Blitz - Book 4 of the Poppy Chronicles

by Claire Rayner

  ‘How was it the ticket inspectors didn’t catch you, Joshy?’

  He didn’t look up and waited to swallow his mouthful before answering, clearly mindful of the manners he had been taught. ‘I hid in the lavatory,’ he said.

  ‘But the inspectors always open the lavatory doors, or knock on them if the engaged sign’s up, and wait – ’

  Now Joshy did look at her and a hint of wickedness shone in his eyes. ‘I hid behind the door and made myself ever so thin,’ he said. ‘And when they pushed the door open they didn’t see me.’

  She looked at his small body, wiry and healthy but undoubtedly thin, and sighed. It really was too easy for him altogether. ‘And at Liverpool Street?’

  ‘I looked all anxious and said my Mummy was just ahead, and he let me through.’

  ‘I’ll bet he did,’ Poppy said. ‘Joshy, you know it’s naughty to tell lies!’

  ‘Not always. Daddy said it’s sometimes necessary. If you’re caught by an enemy soldier and he says, “Are you an English boy?” it’s better to say, “Nein, mein Herr. Ich bin ein Deutscher jünge.” That’s safer, Daddy said. In an emergency, Daddy said – ’

  She sighed. ‘I know what Daddy said. He wasn’t telling you to tell lies, though, Joshy – that was just a – a game of pretend. You know that – ’

  ‘Not really, it wasn’t,’ Joshy said and swallowed the last of the thick Horlicks. ‘It could be real if they invade, couldn’t it? And if they do I want to be here with you, not in horrible old Norfolk.’

  ‘They aren’t going to invade –’ Poppy said uneasily, aching somewhere deep inside at the way small children had to grow up in this fear that shrouded them all. ‘Not now. It was before – everyone was afraid they would – in the summer, when the weather was easier for them – ’

  ‘It’s still quite summer,’ Joshy said with devastating logic. ‘Isn’t it? Ever so warm and summery. And if Hitler wanted to invade us a few weeks ago, then he still does, doesn’t he? And he’ll get to London before he gets to Norfolk and I want to be here with you where all the fun is and – ’

  ‘Fun!’ Poppy said and almost laughed. ‘Fun, Joshy? This is a war we’re talking about – ’

  ‘I know.’ His eyes glowed and he pushed his plate and mug away. ‘Oh, I know all about it, Mummy. After school me and Danny and Edward from the other farm and Jerry Hopkins and the others, we play at invasions and I’m always the aeroplanes over London and I drop a bomb on Hitler, right on him, kerpow, and stop him from going any further and then – ’

  ‘Joshy, war is not fun. War is dangerous and – it hurts people.’

  ‘It kills them too,’ Joshy said happily, and glowed even more brightly. ‘It squashes them flat and makes them all bleed and scream like the pigs on the farm when they’re killed. Edward saw them do it and he told me how they – ’

  ‘Joshy, I don’t want another word,’ Poppy said, holding up both hands to ward off his words. ‘Killing is – it’s dreadful. And being hurt is dreadful. It isn’t a bit like the games you play with the boys after school. You mustn’t think it is, ever. We sent you to Norfolk with Lee because we love you both so much and mean to keep you safe. No one will so much as graze your knees if we can stop them, and – ’

  ‘I keep on grazing my knees,’ Joshy said swiftly. ‘Look –’ And he pushed back his chair and began to roll up his pyjama legs. ‘See? Big grazes. So wouldn’t I be better here than getting all grazed then on a horrid farm, where there’s just smelly old cows who do lavatories in the yard and geese who keep chasing you till you fall over in the smells and – ’

  ‘Joshy, stop it,’ Poppy said. ‘I didn’t mean that getting a graze was so dreadful. I was just trying to explain why we sent you to Norfolk – and why you have to stay there till the war’s over and it’s safe to come home to London.’

  He sat there with his head down and let his pyjama legs slither down till they almost covered the pompoms on the slippers.

  ‘Do I really have to?’ he said then, and there was a piteous note in his voice. ‘Have I absolutely ever so much all the time got to?’

