Ambulance Girls

by Deborah Burrows

  My smile became wry. ‘So when the raids started we were all rather thrilled and excited. Little did we know.’ I looked up at him. ‘They’re a grand bunch, on the whole, my colleagues.’

  ‘So you work with old David Levy,’ said Jim. ‘I headed off to Cambridge after Harrow, and he went to the other place. We’ve not seen each other much in the past few years.’ His smile became teasing. ‘A few months ago he told me he was in the Ambulance Service and that his driver was a doll.’

  I picked up a scone, and pondered whether it was really a compliment to be described as a doll. I knew that was probably the intention, dolls were pretty, but they were also rather vapid-looking, surely? And they were inanimate. I had never liked dolls much as a girl. For playmates I had preferred Minnie, the hotel cat, and my mongrel dog, Prince.

  ‘I suppose David’s a conscientious objector?’

  Again I came back to the conversation with a start. ‘No. He was rejected for service on medical grounds. Why would you think he was a conchie?’

  ‘Because he’s a communist.’

  ‘What?’ Levy and I had never discussed politics. Flustered, I took a little cake and bit into it, savouring the delicate sweetness.

  ‘I really don’t think so,’ I said.

  ‘Well, he used to spout communist nonsense at school. We came to blows over it on one occasion.’

  ‘Who won?’

  A smile tugged at his mouth. ‘I did. Gave him a black eye. Then I told him that the Bolsheviks murdered my father and after that he stopped trying to shove Marx down my throat.’

  ‘Did the Bolsheviks murder your father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. In the end I said, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Why apologise?’ His voice was brusque. ‘You didn’t drag him out of his house in front of his wife and five-year-old child, take him to the Peter and Paul Fortress and shoot him without trial.’ Anger flashed in those deep-set eyes.

  He did not want my sympathy, that was clear. I played with the fingers of my gloves, which I had placed neatly on the table. I said, to my gloves, ‘Levy never mentioned communism to me.’

  ‘Maybe he’s seen the light.’

  His tone was curt, almost unpleasant. I was out of my depth. It was my turn to change the conversation.

  ‘So you went to school with Levy and to university with Nancy’s husband. How do you know Ashw— I mean Celia?’

  ‘I had rather a thing for Celia’s sister when I was up at Cambridge and I hung around with her set for a while.’

  So Jim might be a closet fascist after all.

  Suddenly my delicious cake was far too sweet, and I finished it with difficulty. I wondered how long this tea would continue, how long before I could excuse myself and go home.

  ‘Celia’s husband was part of our group,’ he went on. ‘It was before they were married, of course. I never liked him much. He’s rather a cad, and Celia’s far too good for him.’ He grimaced. ‘It all leaves rather a bad taste in one’s mouth, don’t you agree? Communism, fascism – whatever they call it, it’s simply about imposing someone’s will on the powerless.’

  I nodded and took another little cake. I was wrong before, I decided. They really weren’t bad at all.

  ‘Nancy said you had a weekend’s leave,’ I remarked. ‘Does that mean you’re back on duty tomorrow?’

  ‘No rest for the wicked.’

  ‘Levy says that.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve fallen in love with him.’ He reached for a scone, avoiding my eyes.

  ‘With Levy? Love among the ruins?’ I laughed at the thought of it. ‘No. Levy and I are friends. Colleagues. Mates. We rely on each other. Or rather, I rely on him.’

  ‘You looked absolutely done in yesterday,’ he said.

  ‘It had been a tough day, at the end of a tough week of day shift. I honestly don’t know how I could do it without Levy. He’s a wonderful ambulance attendant, and makes it all much easier than it could be.’ I smiled at Jim. ‘He’s great company, always making me laugh. Tomorrow we’re back on night shift together.’

  ‘Night shift must be ghastly.’

  ‘Oh, I prefer it to day shift.’

  ‘More exciting?’

  ‘More satisfying. Levy and I whizz around picking up casualties and taking them to hospital.’ I took a sip of tea. ‘The worst part of day shift is the mortuary runs.’

  ‘It does sound rather unpleasant, taking bodies to the morgue,’ he said.

