by Emma Fraser
She threw down her napkin. ‘Can we find out?’
Richard’s eyes darkened. ‘It’s been a rough few weeks. You may not know but the RAF has been involved in some heavy fighting over the last months and your countrymen played a major part.’ He shook his head. ‘A lot of pilots bought it.’
‘Bought it? I don’t understand.’
‘Died.’
She sank back into her chair. She couldn’t bear it if she’d come all this way only to find her darling brother was dead.
‘Look, Irena, it’s possible that your brother – if indeed he is here – wasn’t involved in the fighting. I know it’s difficult, but try not to worry.’
Try not to worry! All she’d been doing since the war started was worry. As Richard turned his attention to Smith to indicate he could remove their plates, she studied Lord Glendale’s son more closely. He was older than her, in his late twenties, she guessed, and good-looking in the way that she thought of as quintessentially British, with his blue eyes, high cheekbones and haughty expression. But behind his eyes she thought she saw shadows – and the same aching sadness that was inside her.
‘Were you involved in these battles?’ she asked, once their plates had been cleared.
‘Yes,’ he said shortly. ‘Now I’m afraid you will have to excuse me. I have to get back to base. Mrs Smith will look after you. If the air-raid sirens sound, don’t panic. One of them will take you to the cellar. If you happen to be outside, the underground shelters are all signposted. Or just follow the others. Make certain you take a gas mask with you – I believe there’s a spare that Mrs Smith can let you have.’
He clearly had no idea what she’d been through. Nevertheless, it felt good to have someone look after her for a change.
But she had no intention of going anywhere. Even her bones were heavy with fatigue. ‘I must wait up for your father, but after that – unless he has decided I am a spy,’ she managed a smile, ‘I shall go to bed.’
‘When I get back to my base I’ll make enquiries about your brother.’
‘Would you? I’d be very grateful.’
‘Don’t worry, if he’s in the country I’ll track him down. I promise.’
Chapter 27
When Lord Glendale returned, it seemed that whatever he’d managed to find out about Irena, from whatever sources he had, had satisfied him.
‘I’ve spoken to my wife and told her about you. She tells me that there is a medical school in Edinburgh that is run by Poles for Poles. She thinks you might wish to finish your studies there.’
‘They would take me?’
‘It seems so. Richard is going to visit his mother in a couple of weeks and, if you chose to go, he could accompany you. I’m afraid it will take a week or two to make the necessary arrangements. Our railways are rather in demand at the moment. Now should I tell Lady Glendale to expect you? It would be better than staying here. London’s not safe.’
She couldn’t leave London without finding Aleksy first. However, she had a week or two to track him down. ‘Thank you, I’d very much like to resume my studies.’ At least then, when she returned to Poland, she’d be able to start work straight away as a qualified doctor.
‘Good show! I’ll sort out the necessary documents, identity book, ration cards, gas mask and so forth. In the meantime, you’re to treat this house as your home.’
His unexpected kindness brought a lump to her throat.
‘I’ve asked Mrs Smith to move your possessions into one of the guest bedrooms,’ he continued, ‘and Lady Glendale has suggested that Mrs Smith gives you some of the clothes my wife has in her wardrobe. There are additional questions that the authorities would like to ask you, but apart from that, you must pass the days as best you can. I don’t spend much time at home so you’ll have to make do with your own company, I’m afraid.’
In the morning, as promised, there was a dress lying on the end of her bed along with some underwear, still in its wrapping paper. The simple tea dress with a lace collar would have been too tight had she not lost so much weight, but it was a good length, coming to just below her knees. She and Lady Glendale must be a similar height.
She made her way back down to the dining room to find Lord Glendale finishing his breakfast.
‘Good morning,’ he said, glancing up from his paper. ‘Did you manage to get some rest, my dear?’
‘I did, thank you.’
She laid her napkin on her lap while the still-disapproving Smith served her bacon and toast. The bacon, the first she’d had in months, smelled and tasted so good she ate it one small piece at a time, savouring every delicious mouthful.
‘I’d like you to come to my office this afternoon to tell my colleagues more about what is happening in Poland,’ Lord Glendale said. ‘I shall send a car around three if that suits?’
As if she could refuse. ‘I’ll be ready.’
The car came to collect her promptly at three, and delivered her to a large, imposing building. After a long wait in the foyer, she was shown into a room with several men in officer’s uniform, including Lord Glendale. She was given a cup of tea and asked about her journey. Then the questions became more searching. What was happening in Poland? Was she aware of any resistance groups where she’d lived?
She answered as best she could, omitting the part about the typhus scam, and although she told them that the underground army was active, she wasn’t specific. She wasn’t altogether sure she could trust them not to leak information that would get her Polish friends in trouble, even shot.
When they had finished with her, she was driven back to the house on Grosvenor Street. As a wave of exhaustion washed over her, she decided to leave exploring London until another day and, finding a well-stocked library, curled up in a chair with a book instead.
