Blitz (12 page)

But she knew she had been right, and that had helped her a little, and if anyone argued more with her about it, she’d stick to her guns, she told herself firmly, even with Sister if she had to. It had been abominable to ignore Todd when they’d had their break, quite abominable, and she scrubbed and polished even harder every time she thought of it. It was worth all this nagging and dislike to have stood up for a principle, really it was.

Or so she tried to convince herself, but by the time she came off duty, bedraggled and exhausted, she wasn’t quite so sure. All around her the hospital buzzed and hummed as the day got under way and the rubble began to be picked up in the battered streets and houses that surrounded it and she stood there blinking in the sunshine and wondering bleakly why she bothered. It was too wearing altogether to work here, and maybe she should do as Poppy wanted her to do and leave London and find somewhere peaceful and safe, out of the line of fire.

But then she pulled her cape more closely around her and
set off to trudge to the Nurses’ Home and a bath and bed. It was silly to stand about thinking when she felt like this. She’d never think clearly that way, and she dragged her weary feet on and was hardly able to turn her head when Chick came after her and fell into step alongside.

‘Heavens, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Why weren’t you in the dining room?’

‘If you think I can face shepherd’s pie at this hour of the morning, you’ve another think coming,’ Robin said. ‘If only we could have two breakfasts it wouldn’t be so bad, but the sight of all that awful stuff – and the cabbage – at eight in the morning – I just can’t handle it.’

‘Night Sister’ll have your guts for garters,’ Chick said cheerfully. ‘I answered roll call for you this morning, but she looked up a bit sharpish when I did it. I won’t get away with it again. No more shirking! Come and sit with us at least, even if you don’t want to eat. Then you can find out about your own off-duty.’

‘Mmm? What off-duty?’

‘See what I mean? They’ve changed the schedule, ducky. You’ve got three nights off starting tonight! So you needn’t face old Priestland and that repellent very unMeek madam, and by the time you get back maybe they’ll have forgotten all about your waving the banner for Todd. Whatever got into you?’ Chick looked at her curiously as they reached the foot of the stairs to their rooms. ‘I didn’t think you cared that much about him.’

Robin made a face. ‘I don’t. I mean I’ve nothing for or against him. I just thought it was rotten to treat him as though he hadn’t worked as hard as we had, just because he’s an orderly.’

‘Oh, you’re such snobs, you British! That’s why I like you, kid. You ain’t! I’ll back you up if the fuss starts again. Good on you, anyway. Goodnight, or good morning, or whatever. Remember to phone your Ma, for heaven’s sake.’

‘I’ll do better than that,’ Robin said, suddenly energized. ‘Of course I will. Now I’ve got nights off, I’ll go home! There! See you in a few days, Chick!’ And she went hurrying up the stairs feeling much better than she would have thought possible, after such a night of utter hell.

The house was blissfully quiet when Robin got there and she stood in the hall breathing in the familiar smells of floor polish and brass cleaner and flowers – for there were vases of rich red and bronze chrysanthemums from the garden set on the polished hall tables – and listened. There was a faint clatter of dishes from below and she smiled; dear old Goosey twiddling about at something or other; and then a new scent reached her, of baking this time, and her smile widened. The absence of shepherd’s pie and cabbage inside was making itself felt, a little noisily. Goosey would like nothing better than to have someone to feed, and she threw her coat on to the hall stand and dropped her weekend case on the floor and went clattering down to the kitchen to be hugged by a delighted Goosey and fussed over as though she were still three years old. Very agreeable, Robin thought, balm to a wounded soul, and luxuriated in it.

Not until she had wolfed a great plateful of French toast – for Goosey unearthed a precious egg from her secret hoard – and followed it with vast cups of tea, did she stop to check on the rest of the family. And was amazed to be told that both Poppy and David were at home and fast asleep.

‘’Ad a terrible night they did, bless ’em both,’ Goosey said, and sat down at the table herself and poured a cup of tea from the chipped old brown teapot into her favourite cup, which she’d bought long ago on a seaside holiday in Yarmouth and which held fully half a pint. ‘There’s Mr David comes ’ome at seven this mornin’ just as I’m about to get things goin’ and there she is, Mrs Poppy, poor soul, fast asleep on that there chair in the ’all! I ask you! Sleeping on that chair! I said to her, I did, when she goes up to have a bath and I take her a bit o’
breakfast, I told her, that’s no way to take care of yourself to win the war, is it? No matter what’s happened to young Joshy and no matter what they say – ’

‘Joshy?’ Robin’s head came up sharply and the sleepiness which had been creeping back disappeared. ‘What about him?’

