A Ration Book Christmas

by Jean Fullerton

  ‘Is that a fact, Sergeant Major?’ said Reggie, dealing out the cards.

  ‘You know it is,’ Cyril replied, the muscle under his right eye working overtime. ‘Because there’s a written order on the noticeboard stating clearly that no “games of chance where a money wager is placed on the outcome are allowed on ARP premises”.’

  ‘Ah well, that’s all right then, Admiral,’ said Reggie, dealing out the next hand. ‘Cos this ain’t no game of chance as these poor buggers never beat me.’

  The men laughed and Cyril’s face went as red as the warden badge on his chest.

  He stood there glaring at Reggie for a moment and then as the first round of cards landed on the box he lunged at them.

  Reggie’s brawny hand shot out and he grabbed the wrist of the Post’s senior warden. ‘I wouldn’t do that, chum.’

  ‘But you’re not permit—’

  Reggie tightened his grip and Cyril winced.

  The chair scraped back as Reggie rose to his feet. The men around the table averted their eyes and fiddled with their cards.

  Setting aside the newspaper clipping, Tommy stood up too.

  ‘Leave him be,’ he said softly.

  ‘But he’s mucked up our game,’ said Reggie, like a five-year-old who’d had his sandcastle trod on.

  ‘Reggie,’ said Tommy.

  No one moved.

  Then Reggie released the chief warden so abruptly that he staggered back. ‘All right, have it your way.’

  Cyril shot him an angry look but sensibly beat a retreat to the far side of the control centre, rubbing his wrist as he went.

  ‘Bloody tin-pot general,’ muttered Reggie as he watched Cyril talking to a couple of his fellow wardens.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Tommy, ‘but he’s in charge of this depot and if you want to carry on getting the extra heavy rescue petrol rations you’d better stop riling him.’

  Reggie chewed the inside of his mouth for a second or two then he threw himself back into his chair and picked up his cards.

  ‘All right, lads, by order of Colonel Blimp over there,’ he jerked his head towards Cyril, who was now making sure the stirrup pumps were standing to attention, ‘no money is to change hands.’ Taking a matchbox from his pocket he tipped the contents on the table. ‘So penny a stick and you can settle up with me later.’

  The men surrounding him laughed and picked up their cards.

  Thinking while he was up he might as well get himself a cuppa, Tommy slipped his unfinished competition entry into his book and, leaving it on the seat, strolled over to the serving hatch.

  He’d just got himself a mug of strong tea from the elderly WVS woman behind the counter when the jolly, bouncy woman with the wild hair who drove one of Post 7’s mobile dressing stations strode in. When he saw Jo walking in beside her, Tommy nearly dropped the cup.

  Her wild chestnut hair was now confined in a thick plait and secured at the nape of her neck. The square-shoulder navy jacket she was wearing had a very masculine cut but this only highlighted her femininity, as did the trousers, which hugged her hips and long slim legs.

  Even though she was dressed like the fireman on the footplate of the Flying Scotsman, Jo looked absolutely gorgeous.

  Cradling his cup in his hand, Tommy stepped aside so the next person could be served. While he leaned against the wall and drank his tea, Tommy allowed himself the pleasure of watching Jo talking and smiling as she was introduced to her new team. Her eyes, sparkly with laughter at something someone said, changed to thoughtful as she was asked a serious question. He studied the tilt of her head and the curve of neck and the way her hips moved as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other.

  Perhaps God had heard his plea and decided to give him a chance to put things right. Well, at least working alongside her every day beat taking up residence on the pavement in Mafeking Terrace.

  Swallowing the last mouthful of tea, Tommy returned the mug to the hatch then strolled across the room.

  He stopped just to one side of Jo, and the people she’d been talking to looked at him. Jo stopped talking and turned.

  Tommy smiled. ‘Hello, Jo.’

  For a split second, surprise and joy flashed across her face but then a stony stare replaced her look of pleasure.

  ‘Hello.’ She cast her frosty gaze over him and started to turn back.

  He smiled. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

  ‘Yes, fancy,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder at him.