  They had taught him that phrase, she remembered, as she stared at him, feeling helpless. Taught him it was what you said when you went through your bedtime ritual; ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Of course I love you.’ ‘How much do you love me?’ ‘Absolutely, ever so much, all the time – ’

  ‘Yes, darling,’ she said gently. ‘Yes, you do. Because I love you absolutely ever so much, all the time, and that means I have to keep you safe. We miss you as much as you miss us, and we wish even more than you do that this horrible war was over and we could all be together again. But what can we do? There is a war and we have to do the best we can and not fuss too much.’

  She stood up and came and bent down beside him and picked him up and he wrapped his legs round her waist and she thought with a pang – he’s growing. He’s taller than he was in the spring – and she held him tight as he buried his face in the junction of her neck and shoulder the way he had done as a fretful toddler, and held on equally tightly. They stood there for a while in the quiet kitchen where the light reflected off the gleaming black planes of the old range in the fireplace and on the dishes arranged so neatly on Goosey’s old dresser, and said nothing. And then she carried him up to his room and put him to bed and kissed him and he fell asleep even before she’d left the room, with all the abandonment of a weary child. She was weeping a little as she went downstairs to the hall and the telephone.

  It took her over an hour to get through to him. The office was supposed to be always manned, or rather womanned these days, for David had had to take on a rather sour middle-aged woman to act as his second-in-command instead of the eager young would-be male journalists who had once flocked to work with him, but who were now all in the armed services; but tonight the phone rang and rang in her ear and she stood there in the hall of her shabby old house, staring down at the now rather dingy black and white tiles of the floor – for Goosey couldn’t get the right polish for them anywhere – and imagined the phone on his desk, ringing through the empty rooms. And her tired mind ran away with her and she saw the rooms as stripped and bare and David gone for ever, gone somewhere out of reach the way Bobby had gone, and felt the desolation of being totally and helplessly alone in a hostile world; and had to hold on very hard to her common sense to avoid going headfirst into a state of panic.

  But she managed it at last. She made herself some tea – oh, she thought, these interminable cups of tea! – and went back to sit in the hall on the battered old carved chair they had found in the Caledonian Market and brought home in such triumph that time when she had been so heavily pregnant with the little boy now sleeping so deeply upstairs, and dialled again.

  And this time he answered and she could have wept with relief.

  ‘Darling! I’ve been ringing and ringing, it must have been an hour. It’s almost three in the morning – can’t you get home tonight?’

  ‘Is it likely?’ he said wearily. ‘I’ve been trying, believe me. But I’ve got some good pictures from the raids and some stories about Americans caught here and I’ve been trying to get the stuff cabled over. I’ve been at the Embassy all the time. I can’t think why Mrs Humphries isn’t here – she should be – ’

  ‘Well, no one’s been there – I’ve been trying for ages. Listen, David – ’

  ‘Bloody woman,’ he said fretfully. ‘I’ll have to find someone else, though don’t ask me where or how. But God knows what might have been coming in! They’re still working in the office in Baltimore and they could have been sending cables and heaven knows what I’ve missed – ’

  ‘That’s the least of your problems right now,’ she said crisply. ‘Joshy’s here.’

  There was a little silence and then he spoke with a much brighter tone in his voice. ‘Joshy? He’s run away again?’

  ‘Again,’ she said wearily. ‘What are we to do with him?’

  ‘The little wretch,’ David said softly and
there was a note of pride and delight in his voice that made Poppy sit up very straight indeed.

  ‘David, now, stop that! I’ve been trying so hard to show him in every way I can that this isn’t on. He’s got to go back – you can’t mean to allow him to stay here! You’ve seen what the raids are like!’

  ‘They’re all to the east – ’

  ‘David, you can’t – for God’s sake, they could reach here as easily as they reach the East End and probably will! How can you even consider it?’

  There was a little silence and then he said dully, ‘I know. You’re right, of course. It’s mad to even – but it’s just that I hate to think of him so unhappy that he’ll do this so often. This is the third time, for pity’s sake!’

