by Lizzie Page
1940 – Now
Debates in Parliament, ‘the Norway question’, rationing and more rationing. Churchill is now our prime minister; we race to listen to his stirring voice on the wireless. British Summer Time is back, which helps a bit as there is more daylight. No Germans have managed to parachute themselves in to Leicester – not that I know of anyway – but news elsewhere is unrelentingly grim: France has capitulated as Edmund always said they would.
The Nazi occupation of France is heart-rending news. I think of the brave French soldiers I knew in the Great War. Trying to make light of their wounds in the back of my ambulance. Singing ‘La Marseillaise’ in the railway sidings. The frazzled doctors and frantic nurses. How had things come to this? Europe was going through this turmoil again, just one generation after it had fallen apart.
Two soldiers made it home to Hinckley from the hideous events at Dunkirk and we WAVs talked about holding a party in the hall, but apparently, they were too exhausted and there wasn’t much of an appetite for one among everyone else.
I had no appetite for anything any more. Not even Mrs Burton’s biscuits.
* * *
And then, towards the end of summer, bloody Hitler finally turned his attention to us. It was our turn now. They called it the Blitzkrieg. Blitz, for short.
‘Lightning attacks?’ I think, They love a new name for old things. The way the newspapers report it, it’s as if it’s the first time England has ever been bombed. Of course, it’s the first time it’s been this ferocious, but it is not the first time. I know this.
The dramatic things we feared last September are now happening. The voices on the wireless grow ever more sombre. The Pathé film clips show soldiers less cheerful, more fatigued. The phoney war is over. Down go the buildings and the town centres. The pictures in the papers start to look like wastelands. People are dying. We, the civilians, the innocents, are under attack.
How can London stand it? Poor London. I want to wrap it up and bring it here. But it’s not just London. It’s all the industrial towns. Sometimes it’s good to live nowhere special, in an in-betweeny place like Hinckley.
I desperately miss my Pearl-in-London. I am so worried about her, I lie awake at night, willing her to stay safe. I hear of children crushed or burned alive. Won’t her mother please send her back to me? I don’t think I can bear it for much longer.
* * *
Mrs Burton’s husband, Ernie, who I never see much of despite spending so much time in his house, appears in our street, driving a mobile tea canteen. Gleaming silver it is, fully fitted and purpose-built.
‘Present for the WAVs!’ he calls, hooting the horn.
The tea canteen is for us to drive to wherever needs tea. Outside railway stations, hospitals, community events… but we know its primary purpose is to go to the site of anywhere that’s been bombed.
We gather round, admiring it. It is state-of-the-art inside too. It’s got all its bits and pieces in the right places. Loaded with china cups and saucers. Sacks of sugar. Milk. We can pour sugar in if they like it sweet. If it’s cold, if it’s bad, we will. Milk in the cup first.
‘Who’s going to drive it then?’
No one volunteers. Mr Burton suddenly looks anxious. ‘Oh no… What? Can none of you drive?’
I put my hand up slowly.
‘It’s been a while but…’
Mrs Burton looks at me, and chuckles. ‘Dark horse.’
‘It was a Ford Model T ambulance, actually.’
* * *
Mrs Burton and I take it out for a run. We pass by Edmund’s parents’ home and, spur of the moment, decide to stop there. I hoot and the residents who can walk come out and admire it.
‘It’s a beauty!’ says one old man, sliding his hand along the side. ‘Amazing what they can do nowadays.’
Edmund’s father stays indoors, huddled up to the wireless.
‘It’s a wagon.’ Edmund’s mother sidles up to me. ‘You’ll look like a gypsy in that.’
I hate you, I think suddenly. My ferocity, after all these years, takes me by surprise.
18
1915 – Then
Olive and I went home for Christmas 1915. The first thing I saw were children carrying wreaths and mistletoe through the street and I felt a great surge of hope.