  She turned her attention back to her new colleagues.

  ‘So,’ he said, forcing a jolly laugh, ‘you’re the new recruit to the mobile dressing station, Jo.’

  Slowly she turned back to face him again and raised a mocking eyebrow.

  ‘Obviously.’

  Tommy rolled his eyes. ‘Stupid question or what?’

  She regarded him coolly.

  Tommy rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. ‘How are your family? Are they—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tommy,’ Jo cut in, giving him a glacial smile, ‘but we’re a bit busy, so if you don’t mind . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ said Tommy, acutely aware of the amused expressions of the people standing around them.

  He smiled again, inviting her to do the same.

  She didn’t. Instead, she cast her lovely brown eyes over him again then turned away.

  ‘Well, it was nice to see you, Jo,’ he said, addressing the back of her head. ‘And we’ll chat another time.’

  She didn’t reply.

  He stood with his arms hanging at his side for a moment then he turned on his heels and marched back to his seat.

  Snatching the book from the seat, Tommy threw himself into the saggy armchair. Taking out the newspaper cutting, he retrieved his pencil from between the cushion and the arm. As he forced his mind to concentrate on the first sequence of numbers, Jo’s throaty laugh drifted over and suddenly solving a puzzle was the very last thing on Tommy’s mind.

  ‘Our main function, Jo,’ said Eddie, as they stood beside the stretcher rack in the back of the ambulance, ‘is to patch people up enough so they are safe to travel by ambulance to hospital.’

  It was now close to five in the afternoon and she was standing in the back of the converted horsebox, with Eddie and her two new colleagues. As the blackout had come into force an hour ago they had shut the door and had lit the ambulance’s hurricane lamp. Huddled in the half-light, Jo was getting a rundown of how the team operated and she was beginning to worry that her head would explode with all the new things she was expected to cram in it.

  As well as the tedious morning trying to master the complex hierarchy of the Civil Defence and the London Ambulance Brigade structure, she’d had a full twenty minutes on the drive to the post getting the rundown on Eddie’s somewhat eccentric upbringing.

  Born in China of missionary parents, she’d been smuggled out of the European quarter in Peking as a baby by a faithful family servant during the Boxer Uprising. Her parents perished along with a hundred of their Chinese parishioners as the rebellion swept the country, but after a journey around Russia and most of Europe, Eddie had finally arrived in England. Despite her assertion that she’d never been to school, she must have learned something along the way because she’d been an undergraduate at Girton College before travelling, mostly alone, to all four corners of the Empire, but when Hitler had annexed the Sudetenland and, sensing ‘the Old Country was heading into choppy water’, Eddie had returned to do her bit. All this Jo had learned as they drove to Post 7. Shadwell School was only three miles from St Katherine’s but as rubber was imported and worth its weight in gold, it was a mortal sin to damage your vehicle tyres, so Eddie drove the short journey no faster than the regulation speed of fifteen miles an hour, which gave her ample time to explain her complicated family history.

  ‘We don’t bother with superficial cuts and grazes; the nurses can sort them out,’ said Percy Fisher. He had served in the last war as a medical orderly in France and the
two stripes on his shoulder signified he was the senior first-aider. He was of middling height, and had carefully smoothed the remnants of his sandy hair across his head in narrow strips to try to give the impression that he still possessed a full head of hair. He lived behind Shadwell School in Crawford Walk, which meant he could pop home to keep his prize-winning budgies company when they were parked up in the depot.

  ‘And as long as it’s not pumping blood we treat deeper lacerations by slapping on a gauze dressing, binding it with a bandage and then sending them off to the hospital in an ambulance,’ added Joan Green, the final member of their four-person crew.

  Joan was a pretty blonde, a year or two older than Jo. She had wanted to join the Queen Alexandra nurses but her mother had objected so she’d joined the ambulance service instead.

  ‘What about fractures?’ asked Jo.

  ‘If it’s legs, bind them ankle and knee in the usual way. Same with arms.’ Joan tapped the white enamel cupboard behind her. ‘The straps are in here.’

  ‘The aim is to keep the limb stable,’ added Jim.

