Birmingham Friends (17 page)

I worked nights in the casualty centre at the Queen’s Hospital in Bath Row. Mummy was doing two-night stints in the first aid post at Moseley Baths.

On one of the heaviest nights of the blitz I set off late for work. Pushing down feverishly on the pedals of my bike I turned into the Moseley Road. There was a light mist which made the going slower with my muffled headlamps. I breathed in mouthfuls of the damp air. Abruptly, the air-raid sirens let out their terrible wail into the night.

‘Damn and blast it!’ I stopped, my stomach churning with nerves. Gas mask. I couldn’t go without it tonight. I tore back home to fetch it and set off again, balancing the box in my wicker bicycle basket.

I had only gone about a mile when I heard the sound of the first planes. In panic I dismounted, and finding myself against the wall of a churchyard, left the bicycle and ducked down in the graveyard, somewhere I would never normally have gone at night on my own. Squatting, head down, hands against the lichen-covered brick of the wall, I became aware of my quick breathing, the beat of my heart, close and hard, and in the distance the drone of the planes.

They crossed the city, coming in from the east. There was a swell of sound: ack-ack guns, the impact of the bombs, muffled explosions in the distance, then the noise dying. And here was I shouting ‘Damn you, damn you!’ at the top of my voice, furious at having to squat terrified in my own city while they knocked the stuffing out of it. It was clear they were aiming for the centre, hoping to destroy aeroplane and weapons factories, though in fact the extra ‘shadow’ factories to fuel the war were built on the edges, so shops and houses took it instead.

I had not long set off again when I heard the next lot. I had suddenly grown wings. I flew down the sweeping slope of Belgrave Road as if I was parachuting and pedalled madly across the Bristol Road towards Five Ways.

What little traffic was on the roads had come to a standstill. I slowed, looking upwards. The searchlights jittered and crossed over us, lighting up the bellies of barrage balloons like bloated silver fish, and now there was extra light from fires. The planes were very close. I was only yards from Bath Row, already off my bike and pushing it, when the first wave of bombs fell. I flung myself against the nearest building, shielding myself behind my bicycle and with my free arm wrapped round my head. The gas mask tipped on to the ground. Our ack-ack guns were going again, hammering into the sky. There was a terrible pause, then the impact. In seconds there were more explosions, close, but not in my street. Panting, I waited for the one that was going to fall on me. There came what seemed hours of sound, the whistle of the bombs, the echoing, shaking impact as they fell, glass shattering and debris falling and the smell of cordite and the air thickened with dust and smoke. But the sound of the impacts grew more muffled. They were moving over. The guns held fire, no doubt predicting the positions of the next wave of planes that I could already hear. I knew this was the moment to move.

I pushed my bike upright. Flames lit the sky from the next street and I could hear fire-engine bells in the distance and shouts from firewatchers high on one of the buildings near by. As the planes roared overhead I dashed towards the entrance to the hospital, thanking heaven I could at last get under cover.

There was an ambulance parked outside. At the Casualty entrance I held the door open for two ambulance volunteers coming out with an empty stretcher.

‘Won’t be Bournvita and slippers tonight,’ one of them said to me cheerfully. ‘Not for a good few hours yet, anyway.’

I smiled at him, reassured. My legs were like jelly, but at least I would be inside now. These people had to go out and face it all over again. ‘I wish I could get you some.’

‘Oh, you’ll have enough to do, love.’

But we at least had an illusion of safety here, the generous layers of the hospital stacked above us.

Hurriedly I hung up my coat and pinned on my white cap, feeling at home now, able to be competent. Doctors, already looking exhausted, were scurrying between the new arrivals in the reception area. ‘Fractured tibia – needs casting’, ‘This one – theatre – quickly’, ‘That one can hang on for a bit’.

Nurses were collecting valuables from the wounded, writing rapid notes on casualty record cards and trying to exude calmness and reassurance. There were already more casualties coming in.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ one of the other nurses demanded as she rushed past me.

‘I got caught out in it.’

She didn’t comment further on my lateness. ‘At least you can hear ours going out there.’

It was always a great boost to people to be able to hear the ack-ack guns, though we had no idea how accurate they were. Our defence was comforting. We were fighting back. But it was hard, even while rushing to and fro paying attention to the job you were doing, not to strain your ears, constantly wondering what was going on outside, wondering how close they were. Often we felt the vibrations of the bombs’ impact.

