Ambulance Girls Under Fire

by Deborah Burrows

  ‘They’d be sad, perhaps, but wouldn’t really miss me. Not for long, anyway. Perhaps not at all.’

  ‘Now that does sound like self-pity.’ His voice was crisp, matter of fact.

  ‘Actually, it’s true,’ I said, incensed. My mother had always enjoyed a mindless whirl of social activities more than her children, and I had an odd relationship with Helen.

  ‘But you don’t want to hear about my troubles.’ My voice had become brisker, no-nonsense, more like myself. ‘Might I have some water, please?’

  He put the cup to my lips and I sipped. ‘Do you love your parents?’ I asked him.

  ‘Very much. I had a happy childhood.’

  ‘I rarely saw my parents, but it wasn’t an unhappy childhood by any means,’ I said. ‘I adored my nanny, and I was left to my own devices on the whole because Father had fixed ideas about children, who were to be seen rarely and heard less. And so I spent a great deal of time giving my latest governess the slip and roaming around the Kentish countryside with my dog or on my pony. The servants kept an eye on me when they could.’

  What I had hated the most about my childhood was that each afternoon when my parents were at home Nanny would dress me up in my best frock and brush my hair until it crackled with electricity and then I would be trotted out to spend half an hour with Father and Mummy. How I had hated those afternoons.

  ‘Father preferred my older sister Helen to me or Tom,’ I went on, ‘even though Tom was the heir.’

  ‘I had a brother who was the favourite,’ said the doctor, but I could hear the indulgent tone behind the words. ‘That was because he was quite ill as a child. I never minded. Just accepted it as the right order of things. My parents tried to hide it, but I knew.’

  ‘Oh, my father made no secret of his preference for Helen.’

  He used to say I must be his, with my red hair and blue eyes, but it was a mystery how he could have sired such a gauche and stupid child.

  ‘You were afraid of your father?’

  I breathed a laugh and the story came bubbling out, as if I had no control of my tongue. I thought later that it must have been the morphine because I am on the whole a very close-lipped woman.

  ‘Terrified. He died last year, and I really shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but my father could be quite cruel. When I was about eight years old I began to bite my fingernails and he was furious.’

  He had raged at me, telling me all a woman had was her beauty and charm, and what hope was there for a scrawny little fool like me, if my hands looked like that?

  ‘So he took to inspecting my hands,’ I went on, ‘whenever Helen and I joined him and Mummy for tea. And if he thought I’d been nibbling my nails, he would hit me once on each palm with his riding crop. If I cried, he would hit me twice. I learned not to cry.’

  Tom had taught me how to hide my fear and misery. ‘You can’t show him how you feel,’ he had told me. ‘You have to keep it inside and you have to make your face calm, no matter how bad it is.’

  ‘But I can’t,’ I had wailed. ‘I can’t pretend it’s not hurting me.’

  ‘He’ll just hit harder if you cry or if you seem afraid. What I do when the Head gives me six at school is to pretend I’m somewhere else. Somewhere lovely. What’s your favourite place in all the world?’

  ‘The bluebell glade, where I found the pilgrim badge.’

  ‘Imagine you are in the bluebell glade. Be in the bluebell glade. Smell the flowers, and the grass, hear the river, feel the wind. And keep your face like this –’ he had showed me a very serious, unemotional face ‘– like a mask. And keep it like that, no matter what.’

  Gradually, I had learned not to cry when Father hit me, and over the years I learned to keep my face calm – head high and walk tall – no matter what provocation I was given.

  Beside me, the doctor shifted. ‘Did you stop biting your nails?’

  ‘Eventually.’

  ‘Your brother sounds like a decent sort of chap.’

  I gasped. ‘Did I tell you that? I can’t get clear in my head what I say out loud and what I only think. God, I hate morphine. Tom was more than nice, he was simply lovely. He died at Dunkirk.’

  I had given him the pilgrim badge to keep him safe, but it hadn’t saved him.

  The doctor cleared his throat. ‘I was at Dunkirk. Perhaps I treated him.’

  ‘The boat he was on was blown up. He fell into the water and was drowned.’