  ‘When the bombing started, people died on the way to the hospitals from internal bleeding and lost limbs because fractures were made worse by being jigged about in the back of the ambulance without being stabilised first,’ explained Eddie. ‘Our job is to assess people on the spot and make them safe to transport.’

  ‘Of course, some poor souls are too seriously injured to be moved,’ said Joan.

  ‘Which is where this comes in.’ Eddie tapped the stainless-steel bench bolted to the ambulance floor . ‘If needs be, it can be used as an operating table.’

  ‘Thankfully, we haven’t had to use it yet,’ said Joan. ‘But all the instruments are stored in the cupboard next to it if ever one of our doctors needs them.’

  Jo swallowed hard.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Jim, seeing her alarmed expression. ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Jo, trying to imagine herself assisting in an operation as bombs dropped around her.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be better than I was when I first started,’ laughed Joan.

  ‘I know it’s been a bit of a gallop through,’ said Eddie, ‘but I think I’ve more or less told you enough to get you started.’

  ‘And if you can’t find something just give us a shout,’ said Joan.

  Jo smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I will.’

  ‘And on that note,’ said Jim, rubbing his hands together, ‘I think it’s time for a cuppa.’

  ‘Capital idea,’ said Eddie, lifting the glass of the lamp and snuffing out the wick.

  As the interior of the van was plunged into darkness, Jim opened one of the back doors, letting in the last rays of the setting sun and the cool evening breeze.

  The other three climbed out and Jo followed.

  Closing the door behind her, Jo started across the playground towards the school but as she got halfway across the space a figure emerged from the shadows. Despite her telling it not to, Jo’s heart did a little double step of happiness.

  As she and Eddie had bumped along towards Post 7, Jo had resolved that, despite her grievance with her sister, when she came face to face with Mattie, she wouldn’t let their differences interfere with the vital work they were both doing.

  As her sister was out on blackout patrol when she’d arrived, Jo hadn’t needed to put this to the test. However, when she’d turned to see Tommy standing behind her, having to work cheek by jowl with her sister was the least of her problems.

  In fact, staying upright was her first concern as she’d nearly dropped in a dead faint at his feet. Thankfully, she hadn’t, but it had taken a full half-hour for her pulse to return to anything resembling normal.

  Squaring her shoulders, Jo now continued towards the main doorway.

  ‘Hello again, Jo,’ Tommy said softly, as she drew level with him. ‘How are you finding your first day?’

  Jo forced a polite smile. ‘Fine.’

  She went to walk past but Tommy caught her hand.

  Jo’s heart beat faster and she looked up into Tommy’s eyes, warmed by the dying rays of the setting sun.

  Standing just inches from him, her body remembered the pleasure of being held in his arms. For several heartbeats Jo fought the almost overwhelming desire to throw herself into Tommy’s embrace.

  He stepped forward. ‘Jo, I—’

  The air raid siren screeched between them, cutting off Tommy’s words. He took a step towards her and for an instant she thought, hoped, he would take her in his arms but then the door flew open as Post 7’s air raid wardens, fire and ambulance personnel burst out and raced to their vehicles.

  It was close to nine thirty by the time Jo finally made it back to Mafeking Terrace the following morning. Finally, because when the all-clear had sounded at seven she and the mobile dressing station had been almost five miles away in City Road. Defiance and rebellion had long been characteristics of the citizens of London, so it was hardly surprising that, after three days of constant bombardment, they had had enough. Ignoring police and Civil Defence mandarins’ orders barring them from sheltering in underground stations, many had headed for their nearest tube station when the alarm went off. The reason officials had banned civilians from sheltering below ground was the fear that if there was a direct hit on an underground station, thousands could be killed or trapped. This was precisely what had happened that morning. Mercifully, for the two thousand plus people sheltering below Old Street Station, the bomb didn’t go off but London’s central control didn’t know that when they dispatched Jo’s MDS to Islington’s ARP depot to help.

  Having driven at the regulation fifteen miles an hour they’d arrived an hour after the bomb landed and were stood down immediately. The all-clear sounded soon after but it had taken an hour of navigating their way around collapsed buildings and shattered water mains to get back to Post 7.

