Ambulance Girls Under Fire Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Deborah Burrows

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Read on for an extract from Ambulance Girls

  Further Reading

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  In times of war, how do you know who to trust?

  Celia Ashton has driven ambulances throughout the Blitz for the Bloomsbury Auxiliary Ambulance Depot. Cool under fire, she revels in her exciting and extremely dangerous job.

  When her husband, a known Nazi supporter, is released from prison, Celia refuses to return to her unhappy marriage. Instead she joins forces with Simon Levy, a man who appears to despise her, to help a young Jewish orphan. In so doing she discovers that one ruthless traitor can be more dangerous than any German bomber, and that love can cross any boundary.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Deborah Burrows was raised in Perth, Western Australia, by a wonderful mother who was widowed in World War II and who loved to tell stories. As a child she always had a book in hand, even when watching her favourite classic movies on TV.

  She has several degrees in history including a post-graduate degree from Oxford University. She currently lives in Perth, though makes frequent visits to the UK. She is the author of Ambulance Girls.

  Also by Deborah Burrows

  Ambulance Girls

  To the Williams boys: my brothers, Bevan, Mark and Vaughn, who are and always have been so supportive and loving; my nephews Dylan and Darcy and my new great-nephew, Jesse.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sunday 29 December 1940

  ‘Watch out, Ashwin!’ Maisie Halliday’s voice was thin and high, almost a scream. ‘For God’s sake, run. The whole thing is coming down on top of you.’

  I glanced up at the wall beside me. Maisie was right: the bricks were rippling and it was obviously close to collapse, but I hesitated, unsure if I had really heard a voice calling out from the ruins. Then I tasted dust. My heart gave a thump and, acting on pure instinct, I turned and made an attempt at a frantic dash to safety. It was more of a clumsy waddle, as I was weighed down by my heavy waterproof, rubber boots and gas mask, all of which made it difficult to move quickly, especially as the ground was boggy from water used to put out the fire and uneven with rubble from the building’s earlier collapse. I staggered through mud, water, cinders and charcoal, slipping and sliding and almost falling several times.

  When I reached the roadway I bent over, rested my hands on my knees and pulled in a few ragged breaths. From behind me came the roar of collapsing bricks mingled, surprisingly, with cheers. I realised why when I raised my head. Fires were burning out of control around me and the scene was bright as daylight; my ungainly retreat to safety had been witnessed by rescue workers and firemen. I threw them a grin and a wave and plodded across the road to Maisie, who was standing beside our ambulance.

  As I got closer I saw the scowl on her usually serene face.

  ‘Bit of a close shave, that,’ I said lightly, and smiled at her as I took off my steel helmet. Smoke swirled around me in a sudden eddy, making me cough as I pulled out my handkerchief. Scraps of charred paper floated past us in the heated air.

  ‘It was far too close,’ Maisie replied, in a stiff angry tone.

  I didn’t reply. Instead I swiped the handkerchief across my sweaty face. When I glanced at the linen it was blackened. Blackened face, dirty uniform. I must look like a guy, I thought. Penny for the old guy? I gave a laugh at the thought that one national newspaper had described me as ‘the loveliest debutante of 1937’.

  ‘How can you laugh, Ashwin? You nearly died.’ Maisie sounded close to tears.

  I put away the soiled handkerchief. ‘But I didn’t die. So no need to fuss.’

  Maisie’s voice rose. ‘Why do you always rush into danger? You’re not invincible, you know.’ She was really angry, which surprised me, as Maisie was usually remarkably even-tempered. ‘I don’t want to attend another funeral,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘Not so soon after David Levy’s.’

  I no longer felt like laughing. The pain of David’s death two months before was as raw as the burns on my cheeks from the falling embers. But Maisie didn’t know about David and me, and she never would. I straightened my back, raised my chin and assumed the mask of chilly reserve that served me well in such situations. Head high, walk tall.

  ‘I’m sorry to have frightened you,’ I said. ‘I thought I heard a voice calling out and I simply reacted.’

  ‘Well, it was a daft thing to do. That’s what the rescue squads are for.’ Maisie tried for a disgruntled tone, but her sunny nature won through and she gave me a smile. ‘I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.’

  I glanced back at the pile of bricks that was all that remained of the wall and raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, so am I.’

  Maisie laughed. She was nineteen, and a dancer when she wasn’t an ambulance attendant. Her slim, tough dancer’s body was allied to a face with the dark luminosity of a Raphael Madonna. I liked her, and she was always friendly enough to me, but we weren’t close. I suspected she distrusted my class on principle.

  ‘Aren’t you ever afraid?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s no time for fear,’ I replied, waving at the scene around us.

  The ancient City of London was alight and burning out of control after the night’s incendiary attack by the German bombers. Above us, massed battalions of low-flying aircraft were still dropping yet more of the little deadly devices, interspersed with high-explosive bombs that made the ground shake. Firemen, with smoke-blackened faces and dripping uniforms, sweated on the ends of wriggling hoses, fighting a futile battle against the flames. Rescue workers, grey with choking plaster dust and ash, combed through the charred and smoking ruins. Fire engines, trailers and pumps were dotted around, barely visible in the thick smoke.

