Ambulance Girls At War

by Deborah Burrows

  ‘Watch that screen,’ someone yelled.

  ‘Over here,’ yelled another. ‘Not there!’

  ‘Watch it!’

  A loud crash made me jump, and then I shared a smile with Lily at the swearing that came soon afterwards.

  At eleven-thirty we were all called to the set, an ersatz ambulance common room that looked much less comfortable than ours in Bloomsbury. There were many similarities, the big table, the sandbags, the map of London on the wall. There were also differences. The telephone sat on the table, rather than in the station leader’s office, and two government posters decorated one wall: ‘Be Like Dad and Keep Mum’ and ‘Dig for Victory’ had prominent spots. In the re-rewritten script there was reference to victory gardens and to the dangers of Careless Talk. I supposed they’d decided to kill a few birds with one film.

  Three of the four professional actors wandered over to us and introduced themselves.

  ‘Arthur Hendry,’ said a short, nuggety man with a long, mobile mouth. ‘I’m a cheery Cockney chappy.’ He made a comical face. Then he looked at me and Celia and sidled up to Lily. ‘Blimey, I’ll keep close to you, princess. More my size.’

  ‘Henry’ the Yorkshireman, was a tall, elegant man with the perfectly rounded vowels of a Shakespearean actor. His name was Aubrey St George.

  ‘So you put on the accent?’ I asked. ‘Are you really from Yorkshire?’

  He grinned and placed a finger at the side of his nose. ‘Liverpool, originally, but I do a perfectly respectable Yorkshire accent. Please don’t rumble me.’

  ‘Shop girl Avis’ was played by a dark-haired girl with an intense expression. She was Una Norman, and was polite but not friendly. Una whispered to me that Billie Prescott was a menace at grabbing shots. I had no idea what she meant, but I nodded sympathetically.

  The famous Billie Prescott arrived a good twenty minutes after everybody else, took one look at Celia and dragged away Mr Morris to whisper feverishly in his ear. He returned looking shaken, but pulled himself together and addressed me, Lily, Celia, Molly Pike and Diana Beauchamp very cordially.

  ‘Now I know that, apart from Diana who’s playing Lady Harriet, you haven’t done anything like this before, but just do your best. We’ll be filming scene one first, which has all of your lines.’ He hesitated, then said to Celia, ‘I understand that your lines have been cut. They’re now being said by Diana, who is playing Harriet? Is that correct, Miss Palmer-Thomas?’

  ‘Absolutely correct,’ said Celia.

  Mr Morris darted a look at Billie Prescott and gave a quick nod. She smiled.

  ‘The first scene is an establishing scene,’ he went on, ‘where we meet you all and it’s clear that you’re a tight team. We’ll do your outside shots the day after tomorrow. They won’t actually be outside, of course, because we’ll be filming entirely on the bigger sound stage. You’ll be hauling wounded into the ambulances and running around in the smoke. A dark filter will make it seem like night in the finished film, so you’ll be filming under lights. Sound effects will be added later and film of a real air raid will be spliced in. The scenes you don’t appear in will be filmed in your absence. Got that?’

  We all nodded.

  ‘So, in the first scene you’re all sitting together at your ambulance station, relaxing. Rose, Henry and Bert have a discussion about victory gardens and careless talk – have you been given the final script with that dialogue?’

  We nodded.

  ‘The Warning sounds, the raid begins. Mary says her line, and it goes from there. You know all your lines?’

  Lily, Diana, Molly and I nodded again. Celia looked beautiful and bored. Billie Prescott pretended not to be shooting looks of loathing at her. The immediate and fierce aversion she’d taken to Celia might be because she recognised Celia as the widow of the infamous fascist, Cedric Ashwin, but I thought it more likely that Billie Prescott was well aware of the danger that Celia would draw the viewer’s eye whenever she appeared.

  Mr Morris put us into our places in the fake ambulance station. Lily and I were near the front of the table. I was positioned so that my silk-clad legs were in shot. He told me to put my jacket over the back of my chair, cross my legs and arch my back a little. This meant that my already tight shirt seemed about to pop a button or two. It appeared that Denbeigh had told him to take full advantage of my assets.

  Lily sat next to me. I thought that Celia would be sitting next to her, but the director told her to sit in a far corner of the room.

