Blitz

by Claire Rayner

  The nurses stared at her, amazed and shocked. Sister Priest-land to swear? And even as they looked at her she blushed and muttered something that sounded as though it might have been an apology.

  ‘It’s the only description,’ Sam Landow said. ‘Wren’s London up in flames – it’s worse than vandalism. But at least it’s not too many people. Most of the buildings are empty and locked at weekends, you see, especially now, between Christmas and New Year. Most of the people they’re getting in at the other hospitals are firefighters and wardens and so forth – hang on – here we go!’

  They had all heard it, and pushed the dressing preparation trolley into its cubbyhole and made for the big doors as a group, ready to take their first patients. It was Sam Landow who opened the big doors and the stretchers came bustling in, and with them the reek of burned rubber and cloth and leather.

  They filled the cubicles at once, but unlike the bedlam caused by other raids, especially of high explosives, there were few bewildered people sitting or lying in the waiting hall until they could be treated. The place was well in control of the amount of work there was, and Robin and Landow, who were working together in her usual far cubicle, had actually finished their patient and seen him, his dreadfully blackened face well covered with vaseline gauze, off to his bed in the ward, and had stopped to tidy their dressing trolley when Sister Priestland put her head round the curtain.

  ‘Dr Landow,’ she said. ‘You’ve got your obs. training, haven’t you?’

  He lifted his chin sharply. ‘Yes – Got one coming in?’

  She shook her head. ‘Guy’s called. They’ve got a domiciliary case calling from Fenchurch Street, would you believe. Caretaker’s wife at a bank – in the first stage, they said. The woman sent for a midwife but all theirs at Guy’s are out or involved in the pressures they’ve got on their Casualty department and they can’t help at Bart’s either. Our midwives have a full ward and can’t go and anyway they want a doctor. The girl’s had a pre-partum haemorrhage already – ’

  ‘Jesus, why didn’t they admit her?’ He was half-way out of the cubicle. ‘I’ll deal with it. Give me the address. And Sister –’ He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. ‘I’ll need another pair of hands. Can I take Nurse Bradman here? She’s deft enough to make up for not having a midder training and she takes orders well – can you spare her?’

  ‘Off you go, Nurse.’ Sister Priestland nodded at Robin and she, staring with shock at them both, opened her mouth to speak, closed it and then opened it again like a half-witted fish.

  ‘No time for that,’ Sam Landow said briskly. ‘Come on.’ And she was off, almost running behind him.

  He stopped at the instrument cupboard. ‘Get me dressing towels, big swabs, some small ones and a roll of gamgee,’ he instructed over his shoulder as he pulled items out of the cupboards. ‘And a bottle of Lysol and some mercurochrome and ask Sister for a sterile drum of gowns and gloves. They’ll have nothing there, I’m sure.’

  Staff Nurse Meek came surging across the waiting hall and tried to put herself in between Robin and Sam.

  ‘I’ll deal with this, sir,’ she said smoothly. ‘Nurse, get back to your work. Now, Doctor – ’

  ‘No, thank you, Nurse Meek,’ he said firmly and handed the instruments he’d collected to Robin. ‘Sister’s sent Nurse Bradman to help me. Put those in the bag you’ll find in the corner of the office, nurse, and make sure all its bottles are full, will you? There should be spirit, some carbolic acid and silver nitrate as well as the other things I asked you for. I’ll check the ergotamine and the needles and suture materials. Excuse me, Nurse Meek.’ And he pushed his way past her.

  And Staff Nurse Meek, who didn’t know whether to be more mortally offended because Dr Landow had addressed her simply as ‘Nurse’ instead of her justly entitled ‘Staff Nurse’ or because she had been passed over in favour of a much-hated junior, stood there blankly without a word to say. That was, Robin decided, the sweetest moment of her entire life so far.