As soon as she could, Olive raced over to see the Fords. Walter was away, training in Oxford, so I couldn’t understand her great hurry to get to Warrington Crescent but she said to me, ‘You want me to stay in with the capitalist pigs and the crashing bores? No thank you.’
In civilian clothes, Olive looked muscular and blithe, her hair pinned back in her cap emphasising her pointed chin. She had struggled in France, we both knew that. And we were both surprised that I had not. But Olive was determined that once we’d done with Christmas, we’d return together to Lamarck Hospital to do our best. I loved her determination and commitment to our team and to the men. It occurred to me that we were closer than ever before. That’s what driving into blackness, with death all around you, can do for you.
‘We’re the Mudie-Cookes,’ she whispered with a squeeze. ‘And we’re not doing too badly, are we?’
* * *
On Christmas Day, it was just Father and me who went over to Aunt and Uncle’s – and since it was our first Christmas without dear Richard, naturally it was a sombre occasion. We tried to have good cheer but it was impossible to hold back the tide of missing him.
Aunt Cecily told me that Edmund had applied for leave but not been given permission. This seemed desperately unfair. The likelihood of us getting leave at the same time seemed to be narrowing but we all had to do our duty and I understood, after the things I’d seen.
I was glad when Edmund’s parents came over. Aunt Cecily and Uncle Toby weren’t as convivial as they used to be and I was nervous that the Lowes might have moved on. Their being here showed that they were good, loyal friends. And they brought with them Christopher, who had been granted leave, and I had to admit, he was much warmer to me than he used to be. They also had brought with them a rich fruit cake that Mrs Lowe was very proud of.
When his mother asked, ‘Is it really as bad as people are saying?’ Christopher said, ‘No, Mother, it’s far worse. Am I right, Vivienne?’
I nodded. Strange to be on the same side as him for once.
Christopher was an officer. At dinner he speared his carrots merrily like he was playing a violent game with them: ‘To be honest, I’m not having too rough a time of it,’ he confided, and I noticed his throat was spotty against his collar. ‘But I know plenty who are.’
Edmund’s mother sliced her food into tiny pieces. She soon returned to one of her favourite subjects: skivers and whingers.
‘The problem with the world today is it lacks backbone,’ she said.
I smirked, thinking of what Olive would say if she heard that. The world lacks backbone? How is that even logistically possible?
Christopher asked for seconds, especially of those fine roasted potatoes, and his mother looked embarrassed. ‘And a little more meat?’ he continued obliviously. When Aunt Cecily admitted there wasn’t any and asked didn’t he know about the shortages, he too blushed, and said, ‘Not to worry, it was just a joke.’ He turned to me and asked if I’d heard the news that he was getting married to a girl he called Pigeon.
‘No? I didn’t… I didn’t hear that.’ Silly, but I felt flooded with resentment. Edmund and I had been close for a long time. Where had this Pigeon come from and how had she suddenly overtaken us?
It occurred to me that since Christopher was older, it might be that Edmund was waiting for him to marry first: he might have felt it was inappropriate for him – for us – to jump the queue.
I stared into my plate. The thing was, I didn’t know if I wanted anything to happen between Edmund and me any longer. Since I’d missed him so little while I was in France, I wondered if maybe he and I were just habit and not the real thing. Maybe we weren’t as compatible as I once thoug
ht. As if he knew what I was thinking, Christopher laid down his knife and fork and looked at me seriously. ‘War intensifies everything,’ he said. ‘You know that. It accelerates. It amplifies. Chin up, Vivienne. Edmund will come to his senses.’
Timidly, I smiled. ‘That’s just what Richard used to say.’
He winked at me. ‘Edmund’s lucky to have a loyal girl like you.’ He picked up his cutlery again and asked if he might, just might, grab the Brussels sprouts I had left.
