharpened. ‘Celia? Are you still with us?’

  Ignoring the pain, I raised my voice to drawl, in a fair imitation of David’s voice, ‘Still here. A trifle bored, though. Send down a magazine, if you’d be so kind.’

  Maisie’s laugh gave me strength. It sounded so alive in the dusty darkness.

  ‘The Tatler?’ Maisie’s tone was teasing. ‘All you posh types devour the Tatler.’

  ‘What else? I need to keep up. Oh, and I’d kill for a pink gin.’

  ‘I’ll send down some water.’

  ‘Skinflint.’

  A muffled conversation ensued between Maisie and someone behind her. There was relative silence for a while, with only little sounds around me, the squeaks and shuffles of shifting masonry, or perhaps rats. There were always rats on a bomb site. Maisie was surprisingly good at ignoring them, or shooing them away; Fripp screamed blue murder whenever she saw one. When I attended an incident I forced myself to imagine Ratty from The Wind in the Willows, a book I had loved as a child, and I tried to see the rats as an annoyance rather than a terror. Now I was trapped, the rodents became yet another horror. I didn’t want rat bites to contend with on top of everything.

  ‘The doctor’s just arrived,’ Maisie called out. ‘He wants to get down to you, check on your condition. We’re going to try to move some of this stuff to make way for him.’

  Something shifted. The increased light revealed that I was buried almost to my shoulders in a mess of beams and planks. A big piece of stone or plaster lay across my chest and shoulders, pinning me down. I managed to pull my right arm free and give a smile and a little wave to those above.

  ‘Atta girl,’ a man shouted down. ‘We’ll soon have you out. Soon as we can. That’s a promise.’

  ‘Can you move your legs?’ This man’s voice was clear and cool and public-school inflected. Probably the doctor.

  ‘No,’ I called up. ‘Has the All Clear sounded?’

  ‘Local All Clear went an hour or so ago,’ he replied, ‘but they might return. It’s only around five, a few hours yet until dawn. Hold on – I’m coming down to you.’

  I began coughing again. Each cough brought a sharp, ragged pain that made my head seem to whirl and spin and my stomach lurch with nausea. I drifted into the dream of the horses suffocating me in the stable yard and was jerked awake by more shouts and swearing. I realised that someone, with infinite caution, was lowering himself through the wreckage towards me with the support of a rope fastened around his chest and under his shoulders. He was wearing an army uniform and a steel helmet and he was holding a bag that I assumed held first-aid gear. Inch by careful inch he came down, until at last he crouched beside me.

  His face was obscured by the shadow of his helmet, and as he introduced himself there was a loud crash above us and I didn’t hear his name.

  ‘May I take your hand?’ he asked. Now that he was beside me he sounded surprisingly young. ‘I need to feel for your pulse.’

  It was as if he were asking me for a dance. Hysteria bubbled up. I pushed it away and held out my arm, coated a chalky white with plaster dust. His touch was firm and sure as he pressed two fingers lightly on my wrist, staring at his watch under the beam of his slim torch.

  ‘A bit quick,’ he said, ‘but strong.’ His voice was briskly encouraging. ‘You’re doing very well. Now I need to shine my torch into your eyes. It won’t take a moment.’

  His fingers moved to my chin and he tilted up my head, holding it steady as he shone a bright thin beam into my eyes, left then right. My head jerked at the lancing pain it caused. He made a soft grunting sound and put a cool hand on my forehead. I winced at his touch. Torchlight moved across my head, and as he gently palpated my scalp it was all I could do not to cry out with the exquisite pain of it, but I gritted my teeth and submitted.

  ‘You weren’t wearing a tin hat?’

  ‘I was. It must have come loose in the fall.’

  ‘Any vomiting? Tingling in your arms or legs?’

  ‘No. And no.’

  ‘Cold?’

  As soon as he mentioned it I shivered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It’s like an icebox in here.’ He pulled a blanket out of the bag beside him and tucked it around my neck and free shoulder, making sure it was tight.

  ‘Thank you.’ Despite the blanket, I shivered again. ‘Well, what do you think? Will I do?’ I tried for a jocular tone but my voice was faint and to my annoyance, it quavered.

  ‘You’ll do very well,’ he said, with a medical practitioner’s impersonal, rather clinical, kindness. ‘Your name’s Cecilia? Is that right? Pretty name.’

  I couldn’t be bothered to correct him.

  ‘Can you feel your legs, Cecilia?’ he asked. ‘Move them?’