The next morning she went down to breakfast to find a middle-aged yet still beautiful red-haired woman wearing a khaki uniform, her hair neatly rolled above her collar, sitting opposite Lord Glendale. She had a piece of toast in one hand, and was talking rapidly, her free hand gesticulating as she spoke.
When Lord Glendale noticed Irena he got to his feet. ‘My dear, may I introduce you to my sister, Lady Dorothea? Dorothea, this is Irena Kraszewska, the young lady I was telling you about.’
Irena crossed over to the woman and held out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Lady Dorothea shook it and smiled. ‘How do you do?’
Irena sat and helped herself to a slice of toast. Smith placed a boiled egg on her plate and returned to his place at the sideboard.
‘I gather you’re a medical student,’ Lady Dorothea said, dabbing her lips with a napkin.
‘Yes.’
‘You must have had experience of dealing with casualties in Poland then.’
‘I was working in a hospital until I left.’
Lady Dorothea slid a triumphant glance at her brother. ‘I told you she’d be perfect.’
‘Leave the poor girl be, Dorothea. She’s been through hell in the last months.’
‘Perfect for what?’ Irena asked. She wouldn’t be talked about as if she weren’t there.
‘My sister is with the FANYs,’ Lord Glendale told Irena. ‘Now we’re at war, she sees it as her duty to keep London running – single-handed if necessary.’
‘FANYs?’
‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.’ Lady Dorothea sent a scornful glance in her brother’s direction. ‘We do loads to help the war effort – not just nursing.’
‘My sister is a Staff Commander. She was in the last war and I dare say if they’d allow her she’d be in the thick of things overseas.’
‘I am in the thick of things, Simon, right here. It can’t get much thicker, can it? Not when that dreadful man is determined to pulverise us into submission. I’ve had to send my only child to the country to keep him safe – God knows when I’ll see him again – and my husband is overseas doing his bit, so naturally I have to do mine.’ Lady Dorothea flicked her fingers at her brother. ‘But
never mind all that now, I have to go in a minute.’ She turned to Irena. ‘We need more people to man our first-aid posts. We’re terribly short of recruits. All the decent nurses have joined the forces or are employed in the hospitals. If you were working in a hospital in Poland, you must have bags of experience.’
‘Yes, I do.’ Irena closed her eyes briefly. Bags of experience – that was one way of putting it. Images of mutilated and dead bodies spooled through her mind, and she shook her head to push them away. ‘Of course, I’d be happy to help,’ she said. ‘Just tell me where and when.’
‘Not so fast,’ Simon protested. ‘There are procedures to follow. An application process…’
Lady Dorothea smiled sweetly at him. ‘Fiddlesticks! What is the point in having a brother in the War Office, Simon, if not to bypass procedures and rules?’ She stood. ‘Shall we go, Miss Kraszewska?’
Lord Glendale tossed his napkin to the table and got to his feet too. ‘At least let the poor girl finish her breakfast.’
Irena placed her half-eaten toast on the plate. ‘I’m ready now.’
Lady Dorothea drove her to the Red Cross headquarters and introduced her to one of the women in charge. After telling her that Irena was top dollar, able to drive and happy to work the nightshift, she’d hurried away to ‘check up on her girls’.
Following a verbal check of her credentials, Irena was given a tin hat with FAP stencilled on the front, a short-sleeved blue dress and an apron with a red cross emblazoned on it, and told to report to a station that evening where ‘someone would show her the ropes’.
That evening, after a solitary supper, Irena took the bus to her first-aid post. Contrary to what she’d been led to believe, there were only two of them – herself and Gladys, a thin woman somewhere around thirty although it was difficult to say for certain. Gladys had almost no nursing experience, had only been working there for a week or so and was, she freely admitted, terrified.
A number of people stopped by with cuts and scratches as well as a few complaining of sore heads and abdomens. Irena dealt with them quickly, showing Gladys how to clean wounds and re-bandage them properly. She gave out aspirin to the people with headaches and stomach aches, advising them to go to their doctor in the morning if it didn’t get better. She suspected that the cause of the vague aches and pains was fear and stress but she sympathised. What she did find remarkable was the attitude of the Londoners as they waited patiently to be seen. Many of them had lost loved ones and everything they owned, yet they smiled and joked with each other as if they were at a tea party.
By eleven there were no more patients to see. Gladys had just poured them a cup of tea, when the siren wailed.
‘We need to get to Marble Arch underground. That’s the nearest shelter to us. Come on.’ Gladys yanked her by the arm and away from their post.
Like rabbits emerging from rabbit holes, figures appeared, joining those already on the street: men and women, coats thrown hurriedly over nightclothes, hurried to the bomb shelter, holding babies in their arms or tugging children along by the hand. Suddenly the night sky was illuminated by searchlights criss-crossing the sky.
