Blitz

by Claire Rayner

  ‘I rather like it. It beats crappy macks, anyway,’ Robin said, and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Her fingers were red and swollen with cold because the hospital’s hot water was at low ebb following a raid earlier in the week which had caught the big boiler-house at the rear of the courtyard. ‘And don’t change the subject – ’

  ‘The only reason I have to do ’em,’ Chick said, studiously not looking at Robin, ‘is because that grade-A bitch Meek, may she rot, has taken it into her head to punish anyone who dares to be a friend of yours. I’ve heard of vindictive, but she honestly is the end – ’

  ‘She’s going next week. All you have to do is be patient,’ Robin said. ‘And the Main Theatres can have her and welcome. It’ll get easier then. So, tell me – were you out with both of them again today?’

  ‘Oh, damn you, Robin Bradman,’ Chick said. ‘You’re as bad as my mother used to be, always quizzing – all right, so I did. So what? Work’s so miserable at the moment that I have to do the best I can with my days to make it tolerable.’

  ‘Just make sure Night Sister doesn’t find out you’re not in your room by noon, that’s all,’ Robin said. ‘She can’t be fooled by a bolster in the bed for ever. What I can’t understand is why you go out with both of ’em at the same time.’

  ‘It’s a bit tricky –’ Chick agreed, and began to spread gauze over the layer of grey kaolin she had at last finished applying. ‘But what can I do? They’re both staying at your grandmother’s house, and it’s difficult for them not to know what the other’s doing, if you see what I mean. So whenever Daniel makes a plan with me, somehow Harry turns up too.’ She chuckled then, a self-satisfied little sound that irritated Robin greatly. ‘It makes Daniel absolutely furious, but I don’t really mind. It’s rather fun to have two chaps fussing over you.’

  ‘I dare say it is,’ Robin said shortly and slung the huge mackintosh she had at last finished over the drying horse, and then bent to mop up the inevitable puddles she had made. Staff Nurse Meek would bawl at her at the top of her voice if she didn’t, as she knew from bitter experience. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Chick said sympathetically. ‘Did Chloe horn in again today?’

  ‘I really have no idea,’ Robin said, even more shortly. ‘And what’s more, I don’t care. For heaven’s sake, Chick, do move over. I can’t get this one done properly if you keep your trolley so close. And anyway your poultices might get contaminated.’

  ‘Don’t take your fury out on me,’ Chick said comfortably, though she did move her own working trolley out of the way. ‘Save it for the person it belongs to.’

  ‘Chloe? I wouldn’t waste my breath on her –’ Robin began.

  ‘Actually, I was thinking of Hamish,’ Chick said mildly and shot a glance at her from beneath her lashes. ‘He’s not exactly a baby doll, is he, lying around for someone to pick up as and when she fancies? I mean, he is a person with a mind of his own. If he accepts the wretched woman’s invitations, he’s the one to blame, rather than Chloe – ’

  ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Robin snapped. ‘And that’s the last mack, thank God. I’d better get those drums packed now, or Meek’ll explode.’ And she flung the last mackintosh into place to dry, mopped out the sink, and fled to the other side of the department. Talking to anyone, even Chick, just made matters worse.

  Maybe especially Chick, she thought then, as she began to pull pieces of cotton wool off the big roll to make them into swabs ready to be packed in the big metal drums in which they would be sterilized. She had too shrewd an idea of what was going on in Robin’s life and was far too pushy about meddling. It was all very well, Robin told herself with some anger, to be a free and easy Canadian and all that, but there had to be times, surely, when you showed a bit of tact, and tact was the one quality Chick conspicuously lacked.

  But she didn’t lack common sense and Robin had to admit that what she said about Hamish not being a helpless doll was absolutely true. He was a person with a mind of his own – more mind than most, in fact, for hadn’t he set himself against all conventional thinking in refusing to put on a uniform? – and if he let Chloe with all her obviousness take him in, surely the fault was as much his as hers?