Goosey shook her head lugubriously. ‘Done it again, ain’t ’e? Just like last time. Mind you –’ and her attempt to be censorious faltered and vanished, to be replaced by a wide proud grin that showed all too clearly the teeth she no longer had. ‘You got to ‘and it to him. A right young limb ’e is, and clever? They don’t come any cleverer than our Joshy.’

‘Run away again?’ Robin said sympathetically.

‘Course ’e has! Yer Ma had a bad time of it down that canteen of hers last night, and then comes home dead tired and there he is down in the area and waitin’ for ’er. Told me, she did, this morning when I got her into bed. Couldn’t hardly move she couldn’t, she was that stiff. But she said he’d got to go back o’ course. Shame really.’ Goosey got to her feet with an audible creaking of her old stays. ‘When he just don’t want to. It’s not that my brother’s boy’s not good to him and to our Lee, of course he is, but it stands to reason the poor little things want to be with their Ma and Pa, don’t it? It’s flyin’ in the face of nature, that’s what it is, to keep these children so far away from their own. We’ve had no bombs here, have we? They’re all down in that nasty East End of yours.’ And she looked at Robin sternly as though to blame her for the pasting that was being suffered by the slums in which she worked. ‘If it was up to me, I tell you straight, I’d keep the children here and make sure we all got down in that nasty shelter whenever there was any hint of trouble and we’d all be fine and young Joshy wouldn’t have to keep on upsetting everyone by legging it the way he does. And my nephew,’ she went on with an air of great virtue, ‘my nephew could take on some other of these ’ere evacuees what’d be glad of the chance to go and live on a farm like his. Ducks and geese and there’s chickens and all – but there it is, no one don’t want my opinion, do they? I’m just an old woman and no good to no one, not when it comes to opinions, though I can cook and clean and so forth o’ course – ’

Robin cut in hastily to stem the tide of chatter which was threatening to turn into an all too familiar diatribe. No one knew better than Robin just how much of the housework and
cooking Poppy had to do now that Goosey was so old and frail, and equally no one knew just how much the old woman tried to convince herself and everyone around her that she was still the prop and stay of the household that she always had been.

‘Listen, Goosey, where is he? Joshy, I mean. Has he gone out to play or something? Because – ’

‘Him, gone out? Not a bit of it. Fast asleep still, isn’t he? Up there in his bed looking like every angel you ever saw, as pink as a picture that he is. He was always the best-looking of all you babies. Goosey should know, because didn’t I have the care of all three of you? But no one never asks me for an opinion – why should they? I’m only old Goosey, been here for ever – ’

She went on muttering to herself as she began laboriously to wash the last of the dishes Robin had swiftly taken from the table to the sink, and only stopped when Robin kissed the back of her old neck, which smelled as it always did of baby powder and lavender water, and made for the stairs.

‘I’ll go up and see him,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed the little wretch dreadfully. And it’s high time he was up, surely – ’

‘Didn’t get to bed till well after one, or maybe it was two, this morning,’ Goosey said. ‘And he’d been on the run all day. He might well be sleeping yet.’

‘It’s ten o’clock now – so he’s had eight hours at least. Do start some breakfast for him, Goosey. Have you another egg to manage some French toast for him? He loves it – I’ll be down with him soon – ’

And she ran up the stairs eagerly. She had always adored her small brother, from the moment she had first seen him, a crumpled creature with a furious expression on his face, the day Poppy had brought him home from the hospital. Lee had always been a little remote, a self-contained child with a strong will of her own and a tendency to be silent and watchful, but Joshy had always been delightful, confiding, friendly and just wicked enough to be amusing. To see him before she curled up for a day’s sleep herself would be lovely.

He was already awake when she put her head round his door, sitting on the edge of his bed and struggling to tie his shoelaces tight enough. Even at his age he still found that a problem and his big sister was one of the few people he allowed to know it, and he grinned cheerfully at her over his shoulder as she said,
‘Joshy!’ in a delighted voice, and stuck out one leg.