Down in the bowels of the underground station, people unrolled mattresses and blankets and calmly set about getting their children back to sleep. Some men gathered around a pack of cards and started a game. Others unscrewed the tops of flasks and poured cups of tea for themselves and their neighbours. At the far end of the tunnel a man had taken out a squeeze box and, as he played, many began to sing along.
The unreal, almost festive, atmosphere changed when the first bombs fell, making the ground shake. Children woke up and began to cry and mothers tried to shush them.
Over the next hour more and more loud explosions echoed through the tunnels.
‘We have to get out of here,’ a woman cried after a particularly close explosion, one that showered plaster and dirt from the ceiling. ‘I’m not going to let them bury me alive.’ She’d been pacing up and down all evening, a child clutched to her chest.
A nearby man grabbed her by her shoulders. ‘Sit down, Mother. No one is to leave before the all-clear.’
The woman looked around frantically as if searching for an escape route.
Irena crossed over to her. ‘Is that your baby?’ she said. ‘Let me see.’
The woman paused. Her child was wrapped in a blanket but one chubby leg had worked its way through the folds and was waving up and down. At once an image of the baby she hadn’t tried to save leaped to Irena’s mind. As her chest tightened, she pushed the memory away.
‘What a lovely, strong baby,’ Irena said. ‘A boy or a girl?’
‘A girl. Daisy, I call her.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Sandra.’
There was a loud crump that made the ground beneath them shake. Sandra shrieked and glanced around in panic.
‘How old is Daisy, Sandra?’ Irena asked to distract her.
‘Nine months.’
Daisy looked up at Irena and grinned, exposing two tiny lower front teeth in her otherwise toothless mouth.
‘She’s beautiful. Can I hold her?’
Sandra held out the infant and Irena took her. Holding the baby was a small balm to her soul.
‘Why don’t we sit down?’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps we could have a cup of tea while we are waiting for the raid to finish?’
A couple of women in uniform had set up a trolley with large urns from which they were dispensing hot drinks.
‘A cup of char would be good,’ Sandra agreed and, to Irena’s relief, settled down on one of the benches lining the platform.
Irena handed Daisy back to her. ‘I’ll get it for us, then perhaps you can tell me all about little Daisy?’
When the all-clear sounded, people began to fold their blankets and make their way outside. Irena and Gladys had to wait in line until eventually they emerged from the stairs and onto the street.
As she took in the scene, Irena’s heart kicked against her ribs. It was Warsaw all over again. On the far side of the street buildings were alight, the flames reaching to the sky, turning it red. There were gaps where shops and homes had once stood, the remaining houses almost cut in two, ragged shards of wallpaper the only evidence that a short while ago people had lived there. The contents of shop windows – coats, dresses, silk shirts – were strewn across the debris. Cinders swirled around them like a hellish snow storm. A foot, still in its tiny shoe, lay close to a pile of rubble. Huge craters, with flames leaping from them, punctuated the road. A woman, missing most of her clothes, staggered along the street, keening. Firemen trained their hoses on the burning buildings while the clanging of ambulances couldn’t quite drown out the screams of distress. Men and women immediately started tearing at the piles of rubble that had once been homes and offices, looking for survivors.
Irena felt a hand on her arm.
‘Poor devils,’ Gladys muttered, ‘but if the Boche think we’re going to give up just because they drop a few bombs on us, they have another think coming.’
A short distance away, a man had unearthed the body of an old lady. He felt for a pulse before shouting for an ambulance, but the ambulances were overwhelmed. It might be hours before some of the casualties received medical attention.
‘Come on, Gladys,’ Irena said, taking her companion by the arm. ‘We must help.’
‘We can’t abandon the first-aid post,’ Gladys replied. ‘Sister will have my guts for garters.’
‘We’re needed here.’ When Gladys didn’t respond, Irena sighed. ‘You go back – fetch me if you need me. But I’m staying here.’
She worked until she could hardly think. She applied tourniquets and pressure bandages made from anything she could get her hands on, soothed the injured and the dying and announced deaths so that the rescue workers wouldn’t waste time and energy trying to revive those who were beyond hope.
It was a long, dreadful night, but when the casualties had all been taken to hospital a
nd the dead to the morgues, Irena sat on a broken piece of masonry and stared up at the clear blue sky above the smoke. She was tired and dirty and some of what she’d seen would stay with her forever, but, despite all that, she felt a strange sense of peace.
She’d been manning the first-aid station for less than a week when the bombing stopped. There was still no word about Aleksy and she was terrified the lack of news meant he wasn’t in Britain as she’d hoped or, worse still, that he was dead.
But just as she’d decided to visit every RAF base on her own, Richard brought news.
She was ringing the doorbell so that Smith could let her in when there was a loud roar behind her. She turned to find Richard, in flying cap and goggles, astride a motorcycle. A girl in the uniform of a WAAF was perched on the seat behind him.