I was sent to theatre to help prepare trolleys. I recited the items in my mind trying to keep my thoughts away from the bombing, from my parents, both out there working. Saline, hydrogen peroxide, sterilized dressing drum, Cheatle’s forceps, tray of instruments, bandages, iodine . . . the reassurance of routine.

I’d no sooner got going on that, though, when Sister hurried over to me. ‘Nurse Munro, we need you to come and help with some of the new arrivals . . .’ and once I’d got started on that one of the doctors sent me scurrying back and forth for dressings. As I completed this task we heard a loud groan of pain from one of the two men lying to the side of the reception area waiting for further attention.

‘Nurse!’

‘Go and see,’ the doctor ordered me.

A middle-aged man, face a ghastly white, was lying stoically pressing a pad to his wounded head. When I approached him, he said, ‘I’m all right love. You see to ’im.’

The sounds of distress were coming from the younger man beside him. He had a padded dressing which had been hastily applied to his left cheek and was already bloodstained. The clothing had been cut from his upper torso, presumably because it was soaked in blood. There was no other apparent injury to his body.

I bent down beside him. ‘What’s the matter?’

Few of our patients made much of a to-do when they came in. Some, of course, were very frightened or in pain, but many of them were in shock and lay there numbly like sacrificial lambs.

‘God,’ he groaned. ‘I’m in such bloody agony.’ He twitched his body angrily from side to side. ‘I can’t stand it. It was numb to begin with, but now it’s getting worse every minute.’ He spoke painfully out of the side of his mouth, trying not to move the left side of his face.

‘It won’t be long,’ I assured him. ‘A doctor will see to you properly soon. It’s busy tonight, I’m afraid.’ I felt a bit irritated at the fuss he was making, but at the same time there was something about him which intrigued me. I think it was partly the strength of feeling that came from him, even though it was expressed through frustration, and partly the glimpse I caught of the side of his face not covered by the dressing. I saw the contours of a prominent cheekbone, a strong chin and eyes of the brightest blue I’d ever seen. I found myself staring in fascination.

I thought I’d try and take his mind off the pain. ‘My name’s Kate,’ I said. ‘Yours?’

‘Douglas Craven,’ he grunted, then added ironically, ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance.’ He spoke very carefully, wincing as he did so.

‘It’s bad out there tonight, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it’s bad,’ he snapped. ‘What the hell d’you think?’

‘What happened to your face?’

‘Don’t know exactly. I was on firewatch. There was stuff flying all over the place. Something stabbed right through my cheek – metal. I can feel it’s gone into the bone . . . Aagh – God!’

He started giving dry, tearless sobs, his lips contorting miserably. He had a little moustache which was clotted with blood so I couldn’t see its colour. His hair was blond though, so I assumed the moustache might be. For a moment I took his hand.

‘They’ll soon look at you. It must be quite awful for you.’

‘Damn it!’ He writhed beside me. ‘This is terrible.’

He communicated the powerful outrage of a fit man who has been struck down and slowed.

A commotion suddenly started up at the entrance, raised voices and more stretchers arriving.

‘I’ll be back.’

Everyone was talking at once, the ambulance workers, a doctor trying to be heard above everyone else. Then everyone saying ‘Ssssh.’

‘It’s the Carlton Cinema up Sparkhill,’ one of the ambulance workers told us. His eyelashes were white with dust.

‘The control centre warned us you were coming,’ said a voice. Everyone had fallen silent. ‘What’s the damage?’

‘Direct hit. Straight down in front of the screen.’ The man speaking looked really shaken. ‘There’s God knows how many gone. The blast got their lungs. They were all sat there in the front rows as if they were still watching the film. Never seen anything like it. Eerie as hell. They’re taking the rest straight to the General, and Selly Oak, I think.’

I hurried back to Douglas Craven. ‘It’s going to be very busy.’ I told him what had happened.

‘Oh damn, damn,’ he groaned.

‘Whatever’s wrong? Was someone you knew at the Carlton?’

‘I should have been over there.’

I stared at him in disbelief. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m a reporter. If I hadn’t been on bloody firewatch I could have been over there – got the first look at it . . . And now I’m stuck here with my face in shreds . . .’