19
1940 – Now
I write to Pearl. She writes back and her tales leave me goose-pimpled with fear. This is a terrible time. Another terrible time. How can we stand it again? I am glued to the wireless as it reports on the devastation – it’s not just London, oh, Mr Hitler is intent on caning the whole country – but my heart is in London for it’s London I know best and it’s London where my loved ones are.
Pearl hid in the Anderson shelter at the end of Nathan’s parents’ garden. They live by a railway track so it’s classified as a dangerous area – especially at risk. She walked to school the morning after the bombs. Two of her classmates were squashed, sheltering on the steps of the Underground. Her mum was talking to someone else, but Pearl heard her describe it. Squashed like beetles. Nowhere is safe, she writes cheerfully. People are getting crushed by their own ceilings.
I want to cry with frustration. Send Pearl here!
* * *
One morning, while I am listening to the wireless in the kitchen, Edmund comes in. Taking his sandwich for lunch, he stands next to me for one moment, listening to the estimates of the numbers killed.
‘It’s terrible,’ I say. Briefly, he puts his hand on my back, in the way he did in the old days, only he doesn’t move it to stroke me, and I daren’t breathe.
He goes over to the bread bin, but instead of lifting the lid, he picks up the whole container.
He holds out something: a grimy envelope covered in crumbs.
‘When did this come, Edmund?’
I turn over the paper and look at the stamp. I can see for myself: two weeks ago.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘If you’d ever bothered to lift the bread bin to clean underneath, you’d know, wouldn’t you?’ he says as he walks off.
Mrs Dean, I think. Mrs Dean is who I need. I run over to her house with a sixpence, clutching the letter from the Raines Foundation School, London, tightly in my fist. I’m not losing it now.
‘May I use your telephone?’ I cry breathlessly. Mrs Dean is always glad when someone needs the phone for she has not made as much use of it herself as she had imagined. She hovers by me as I make the call, pretending to dust the cobwebs from the picture rail.
What if Pearl has been bombed? What if she’s in hospital? What if she’s already gone to some nasty house where they feed her bacon and feel her head for horns every day?
‘Please, let them know – we have a place for Pearl.’
20
1916 – Then
The first months of 1916 were even more difficult than those months preceding. Endless dark shifts. Freezing rain. Driving from the train to the hospital. Hospital back to train. Port to hospital. Hospital to port. Holding hands with bloodied men. Terrible injuries. Heartbreak. We dealt with men who had been gassed. Men who had been blinded. Men who called out for their mothers, their sweethearts. Sometimes I wondered why the doctors battled to save them; they must have known there was no hope…
One side of the hospital became the place for dead bodies. I went there two, three times a night, either to pick up or to deliver. You tried not to think about it too much.
One brutal night, we had done about six runs and I was growing desperate for a break. There had been explosions, shootings, smoke and we had lost two Frenchmen in the back of the ambulance around midnight. By four in the morning, I was seeing to an English Tommy, who was very dignified despite his dreadful predicament. We decided Olive would stay in the back with him. Then a second patient was loaded in, and he was shrieking about something, flailing about, and the Belgian stretcher-bearers grimaced, ‘Sorry, ladies, it’s only his thigh… but I don’t know, he won’t let us look.’
The patient had a crazed look in his eyes, but you can’t turn people away.
‘The hospital will deal with him,’ the stretcher-bearer continued. ‘Maybe give him a jab or something to calm down.’
I was just leaning over to give the first man some water when I felt something smack hard onto my back: the second patient had leapt on me. I buckled under the weight of him and, desperate to avoid hurting the first man, twisted away from him and fell down, smack, onto the ambulance floor.
‘You German whore!’ he was shouting as he pulled my hair.
I struggled hard. He was out of his mind. I pushed him off me as brutally as I could. I could hear Olive screaming. She was tugging at him, trying to pull him off me. He got up again and started yelling at both of us, ‘Hun! Bitch, Bosch whore!’ As I clambered up, he came for me again, but Olive clonked him over the head with a petrol can and he fell to the floor, dazzled.
