Ambulance Girls

by Deborah Burrows

  ‘Well, why isn’t he with them?’ said Fripp.

  I forced myself to reply calmly, as though I were talking to a misbehaving child. ‘Levy tried to join the army but was rejected on medical grounds.’

  ‘I don’t buy the illness story,’ replied Moray. ‘I’ve never seen a healthier looking specimen. Don’t be naive, Brennan. Levy took this job to avoid military service.’

  ‘That’s a damn lie.’ I was no longer calm; my whole body thrummed with anger. ‘You know it’s not true.’ I looked around at the smug faces.

  Knaggs began to hum the tune to ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, clearly referring to the version played by Charlie and his Orchestra in the German propaganda broadcasts each Wednesday and Saturday. I had often thought the government would be horrified to know just how many of us listened to those broadcasts. Yes, we did so in order to laugh at Lord Haw-Haw, but mainly to listen to better music than was played by the BBC.

  But the Germans also used the broadcasts to spread their anti-Jewish propaganda, and often played a song the English fascists apparently sang in the 1930s to the tune of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. The song referred disparagingly to wealthy and influential English Jews but the words were generally anti-Semitic, nasty and slanderous.

  As Knaggs hummed, everyone in that room now seemed to be watching me. Sadler was grinning, Fripp had a small, guarded smile and even Harris had ceased knitting and was regarding me with an unblinking gaze that was somehow intimidating. I felt trapped, surrounded by enemies who had judged me and found me wanting. And beneath it all I felt a brooding intent, observing and manipulating. I wanted to speak, but I could find no words, no voice. As if I were under water.

  Then Maisie’s light, pretty voice interrupted Knaggs’s tune. She was standing in the doorway, frowning. ‘I think you’re all being beastly unfair. And you’re being racialist. I hate that.’

  ‘Halliday’s right.’ The Hon. Celia Ashwin had joined Maisie, surveying the room with her usual sangfroid.

  Celia Ashwin was in her early twenties and a thoroughbred, from the auburn hair framing her smoothly oval face in a loose bob to her aristocratically narrow hands and feet. Levy dismissed her as an empty-headed glamour puss; he called her the station’s sizzler, because her lop-sided smile and spectacular figure played havoc with the men there. Her response was to treat them all with a mixture of overt boredom and superciliousness.

  Knaggs stopped his humming.

  ‘In this station we rely on each other to get the job done.’ Celia’s voice was clipped and coldly well-bred. ‘Levy does his job and as far as I can see, he does it well. That should be enough for all of you, whether or not you like him or his race.’

  Celia could use her voice as a weapon, and this time it cut like a lash. Or perhaps it was the ingrained English respect for her class, but the response was immediate. Armstrong’s spots became a deeper red. Sadler and Knaggs looked down at the grubby deck of cards in front of them, while Nola Fripp mumbled what might have been an apology and all the others went back to whatever they had been doing. Moray, however, affected to be unperturbed. He smiled at Celia and I thought I saw him wink.

  She ignored him and nodded a greeting to me as she entered the room.

  Her defence of Levy had surprised me, as her husband was a high-ranking member of the British fascists, who was now incarcerated with Oswald Mosley. Celia had joined the ambulance service in May, not long after he had been arrested as a threat to public safety.

  My time at boarding school and my experience at the Riviera had taught me to mistrust those who had been born into luxury, so Celia’s upper-crust background and fascist connections made me wary of her. By chance, we had flats in the same building, but had never been more than superficially friendly.

  Levy strolled into the common room, and I noticed her cheeks redden. ‘I’m ready to call it a night,’ he said to me, giving me his special, sweet smile. He turned to Maisie and gave her the same smile, which she returned. But when he looked at Celia, his smile faded into an ironic twist. She ignored it and walked past him to take a seat next to Fripp.

  Maisie slipped into the seat beside me. ‘Don’t let them worry you with their silly comments,’ she whispered.

  ‘They don’t,’ I said.

  I glanced at my watch and was surprised to see that it was almost nine. Our shift was nearly over. As Levy sauntered towards us, I lifted my arms in a stretch and frowned at him as I remembered. ‘We need to clean the Monster,’ I said, as he sat down.

