Ambulance Girls Page 3

  People were on the streets now, and they looked up as we drove past. They were pale and many looked tired, which wasn’t surprising after a night in the shelters, but they did not seem miserable or defeated. On the contrary, most appeared cheerful. Some of them waved and smiled at us.

  At St Pancras station I was forced into a complicated detour by a large yellow notice, ‘DANGER – UNEXPLODED BOMB’. The Old Grey Mare – the grey painted car allocated to bomb reconnaissance – was parked at the corner. I sent up a quick prayer for the disposal squad, who would be racing the clock to disarm the bomb.

  ‘No rest for the wicked,’ said Levy, as we drove past.

  He found it hard to remain silent, and often tried my patience with such pointless remarks. I ignored him to concentrate on the road. We were nearly at the station.

  In Woburn Place, opposite Russell Square, not far from the ruddy Edwardian grandeur of the Hotel Russell and around the corner from the Russell Square Underground Station, was a large mansion block called Russell Court. It rather dominated that part of Bloomsbury. The Bloomsbury auxiliary ambulance station was located there and in the building’s basement garage were kept the five ambulances and the six cars used to transport the walking wounded.

  By the time we arrived at the station it was an effort for me even to drive down the ramp into the garage, and when I opened my door I nearly fell out of the cabin. The concrete floor seemed to sway as I pulled off my steel hat and, when I removed my eye shield, my eyes were sore and gritty with fatigue. I massaged my scalp with dirty fingers, trying to ease the knots of tension. When I blinked at my watch, the small dial showed six-thirty. I had hoped it was later. Still, if things were quiet now, I could grab some breakfast before helping Levy clean the Monster. We were obliged to leave her spick and span and free of blood for the day shift.

  Poor old Monster, the night had added some dents and dings to her body. I saw them as scars of battle and gave her a pat before heading to the women’s washroom to clean off some of the grime.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Maisie Halliday was in the washroom, also trying to wash away the dirt that collected during a hard shift. She was a tall, dark-eyed girl of nineteen with long legs and a calm disposition, who worked at the Trocadero as a dancer when she wasn’t driving ambulances. She had joined us only a couple of weeks before and I had not had much chance to speak to her, but from what I had seen I was fairly sure I would like her.

  I greeted Maisie and looked in the mirror. My face was not just dirty, it was a varicoloured streaky mess of grime and blood. I groaned, picked up a bar of soap and turned on the tap. A few minutes later my skin was clean, but bright red from scrubbing and the icy water.

  Maisie looked at her own reflection and laughed. ‘This job is murder on the complexion.’

  ‘You’re a dancer, aren’t you? I suppose you know how to cover it all up with make-up.’

  She nodded. ‘I do, but I wonder sometimes if the little nicks we always seem to pick up at the incidents will mark my face for life. I’m terribly afraid it could hamper my chances at Hollywood stardom when this war is over.’

  I wondered if she were serious, until I caught sight of the twinkle in her eyes.

  We walked together out of the washroom and headed for the canteen to grab breakfast.

  ‘Are you really interested in acting?’ I asked, as we tucked into our baked beans and bacon.

  Her expression became dreamy. ‘No. I’m a dancer. After this is all over my dream is to head back to France. Before the war I had a peachy job in the Riviera as an exhibition dancer at a big hotel. Good tips and I could laze around on the beach all day, working on my tan.’ She threw me a wicked smile. ‘Lots of rich men, happy to squire me around.’ Her smile faded and she finished bitterly, ‘But the war put paid to all that.’

  ‘I was in the Riviera for a few months in 1938,’ I said, ‘working as a governess for a Czech family. That was in the winter season, though.’

  ‘A titled family?’ asked Maisie.

  ‘Actually, yes. Count Szrebesky. I looked after his two daughters for a year and a half. The family hovel was in Prague, but they always wintered in the Algarve. Why did you suppose he had a title?’

  She grinned and touched her nose. ‘All the titled European families winter in the Riviera. I suppose you speak excellent French.’

  ‘I do, actually. And German, but I don’t like that language much anymore.’

