Ambulance Girls Under Fire

by Deborah Burrows

  I pushed away the tin cup. ‘Anyway, that’s enough of me. Tell me about yourself, Dr Simon.’

  ‘It’s you who are supposed to be talking. I need you to stay awake.’ He paused. ‘My brother – my parents’ favourite – he died recently. We were very close, only a year apart in age. More like twins.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it. Really, I am so sorry.’

  We were silent for a little while, both lost in memories.

  ‘It’s an odd relationship, isn’t it?’ I said eventually. ‘Siblings, I mean. So much shared. So much of who you are comes from your childhood, and you spent it with your siblings. Tom was four years older, and all my life he was my steady guiding light. My Pole Star. I miss him terribly.’

  ‘And David?’

  I jerked in surprise at the question, then said slowly, ‘David was a new sun in my sky. He outshone everything. It was so intense. I had never…’ I said, with an attempt at flippancy, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to describe what I felt for David. It all seems like a dream now. Adoration? Love is too steady a word for what we had.’ The pain of the memory was suddenly overwhelming. ‘Please, I don’t want to talk about David.’

  ‘Talk about Cedric Ashwin, then.’

  ‘He is a womanising bully. Just like my father, I now realise, except Cedric’s bullying is through charm and my father rarely bothered. Cedric played me for a fool and I let him do so because I didn’t know any better.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, you married the man.’ Simon’s voice was harsh, and the bitterness in it shocked me. ‘You can’t tell me he didn’t discuss his political views with you. They were a part of the man he was. The man he is still, because those vile pamphlets he wrote keep popping up all over London. You were eighteen – yes, that’s young, but the soldiers I treated in France, and more recently in North Africa, were just as young and they had volunteered to be there. Eighteen-year-olds are fighting the Nazis as we speak. Eighteen-year-old Jews are being shot by the Gestapo in Poland. Even at eighteen you should have known what sort of man you were marrying. You can’t—’

  Simon fell silent. I was stunned at his vehemence, and hated my own vulnerability, trapped in the dark with him, unable to move. It was obvious that he hated all that my husband stood for and, by default, he hated me, too. The pamphlets Simon had spoken of were ones Cedric had penned before the war and his supporters continued to publish them. ‘This is a Jews’ War’, ‘The Jewish Conspiracy Against You’ and ‘The British: A Hoodwinked People’ were some of the titles.

  I tried to move my legs but they were still trapped, and my left arm and chest were similarly held in a vice grip by the ruins.

  Simon gently cleared his throat. ‘That was unkind and I apologise.’ His voice was hesitant, contrite.

  I drew in a breath, and although I wasn’t sure why I should do so, I tried to explain.

  ‘What Cedric was saying – about Jews, about the best way to run Britain – it was no different from what my father had said when I was growing up. What Cedric believed was what I had been taught to believe. I was young, naive, and Cedric seemed to be everything I wanted… And then I met David.’

  Again Simon cleared his throat and seemed about to speak, but I forestalled him.

  ‘In two months with David, all I thought I knew about the world, all I thought I was, had changed. It was David who changed me.’

  Simon gave a bark of mocking laughter. It was shocking after my confession.

  ‘Don’t make more of it than it was,’ he said. ‘You were a married woman who had a fling with a good-looking man. It was a tawdry affair. That’s all.’

  My chin came up and there was as much ice in my voice as I could manage: ‘It was not tawdry. You don’t know me, or David. How dare you judge us?’

  A cracking sound rent the silence and I flinched, certain the bomb had exploded. Instead, light poured in from the widening hole above us.

  ‘All sorted next door?’ Simon called out.

  A northern-accented voice replied, ‘Aye. All sorted. It was a big ’un. Thousand pounder with a delayed fuse. Bomb squad fixed it. Nowt to worry about now, Doc.’

  Relief threatened to overwhelm me, but I was determined not to cry. Not in front of the doctor, who had been so cruel. Head high, walk tall. Only I couldn’t help flinching when bits of plaster showered down on top of me, dislodged by rescue workers as they removed lumps of rubble and bricks. I flinched again as Simon leaned towards me.

