Blitz (22 page)

It was not often that Jessie Braham was lost for words, but this was one of them. She looked at the tall man and blinked and swallowed, and then went as pink as the blouse she was wearing.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mr er – ’

‘Doctor,’ Robin said, highly amused at Jessie’s reaction. ‘Dr Landow, from the hospital, Auntie Jessie. Dr Landow, may I present my aunt, Mrs Braham. Now then! You’ve been introduced!’

Dr Landow held out his hand and shook Jessie’s, and she looked as flustered and as pleased as a girl at her first dance.

‘I haven’t eaten food like yours since my grandmother died
in 1937,’ he said. ‘Rest her soul in peace. She made the best salt beef in all Manchester but I have to admit yours is even better. And that’s quite an achievement.’

Jessie looked at him with birdlike brilliance in her eyes.

‘A luntsman!’ she said and he laughed.

‘Who else could appreciate your salt beef?’

‘Sit down!’ Jessie commanded and waved at the adjoining table which had no diners at it. ‘Bring a chair – ’

‘Oh, I couldn’t intrude!’ he said and she became positively vehement and got to her feet and dragged the chair over herself.

‘It’s no intrusion. Right, Robin? Poppy?’

‘Of course not,’ Poppy said. ‘As long as Robin and Hamish – ’

Hamish had said nothing but now he looked at Robin and lifted one eyebrow. ‘I’ve no objection at all,’ he said. ‘A party’s a party – ’

Dr Landow stood there hovering, looking at Robin. ‘I really do feel a considerable nuisance now – I wish I’d not bothered you – ’

‘Oh, do please sit down!’ Robin said. ‘You’re no trouble at all. As long as you don’t mind if we start eating. This is getting cold – ’

Jessie was at once scandalized and surged to her feet. ‘Give it to me at once. We’ll get fresh for you – for everyone! I can’t have you eating cold food!’

‘And I can’t have you wasting it,’ Robin said, holding on to her plate by curling her arm round it like a schoolchild trying to prevent his neighbour copying his work. ‘Go and sort out everyone else’s, darling, and leave us to this. It’s divine. Isn’t it, Hamish?’

Hamish, who had been steadily and quietly eating anyway, nodded, his mouth full, and Robin laughed even more. ‘You see, Auntie Jessie? Go and deal with everyone else. We’re absolutely fine – ’

‘Dr Landow – salt beef for you and for Poppy and – ’

‘I’ve eaten,’ he protested. ‘I had a plateful already – ’

‘A little more a healthy man can always manage,’ Jessie said and went away, and a little silence descended on the table as the four of them sat there, a little awkwardly. It was as though Jessie had been the glue that held the group together.

‘So tell me,’ Poppy began just as Hamish looked at Dr
Landow and said, ‘If I might just ask – ’

Landow laughed and held up both hands. ‘Nice to be popular!’

Hamish looked at Poppy. ‘I’m sorry. I didna’ mean to interrupt – ’

‘It wasn’t important,’ Poppy said. ‘Just making conversation. I was going to – how long have you lived in London?’

‘Since I got this job as a Casualty houseman. It’s my second since I qualified and it seemed like a good idea to come to London.’ His face twisted a little, amused. ‘That was before the Blitz started, of course. My mother’s having fits, as you can imagine – ’

‘I can imagine,’ Poppy said and glanced at Robin. ‘I’m not exactly sleeping easy over Robin being there in the middle of it all – ’

‘Casualty’s pretty safe,’ he said. ‘Mostly underground – ’

‘It didn’t stop her being buried, though, did it? That could have been a dreadful incident.’ And she looked bleak as she contemplated the awful might-have-been.

‘But it wasn’t,’ he said gently. ‘And that’s the thing to hang on to. We’re all doing pretty well, under the circumstances.’

‘There was a patient in last night who said she never worried – if a bomb’s got your name on it then that’s it, and if it hasn’t you’ll come to no harm. And the child sitting on the bench next to her started to scream blue murder and we couldn’t work out why until we managed to get him to explain he was frightened because his name was so easy to write – he’s Bill Jones – and he thought the Germans would mark a bomb for him soon. Poor little scrap – ’

