All Clear

Blackfriars Tube Station—29 December 1940

EILEEN TRIED TO PUSH PAST ALF AND BINNIE, BUT THEY’D planted themselves immovably between her and the turnstile, and John Bartholomew was already going through it.

“We been lookin’ all over the station for you,” Binnie said.

They were both filthy, and Binnie was wearing the same too-small dress she’d worn the day Eileen went to borrow the map. “Ain’t you glad to see us?”

No, Eileen thought, looking desperately over to where John Bartholomew was elbowing his way toward the exit.

“What’re you doin’ ’ere?” Binnie asked.

“ ’Ow come you never sent my map back like you said?” Alf said.

I haven’t got time for this, Eileen thought frantically. He was nearly to the exit. “I can’t talk to you now,” she said, shoving the children aside and running after him.

An arm shot out to bar her way. “Where do you think you’re going, miss?” the station guard demanded.

“The man who just left—I must catch him.”

“Sorry, no one allowed out till the all clear.”

“But you let him out,” she said, straining against his arm.

“He’s one of St. Paul’s fire watch.”

“I know. I must catch him,” Eileen said, and made a dive to get past him.

The guard grabbed her around the waist. “No, you don’t, miss,” he said, and then more kindly, “It’s too dangerous out there.”

“Dangerous?” she said, nearly crying with rage. “Dangerous? You don’t understand. If I don’t get a message through to—”

“The fire watch is too busy for messages just now. So you be a good girl and go back down below, where it’s safe. Whatever you need to tell him can wait till morning.”

He turned her around and gave her a push back toward the turnstiles. And Alf and Binnie.

“We thought you’d be glad to see us,” Binnie said reproachfully. “Tim told us ’e seen a lady named Eileen, and I says, ‘Eileen what?’ and Tim says ’e don’t know, and I says, ‘Well, go ask ’er then—’ ”

Eileen grabbed Binnie by the shoulders. “Listen. I must get past the guard. Can you help me?”

“Course,” Alf said scornfully.

“Wait ’ere,” Binnie ordered her, and the two of them shot over to where the guard was standing.

Eileen couldn’t see what they were doing, but moments later the guard shouted, “Hey, you two! Come back here!” and took off after them.

Eileen didn’t wait to see where they went. She shot through the gate and up the steps.

And into a nightmare. There was smoke everywhere, and just up the hill a building spurted red-orange flames from its roof. Half a dozen firemen had their hoses trained on it, and more moved purposefully around the fire pumper and the ambulance standing in the middle of the street, hooking up hydrants, loading a stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

But there was no sign of Mr. Bartholomew. Those few minutes she’d been delayed had given him too much of a head start. At least she knew where he was going.

But there was no sign of the cathedral either, only smoke and more smoke, great billowing gray and pink and rose-colored clouds of it.

You don’t need to see it, she thought. It’s at the top of the hill. She started up it, past the pumper, trying to hurry, but speed was impossible. The pavement was a snake pit of hoses and water and mud. She squelched through it past the fire, past the ambulance, where they were loading in a second stretcher.

“This one’s bad,” one of the firemen loading it shouted to no one in particular. “He’s lost a good deal of blood.”

A hand grabbed Eileen’s arm.

Oh, no, it’s the station guard, she thought, but it was the ARP warden who’d forced her to come to Blackfriars.

“Can you drive?” he asked.

“Drive?” she repeated blankly. “What—”

“I need someone to drive that ambulance to hospital. The driver’s unconscious. Hit on the head. And I’ve got an Army lieutenant who’s bleeding bad. Do you know how to drive?”

“Yeah,” Binnie said, appearing out of nowhere with Alf.

“The vicar taught her,” Alf put in.

“ ’E taught me, too,” Binnie said. “I’ll drive the ambulance.”

“You will not,” Eileen said, and to the warden, “These children have no business—”

“Do you know first aid?” the warden asked Binnie.

“Course.”

She scrambled into the back of the ambulance.

“Show her what to do!” the warden shouted to the stretcher-bearers. He turned back to Eileen. “I’ve no one else to send.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I must get to St. Paul’s. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“So’s this. I’ve got a driver!” he called to the men, opened the ambulance door, and pushed Eileen in. “It’s already running. Take them to St. Bart’s. It’s nearest.”

