Blitz

by Claire Rayner

  Robin sipped hers gratefully but with a moue of distaste, as Hamish shook his head. ‘I don’t take spirits, Sister,’ he said. ‘Thank you all the same. And I’m no’ hurt. I’ll be back to work then – ’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said Sister Priestland. ‘Not until you’ve been seen by one of the doctors and passed as fit.’ And she looked at the cup of brandy in her hand, then at Hamish, and with a sort of half shrug and half grimace drank it herself. ‘It’s easier than putting it back in the bottle,’ she said and smiled at Robin, a wide sweet smile that made her look suddenly rather vulnerable, and Robin became sharply aware of how heavy a responsibility rested on those plump round shoulders, and was grateful to her.

  ‘I’m fit too, Sister. A bit shaken up but nothing broken or cut.’ She moved then experimentally and made a face. ‘A few bruises, though.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see what the medical men say,’ Sister Priestland said. ‘Now, come on, and take care as you go – ’

  They followed her along the wrecked corridor, aware then of what had happened. The roof had come in, clearly, for an awning of blackout material had been rigged overhead to prevent light getting out to bring the bombers back, and everywhere rubble was heaped. One of the rescue men led the little group carefully past the worst of it and then they emerged into the rest of the corridor which was remarkably undamaged.

  ‘A small bomb,’ the rescue man said. ‘Just one. It’s when they come in sticks they really cause a muck-up. This was one left over or something – it was down the docks they laid most of their ruddy Hitler eggs tonight – ’

  ‘Small or not,’ Sister Priestland said sharply, ‘it’s done enough damage and caught two of my staff, and I won’t have it!’ And she turned her head and looked at Robin. ‘You shouldn’t have been there at the time, for heaven’s sake, girl! You were supposed to be at your meal.’

  ‘I came back early,’ Robin said and added a little mendaciously, ‘in case we got busy.’

  ‘Such stuff,’ Sister Priestland snorted. ‘You must think me very stupid! You came back early to gossip with your friend, Chester.’

  ‘Oh,’ Robin said and could manage no more.

  ‘Well, there it is. Girls!’ said Sister Priestland, as though that one syllable said everything necessary. ‘She’s been leaping about like a scalded cat ever since the incident. She’s waiting for you now – ’

  They arrived in Casualty at last and stood there blinking a little in the bright lights and then there was Chick, bursting across the waiting hall like a hurricane, quite oblivious of everyone else, and seizing Robin by the elbows.

  ‘You wretch!’ she cried. ‘Getting in the way of a bomb! You ought to know better. You know how I worry. Are you hurt? Are you all right? Have you got any – ’

  ‘Nurse Chester, we’re all well aware that Nurse Bradman is your very best friend but your anxiety is excessive. Now if you please, a little space and time for the pair of them to be dealt with. Todd, you come to the corner cubicle – here he is, Dr Smith. We need to be sure he has no injuries – ’

  Hamish was led away, muttering that he was fine, he couldn’t think what all the fuss was about, and Robin looked anxiously after him. He caught her eye and lifted his chin a little, looking interrogative and she nodded back at him as reassuringly as she could. He needed to know she wouldn’t say a word to anyone about the conversation they had had under that pile of rubble and the casualty department trolley, and she hoped that he had understood the unspoken message she had sent him. But then she saw that a little of his colour had come back and was comforted because he had been rather pallid.

  ‘And you, Nurse Bradman,’ Sister Priestland was saying. ‘Come here. Dr Landow will check you. Nurse Chester, take her to the cubicle and help her get into a gown and don’t exhaust her with your chatter. Now, stop looking so hard done by, Nurse Bradman. You must see we can’t let you back on duty till we know you’re fit for it. No one can be properly looked after by nurses who are not themselves in peak condition! So it’s as much for the patients’ sake as yours that it is necessary for you to be medically checked. If necessary, there’ll be X-rays. Happily we’re not too busy at present, so you’ll cause no problems by being a patient yourself for a little while. Nurse Jenner, get on with cleaning those trolleys, and Nurse Dollis, there are drums to be packed. We’re short of swabs, and gauze packs and stores. And after that I’ll need the kaolin poultices made up for the infected wounds – there’s plenty to be done – will you get on with it now?’ And she went off in her usual mad bustle and Robin followed Chick gratefully to the corner cubicle, aware of the fact that both the other probationers were watching her with undoubted envy. Clearly they thought it would have been well worth being buried for a couple of hours or so to have had so much attention.

