Ambulance Girls At War Read online

  ‘Yes, Mam,’ I murmured.

  I got up, washed, changed into my pyjamas, brushed my long black hair and crawled into bed. Thoughts of the day grew dim, I closed my eyes and fell into velvety darkness.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Saturday 9 March 1941

  It was seven o’clock on a Saturday night and I was determined to go out. So I dressed, made up my face, fixed my hair and left my room. As I descended, the chatter and laughter of the other girls increased in volume with each step down. When it was busy, the club housed up to forty girls. At present there were only twenty of us, but twenty young women could make a lot of noise. It sounded like a flock of exotic birds had descended on the common room, and I suspected that it wouldn’t be long before Miss King put a stop to the racket.

  Sure enough, her strident voice rang out. ‘Girls, please. You sound like a band of wild monkeys in the jungle. Quiet, please.’ The volume of noise ceased suddenly, as if a radio had been turned down.

  Miss King emerged from the common room with a triumphant expression as I reached the first floor. She had been in charge of the club for almost twenty years, and was a tall, spare woman in her early fifties. Her fair hair, now fading to grey, was regularly subjected to an expensive permanent wave that set it in rigid curls. As usual, she was beautifully dressed. That evening it was a dove grey suit over a cream silk blouse. She smiled when she saw me.

  ‘Going out, Maisie?’

  ‘I’m off to the cinema.’

  Miss King shook her head and I watched, fascinated, as not one of the curls moved even slightly. ‘You really should stay in,’ she said. ‘There’ll be a raid tonight.’

  ‘Oh, Hitler’s too busy in the Balkans to bother with us.’

  ‘We’ve clear skies and the moon’s nearly full,’ she said darkly. ‘There hasn’t been a really bad raid since January and we’re due one. They’ll be over, and bombs will fall.’ Again she shook her head and again the curls obediently stayed put. ‘You should know better, in your line of work, than to venture out on a night like this. If you’re not careful you’ll end up being carted off in one of your own ambulances.’

  I said, in mock seriousness, ‘Oh, no. The Soho station near Leicester Square picks up wounded from around here. My station’s in Bloomsbury, remember, near Russell Square.’

  ‘No need to be cheeky. You know what I mean.’

  ‘I won’t stay out long,’ I replied, laughing. ‘Promise.’

  ‘Much better to stay in and listen to the wireless. If there’s a raid you’ll be nice and safe in the practice room.’

  ‘It’s Saturday night and I want to feel that the Luftwaffe doesn’t rule my life. Anyway, the new John Wayne is on at the Odeon.’

  ‘I saw it yesterday,’ she said, ‘and it’s very enjoyable, even if that Marlene Dietrich is in it. I don’t approve of her, not really. She’s a German.’

  Miss King tended towards the ‘all Germans are bad, always’ way of thinking.

  ‘She’s American, now,’ I said. ‘And has spoken up against Hitler.’

  ‘Hmm. It’s easy to say it. She could be a spy.’ Miss King’s face lightened. ‘I like John Wayne, though. He’s a real man.’

  ‘Who is?’ Lorna Gaskin burst out of the common room followed by a gust of laughter. Lorna was small and round with a halo of blonde curls and had the singing voice of an angel.

  ‘John Wayne, apparently,’ I said.

  ‘Ooh, I like him,’ she said. ‘He’s lovely. So manly.’ She gave me an appraising look I knew all too well. I braced myself. ‘Man like that’d be just the ticket for a girl like you. He’s lovely and tall.’

  ‘John Waynes are thin on the ground in London right now,’ I said lightly, pushing thoughts of Michael Harker out of my head.

  ‘You’ll never know if you don’t look,’ said Lorna. ‘London’s full of men in uniforms from all over the world, all of them after a good time. Any girl with any sort of good looks can have the time of her life. And you’ve got the looks, Maisie.’

  ‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘I’m not interested in a boyfriend, whether he’s tall or short, American, English or – or Zulu. I really don’t know why you lot are so obsessed with men, when all you do is complain about your blokes and how awfully they treat you.’