  I had the feeling that he was having to work at keeping the conversation going, as if he wasn’t all that interested any more. I wondered if I’d said anything wrong and regretted the bitter way I’d referred to the Nazis in Czechoslovakia. He didn’t want to discuss politics on his day away from the airfield. I should be trying for light, amusing conversation. Flustered, I spoke without thinking.

  ‘Oh, I can cope with that side of it. It’s just – well, the bodies are not always intact. Sometimes we have to wander around the bombsites to help find the bits and pieces and put them in buckets and sacks. I find that rather dire,’ I finished in a light tone.

  He turned away slightly, so his eyes were hidden. ‘I see,’ he said, in an expressionless voice. When he turned to look at me again his eyes were shadowed. Although his face gave nothing away, I supposed that I must have horrified him with my insouciance.

  ‘That sounded dreadfully blasé,’ I said, looking down at my plate. I didn’t know how to regain the lightness we had begun with. ‘But – as Levy says – you need – well, you need to grow a protective shell. Otherwise you simply couldn’t do the job. Although, without Levy I don’t think I could—’

  Jim was silent, twisting his cup around in its saucer, regarding it thoughtfully as he did so.

  I said, hurriedly, ‘When I started with the Ambulance Service I’d never seen a dead body, I was even squeamish about handling dead animals. I’ve had to learn how to deal with things I’d never dreamed of. Levy – I’m lucky that Levy – he’s—’ My cheeks burned as I remembered how in the early days Levy had always dealt with the horrors I could not face, picking up body parts, everything.

  Jim sat back in his seat and regarded me, unsmiling, as if attempting to puzzle me out.

  I blundered on. ‘At my first incident we found a baby. It had been thrown through a window by the blast and it was—’ I sucked in a breath, remembering the poor little broken body. ‘Levy found a bit of curtain to wrap it in and I—’

  And I had howled like a dog when I returned to my flat.

  Eventually I looked up at him. ‘You really can cope with anything if you have to. Levy – he’s very kind.’ I knew what would happen next: Jim would take me back to St Andrew’s, drop me off and forget about me because I was boring and common, talking about my job in such an offhand, callous manner and blathering on about politics.

  He nodded, not unsympathetically. Then he sat up, drained his tea and replaced the cup in its saucer. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll drop you off home now,’ he said. ‘I have to drive back to the airfield tonight as we’re expected to be at readiness at first light.’

  ‘Readiness?’ I felt deflated, unready for such an abrupt end to our afternoon, even though I’d seen it coming.

  ‘That’s when we sit in the dispersal hut, togged up in our Mae Wests with our aeroplanes ready, waiting for the order to scramble.’

  ‘And “scramble” is when . . .?’

  ‘That’s when we run for the planes and take off. Speaking of which, I’m awfully sorry, but we do need to get going.’ He stood and came round to draw my chair out. As we walked to the car we continued the conversation in a rather desultory fashion. It seemed clear that we were both just waiting for the day to be over.

  ‘It must be a terrible strain on the nerves, one sortie after another,’ I said.

  ‘Things have quietened down for us now. At least we have time to sit in the dispersal hut. When they were hitting the airfields – before they started
this Blitz on London – we were sleeping in the cockpits in between scrambles.’

  The ironic twist returned to his smile. ‘The worst part is waiting for the scramble telephone to ring.’ There was a mirthless laugh. ‘Once I’ve made my first interception I’m usually too busy to think.’

  ‘Interception?’

  ‘When we engage with the enemy.’

  It was like that at Woburn Place, when the Warning went and we knew the raiders were on their way. We would sit there, wondering what lay ahead. All of us preferred to be on the road, dealing with problems as they arose, no matter how bad the raid.

  And yet, I well knew that driving around in an ambulance was nothing compared to jumping into a plane and doing battle with German fighters, high up in the sky.

  ‘Do you think the air battle Churchill referred to in his wonderful speech – the one where he referred to you pilots as “the Few” – do you think that’s over now?’ I asked. ‘From what I can gather, Churchill seems to think the Blitz is a different thing entirely.’

  ‘Things are certainly less hectic for us now, although much worse for you.’