  ‘Mary,’ he barked, ‘pick up the newspaper and read it. When it’s your cue, put it down and then say your line.’

  Lily nudged me. I remembered I was Mary, and picked up the newspaper.

  ‘Sheila, pick up that book, will you?’ Lily did so.

  He looked over at Celia, glanced at Billie Prescott and bit his lip. Turning, he motioned to Anne Tait. She came across to him and they had a whispered conversation. Anne left the set, returning a minute later with a half-finished jumper, some wool and knitting needles. These were handed to Celia, who looked at them in astonishment.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ she asked, her clear voice cutting through the noise around us.

  ‘Knit,’ said Billie Prescott, with a simper.

  Mr Morris seemed abashed. ‘I’m told that there’s always someone knitting in these places. You’ll be the knitter.’

  ‘Can’t knit,’ said Celia, putting the mess of wool on the floor beside her.

  ‘My dear,’ said Billie sweetly, ‘Actresses pretend. Can’t you pretend, just a teensy bit? For the sake of the film.’

  ‘I thought you wanted a slice of reality.’ Celia addressed Mr Morris. ‘If I’m filmed fumbling around with these things, all reality flies out the door.’

  ‘I can knit a little,’ said Lily helpfully. ‘I could knit and Celia – I mean Linda – could read the book.’

  From the look on Billie Prescott’s face I could guess what she thought of the idea of a Celia in the back of the scene looking down at a book and drawing the viewer’s eye to a slim neck and beautifully moulded features. Miss Prescott was very lovely, but Celia was a good ten years younger and, I thought, lovelier.

  ‘I’m perfectly happy to be out of the film altogether,’ said Celia, her chin rising toward the ceiling.

  ‘Not a chance,’ Cockney Bert whispered to me. ‘Apparently the director insists that she’s seen on screen, even if she has no lines. I can see why. She’s a looker, all right, but awfully stuck up.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to be here,’ I said. ‘Celia’s a good sort when you get to know her.’

  Mr Morris dragged Anne away for another whispered consultation. The upshot was that Molly/Poppy was put next to Celia with a skein of wool wrapped around her hands. Celia was instructed to wind it into a ball.

  Someone called out, ‘Rehearsal’s up’, and we had three practice goes at scene one. By the end, Mr Morris was nodding in approval.

  ‘What happens now?’ I whispered to Cockney Bert.

  ‘They’ll go for a take. That means they’ll really be filming. Before they start, they need to let everyone know that it’s about to happen, so they’ll shout out something like “picture’s up” or “film’s up”. It lets the actors settle in and gets everyone ready so there’ll be no interruptions later on.’

  The make-up girl dashed over to pat our noses with powder, then drifted off along with the others who had been standing around us. A whistle blew, startling me.

  ‘Quiet, please,’ Mr Morris shouted. ‘This will be a take. Ambulance Girls At War, scene one.’

  All movement and sound on the set ceased. Voices called out words in what was obviously a standard sequence.

  ‘Picture’s up,’ said Mr Morris.

  ‘Picture’s up’ was repeated by several voices.

  ‘Roll sound.’

  ‘Rolling.’

  ‘Speeds?’

  ‘Sound speeds.’

  ‘Camera speed?’

  ‘Ye
s.’

  A boy with a clapper board said ‘One alpha. Take one. A mark.’ He put the clapper board in front of the camera and snapped it shut.

  ‘Set.’

  ‘And, action,’ said the First Assistant Director.

  I read my newspaper industriously as Rose and Henry and Bert debated the war, throwing in a line or two about Henry’s victory garden and a snippet of gossip that Rose derided as Careless Talk. The noise of planes increased.

  ‘Cut,’ yelled Mr Morris, making me start. ‘Mary, you missed your cue.’

  Mary? I was Mary. I looked up at him in horror. ‘Oh, I’m awfully sorry. I forgot.’

  He glared at me. ‘Quiet on set. We’ll try again.’

  The clapper-board boy clapped the board. There was a sound of engines. I stared at my newspaper and listened to Rose and Henry and Bert. The victory garden was mentioned. Careless Talk. The planes increased in volume.

  ‘My word, Jerry’s coming over sick and sound tonight,’ I squeaked and clapped my hand over my mouth in embarrassment.