  Robin sat on the end of the couch and let her shoulders loosen, aware suddenly of how very tired she was, and how much Sister Priestland’s brandy had penetrated to her muscles. She started to shake a little and Chick, looking sharply at her, began to help her undress, untying her shoes and unbuckling her belt, chattering like a train all the time, half scolding, half commiserating.

  Robin stopped listening after a while, letting the words roll over her like a tide. She really felt very sleepy now, indeed downright feeble, and she let Chick do as she liked with her, until at last she was stretched out on the consulting couch, wrapped in a gown and wearing beneath it just her panties.

  ‘ – it really was, I said, a total mystery, because why did he say he got it if he didn’t?’

  ‘Mmm?’ Robin said a little dreamily, trying to focus her eyes on Chick’s round face. She seemed to be bouncing gently like a barrage balloon on its cables.

  ‘I told you, love – if she didn’t realize what it was you wanted and didn’t send anyone, how could he have got any message at all? A total mystery – I thought I’d tell you about it, and that was what I tried to do every time I saw you. But of course I couldn’t, and then when you go to the trouble of coming back early from your meal so that I could, and then get yourself flattened by a bloody Hun bomb, well, you can imagine how I felt – ’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Robin tried to concentrate. It wasn’t easy. She had a clamorous need to sleep.

  ‘So I thought, well I’ll ask him,’ Chick went on, apparently oblivious as she pulled the sheet tidily over Robin, and checked the examination trolley was ready. ‘But damn me if he wasn’t flattened by the same wretched bomb! So how could I?’

  ‘Chick!’ Robin managed to say it loudly and Chick looked round at her and grinned.

  ‘What is it, ducks?’

  ‘What – are – you – talking – about?’

  ‘I told you! About that message your Ma didn’t send.’

  Robin blinked. ‘Didn’t send? I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s not difficult. When you phoned from Norwich, you remember? The line was awful at this end, apparently, and she only got one word in three. So she didn’t realize you wanted her to call the hospital and tell them you’d be late. So of course she never did.’

  ‘She didn’t?’ Robin said and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. And then opened them again to stare at Chick. ‘Then what was the message Hamish – I mean Todd – got?’

  Chick shook her head. ‘See what I mean? That’s the total mystery. I’ll ask him, shall I? Smith’s checked him, I think, by now and I could nip across and have a word – ’

  ‘No!’ Robin must have shouted it louder than she realized because Chick, who was already half out of the cubicle, turned back and stared.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Leave him be. I’ll sort it out,’ she said and after a moment Chick let go of the curtain and stood there looking at her with a comically quizzical expression on her face.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘So they were right! I told ’em they were screwballs but they were right! You could have said something to me, you know. Damn it, what’s a friend for?’

  ‘N
ow what are you going on about?’ Some of the sleepiness had gone, to be replaced by a dullish headache that was beginning to make Robin’s temples throb. ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk mysteries at me.’

  ‘Jenner and Dollis – a right pair of clots they are – said that Staff Nurse Meek, may her cleavage, such as it is, shrivel, was putting it about that you had a tendresse for the orderly, and what a low-class creature you were and so forth, on account of nurses should know better than to consort with types like orderlies. Of course I told them where to go and put themselves, but I’m beginning to wonder – ’

  ‘You are as big an ass as they are,’ Robin said wrathfully, and tried to sit up. ‘Oh, hell, I’m going to be sick –’ And she was, suddenly and copiously and very shamingly, and Chick shook her head at her and set about cleaning her up and replacing her gown with great dispatch and skill.