  But we had already run out of time: I could hear the voices of the day shift as they arrived.

  ‘It’s done. You looked whacked, so I let you sleep.’

  Around us the conversation had switched to speculation about the German invasion. We expected it any day, so it was a favourite topic at present.

  Squire’s booming voice declared: ‘We’re better off without the frogs. Now we can get on with the job, and no more messing about! We’re good and ready for whatever that Hitler throws at us.’

  I leaned towards Levy. ‘Whatever would I do without you?’ I whispered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A week later, at the end of an eight-hour day shift, I emerged from the garage into a chilly October evening. Celia Ashwin rode past me on her bicycle and gave me a slight wave. It was five o’clock Saturday, and I had a break now until a week’s night shift started at five on Monday afternoon.

  I rubbed my eyes, feeling tired and dispirited after completing several mortuary runs during the shift. During the day, we used the ambulances for all manner of things – carting bread to the hospitals, transporting medical supplies, picking up victims of the daylight raids or road accidents – and we also transported bodies and body parts from bomb sites to the morgues.

  I found this deeply distressing, especially when the bodies were those of children, or were extremely mutilated. Levy gallantly tackled the more revolting tasks himself, but I still found it difficult to shrug off the terrible things I had seen.

  It was a cold afternoon. Scrappy dark clouds raced across the sky and rain was threatening. I began walking briskly to warm myself up and had gone some distance before I realised that in my hurry to leave the station I had left behind my umbrella. I looked at the sky. It could go either way. My flat was only a ten-minute walk away and I decided to risk it.

  St Andrew’s Court on Gray’s Inn Road was a modern serviced apartment building. Because so many young men were away in the forces and anyone who could afford it had fled London when the bombing began, St Andrew’s had become a haven for single women such as myself. I enjoyed living there. My one-bedroom flat was cleaned every second day and I could dine when it suited me in the service restaurant on the ground floor. The set-up was similar to a boarding house but with a great deal more autonomy.

  That evening, however, I was exhausted and the ten-minute walk home seemed interminable. By the time I turned the corner into Gray’s Inn Road my steps were unsteady and I suspected that the woman in the ugly brown hat who brushed past me thought I was under the influence of alcohol. She gave me a most disapproving look down her long and bony nose. I smiled at her but she turned away with a sniff, disdainful of my shabby appearance, no doubt. Or perhaps she took objection to my wearing trousers in public. It had become much more common now we were performing the traditionally male jobs, but it was only really acceptable if trousers were part of a recognisable uniform. This was one of the problems women ambulance drivers faced in not yet having formal attire.

  Women were wearing uniforms all over London: the Air Force blue of the WRAF, the khaki tunic and skirt of the ATS, the navy blue of the Wrens, the buff felt hat and green pullover of the Land Army, the navy-blue trouser suits of the River Emergency Service, the bluish-green tweed coat and felt hat of the WVS, and the red cross cap and apron of the Auxiliary Nurses. Londoners were used to women in uniform and liked to see them on the streets.

  The Ambulance Service had assured us that uniforms would be provided �
�in good time’, but until then we had been issued only a shapeless grey cotton coat that some wag had christened the ‘flit coat’, after the man in the Flit advertisement who dressed like that to kill flies, a gabardine cap with optional ear-flaps – very fetching! – and, of course, our black steel hat, embellished with a white ‘A’ for ambulance.

  So I wore a uniform of my own devising: blue gabardine trousers, white shirt, a Harrow school tie (provided by Levy for a lark), blue pullover and black lace-up shoes. It was not a stylish or flattering ensemble but it was practical in the ambulance and on a bomb site. Unless I was wearing the flit coat and steel hat, however, or someone stood close enough to see the Ambulance Service badge I used as a tiepin, I more nearly resembled a short, badly dressed male impersonator than an ambulance officer.

  I felt a drop of rain and when I looked up the sky had clouded over. More raindrops fell as I plodded past the identical dirty porticos of the identical dirty red brick three-storeyed buildings that lined the street. The rain grew heavier and I quickened my pace, dodging other pedestrians who blundered around me, umbrellas up and faces down.

