Ambulance Girls

by Deborah Burrows

  Jim reached across to take the teacup out of my hand. ‘Let’s get some real food into you,’ he said. ‘And then we’ll see about David.’

  The rain had stopped but the pavement was slick and wet. As always after rain, there was a deceptive freshness to the air. Jim took my arm in his and I walked carefully, lightheaded from lack of food and too much brandy. He tightened his grip on my arm as we negotiated some broken pavement and we turned together into a street off Piccadilly to stop in front of a small tearoom.

  The boards over its glassless windows made it dark inside, especially as the walls were covered with crimson flock wallpaper. It was furnished with bentwood chairs and a dozen or so small tables draped with oilcloths, upon which stood small vases of flowers. In a corner was an enormous smoking, spluttering samovar of fluted brass. Most of the tables were occupied, but as soon as we appeared a waitress, as sloe-eyed and exotic as Natasha from the Dorchester, pounced upon us and led us through the cafe to a table in a corner. Jim requested a good, plain lunch.

  ‘Pirozhki? Soup, stroganoff, tea?’ she said.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Jim.

  She flounced off.

  ‘Another White Russian émigré?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, this place is a favourite. Irina – that’s the waitress – her parents own it. Her mother cooks and her father – who used to be an Imperial Guard under the Tsar – is sure to be over to talk to us in a moment or two.’

  ‘You White Russians are everywhere.’

  He laughed. ‘We scattered when the Bolsheviks came to power. It’s ironic to think that I could have just as easily ended up living in Germany as Britain. I’ve got cousins all over Europe. And also in China, where they are now at the mercy of the Japanese.’

  ‘Australia?’

  He smiled. ‘Even there, I’m fairly sure.’

  A big man with a waxed moustache appeared, shook Jim’s hand vigorously and made a formal bow. He introduced himself to me as Monsieur Denisov and smiled. ‘How charming you are, mademoiselle. Like a feya. A fairy, you know?’

  I smiled at him in return, though I was not too enamoured with the compliment.

  ‘We have for you today soup and stroganoff,’ he said. ‘No caviar. It is this war, you know. But first I will bring you pirozhki, straight from oven.’

  ‘Any tyanuchki?’ asked Jim.

  M. Denisov lowered his voice, and glanced around. ‘For you, tyanuchki. But be discreet, others have been told there is none left.’

  He wandered off to talk to another table.

  ‘Tyanuchki?’ I ventured, trying not to make too much a hash of the pronunciation.

  He smiled. ‘The speciality of the house. It’s a sublime caramel. You’ll love it.’ He met my eyes. ‘Let’s not discuss David until after you’ve eaten.’

  I nodded.

  Mercifully, Irina soon arrived with a dish of pastries. I pounced on them, trying not to embarrass myself by eating too quickly. Some were stuffed with seasoned meat, others with cheese. They were delicious.

  When the plate was empty Irina returned with black rye bread and a pale, thick soup that smelled wonderful.

  Once the soup had disappeared I felt much better. Jim finished his and sat back. His fingers began to tap out the notes of an invisible piano.

  Before we could speak, Irina arrived to replace our soup bowls with plates of a meat casserole, its sauce pink in colour, and spicy and sour at the same time. I could only hope that they had not used horse meat, because I ate it all with relish.

  When we had finished the waitress delivered lemon tea, served Russian style, in glasses. It was accompanied by the tyanuchki, which was squares of thick caramel-coloured fudge, as smooth and sleek as marble, and as sublime as Jim had promised.

  ‘Feeling better?’ Jim asked.

  ‘You have no idea. I really was dead on my feet. And that brandy made it worse, not better.’

  ‘My mother swears by it.’

  I concentrated on making the tyanuchki last as long as possible in my mouth.

  ‘So,’ said Jim, ‘if I have this right, David didn’t turn up for work, which is unusual. You’ve had no word from him as to why he didn’t turn up. Someone telephoned his parents’ number and was told that the line was out of order. A man who works with you at your ambulance station teased you by saying that David was killed in a raid on Thursday night in Soho, or alternatively that he had been identified as a man handing out defeatist propaganda in Holborn Underground Station and he was assaulted because of this.’