  ‘You’ve had more of a shaking than you know,’ she said. ‘And I ought to be ashamed of myself for bothering you with nonsense. Sorry, ducks. You need to get to bed if you ask me. Listen, I’ll see if I can find his Lordship – ’

  ‘No need,’ said Dr Landow from the curtain and came in and Chick went pink and laughed and so did he. Robin looked up at him owlishly and thought how agreeable it was to see so friendly a face and then closed her eyes. She really did feel dreadful.

  He checked her over with quiet care and warm hands, which made Robin so grateful that tears sprang into her eyes and then said to Chick who was standing by in the time-honoured nurse’s pose, with both hands folded demurely against the front of her apron, ‘She’ll do. Tell Sister she’s very shaken up and a bit weepy in consequence. No need to look so annoyed with me, Nurse Bradman. It’s perfectly permissible to feel like crying when you’ve been the target of a bomb. I would if it were me.’

  Chick winked at her and went away to deliver her message to Sister Priestland and Dr Landow sat on the end of the couch and looked at Robin and smiled. And she managed to produce in return a smile, though she knew it was a rather watery one.

  ‘I wouldn’t tell Sister Priestland for the world, but the worst possible thing to give to people who’ve been shocked is brandy. But who am I to try to change one of the great British traditions of centuries? Whatever happens, bring out the brandy and then the tea and best of all both together.’

  She managed to laugh at that. ‘I know. It seemed like a good idea at the time but actually it doesn’t suit me. I hardly ever drink anything. It made me feel awful.’

  ‘Worse than the bomb,’ he said and then in the same conversational tone. ‘How frightened were you?’

  She thought about that. ‘Hardly at all. Odd, isn’t that?’

  ‘Not really. You had someone with you of course and that helped.’

  ‘Well having someone to take care of takes your mind off yourself,’ she said without thinking, and he lifted one brow at her.

  ‘Oh? What sort of looking after did he need? I got the impression he was unhurt too. Just the inconvenience of being buried for a while. Did he have some sort of reaction?’

  ‘Oh, no, not at all,’ she said hastily. Too hastily? She couldn’t be sure. ‘It’s just that when there’s someone else there you do think about them as well as yourself and it doesn’t seem so bad.’

  He nodded, seeming satisfied. ‘Well, there it is, you’re fine now, in a purely physical sense that is. But if you get a few days of depression later on, don’t be surprised. No one’s got much time for psychiatric problems at present, what with all the surgery that’s needed in wartime, and in lots of ways the speciality has a dirty name anyway. The general public tend to see people who can’t be soldiers because of some sort of psychological disability as skivers and cheats. Pity really, because they certainly are not. But there it is. We’ll teach them eventually, I dare say. But as I say, if you feel at all – shall we say, strange – come and tell me. I’m making a bit of a study of the way people react to raids. And those who’ve been in incidents, I’ve found, do get rather low for a while sometime later. If it happens be sure to come and talk to me, hmm? It’s a subject I’m interested in. And I’d be glad to help in any way I can.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said and smiled and he turned to go. And then turned back after a moment. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you. Haven’t I seen you at that marvellous little restaurant in Cable Street? I went there a few times when I first came here to the London Hospital, last year it was, and I can remember seeing a girl who looked rather like you – or was I imagining it?’

  She smiled then, broadly. ‘No, you weren’t. That restaurant in Cable Street – I go there quite often – It belongs to my great-aunt. Isn’t it super?’

  ‘Super,’ he said and then gave a half shake of his head. ‘Well, well, well. Who’d have thought it!’ And went away, as Sister Priestland came back with Chick.

  Not until she had been taken over to the Nurses’ Home (in a wheelchair, which she found very demeaning) to sleep off her adventure with strict instructions to be on duty on time the next night, did she think about Dr Landow again and then it was with some puzzlement. What on earth had he meant by that odd little gesture of his head and that ‘Who’d have thought it?’

  Very strange, she told herself as she fell asleep. But not as strange as the message that wasn’t sent but had been received. One way and another she had a good deal to talk to Hamish about next time she saw him.

