Ambulance Girls

by Deborah Burrows

  ‘But you didn’t kill him,’ I blurted out. ‘Why do you need to atone?’

  ‘Because I was a craven coward who left him alone.’ She shrugged and looked down to rummage around in her handbag. A lipstick and compact appeared in her hand and she spent a minute or so refreshing her lipstick, which I suspected was to avoid looking at me. When she had finished she turned to me again. She seemed composed.

  ‘Did you know that some Jews believe that the soul hovers over the body it has left for three days?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘They think that in that time the soul is lost, confused and so they set someone to watch over the body until it is buried,’ she said. ‘It is never left alone.’

  ‘But, Celia—’

  ‘I left David alone in those ruins for more than two weeks because I was afraid of my family, of Cedric, of society – oh, of everything really. I let his family and his friends suffer dreadfully, not knowing what had happened to him. So, now I’m trying to atone by assisting his family in their war work – by assisting his people who are war refugees.’ She laughed a little, self-consciously. ‘Helen won’t speak to me, of course, and Cedric wants me locked up as a mad woman, but he still won’t divorce me.’

  ‘You are happier, though?’

  She smiled. There was a clear, unaffected humour in her smile and although I saw grief still in her eyes, the bitterness had gone.

  ‘Actually, I am,’ she said. ‘Selfish as ever, I find it helps me to be helping people who are worse off than I.’ A shadow passed over her face. ‘The stories I’ve heard.’ She looked at me with a savage intentness. ‘We simply must defeat the Nazis, Lily.’

  Celia gave me her lopsided smile. ‘I’ve monopolised the conversation and I do beg your pardon. Are you well enough to walk? If you are, I can take you to see Jim.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ I raised my hand to my cheek. ‘My face. How is my face? Will I be scarred?’

  She passed me the compact and I stared at my red face, pocked with red marks from where the gravel had been removed. It looked unfortunate, but it was not too disfiguring.

  ‘Would they mind if I put on some powder?’ I asked.

  Celia shrugged. ‘I won’t tell on you. Here. Let me do it.’

  Once my face looked less raw, and my lips were the pretty coral colour of Celia’s lipstick she helped me to sit up. I swung my feet out of the bed and she was waiting with a dressing gown.

  ‘I was wrong,’ she said, as she held it for me to shrug into. I waited for her to explain what she meant.

  ‘I don’t know if David and I ever really had a chance, but you and Jim do. Life is uncertain, Lily. And that’s why we must grab hold of what we want and damn the consequences. Don’t let fear destroy your chance at happiness.’

  Jim lay white and still in the narrow bed as I limped through the ward doorway, supported by Celia. His head was bandaged and his left arm was in a plaster cast. An oxygen mask covered his face. When he saw me he pulled it to one side and said, in a rasping whisper, ‘Sight for sore eyes.’

  They had been his words when I visited him in hospital before, when I had been accompanied by Levy.

  I managed a smile and sat down on the hard chair next to his bed. Celia murmured something and left us.

  ‘We must stop meeting like this,’ I said. ‘And for the record, let’s forgo dinner at the Ritz.’

  He smiled and held out his hand. When I took it he squeezed it gently.

  On Christmas Eve it snowed, and there were no bombs. Nor were there bombs on Christmas night, or the day after. Word on the street was that a deal had been brokered with the Germans: if we didn’t bomb them during the festive season, they wouldn’t bomb us.

  Jim remained in hospital for Christmas, and Katherine and I went to Gloucester Road Tube station to celebrate with Pam and Betty and their hordes of tube shelterers. Despite the surroundings, we all had a marvellous time. As I sang carols, ate the meagre dinner among the many laughing people, stood for the loyal toast and joined the deafening cheers for ‘the King, God bless him’ and for Churchill, I thought that Hitler’s plan to destroy London’s morale had been a dismal failure.

  ‘Not even the sound of a plane,’ said Pam at breakfast on the day following Boxing Day. ‘If this keeps up I may recover the roses in my cheeks.’

  ‘They’ll come tonight,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Pessimist,’ said Pam.

  ‘Near full moon,’ replied Katherine. ‘They won’t waste it. We’ll be in for it in the next few nights.’

  Katherine was right, of course.

  Jim was discharged on the twenty-ninth of December. His arm was still in a cast and he was pale and thin, but otherwise seemed well enough. My scars were healing also and I had made up my mind about my future.

  ‘Now you listen to me, Jim Vassilikov,’ I said in a brisk voice, after I had settled him on my sofa. ‘No more shilly-shallying. I think we should be married as soon as possible. And although I would prefer to return to Australia after the war – if you want to stay here in England, I will.’

  Jim smiled. ‘I told you, I would be delighted to live in Australia. But, ah, there is something I forgot to tell you.’ He was frowning slightly, but only slightly.

