Ambulance Girls Under Fire

by Deborah Burrows

  Then I realised what Lily had said.

  ‘Why did you say, “mope”?’ I asked, putting the cup down. ‘Do you think I’ve been moping?’

  Lily looked at me. ‘You suffered a terrible loss only two months ago. No one could get over David’s loss quickly. Of course you are still unhappy. Last week you were trapped for hours and hours, not knowing if you would live or die. Then you discover that the man who saved you is David’s brother, which must have made it all even worse.’ She leaned across to touch my hand. ‘I think you are sad, Celia. But I know you will find your way back. In your own time.’

  It was as if my mind was blank, and I had no reply. People who don’t know Lily well see her only as a pretty, curly-haired bundle of energy with a lovely smile. They see a small Australian whirlwind who sweeps everything up around her and never seems to relax, but Lily has a core of solid nurturing affection and tough common sense. And she was right, of course.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lily added, ‘I never said you were moping. Just that any tendency in that direction would be prevented by the company of a parrot.’

  Another explosion, this time much nearer, shook the room. Lily smiled at me. Lily’s smile is impossibly infectious and I found myself smiling in return.

  I said, teasingly, ‘Any tendency towards moping…?’

  ‘Will be prevented by the company of a parrot. Everybody knows that. It is a truth universally acknowledged.’

  ‘So you’re allowed to quote, but I’m not,’ said Jim, in an aggrieved tone.

  ‘If you feel well enough, please come with us to Shoreditch tomorrow afternoon,’ said Lily, pointedly ignoring him. ‘Jim has the day off because he worked all weekend. We’re determined to find Bobby.’

  They stayed until the All Clear. As Lily picked up her coat and hat she asked, ‘By the way, who is your doctor?’

  ‘Dr Cameron, in Gower Street. Right now he’s away with the army and his father is looking after the practice for him. Why?’

  ‘You’ll need those stitches out in a couple of days.’

  They left. I made myself a cup of Horlicks and sat on the couch to read Cedric’s letter, which had been marked as passed by the censor. We were at war and all mail was read and censored, but it was galling to know that strangers were allowed to read my pleas to my husband for a divorce and his flippant refusals.

  I tore open the envelope and extracted the two sheets of flimsy blue paper. Darling, great news. I am to be let out of this place…

  So Eddie had been right after all. It was likely that Cedric’s father had had a hand in his release. My father-in-law was a Member of Parliament and a friend of Churchill’s, and he had been campaigning for months to have his son released from prison.

  I carried on reading, scanning Cedric’s thick, left-slanted writing. It was heavily censored, but what remained was sufficient to dash my hopes of freedom. I will never agree to a divorce. Really, darling, you’d hate being a divorcee. The invitations would dry up. Remember, divorcees are not allowed into the Royal Box at Ascot. Much better to keep things as they are.

  Invitations? Royal Box? I wondered if spending time on the Isle of Man had addled his brain. Most of our friends had dropped me cold, and there was no longer any social season worth mentioning.

  You must know I adore you. I tell you, darling, all our dreams may soon come true. Let’s begin again, shall we?

  So Cedric thought that if he told me he loved me and snapped his fingers I’d come running back to him. I shook my head. He was in for a nasty surprise.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When I came downstairs early the following afternoon Jim was waiting with Lily in the lobby. Lily was telling him some story as he gazed at her with the slightly dazed expression he always seemed to exhibit when he was looking at his fiancée.

  Their registry wedding was to take place in a little under three weeks and a Russian Orthodox ceremony would be conducted later, once Lily had finished her conversion. This consisted of lessons once a week with a Russian priest. Lily had told me that the conversion process was hard-going and would take some time. When I asked her if she minded having to convert, she said that as it mattered a great deal to Jim she was happy to do it. I wasn’t sure that I could be so accommodating. The subject had never arisen with David.

  ‘Ready for Operation African Grey?’ said Lily, turning at my greeting.

  I laughed. ‘Operation African Bald, more like.’

  ‘Jim says we shouldn’t offer any money for Bobby as the warden had no right to sell him in the first place, but we’ll see.’