‘He should be out of London,’ Landow said. ‘It’s bad enough for us. For children it’s hell – but I must say I do know what that woman meant, and I quite agree with her. A pity a child had to take it so literally, but there it is. I think you
do
have to be rather fatalistic. There’s nothing any of us can do to control what’s going on. We just have to do our best and try not to think of the might-happens.’ He was looking very directly at Poppy as he said it, and she smiled at him, grateful for his sympathy.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. ‘I try not to get too agitated, but it’s not easy. My husband’s a journalist, so he has to go out and cover the most difficult things – he’s the London
correspondent for a Baltimore paper, so he has to do everything from ship launches to air raids to travelling with the services all over the place. And there’re my other two children evacuated to Norfolk, and Jessie to worry about, and Goosey – she’s awfully old, and been with us for years and I can’t persuade her to use the shelter and if they come to our side of London, heaven help us. And then there’s Robin –’ She stopped then, suddenly confused. ‘Heavens, how I do chatter on! I do so beg your pardon. I can’t think what got into me to be so boring.’

‘Not at all,’ he said and smiled.

Robin, who’d finished her plateful by now, smiled too, looking at her mother. ‘I dare say it’s because he’s interested in psychiatry. You make people blurt it all out, don’t you? Isn’t that what psychiatry is for?’

‘Not precisely,’ Landow said.

‘Psychiatry?’ Hamish had lifted his head. ‘I didn’t know that. And I tend to pick up most things around the department.’

Landow’s lips quirked. ‘I bet you do. Someone as quiet and as observant as you has to – I’ve watched you doing it and been very amused. Does it worry you that you didn’t discover this about me?’

‘Not in the least,’ Hamish said and bent his head to look at his own plate, also empty now. ‘It was just – I thought it interesting.’

‘I interrupted you before,’ Poppy said then. ‘I’m sorry, Hamish. What was it you were going to say?’

‘Hmm?’ Hamish looked bemused.

‘When I started talking you said you wanted to ask something.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Hamish looked at Landow and lifted his brows in interrogation. ‘If I might ask you – what’s a luntsman?’

Landow looked amused. ‘Ah! A mysterious word, is it?’

‘Very.’

‘It’s a rather altered one. It derives from the German word Landsman – in Yiddish, which itself derives largely from German. It’s often mispronounced and it means simply a person from the same place as oneself. In the days when a great many Jewish immigrants fled here from the bad time in Europe, they clustered together in groups made up not just of their immediate relatives, but of people from their home village or district. It was like being related to each other – kith if not kin –
but over the years the word has come to mean any Jew. One greets another as one of their own people. There! A very full and frank explanation for you!’

Hamish was looking at Robin. ‘So you are Jewish then?’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure from what you told me – ’

‘A quarter of me is,’ Robin said and looked steadily at him. ‘Does that worry you?’

‘Worry me? Not in the least! I’m verra interested, is all. My family are good Scots Presbyterians, do you see, and they regard the Jews verra highly as the people of the Bible. I’ve never had the good fortune to meet anyone who is Jewish. A quarter, you say?’

‘My father was Jewish,’ Poppy said. ‘Jessie’s brother. My mother was not – ’

‘So you aren’t’ Dr Landow said. ‘Are you?’

Poppy smiled. ‘Because of lineage only being through the mother? Yes, you’re right. I’m not one of the chosen – except from my own choice.’

‘How do you mean?’ Hamish said, clearly fascinated.

‘It’s rather practical really,’ Landow said. ‘The ancients of the tribe reckoned you couldn’t guarantee a person’s father, but you could always know who his mother was. Maternity can be proven, in other words, unlike paternity. So, they made it a rule – Jewish mothers have Jewish babies. Jewish fathers don’t necessarily – ’

Hamish shook his head admiringly. ‘Well, well, is that so? My father will find that verra interesting. I’ll write and tell him – ’

Jessie arrived then in a great flurry of excitement, followed by the restaurant’s only waitress, who was looking more than a little flustered, and started handing out quantities of food. There was more salt beef and piles of fried potatoes and pickled green cucumbers in quantities and Hamish happily accepted a second helping as did Dr Landow, though with a display of unwillingness that fooled no one, and at last they were all eating contentedly. And chattering away as though they’d all known each other for years, though in fact two of the party were total strangers to both Jessie and Poppy. But it didn’t seem to matter and Robin, looking round at them all, had a sudden frisson of pleasure at having been the person who had brought this disparate group together. It made her feel very grown up, suddenly, in a way she rather liked.

‘What does your Ma call you, Dr Landow?’ Jessie said, now very comfortable with him and beaming at him in an almost proprietorial fashion. ‘We can’t go on being so formal, can we?’

‘Sam,’ said Dr Landow. ‘Call me Sam. All of you – I’d like that.’