  ‘What?’ I looked at him suspiciously, but he seemed calm and unperturbed. ‘Are you teasing me?’

  ‘You will need to convert.’

  ‘Convert to what?’

  ‘The Russian Orthodox Church.’

  I stared at him. ‘Or you won’t marry me? You are teasing me.’

  ‘Of course I’ll still marry you – I think we should be married right away, in the registry office, this week, preferably. But we would not be considered legally married by my family – and more importantly, our children wouldn’t be considered legitimate by them – unless we also marry in an Orthodox ceremony. If they ever want to use the title – well, they couldn’t really, unless we marry in the Church – in my Church, I mean. Is it a problem for you?’ He added lightly, ‘I seem to find it is important to me.’

  ‘I’m C of E, but I’m not very . . .’ I let my voice die away as I considered what it would mean. I knew nothing about the Orthodox religion. I would have to take lessons, I supposed, with a black-bearded patriarch. Would I need to learn Russian? Could I just swap over like that?

  And then, all at once, my worries disappeared. Why not? It was the same God, after all.

  ‘She’s apples,’ I said, in a broad Australian accent, which made Jim laugh. ‘What is your Russian title, anyway? You’ve never told me.’

  He bowed his head to me. ‘I am Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Vassilikov of Russia.’

  I blurted out the first thing in my head. ‘It’s a joke. Isn’t it? You’re teasing me, because I told you my dog was called Prince.’

  His expression was unreadable.

  ‘My father was a prince – it’s a fairly common title in Russia – but he wasn’t a royal prince. He was a Georgian nobleman, a Cossack if you will. It’s my mother who’s the Romanov.’ He spoke in a detached style, as if he were reading from a guidebook.

  ‘Your mother is a Romanov?’

  ‘My mother is a great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I, so she’s a member of the Romanov dynasty. But by marrying my father, who was effectively a commoner despite his title, she renounced her dynastic rights.’

  I swallowed a laugh. ‘So you’re not in line for the Russian throne.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, thank God for that!’ I said, and he seemed to relax at last.

  ‘So that’s your mysterious title,’ I said, lightly, taking hold of his hand. ‘You won’t expect me to curtsy, will you. I’m—’

  ‘I know. Believe me, I know very well that you’re Australian and Australians don’t go in much for nobility, except for the British royal family.’

  ‘Too right.’ Then something occurred to me. ‘Are you related to the British monarchy?’

  ‘George III was my great-great-great-great-grandfathe
r. But that side of the family stayed in Germany. I’m barely related to King George VI.’

  ‘Oh.’ I suddenly felt lost, unsettled and unsure again. Out of my depth.

  Jim looked away, down at his right hand as it tapped the side of the sofa, playing his imaginary piano. I knew him well enough to know that it meant he was in as much turmoil as I was. His left hand was still clasping mine though. I squeezed it hard.

  ‘Jim, we really are so different. Our backgrounds . . .’

  ‘Flying fish,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Fish that fly. To take Celia’s very trite analogy to a logical conclusion, why can’t we meet halfway, like flying fish?’

  I laughed. ‘That’s silly.’

  ‘Not wanting to marry me because of my accident of birth is silly. I don’t use the title and it does not define me. My mother may not be thrilled, if that is what worries you, but we rarely see one another. You’re not marrying my mother. She may even decide to visit us in Australia: who can say what miracles may happen when fish are flying.’

  ‘I want to believe you,’ I said. ‘But—’

  ‘We found each other, Lily,’ he said, and there was a quiet intensity in his voice. ‘How remarkable is that? Think about it. We were born in the same hour, eight thousand miles apart, and we found each other here in London in the middle of a war.’

  He withdrew his hand from my clasp, leaving my hand suddenly cold.

  ‘Now try to think about what it would be like to live your life without me,’ he said. ‘I – I can’t imagine life without you. Not now that I’ve found you.’

  In my mind, the words of a Shakespeare sonnet came unbidden: For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And, thou away, the very birds are mute: Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer, That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

  I breathed a laugh. I knew what it would be like to live my life without him. It would be like winter. A cold, dark, wet English winter, one without an end.

  ‘Marry me, Lily.’

  ‘I think I’ve been subtly manoeuvred,’ I said.

  ‘Here.’

  He handed me a small leather box, decorated with gold leaves and flowers. When I opened it there was the ring. A sapphire surrounded by eight diamonds.

  ‘Let’s see if it fits,’ he said.

  It did.

  * * *

  The Warning went at six o’clock that evening. Its mournful wail rose and fell in the clear cold night air to be superseded almost immediately by the roar of planes coming in low. Under a full bombers’ moon London lay open, beautiful and as vulnerable as an anaesthetised patient stretched out on an operating table. The white-painted kerbs, the shadows of the grand buildings and the twisting Thames all conspired to guide the raiders straight to the heart of the capital.