  ‘Him? Are you sure Bobby is a boy?’

  ‘It’s hard to tell the sex on an African Grey,’ said Jim.

  ‘Until it lays an egg?’ I suggested.

  Lily shrugged. ‘Bobby’s a boy. I’m sure of it. Will you teach him any words or phrases?’

  ‘I think parrots pick things up without you even trying.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Lily. ‘I’ll teach him how to sing “Waltzing Matilda” and he’ll liven up your flat with swagmen, billabongs, coolabah trees and jolly jumbucks. A touch of Australia in Bloomsbury.’ She gave a gurgle of laughter at my expression.

  ‘There will be no singing anywhere near my parrot,’ I said, sternly. ‘I mean that.’

  Jim broke in. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to visit the City before we head off to Shoreditch. I want to see what sort of damage the firestorm caused. I know you were in the City on the night it burned, Celia, but I’ve not had a chance to get there yet.’

  ‘The main problem will be finding the right bus,’ said Lily. ‘With all the roads blocked by “No Entry” or “Unexploded Bomb” signs, the 63 bus now curls about in all sorts of back streets. The other day I met one going east and west, got on and ended up heading north when I wanted south. I felt such an fool, but the conductor said it happens all the time nowadays.’

  Despite Lily’s concerns, we managed to catch a southbound bus to Ludgate Circus, and marched up the left side of Ludgate Hill towards St Paul’s under a leaden sky that suggested it would soon be snowing. The streets were filled with people, apparently all as anxious as Jim was to view the fire-ravaged City on this grey day. The mood of the crowd became sombre as we got closer to the cathedral and saw the extent of the damage caused by the firestorm.

  Ancient alleys and courtyards were flattened areas of ash. Buildings were empty shells that had burned from the inside out. Ave Maria Lane was closed, and when we peered down the little crooked street, the fire appeared to have left nothing in its wake. All around was a wasteland of charred ruin, yet ahead of us St Paul’s stood proudly in the centre of the blighted City, serenely beautiful as ever.

  ‘Paternoster Row’s a complete ruin,’ said a warden who was directing a heavy-rescue team. ‘Terrible shame. They say we lost six million books in the flames.’ He sighed, then raised his chin and straightened his shoulders. ‘We must always remember, we’d be much worse off under Hitler.’ His voice strengthened. ‘It’s true, you know. You have to think of that when all of this gets you down.’

  We wandered on among the sightseers. The buildings on the left side of Watling Street were mostly ruins. Jim sighed to see the utter destruction.

  ‘So many Wren churches,’ he muttered.

  I was startled when Lily gave a short laugh.

  ‘Oh, look at this,’ she said, pointing to the window of a little stationer’s shop. All the plate glass of the windows lay in glistening fragments on the shelf behind and the place was in a terrible state with the counter smashed and stock scattered over the floor. A couple of workers were doggedly putting it to rights. In the windowsill, a board with a bit of handwritten doggerel verse had been set up under a Union Jack. It said:

  ‘Hitler dropped a bomb on Hart’s,

  and knocked it all to bits,

  but if he saw us carrying on,

  he’d have blue pencil fits.’

  It was signed ‘Professor Bush’. Next to it another board proclaimed: ‘
We’re open and still going strong’.

  Lily called out ‘Good on you’ to the workers who were cleaning up inside.

  They smiled at her, and one of them said earnestly, ‘None of this matters, so long as we beat him.’

  Hart’s was not the only bombed shop to have a defiantly funny notice in its window, and we managed to laugh despite the devastation.

  ‘We are open for business. Oh, boy, are we open for business’ was in the shattered windows of a haberdashery shop that had had a wall blown out. And around the corner, a fishmonger had put up: ‘Jerry tried to jump the queue and cut up rough when we wouldn’t serve him’. We passed two shops, both practically demolished with their roofs off and no glass in any window. One had a notice up, ‘Open as Usual’, and the one next door had gone one better and put a board up, ‘More Open Than Usual’.