  She grinned. ‘And we keep coming back for more, don’t we? If you do meet John Wayne, ask if he has a friend. I dote on Yanks. Not that I’ve met any, but they seem lovely in the movies.’

  I shook my head in mock exasperation. ‘Don’t hold your breath. I work twenty-four-hour shifts, remember. Any men I meet tend to need bandaging.’

  ‘What about that Mr Purvis from your station?’ said Miss King. ‘The one who took you dancing at the Trocadero. He seemed nice enough.’

  I shook my head. ‘We only went there to help out a friend. It wasn’t a date. I don’t like him like that. And anyway, Rupert’s too old for me. He’s thirty-five if he’s a day.’

  ‘That old?’ said Lorna. ‘Still—’

  ‘There’ll be time for romance when this is all over,’ I broke in, but smiled at her persistence. ‘I’ve seen too many girls left heart-broken when their fellow is killed. It’s a mug’s game, falling in love during a war. And I’m no mug.’

  ‘Well, you must be the only girl in London who thinks that way,’ said Miss King.

  ‘Thinks what way?’ Bobbie Davis had come upstairs from the practice room. A dancer like me, only six inches shorter, she was dressed in a leotard and ballet pumps and had a towel wrapped around her neck.

  ‘That she doesn’t need romance in her life,’ said Lorna.

  ‘No one really needs romance, but it’s fun,’ said Bobbie. ‘So many men around now, so handsome in their uniforms.’

  With infinite grace, she raised her arms in a stretch, then put her slippered leg straight up against the wall and leaned against it, ignoring Miss King’s frown. I knew how good it felt to push into such a deep stretch after dance practice, when muscles were tired but loose, and I ached to join her.

  ‘I’m off to dinner and dancing tonight with a dashing Free French Officer,’ she said, as she swapped legs. ‘The trick is not to take any of it too seriously.’

  ‘Take your leg off the wall, Bobbie. Right now, if you please!’ Miss King’s tone was sharp.

  In a leisurely fashion, Bobbie stood upright, then bent from the waist into another long and graceful stretch. ‘You should find a fellow and join me and the Frog,’ she said, from somewhere near the floor. ‘It’s just a night out, no need to be serious.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling her,’ said Lorna.

  ‘Telling who what?’ Jill Peterson – a slim brunette dancer with a cheeky grin – entered the hall from the common room. She was munching on an apple, so her voice was muffled.

  ‘Telling Maisie to enjoy herself and not worry so much,’ said Lorna.

  Jill swallowed her mouthful of apple. She opened her eyes very wide and said earnestly, ‘That’s so true.’

  ‘I’m going out tonight with a Dutch sailor,’ said Lorna. ‘He’s a mechanic on a ship and ever so nice and tall with lovely blue eyes. Some of those Dutchmen are quite handsome, Maisie. I could phone him, see if he has a friend.’

  I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but no. I’m going to the movies.’

  ‘Alone?’ Her face was a picture of horrified surprise.

  ‘Yes, alone. I like going alone.’

  ‘I hate going alone to the movies. I’m sure that everyone is thinking I’m there because I couldn’t find a man to take me.’

  Bobbie laughed. ‘Even dressed like that, no one would think that Maisie couldn’t find a man to take her to the movies.’

  I turned on her. ‘What’s the matter with how I’m dressed?’

  She looked me up and down. ‘Slacks, sweater, jacket, brogues. Not exactly glamorous.’

  Ellie Kavanagh appeared. ‘Well, I’m off to the Café de Paris with Raymond and his best friend and his best friend’s new girlfriend,’ she said, her ey
es shining. ‘I can’t wait to see the place. It’s supposed to be a dream.’

  Ellie was a young dancer from Birmingham, who had been at the club for six months. Her boyfriend was a Canadian soldier.

  ‘Lucky you,’ I said.

  The Café de Paris was a sumptuous subterranean haven, a nightclub and restaurant with crooners, cocktails, chorus dancers and swing bands. The clientele might not be quite as select as it had been before the war – uniforms were a great social leveller – but it was still the place where the smart set chose to go for a good night out, to dance till dawn and forget about the war.

  ‘I love that place,’ said Bobbie. ‘I don’t know how, but somehow, the men all seem extraordinarily handsome down there.’