  ‘I met a dreamy Frenchman in Cannes in ’38,’ she said on a sigh. ‘But my French wasn’t up to it. We ended up simply smiling and miming, which is no way to further a friendship.’

  Now it was my turn to sound bitter. ‘You can’t trust the dreamy titled men on the Riviera. They may be charming to your face, but they’re often rotters.’

  ‘Therein lies a tale, I’ll bet. What happened?’ she asked sympathetically.

  ‘It’s a common story, I suppose. Young woman, romantic setting, handsome man. He pursued me until he discovered that I was travelling with the Szrebesky family only as a governess and not as a friend or relation. All of a sudden, my charms were not so charming. He dropped me cold.’ My tone was light, but that was to hide the fact that it still hurt, to have been so abruptly dropped because I wasn’t ‘one of them’.

  ‘What was the blighter’s name?’ asked Maisie.

  ‘Henri, Comte de Valhubert. He was extraordinarily handsome and ridiculously charming.’

  She laughed. ‘Then I expect you’re not the first to have been treated badly by him. The stories I heard about those young aristos.’ She smiled. ‘I’m rarely romantic about such things. Does that make me sound shallow?’

  ‘No. Sensible. He wasn’t the only one, but was the most charming and the most offensive. First he let me know that it would be unsuitable, pas convenable, as he put it, for us to be seen together in public, given my background. Then he made a pass at me and suggested we go somewhere private instead. For a while I thought I had a sign on my forehead – Australian innocent, open to advances.’

  Maisie laughed. ‘It wasn’t you, Lily. Gosh, you might as well say the fox is open to the advances of the hounds.’

  ‘It hurt me badly at the time,’ I admitted, ‘but I’ve taken it as one of those lessons in life we all need to learn. Mind you, I’m very grateful to have got it learned and put it behind me.’

  ‘How did you come to be a governess in Prague in the first place?’

  ‘That’s simple. I was a teacher back home in Australia, and I wanted to see the world.’

  The answer wasn’t nearly so simple really, but how could I explain to Maisie the almost overwhelming compulsion I had to escape my life as a country schoolteacher and come to Europe.

  ‘Did the world live up to your expectations?’ she asked. ‘Handsome scoundrels excepted.’

  I took a sip of tea while I pondered my answer. Throughout my childhood I had been taught that Europe, and especially Britain, was far superior to Australia in every way. I had accepted this without question. I was also a voracious reader and almost every book I read was set in Britain. I lived in the desert and dreamed of bluebell woods, picnics with Nanny in Hyde Park and snowy Christmases. Once I was able to understand French and German well enough, I read books written in those languages too, and it seemed to me that my life would not be complete until I had seen the countries they described.

  So I saved every penny I could from my teaching and begged my parents for assistance. They could see that war was brewing and tried to convince me to stay in Australia, but I had no interest in their words of caution.

  ‘At first it seemed that I was living in a fairy tale made up of all the books I’d read,’ I said to Maisie. ‘Mind you, I had on pretty thick rose-coloured glasses.’

  I had arrived in London on a cold February day in 1938 determined to love the city. And so I did, despite the dark winter days and the reeking smoky air. I had seen only a tiny part of the city, however, before I left for the Continent, and it was not until I ret
urned to England and joined the Ambulance Service last October – was it really only a year ago? – that I first saw the East End slums. Now that had been an education. It was then I realised that there was more to London than glittering Mayfair, the bright West End and quaint Bloomsbury. Nothing could ever make me dislike London, but the East End had been a corrective to my innocent delight in the city.

  ‘Lily? Are you wool-gathering?’ Maisie had leaned over and tweaked my arm. ‘Did the glasses stay rosy?’

  ‘For a while – and I still love London, although I’m well aware now that it’s not perfect. I wasn’t here long before the Szrebesky family offered me a job as governess. It was when I arrived in Prague that I really thought I was in heaven. I adore Prague.’

  ‘Were the family good to work for?’

  ‘I was very fond of the two girls, Leonor and Karolina, and the countess was always nice to me, but the count was a fascist. Charming, but a fascist. I had very little to do with him, thankfully.’