  It was just as well it had taken so long because Jo wanted to have a word with Mattie and it was probably better not to have it in front of four dozen people.

  Crossing the yard, she pushed open the back door to find Gran doing what she did every morning: making the family breakfast. She turned around as Jo stormed in.

  ‘So what’s screwed your temper up so early in the day then?’ said Queenie.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jo, in what she hoped was a nonchalant voice. ‘Is Mattie in?’

  ‘She is and she’s in bed, which is where she should have been three hours ago,’ Gran replied, fixing Jo with an accusing stare. ‘So you better not be thinking of bothering her.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Jo, dropping her bag on the nearest chair. ‘I just want to ask her a question.’

  Leaving her gran turning the toast under the grill, Jo rushed through the house and upstairs.

  Pushing open the door to their bedroom, she found Mattie sitting up in bed reading one of those postcards from her husband’s Aunt Fanny.

  ‘I thought you might have told me Tommy Sweete was working at Post 7,’ said Jo.

  ‘And good morning to you too, Jo,’ said Mattie, slipping the card under her pillow.

  ‘Yes, good morning,’ said Jo testily. ‘But why didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, for a start, Jo,’ said Mattie, matching Jo’s angry glare, ‘every time I try to speak to you I get a dirty look and a curt answer so why should I bother to tell you anything? And secondly, I didn’t think you cared about Tommy any more.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Jo. ‘It was just a shock, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I was shocked too,’ said Mattie. ‘Shocked that you believed I told Mum about catching you and Tommy smooching. Because I never, I wouldn’t—’

  Furious hammering on the front door cut off her words.

  Crossing to the window, Jo looked down and recognised the sleek-looking car sitting outside their house.

  ‘Sounds like the devil himself trying to get in?’ asked Mattie.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Jo, dashing acros
s the room. ‘It’s Aunt Pearl.’

  Tearing open the bedroom door, she dashed downstairs just as Gran came out of the back-parlour room.

  ‘It’s Pearl,’ said Jo, catching her arm.

  Alarm flashed across Queenie’s face and she disappeared back into the parlour, slamming the door behind her.

  Jo waited until the knocker rapped on the stud half a dozen times more then, taking a deep breath, she opened the front door.

  Standing on the step was her mother’s younger sister Pearl.

  Although she was only three years younger than Ida, thanks to weekly trips to the hairdressers, there was not a grey hair amongst her honey-blonde curls. Unlike Jo’s mother’s matronly figure, Pearl’s waist had only expanded once to accommodate a child and was still flat and tight. With carefully powdered cheeks, precisely drawn eyebrows and vibrantly applied lipstick, Pearl was what was referred to locally as ‘well preserved’.

  She was wearing a tailored suit, a hat with a pheasant feather attached to one side and a fox fur – complete with legs and head – draped around her shoulders. She looked as if she should have been gliding up the steps of the Savoy rather than standing outside a terraced cottage by London Dock.

  ‘Hello, Aunt Pearl,’ said Jo with a friendly smile. ‘What a nice surpri—’

  ‘Don’t give me all that codswallop,’ snapped Pearl. ‘Where’s my Billy?’

  ‘My brother Billy,’ said Jo, giving her aunt a hard look, ‘is in Essex.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ Pearl shoved her aside and strode in. ‘I told your mother I wanted him safe in the country.’

  ‘And that’s where he is,’ said Jo.

  ‘That’s not what I heard,’ countered Pearl.

  Pushing past Jo, she stormed up the stairs.

  ‘Mum won’t like you barging in like this,’ said Jo, as she hurried up behind her aunt.

  When she reached the half-turn in the staircase, Pearl stopped. She grabbed the handle of Charlie’s room, which Francesca was now using, and marched in. Seeing only a dress draped over the back of a chair, a couple of pairs of women’s shoes and a make-up bag on the cast-iron mantelshelf alongside a picture of Francesca’s family, Pearl marched back out and continued up towards Jo’s room and her mother’s bedroom.