  ‘Not long now,’ he murmured. He used his body to protect me from the falling debris.

  More rubble fell, and the noise of the rescue increased. Northern voice called down, ‘You all right, Doc? How’s the patient?’

  ‘We’re both fine. Keep going. The sooner she’s out now, the better.’

  Simon took hold of my wrist and rested two fingers lightly on my pulse. I closed my eyes, too exhausted to keep them open.

  ‘Try to stay awake,’ he said. He was still holding my wrist, but I could not summon the energy to tell him to let go.

  ‘Hurry up, if you can,’ he called out sharply to those above.

  ‘Doing our best,’ was the gruff reply. A London accent this time. ‘You don’t want the whole blooming lot down on top of you, do you?’

  I began to drift. Simon pinched the skin between my thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Keep awake.’

  ‘You enjoyed doing that.’ My voice was indignant, and he gave a low chuckle as he shook his head.

  The noises around us increased. Simon moved away to allow the rescuers to crouch beside me and begin the slow process of lifting bomb debris off my body. Chains attached to a portable crane were let down and used to lift away the heavier pieces.

  ‘I’ll see you up top,’ Simon said, and gave a shout to the men above, who pulled him up the pile of wreckage, using the rope that was still looped around his chest. He was heading for the light. I felt surprisingly lost and alone without him.

  ‘Nearly there,’ said the northern voice, who was now a burly shape beside me in the gloom. ‘Nearly free, lass.’

  The pieces of debris that pinned me down were removed, one by one. When the final, largest piece was pulled away from my chest the sudden sense of lightness and freedom made me feel as if I had been reborn.

  Then I was lifted up and passed from one pair of arms to the next until I was shivering on a stretcher in cold morning air, surrounded by men in dusty overalls, who smiled at me and told me everything was grand.

  ‘You were near to heaven last night, love,’ said one of them. ‘I bet you heard them harps playing.’

  Pale sunlight lit the scene. Hope had indeed come with the morning. Maisie Halliday was there, tucking blankets around me and wiping my face with a damp flannel. She had been crying but was trying valiantly to smile.

  ‘You’re a lucky one,’ she said, as she turned her head away to dash away the tears. ‘I’m sorry to be so sloppy, it’s just that…’ She sniffed, and turned back towards me with a smile.

  I managed a smile. ‘You look rather blurred, Halliday. And what’s more, you appear to be bobbing up and down. Or is that me?’

  She managed a laugh. ‘It’s you. The doctor will be here soon, for a last check-over and then I’ll get you to hospital.’

  ‘The doctor…’ I paused, unsure what I wanted to ask about the doctor called Simon.

  ‘Oh, isn’t he simply marvellous? Went down to check on you even though he’d been told about the bomb in the next house. And then he refused to leave you there alone. He’s an army doctor, helping out.’ She smiled. ‘And what an amazing coincidence—’ Maisie glanced up. ‘Here he comes.’

  My heart raced as I watched him walk across the rubble towards us. Things did seem rather blurry but they sharpened as he approached. My rescuer was revealed to be a man of average height, dark hair, slim build. His thinnish and finely boned face had an air of frowning abstraction I was willing to put down to tiredness. This slender, studious-looking man had stayed bes
ide me for hours in the face of an unexploded bomb. War made unlikely heroes.

  ‘How’s the patient?’ he asked Maisie. His eyes were dark and straight black eyebrows lent him a stern expression.

  ‘She says things are a bit blurred.’ Maisie gave him a bright smile that he did not return.

  Instead he nodded, knelt beside me without a word and took my hand to check my pulse. Again he shone his torch into my eyes, but this time I did not flinch.

  Maisie smiled, touched my shoulder and stood up. ‘I have to check on the ambulance, but I’ll be back in two ticks to take you to hospital.’

  As she walked away the doctor and I regarded each other. His eyes were grave, sombre even. I said, simply to say something, ‘I want to thank—’

  ‘Please don’t,’ he interrupted. ‘I was just doing my job.’