  It could have been my Uncle Charles speaking. I nodded.

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Jim, ‘that the only fact I can glean from the story is that one of the men you work with has a doubtful sense of humour.’

  I toyed with the carnation in the vase on the table, reluctant to agree with him, and suddenly started in fright. How on earth could I have forgotten? Knaggs had a serious grudge against Levy. He had threatened him. Mr Richie was a witness to that. And Mrs Coke had also made threats, just last night.

  I tried to explain this to Jim. Again, it was hard to know where to start, because the roots of both stories seemed to go back such a long way. I managed to make some sense, but Jim pointed out in his coolly logical manner the flaw in my fear.

  ‘Mrs Coke wouldn’t have been making a threat if she had already arranged for him to be hurt, would she? And that man Knaggs sounds like a petty criminal – such men are ready to loot for easy money but draw the line at actual violence. They know how much trouble it is. I’ve met many of them in my time in the criminal courts.’

  I could only retreat into the one salient fact.

  ‘But Levy is missing.’

  ‘Lily, all we know is that David didn’t turn up for work. There may be a perfectly good reason. His parents may have been bombed out and needed immediate rehousing.’

  ‘He would have telephoned the station if he wasn’t going to turn up. I need to know for sure that he’s safe.’

  ‘Then we’ll visit his parents’ house and see what’s what.’

  * * *

  Jim drove through the usual maze of detours until we arrived outside the Levys’ house, which was in Bayswater, near Hyde Park. The facade was white with an elaborate portico, like all the other houses around it. There was no sign of damage to the structure, but it was roped off with a ‘No Entry’ sign.

  We stopped an elderly man, tall and thin with a slight stoop, who was walking a yappy little terrier.

  ‘Did this house get it?’ asked Jim.

  ‘Not last night, the one before.’

  ‘Anybody hurt?’

  The man nodded. ‘I was on duty that night – I’m a local warden. Injuries, but nothing fatal.’

  My heart seemed to thud and for the first time since Levy had not turned up for work I felt happy. Nothing fatal. He may be injured, but it was nothing fatal.

  ‘We know the people – do you know where they went?’ asked Jim.

  ‘You know the Levys?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Levy was cut about a bit. Mrs Levy . . .’ He paused, gave us a long, considering look.

  ‘I was at school with one their sons,’ said Jim.

  The man looked him over, obviously taking note of the uniform and the cut glass accent.

  ‘We had to dig her out.’ He gestured behind us. ‘It was all at the back of the house. You wouldn’t think there was a jot of damage from out here, but it’s rather a wreck inside.’

  ‘And David?’ I cut in. ‘Their son?’

  ‘They said there was no one else in the house when it happened.’

  We thanked him and he wandered off along the street, turning into the portico of a house a few doors down.

  ‘We’re back to square one,’ I said.

  ‘Not at all. We know that David’s parents were bombed out and that he wasn’t with them at the time. Which makes it more likely that he is with them now and that he simply forgot to telephone your station.’

  ‘He wouldn’t
do that,’ I repeated stubbornly.

  ‘If your parents had been bombed out and your mother badly injured, would you telephone work to say you’d not be in that evening?’

  I grimaced. ‘Fair enough. I’d probably forget about everything except them.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up at the ambulance station for his next shift. When is that?’

  ‘Monday morning. We’re on days next week.’

  ‘You’ll see him then, I’m sure. Or he’ll have telephoned your station officer.’ He gave me a level look. ‘Do you want to ring around in the meantime, find out what hospital his parents were taken to, see if he is with them?’

  ‘Please, Jim. If you could. I’m nearly out of my mind with worry.’

  ‘I’ll make enquiries, I promise.’

  Jim drove slowly back to my flat, threading his way through detour after detour, past wreckage and ruins and mud and misery. It was like one of those endless mazes pursued in dreams and I remembered my own dream of earlier that day.

