Ambulance Girls At War

by Deborah Burrows

  The people who pushed past me tonight would tomorrow plod to work through streets strewn with broken glass. They’d hear the mournful thud of army engineers’ demolition charges, as dangerously teetering structures were levelled. They would pass by what remained of ancient buildings that had withstood the last Great Fire in 1666, buildings that were now reduced to rubble by German high-explosive bombs, or burned to ashes in incendiary attacks or destroyed by our own engineers.

  Perhaps they’d ponder how much London was changing before their eyes. Did it sadden them or anger them that so much of the city of their childhood was now gone? How would I would feel, I wondered, if I were to return to Sheffield after all this time and see a pile of broken bricks where the Marples Hotel – that grand landmark of my childhood – had stood in Fitzalan Square. I’d heard that it had been utterly destroyed in the Sheffield Blitz of the twelfth of December.

  More important than buildings, though, were Londoners themselves. Familiar faces would be missing at bus stops tomorrow and there would be vacant chairs at workplaces. Every time you said goodbye to a friend or colleague you had to accept the possibility that it might be the last time you saw them. I remembered how the girls had teased me about my non-existent love life and gave a small, grim smile. It would be a mug’s game indeed to fall in love in a time of such uncertainty.

  Shaking off such morbid thoughts I continued along Coventry Street. Above me the sky was tremulous with the glow of fires. The footpath was much less crowded than when I had gone to the cinema, which was not surprising, but a fair number of people had emerged from shelters on to the streets.

  As it was some time yet until the eleven o’clock lockout at the club, I thought I’d go to the Lyon’s Corner House for a cup of tea and a treat. It was next to the Rialto Cinema and the entrance to the glittering Café de Paris nightclub, not more than a few minutes’ walk away. I knew that Corner House well. It was where my mother had worked after we came to London. I think Mam had enjoyed working as a Nippy, or at least she had told me that it was a pleasant change from the steel factory in Sheffield. The Corner House had been bombed back in October, but it had opened again two weeks ago and I wanted to see how it was doing.

  The street was strewn with the usual after-air-raid mess. I stepped across bits of barrage balloons and shrapnel and dodged the piles of sand that had sprung up like molehills all over the footpath and on the road. Under each pile was a smothered incendiary bomb. The sand had been taken from the sandbags that surrounded nearly every lamp-post. Not all fires had been successfully extinguished, because somewhere not far away, an inferno was raging. Firelight coloured the scene in flickering shades ranging from pink to blood red, and the light wind was bitter with the smell of burning.

  I was about to enter the Corner House when I heard my name being called. I turned to find myself facing Ellie Kavanagh and two tall men in Canadian army uniform. One was Ellie’s current boyfriend, Raymond Abbot. I didn’t know the other. Ellie took my arm.

  ‘Come with us to the Café de Paris,’ she said, sounding light-hearted and more than a little tipsy. ‘Cameron has been stood up and we need another girl or he’ll be a third wheel. Do say you’ll join us.’

  I glanced down at my outfit: old raincoat, woollen slacks, cream pullover and tweed jacket, with sensible brogues on my feet. Ellie was wearing a rose-coloured evening gown under a white coat.

  ‘I’m not dressed for a nightclub,’ I said, brushing my slacks.

  ‘Oh, they’ll put us in the balcony. They always put the ones who’re not in evening dress in the balcony,’ said Raymond.

  ‘Do say you’ll come,’ said Ellie. She looked around and seemed to take in the fires and smell of smoke. ‘Oh, come on, Maisie. It’ll be safer in the Café de Paris than the Corner House. Everyone knows it’s the safest place in town.’

  She had a point. The Café de Paris was twenty feet below ground and its manager promoted it as ‘the safest and gayest restaurant in town’. Going there with Ellie and two Canadians would be a lot more fun than sitting in the Corner House alone. And quite a bit safer.

  His companion gave me a smile. ‘I’m Cameron Martin, the one who’s been stood up so shamefully. It’d be swell if you could join us and turn my evening of misery into joy.’ I thought he was laying it on a bit thick, but he had a nice smile.

