Ambulance Girls At War

by Deborah Burrows

  ‘Yes?’ said Michael. ‘And?’

  I gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘And not at all interested in girls. Tito and I got on well and we danced together beautifully.’

  Michael paused to pass his hand across his forehead, then went back to the infinite tedium of cutting around each tile and pushing it through.

  ‘You were, what, seventeen then?’

  ‘Almost eighteen. I went there in March thirty-nine. Tito was such a dramatic man. If he misplaced a cufflink it was the end of the world. And his hair was always a bit too well oiled.’ I gave a soft laugh. ‘You smell of spice and cedar, and he always smelled of violets.’

  ‘Spice and cedar?’ There was amusement in his tone.

  ‘Your raincoat. I’m still wearing it, remember.’

  ‘Glad you approve.’

  Michael paused to wipe his hand over his eyes and roll his shoulders into a stretch. When he returned to the task, hacking at the tiles I felt a wash of some strong emotion, and I didn’t want to lie to him any more.

  ‘I lied to you, when I told you about my father,’ I said. ‘The truth is, I was born illegitimate. That’s one of the reasons why I hide my background.’

  Immediately I regretted telling him. I wasn’t sure why I had felt such a strong need to share such a personal thing with him. Illegitimacy was such a stigma that I had found that people treated me differently once they knew, dismissed me as one of society’s dregs.

  Michael kept tapping at the tiles. ‘Did your father not hang around, or was it something else?’

  ‘Mam never told me anything about him. I think he was married.’

  ‘You look like him?’

  I shrugged. ‘Probably. I certainly don’t look like my mother.’

  On the night of my mother’s death I had gazed at my reflection for what seemed like hours, trying to see my mother in my face. Possibly something in the way I held my head, perhaps. Something in my smile? But my dark eyes were nothing like my mother’s soft blue and her hair had been a soft brown, not black like mine, with its blue sheen like a raven’s wing.

  I had gazed at myself in utter misery that night, until I realised that it didn’t matter. So what if I didn’t look like my mother if I had inherited her firm common sense, her easy laughter and her hatred of cruelty? I was my mother’s daughter and that was enough.

  ‘How old was your mom when you were born?’ he asked.

  ‘Nineteen.’ The age I was now.

  He paused in his task for a moment. ‘Handsome man, young girl,’ he said. ‘Sad story, and all too common. Nowadays, just as much as then. You stay smart. Wait for the ring on your finger.’

  ‘It’s none of your business, Granddad.’ I gave him a cheeky smile that he couldn’t see. ‘You sound like my mother. She made me promise …’

  The scene was clearly fixed in my mind. It was just before I left London for my first grown-up chorus job in the provinces. ‘Don’t make my mistake, Maisie,’ she had told me. ‘Men can be persuasive, but they’re not the ones who are left with the consequences. I love you dearly, but it’s been difficult for me, rearing a child without a father, and difficult for you also, through no fault of your own. Be sensible, love. Please wait for marriage. Promise me.’ I had given her that promise.

  ‘What did she make you promise,’ said Michael, wiping his hand across his eyes again.

  ‘Never you mind,’ I said. ‘Anyway, there’s plenty of time to find the right man.’

  Michael laughed. ‘Sure there is, kid. I’m nearly done here. When did you come home to England from the Riviera?’

  ‘I came back home toute suite, as they say in France, once war was declared. When your country is at war you want to be among your own people.’

  ‘They’re good people, your people,’ said Michael. ‘They impress me.’

  ‘Most of them impress me, too.’ I breathed a laugh. ‘I thought I could easily get a job dancing in London, but when I arrived without a brass farthing in my pocket, I discovered that the government had closed all the theatres. So I was a skint chorus girl in a town without any theatres.’

  ‘Tough.’

  ‘I’d learned to drive in France, I’m not afraid of blood or hard work and I wanted to stay in London. Ambulance work seemed just the ticket.’

  Michael gave a short laugh. ‘Sure. Just the ticket.’

  ‘I’ve never been sorry I chose it,’ I said, a trifle defensively. ‘Not even when the theatres reopened and dancers were in work again. Not even when the Blitz began. Especially when the Blitz began.’