  Robin’s hands slowed down as she thought of it all, and her eyes felt hot and tight. It had all seemed so silly at first; she had just been amused. But not for long. They’d come off duty one morning, she and Chick, to find Chloe’s small car in one of the spaces in the courtyard reserved for the consultants. Robin had recognized it at once, for it was a rakish little red roadster with huge headlights that made it look as though it had a face on which a positively wicked leer could be seen. It suited Chloe exactly, Robin had always thought, and to see it in the hospital’s yard was amazing and she stopped short to stare. Chick, who had been chattering at her, had gone on several yards before she realized that Robin was not beside her and turned back to see what had delayed her.

  ‘What on earth is she doing here at this time of the morning?’ Robin had said, and then reddened as Chloe, seeing her, had got out of the car and came over to her.

  ‘Morning, ducks!’ she had said. ‘My word, but you look rough. Too awful working at night. I’d loathe it.’ And she’d given a pretty little shudder and then nodded coolly at Chick. She herself was looking chic and elegant as only she could in beautifully cut black slacks and a little red jigger coat. Robin looked at her almost despairingly, well aware of her own straggling hair and shiny nose on a face which was quite innocent of any make-up.

  ‘Looks as though you loathe working during the day too,’ Chick had said, looking at her watch with some ostentation. ‘Shouldn’t you be at your madly important job in the War Office by this time?’

  Chloe had looked at her with naked dislike. ‘Actually, my dear,’ she had said, ‘It’s Saturday, and we don’t go in on Saturday unless there’s a madly big push. Some people do, of course, but I’m not one of them, glory be. One needs some time to call one’s own, war effort or no war effort.’

  ‘We wouldn’t know,’ Chick said and smiled at her, a glittering, rather wolfish grimace that had no pleasantness in it at all. ‘Time to ourselves is something we don’t expect. And we’re right not to on account of we don’t get it.’

  ‘Poor you,’ Chloe said and flicked her eyes away from her and back to Robin. ‘Darling, your poor hands! They look like a pile of pork sausages! You ought to use some cream on them. I’ll try and get some for you. It’s madly short in the shops but I have one or two useful contacts.’

  ‘I’ll bet you do,’ Chick said, looking at the car. ‘How else would you get petrol?’

  Chloe didn’t look at her but couldn’t resist answering, ‘I get a special allowance because of my job,’ she said. ‘Essential services, you know. Now, Robin darling, do remember to remind me about that cream. I do so want to help you. And you could do with some new lipstick too. Can’t you get any? I’ve a few ends I’m sure that you can have.’

  ‘We aren’t allowed to wear it in uniform,’ Robin said. ‘I’ve enough for off duty, though, thanks all the same. No need to give me leftovers of yours – ’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear! You sound just like you did when you were small, complaining because you couldn’t stay up late like me! No need for that, sweetie! We’re all grown up now.’

  ‘Some more than others,’ Chick said nastily and then tucked her hand into Robin’s elbow. ‘Come on, Robin. We’ve been working all night, unlike some people, and we need our sleep.’

  This time Chloe ignored her completely and kept her eyes on Robin. ‘Any news from home?’ she said. ‘I never seem to get a moment to phone Poppy, what with work and one thing and another.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ Chick murmured.

  ‘No,’ Robin said. And her voice sounded husky suddenly and Chick, knowing how anxious she was about her stepfather, tightened her grasp on her arm. ‘Ma’s working all the hours God gives of course, and we haven’t heard anything
about David. So I suppose everything’s all right –’ Her voice had sharpened then. ‘Is that why you’re here? Have you heard something that – oh, my God, Chloe, do tell me! What is it?’ And her eyes had widened in sudden terror. Standing now at the dressings table and rolling her cotton wool swabs with savage little movements of her wrists, Robin remembered the way fear had leapt in her, how certain she had been that Chloe’s unexpected appearance at the hospital had been because she was the bearer of some awful news.

  But Chloe had just lifted her brows and laughed. ‘My dear infant, why on earth should I have any news for you? I told you I never get round to calling poor old Poppy as it is – ’

  ‘The War Office,’ Robin said. ‘I thought perhaps – ’

  ‘No, my dear,’ Chloe said. ‘I deal with quite different matters.’ And she put up her hands to pull her red woollen cap to a more becoming angle as her glance shifted over Robin’s shoulder. ‘Ah! Here comes the reason I’m here. Good morning, Hamish! Have you had a ghastly night too?’