“I don’t know the way.”

“I do,” Alf said, getting in. “I know this ’ole side o’ London. Even if you didn’t bring my map back.”

“You better ’urry,” Binnie said from the back. “ ’E’s really bleedin’.”

And Binnie no more knew first aid than the man in the moon. Eileen scrambled over the seat into the back, where Binnie squatted between two stretchers, holding a folded gauze pad on the lieutenant’s blood-soaked leg. “Press down as hard as you can. Push,” Eileen said, thinking, Thank goodness Lady Caroline insisted I attend those first-aid classes.

“How bad is it?” the lieutenant asked weakly.

Eileen hadn’t realized he was conscious.

“Not bad,” she said. “Not bad?” Binnie exclaimed. “Lookit all that blood.”

“You mustn’t worry,” Eileen said, glaring at Binnie. “We’re taking you to hospital.”

She took a quick look around the back for sticking plaster to fix the pad more tightly to the wound, but there was no sign of a first-aid kit, and the driver on the other stretcher was in no shape to tell her what had happened to it. She was unconscious, her face gray even in the orange light from the fire.

They both needed to get to hospital immediately. If Eileen could find it. And if she could get out of here. Another fire pumper had arrived, bells clanging, and it blocked her way. She had to back and turn the ambulance, which was at least three times the size of the vicar’s Austin, twice to get it past it. “Which way?” she asked Alf.

“That way.” He pointed, and they took off through the burning streets.

It seemed as if every road had at least one fire, and in the few that didn’t, incendiaries glittered and spat white sparks. “Take the next turning,” Alf said.

“Which direction?”

“Right,” he said. “No, left.”

“Are you certain you know the way to St. Bart’s?”

“Course. We was there when—” He stopped short.

“When what?” Eileen said, glancing over at him.

He didn’t answer her. “If I ’ad my map, I’d know the way for sure,” he grumbled. “ ’Ow come you never sent it?”

“I brought it back, but you weren’t home, so I put it under your door.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s why. After—”

“You never said what you was doin’ in Blackfriars,” Binnie interrupted from the back.

“I was trying to get to St. Paul’s. What were you two doing there?” Eileen asked, though she had a good idea.

“We was goin’ to a shelter durin’ the raids like you told us to,” Binnie said virtuously.

Alf nodded. “Bank Station’s the best, but sometimes we go to Liverpool Street. Or Blackfriars, like tonight. It’s got a canteen.”

“Can’t you drive faster?” Binnie called from the back.

No, Eileen thought, gripping the wheel. There was too much smoke, and too many obstacles. Half the streets Alf told her to take were filled with fire equipment.

Or with flames. Glowing embers clattered onto the bonnet of the ambulance, and halfway along Old Bailey, the darkened buildings on either side suddenly flared into burning torches, and Eileen had to back up and take a side lane so narrow she wasn’t certain the ambulance could get through. And if the tall wooden buildings crowding in on either side caught fire the way the others had, there’d be no way out.

“This is fun, ain’t it?” Alf said. “Are we gonna be killed?”

“No,” Eileen said grimly. You were born to be hanged.

“Now where?” she asked.

“That way.” He pointed off to the east.

“I thought the hospital was north.”

“It is, but we can’t go that way. There’s fires.”

“Binnie!” Eileen called into the backseat. “Is the driver coming round yet?”

“No,” Binnie said, “and the lieutenant’s asleep.”

Oh, no.

“Is he still breathing?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Binnie said, but uncertainly. “ ’Ow long do I got to push on this bandage?”

“Till we get there,” Eileen said. “You can’t let up for even a moment, Binnie.”

“I know.”

“Go down there,” Alf directed, pointing along a street that led downhill toward the river.

“You’re certain this is the shortest way, Alf?” Eileen asked, veering to avoid an incendiary in the middle of the street.

“Yeah. We got to go round the fires.”

Which was easier said than done. New waves of planes flew overhead every few minutes, followed by scattered spurts of white and then yellow flame at a dozen places among the roofs. We’ll have to drive to Dover to get around all these fires, Eileen thought.

“Now down there,” Alf said.

“The bandage is bleedin’ through,” Binnie said.

“Keep pressing. Don’t let up.”