  ‘The miracle was that so many of us did get back.’ The doctor took a deep, shuddering breath that ended in a cough.

  ‘How did you get back?’

  ‘I was with one of the last groups to escape,’ the doctor said slowly. ‘I spent three days travelling with an ambulance-load of wounded. We had missed the last hospital train, so I was trying to keep four men alive without morphine or fresh bandages. We had nothing to eat and little to drink and it was a slow journey along roads choked with burnt-out vehicles and civilians, mostly women, some old men, children. All fleeing the Germans.

  ‘We ended up at La Panne,’ he continued, ‘which is a beach a little to the north of Dunkirk. It was choked with British and French soldiers, on the sand and in the water, waiting to be evacuated. The Messerschmitts and Stukas were relentless, dive-bombing, machine-gunning us.’

  His voice rose, became angry. ‘They said I had to leave my wounded patients for the Germans to find. I was told they’d be taken prisoner, but they’d be looked after.’ He paused, went on almost in a whisper. ‘I have no idea if those men lived or died. We’d spent days together and I’d kept them alive, and then I had to leave them to the mercy of the enemy.’

  I could hear the pain in his voice and I wanted to comfort him somehow, but I didn’t know what to do. There was a moment of silence, until he cleared his throat. ‘And that was my time at Dunkirk,’ he said.

  ‘How did you escape?’

  ‘In a grubby oyster dredger called the Valiant. It was built for six men to haul in the nets, but the crew shoehorned dozens of soldiers into her and we set off for England. She wasn’t built for the open sea and rolled like a pig, so we were all seasick. Then the engines went dead halfway across the Channel and I thought the game was up…’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Along came the Ramsgate Lifeboat and it towed us back to England. Out of the mist loomed the White Cliffs, and it was as if I’d been reborn.’

  ‘And because of that they are the only bit of Kent that you love.’

  ‘I was teasing you. Kent is very beautiful. It’s just that I like London best.’

  I drew in a breath to speak but choked and coughed instead. He poured water into the tin cup, took my chin in one hand and held the cup to my lips with the other. His hand on my face was cool and steady, and as I drank I thought that I had not felt as comfortable with a man since David had died. I felt as though I had known this doctor all my life.

  And then I told him who I was.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘I didn’t quite catch your name before,’ I said. ‘Mine’s Celia, actually, not Cecelia. Celia Ashwin.’

  ‘Celia Ashwin?’

  All at once it was as if a distance had opened between us, far more than the few inches that separated our bodies. Ashwin was an uncommon and damnably well-known name.

  ‘Cedric Ashwin is my husband,’ I said flatly. Over the years I had perfected a facade of indifference. I made my voice expressionless as I said, ‘I don’t agree with my husband’s politics.’

  The doctor replied in a brisk and business-like tone, ‘I’m glad to hear it, because his views are abominable.’ He paused, and said, ‘Please, call me Simon.’

  ‘Dr Simon? Or just Simon?’

  He gave a soft laugh. ‘Just Simon. Everyone uses first names nowadays. It’s all quite informal and comradely in the Blitz … Celia.’

  ‘Except in Air-Raid Precautions. We use surnames only.’ The pain was easing, and left me light-headed and dizzy in its wake, so I spoke without thinking. �
�I wish my name wasn’t Ashwin. I want to divorce Cedric, but he won’t let me. He should damn well let me divorce him.’

  The sharp indignant note in my voice made me sound like my mother, I realised with some horror. David had called that tone my ‘hoity-toity’ voice.

  ‘Because it doesn’t suit you any more to be married to a well-known fascist?’ There was contempt in Simon’s reply and it enraged me.

  ‘Because I don’t agree with any of Cedric’s views,’ I retorted. ‘I don’t know I ever did agree with them, not really. But I certainly don’t agree with them now.’

  I found myself talking in a fast, high voice as the morphine again released my inhibitions.

  ‘I don’t love Cedric. Not like David. And I’d never – not until I met David – never – despite Cedric running around with half of—’

  I stopped speaking, horrified at what I’d said.

  ‘Oh, God, I hate morphine,’ I drawled, trying to sound coolly indifferent to what I’d revealed. ‘That was all tommyrot, of course. Please forgive me, I’m raving.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he murmured.