  ‘And the young women all so very beautiful?’ I replied, tongue in cheek.

  ‘Absolutely. Oh, the evening gowns the women wear in that place! And fur coats, too. They’re simply to die for.’

  Ellie smiled at me. ‘Want me to see if there’s a spare Canadian? You could come too?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said, and smiled at Miss King. ‘I have the night key, because it’s such a special occasion.’

  Lorna chimed in again. ‘No one knows if they’re going to be alive tomorrow, so why not take your fun whenever you can?’

  ‘Fun? Who’s having fun? Tell all.’ Pru Hort came bounding up the stairs from the practice room, followed by Esther Jacob. Pru was an actress with ENSA, the Entertainments National Services Association, that put on shows for the troops. It was affectionately known as ‘Every Night Something Awful’.

  ‘What fun is Maisie taking, please?’ asked Esther in her broken English. A Jewish refugee from Poland, Esther was a ballet dancer with huge dark eyes and a ravaged face that belied her cheerful disposition.

  ‘None!’ I said, laughing. ‘This place is a madhouse. Goodbye all, I’m off to the flicks. Alone.’ I fled down the stairs before anyone could reply.

  Miss King’s voice floated after me. ‘Please be careful, Maisie dear, and be sure to go to a shelter when the raid starts. Leicester Square if you can. It’s always safer underground, remember.’

  ‘If there’s a raid, I’ll try to get there,’ I shouted back. I knew that being underground was not necessarily safer in a raid – I’d helped with the injured after the Bank underground station disaster, when a bomb exploded on the concourse – but there was no point in mentioning it to her. Besides, Leicester Square station was probably safer than most places.

  With the never-ending summer time the sun was still up when I stepped out on to Greek Street, even at seven o’clock in early March. Sunset was near, though. As daylight faded, the blueness above paled into a clear bleached brightness and a chalky circle was high in the sky. It would be a full moon tonight and I suspected that Miss King was right about the raid. German planes still came over London nearly every night to drop incendiaries and bombs, but the last really bad raid had been in January. We were due for a big one.

  I walked slowly along Greek Street, dodging the crowds who were trying to get home or get to shelter before the blackout was in force. The street walkers were out, whispering suggestively to passing men, or calling out from windows and doorways or jangling keys to draw the attention of potential clients. Some were dressed to the nines in black-market finery – those were the affluent ones, who kept flats – but most who walked the streets rented rooms by the hour when they were needed or popped into a vacant shelter.

  I had come to know most of the prostitutes on Greek Street by sight, and occasionally stopped for a chat with them if their business was slow, especially in the mornings when I was returning to the club after my shift. Apparently the blackout had been a boon to them.

  ‘It’s this Blitz,’ one had told me last week. ‘Gets the punters excited, not knowing if they’ll be killed by a bomb tomorrow. And it’s all secret doings in the blackout, you can get up to just about anything. Some of them shelters are real comfortable.’

  A little further along Greek Street I heard a voice I recognised. Edna was trying her luck at her usual patch, just outside the old Prince of Wales Theatre. I liked Edna and I felt sorry for her. She’d been an actress once, and could tell a fine story or two about her time treading the boards in the Music Halls in the twenties. But gin and poverty had taken their toll and now she walked the Soho streets. Poor Edna, she’d developed a cough over winter and it was lingering.

  ‘How about it, love?’ Her voice was high and wheedling, and ended in a cough. ‘For a fiver I could take you to heaven.’

  Her man wasn’t interested, and walked off quickly. I gave her a wave as I walked past.

  ‘That you, Maisie love? I think we’ll have a raid tonight – so you be sure to take cover.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, and walked on.

  I had a firm suspicion that something about me said I was motherless, because older women always seemed to want to look out for me. Younger women often saw me as a potential rival, which was annoying.

  Daylight faded quickly. I took my pencil torch out of my handbag but didn’t switch it on right away because it was easy enough to navigate using the white stripes that had been painted on kerbs, fire hydrants, lamp-posts, steps, anything that could be stumbled over in the dark.