  But there was a great deal more to come. She had pulled on her cape, well aware that it was a cold night and prepared to be chilled to the marrow, but when she got into the yard and followed Sam Landow’s headlong rush towards the parked cars on one side, she was startled to find that the wind that was blowing strongly from the west was a warm one. But it was not the normal warmth of a spring breeze. It came in hot gusts and brought thick flakes of soot and the stench of burning wood, and beneath that an even more ominous smell that she preferred not to think about. There couldn’t be that sort of smell, could there? Not people –

  The car bore a large white cross painted on its roof and on both the front doors, as well as white paint on its mudguards and running boards, and she bundled herself into it as fast as she could as Sam Landow stowed the bag and the dispensary basket, now containing the dressings drum and the extra lotions he’d asked for, on the back seat, and then came and clambered in himself.

  ‘I’ve been expecting calls like this from the beginning,’ he said, as he pulled the steering wheel round and hauled the car into the main road. ‘Painted the crosses on, the lot, to be ready, but this is the first time I’ve needed it. But it’ll show the rest of ’em I was on the right tracks. They’ll stop laughing at me now – ’

  ‘Who laughed?’ Robin almost gasped it as she hung on grimly, for the car was not as well equipped with springs as it was with white crosses, and the bumping was horrendous.

  ‘Oh, the other fellows in the mess – listen, I’d better give you a quick lecture on the normal delivery. Listen hard. It should help. Don’t think you can remember it all at once because you can’t, but once we’re there and in the thick of it you’ll have an idea what’s going on. So, here goes.’

  She would never forget the next ten minutes, not if she lived to be a hundred, Robin decided. As the crazily painted little car careered along the Whitechapel Road towards the crimson glow that now filled the sky ahead, she listened to his shouted account of a baby’s birth. She knew the basic female anatomy and physiology well enough, but had only the sketchiest notion of what happened to the anatomy when it was in full working order, and listening now as he spoke of the cervix dilating and the infant pushing its head against the perineum she began to feel decidedly alarmed. It wasn’t just the fact that they were heading for the centre of what looked like the most incredible inferno, but that she was to help someone with what was obviously a great deal more complicated procedure than she would ever have imagined. He spoke of the baby’s neck flexing, of the crowning of the occiput and the risk of the umbilical cord being round the neck and how to deal with it after the presenting shoulder delivered –

  Her head spun and she knew that she wanted more desperately than she had ever wanted anything to get out of this hateful little car and away from this implacable man talking still at the top of his voice of the most unspeakable things while he drove them both into hell and seeming a totally different being to the friendly one she had worked with hitherto. But the car was going too fast for her to escape. To have left it would have been even riskier than staying. She was appallingly trapped and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

  They shrieked to a stop just outside Aldgate East Station, as a policeman, looking very odd because most of his face was black with soot, flagged them down. Sam leaned out of the window to explain to him, at the top of his voice again because the din that exploded over them when the window was open was immense, an amalgam of fire bells and shouting and shrieking burglar alarms. Whatever Sam said clearly worked, because the policeman jumped up on the running board and waving his other arm over his head as he held on grimly, got them through the hubbub and the twisting snakes of fire hoses, onwards towards the City.

  Inferno was too weak a word for it. Everywhere they looked buildings were burning, and the crackling roar of the flames got louder and louder as they moved ever westwards, past Whitechapel High Street and on over Middlesex and Mansell Streets, inching their way towards
Aldgate proper and thence to Fenchurch Street.

  Outside the remains of the façade of Aldgate Station, the policeman thumped on the car roof and Sam stamped on his brakes and the car stopped, almost throwing Robin forwards into the windscreen, and the policeman jumped down and shouted, ‘You’ll get no further than this, sir. The Malay Bank’s about half-way down on the other side. It’s not been burned yet, but it will be. I’ll get the ambulance up as close as I can and we’ll load the lot of you into it. You be ready for us!’ And he jumped down and disappeared into the mêlée behind them.