  ‘Don’t I know it?’ she said grimly.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘A little subdued. He knows I’m not pleased – ’

  ‘You’re not being – ’

  ‘Being what?’ she said and her voice was a little high. She was desperately tired and all she needed now to set her fuse off was any sort of remonstrance.

  ‘Oh, you know, darling! A bit firm – ’

  ‘He needs it.’

  ‘Of course he does. But he needs loving even more.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that. I’ve given him lots of attention since I found him here – ’

  ‘But lots of disapproval too.’

  ‘Of course. He’s got to understand he can’t just do what he wants. He can’t, David. You must understand that – ’

  David sighed gustily in her ear. ‘Oh, I dare say you’re right. You usually are. But I’ll never get used to you Brits, you know. You’re so – oh, you’re so goddamned tough with your kids! They never seem to get away with anything, poor little tykes – ’

  ‘And from where I stand American children get away with a deal too much,’ she said tartly. ‘Listen, are we going to stand here at three in the morning arguing the toss about transatlantic child-rearing methods?’

  He sighed again. ‘No, darling. I’m sorry. It’s just that – Jesus, I miss that kid!’

  ‘Do you think I don’t? I hurt, I want them here so much – ’

  ‘But they can’t stay in London. You’re right, of course. You always are, sweetheart.’

  ‘So you keep saying, but you don’t always mean it,’ she said. ‘The question is, how do we get him back there? I can’t go, you can’t go – ’

  ‘I’ll think of something,’ he said. ‘Maybe Goosey – ’

  ‘Out of the question. She’s too old and far too decrepit. Those trains can be hours late and you’re lucky if you get a seat and – ’

  ‘No, I know. Damn it all! I’ll have to work something out. Look, Poppy, doll, go to bed. You must be really bushed.’

  ‘I’m dead on my feet,’ she said then and yawned, hugely, and was aware as she hadn’t been at all aware so far of just how much she ached for sleep. Her eyelids felt as though they had been lined with lead shot. ‘I’m supposed to be at the canteen at seven – ’

  ‘To hell with that!’ he said vigorously. ‘Someone else’ll have to do your shift – ’

  ‘I could ask Joyce to hold on a bit till Maria gets there,’ she said dubiously.

  ‘Then do that. Call her now. And then go to bed. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Be nice to him, sweetheart.’

  ‘I’m being as nice as I dare,’ she said. ‘I want to hold him and kiss him to pieces – but he’s got to know he’s in the wrong. He’s got to go back and be safe.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Goddamn it, I know! See you soon, doll –’ And the phone clicked in her ear and she yawned again and picked it up to call Joyce.

  And when she’d made the necessary arrangements and Joyce had promised cheerfully to recruit her sister Madge from over Hackney way to muck in, she sat there in her little wooden chair in the hall too tired to make the effort to climb the stairs again and go to bed.

  And that was where David found her at seven o’clock when he came home.

  8

  Robin’s first night on Casualty, she decided, had been complete and utter hell.

  She had come on duty at eight thirty sharp, after eating dispirited porridge and toast and marmalade in the nurses’ dining room – for it had been decreed that night nurses breakfasted in the evening and took their dinners in the morning – to find the department alive with activity. There had been a slanting hit on a small tenement house just off Sidney Street, and seven people had been buried in it. All of them were out now, and all of them were in the Casualty department, three of them children who were shrieking in fear and rage and loneliness for their mothers, both of whom were in separate cubicles and suffering from various injuries while the other survivors, two battered old women, sat in a corner glowering at everyone and demanding to be taken home.

  No one, it turned out, had been able to convince them they had no home to go back to, so it was small wonder that Sister Priestland, the small and very round Irish Sister in charge, was in a state of high tension. She was flashing around her department from cubicle to cubicle and through the crowded benches in the waiting room – for in addition to the Sidney Street hit there had been plenty of other incidents causing injuries among civilians as well as wardens and firefighters – like a small tornado in a rage and Chick, standing at Robin’s elbow, looked around at it all and breathed an awed, ‘Oh, my Gawd!’ in her ear.