  ‘That’s it!’ The hole he’d made loomed in front of him.

  ‘Can you fit inside?’ I asked.

  He eased his slim body through the narrow opening and shone his torch into the darkness beyond.

  ‘It’s a mess in here,’ he said.

  I shone my own torch inside. It picked out Michael and beyond him a tangled mass of wreckage. There was no obvious way through.

  Another faint cry for help came from deep inside.

  ‘We’re coming,’ Michael shouted. ‘As soon as we can.’

  ‘What will you do?’ I asked.

  Michael took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. ‘Use my hands.’

  ‘You can’t,’ I said.

  He ignored me. ‘Maisie, I’d like you to look around and find me some planks of wood, say two feet long. Or anything else I can use to shore up the sides of the passage I’m going to make.’

  I ran around on the bomb site, picking up likely pieces of wood. When I returned, only Michael’s feet were visible. The rest of him was in a hole he had made, by lying on his back and pushing aside bricks and plaster and other debris with his bare hands.

  ‘I’m back,’ I called.

  He eased himself out and lay there, looking up at me. ‘Got anything?’

  I showed him my finds and he grunted. ‘I’ll need more.’

  He took what I had brought and, using his elbows and feet, wriggled backwards into the hole.

  I went out to find more planks. When I came back, his feet had disappeared. I wriggled in after him, using my elbows and feet as Michael had, but on my front. By the time I reached him my knees were burning and my stockings were a tattered ruin. I refused to think of the state of my best suit and best shoes. There was a strong smell of rotten cabbages in the air and Michael was coughing.

  ‘Gas,’ he said on a gasp. ‘Where’s your handkerchief?’

  ‘I put it back in my bag.’ I wriggled out in a panic, ignoring my grazed knees, pushed through the hole and searched for my handbag. I reached in and as I did so I brushed the compact.

  The negatives. They were the reason Michael was still with me, the reason we had come across this disaster. If he managed to save these people, was it somehow because of my stubbornness? I shook my head to clear it. Don’t be silly, Maisie.

  I pulled out my hankie, wet it in the gushing water pipe and wrung it out. Then I shuffled down the tunnel on my stomach. Michael had used the wood I brought him to prop up the unstable sides of the makeshift tunnel. I hoped it was enough to prevent the entire mess of bombed house from falling in and crushing him and the people he was trying to save.

  The sides seemed to push in on me. The rotten cabbage smell of gas was heavy in the air and it seemed a long time before my torchlight made out the soles of his feet. He was still wriggling forwards, lying on his back and pushing aside debris as he did so. Working like a madman.

  ‘I wet it, but it’s not very big,’ I said.

  ‘It’ll have to do.’ His reply finished on a cough. ‘Now I remember why I vowed never to go down a mine again.’ He raised his voice and shouted, ‘Keep calling out, man. I need to locate you.’ He took the wet handkerchief and put it over his nose and mouth.

  ‘We’re here,’ came the reply, out of the darkness ahead. It seemed closer.

  I shone my torch on to Michael’s hands. They were all over blood. The smell of gas was stronger. Saliva poured into my mouth and I gagged. The rotte
n cabbage fumes filled my nostrils, crept into my brain so that my head began to swim. It now seemed blindingly obvious that it was not living bomb victims who waited ahead of us, but we were following the voice of a ghost. Like a marsh light, it was drawing us on to be smothered by gas or crushed by collapsing debris. I shook my head to clear away the fantasy.

  ‘No good both of us being overcome by gas,’ said Michael. ‘You get out. Try to find some help. I’m not sure I can manage this by myself.’

  I shook my head again and spoke with a semblance of briskness, trying to sound reasonable. ‘I’m not leaving you alone in here.’

  ‘I can’t turn around.’ He sounded annoyed, fed up. ‘Get out, Maisie. If you don’t go now I swear I’ll kick you. I’ll feel a lot better if I know you’re safe.’

  It was a voice of command and it cut through the fog in my brain. I obeyed without further argument, shuffling backwards on my burning knees and elbows. At last I pushed through the hole in the tiles to suck in fresh if smoke-tainted London air. The night was dark, and in the distance were ambulance and fire engine bells.