  ‘Here we go,’ Sam said and got out of the car, reaching back to fetch the gear as Robin sat there, unable to move. She had been overcome by a wave of fear so powerful that it had seized her muscles in a harsh grip and she could not have moved out of the small safe place that was the car she had so recently yearned to leave to save her life. She knew it and she knew too that she couldn’t explain to him why she was still sitting there, because she couldn’t speak either. It was an extraordinary way to feel and she sat and stared at the fitful light ahead of her, thrown by the flames, and thought – I’m breathing. I can breathe, please don’t let that stop too –

  It was as though he knew. He had come round the car to her side, and had opened the door to let her out, but still she sat there, her head held rigid, and after a moment he crouched down beside her and said in a conversational tone, ‘It’s all right. This happens to a lot of people. It’s a sort of paralysis – nothing to get agitated about. I’m going to touch you, on your face, and that will be the thing that makes your muscles work again. You understand me? When I touch you on your cheek, your muscles will work again and you’ll get out of the car and come and help me.’

  Still she sat and stared ahead, her eyes so hot with her staring that tears were running down the sides of her nose, not tears of misery, but of stillness. And he put out one hand and touched her cheek and at last it was all right. The touch of his fingers on her cheek, just at the side of her nose, felt like the touch of something very cold, and the cold slithered inwards and downwards and then she was moving without knowing quite how she’d done it, lifting her legs to put her feet outside the car as he straightened up and stepped back.

  When she was standing beside him he peered into her face and then put a hand in his pocket and hauled out a handkerchief. ‘You’ll need this or your eyes will hurt,’ he said. ‘Dry them carefully,’ and she obeyed. The handkerchief smelled of ether and tobacco smoke and an indefinable something else which she found she rather liked and then didn’t, and she scrubbed at her eyes and handed it back to him and said huskily, ‘So sorry. Don’t know what happened there – ’

  ‘A moment of hysterical paralysis, that’s all,’ he said conversationally. ‘Common in crises like these. You behaved extremely well. You’d be a joy to hypnotize, I suspect. A fast responder.’

  ‘What?’ She was alarmed, and he laughed.

  ‘Not now, idiot! We’ve got a baby waiting for us right now. Some other time. Come on!’

  She followed him blindly, knowing she was safe now. It was a silly way to feel. There they were in the middle of a positive holocaust, as flames licked the City of London into rubble with the dome of St Paul’s, outlined by the glow of the innumerable fires, cut out against the night sky – at least that hadn’t burned yet – and she felt safe. ‘That’s mad,’ she whispered to herself and he half turned his head and said, ‘What did you say?’ But she shook her head and smiled at him and he turned back and went on with his half-crouching, half-running walk that made her think absurdly of Groucho Marx for a moment, and she followed him.

  ‘Found it,’ he said after a moment. ‘Malay – here it is. They said the basement but I can’t see – oh, yes, there. A small area. Great. Underground has to be safer than this –’ as overhead a flame leapt from a high roof and then over their heads to the other side of the street and seemed to lick at the brickwork there greedily.

  There was a gate half hanging off the railings and below it a short flight of steps and he went down, lugging the heavy basket he was carrying, and she brought the bag and for the first time they stood fully upright and he took a deep breath and said, ‘Thank God for that! I was beginning to feel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.’

  ‘You looked like Groucho Marx,’ she said and he gave a snort of laughter and then banged on the door.

  It moved under his attack and he pushed it open and peered in. There was blackness so thick it was like fabric, and he reached into his coat pocket seeking a torch, and at last found it, to send its tiny beam to cut the inkiness ahead like a needle, albeit a very small needle.

  ‘Probably didn’t want to leave her,’ Sam said. ‘Come on,’ and she did, wondering if he ever said anything else, and they shuffled their way along what seemed to be a narrow corridor until they reached a dead end.

  ‘Another door. Open, I wonder?’ he said and pushed and this time a faint rim of light appeared and she took a deep breath of gratitude. The heavy blackness had started to make her feel very jittery indeed.

  The rim of light became a square and then filled itself in with a fitful glow. They were on the wrong side of a heavy curtain, she realized, and he reached up and pulled it to one side and the rings above it clattered and rang and then there was a good deal more light, and she blinked over his shoulder to see where they were.