‘I daren’t,’ Robin said. ‘It might slip out sometime when we were in Casualty and Sister Priestland would skin me alive.’

‘Hospital hierarchies!’ Sam said. ‘So ridiculous – but useful too, I suppose.’

‘How can they be useful?’ Robin demanded. ‘As far as I can see they’re just designed to make fools out of junior nurses – ’

‘ – and drudges out of orderlies,’ Hamish said. ‘If any of them knew I was sitting here with a doctor and a nurse, talking on equal terms, I’d be – well, you can imagine. There’d be all the hounds of hell called out to gore me alive.’

‘Not quite,’ Sam said. ‘But not far off. But the rules and the regulations are useful, you know. When there’s a crisis of some sort everyone does what they have to do because they’re more scared of upsetting the people above them or looking stupid to those below them than they are of whatever the emergency is. That’s how armies operate, of course. Take away the soldier’s individuality and you’ve got a hard fighting weapon. Let ’em think and do for themselves and you’ve got mayhem.’

‘That’s one of the reasons I won’t serve in the forces,’ Hamish said. ‘I’ll not kill, no matter what. I’m a good Christian – oh!’ He looked awkward. ‘I hope that’s no offence to you.’

‘Of course not! Why should it be?’

‘Well, like I said. I’m a good Christian, so I don’t kill – but I’m also a man, and God gave us free will to do as we think fit. He didna’ make us to obey the rules of other men. So, I’ll no’ join any army where I’m no’ allowed to think for myself.’

‘Well done,’ Sam said and reached over and touched his arm. ‘I feel the same. But in my job I don’t have the problem much, of course. I’m not entirely free of it, because there are still the consultants to worry about and the hospital administrators and so forth – but I’m allowed to have my own medical judgement. And that helps. It’s not easy being you.’

‘It is not,’ said Hamish fervently and then smiled, an unusual expression for him. ‘You’re a pleasure to talk to, Sam.’

‘And so are you,’ Sam said and Robin lifted her brows at her mother.

‘I’m beginning to feel a bit out of place at this mutual admiration society meeting,’ she said.

‘And why shouldn’t they?’ Jessie swallowed the last mouthful of her massive supper. ‘They’re both nice people. You should ask them to the party as well, Poppy.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Robin said, remembering. ‘What’s all this about a party, Ma?’

Poppy managed not to look the daggers she wanted to at Jessie.

‘It’s your grandmother’s, not mine,’ she said, not looking at Robin. ‘There are some cousins coming over, one from Australia, one from South Africa, and she thought a party would be agreeable for us all.’

‘Grandmamma said that?’ Robin said, staring. ‘I don’t believe it!’

‘I’d hardly lie to you,’ Poppy said drily, knowing perfectly well that she had in spirit if not in word. The party had been her own idea in fact. She had felt so low and so tired for so long that she had developed a sort of guilt about it. It was as though she did nothing but work and sleep and all the enjoyable aspects of life had been dropped. A party, she had decided, to welcome the cousins Mildred had spoken of, would be the answer, a chance for everyone to let down their hair a little and relax. She had broached the idea to Mildred in such terms that the old lady had finally not only consented but seen it as her own original notion, and offered to have it in the Leinster Terrace house rather than in Norland Square. Not, she was at some pains to add, that there was anything wrong about Norland Square – but Leinster Terrace was bigger. And Poppy, not wanting to let Goosey push herself into excessive activity (which only got in other people’s way) which she would be sure to do if the party were held on her own territory, had agreed.

Now she said to Robin. ‘Your grandmother wants to welcome her nephews, and this seemed as good a way as any other to do it – ’

‘I’m doing the food,’ Jessie said. ‘I’m already saving up some special stuff – dried fruit and so forth –’ And she buried her own unease, which had to do with the source of her extra supplies; I won’t think about Bernie and his affairs, she told herself fiercely, I won’t. ‘So that’ll be good. And the more people the merrier. That Leinster Terrace house is hell to fill
up, believe me. So you bring your friends Robin, boobala. That nice girl Chick as well as Hamish and Sam here, hey? I like Chick. She’s got an appetite, bless her, it’s a pleasure to see.’

‘Well, it’s very sweet of you, Auntie Jessie. If Ma thinks it’ll be all right with Grandma – ’

‘Of course it will!’ Jessie was at her most beaming and expansive. ‘How could it not be? Her lovely little Robin and all her friends? It’ll be a pleasure for everyone, believe me.’