  I realised then I would know his voice anywhere, after so many hours together in the dark. It was a little rougher after our ordeal, but still cool and professionally disinterested. My gaze fell to the Royal Army Medical Corps insignia on the shoulder of his khaki tunic, which sat below the two pips that showed he was a lieutenant. The caduceus, a pair of snakes entwined around a winged staff, had been the doctors’ emblem since the time of ancient Greece. That’s why he stayed with me. Because he takes his calling seriously, even if he despises me.

  ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

  ‘Three.’ I looked up at him, into a face I had never seen before. ‘And you have two eyes and one nose, all in correct position. Nothing is blurred any more.’

  A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth and suddenly I realised what the frown and professional detachment had disguised before. He was young, only a few years older than myself. A newly minted doctor. Although he had the face of a stranger, there was something familiar in the curve of his lips, the wry, self-mocking expression, the shape of his nose and the angle of his jaw.

  My heart thumped painfully. Maisie had mentioned a coincidence. David had two brothers… and Simon had spoken of his brother.

  ‘Simon?’ I whispered. ‘Simon Levy?’ That was the name of David’s brother, the youngest of the three, the one who had joined up in 1939 as soon as he finished his medical training.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, before standing in one quick movement. ‘David mentioned me?’

  I nodded and tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. ‘He was very proud of you,’ I croaked. ‘Simon, I am so sorry. So very sorry.’

  His eyes were fierce, his mouth set in a firm uncompromising line. Then he looked away and drew in a deep breath. ‘My parents tell me they’ve forgiven you. That you’ve sincerely and honestly apologised for the hell you put them through and you are attempting to atone by helping my mother with her refugee children. They said I should forgive you also, with a sincere mind and a willing spirit, as we’re taught to do. I – you have no idea how much I hated you.’

  I tried to reply, but no words came. Simon Levy turned to survey the destruction around us. There was tension in the way he held his shoulders and a tightness around his eyes. He cleared his throat.

  ‘The Talmud says, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” It is ironic that I should, perhaps, have saved yours.’ He looked down at me, frowned. ‘I thought you’d be older, or at least seem older. I thought you’d be…’

  ‘You thought I’d be a femme fatale?’

  Again, a smile touched the corner of his mouth. ‘Perhaps I did. I still wish to God David had never met you, but at least some good has come out of the night.’

  ‘What good?’ I whispered.

  ‘I don’t hate you any more.’ He called out, in a brisk voice, ‘She’s ready for transfer.’

  The stretcher-bearers hoisted me up with a cheery, ‘Thanks, Dr Levy.’

  ‘You’re light as a feather, miss,’ the one at the front said as they carried me to the waiting ambulance. ‘Makes a pleasant change.’

  ‘Dr Levy?’ I let my voice trail away.

  ‘Marvellous feller, Doc Levy. Got sent home from North Africa some weeks ago – he’s with the Medical Corps, of course – but he’s always helping out at these incidents. D’you know him, miss?’

  ‘I knew his brother.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Will there be a scar?’ My sister gestured towards the bandage on my head.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Shame if it does scar,’ said Roly, her husband. ‘Couldn’t wear those pretty hats you gels seem to like so much.’ He nodded at Helen, who was wearing a little straw number perched on the side of her head. ‘No use at all on a windy day, but dashed pretty, what?’

  Brigadier Roland Markham, currently serving in the War Office and a close friend of Winston Churchill, was some twenty years older than Helen. He delighted in treating women with the sort of gallantry that had been outmoded even when he was a young man. He had always been more our father’s friend than ours, but when Helen failed to snare a suitable husband by the time she was twenty-five she had accepted Roly’s offer and their elaborate wedding had taken place two months before war was declared. They seemed happy enough together. Roly adored Helen, who bossed him relentlessly and spent his money freely, but in return gave him a comfortable and well-managed home. I knew that she tried her best to be her idea of the perfect wife.

  They had offered to put me up until I was fully recovered, but I had steadfastly maintained that I wanted to return to my flat. And so they had dropped me back when I was discharged from hospital two days later.

  Helen and I had never been close – she was too bossy for that – but it was hard to shake off twenty-two years of sibling rivalry and, I suppose, sisterly affection. She liked to keep an eye on me, and I allowed her to do so. When Cedric had been imprisoned, most of my friends had slipped away but Helen, and Roly at her insistence, had continued to support me publicly.