  Raymond said, ‘Yes, please do, Maisie.’

  As I dithered, the Warning sounded again. More raiders were coming over. I took it as a sign.

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said.

  Cameron took my arm and the four of us walked past the garish façade of the Rialto Cinema to the nondescript doorway that led into the Café de Paris. Cameron held back the long blackout curtain and I entered the nightclub. To the left, just off the entrance at ground level were the cloakrooms. Ellie and I retired to leave our coats and fix our make-up.

  ‘I have no idea why I’m here,’ I said, as we sat in front of a couple of long mirrors. I pulled out my pins, shook my long hair free before pulling my comb through it and re-pinning it into a chignon.

  ‘You do that so easily,’ said Ellie, obviously impressed.

  ‘You get used to quick changes in the chorus line.’

  She patted her own elaborate pin-curl creation, reached into her handbag and took out a lipstick and compact. ‘You’re here because Cameron Martin is nice-looking and eligible. And this is certainly a fabulous place. Did you see the furs hanging in the cloakroom?’

  ‘I’m also here because it’s a safe place in an air raid.’ I looked at myself critically. ‘Could I borrow your lipstick?’

  ‘What’s mine is yours,’ she said, handing it over. ‘Except Raymond. I think I’ll keep him.’ She smiled. ‘I mean that. I really do think I’ll keep him.’

  I applied her lipstick, which was a bit too orange for my complexion, but would do. Ellie took it back, touched up her own lipstick and dabbed her nose with powder. We joined the men, and descended into a scene of hectic gaiety with champagne, bright lights and raucous dance music.

  The Café de Paris was on three levels. A flight of stairs led down from the entrance at ground level, where the cloakroom was, to a wide semi-circular balcony set up with tables and a cocktail bar. The dance floor and main restaurant area were on the floor below that, and were reached from the balcony by a broad staircase that divided and curved in two gold and crimson arms to wrap around a small stage where the band played. In front of the stage was the dance floor and past that were rows of tables.

  Ellie and I joined the men at a table on the balcony. As the others chatted I snuck a look at Raymond’s menu and gasped. Caviar at 8s 6d, oysters at 10s a dozen, steaks at 4s 6d, grouse at 10s 6d or a full-length dinner beginning with iced melon, and continuing with sole, chicken and peche melba for 15s 6d. The top price for vintage champagne was 30s a bottle. The best cigars cost 3s 6d.

  I earned £2 3s a week. I hoped that the Canadians were well paid or well heeled. Cameron answered my unuttered question, by telling the waiter, ‘We’ll start with two dozen oysters and a bottle of champagne.’

  I looked up at the glittering ceiling, then down at the dance floor. It heaved with officers in uniform, dancing with women who were dressed in beautiful evening gowns or were also in uniform. I was pleased to see that, as was becoming more common, more than a few of the women wore day clothes, even slacks. So a dance or two with Cameron was on the cards. My spirits rose. It had been a while since I’d been out dancing with a handsome young man.

  The music stopped and the dance floor emptied in anticipation of the floor show. The band leader raised his baton and a drum roll sounded. The saxophone’s smooth notes were the signal for a troupe of twelve chorus girls to glide on to the small stage in a shimmy of long tanned legs under a fringe of gold lamé. They weren’t bad, but two or three were out of time and my kicks were higher. They left the stage to rapturous applause.

  ‘Gorgeous girls,’ said Cameron.

  ‘The bandleader’s Snakehips Johnson,
’ said Raymond.

  ‘Isn’t he marvellous,’ said Ellie.

  Our oysters arrived and the champagne. We toasted each other and the oysters slipped down my throat like silk. I was beginning to feel fizzy, light as the champagne.

  ‘Dance?’ Cameron was looking at me.

  I smiled. ‘Love to.’

  The saxophone sobbed over occasional flares of trumpet, the piano tinkled out the tune and the drums kept the rhythm. We seemed to glide around the dance floor.

  ‘You’re a wonderful dancer, Maisie,’ said Cameron, who was holding me a little too close. ‘Isn’t this place merry and bright? It’s as if there’s no war on at all.’