  After another three goes we broke for lunch. At the side of the soundstage a table had been set up with sandwiches and a tea urn.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to Lily and Celia. ‘I don’t know why I can’t do it. It’s absolutely perfect in my head, and then I speak and I get it wrong or it sounds awful.’

  ‘You’ll do it next time,’ said Lily encouragingly and peered at the plates of sandwiches. ‘Oh, God, fish paste and Bovril. Ugh.’

  ‘Not together?’ I asked, astonished.

  Lily gave a shout of laughter. ‘Some are fish paste, some Bovril. A few spam.’

  ‘I’ll have the spam,’ I said. Celia raised an eyebrow, and I remembered that that was what they called bad actors. Hams. I bit into my sandwich defiantly.

  Mr Denbeigh came over to speak to us. ‘How are you all, girls? Looking marvellous. Just marvellous. I know it’ll be a wonderful film. Help to draw people together. Common purpose, what? Show that everybody has a role to play in this war.’

  I began to apologise for my lack of acting ability, but he brushed it aside. ‘Difficult if it’s all new. You look marvellous and that’s the important thing. Lots of oomph. Just the ticket.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Seen Harker lately?’ he asked.

  ‘No. No, I haven’t.’ Celia looked at me and raised an eyebrow. Mr Denbeigh blundered on.

  ‘So sorry about my faux pas that night. My wife tore strips off me when I told her I’d asked after his wife.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I hadn’t known of course.’

  ‘Known what?’

  Mr Denbeigh was obviously discomforted ‘Didn’t you know either? Poor Vivian volunteered to be a children’s escort on the City of Benares. Wasn’t one of the survivors.’

  I stared at him, horrified. Seven months before, in September, the evacuee ship City of Benares had been torpedoed by a German submarine. It was carrying ninety children to Canada as refugees. Less than half those on board survived, and only a handful of the children. After that the authorities stopped sending children overseas.

  ‘Oh, how very sad,’ said Celia. ‘I met her a few times and she seemed to be a lovely woman.’

  Mr Denbeigh wandered off, leaving me in a state of utter confusion. I tried to remember what I’d said to Michael about his wife. Had I been sarcastic? I couldn’t remember.

  ‘I thought you barely knew Michael Harker,’ said Celia.

  Lily piped up. ‘Is he nice? That’s awful about his wife.’

  ‘I only met him a couple of times,’ said Celia. ‘Spent more time with his wife than with him. She was very pleasant, and he seemed nice enough.’ She gave me a sharp look. ‘Apparently Maisie knows him better than she’s let on.’

  ‘Not really.’ My gaze faltered under her clear stare. ‘Actually, he’s the one who saved the couple who’d been trapped in the rubble. I helped a little but he was awfully brave, digging into the wreckage with his bare hands, despite coal gas and the risk of being buried at any moment.’

  To my relief, Anne came over and collected us. I was so distracted by the news about Michael’s wife that I was able to lose my self-consciousness. For the first time I said the line correctly on my first go and said it well.

  ‘Cut!’ said Mr Morris. ‘It’s no good. A microphone slipped into the shot. Get that blasted microphone up and keep it there. We’ll have to do it again. Let’s make this a one-take, everyone. Silence on set.’

  I pushed thoughts of Michael Harker from my mind and concentrated on listening for my cue. Rose and Henry and Bert chatted about victory gardens and Careless Talk. The roar of aircraft became loud. Louder.

  ‘My word, Jerry’s coming over thick and fast tonight,’ I said, arching my back a little to make the buttons on my shirt strain, just as I’d been instructed, presumably to add ‘oomph’.

  ‘Looks like we’ll be busy,’ said Henry, in a creditable Yorkshire accent.

  ‘My Nance’s gone to the shelter wiv the kids. I ’ope they’re all right down there,’ said Bert, our cheery Cockney chappie, looking less cheery.

  ‘They’ll be fine, Bert. Don’t worry ’bout them,’ said shop girl Avis. ‘We’re the ones running around dodging bombs and shrapnel.’

  Celia wound wool.

  ‘Sometimes I dream I’m back home in Sydney,’ said Sheila/Lily, sounding wistful.

  ‘Wish you was back ’ome now?’ asked Bert.

  Sheila/Lily smiled. ‘When I’m having the time of my life in London? Not a chance.’