  At last St Andrew’s Court was in sight, almost aggressively Art Deco in style. It had been built only four years before, so had not yet darkened into the grubby conformity of its Victorian neighbours and my heart lifted to see its clean modern lines. The metal window frames and delicate iron balustrades on each balcony were painted a bright blue that stood in relief against the stark white walls. A decorative tracery was picked out in blue on the entrance doors too, but the tape that was criss-crossed all over them to prevent the glass shattering and the thick blackout blinds that stayed up day and night rather spoiled the effect.

  I enjoyed living in a modern flat, where the rooms held no ghosts of the past. I had grown to love London, and it was like a hammer blow to see so many beautiful and ancient buildings now in ruins, but often the sheer age of the city weighed me down. I came from a place where the imprint of human history was no more than a tickle on the landscape – the long occupation of Aboriginal people had left no built relics. Kookynie had been just a patch of red earth in the desert only forty-eight years before.

  Sometimes I found it hard to comprehend that London’s history was measured in millennia, and that the city was not so much built, as built over. Roman foundations were covered with medieval cobblestones, which were overlaid with Victorian brickwork. Manor estates turned into Rococo pleasure gardens, which in turn became Edwardian hospital grounds. St Andrew’s Court itself had been constructed on the ruins of an old church and it stood in front of the church’s burial ground. In the 1860s the graveyard had become a park, Trinity Gardens, and I would sit there on fine days to read a book or contemplate the gravestones.

  I ducked across the road at a jog as I tried to outrun the increasingly heavy rain. I had almost made the other side when a car came out of nowhere, blaring its horn as it headed straight for me. I felt suspended in time, like a kangaroo caught in the headlights, transfixed by the knowledge of certain death.

  The car stopped with a screech of brakes and curses from the driver and I was shaken out of my stupor. The utter fatigue of a few moments before had disappeared and I ran along the footpath to the doorway to St Andrew’s Court, pushed open the door and entered into the eternal twilight of the gloomy blacked-out lobby.

  I walked straight into what appeared to be a delegation. The door swung shut behind me as I pushed wet hair out of my eyes and blinked at Celia Ashwin, Pam Beresford, Katherine Carlow and Nancy Parrish, who had a firm hold on a tall RAF pilot. I was keenly aware that my hair was dripping wet, my jumper was sodden and smelled of wet sheep, and my damp trousers clung to my legs, but I gave them my biggest smile.

  ‘No need for a welcoming party,’ I said, ‘though a dry towel wouldn’t go amiss.’

  ‘Enter our resident heroine, dripping, at stage left,’ said Katherine, her thin, clever face alight with mischief. She was a few years older than me and had a sharp tongue, but I liked her. She had stood by me through one of the worst periods of my life.

  Before the war, Katherine had been a junior couturier at one of the best London fashion houses. When her husband entered the navy, she joined the Auxiliary Ambulance Service. She was now deputy station officer at the big Berkeley Square station in the West End, and she was surely the best-dressed ambulance officer in London, looking stylish in an immaculately tailored brown tweed suit, cream silk blouse and a discreet string of pearls.

  I brushed at my damp and filthy clothes. ‘Forgot my umbrella,’ I said. ‘It’s a trifle wet out there.’

  Nancy tittered and held her captive pilot more tightly. She was not one of my favourites at St Andrew’s; I had once overheard her say, ‘I really don’t know about Australians. They’re so gauche. They laugh too much. Make one feel so very awkward.’ At present she was laughing at me, and showing a lot of gum as she did so.

  Nancy was married to an army man, now stationed in Cairo. Not long after he left England she had moved to St Andrew’s from their home in the country, leaving their young son with her mother. Katherine referred to her as ‘Nan the man-eater’, or, if she was feeling particularly wicked, ‘No-pants Nancy’, because quite a few of the men she brought home to her flat did not leave until morning. Nancy was generally considered to be a beauty. She was dressed for a night out, in a yellow frock that clung rather alarmingly to her curves.