  The famed Café de Paris reminded me of a stage set of an opulent hotel, or photos I’d seen of one of those glorious transatlantic liners that took passengers to America before the war. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors covered the walls, reflecting images of luxury and fleeting gaiety. The music rose up to the glittering chandeliers and as Cameron whirled me around I let myself get carried away by the glamour.

  We returned to the balcony for more champagne as the chorus kicked their way through another floor show, bare legs swinging and hips gyrating. Cameron couldn’t keep his eyes off them. He was handsome and polite, but I thought him a little boring.

  ‘Do you like Charles Dickens?’ I asked.

  He put his head on one side. ‘I had to study him at school. Not much. You?’

  ‘I’ve only read A Tale of Two Cities, but I loved that.’

  ‘I liked Ronald Colman in the movie,’ he said. I nodded.

  Above us the planes droned on, their noise not quite drowned out by the band. I looked around at the glittering gaiety and thought it was rather like Dickens had written, this was the best of times and the worst of times. I tried to remember the rest. An age of wisdom and foolishness, of belief and incredulity, a season of light and of darkness. The spring of hope and the winter of despair.

  The chorus girls shimmied off. Snakehips Johnson took the floor, and raised his baton to begin another tune. Raymond asked Ellie for a dance and they descended the staircase to join the milling crowd below.

  Cameron downed his champagne and looked at me. ‘Care to dance?’

  I smiled assent. We walked together towards the elegant steps that led down to the dance floor, and had just reached them when I realised I’d left my handbag at the table. I was too canny to leave it unattended in a crowded place. ‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘I forgot my bag.’ I dashed back to our table.

  And then the world exploded.

  My grandfather was a lay preacher at the Hill of Zion non-conformist chapel in Sheffield, and when I was living with my grandparents Granddad had often practised his fire and brimstone sermons on me. That meant I grew up with an intimate knowledge of the fiery pit of hell. Granddad described it in great detail: how destruction would come like a whirlwind and sinners would be swept away like the chaff of the summer threshing floor into the fiery pit. He was a rousing preacher, my granddad, and when I began to drive ambulances it seemed that his descriptions of the horror had anticipated the Blitz.

  Not one of Granddad’s sermons came close to what I saw that night in the Café de Paris, after the bomb exploded.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  There was a rush of air and the lights went out. The floor rocked beneath me. I fell to my knees. A deafening roar was followed by cascading crashes. In the utter darkness a deathly silence descended on the nightclub. The smell of cordite was choking.

  A woman began to scream.

  ‘Shut up,’ someone yelled, but the silence had been breached. More screams, shouts and moans floated up into the darkness from the floor below. I heard names, supplications to God, desperate entreaties for help. On the balcony was a murmur of movement. I coughed in the dusty air, wiped my moist hands on my slacks and ran my tongue over dry lips.

  All around was black as coal and I felt disorientated, unable to think clearly. I needed light. My torch. It was in my handbag and that was by my chair. I crawled over to where I thought it was, groped and fumbled on the floor until I located it. I snapped it open and felt around until I found the torch and switched it on.

  The air was thick with dust and smoke, but when I shone the thin beam of light around it was clear that the balcony itself was freakishly untouched by the explosion. Most of the chairs were upright. Glasses and bottles of champagne stood on tables, a testament to the jollity before the bomb hit. The mirrors behind the cocktail bar were cracked but the rows of bottles stood, still stacked neatly. Broken glass littered the floor, and part of the ceiling was hanging down, otherwise the damage was light.

  People were walking across the balcony in a silent throng, feeling their way, heading for the stairway that led to the street. All those who could walk, with or without assistance, were seeking an escape from the nightclub.

  I shone my torch upward. It revealed a jagged hole above the dance floor, from which I surmised that the glittering ceiling had collapsed, missing the balcony almost completely, but crashing to the floor below and undoubtedly causing havoc when it landed. The room downstairs had been lined with mirrors and I knew all too well how an explosion turned shards of flying glass into sharp, deadly bullets. Many of the people downstairs would have been terribly injured by blast and flying glass and the fallen ceiling.