“The blood’s comin’ through to my ’ands. It’s all over ’em!” Binnie said.

“Can I see?” Alf said eagerly.

“No,” Eileen said, dragging him back down into the front seat with one hand. “I need you to navigate. Binnie, press hard!”

“I am.”

“Good girl. We’ll be there in a bit,” she said, even though she didn’t believe it, even though it seemed she would spend the rest of eternity turning down street after street at Alf’s direction while all around them London burned to the ground.

“There’s blood all over,” Binnie said, and there was a tone of desperation in her voice that was totally unlike her.

Eileen pulled the car over to the curb, stopped it, and climbed over the seat to look.

Binnie was right. There was blood everywhere. Binnie was pushing down manfully, but she wasn’t strong enough to stanch the bleeding. “Here, let me,” Eileen said, and Binnie immediately let go and scooted aside. Blood spurted.

“Wow!” Alf exclaimed. “Lookit that!”

Eileen pressed down on the towel as hard as she could. The bleeding slowed but didn’t stop. She got on her knees, bent forward so her full weight was over the officer, and pushed down.

“It’s stoppin’,” Binnie said.

But how did that help? The moment she let up on the towel, the wound would begin spurting again, and they couldn’t stay here indefinitely. The lieutenant’s only hope lay in their getting him to hospital, and soon. “Binnie? Do you think you could drive?” Eileen asked.

“A’ course,” Binnie said, and scrambled over the seats and into the driver’s seat.

“Do you remember where first gear is?”

In answer, Binnie stepped on the clutch, put the car in gear, and shot down the street at breakneck speed.

She’s going to get us all killed, Eileen thought, but she didn’t tell her to slow down. Speed was their only hope, both for the officer and the driver, who looked as though she was already dead. Even bending over her, Eileen couldn’t hear her breathing.

“Go right,” Alf said. “Now down there. Now bear left.” Binnie was apparently going the way he told her because he didn’t call her a noddlehead.

She hoped to goodness he knew where he was going and wasn’t only making it up as he went along. But he only hesitated once, to say, “It’s the next one, I think, or the one after. No, go back, it was the first one.” Binnie threw the car into reverse, backed up, and turned into the street he’d indicated.

Eileen didn’t have time to ask if they were getting close. She had her hands full with the lieutenant, who was coming back to consciousness and attempting to pull away from her, and it was all she could do to keep the pad in place.

“Now bear right down that lane,” Alf said, “all the way to the end.”

There was a brief silence, and then Binnie said accusingly, “You told me wrong. There ain’t no way out, just buildin’s.”

“I know,” Alf said. “We’re ’ere.”

Eileen bent forward to look out the front window. They were. The stone buildings of St. Bart’s towered beautifully ahead of them.

“Which door do we go in?” Binnie asked Alf.

“I dunno,” Alf said. “Eileen, where do we go?”

“Binnie, come back here and take over,” Eileen said. Binnie scrambled over the seat and took Eileen’s place, and Eileen squeezed past her into the driver’s seat, but in the darkness she couldn’t tell which door she should pull the ambulance up to either. There were a dozen doors, none of them marked and none of them lit.

“I’ll go see,” Alf said, and was out of the ambulance and out of sight before she could stop him.

Hurry, Eileen thought, her hands gripping the steering wheel, ready to move the car the instant he returned.

“Why don’t he come?” Binnie asked, sounding panicked. “The blood’s comin’ through again.”

There was no sign of Alf. Eileen honked the horn, but no one came.

“I think the driver lady’s stopped breathin’,” Binnie said.

They’re both going to die right here outside St. Bart’s, Eileen thought desperately.

She put on the emergency brake, said, “I’m going to go find it,” and flung herself out of the ambulance and across the drive to the nearest door.

It was locked. She banged on it for what seemed like an eternity and then ran to the next one, and the next. The last one opened onto a narrow, dimly lit corridor, and at one side a counter and sign: Dispensary.

Eileen ran up to the counter, praying there was someone behind it.

There was—a plump, sweet-faced woman in a gray dress with white cuffs and collar and a cameo at her throat. She looked out of place, as if she should be presiding over a tea party.

She won’t be of any help at all, Eileen thought, but there was no one else.