  As usual, the noise was almost overwhelming. The crash of bursting shells, the whine of falling fire-bombs and the scream of larger high-explosive bombs were accompanied by the constant throb and moan of aircraft engines and the shrilling and clanging of ambulance and fire-brigade bells. The thump of pneumatic drills as roadmen worked on a burning gas main that shot blue flames high up into the sky. The song of the guns: the thud of the big anti-aircraft guns, the bark of the smaller mobile guns and the sharp rattle of machine guns firing on descending flares. And behind it all, the roar of fires burning out of control.

  With every gust of the breeze great clouds of pale smoke filled with sparks rolled down and burst over those who fought to save what they could. The high roof of a warehouse, burning fiercely, had become a grid of bright beams again
st the darkness beyond. Leaping flames formed a halo around the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral on its hill above us because, amazingly, the cathedral still stood, silhouetted against a blood-red sky. I sent up a quick prayer that it would survive the firestorm.

  It was an awesomely beautiful sight, the City of London in flames. I felt humbled, and also terribly sad, to witness it. David had loved the City, with its maze of narrow lanes and all its history. Its annihilation would have caused him terrible grief.

  An angry voice cut through the din. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing, Ashwin?’ Our station officer in charge, Jack Moray, stood in front of me, hands on hips, scowling. ‘Getting yourself killed won’t help anyone.’

  I shrugged. ‘I thought I heard someone calling out to me.’ I made my tone nonchalant. ‘Would you be so kind as to ask heavy rescue to check the area? In case someone is trapped in the ruins. In a cellar, perhaps.’

  Moray gave a jerky nod. His lips were thin and flat against his teeth and his face was taut with anger. ‘Less than an hour ago, a brick wall just like that one –’ he gestured towards the pile of bricks across the road ‘– collapsed and killed four firemen. If you don’t stop taking such insane risks, I’ll stop sending you out to incidents. I mean it, Ashwin. You can stay behind at the station and man the phone instead of Fripp.’

  I knew it was an empty threat. Nola Fripp was more trouble than she was worth at an incident because she was scared of loud noises and tended to shriek and run for cover when she was needed to tend the wounded. Moray had taken to leaving her at the station and attending incidents himself if required. No one wanted Fripp on the road in an air raid.

  I nodded, and said as if repeating a lesson, ‘I understand. No more risks.’

  Unless I have to.

  Maisie flinched at the sound of an explosion nearby.

  ‘They’re dynamiting the buildings to the south to prevent the fire from spreading,’ Moray told her. He shook his head, as if in wonderment. ‘Even the roads around the cathedral are on fire. They’re wooden block roads and they’re burning. An amazing sight. It’s like you’d imagine the roads of Hell.’

  ‘Any more casualties for us?’ I asked.

  Maisie and I had been to hospital with three loads of casualties already that night, but we knew that we’d be working until well after daylight.

  ‘Mobile first-aid station in Farringdon Street has four waiting for you. Burns, lacerations and broken limbs…’ He gave me a meaningful look. ‘From falling walls.’

  ‘I could read a book out here,’ said Maisie, as we walked away. ‘It’s so bright.’

  ‘The pages would be blood red.’

  A loud slithering sound came from above and we dodged backwards as a dollop of hot lead from the roof of the old building beside us came down where we had been walking.

  ‘That singed my uniform,’ said Maisie. She gave an unconvincing laugh. ‘You don’t expect to be sent to your maker by a melting roof.’

  ‘I expect just about anything nowadays.’

  We collected the patients and carried them in stretchers to the ambulance. It was tricky, as the whole area was boggy and slippery with ice and mud and water, and we were forced to dodge the coiling hosepipes that covered the roads. As soon as we slid the final stretcher into the rails in the ambulance body, Maisie climbed inside and I drove away from the burning City at the regulation sixteen miles per hour. Maisie’s voice floated in from the back. She was reassuring our patients.

  Fleet Street was on fire and as the warden directed me into a diversion I noticed with a weary sadness that the wedding-cake steeple of St Bride’s Church had been hit. The once beautiful church was a skeletal shell and the ruins were burning furiously. The ever-growing inferno lit up the ruined streets so effectively that it was as if I was driving in full daylight. For once it was easy to see my way and I had no need of my ambulance’s shuttered headlights to show me the holes and bomb craters in the road ahead.

  My ambulance was a tough old bird, and we rolled along uncomfortably through the fire-bright streets. If bomb craters blocked our way, I drove on the footpath. Eventually we arrived and I parked in the hospital yard. When I climbed out to help Maisie with the wounded, flakes of blazing stuff – rags or paper – floated past on the wind like grey snowflakes. They coated Maisie’s tin hat and coat.

  ‘What’s it from?’ asked Maisie, as we carried the first patient to the hospital entrance.

  ‘I think it’s all that remains of the books in Paternoster Row.’