  I turned my torch on to the divided semi-circular staircase that wrapped around the stage. The left side, where Cameron had been standing, had fallen into a pile of rubble on the floor below.

  The right side of the staircase was intact and it thrummed with survivors, nearly all blast-blackened and bloodied, with their clothes in tatters. There was no panic, but they moved as quickly as injuries and shock allowed, a grim cavalcade ascending from the horror below, stumbling across the balcony and heading for the stairway to the street. Wounded leaned on others for support; some men carried the injured. When my torch lit their faces, their eyes seemed dead, which I put down to shock.

  One man staggered into my torchlight, bent under the weight of a bloodied young women in a tattered evening gown. He seemed familiar, and I realised it was Raymond with Ellie, unconscious in his arms. He was taking her up to safety. I knew I should be happy that they had survived, but my ears were ringing from the explosion and I felt numb.

  I crawled to the railing and shone my torch over the balcony on to the floor below, looking for Cameron among the wreckage although I thought it unlikely he had survived the fall. My torchlight cut through the pall of smoke and dust to reveal a macabre vista of mangled corpses and debris, a horror worse than anything I’d been exposed to in six months of driving an ambulance in the Blitz.

  I found out later that the bomb came in through a skylight in the roof. It bounced off the side of the balcony, taking out the left arm of the stairs, and crushing Cameron, who was standing there. Then it exploded on the stage. Those closest to the detonation were killed outright, including Snakehips Johnson and most of his musicians. The dance floor in front of the band had been thick with couples. Many of those dancing had been killed by the blast, and also some who were sitting at the coveted tables close to the dance floor. Others had been struck by bomb debris – bits of the stage, musical instruments, broken tables, bottles, glasses and cutlery. As I had suspected, the massive mirrors that had lined the walls spat out lethal shards of glass when they shattered under the force of the blast. Appalling injuries were also caused by the ceiling when it collapsed.

  The numb feeling began to dissipate as I knelt by the balcony railing and looked down on the shattered restaurant floor. It seemed that no ambulances or rescue crews had arrived yet. I knew first aid. Perhaps I could help. One thing they drill into you in the Ambulance Service is that speed is of the utmost importance in treating the injured. The people downstairs would need all the help they could get. And right away!

  My hands shook and my heart thumped wildly, but I pulled back my shoulders, raised my chin and took a deep breath. It was a mistake – the air was
very dusty and smoky. When I’d finished coughing, I whispered into the darkness: ‘I’m ready for anything.’

  I stumbled down what remained of the grand staircase, following the slim beam of my torch and pushing past survivors who were staggering upwards. They were blast-blackened and bloody, their hair white with plaster dust. Beautiful dresses were in ribbons. Some were almost naked, as the blast had stripped off their clothes.

  At last I reached the main restaurant area. Little lights hovered about in the darkness as others besides me searched for the living and wounded, using torches, cigarette lighters, matches, whatever would give light. The pitiable groans and shouts had increased in volume and seemed to be coming from all over the room.

  I took a few breaths to steady my nerves and clambered over a pile of rubble, probably the fallen ceiling. Then I lurched across the littered floor following the will-o’-the-wisp of my bobbing torchlight.

  Close to what had been the dance floor I came upon a table of four, two men in the uniform of Canadian officers and two women in evening gowns. A bottle of champagne stood upright on the table in front of them, untouched. They were sitting quite naturally, as if just about to eat, or talk, or smile. They were all dead. Blast does that. It’s entirely unpredictable. Sometimes it explodes lungs and doesn’t leave a mark on the corpse.

  When I have nightmares about the bombing of the Café de Paris, it is that table of the dead that wakes me in fright. Those two handsome young officers and their lovely girls so beautifully dressed. Those four corpses watching each other with dead eyes across the bottle of champagne.

  My mouth became very dry. I tried to swallow, but it was as if a lump of coal was in my throat. Nothing could have prepared me for this. My torchlight jerked up and down and the scene shattered and dissolved. I was confused until I realised my hand was shaking violently and tears had flooded my eyes. I started as someone touched my shoulder.