  By ten o’clock, when Jim and I stood on my small balcony, the eerie red glow from the south-east was like a perverted sunrise. The air was hot – in mid-winter! It felt singed and with every breath we inhaled ashes. The smell of burning was almost overpowering. The sound of fire engine bells tore the night, competing with the sound of bombers and guns.

  ‘What is happening?’ I said.

  Jim shuddered and rubbed his eyes in a weary gesture and looked again at the glow in the east.

  ‘The City is burning,’ he said. ‘My God, Lily, it’s an inferno. We’re looking at another Great Fire of London.’

  I wondered if St Paul’s – if the City – would survive the holocaust of flame that lit the night sky with such an infernal brightness.

  It is madness to plan for a future in such times, I thought. And yet that was exactly what we were doing. I reached out for his arm.

  ‘Come inside,’ I said. ‘This ash is bad for your lungs. Whatever it is, London will survive it. And we’ll have time enough tomorrow to see what has happened.’

  Together, we had all the time in the world.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As always, this novel would not have been written without the support and assistance and research skills of my wonderful husband, Toby.

  Thanks also to my fabulous agents, the ever-supportive Sheila Drummond in Australia and Anna Carmichael in London. Thanks to the team at Ebury Press, especially Gillian Green, Emily Yau and Josephine Turner. And to Justinia Baird-Murray for the lovely cover and Charlotte Cole for her sympathetic editing.

  I owe a great debt to my dear friends in Iffley, Oxford: Venetia, Alice and Steve, Jan and Jonathan and Brenda and Sam, who welcomed a couple of Aussies to their golden city, and made them feel as if they belonged. And to John and Rosemary, Kate and Jonathan, and Jock and Jill – still friends so many years after our Tuscan adventure. Many thanks to the amazing staff at the Bodleian Library and the Oxford Central Library – every book imaginable about the Blitz was mine for the asking. Thanks to my dear friends, Felicity and Philip McCann, who generously allowed us to stay in their lovely home when we were back in Perth. Janet Blagg (as always) helped so much. Lovely Lisa Fagin Davis reassured me when I was panicking about the Jewish bits. My friends, all of you, thank you so much.

  Finally, this novel is also dedicated to the ‘ambulance girls’ who risked their lives and who lost their lives, racing through falling bombs to help the victims of the Blitz. I am in awe of their immense courage and grace under fire.

  FURTHER READING

  When writing this novel I tried to ensure that my depiction of the London Blitz was as accurate as possible. I spent many happy hours researching at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and I can’t possibly acknowledge all the books and articles I read and the internet sites I visited, but the following stand out as invaluable in my depiction of London during those dark days:

  Beardmore, George. Civilians at War: Journals 1938–1946. London: John Murray, 1984.

  De Courcy, Anne. Debs at War 1939–1945: How Wartime Changed Their Lives. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005.

  Freedman, Jean R. Whistling in the Dark: Memory and Culture in Wartime London. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.

  Gardiner, Juliet. The Blitz: The British Under Attack. London: Harperpress, 2010.

  Hartley, Jenny. Millions Like Us: British Women’s Fiction of the Second World War. London: Virago, 1997.

  Hodgson, Vere. Few Eggs and No Oranges: A Diary Showing How Unimportant People in London and Birmingham Lived Throughout the War Years. London: Persephone, 1999.

  Howard, Elizabeth Jane. Slipstream: A Memoir. London: Macmillan, 2002.

  Kushner, Tony. The Persistence of Prejudice: Anti-Semitism in British Society during the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.

  Lefebure, Molly. Murder on the Home Front: A True Story of Morgues, Murderers and Mystery in the Blitz. London: Sphere, 2013.

  Nicholson, Harold. Diaries and Letters, London: Fontana, 1969–1971.

  Nixon, Barbara. Raiders Overhead. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1943.

  Raby, Angela. The Forgotten Service: Auxiliary Ambulance Station 39, Weymouth Mews. London: Battle of Britain International, 1999.

  Sweet, Matthew. The West End Front: The Wartime Secrets of London’s Grand Hotels. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 2011.

  Waller, Jane, and Vaughn-Rees, Michael. Blitz: The Civilian War 1940–45. London: Optima, 1990.

  Wyndham, Joan. Love Lessons: A Wartime Diary. London: Heinemann, 1985.

  Ziegler, Philip. London at War 1939–1945. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781473550353


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  Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,

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  Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © Deborah Burrows 2016

  Cover photographs: women by Head Design; background images © Getty Images/Topfoto (ambulance)

  Cover: www.headdesign.co.uk

  Deborah Burrows has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  First published by Ebury Press in 2016

  www.penguin.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781785034602