  Robin had turned her head and seen him coming from the direction of the porter’s rooms, where he was accommodated. He had clearly hurried off duty at a great rate to wash and change, for his hair was clinging damply to his skull and his face had a newly shaved look about it. He was wearing a thick woollen jumper with a round neck, rather like the ones the women patients in the wards spent hours knitting for the Sailors’ Comforts Fund, and looked a totally different person from the bedraggled man in the shabby brown overall which was the insignia of a hospital orderly and in which Robin usually saw him.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Bradman,’ he said and then nodded at Chick and Robin. ‘I can hardly bid you good morning since we were all on duty together the night.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Chick said tartly. ‘You certainly look as though you’re a different person to the one we worked with, so have a go. Where are you two off to?’

  Robin was mortified. She wouldn’t have asked the question had her life depended on it, though God knew she wanted to. The sight of Hamish looking so very well spruced up had rendered her almost speechless. And then angry. It wasn’t that she felt she had any right to be consulted about his comings and goings; they were, after all, only friends and no more than that. She had no special claims on him and would have been very alarmed had he attempted to consult her on all he did or planned to do, but still the sight of him so obviously prepared as he was to meet her half-sister had filled her with a great rush of feeling, and she had to admit to herself, shaming thought though it was, that it was sheer jealousy.

  And that had confused her. Staring at her hands, which were now quite still instead of rolling swabs, she tried again to deal with that. Hamish was a friend, that was all; or was it all? That was the thought that had been forced to the surface of her mind by his appearance that morning, and she still hadn’t answered it satisfactorily. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about such matters as boyfriends and falling in love, or that she wasn’t aware of how important they could be. Didn’t she hear the other nurses talking interminably about their own adventures – or lack of them – until her head buzzed with it? It was just that she didn’t know what her own feelings were. Yet she suspected they were a good deal stronger than she had realized, for why otherwise would that morning encounter have upset her so?

  It had been Chloe who had answered Chick’s question. ‘Oh, nowhere you’d be interested in,’ she had said airily and moved forward to link her arm with Hamish’s in a proprietorial fashion. ‘I just happened to know of a marvellous exhibition all about Scottish involvement with the English, you know, James the First and the Fourth and all that stuff, not to speak of Bonny Prince Thingummy. It’s at the London Museum, so that’s where we’re off too. Toodle-oo, my dears!’ And she had swept Hamish away into her small car and with a last flip of her hand out of the window had taken it noisily out of the gates and into the Whitechapel Road.

  They had stood there in silence for a moment and then Chick had said disgustedly, ‘Well, what a stupid lie that was!’

  ‘What?’ Robin said vaguely, still trying to deal with the confusion of feeling she had experienced.

  ‘I said that was a stupid lie. Of course they’re not going to any museum! She must think we’re really barmy to swallow that!’

  Robin had looked at her, trying to pay sensible attention; it was difficult but she had to try.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because everyone knows they’ve closed the museums, or most of ’em, for the duration. Sent all the exhibits off to Devon or somewhere to keep them safe, and shut up shop. So why try and tell us that’s where they’re going?’

  Robin had felt her face go stiff with dull anger. ‘Hamish wouldn’t lie though –’ she had to say it, knowing him as she did. He might be quiet, but that he was honest and cared a great deal about what he regarded as right and wrong was undoubted.

  ‘Wouldn’t he!’ Chick had said and taken her arm and forced her to start the walk to the dining room, and ultimately bed. ‘He lied over that message that wasn’t sent, didn’t he?’

  ‘But that was different –’ Robin had said, and then no more. They had both dropped the matter as though they’d agreed to, but it had rankled with Robin and it still did.

  Since that morning she had seen Chloe’s car twice more in the yard, and had hurried on, her head down, affecting not to have noticed. But all the same, she had been stung, and had kept well out of Hamish’s way ever since. If that was what he wanted, she had told herself furiously, that’s what he can damn well have. I don’t care tuppence.