“I have two patients outside, and I can’t find where to go, the doors are all locked, and the ambulance driver’s unconscious and the other one’s bleeding badly,” she said, thinking, I’m babbling, she’ll never be able to understand, but amazingly, the woman did.

“Where’s the ambulance?” she said, snatching up a telephone. “Outside this door?”

“Yes, I mean, no. It’s—I kept trying doors and they were all locked. I—”

“Bring the ambulance round to this door,” the woman ordered, and said into the telephone, “I have an emergency here in the dispensary. I need a stretcher crew immediately, and tell them we’ll need a transfusion.”

“Thank you,” Eileen breathed, and ran back out to the ambulance, scrambled in, said to Binnie, “I’ve found help,” and started the ambulance. By the time she’d backed it up to the dispensary door, a group of attendants was already there, opening the back doors, loading the driver and the officer efficiently onto wheeled carts, and draping them with white sheets.

“He’s bleedin’,” Binnie said, scrambling out of the ambulance after them. “You got to apply direct pressure.”

The attendant nodded. “Go with her and make your report,” he said to Eileen, pointing to the nurse standing next to the stretchers.

“I’m not—” Eileen began.

The nurse herded her and Binnie through the door. “Where are you injured?” she asked as soon as they were inside.

“She ain’t,” Binnie said. “It’s them what’s ’urt.” She pointed at the stretchers they were bringing in.

“Come with me,” the nurse said, and led them down the corridor after the carts, which the attendants were pushing at breakneck speed.

The nurse was walking almost as quickly. “I’m not the ambulance driver,” Eileen said, trying to keep up with her. “The injured woman is. They recruited me because I could drive—”

The nurse wasn’t listening. She’d raised her head and was listening to a drone of planes which was growing louder and louder.

Oh, no, Eileen thought, was St. Bart’s hit on the twenty-ninth?

They turned down another corridor, and then another, at the end of which the carts disappeared through a pair of double doors. “Wait here,” the nurse said, and went through them, too.

“You ain’t gonna have to file a report, are you?” Binnie asked.

“A report?”

“Yeah, about us takin’ the ambulance. We won’t ’ave to tell ’em our names, will we?”

“Where’d you two go?” Alf asked, appearing out of nowhere.

“Where’d we go?” Binnie said indignantly. “You were the one what disappeared.”

“I never. I went to find where to go, like you told me—”

“Shh,” Eileen said. “This is a hospital.”

Alf looked around. “What are you standin’ ’ere for? I thought you said you ’ad to go to St. Paul’s.”

“I do, but the nurse—”

“Then we better go before she comes back. The ambulance is this way,” Alf said.

“We can’t drive the ambulance to St. Paul’s,” Eileen said. “The hospital needs it.”

“But if they ain’t got nobody to drive it, it ain’t no good to ’em. We might as well take it,” Alf said, ever practical.

“And if we don’t, ’ow’ll you get there?” Binnie asked. “It’s miles, and the trains’ve stopped running.”

“They have? What time is it?” Eileen asked, glancing at her watch.

It was nearly eleven. Mike would have long since come back to Blackfriars looking for her. He’d have no idea where she’d gone. She had to get back there.

But how? The planes were growing steadily louder, and fires were already blocking nearly every street that led back to Blackfriars. And they’d have spread during the time they’d been here. Soon no one would be able to get anywhere near it or St. Paul’s. The entire City would be ablaze, and there’d be no way to get to Mike or Polly. Or to Mr. Bartholomew, whom they’d surely found by now. They’d each promised they wouldn’t go without the others, but what if the drop was only open for a short time? What if they hadn’t any choice but to go without her?

“Where did you say the ambulance was?” she asked.

“This way.” Alf plunged down a corridor.

“Wait,” Eileen said. “How do you know it’s still there? Someone else may have taken it out.”

Alf reached in his pocket and held the key up. “I took it out when I was lookin’ for you. So nobody could pinch it.”

“Alf!”

“There’s lots of thieves about during raids,” he said innocently.

“We better go before that nurse comes back and asks us our names,” Binnie said.

“This way,” Alf said, “quick,” and led them back through a maze of corridors to the one that led to the dispensary.

Binnie balked. “I don’t think we should go this way. What if that lady’s there?”

“What if she is?” Alf said. “We ain’t doin’ nothin’, only walkin’ past. This way’s the nearest.”