‘Help!’ She leaned out the ambulance. ‘Over here. We need help!’
I had taken a nasty blow to the head against the floor of the van. I rubbed my cheek and pulled at my hat. Useless tears came to my eyes. My body hurt. I would be purple with bruises. I leaned over my first patient. ‘I’m so sorry…’
Two British officers came in and dragged the attacker out. They were full of apologies. Then the Belgian stretcher-bearers from before came and apologised too. They didn’t know what else to say.
‘Just keep him away from my sister!’ Olive barked. I could tell by her voice she was very frightened.
I stroked my elbow. I would be okay.
Our poor first patient raised himself up. He held out his hand to me. Tears coursed down his cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t help.’
I knelt by him. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘He whacked you pretty hard.’
‘Nothing compared to what you’ve been through.’
‘He’ll be court-martialled, I should think.’
I nodded. It gave me no satisfaction; in fact, I couldn’t bear to think about it. The whole episode felt shameful. Olive still looked agitated, but she didn’t say anything. We were all still in shock, I suppose.
The next day, I still had a bump the size of an egg on my forehead and felt like throwing up whenever I thought about it. I felt so vulnerable, it somehow took my breath away. If Olive hadn’t been there, I might have been… and by one of our own men. He had overpowered me; he could have hurt me very badly. And I felt so sad for him too: how diabolical the war must be to turn a man into that.
* * *
I was still going over the incident in my mind when, about a week later, a telegram came from Aunt Cecily:
Christopher is very poorly in hosp. If pos come home. Lowes need support.
I thought of how Edmund’s mother didn’t have a daughter, and Aunt Cecily would be desperately trying to be a good friend but feeling so much grief after losing Richard that she might be devastated all over again, and I knew immediately that returning to England was the right thing to do. The Lowes might not have been my family, not quite, but we were close, and this was their hour of need. Not so much pigs with their snouts in the trough, but worried parents wringing their hands.
* * *
I still had a few days’ leave owed to me, but Enid and Agnes were on long-awaited leave at that time and if I left too, our team would be short. I consulted Olive, but she just stared at me uncomprehendingly. ‘You’d waste your leave on Christopher?’
I thought this was both a disturbing and an unkind response and told her so. She scowled. She was in quite the doldrums lately. Our Christmas trip to England hadn’t cheered her up in any way – quite the reverse. If I enquired, she would simply snap, ‘I miss the Fords, that’s all, can’t you understand?’ as if I were the unfeeling one. She had cut her hair quite
short and was wearing an enormous sheepskin coat like some of the soldiers did. She looked like a buffalo. She looked like someone trying to appear as unfeminine as possible.
I asked Daisy what she thought – about my returning to England so soon after my last leave – and she told me I must ask Mrs Fielding. Mrs Fielding would know what to do. I didn’t want to hear that. I don’t know if Mrs Fielding deliberately made herself unapproachable, but I was always nervous speaking to her. That day, she was preparing an ambulance.
‘Nasty business, what happened.’
‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly. It took me a moment before I realised she was talking about the incident with the violent patient.
‘Some of the boys… their minds are destroyed.’ She paused. She gave me a sympathetic look. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
I hesitated.
Daisy and Enid laughed at Mrs Fielding sometimes. They called her a sapphist – a word I had never come across before. I thought, she doesn’t seem that bad.
She asked if she could do anything to help. Surprised, I said, ‘I was thinking maybe a few days in London…’
She agreed immediately.
‘It’s difficult,’ she said sympathetically, ‘when your own turn on you. I know that. Try not to think all humanity is bad, dear, the soldiers are suffering terribly. Take your time to recover.’
I nodded. I felt guilty that she thought that was the reason I was going, but it seemed easier to go along with it.
‘Olive going with you?’
‘No, she… no.’
I don’t know what Mrs Fielding must have been thinking but she put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.