  Sister caught sight of them and came rushing across the tessellated hall towards them with her heels slapping on the ground like gunshots.

  ‘Are you the two new nurses on my list? Right, let’s get you to work. What’re your names?’

  They murmured their responses, trying not to catch the eyes of the curious waiting patients who were now all staring at them with great interest, for want of anything better to watch. At which Sister Priestland snapped, ‘Do speak up! This is a noisy department whether I like it or not, and I don’t, preferring calm and quiet, but there it is – so you have to make yourself heard and understood! Now, you, Chester, go and help Staff Nurse Meek deal with those wretched children – I see from your report from Sister Marshall that you’re very good with them – and you, Nurse Bradman, had better come with me and we’ll see what we can do with you. Sister Marshall said you were good with your hands and kept your head well. Now let me see you do it.’

  And she fled across the hall again towards the far cubicle, with Robin breathlessly at her heels, and plunged through the curtains of where there seemed to be a great deal going on.

  That was the point at which Robin felt she’d descended into hell. She’d seen blood and broken flesh before in her first year at the London, especially since the raids had begun, but she had never seen anything like this, and she felt herself whiten as the curtain swished to behind her.

  The woman on the high examination and treatment couch was young – possibly not much older than Robin herself, but she looked dreadful. Her face was a yellowish white and she was breathing rapidly and shallowly as her eyes, wide and glazed with terror, flicked from one to the other of the men on each side of her.

  They were doctors, and they were working with their heads well down over her right leg, and neither of them paid any attention as she yelped in pain at one of their actions; and Robin looked at the leg and tried to make herself keep her head clear.

  It had, it seemed at that first glance, been severed half across at the thick part of the calf. In spite of the mass of bright red muscle and the pumping of blood that was covering the whole area, Robin could see the pale rich gleam of naked bone and her own flesh crept in sympathy at the sight of that huge gash with its outwardly pouting lips, and she pulled her eyes away and made herself look questioningly at Sister Priestland.

  ‘Right, nurse,’ she said, and her voice seemed a little approving now. ‘Come and look after this cubicle for the night Take care of this poor girl while her wound is repaired. They’ll be putting on plaster afterwards, I suspect, but they’ll tell you. I’ve got
an even worse one in the next cubicle – Oh, and nurse – the baby’s all right.’

  With which cryptic remark she was gone, leaving Robin standing paralysed for a moment. But only for a moment. Moving as carefully as she could across the slippery floor, which was awash with blood, she went round the doctor in front of her gingerly, and managed to reach the head of the couch, and stretched her arm to put her hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  At once she turned her head and opened her eyes, for she had been lying with them grimly closed, and looked up at her and somehow Robin managed to smile. If she paid no attention to the horror of the wound that was now so easily seen from her new position, she’d be all right. She wouldn’t be sick, she wouldn’t. She’d be able to do her job and do it properly – and she leaned over the woman and whispered, ‘Hello, dear. What’s your name?’

  The woman gasped and moaned as one of the doctors did something that hurt and he looked up for a brief moment and muttered, ‘Sorry, love, but we had to get that artery, that was – well, anyway, you’ll be a bit better now. We’ve stopped most of the bleeding. Give you a transfusion soon and you’ll feel all tickety-boo – ’

  He looked at Robin and lifted one eyebrow comically, and Robin managed to make a small smile in response. She knew who he was from the eyes she could see above his blood-spattered mask and rubber apron; Mr Landow, the surgical registrar who had once come to Annie Zunz to do an emergency tracheotomy on a choking baby, and had told her approvingly that she was deft because she had been able to help him when he reached out his hand for an instrument and Sister had been unable to reach it for him. It helped to know at least one face in this alarming charnel house and she looked back down at her patient, feeling at last a little less queasy.

  ‘Did you hear that, dear? The surgeon says you’ll soon be much better. It’s – you’ve hurt your leg, you see, and it’s bleeding a bit. But they’ve stopped it now and they’ll give you some blood to replace your loss and then you’ll be feeling quite different – ’