  After three deep breaths I felt somewhat better. The dog was still tied up near the entrance, still whimpering. I patted the creature.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Oh, God, please don’t let him die. I don’t know what I’d do if he died.’

  I took another deep breath, let it out, and set about trying to find more wood to take back to Michael, to shore up the death trap he was digging for himself. The moon was down now, and I could see little, even by torchlight.

  How could I get help? I had no idea where to go. Annoyed, I tore off the paper that was masking my torch. The beam strengthened. I ran it over the ground around me, on to the road, to work out where I should go.

  A harsh voice cut through the distant wail of fire engines and ambulance bells. ‘Put that perishing light out.’

  The shock of it made me gasp. I swung my torch around and it flashed on a white helmet. ARP was printed on the front.

  ‘Put the light out,’ he barked. ‘Now, I tell you. You might try to realise that there’s a war on.’

  ‘Not bad, for a Yank,’ had been the general consensus of the heavy rescue workers who arrived soon after. ‘Doing our job for us. We owe you a pint, mate.’

  After we’d seen the man and his injured wife hauled to safety through the tunnel that Michael had dug with his bare hands, the crew gave us a lift back to the Bloomsbury Ambulance Station in their van. There was talk of recommending Michael for a medal. He’d dismissed such talk angrily.

  The van drove away. Michael and I stood quietly together by the entrance to the ambulance station and watched an ambulance from the previous day’s shift roll slowly down the ramp. Michael’s face was indistinct in the pre-dawn light but his slumped posture showed just how weary he was.

  ‘You drive one of those things?’ he asked, nodding at the ambulance.

  ‘I do. They’re monsters. You need to double de-clutch and there’s no suspension to speak of. But they keep on going, no matter what we do to them.’

  ‘Like their drivers,’ he said, with a jaw-cracking yawn. ‘You did good tonight, kid. But now you need some sleep. Go inside and get some, what did you call it, kip?’

  ‘What about you? I’m sure they’d find you a bunk if I told them what you’d—’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll grab a cab, or the underground will be running in a little while.’ He looked down and laughed. ‘I doubt a cab would pick me up. I’m filthy. I’ll take the Tube.’

  I flashed my torch on his hands. They were still bleeding; blood had painted the bandages that the first aid team had wrapped around them. He smiled. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he repeated. ‘How’re you doing?’

  First Aid had bandaged my grazed knees, but they hurt. I shrugged. ‘I’m fine. Sad about the ruined stockings, though. My last silk pair.’

  We were silent for a space, standing together in the cool, early morning air. It was tinged with brick dust, but the light breeze seemed also to bring the scent of spring. Spring was supposed to bring hope, wasn’t it?

  ‘Do you think Hitler will end the Blitz before summer?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe. I think he’s beginning to realise that London’s not about to curl up and play dead dog because his bombers drop their big stuff.’

  It was something to hope for, anyway. We so badly needed something to hope for. Again there was silence.

  I shrugged off his raincoat and held it out to him. ‘You’ll need to find another belt. It went off with the dog.’

  He took the raincoat and put it on.

  ‘Your pretty suit is just about ruined,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you hated this suit.’

  He breathed a laugh. ‘If you think that then you’re far too naive to be wearing it.’

  ‘What’s all this about, Michael? I think I deserve to know something about it.’

  He stared at me, and I held his gaze until he gave me his quirky half-smile.

  ‘I don’t know for certain,’ he said, ‘But I’m pretty sure that they’re photographs of correspondence between the president and your prime minister, discussing how he can get around the US Neutrality Acts to give help to Britain. Politically embarrassing for Roosevelt, maybe even grounds for impeachment. Roosevelt’s your best friend in America. You really don’t want him out of office.’

  No wonder Michael wanted it back.

  ‘What was Mr Egan doing with it?’

  ‘He wanted America to stay right out of the European war. I think he was going to give the microfilm to someone who would use it against Roosevelt.’

  I nibbled at my lip. ‘What should I do, Michael?’

  ‘Give me the negatives. Or destroy them.’