  Maisie pushed aside her empty plate and concentrated on what I was saying. ‘So I suppose he would have been happy when Germany made Czechoslovakia a so-called protectorate.’

  My surprise that she was interested in this must have shown. She laughed. ‘We’ve all become experts in politics in the last few years. I was in Cannes then, and I thought it was jolly awful of France and Britain to let Hitler take over Czechoslovakia like that.’

  ‘Count Szrebesky was one of the men who signed the invitation to Hitler to “save” the country,’ I said. ‘And the Germans marched straight in.’

  ‘I’ve read in the papers that the Nazis don’t treat the Czechs very well.’

  ‘No,’ I said bitterly, ‘they don’t. It wasn’t long before they were persecuting Jews and murdering protesting students.’

  Now Maisie seemed surprised, by my vehemence, and I swallowed back my anger. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I was there when the Nazis marched into Prague. I wasn’t able to get out for two weeks, and that was enough time to make me realise what’s in store for Britain if Hitler manages to take control.’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Maisie cheerfully.

  I wished I could be so sure, but I put a smile on my face. ‘No, he most certainly will not,’ I agreed.

  We finished our breakfast and moved to the common room where, despite my best intentions, I ended up asleep in an easy chair.

  When I awoke, voices around me were spouting nonsense that would have made Hitler proud.

  ‘The Jews run the black market, everybody knows that.’

  Sam Sadler was mouthing off, as usual. I lay still in my chair, too tired to open my eyes, pretending still to be asleep. Levy obviously was not in the room and nothing I could say would change views held since childhood, heard from parents and neighbours, now entrenched as Truth.

  Jews were Different. Their ways were subtle and unknowable. They did not celebrate the great festivals of Christmas and Easter so beloved in English households. They were Different and therefore to be feared and mistrusted. The Germans might be the Enemy, but they were basically Like Us. The Jews, on the other hand, were Different.

  Most of the men and women at the ambulance station were decent people who put up with hardship, long hours and poor pay to help out in this terrible war. We were a wide cross-section of society, ordinary people who had taken on great responsibility in these extraordinary times. I liked most of them very much, but I had grown up in a bush pub and I was well aware that people were not always good and motivations were not always simple.

  ‘The Yids are the only ones making money out of this war. They’re making a killing while the rest of us are dying like flies.’

  ‘Ruddy parasites they are, living off of mugs like us.’

  Sam Sadler again, now joined by Fred Knaggs. Levy referred to them as spivs, but in Australia we would have called them lairs. They wore cheap, tight suits and scented hair oil and they angled their hats low on their foreheads. Somehow they gave the impression of being both shrewd and stupid, these scrawny men with East London accents, sharp features and nervous energy.

  When not at the station, Knaggs was a tic-tac man at a local dog track and Sadler apparently moonlighted as a dance-band leader at a nightclub in Soho. Levy and I were convinced their main occupation was dealing on the black market, which made their comments particularly annoying. Certainly, they always had scarce items available for purchase, such as stockings, watches, perfume and food. Many at Woburn Place used their services, but Levy and I kept clear of them. Levy had earned their undying enmity by telling them once that while he couldn’t give a toss about their black-marketeering, if he ever heard they were involved in looting from bombed houses he would report them to the police.

  A girlish voice joined the conversation. ‘It’s the Jews that started the Great War. People don’t know that, but it’s true. They wanted the brightest and the bravest in Europe to kill each other.’ That was Nola Fripp; her fast, breathless way of talking always made me feel anxious. My jaw tightened at the offensive words.

  ‘They want power and wealth,’ she went on, ‘and they’re getting it through the big companies. It’s a conspiracy. The government is too stupid to see it, and anyway, they’ve infiltrated the government and the City.’

  I pictured the silly young woman who was talking. In her early twenties, Fripp was thin to the point of emaciation. She was the ambulance attendant no one wanted because she often became hysterical during air raids. Her father was high up in the War Office and I wondered if she was spouting the unofficial official line.

  A man’s voice joined the conversation.

  ‘Well, a great many people would agree with you that it’s the Jews who really run this country.’