  ‘I don’t know why you insist on remaining with the Auxiliary Ambulance Service,’ said Helen peevishly. ‘Roly can easily get you a position with the Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps.’

  I glanced at Roly, who had turned away to stare fixedly out of the window. I put him out of his misery.

  ‘You know I applied to the FANYs, but they rejected me because of Cedric,’ I said. ‘I asked if I could join the ATS to drive ambulances. I applied to the Wrens and to the WAAF. Everyone rejected me. Oh, they gave me various excuses, but clearly it was because of Cedric.’

  But, Roly could—’

  ‘No, Helen,’ I said sharply. A thin, needling pain began to drive into my head like a dentist’s drill and I lost my patience. ‘He can’t. It’s unfair to expect Roly to compromise himself to get me into a service that doesn’t want me. The Auxiliary Ambulance Service is doing a marvellous job in this Blitz and I’m staying put.’

  ‘Cedric would not be compromising himself. Everybody who counts knows how silly it was to incarcerate Cedric. Locking him up like a common criminal, simply for holding beliefs that all of our friends held before this war. It’s outrageous.’

  ‘But Cedric continued to hold those beliefs,’ I replied wearily, because Helen and I had had this conversation innumerable times before, ‘even after it was clear that Hitler was a dangerous lunatic and Mussolini a pompous braggart. Even once war had been declared, Cedric still wanted an alliance with Germany and Italy. How could the government ignore that?’

  Helen sniffed. ‘At least Cedric is not a hypocrite,’ she replied, and tossed her hair in a gesture that was so like her when she was a fractious child that I couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘I don’t see what there is to grin about,’ she said. You scarcely bothered to put pen to paper for poor Cedric. He’s been terribly upset about how little you contacted him. You’ll have to work hard to regain his affection when he returns.’

  ‘I want to divorce him,’ I replied flatly.

  Roly continued to stare out of the window.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said my sister.

  I had been discharg
ed from hospital upon the firm instruction that I rest in bed for a week. After Helen and Roly left the flat I sat on the couch and stared at the wall for a moment or two. Next I picked up a novel that Helen had lent me and flicked through a few pages. Then I telephoned Jack Moray at the ambulance station, to tell him I was fit for duty and would be returning to work the following day.

  I am not sure I can explain why I did so. Someone who knows about such things told me some time later that I was probably still concussed. Maybe so, but I suspect it was because the idea of a week to myself in my flat, tormented by the vivid memories of the time I had spent trapped in the darkness, was intolerable. I hated to be inactive. Since David’s death, I had been unable to sleep unless exhausted by physical effort. And I felt peevish after Helen’s visit.

  Looking back, all I can say is that I was not thinking clearly enough to accept I was not fit to work. So I decided to carry on. ‘Business as usual’, just as Churchill required. It was a decision I came to regret.

  At seven o’clock the following morning, I pulled on a knitted helmet and wrapped a thick woollen scarf around my head to cover my mouth and nose as some protection against the cold. The All Clear sounded as I collected my bicycle from the shed at the rear of the building, and I set off along Gray’s Inn Road heading for the Bloomsbury Auxiliary Ambulance Station in a light, freezing mist.

  My journey to the ambulance station took longer than usual that morning because I fought a bitter wind the whole way. On Sidmouth Street, just past the ruined hotel, I had to stop and push my bicycle through the banks of piled-up snow. The Georgian terraces that overlooked Regent Square gardens had been badly bombed and the whole area had an air of desolation. At the Hunter Street dogleg I skidded on several patches of black ice, but with some effort managed to keep the bicycle upright. A minute later I was at the ramp leading to the basement garage of Russell Court, but by then I was chilled through, my legs were shaky and the wound on my head throbbed.

  Bloomsbury station was located in the basement of a large mansion block called Russell Court, about half a mile from my flat. Before the war the place had been filled with young men about town who took advantage of the serviced apartments with meals provided. Now the young men were all in uniform and the building stood nearly empty.