  We continued on our trek, up Bread Street and into Cheapside as the snow began to fall. It was a nightmare scene. Building after building had been reduced to a scarred and blackened shell. It was a relief to see the steeple of St Mary-le-Bow. We walked up to the old church, standing before us on its slight hill. It was black with soot and gouged by shrapnel but rendered picturesque in the falling snow.

  ‘They used to say that you weren’t a true cockney unless you’re born under the sound of the Bow bells,’ said Jim to Lily.

  ‘I know that,’ she replied. ‘Squire told me.

  Jim gazed at the blackened walls and sighed. ‘I wonder if the old church will last the war.’

  ‘If it survived this,’ said Lily, waving at the destruction around us, ‘I’m confident it’ll survive whatever Hitler throws at it.’

  As we continued our walk I watched the crowds milling around. Not one word of anger or fury had I heard, no railing against Hitler or the Luftwaffe. Everyone looked serious, but there was a quiet dignity about the people as they slowly paced through the devastation, as though awed by the magnitude of the loss of the City.

  Jim and Lily turned into a narrow laneway, and I followed them, shuffling through the banked-up snow. On either side were ruined shops and houses.

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked.

  ‘Old Jewry,’ Jim replied. ‘Now the headquarters of the City Police, but London’s Jewish ghetto in medieval times.’

  ‘Really?’ said Lily. ‘David never told me about this street.’

  ‘It’s not a place that has pleasant memories. There was a massacre of Jews here, in the late twelfth century, during the coronation of Richard the Lionheart. I suppose they thought it was a patriotic gesture,’ he added drily.

  ‘Was that when the Jews were expelled from England?’ asked Lily.

  Jim seemed to search his memory. ‘No. That was a century later, in 1290. The Edict of Expulsion.’

  It sounded all too similar to what was happening in Europe under Hitler, where Jews were again being exiled and killed. Looking at the narrow laneway with its charred buildings, I tried to imagine the crowded streets of medieval London. Here in this ruined little street had lived black-gowned men who perhaps looked like David or Simon. They had watched in despair as their homes were destroyed and their people killed. And a century later, they had been forced into exile across the Channel.

  Jim led us out of Old Jewry and into Coleman Street, now a wasteland of ashes and blighted walls, charred rubble and bricks, a tangle of steel girders twisted into tortuous shapes. Ahead of us was a little ruined church. Only its blackened walls remained, still reaching for heaven.

  ‘St Stephen’s,’ said Jim. ‘A Christopher Wren church, built after the last Great Fire. So many of the Wren churches have been destroyed. All of them masterpieces.’

  ‘Will they be rebuilt, d’you think?’ asked Lily.

  ‘God, I hope so,’ said Jim.

  ‘But the City isn’t a residential area any more,’ I pointed out. ‘It doesn’t need a church on every corner. If they’re complete wrecks, shouldn’t the sites be sold to help the City repair the churches that are less damaged?’

  ‘No,’ said Jim firmly, ever the traditionalist.

  Eventually we reached our destination, the devastated Guildhall. The richly decorated council chamber had been burnt out. The giant figures of Gog and Magog – London’s ancient guardians – were no more. The roof had been blasted open and the painted ceilings destroyed. The building was roped off and men were working hard to secure the ruins. Someone had hoisted the Union Jack but there was no wind and the flag drooped disconsolately. Snow began to fall again, deadening the sound of machinery and men, carpeting the scene of desolation in an austere white beauty.

  Jim gestured towards the shell of yet another old church that stood next to Guildhall.

  ‘St Lawrence Jewry. An incendiary took hold there on the night of the bombing, the fire spread to Guildhall and this is the result.’

  I looked at the ruined church. St Lawrence Jewry. Old Jewry Street. Even after seven hundred years, the memory of the medieval Jewish ghetto still lingered in the names. Amongst this charred destruction were the ghosts and shadows of David’s people. I had a sudden image of his brother’s thin face with its dark intensity. They were Simon’s people, too. And what happened to them in this place seven hundred years ago was only a pale shadow of what was happening right now, just across the Channel.

  ‘There should have been more fire-watchers,’ said Jim. His face was flushed and angry. ‘The City was criminally understaffed with fire-watchers. That’s why the incendiaries took hold.’