“All right,” Binnie agreed reluctantly, dropping her voice to a whisper, “but tiptoe.”

“Tiptoeing will look suspicious,” Eileen whispered back. “Just walk past normally. She won’t even notice us.”

Binnie didn’t look convinced. “She looked like she was the sort who don’t miss a trick.”

Alf nodded. “Like the ticket guard at Bank Station.”

“That’s your guilty conscience speaking,” Eileen said. “She was no such thing.” She started confidently down the corridor.

The door to the dispensary stood half open. Inside, the woman who’d helped her was counting out white tablets with a metal stick, her head bent over the tray.

Don’t look up, Eileen willed as they passed.

She didn’t. Eileen opened the door, and they scooted through it. She’d counted on the darkness hiding them once they were outside, but the drive was nearly as bright as the corridor had been. The cloudy sky above them was orange-pink, and the hospital buildings cast odd, wrong-angled, blood-red shadows across the ambulance parked there.

Eileen made Alf and Binnie climb in back. “Get down so they can’t see you till we’re away from the hospital,” she said, putting the key in the ignition and hoping she could start it. It had been running when the rescue worker had handed it over to her.

She pulled on the choke and let the clutch out, praying for the engine to catch.

It did, and then promptly died. “Come on,” Alf said from the backseat. “’Urry.”

Eileen tried again, pulling the choke out slowly and easing up steadily on the clutch as the vicar had taught her. This time it didn’t quite die, and she glanced in the rear-vision mirror and began to back away from the door.

A fist pounded on the passenger-side window.

Eileen nearly jumped out of her skin and killed the engine.

A man in a white coat was standing there knocking. “We’re for it now,” Alf said.

“Step on it!” Binnie ordered, leaning over the seat. “Go!”

“I can’t!” Eileen said, trying desperately to start the engine.

It wouldn’t catch. The man, in his sixties, opened the door and leaned in. “Are you the young woman who brought in the ambulance driver?”

She nodded.

“Good,” he said, getting in. He was carrying a black leather bag. “Mrs. Mallowan told me you were out here. Thank goodness you hadn’t left. I’m Dr. Cross. I need you to take me to Moorgate.”

Both children had ducked down out of sight. “Moorgate?” Eileen said.

He nodded. “There’s a young woman at the tube station there. She’s too badly injured to be moved.” He shut the ambulance door. “We’ll have to treat her at the scene.”

“But I can’t—I’m not a real ambulance driver—”

“Mrs. Mallowan told me you’d been recruited to bring the injured driver and the lieutenant in.”

“She can’t take you,” Alf said, popping up from the back.

“Good Lord, a stowaway,” Dr. Cross said, and as Binnie appeared beside him, “Two stowaways.”

“We’re ’er assistants,” Binnie said. “She can’t take you to Moorgate. She’s got to go to St. Paul’s.”

“To pick up a patient?”

“Yeah,” Alf said.

“One of the fire watch was injured,” Eileen said.

“They’ll have to send another ambulance.”

He reached across and honked the horn. An attendant appeared in the doorway. “As soon as Dawkins gets back,” the doctor called to him, “send her to St. Paul’s!”

He turned to Eileen. “All right, let’s go.”

“We ain’t sure it’ll start,” Alf said.

“It wouldn’t before,” Binnie added.

And if I can’t start it, Dr. Cross will have to find some other transport, Eileen thought, and yanked roughly on the choke the way she had on her first driving lesson.

The ambulance started up immediately. She put it in gear and let out the clutch with a motor-killing jerk that didn’t do anything either. The motor was practically purring.

“Turn left onto the street,” the doctor directed, “and then left on Smithfield.”

Eileen began to back out of the courtyard. An ambulance was pulling in. Why couldn’t it have been here five minutes sooner?

She slowed, trying to think of something she could say to persuade him to take the other ambulance.

Two men in helmets and overalls were clambering out of the back. They pulled out a man on a stretcher. Attendants converged on them.

“Hurry,” the doctor said to Eileen. “We haven’t much time.”

Paradoxically one might say that the most important incident of that night was one that failed to happen.

—W. R. MATTHEWS, DEAN OF ST. PAUL’S,

WRITING ABOUT THE NIGHT OF

29 DECEMBER 1940