  16

  Jessie sat at her corner table, staring out across her restaurant and trying to pretend to herself that it was really like the good old days, before the war.

  It wasn’t of course. How could it be? Then she had sat at this self-same table and watched her customers happily – on these evenings when she wasn’t doing the same thing over at her West End restaurant, that was – beaming as they dealt with her superb fish and her delectable chicken and salt beef and her incredible puddings. Those had been the days when she would worry dreadfully if she wasn’t left with at least a quarter of what she had ordered for the day, even though the restaurant had been hectically busy from opening time till gone midnight, and the money had rolled into the till as smoothly and as copiously as a waterfall.

  But that had been then, and now was now, she thought gloomily, looking at the people who filled her tables. People who in the old days had been chattering and happy but now were quiet, contemplative, downright scowling, some of them. They couldn’t help it, of course; they were tired, and the food they were eating wasn’t what she wanted to give them. In the past, she’d have been ashamed to set before her beloved customers such offerings as shepherd’s pie and chicken casseroles made from very elderly chicken; and as for puddings – who could make decent puddings when eggs were so scarce?

  Scarce. That thought made her uneasy, and she moved in her chair awkwardly, remembering Bernie this afternoon.

  ‘All the eggs you can handle, Ma. And for her bloody canteen an’ all. All you want. And butter and a bit of sugar and I’ve got access to some marvellous salmon, all the way from Scotland. Strictly legal that is. No ration on fish, if you can get it. And I can get it. And when it comes to meat, well, look at that brisket I gave you last week. Isn’t that good for business?’

  ‘It’s useless for business,’ she had told him. ‘Useless! You don’t think people are stupid, do you? They’ll know when I’m offering something I shouldn’t have. They’ll know I’m getting it on the black market – ’

  ‘So what if they do?’ Bernie had said and laughed. ‘Honestly, Ma, that Poppy’s been the ruin of you. You’re a real Mrs Milk Toast. Don’t you know which way is up? There isn’t a house in the West End doesn’t buy black-market on account they can afford it. Well, so can you. And it’s not as though you were buying for yourself! It’s for the business, for your blessed customers, and you know how potty you are about them! Do yourself a favour, Ma, don’t be so silly.’

  That hadn’t settled the matter, of course. Well, not really. He’d gone on and on about wanting access to the closed cellars, the on
es she never used because they were so hard to get to; the ones she had one day intended to turn into a decent wine cellar to stock the West End restaurant from. After the war maybe, she could use it for that. Right now Bernie wanted them for some use of his own, and she’d really rather not know what, Jessie told herself, staring sightlessly at her blacked-out restaurant and its few customers sitting quietly at their tables, and eating with so little delight. He’d take them, of course; didn’t he always get his own way, one way or another? Of course he did. And it was her fault. She knew that and she sat and struggled with her conscience over it, trying not to remember the way he’d been able to melt her by just glancing at her with those big dark eyes of his, or showing his perfect teeth in a wide and affectionate smile; all her fault. But God’s too, for making him so very beautiful, so very beguiling –

  The curtain over the door billowed and then flattened as someone opened the outer door to the street and came in, and then once the blacked-out outer door had been carefully closed, it opened to admit the newcomer, and Jessie beamed and surged to her feet, all miseries at once forgotten.

  ‘Robin! It’s a mitzvah – it’s a blessing to see you! How are you, dolly? And your nice friend? How are you?’ And she held out one hand graciously to Hamish who was standing behind Robin, bowing a little regally as she did so. She wasn’t as forthcoming to him as she was to some of her customers, and Robin knew it, but she put that down to a sort of shyness because of Hamish’s size and also his rather exotic strangeness – for Scottish was very exotic to East End Jessie – and was glad of it. Jessie in a really affectionate mood could be more than a little overwhelming.

  She settled them in a quiet table and told the kitchen what to send out to them – for none of her special customers ever actually ordered at Jessie’s. She knew what was best in the kitchen, and what was to be recommended and only a fool would argue with her, and then went to find them a half bottle of claret to go with it.