I knelt down close to him so that no one else could hear, and between clenched teeth I said, ‘You stupid, self-pitying sod. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

I turned away and busied myself with what I considered to be more deserving patients.

The next day I was ashamed. It was very bad form to talk to any patient like that however much they provoked you. It had been a very hard night and I was exhausted, but I went to enquire with the casualty register.

‘Douglas Craven? Looks as if he was admitted for the night.’

The morning, after the all clear, had brought news that the total dead in the Carlton Cinema was nineteen. It was the first thing my mother told me the next morning. I resolved to take this news to Douglas Craven, to show him the consequences of what he had seen as a ‘story’. I suppose I felt rather self-righteous, and it didn’t occur to me that the reason the city was reeling with the news this morning was that someone like Douglas had done the job of reporting it.

We didn’t recognize each other to begin with. They’d cleaned Douglas up so that his hair and moustache were the same colour, and the dressing was neat and not seeping.

Now it was more reposed, his face was even more striking, with its chiselled bone structure and those vivid blue eyes. He was sitting in bed in the pale light of the ward eyeing the morning paper.

‘Hello,’ I said gruffly.

He looked up, baffled. I didn’t have my uniform on.

Speaking rapidly, I said, ‘I owe you an apology – for last night. I shouldn’t have said what I did. You were in pain and in a state. I’m sorry.’

His blue eyes suddenly showed recognition. ‘Kate, isn’t it? My Florence Nightingale.’ He appeared still to speak with some difficulty.

‘Not all nurses are Florence Nightingale,’ I pointed out stiffly. ‘We’re all different. We have personalities of our own actually.’

‘Yes, quite. I’m sorry. And thank you for your apology. You’re quite right, I was in a state, but nothing to some of them who came in. I’m afraid I was having a bit of a tantrum. Do sit down by the way.’

Reluctantly I perched on the chair by his bed. I wasn’t at home as a visitor in a hospital, nor was I sure how I felt about being in his company.

‘Surely you should be asleep in bed after last night, not visiting me?’

‘I’ve slept. I’m used to night work. How’re you feeling?’

‘Oh marvellous. Actually – ’ he tried a rueful smile, putting the palm of his hand cautiously against the dressing – ‘my face is dreadfully sore and stiff. They managed to yank out a great shard of something.’ He spoke in a sardonic tone, but I saw a blush seep across his face. ‘I’m afraid I was an awful baby.’

Disarmed, I said, ‘That’s all right. It’s the pain.’ I added untruthfully, ‘Anyone’d be the same.’

‘You’re very kind,’ he said. ‘Do you enjoy being a nurse? Seems a frightful job to me.’

‘Oh yes – on the whole.’ I told him of my longer-term plans. I found that he asked a great many questions, and that by the time I left I had told him a surprising amount about myself, my work and my family. I supposed he was at ease asking questions. It was his job, after all. His eyes watched me with intent interest. To my surprise I realized I was enjoying the conversation. I found myself telling him I was engaged, which seemed the easiest way of explaining my relationship with Angus.

‘Ah,’ Douglas said. ‘That explains it. Your face has a kind of glow about it.’

I smiled wryly. In fact I was feeling pretty washed out and tired sitting there after a few restless hours of sleep.

‘Must be the light of love I can see – lucky fellow.’ For a split second as he said these words Douglas appeared vulnerable.

‘You don’t have anyone?’

He gave an odd laugh, somehow apologetic. ‘Me? Good heavens no.’

Unsure what to say next I felt I ought to leave. I stood up, suddenly reluctant to go. As we shook hands I smiled, and Douglas made a rueful attempt to do the same. ‘Well, good luck. Don’t risk too much for your reporting will you?’

He said goodbye with a strange solemnity. I turned at the door as I left, half pretending I was just glancing round the ward, and saw he was still watching me. I raised my hand in a wave. As I walked downstairs from the ward I mused over the fact that I had told him far more about myself than I had imagined possible, and that about him I knew almost nothing.

Olivia stopped writing to me in any meaningful way in November 1940. After sending a letter faithfully once or twice a week, she scarcely wrote now from one month to the next, and when she did, it was a note on a single sheet, brief and frothy, as if suddenly for a few seconds she had remembered me. At first I was baffled. She’d been home on leave for a week back in the summer and we’d had a very jolly time together, laughing almost as much as when we were children. It was an escape from the war, looking at the light side of things and finding the jokes.