  I tried to push my legs against the crush of debris and felt the muscles flexing fruitlessly. Each movement caused jagged pain to shoot through my skull. ‘Yes. I think my legs are working, but I’m wedged in tight. They are rather numb.’

 
; ‘I don’t think there’s much blood loss,’ he said carefully, ‘but I can’t tell how badly off you are without examining you properly. It’s clear that you have a head wound and you seem feverish. Are you in much pain?’

  ‘My head throbs a bit.’

  ‘Is the pain very bad?’

  ‘It’s just a headache.’

  He rooted around in the bag beside him. ‘I’ll give you a shot of morphine.’

  ‘No.’ My voice was sharp, imperative. ‘Thank you, but I don’t want morphine.’

  His hands stilled. ‘Why ever not?’

  The sharp throbbing in my head made coherent thoughts difficult, so I took a minute before I replied, and hated sounding so hesitant when I did.

  ‘I’d rather face it – death, pain, whatever comes – I’d rather face it head on. I don’t want to fall asleep and drift into death without knowing about it.’

  ‘I was only intending to give you enough to take the edge off. I don’t want you falling asleep, not if I don’t know the extent of your head injury.’

  Now I felt like a fool. ‘I won’t fall asleep?’

  He said, after a short pause, ‘Many people would prefer to be asleep when it comes. Death, I mean.’

  ‘“To cease upon the midnight with no pain”,’ I said softly, quoting Keats. ‘I’m not afraid of death… In a way, I’d welcome it, but…’ My voice faded away as common sense reasserted itself. I could almost hear David’s voice saying, ‘Honestly, Celia, the role of martyr doesn’t suit you at all. Take the bloody morphine.’

  I said to the doctor, ‘It would simply take the edge off the pain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then please.’ I lifted my arm.

  ‘Good decision,’ he said, as he pushed back my sleeve. I felt the prick of the injection. ‘Won’t be long before the pain lessens.’

  He had a beautiful voice. He sounded like David, only without the drawl David had often affected. Or was it Tom he sounded like? His voice was lighter in tone than Tom’s or David’s had been. I wondered how old he was.

  A shout came from up above us and he tilted his head to look upwards. At last I saw his face. It was, disappointingly, only a vague outline smothered in plaster dust and I suspected that as long as we were together in the ruins he was destined to remain a ghostly figure beside me, a featureless wraith with a coolly kind voice.

  He shouted back, up towards the light. ‘She’s not too bad, I think, but we’ll need the heavy lifting equipment to free her. Let me know when it’s all sorted up there.’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ someone called down. ‘We can still haul you out.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ he replied.

  ‘We’ll leave one light on, under the tarpaulin. Is that enough?’

  ‘It’ll do.’

  ‘Good luck.’ The noises above us ceased, and the light dimmed.

  ‘What’s that about?’ I asked.

  ‘Technical difficulties.’

  I had a vague feeling that I should be worried, but the morphine was making my head spin and just then some of the dust in the air caught in my throat. I coughed wildly. The pain it caused pushed all other thoughts out of my head. The doctor rooted around in his bag, brought out a canteen and poured water into a tin cup. He held my hand steady as I drank.

  ‘It’s the dust,’ I said. ‘I’m so tired of brick dust and the smell of cordite. I wish I was at home, breathing clean country air.’

  ‘Where’s home?’

  I didn’t answer for a moment as images of Goddings flooded into my mind. It was more a collection of buildings than a single house, all of them dating from different periods of history and set around two courtyards. The main wing had a Georgian facade, but everybody knew Goddings was much, much older.

  ‘It’s a beautiful old pile set up high, overlooking the Kentish Weald.’ I took a shallow breath that ended in a sigh. ‘The loveliest place in the whole world.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. I’m a Londoner, born and bred. My parents have a country place in Surrey, and it’s pretty enough, but I miss Town like the devil whenever I’m away.’

  I laughed. ‘You sound like Da—a friend of mine. He loved London more than anywhere.’

  ‘As the cliché says, tired of London, tired of life.’

  ‘I’m a Londoner for the duration, but a Kentishwoman at heart. There is nothing more beautiful than fields of hops glowing gold under a full moon.’

  ‘Oh, yes there is.’ I heard the smile in his voice. ‘Yellow London streetlights, in that blue hour just before sunset.’ His tone became teasing. ‘Seen one oust house, seen ’em all.’ He was obviously trying to lift my spirits. I’d done the same with my patients in the ambulance. David had been expert at it.

  I breathed a laugh. ‘But you must admit that the Weald of Kent is utterly glorious.’