  We were silent for a while. My eyelids drifted shut and my head began to whirl. ‘You lied,’ I said. ‘I’m falling asleep.’

  ‘Don’t do that. You must try to stay awake. Talk to me.’ His voice became sharper, more insistent. ‘You’re a young and beautiful woman with a life ahead of you and I’m not about to let you die here. Keep talking, dammit.’

  ‘What do you want me to talk about?’

  ‘Anything. But don’t fall asleep.’ His tone was again coolly unemotional, entirely professional.

  ‘Thank you for staying with me,’ I said. ‘I’m glad I’m not alone. David died alone.’ My voice became bitter. ‘And I let his parents suffer for weeks, not knowing what happened to him. I’m trying to atone for that. I try so hard. I work with his mother’s charity, and… Oh, I am raving.’

  Silence fell between us again, but I was more awake now and I listened to the little sounds of the wrecked house. The small slithers and the creaks of settling debris. I thought again of rats, and shivered.

  ‘I should have brought another blanket,’ he said. ‘I could give you my tunic.’

  ‘No. Please. I’m fine. It’s not the cold, it’s something else. Thank you for being here with me, Simon.’

  Again there was silence.

  ‘Why did you say I’m beautiful?’ I asked, to take my mind off the rats. And to hear his voice again because it was lonely, when he was silent. ‘You said I was a young and beautiful woman. My face is smothered in plaster dust and you’ve shone your torch exactly once in each of my undoubtedly bloodshot eyes. How could you possibly know what I look like?’

  He breathed a laugh. ‘You’re quite famous, you know. Cedric Ashwin’s young and beautiful auburn-haired and aristocratic wife, the darling of the social set, who drives an ambulance in the Blitz.’

  There was contempt in his voice, or I thought there was, and suddenly I was furious.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ I said hotly. ‘There’s no need to be unkind, just because of my husband.’

  He said nothing for a little while and the silence settled around us like a shroud.

  ‘I didn’t mean to be unkind,’ he murmured. ‘You are well known, though. And much photographed.’

  ‘When I was presented in 1937 my photo appeared in most of the newspapers,’ I admitted. ‘I was Celia Palmer-Thomas then. Cecil Beaton photographed me holding a dove and the picture showed up everywhere.’

  ‘How glamorous.’

  I gave a little choked laugh. ‘Not really. The blasted dove wouldn’t keep still. It may have looked angelic, but let me tell you, that bird had a devilishly nasty bite. I’ve a scar on my finger I’ll carry for life.’

  There was amusement in his voice as he replied, ‘I’m sure it was worth it for the picture.’

  ‘I hate that picture. I look like a halfwit, with my mouth slightly open and gazing rather vacantly into space. The worst of it was that it turned me into a commodity.’

  The Sunday Express had dubbed me ‘The Loveliest Debutante of 1937’, writing: ‘The Honourable Miss Celia Palmer-Thomas enjoys the twin blessings of beauty and elegance; with a classic oval face, dark-blue eyes and auburn hair, her smile is like a Lely court beauty.’

  My sister had been annoyed by the articles, my mother embarrassed, and my father enraged. Tom had laughed and said it would have been more honest to have written: ‘Miss Celia Palmer-Thomas is now on the marriage market. Who’s the first bidder? Old family, well connected, but not much money. How much for her pretty face?’

  ‘A commodity?’ Simon asked.

  ‘People asked me to allow my picture to be used to sell things in magazines. Face cream, stockings, lingerie, even marmalade.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Of course not. I don’t like marmalade.’

  ‘I must say, yours sounds like a charmed life,’ he said. ‘Being presented at Court before the King and Queen, dancing with the good and the great at balls and receptions, attending Ascot, Henley.’

  ‘Don’t forget Finals Day at Wimbledon, the Eton and Harrow match at Lord’s, the Air Pageant.’ I made my voice light, flippant. ‘And every first night on the West End, with dinner somewhere first and supper somewhere else afterwards.’ I gave a laugh that became a cough. ‘I can’t believe I managed to survive it all.’

