Free Blitz by Claire Rayner

and then it started up close by and the shelterers took a deep sigh of relief and got to their feet, reaching for their knitting and their books and talking and laughing loudly in deep relief that this was another air raid over and done with and they were not hurt.
    ‘I’d love to talk some more about this,’ Robin said, a little shyly and she straightened her somewhat creaking knees and brushed the dust of the shelter wall from her trousers and shirt. She didn’t look at him.
    ‘Aye, well, mebbe we can at that,’ he said. ‘If there’s time in Casualty. Not that it’ll be likely.’ He squinted outside as the warden came and opened the door. There was the all too familiar dust in the air again and the sickening reek of cordite and he sighed. ‘If it’s like this now, God help us all when it gets dark –’ And then his eyes glinted with humour as he looked at her. ‘If you’ll forgive my use of the deity’s name!’
    She laughed too and then watched as he went walking away across the courtyard, his long legs covering the ground quickly, as she waited for Chick to emerge with her armful of Davidoff twins. What a very odd day this was turning out to be, she thought, as she looked up at the sky, now a rich blue with the last rays of the September afternoon. Even among odd days which were the normal thing now, this one had given her a great deal to think about.

6
     
    By seven o’clock, Poppy’s battered knee had swollen so badly she had to limp, and she felt dreadful. There wasn’t time to think about it as the first all-clear of the night offered only a half hour’s respite before the warning wailed its swooping notes again, but it sat at the back of her consciousness like a thick black cloud that threatened to overwhelm her at any moment.
    Maria had gone when she had reached the canteen, leaving a note that said cryptically, ‘I been and gone I had to see you tomorrow as per arrangements as usual yrs truly Maria Randall (Mrs),’ and there had been a knot of wardens on their way on duty waiting and clamouring for their evening meal before they went. She had barely had time to put on her apron before she was dishing out the mince and potatoes that Maria had mercifully left bubbling ready on the stove.
    The first wave of evening regulars went and she had a moment or two then for herself, and she used them to take off her stockings, pulling the tattered threads from her bloodied knee very gingerly, though it stung dreadfully, and then putting on iodine and a makeshift bandage. She was almost in tears of pain by this time and had to be very firm indeed with herself as she swallowed a couple of aspirin and then limped around the canteen collecting dirty dishes and washing up, and leaving the serving counter clean and ready for the next onslaught. To be so upset and tearful just because of a fall? It was ridiculous. And then she sighed and began to slice bread with some ferocity.
    It wasn’t the fall, of course it wasn’t. It was that wretched Bernie who had upset her, and she brooded over him as she spread the margarine and then fish paste to make the piles of sandwiches that would vanish in no time once the night raidsstarted in good earnest, as they very soon would. You could almost tell the time by those wretched planes. But it wasn’t the raids that had upset her, nor was it the fall. It was definitely Bernie; and the more she thought about him the more ferociously hard and fast she worked.
    He was hateful, totally hateful, she told herself. To have come slinking around Jessie as he had, and to have been here in London for two years without her knowing it – and then a different sort of anger filled her. How could Jessie have been so devious with her? To have hidden the fact so well had been an act of downright betrayal, she thought hotly, a dreadful thing to have done to her –
    But she couldn’t sustain her anger for long, not against Jessie. As she had said herself so piteously, what was a mother