  That was Jack Moray. If the spivs were an annoyance, Moray was a thorn that burrowed deep into my side. He had joined us at Woburn Place in January and within a week had become the right-hand man of our station officer, Mrs Coke, and been appointed her deputy. It was basically a desk job, and he rarely went out to incidents. A dark-haired man in his thirties, his teeth were large and not quite even, which gave him a disturbing, almost vulpine look that some women obviously found attractive. It matched his offhand cynical manner and cruelly amusing sense of humour, which he often directed at Levy.

  Moray dressed suavely and his accent was cultivated, but anyone with an ear for vowels could sound posh and the old school tie he wore could have been bought in a shop. I knew what my father would have made of him. Dad would have looked Moray up and down and pronounced him ‘flash as a rat with a gold tooth’. Such men might be well-dressed and well-groomed and well-spoken, but some instinct told you they were never to be trusted.

  I was almost roused to argue the point with Moray and Fripp. Or rather, since intellectual argument was not my forte, to tell them that they were a pair of stupid idiots who were parroting nonsense. But then George Squire spoke and derailed my train of thought.

  ‘Well, I’d never trust a Jew,’ he said.

  I sat up and glared at him. ‘What about Levy?’ I asked, because I had always thought Squire liked Levy. ‘You trust Levy to go out into the Blitz and risk his life for others, don’t you?’

  Squire was a former boxer, not a tall man, but he had big hulking shoulders. At present he was hunkered over the oil heater, and when he reached out his hands to the warmth I was struck by how large they were. He turned to face me.

  ‘I don’t mean Levy.’

  ‘But Levy is a Jew,’ I replied, barely remembering to omit you stupid idiot.

  ‘Yeah. But Levy’s different. I’m speaking in a – a general sense. I don’t like Jews in general. Don’t trust ’em.’

  How could I respond to that? Everyone knew what was happening to the Jews under Nazi rule; the newspapers had been reporting massacres in Poland, the systematic stripping of all their human rights and dignities in Germany and its ‘protectorates’. And yet these ordinary Londoners were still willing to trot out the old stereotypes that could resu
lt in such inhumanity.

  ‘How can you say such rot when you know what’s happening in Europe?’ My hands were in tight painful fists. ‘You must have read how the Nazis are murdering Jews in Poland. I saw what they did in Prague. I was there when Nazi supporters smashed Jewish shops, trying to whip up enthusiasm for the Nazis before the invasion. I saw an old Jewish shop owner being beaten in front of me. It was terrible, they were vicious thugs. I tried to help him, but—’

  ‘You tried to help him?’ Moray seemed surprised.

  ‘Of course I did! Would you have just stood there? Would you? He was old, helpless. They broke his windows and when he came out they broke his body.’

  There were six of them. I’d tried to pull them off the old man; I hit them and kicked at them, but they just laughed at me and pushed me aside so that I landed heavily on the footpath. I’d lain there, dazed, until my friends pulled me back into the crowd and then away into the maze of little streets. I had no idea if those friends were still alive.

  ‘Of course we don’t condone that sort of behaviour,’ said Myra Harris, a plump woman of fifty-odd with a mop of wiry black curls speckled with grey. She was sitting in a Lloyd Loom chair, bent over a half-knitted balaclava as her needles clicked comfortably. ‘This is England. Things like that don’t happen here.’

  I stared at her. Didn’t she know the Czechs had thought things like that didn’t happen there, either?

  ‘Levy can be very sarcastic,’ said Stephen Armstrong. He was a pale and spotty boy of seventeen. When I turned to face him, he had flushed a bright red, perhaps in memory of Levy’s sarcasm. Levy did not suffer fools, and Armstrong could be remarkably stupid on occasion.

  Harris was nodding in agreement.

  ‘And how many Jews do you see in uniform?’ asked Fripp.

  ‘Lots,’ I snapped. ‘Levy has two brothers in the army.’

  Moray laughed. ‘In the pawnbroker battalion?’

  ‘Don’t be offensive,’ I snapped. ‘One’s a doctor in the Medical Corps and the other is in a tank regiment. They’re both serving in North Africa.’