  And all of a sudden, I knew what to do. The answer was there, standing in front of me, utterly exhausted after risking his life to save two people he had never met, who had been injured in a war that wasn’t his. I reached into my handbag and pulled out my compact, removed the little package and held it out to him.

  ‘You had them with you all this time?’ He gave a short laugh and took it from me, slipping it into his pocket almost as if it meant nothing at all to him.

  ‘Thanks, kid,’ he said. ‘Now you get some sleep.’

  He hesitated, then leaned across to kiss my cheek. His lips were dry and soft on my skin. ‘You’re one hell of a gal, Maisie Halliday.’

  ‘You’d better go straight home to your wife, Michael,’ I said. ‘She must be worried.’

  He began to walk towards Russell Square. Without bothering to turn around he raised his hand in a lazy sort of wave and disappeared into the early morning fog.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I stumbled into the station like a sleepwalker. McIver took one look at me and asked, ‘Another night out on the town? You’ll soon have no clothes left.’ She glanced down at my bandaged knees. ‘What happened?’

  ‘A couple were trapped in a bombed house. I assisted a little.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve magically conjured a spare set of clothes?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Och, use Ashwin’s again. She told me that you could use her spare clothes any time you wanted. And her pyjamas. But if you intend making a habit of this you’d best keep some of your own here. You’re a mite taller than Ashwin.’ She glanced down. ‘You’ll need some shoes. Lord only knows how you walk in those heels. Ashwin has a spare pair of brogues and I’ll put them out for you. I hope they’re your size.’

  I washed, pulled on Ashwin’s pyjamas and crawled into a bunk. I was exhausted, but too wound up to sleep and always in my mind was Michael’s face as he grimly tried to tunnel through to the trapped couple. This became a dream of him tumbling with me through bomb debris, buffeted by bricks and household items and wooden beams. Then Michael disappeared and I somehow knew that he had been rescued by his wife, leaving me to face the tempest alone. I was toppling headlong into the abyss, struck and jostle
d and shoved to and fro until I was sufficiently awake enough to realise that someone was saying my name. I opened bleary eyes to see Moray standing over me. He had hold of my shoulder and was shaking me.

  ‘Sorry, Halliday,’ he said. ‘It’s noon. I know you didn’t get to sleep until after seven, but there are some men here who want to speak to you urgently.’

  I sat up, clutching the blanket with one hand and rubbing my eyes with the other. ‘What men?’

  ‘From the American Embassy. The say it’s urgent. I told them you were sleeping but they insisted.’

  All at once I was wide awake. ‘Is one of them called Michael Harker?’

  Moray shook his head. ‘No. Their names are Lowell and Casey.’

  Once Moray had left I dressed quickly. I covered Celia’s straining blouse with her spare pullover. Her shoes were a little small, but nothing to worry about, although I sighed again at the sight of my ankles under the hem of her too-short trousers. I looked ridiculous. I put a hand to my head and felt the matted mass of my hair. In desperation I ducked into the washroom, and was pulled up short by the sight of myself in the mirror. Heavy and sleep-crusted eyes, flushed face and bird’s nest hair.

  Mr Lowell and Mr Casey could just wait while I made myself presentable, I decided. So I took my time to properly wash my face and comb my hair into a smooth chignon. One more glance in the mirror and I entered the common room. Only Celia, Purvis and Harris were there.

  I checked the big board on the wall first, noting that I’d been chalked up as attending Celia, who would be driving.

  ‘Where are the others,’ I asked.

  Celia looked up from the book she was reading. ‘Lily is delivering supplies to Middlesex with Squire. Armstrong and Sadler are on a mortuary run and Powell is doing maintenance on her vehicle. Moray wants to see you.’

  ‘I know.’

  I knocked on the office door and entered. Two strangers were in the room. One was a toughly built man with a quite terrifyingly short blond haircut and a bullish face. The other was younger, suave and well-groomed with a muscular physique. His dark blond hair was slick with oil and crisply parted at the side. Grey-green eyes and an air of brusque efficiency allied to self-satisfaction completed the picture. He was attractive enough, but he had a knowing air that I found off-putting.