  At the hospital entrance a medical student was sitting with a pile of large brown envelopes. On these he recorded each patient’s number and any identifying information. The young man had a bony, pleasant face, but his eyes were leaden with exhaustion and his voice was raspy as he greeted us.

  ‘I hear they’re calling it the Second Great Fire of London,’ he said, ‘because the entire City is on fire. Is it true?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Maisie. ‘We’ve lost most of the Wren churches, and Guildhall is burning, which is awful, but it looks like they’ve saved St Paul’s.’

  ‘At least that’s something.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I wonder if they’ll make up a rhyme this time around.’ At Maisie’s look he said, ‘You must remember it. In sixteen hundred and sixty-six, London burned like rotten sticks.’

  As I drove back to the beleaguered City, a searchlight sword struck out across the sky. Others soon joined it, until there was an intricate tracery of light through which flew small objects like ominous black birds, ones that that carried death under their wings.

  Beside me, Maisie laughed, which confused me until she said, ‘I’ve thought of a rhyme.’

  ‘A rhyme?’

  ‘A nursery rhyme, like the one the medical student recited. Here goes: In December nineteen forty, Goering’s planes left London in flames.’

  ‘It doesn’t scan,’ I protested.

  She was silent for a while, then said, ‘What about: In nineteen forty in December, German raiders turned London to embers.’

  ‘That one doesn’t really rhyme.’

  ‘Oh, you’re a tough audience, Ashwin. Goering’s planes were London’s bane? No. That is awful. Fire. Mire. Byre. Lyre. Shame there’s no spire on St Paul’s,’ she muttered. ‘Then again, all those Wren churches have gone, and they all had spires.’

  I parked the ambulance near Ludgate. In our absence, the fires in the City seemed to have increased in intensity. The dome of St Paul’s was silhouetted against a sky of yellow and green and red, with great billows of smoke around it. Clouds of sparks fell around us as we headed towards the mobile first-aid post in a haze of smoke, ready to collect our next batch of wounded. The heated air scorched my skin.

  To my astonishment, Maisie gave a shout of laughter. ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘Listen.’

  And, against a backdrop of roaring flames and billowing smoke, and above the hiss of hoses and the shouts of rescuers and the clanging of fire engine and ambulance bells, Maisie declaimed her poem into the heart of the inferno before us:

  ‘In sixteen hundred and sixty-six,

  London burned like rotten sticks.

  In nineteen forty, it happened again,

  The Luftwaffe came and left London aflame.

  But try as they might they’ll never break her

  Just like before, we will remake her.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  In May 1940, not long after my husband, Cedric Ashwin, was incarcerated under Regulation 18B as a Nazi sympathiser and potential fifth columnist, I moved out of the Mayfair townhouse we had shared for the two and a half years of our marriage and into a small serviced flat on the Gray’s Inn Road.

  My flat was in St Andrew’s Court, which had been built only six years before. I liked the clean vertical lines and stark white walls of the building, which were softened by blue metal window frames and delicate iron balustrades on each balcony. As I couldn’t boil an egg, I also liked the service restaurant. It was below the street level,
so you could only hear bombs that dropped very close by and you hardly heard the guns at all when you were eating. And because St Andrew’s had been constructed of tough, modern concrete, the air raids had not caused any real damage to the fabric of the building itself.

  Another benefit was that St Andrew’s was close to Bloomsbury Auxiliary Ambulance Station, in Woburn Place, near Russell Square, where I worked as an ambulance driver. St Andrew’s was also close to my other workplace, the Jewish Children’s Placement Board in Bloomsbury House, on the corner of Gower Street and Bedford Avenue. For the past five weeks, on my days off, I had been working at the JCPB as very bad typist and reasonably efficient clerk.

  It was to Bloomsbury House that I was heading on that chilly December morning, the day after the firestorm, the last day of 1940. I wheeled my bicycle on to Gray’s Inn Road and had just steadied myself ready to push off from the kerb when someone called out my name. I turned around to see Eddie Hollis leaning against the wall of the building next door.

  ‘Good morning, Eddie.’ My voice was cold and my face unwelcoming.

  Eddie was one of Cedric’s most ardent admirers. He was a colourless sort of man, with thinning dark-blond hair and blue, rather protruding, eyes. His neck was thick, but he had surprisingly small ears. Before the war he had been an active blackshirt. As such he had delighted in tormenting those he considered to be his inferiors, specifically any Jew who lived in London. I had not seen him since my husband had been incarcerated and it was not a pleasure to see him now. In the past eight months I had distanced myself from Cedric’s followers and I didn’t want to encourage visits from Eddie Hollis.

  Eddie peeled away from the wall and slunk across the footpath to stand next to me. He put a restraining hand on my handlebar.

  ‘You off to that Yid place then?’ Eddie’s tone was just as offensive as his words. It was concerning that he not only knew where I lived but also about my work at Bloomsbury House. Had he been watching me, my husband’s grubby little acolyte?

  ‘Why do you go there?’ he said. ‘He doesn’t like it. I told him all about it and he’s not happy.’