  We had reached the car, and he opened my door. As he got in and sat beside me, he said, ‘It’s difficult to know when a battle of that kind ends. We’re still having trouble with Messer one-o-nines during the day. Their high-flying capacities can make things pretty dicey, especially if one flies a Hurricane, as I do.’ He stopped talking abruptly and looked at me as he turned on the ignition. ‘And I shouldn’t be mentioning such things when I’m with a lovely girl.’

  Jim was like Henri Valhubert, I decided, as the car roared into life and we set off down the road. Like that Frenchman, Jim Vassilikov was a titled and somewhat pompous ass, who was arrogant enough to judge me and find me wanting. I wondered what it was that men of his class so despised about me, what I had said to make Jim so sure that I Just Wouldn’t Do. And yet, I couldn’t help a feeling of misery because I had really liked him to begin with, had delighted in our repartee and his sense of humour.

  We drove home through the shattered landscape of London. At the door to St Andrew’s he thanked me for a delightful afternoon and gave me a smile as dazzling as sunlight on water. Yet it did not reach his eyes. Although I knew it was a dismissal, my heart raced and my cheeks burned as I automatically smiled in response. I remembered Katherine’s remarks and thought I would have to tell her that she was right about the S.A.

  ‘I hope we can meet again soon,’ he said, but without much enthusiasm. ‘Perhaps we could dine at the Ritz one evening. In the Ritz, one can forget about all this.’ He waved his hand towards the ruins across the street.

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  He returned to his car and disappeared in a cloud of exhaust smoke down Gray’s Inn Road.

  ‘Well, Lily,’ I murmured, ‘that’s that, then.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘So, how did the concert go yesterday? Tell me everything.’

  Pam was waiting for me outside the Empire laden with two string bags stuffed with brown paper parcels. Her hair had been freshly set and she was wearing a blue woollen dress and an eager expression.

  ‘I doubt I’ll see him again,’ I said, as we entered the lobby. ‘I was boring and he was bored. Actually, he was a bit boring too.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts. I don’t want to discuss it.’

  Pam could take a hint. We went into the movie to see her idol, Robert Taylor, who was as woodenly handsome as ever. I was more impressed by his co-star, Hedy Lamarr, playing a woman desperately and unsuccessfully trying to fit into a world that would not accept her. It ended in tragedy, which I suspect would have been my lot if Jim really had taken a shine to me.

  ‘And now for some delicious pastries,’ I said, when we emerged. I grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the narrow streets of Soho.

  ‘This is the dark centre of vice in London, isn’t it?’ Pam asked, as we stepped gingerly around bomb debris to enter Greek Street. Her face was alight with a kind of horrified glee.

  ‘It’s also the bright cosmopolitan centre of London. I like it,’ I replied.

  ‘D’you think she is a – you know?’ Pam whispered, after a well-dressed woman sauntered by.

  I laughed. ‘How should I know? By the way, I suggested that Betty see you about volunteering in your shelter at night. I think she’s worse, if anything. She talked about wanting to die.’

  ‘She did seem to be in a bad way on Saturday, poor thing. Of course she can come to the shelter with me. We could certainly use her.’

  ‘Good. Will you tell her?’

  ‘I’d be happy to. My father says that feeling needed is the panacea for loneliness and misery.’

  I said, in a teasing tone, ‘I wonder how your father the bishop would feel about you wandering the vice-ridden streets of Soho.’

  ‘I haven’t seen anything in the slightest bit vice-ridden,’ she responded glumly. ‘Ooh, unless that man is heading to a . . .?’

  I looked up to see someone I knew striding ahead of us.

  ‘That’s Jack Moray,’ I said, feeling the confusion of seeing someone you know in an unexpected place. ‘He’s a deputy station officer at Bloomsbury.’

  ‘And do you think he’s going to a – a you-know-what?’ asked Pam again. She was making a bad job of trying to hide a smirk.

  ‘A what?’ I asked, wondering myself what he was doing in Soho, and slightly embarrassed that I should be so curious.

  She lowered her voice and hissed, ‘A brothel.’