  ‘I admit nothing of the sort. What about Hyde Park in autumn?’

  ‘The Blean?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘It’s an ancient forest near Canterbury.’

  ‘I suppose it’s filled with fairies? Don’t reply to that. If you say “yes” I’ll worry. You do have a head wound, after all.’

  I gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Canterbury Cathedral?’

  ‘Compared to St Paul’s? I think not.’

  ‘Oh – oh, that’s just ridiculous,’ I said, in mock horror. ‘They’re apples and pears. What about the White Cliffs of Dover?’

  He was quiet for a couple of beats, then said softly, ‘I love the White Cliffs.’ There was a quick laugh. ‘But you can raffle your Kentish Weald. Give me Waterloo Bridge at sunset, when the setting sun sets the Thames ablaze. And all those lovely lines of red buses jammed at Oxford Circus.’

  ‘Accompanied by that delicious reek of gasoline?’

  ‘Le parfum de Londres.’

  ‘You are mad.’

  He gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Quite possibly. I’m a Londoner, remember.’

  ‘So you can take it.’

  ‘Whatever Jerry throws at me,’ he agreed. ‘Bombs, bullets, firestorms, mines floating down on parachutes – all water off a duck’s back to a Londoner.’

  ‘Well, as I said, I’m a Londoner for the duration and I have come to love the city, but I miss Kent.’ I smiled in the darkness. ‘I do love the big red London buses, though. Somehow they are rather human, don’t you think?’

  ‘That’s because they’re filled with humanity. Good, bad and in-between. Just like London itself, really.’

  He leaned across to give me another sip of water, and I realised the sounds of the rescue party had ceased. There was only the creak and clatter of settling debris around us. What I should have been hearing were men’s voices, digging, heavy machinery.

  ‘I don’t understand why everyone has disappeared.’ I was spooked, but forced myself to ask calmly, ‘Why have they gone?’

  ‘Well…’ The doctor cleared his throat gently, then spoke quickly, obviously trying to play down the horror of what he had to tell me. ‘They found a UXB in the house next door. They’re not sure if the bomb is time-delayed or it simply didn’t go off. They’ve called the bomb-disposal squad and I’m sure it’ll all be sorted out shortly. That’s what brought the house down around you, the impact when it fell. There was no explosion.’

  It was as if I had been doused with water. ‘Get out of here,’ I hissed. ‘Go. Now. Get away. Come back if you like, when it’s safe. But get out.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I’ll be perfectly fine alone until it’s sorted.’ Or until the bomb explodes and I die.

  ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘This is utter madness.’ I said, with an attempt at cool assurance. ‘There is no point in you dying here with me.’

  His response was equally cool and assured. ‘They need to haul me out on a rope and they’ve all gone away. So you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why? Why would you send them away?’

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ he said, a
s if that explained everything. ‘I came down to check on your condition. I told them I’d stay with you if you were conscious and in need of attention. You were, so I did.’

  ‘But it makes no sense.’ I hated the shakiness in my voice. ‘You don’t know me. You should have left once you knew I was fine.’

  ‘That’s not how it works. You’re my patient now and you were in pain. When the morphine wears off you’ll be in pain again. If you fall asleep you may not wake. It’s better that I’m here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts. I’m here, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Someone to watch over me? Just like the old song?’

  He laughed. ‘I suppose you could put it that way.’

  I felt ashamed to have been ungracious to someone who was risking his life to help me. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Not at all.’

  I yawned. ‘I’m very sleepy.’

  ‘You mustn’t fall asleep. Talk to me.’

  ‘Like Scheherazade? Tell you tales?’

  ‘Tell me stories if that’s what you want. Although I’d rather hear about you.’ His voice changed, became carefully non-committal. ‘Why would you welcome death? You said that, earlier.’

  I hesitated, then told him. Perhaps it was the morphine loosening inhibitions, or perhaps it was simply because his voice was sympathetic, but I told him the truth. I hated how pathetic it sounded, but it was the truth.

  ‘Everyone I really cared for is dead. Tom, my brother, last June. My nanny died some years ago, and – and the man I loved died two months ago. Some say we’ll meet those we love again after we die. I want to meet them again.’ My voice fell away into the darkness and immediately I wished the words unsaid. So I tried to laugh them off. ‘That sounded awfully mushy, didn’t it? It’s this situation. It’s playing on my nerves.’

  ‘You have no other family?’ There was not even a hint of sympathy in his voice, which was oddly comforting.

  ‘A sister. My mother.’ A husband I despise.

  ‘They’d miss you.’