  She jumped than as Staff Nurse Meek’s voice came from behind her, as strident as ever, if not more so. ‘If you’ve nothing better to do than stand there cuddling that cotton wool, Nurse Bradman, I’ll find something for you. One of these drunks has been sick in the far cubicle. Go and clean it at once – ’

  ‘I’ve done it, Staff Nurse.’ This time it was Hamish’s voice that made Robin’s head snap round and she stared at him as he went stomping past them with his covered bucket and mop and he looked at Robin with a faint smile and then at Nurse Meek with an expression of stolid stupidity which, had Robin not been so angry with him, would have made her laugh aloud.

  ‘Oh, trust you two to hang together!’ Meek shrilled. ‘It’s no more than I’d expect from the likes of you, Bradman – hanging around with domestics. It’s all you’re fit for, isn’t it? Well, then – ’

  It started suddenly, almost overhead, and they all stood silently as the noise swooped on them and then Hamish said loudly, ‘I didn’t hear them start over the docks the way they usually do –’ just as another siren took up the clamour.

  Sister Priestland, hitherto locked in her office, appeared from nowhere out of the tiled floor, surging into the middle of the waiting hall like a very small but very wind-filled galleon, her full bust seeming to pull her forwards.

  ‘Right!’ she called. ‘Get yourselves together and start moving, everyone. There’s sure to be big trouble here soon. Get those drunks on their way as fast as you can and make sure every cubicle is set up and ready. I want all the available blood there is and then plasma, and the wards checked for available beds. Nurse Bradman, leave those drums and get the anaesthetic equipment checked. Nurse Chester, I want dressing packs and drips sets in every cubicle, and Todd, bring in all the spare oxygen and nitrous oxide cylinders as well as the CO2 – ’

  The instructions came out in a steady stream and the whole department seemed to scatter in a maelstrom of movement as the sirens went on and on shrieking overhead and others took up the noise. And then there was the even more ominous sound of planes, flying low and in large numbers. The London Hospital’s Casualty Department braced itself for a heavy night.

  22

  The readiness was the easy part. Within fifteen minutes of the sirens sounding the alarm, the Casualty department was poised and able to deal with a positive flood of casualties. The drunks were gone, banished for treatment elsewhere in the h
ospital – Robin never did find out where – and the benches in the waiting hall all stretched silent and glossy with the polish imparted by thousands of serge-clad East End bottoms over the years. But the casualties didn’t come. The sirens stopped their noise and the doctors and nurses braced themselves for the usual din of whistling bombs and explosions and gunfire to come but none of it did – not even the ack-ack response from Victoria Park they were so used to – and still there were no ambulances shrieking up to the doors outside, still no stretchers dragged in by sweating First Aiders and ARP post wardens.

  It was Dr Landow who found out what was going on. He went out into the street to see what was happening, which scandalized the gate porter, Thomas, who believed that everyone but himself must be kept within doors while an alert was in progress, and came back to head for the phone in Sister’s office. When he emerged his face was grim.

  ‘It’s different this time,’ he said, and Sister, who had set her nurses to rolling those interminable cotton wool swabs on the principle that they’d get tired out from doing nothing at all, turned her head and said drily, ‘We’d guessed as much. What is it? Gas? I’ve just the three emergency respirators, you know. It’s the one I’ve always told everyone we’d not be able to handle so well – ’

  He shook his head. ‘Not gas, thank God. Not really all that many people either, which is what matters most. It’s the City – ’

  ‘The City?’

  ‘I’ve talked to them at Bart’s and Guy’s. They’re pounding the city with fire bombs. None of your big stuff, but it’s doing terrible damage. It’s burning like crazy, according to old Geoff Lovell at Guy’s. He says the Thames is at low tide and the fire service have no pressure in their hoses and there are whole streets burning and nothing to stop ’em. It’s 1666 all over again.’

  ‘The City,’ Sister Priestland said and then rubbed her eyes with the heels of both hands. ‘Bloody vandals,’ she said loudly. ‘Bloody vandals!’