  ‘I was so worried I even dreamed about Levy. When I was asleep in your car I dreamed that I was looking for him and he told me I was looking in the wrong place.’ I laughed. ‘I wondered if it had been a sign.’

  He turned down a small street at the direction of a notice marked ‘Detour – Gas Leak’. As we rounded the corner he nodded at the notice. ‘That’s a sign. Your dream was a simply a manifestation of your concern.’

  Yep, just like my Uncle Charles. That thought made me laugh out loud, and Jim turned to look at me.

  ‘You’re such a lawyer,’ I said.

  He smiled, then sighed. ‘That sounded damnably pompous,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I find it difficult . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To find the right words around you.’

  ‘I’m not so scary,’ I said.

  ‘No. But you’re in love with someone I count as a close friend, which makes it—’

  ‘I’m not in love with Levy.’

  He made no reply.

  ‘I’m not in love with Levy,’ I repeated, more loudly. ‘He looks after me, and I’ve been worried sick about him. I hate the way people treat him, just because he was born a Jew, but I’m not in love with him. We’re mates. Why do people assume that I’m in love with him?’

  ‘Perhaps because you never shut up about him.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  Jim pulled over to the side of the road and switched off the engine.

  ‘The first time, when we met in Regent’s Park, you talked incessantly about Levy. So naturally I understood that you and he—’

  ‘But I told you we weren’t.’

  ‘I didn’t believe you. Only, David brought you to the hospital and he let me know that the path was clear for me. So I—’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘David wrote to me and said you were simply friends. He left us alone together at the hospital.’ Jim smiled briefly at my expression. ‘That’s why I asked you out again, and I thought it went well yesterday. Only, this morning you turn up out of the blue, and it’s all about David again.’

  ‘I’m worried about him. But believe me, I’m not in love with him. Our friendship is purely platonic.’

  Jim shrugged. It was getting late and the light was fading fast, despite the continued summer time. I had a sudden need for familiar surroundings.

  ‘Come to dinner at my service restaurant,’ I said. ‘My treat.’ I thought about it. ‘Not that it will be exactly a treat, because the food is rather dire, but it’ll be hot and more or less nourishing.’

  The eyebrow rose. ‘How could a chap refuse such an invitation?’

  It was tomato soup (tinned), mutton with cabbage and potatoes and bread pudding. Jim ate it all manfully, and ignored the curious looks of the other diners.

  We took our coffee upstairs to my flat. I put the blackout blinds in place and turned on the lights.

  Jim looked around with unabashed curiosity.

  People are judged by their surroundings and I wondered how Jim saw mine. I had furnished my flat somewhat eccentrically with cheap and second-hand furniture and objects that appealed to me. The low oval mahogany table was crowned with a lustre bowl of iridescent blue that I had picked up cheaply because it was chipped, and it was filled with late autumn roses; their scent permeated the room. The bookcases on either side of the fireplace were crammed with books I had bought second hand on Charing Cross Road. An old but comfortable sofa lay beneath the double windows that overlooked my narrow balcony. Its brocade cover was heavily stained, so I had thrown a dark green velvet curtain over it, hoping it added a sumptuous note to the room. I loved to lie on the velvet to read.

  ‘I like your flat,’ he said. ‘Do you get to the balcony from the bedroom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wondered if he would ask to see the bedroom, where French doors, framed in steel like the windows, led to the tiled balcony.

  ‘There’s not much of a view,’ I said, ‘but it faces east so I have morning sunshine and I overlook the gardens. I love having a balcony.’

  I left him gazing at my bookshelf while I slipped into the bedroom to draw down the blackout curtains. I was about to return when I saw Denys’s photograph on my dressing table. The man I had loved, or thought I loved. Now it was time to move on. I picked up the photograph and tucked it inside my dressing table drawer.

  As I returned to Jim the Warning sounded.

  ‘Do you usually take shelter?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I’d prefer to travel down to earth with the ruins rather than be trapped in the cellar.’