  Diana/Lady Harriet spoke about her parents and their opposition to her driving an ambulance, and how it felt right that she should be mucking in with everyone else.

  Molly/Poppy talked of the kind of world she wanted after the war, one where class made no difference and there was a fair share for all.

  The telephone rang. We looked at it expectantly, with a hint of trepidation, as instructed. Rose picked up the receiver, listened intently then scribbled on the pad beside it. She hung up, tore off the sheet and looked around the room. Her lovely face showed courage and resolution.

  ‘They’ve hit the docks again,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid we’re in for a bad night.’

  ‘Better get going, then,’ said Henry, his face grim and determined.

  We began to rise, our faces showing our willingness to follow Rose into the breach, no matter how dangerous or difficult it was. We were all of England in one small room. We were the nation’s finest and we would do our duty, no matter what dangers we faced.

  ‘Oh, God,’ muttered Celia in her clear, upper-class voice. ‘I’ve dropped the bloody wool.’

  ‘Cut,’ said the First Assistant Director.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The twenty-first of April was my twentieth birthday, and somehow word got out two weeks before.

  ‘If it’s your birthday,’ said Lily, ‘then we need to celebrate. There’s no two ways about it. Please let Jim and me take you out. We’ll make a party of it. What about the Hungaria?’

  ‘The Hungaria? That’s a bi—’

  ‘It is, a bit,’ admitted Lily, ‘but the food’s great and the company will be superb.’

  I gave a laugh. ‘Who’s coming?’

  ‘I’m not sure. You, of course, as guest of honour. Me, Jim, Celia, Simon. Is there a special someone in your life? You never talk about—’

  ‘No special someone.’

  ‘Anyone you’d like to invite from the station? Rupy Purvis seems quite taken with you.’

  ‘Um, I think if we invited one we’d have to invite everyone. Celia’s different because she’s so often my driver and vice versa.’

  ‘What about girls from that club of yours?’

  ‘Could I invite Ellie Kavanagh and her Canadian boyfriend? She lost an eye in the Café de Paris bombing and it would be a special treat.’ Ellie had been discharged from hospital a few days before. Her injured eye was still covered by a bandage. She was otherwise wel
l, but I hadn’t seen her smile since the night of the bombing. Perhaps a night out would cheer her up.

  Lily smiled. ‘Of course.’ She hesitated, then said quickly, ‘I’m just asking, and please feel free to say no, but do you want us to invite a spare male? Jim knows some awfully nice—’

  ‘No!’ I tempered this with a smile. ‘Thanks but no thanks.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Lily. ‘You picked a good day to be born. It’s not only Princess Elizabeth’s birthday, it’s the week after Easter. That means we’re through Great Lent and can really let our hair down.’

  ‘Great Lent?’

  ‘Russian Orthodox Lent. It’s awfully strict. No meat, poultry, eggs or dairy products for forty-six days. Forty-six days! We’re surviving on black tea, vegetable stew and fish when I can get it. But from this Sunday – Easter Sunday – Jim and I can eat and drink what we want.’ She smiled. ‘Within reason, given the rationing.’

  ‘How’s your conversion going?’ Lily was undergoing conversion to the Russian Orthodox Church. Her new husband, Jim Vassilikov, was a Russian aristocrat by birth, although he was entirely English by upbringing, except for his religion.

  ‘Slowly. Lots to learn.’ She nodded purposefully. ‘All set then. Dinner at the Hungaria on Monday the twenty-first of April.’

  Celia said, as we drove out of the station later that day, ‘Thank goodness your birthday is the twenty-first. Well done.’

  I turned into Tottenham Court Road and the ambulance juddered over potholes. ‘My mother has to take some of the credit. Why is it a good day?’

  ‘The week of Passover finishes on the nineteenth, so no guilt for Simon in eating and drinking what he wants. He says that he intends to enjoy himself.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ I said.

  Ellie flushed when I asked if she and Raymond wanted to celebrate with me.

  ‘I hear that the Hungaria is very elegant,’ she said. ‘And underground, just like …’ Her voice faded.

  ‘It’s very elegant indeed,’ I said, although I’d never actually been there. ‘It’ll be fun. Please, do come. You’ll like Lily and Jim, and Celia and Simon.’