  ‘Katherine is absolutely right, you know. For a bishop’s daughter you have a very low mind, Pamela Beresford.’

  Pam giggled. ‘Is he the one you don’t like very much?’

  ‘He’s horrid to Levy.’

  ‘Then come on, let’s see whether he is of questionable morals as well as a horrid disposition.’

  Moray had by now disappeared behind a surface shelter on the corner. The government had built hundreds of these square brick structures when the Blitz began, but people disliked using them, preferring the Underground. Pam tugged at my arm until I followed her to the shelter. Sheepishly, I peeped around the corner to see that Moray had halted in front of what had once been a stylish residence facing Soho Square. As we watched he turned into the shadows of the deeply recessed entrance and disappeared.

  ‘I bet it’s a you-know-what,’ said Pam. ‘Let’s check.’

  With some trepidation I allowed her to pull me to the building’s portico. Two well-worn steps led up to a magnificently carved and pillared doorway – now chipped and scratched and worse for wear – above which was an ornate fanlight that had been painted over for blackout purposes. The list of names pencilled into holders by the door indicated that the building had been converted into flats. Pam chortled as she read out the names of the tenants – in many cases only their first names appeared.

  ‘Carmen, Cherry, Mindy, Aimée, Coco, Lola. They’re an exotic-sounding bunch.’ She turned her eyes to me in fascinated horror. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? Golly. It really is one of those places? I can’t believe I was right.’

  Beside the portico, stone steps led down to a basement.

  ‘I think he must have gone down there,’ I said. ‘He didn’t go through the front door.’

  Pam peered at the list of names. ‘There’s no name listed for the basement flat.’

  ‘Perhaps Moray lives there?’ I ventured.

  Pam rolled her eyes. Her mouth quivered, and I knew that any moment she would be in a fit of giggles.

  I grabbed her arm and we set off down the street at a brisk walk, almost a trot. My face was flaming. A brothel! And Moray had marched up to the place as if he was on his way to a garden party at Buckingham Palace.

  On my way to work that afternoon I wondered whether I would tell Levy about seeing Moray in Soho. We usually did share gossip, but this was salacious gossip, and Pam and I might well have jumped to the wrong conclusion. In the end I decided that, even if
he was visiting a brothel, it was his business. Telling on him would be a nasty thing to do.

  My route to the ambulance station took me past the Guildford Arms, a cheerful old pub in peacetime. Now, its windows were covered with thin boarding and this gave the building a blank, unwelcoming aspect, so that it seemed to crouch blindly on its corner behind piles of sandbags. Mr Richie, who was the publican as well as my local ARP warden, was wiping tables inside.

  I liked Mr Richie. He reminded me of my father. Not in looks, because Mr Richie was a small, squat man and my father was big, but in the force of character apparent in his no-nonsense attitude to life and the knowing expression in his eyes. His thick body was all bone and muscle rather than fat, and he kept his hair very short, like a fighter.

  Mr Richie had an uncanny instinct about timed bombs. Sometimes bombs did not explode immediately because the Germans had attached a timer, hoping they would explode as the rescue parties were digging for survivors. In such cases the special bomb disposal squad had to be called to make them safe and everyone had to keep their distance until the fuses were removed.

  Somehow Mr Richie always knew when one of the timed bombs on his ‘patch’ was going to explode. Pam and Katherine had laughed when I had told them and said I was pulling their legs. But Levy and I knew how many lives he had saved because of his strange faculty.

  He waved me over and when I joined him in the doorway he looked grim.

  ‘It was bad here in Bloomsbury last night,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘A couple of hundred-pounders smashed two houses in Roger Street and fire took out another. A young feller bought it when they hit Long Yard in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Only eighteen, poor lad.’

  He gave a table near the door a quick rub with his towel. ‘We Do Not Recognise The Possibility Of Defeat’ announced a sign that hung over the bar behind him.

  ‘You know a hundred-pounder fell in Calthorpe Street, early Friday morning?’ he went on.

  I nodded. I had not attended the incident, but I’d heard about it.

  ‘One dead, I was told,’ I said.

  ‘Killed a mother and injured three kiddies.’