  ‘At least they saved St Paul’s,’ said Lily.

  ‘If I hear that one more time, I swear I’ll do something violent,’ he said. ‘Look around you. Look at what’s been lost. Most of Fleet Street. The Temple northwards and eastwards beyond Fountain Court is gone. Charles Dickens would weep to see it.’

  I thought of the Temple Church, where the effigies of the Crusaders lay with their crossed legs, and also felt like weeping.

  ‘It’ll be rebuilt.’ Lily took hold of his arm. ‘This is beyond the worst I could have imagined. But I refuse to cry, because it will be rebuilt.’

  Jim took a deep breath. ‘You keep saying that, Lily. But it won’t be the same.’

  I cleared my throat, unsure if I should speak. Jim knew a great deal more than I did about London’s history, but it was a story that David had told me, and it had given me hope on a night when we clung to each other as the bombers came in low and the scream and thunder of their falling cargo seemed to tear apart the air.

  ‘After the first Great Fire,’ I said, ‘when Sir Christopher Wren was laying out the centre of the new cathedral—’

  I saw Jim’s expression soften and he smiled. He obviously knew the story, but I didn’t think that Lily did, so I went on.

  ‘—he asked for a stone to mark the centre of the dome, as a guide for the workmen. Someone brought him a piece of old tombstone they had picked up at random from a heap of rubble in the ruins of the old cathedral. And when Wren looked at it he found that it was engraved with the Latin inscription “resurgam”, which means “I shall rise again”. So he placed the stone in the new cathedral, beneath a carved phoenix. I suppose it’s still there.’

  Lily’s smile lit up that gloomy day as she turned to Jim. ‘See,’ she said.

  ‘See what? It changes nothing.’ But he smiled at her in return, reached out and touched her hair.

  It seemed clear that they had forgotten that anyone else existed, so I turned and walked a little distance, leaving them alone while I watched the heavy-rescue crew secure the ruins of the once-beautiful Guildhall. And as I mourned the City’s destruction in my own way, I felt cheered to remember Maisie’s bit of doggerel:

  ‘But try as they might they’ll never break her

  Just like before, we will remake her.’

  ‘Resurgam,’ I said, and the word slipped away into the wind.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A short while later Lily, Jim and I were on a red London bus trundling through the snow along Bishopsgate toward
s Shoreditch. As I watched the scarred face of London pass by the window I remembered my conversation with Simon when I was trapped and reflected that London buses were somehow comfortingly human. Perhaps it was their sheer normality amid the chaos.

  Then a blue bus passed us and reminded me that nothing in wartime London was normal. Emergency bus services were used to ferry passengers whenever a railway line was incapacitated. As a result, London’s fleet of buses was over-stretched and buses were being brought into London from all over the country. I watched it drive away and wondered where the blue bus had come from.

  We got off at Bethnal Green Road and walked along Club Row towards Arnold Circus, looking for the birdseller who might have poor Bobby. I had come to the live animal market in Club Row with my godmother as a treat one Sunday morning when I was ten years old and visiting her in London, and I had looked in wonderment at the caged life before me. There had been birds of all kinds, cats and puppies and more exotic beasts in cages outside the shops. The vendors’ cries matched those of their wares, as they called and cawed and bellowed in the frosty air. One fellow in a striped waistcoat and a spotted handkerchief knotted around his sinewy neck had jumped in front of us and thrust a kitten into my face. ‘Kitten for the pretty little girl?’ he asked my godmother, before grinning at me. ‘I’ll have to call you Penny, luv. Coz your hair’s the colour of a new copper penny.’

  I had longed to take the small bundle of squirming black-and-white fur from him, but my godmother batted away his hands. ‘Oh, no,’ she had said, in her regal manner, ‘that will simply not do.’

  Now I walked through a shadow of the busy market I remembered. The air did not ring with shrieks and calls and barking and mewing and the shouts of cockney vendors. Some cages lined the roadside as before, but their few occupants sat miserably huddled on perches, obviously cold and dispirited. I saw lorikeets and budgerigars and poultry and pigeons, but no parrots. It was all much more subdued than I remembered and more than a little sad.