‘I knew someone’d come if I tried on my own first,’ he said. ‘And I’m glad it’s you. You won’t give me a row, will you?’

Robin crouched in front of him and expertly lacing and tying his scuffed brown shoes, laughed.

‘Ma been giving you a tongue-lashing?’

He made a face. ‘Sort of.’

‘I’ll bet. You are a wretch, Joshy. You know how she worries – tell me, how’d you do it this time?’

He launched into a graphic account of his escapade, and she stayed there sitting on her haunches in front of him and watching his eloquent face as he chattered on and marvelled a little. She was used to children from her work at the hospital, and of course from Lee, who at two years his senior had been the first small child she’d ever had much to do with; but none of them had ever seemed to her to have his ready wit and sharp intelligence. One day, she found herself thinking now as he mimed for her the way the ticket inspector had slammed open the lavatory door behind which he had been hiding, one day he’ll be famous. He’ll do something very special with his life. He’s that sort of person.

Joshy finished then with a sudden descent into gloom. ‘ – So Mummy found me and said I’d got to go back. I had a lovely supper and everything but she says I’ve got to go back. It’s not fair.’

Robin got to her feet a little stiffly. ‘I’m sorry, Joshy, but it is, you know. It’s dangerous in London. I was in a raid the other night and last night – well, the injured people in Casualty – it was dreadful.’

‘Lots of blood?’ Joshy said and his eyes glowed.

‘Lots,’ Robin said. ‘And no, I will not tell you the details, so stop gloating. You’re a revolting child, young man, that’s what you are. If someone came and spilled all their guts at your feet you wouldn’t turn a hair, I suspect – ’

‘Course I wouldn’t!’ he said disgustedly. ‘It’s what wars are about, isn’t it? That’s why I want to stay home. To be where it’s all happening and see all the fun.’

‘Not to be with us? With Ma and Pa?’ Robin was genuinely curious, for he had always been a most affectionate child as well as being as normally bloodthirsty as any boy of his age, and he looked at her and then away and made a face.

‘Course I do,’ he said gruffly. ‘That’s mostly why I want to stay here, but I can’t tell them that, can I? They’ll get all worried and that’s no good to anyone. I thought if I showed them how brave I am and everything they’d let me stay because they’d know then that nothing that happened would upset me. They’d think I’d be all right and – ’

‘You’re missing the point, Josh,’ Robin said as gently as she could. ‘It’s not the possibility that you’d see something nasty and be upset that worries them. It’s the possibility that you’d be the something nasty and bloody that they’d see. You could be hurt, love, killed even.’

Joshy stared at her, invincible in his belief in his own immortality. ‘You haven’t been hurt or killed,’ he said. ‘Have you? And you’re down in the East End where it’s much worse, and you’re working in a hospital where there are all sorts of disgusting germs to give you dreadful diseases, and you haven’t caught any of them.’

‘Haven’t I just,’ Robin said with considerable feeling. ‘Didn’t I have the most appalling flu last year, caught from the hospital?’

‘Well, so did we all, didn’t we? So it wasn’t just the hospital, it was everywhere. Anyway, they couldn’t hurt me, those bombs. I can run ever so fast. And anyway, there are the shelters, aren’t there?’

‘They’re not always all that safe,’ Robin said, remembering the night last week when a shelter had had a direct hit across the road from the hospital, and all the fifteen people in it had died. ‘You’ll have to go back, Joshy. You know you will.’

He looked triumphantly at her and shook his head. ‘Well, maybe, but not yet. I don’t know when. I heard Ma and Pa talking last night. They came in to see me and I sort of stayed asleep, you know what I mean. And they were saying there’s no one to take me back. Pa’s got his work and Ma’s got the canteen and Goosey’s too old. So there it is. I’ll have to stay a while, at least.’

She looked at him consideringly. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t, my love.’ And she reached out and hugged him. ‘Don’t hate me for it. But I’ve got three nights off. I could take you. And I will, because it just isn’t safe enough for you in London. No, don’t look at me that way. Believe it or not, I’m on your side. But I also know what your tricks are, so go back you will. And I’ll take you. But not right now. I need some sleep in the worst way,
and Goosey’s making some breakfast for you in the kitchen. So, on your way sweetheart. Big sister needs some time to herself.’ And she slapped his bottom gently as he stood up reluctantly and went over to the door his head down and his feet dragging.