  How could I explain, especially to a man, how much hard work it had been, that frenzy of carefully organised gaiety? I had been a gauche country girl, who had felt out of place and unhappy throughout the seemingly endless round of social events, and who had been given little support by her mother or sister. Helen had been seeking a husband of her own and didn’t want me around her when she did so, and my mother felt that she’d ‘done her bit’ merely by presenting me at Court.

  ‘It sounds more exciting than it was,’ I said. ‘I was scared to death I’d do something wrong.’

  Men told me I was beautiful. Beautiful! I had grown up being told I was scrawny and stupid and unwanted. Nanny loved me, but she detested vanity. She would say if she saw me looking at my reflection, ‘Who would want to look at you, my girl?’

  I had felt I was a fraud. I had been terrified the mask would drop and they would all realise I was not elegant or self-assured. And then they would laugh at me and I would be sent away in disgrace. As a result, my manner was stiff and coolly reserved and I had not ‘taken’. Apparently I have a stare that can freeze a man at ten paces and I was soon dubbed ‘the Ice Queen’. That was why I had been drawn to the older men, who were not put off by my cool exterior. Cedric was soon my favourite because he never once told me I was beautiful. His nickname for me was ‘Funny Face’ and I had liked him for it.

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘When I came out? Eighteen. I was presented at the first evening Court of 1937, to the new King and Queen. That was my first disappointment. I had so wanted to meet the Prince of Wales – I mean King Edward – but he had abdicated in December.’

  ‘Why ever did you want to meet him?’

  I laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Because he was charming and handsome, I suppose. And it was so romantic that he gave up so much for the woman he loved.’

  ‘He was an idiot,’ said Simon.

  ‘Don’t you believe in that sort of love?’ I was genuinely curious.

  ‘What sort of love?’

  ‘Oh… the selfless sort, I suppose. Where you’d risk anything, give up everything for the one you love. He gave up the crown, after all.’

  ‘He had a more important duty to his people, and he chucked it all away for that American divorcee.’

  ‘For love,’ I insisted. ‘He did it for love.’ I raised my voice slightly to declaim: ‘“I cannot carry the heavy burden of responsibility and discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”’

  ‘You memorised his abdication speech?’ Simon didn’t bot
her to hide his amusement.

  ‘I have that sort of memory.’

  An image of David came unbidden, along with the sharply painful realisation that our love hadn’t been strong enough to cope with the difficulties we faced. We had been unwilling to contend with social and family disapproval. We were together only two months. Maybe with more time I would have found the courage. But it was not only me who was unwilling. David had not wanted to face his family’s displeasure at finding out he was in love with a Gentile. We were both cowards in our way.

  ‘I disagree.’ Simon’s tone was sharp. ‘Was it cowardly for David to put his family first?’

  ‘I spoke out loud?’ I said, horrified.

  ‘David was Jewish.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Simon’s face remained hidden in the gloom, but his voice was crisply insistent. ‘It would have been more than difficult to explain you to his family. You are a Gentile who is married to a notorious fascist. How could your love affair ever have ended happily? Did you expect him to abdicate from being Jewish?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  The quaver in my voice must have given me away. Simon lifted the cup of water to my lips and again held my face in a cool, steady grip as I sipped. A memory came of a conversation I’d had with David about his religion, a week or so before he died.

  ‘My family attends synagogue on the high holidays,’ he had said, ‘but it’s more for social reasons. We’ve never been devout or particularly observant.’ He’d smiled then, the smile that made my heart sing. ‘We have raisins only in our Christmas pudding.’ Then he’d shrugged. ‘My parents sent me to Harrow, remember, not to a yeshiva. I don’t wear the yarmulke except in synagogue, and I haven’t been to synagogue for over a year.’

  ‘But, although you don’t go to – to synagogue very often, you still feel Jewish?’

  ‘I am Jewish. It’s not about religion so much as—’

  ‘Don’t say race,’ I had interrupted him hurriedly. ‘That’s how Hitler justifies his treatment of your people.’

  ‘I was going to say it’s about belonging. But you put it neatly: they are my people.’ He had shrugged and repeated, ‘I am Jewish.’