  It was a cellar, a common enough place to use for an air raid shelter, but this one was not equipped like the usual sort. In the middle there was a table, which looked like a common or garden kitchen table, and all around this were chests and boxes, piled higgledy-piggledy on each other. Not that Robin paid much attention to them; it was the table’s burden which interested her most.

  A woman was lying there, with hair so long that it hung down at the back of the table, and almost reached the floor. At her side sat a man, holding her hand tightly as she rolled her head from side to side on the bare boards of the table. He jumped up as they came in and stood with his back to the woman on the table, clearly terrified, and then at the sight of Robin his face cleared and he ran forwards, and totally ignoring Sam Landow seized her hands in both of his and dragged her over to the table, chattering loudly all the time in a rather shrill voice, and Robin, like it or not, had to go with him. Not that she minded; but she was undoubtedly bemused.

  Because the chattering meant not a thing to her. The man, and the woman on the table, were both Oriental, with the narrow eyes and the high cheekbones that looked so familiar to her from performances of Chu Chin Chow. But these two were not pretending to be Oriental people; they really were, and she didn’t understand a word they were saying. And she realized, as she looked over her shoulder at Sam, neither did he. And the woman on the table was crying bitterly and the man now pushing Robin at her was too, and both were looking at her appealingly, begging for help. And she hadn’t the remotest idea what to do.

  23

  ‘It’s your uniform,’ Sam said then. ‘That’s what makes him trust you.’ And he took the bag from her and set it down on the floor beside the table. ‘Get your cape off, and see if you can bring over enough of those boxes to make into some sort of working surface. Then lay out the gear on it while I look at her.’ He sounded crisp and a little remote, with none of his usual relaxed friendliness, and that helped her feel more able to cope, oddly enough. He was so coolly professional that it was as though he had brought a small part of the hospital with him to wrap them all around in its safety.

  She obeyed without hesitation, using her cape after a moment’s thought to cover the feet of the girl on the table, for she had no other covering and was wearing just a thin nightdress, and the man, who had returned to the woman’s side and was murmuring rapidly at her looked at Robin and then smiled suddenly, a wide sweet smile that she found herself returning almost automatically.

  When she went over the side of the room to start dragging boxes to the table, he understood quickly and came to help her, and soon they had a broad, it rath
er low, surface prepared, and Robin began to empty the dispensary basket as well as the bag, first setting a dressing towel to cover the rough cardboard.

  Sam, who had moved to the girl’s side and had been checking her pulse as she stared up at him in clear alarm, nodded approvingly.

  ‘I’ll need to wash,’ he said then. ‘See if you can see any water sources, will you? We won’t need all those buckets of water they always boil up in the films, but I’ll need some – ’

  She looked around and could see no taps or sinks and turned back to the man, and mimed what she wanted; turning a tap, washing her hands; and he stared for a moment and then nodded and went off at a trot, leaving her to follow as he plunged into the shadows deeper into the cellars.

  There was a tap over a dirty sink there in the dimness and beside it a crusted old gas ring with a battered iron kettle on it and she looked around for matches and found some in a dirty box on a nearby shelf. All was covered in old cobwebs and she bit her lip hopefully as she wrestled with the stiff gas tap and then breathed again at the blessed sound of hissing and the smell of town gas which emerged. She struck a match and lit the ring, praying inside her head with a garbled fervour that the so far unbroken gas main which serviced it should remain that way; and was amazed that in all the conflagration outside it was still possible to find a gas ring that worked.

  The little Malaysian had wasted no time, but had filled the kettle and now he hauled it on to the ring and then went trotting back into the middle of the cellar to where Sam was with the girl. She had twisted herself up again into a posture of agony and her face was twisted too into a tight rictus, but she made no sound and Robin realized that so far she hadn’t uttered a word, and she went over to her as Sam looked up and summoned her with a little jerk of his head to come to join him.

  Robin reached out and took the girl’s hand, and she grasped it convulsively and Robin looked at her more closely, for the hand was wet with sweat, and now she could see that her face was too, and she lifted a corner of her apron, for want of anything else to use, to mop the girl’s face dry. Nothing felt worse, she knew, than having a sweat-streaked face that itched –