  ‘Suits me,’ he said. ‘I hate sheltering underground. I never go into the basement at Half Moon Street, no matter how bad the raid.’

  As Jim sipped his coffee I wondered how I could explain my friendship with Levy.

  ‘I know I talk about Levy a lot,’ I said, ‘but you must understand that he’s been an important part of my life over the past months. I think I only survived the early days of the Blitz because of Levy.’

  Levy was so handsome that I’d had a few daydreams when we first began working together, but those feelings had changed, and not only because of Levy’s lack of interest in me in that way. Working through the Blitz forced us to confront together the horrors of aerial warfare on civilians. As I kept facing those horrors, day after day, night after night, what Levy came to mean to me was more than an emotional attachment to a handsome face. Our friendship was now solidly based on comradeship in harsh times, on mutual respect and the knowledge that we would look after each no matter how hard the shift might be.

  Jim sat quietly on my couch, watching me carefully as I tried to explain. And while I spoke I observed him as well. It really was too soon to know how I felt about Jim Vassilikov, other than that I liked him and I was attracted to him. Our characters and our backgrounds were very different, and yet we seemed to get on well together and to share interests and views. On the other hand, his ease with the Dorchester life presented a real obstacle for me.

  I needed time to work out what I felt, but I well knew that in a war, when emotions were stretched tight and life itself was so tenuous, time was what we did not have.

  I put down my coffee cup and walked across to where he was sitting. When I sat beside him I was intensely aware of him, of the blood moving under his skin and flushing his pale face, pulsing in rapid beats in his neck. I could feel the air moving as he breathed in and out.

  ‘The question is,’ I said, ‘what to do?’

  He put down the coffee cup. ‘We could play cards. Penny a pop?’

  Obviously, I was not a born vamp. I tried again. ‘What I mean is, what can I do to convince you I’m not in love with David Levy?’

  When he began to pull me close, I resisted a little, saying, ‘I should tell you that I became engaged last year. He died at Scapa Flow.’

  ‘David mentioned that. Are you still—’

  ‘No. He was a good man, and I . . . No, not any more. Not now.’

&
nbsp; The nightly thunder of the guns began and the throbbing roar of planes was overhead. Jim pulled me close again and this time I yielded. The room began to shake and we clung to each other as if the world was ending.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Gently disengaging himself from my embrace, Jim stood up. His face was flushed and his eyes unfocused and there was no irony in his smile, but real regret. He took a deep, ragged breath. I made a soft, annoyed sound.

  ‘Lily, you fell asleep on your feet this morning. Your nerves are shot and you need a good night’s sleep, if that’s possible in this racket. And we both need time.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘To work things out, work out what you want, where we should go with this. Especially with David . . .’

  The local All Clear sounded and he smiled again.

  ‘Fate,’ he said. ‘Telling me to get out before my resistance is entirely swept away or you fall asleep. Or both.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Stay there. I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘Will you come back tomorrow? It’s Sunday, are you free?’ I hated sounding so feeble.

  ‘Yes, of course, and yes I’m free. I’ll telephone you once I’m back at my flat, to let you know I’ve arrived in one piece.’

  He turned to leave, but then he was in front of me again, leaning down to brush his lips across mine. As he straightened he murmured something in Russian. And he was gone.

  I waited fifteen minutes and raced downstairs to the pay telephone in the foyer, standing guard over the machine, already longing to hear his voice again. After another long fifteen minutes the telephone rang.

  ‘I’m home and all’s well.’

  ‘Tell me something lovely.’

  ‘Your kisses are like the first soft fall of snow.’ His voice was dry, unsentimental. ‘Is that romantic enough?’

  I laughed. ‘Brute. Is there no romance in you?’

  ‘I’m a barrister. I’ll kiss you again tomorrow and find a suitable metaphor then, but you sleep now.’

  I hung up. ‘First fall of snow,’ I murmured, and laughed to myself as I climbed the stairs to the flat. Once I was inside I tidied up, unwilling to go to bed, wanting to remember the evening.