  Londoners had been told to wear something white in the blackout to help prevent road accidents. People smarter than me had sewn white bands and patches on the sleeves, legs and shoulders of their coats, even on the brims of hats. Tonight my ‘something white’ was a pale pink scarf around my neck. I was not intending to be knocked over by an attractive American again.

  The sandbagged entrance to the cinema was just off Piccadilly Circus. I paid my one and nine pence and the usherette led me to a seat. There I sat comfortably enough in the warm fug of cigarette smoke, human bodies and cheap perfume. After the cartoon the newsreel began. We were informed that the Italians were busy invading Albania, but they were being harassed by the Greek air force and by the RAF – loud cheers from the crowd at the sight of Spitfires and Hurricanes sending enemy planes crashing to earth. The scene shifted to Somaliland, where the Italians were frantically withdrawing. We had taken over nine thousand Italian prisoners and there were loud jeers and whistles at pictures of a few bored Tommies guarding long lines of Italian prisoners in the desert. Some of the Italians looked dejected, but others grinned at the camera.

  ‘Bet they think they’re well out of it,’ a woman beside me whispered.

  ‘I bet they do,’ I whispered back. As I did so I pondered how things had changed since the Blitz began. People talked to strangers now, which had never happened in London before the war.

  ‘Well, I hope all those I-tye prisoners stay in Africa,’ said the man next to her. ‘How can we feed them when there’s hardly anything for ourselves?’

  The Warning went, the awful warbling-like sound that reminded me of a howling wolf. A collective groan sounded, and the man sitting behind me said, ‘Old Wailing Winnie sounds just like the wife when she can’t find her teeth in the morning.’ A few people laughed.

  There was another groan when the usual sign flashed on the screen: ‘An Air Raid Warning has just been sounded. If you wish to leave, walk, do not run, to the exits. Do not panic. Remember, you are British! Those who wish to remain may do so at their own risk. The film now continues.’

  In six months of Blitz I had never known anyone to panic. The usual feeling seemed to be one of resigned annoyance.

  ‘Bloody Hitler. Can’t even let us watch a picture in peace.’

  ‘I hope we’re hitting Berlin just as hard.’

  ‘He’s a sheeny beggar, awright, that Hitler.’ My heart beat a little faster, because that accent was one out of my childhood in the city built on seven hills. (I mean Sheffield, of course, not Rome.) ‘He can’t bide us hitting Berlin, so he keeps on at London.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed her companion.

  For the first time in a while I felt homesick. That broug
ht thoughts of my mother. Tears gathered, but I blinked them away.

  No one moved. Londoners had long since given up exiting on the Warning alone. Not until we knew that the raiders were directly overhead would we consider taking shelter. I decided to stay put. Eventually the siren ceased. The message on the screen disappeared and the newsreel began again, followed by a short Ministry of Information film about the need to check your home for salvageable rubbish, and a longer Crown Film Unit production about the dangers of Careless Talk. Finally the credits for the feature appeared. Around me people settled down in their seats to watch.

  The cinema rocked like a boat on a stormy sea as bombs fell around us. John Wayne fell in love with a sexy cabaret singer on a South Sea island and risked both his naval career and his life for her. He was handsome, I thought. He looked nothing like Michael Harker.

  Or only a little bit.

  Not much at all, really.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Like everyone else, I stayed to see the National Anthem played to the end, and then pushed outside with the crowd.

  The night sky was lit up with the criss-crossing beams of searchlights, but the sound of aeroplane engines had faded, and the crump of bombs was now faint and far away. Somewhere nearby a fire was raging, turning the darkness to pink and then blood red. The All Clear sounded.

  What with the moonlight, searchlights and firelight I could clearly see the faces around me. There was still defiance in most eyes, but more and more I was seeing a dreary sort of resignation. Londoners accepted that they were on the front line in this war, but they didn’t like it. I was beginning to worry that their bravado was wearing thin. But then, how could it endure month after month after month of constant bombardment?

  Londoners had developed a devil-may-care sort of fatalism. ‘If it’s got my name on it, then I’m a gonner no matter what,’ was often heard. Many people were no longer going to the shelters, trusting that in a city as big and populous as London, someone else would ‘get it’ instead of them.