  ‘Gracious, Lily,’ she said, ‘you look like a drowned—’

  ‘Kitten,’ cut in Pam, a bubbly twenty-year-old who was the daughter of a Tasmanian bishop and worked as a secretary at Australia House. She disapproved of Nancy on principle. I liked Pam. When I could, I would go to the pictures with her, or join her for dancing at one of the Australia House functions. I could let my hair down with Pam.

  I smiled at her, but eyed the stairs for a quick escape. I wished everyone would leave and let me get to my flat. Water was dripping out of my jumper to pool on the tiles by my shoes and I was becoming very cold. As I moved towards the stairs Nancy further tightened her hold on the airman – did she think I was going to drag him away with me? The flight lieutenant had veiled grey eyes and a defensive, arms-crossed manner, which I thought was understandable in the circumstances. Without warning, and despite Nancy’s best effort, he slipped out of her clutches with almost Houdini-like adroitness to stand warily beside her, watching me closely.

  Katherine swept her hand towards him in a graceful gesture of introduction. ‘Miss Lily Brennan, may I introduce Jim Vassy-something? I’m sorry, Jim, but your surname is unpronounceable. Lily here is our resident heroine. She saved a couple of kiddies last week by climbing into the ruins of a bombed building to get to them. In the middle of an air raid, mind you, and not knowing if there was a live bomb in there.’ She paused for effect. ‘There was, as a matter of fact. It went off soon after she’d got them out.’

  ‘Do shut up, Katherine,’ I said. The children’s grandparents had sent me a touching letter, care of the station. That was all I needed by way of recognition.

  Pam giggled. She did that a lot, to disguise, I think, the fact that she was a smart and competent young woman. She had completed first aid training soon after the Blitz began and now did three twelve-hour night shifts a week as a shelter officer at Gloucester Road Tube station.

  Nancy made an impatient movement. ‘And you think Jim just sits on his backside in his Spitfire?’

  ‘I fly a Hurricane, Nan,’ said Jim Vassy-something. ‘You know that.’ His voice was calm and deep and drawling, as coolly upper class as Celia’s, or Levy’s. I liked the sound of it.

  Nancy ignored him and went on, ‘He’s already shot down five enemy planes,’ she said. ‘So he’s an ace.’ I could hear annoyance in her school-girlish boasting, not her usual standoffish style at all. So even posh Nancy could get a crush on a pilot, I thought.

  ‘Oh, we’re all heroes here,’ drawled Katherine. ‘Just as Churchill requires. Noses to the wheel, shoulders to the grindstone,
blah blah, blood on the beaches, toil, tears and sweat. All defending the home front in our own ways.’

  Jim stood easily, watching me with a slight smile.

  ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Brennan,’ he said. ‘Did I detect an Australian accent? You’re a long way from home.’

  He was at least a foot taller than my five feet and half an inch, with one of those lean bodies that seem almost gaunt. I guessed he was around my age. He had a pleasant enough face, of the type you imagined in the best gentleman’s clubs, or at the Ritz or the Savoy or Claridge’s, but his was given some gravitas by a hawkish nose and a surprisingly firm chin. Fine fair hair completed the picture.

  I assumed that he was one of the type I had so often met here in London: beautiful manners, little personality and rather a childish sense of humour. He was undoubtedly brave, though, if he had not only survived the recent aerial war between the Luftwaffe and the RAF but was an Ace.

  ‘It looked like you Poms needed some help,’ I said. I ran my hand through my damp hair. My head always hurt at the end of a shift.

  ‘Poms?’ Nancy voiced her confusion.

  ‘It’s what they call the English in Australia,’ said Celia, surprising me.

  Jim Vassy-something said, ‘The Aussies in my squadron use the word.’ He addressed me. ‘Is it from pommes? French for apples.’

  It annoyed me that he assumed I could not speak French, especially as I had been told that my accent was excellent. So I replied in that language to tell him that although the origin of the word was not known, perhaps it related to rosy English cheeks.

  ‘C’est un mot que nous avons utilisé pendant de nombreuses années. Peut-être les Australiens pensent que les Anglais ont les joues rouges comme des pommes.’

  To my amazement, he blushed. Now he looked as young as Pam. His cheeks were two red blotches, just like pippins, and I laughed without thinking.