Free Blitz by Claire Rayner Page B

only for a moment, because the door was pushed open as the first people arrived – a fireman leading one of his mateswho had a blackened face and whose eyes were half closed above swollen cheeks.
    ‘Got a blast from a gas flare,’ explained the fireman after he’d settled the injured man at a table. ‘Can you take care of ’im for us till the ambulance can take ’im? There’s bin a direct hit over at Fieldgate Street, by Vine Court. They’re digging ’em out now. The Warden’s post ’as gone an’ all – ’
    She lifted her head quickly. ‘The Post? What about old Arthur?’
    The fireman shook his head and began to make his way back to the door. ‘Sorry, ducks, but he was one of the dead ones. Three there was. Was he a friend of yours?’
    ‘Yes,’ Poppy said dully. ‘A friend of mine –’ And she looked over her shoulder at the tin hat Arthur had given her and which was hanging on the hook behind the side door and thought – please, don’t let him be dead because he didn’t have his tin hat –
    ‘Rotten luck it was,’ the fireman said. ‘Crushed right across his chest, he was. Never stood a chance, lying there looking just as he usually did, only with this bleedin’ great rafter across him.’
    ‘Not – not his head then?’
    The fireman looked at her sharply. ‘No, love. Does it matter?’
    ‘He gave me his tin hat to get me back here safely – I was caught outside in the alert at five o’clock – ’
    The fireman shook his head and opened the door. ‘Never give it a thought, ducks. He was wearing one.’ And went. And Poppy took a deep shaking breath and carried a cup of very hot sweet tea over to the man sitting so quietly slumped at the table.
    He was shocked, but as far as she could see the damage to his face wasn’t too bad and as she went and collected cold wet cloths to put across his forehead and to pat on his flaming cheeks, she was grateful again for the nursing experience she had been given during the last war as part of her FANY ’s training. First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, she thought as she worked on the injured man, and got a sudden vision of herself in the uniform, and then banished it. She was just a canteen supervisor in this war, one with a bit of first-aid training, admittedly, but only a caterer and cleaner-upper. She had enough on her plate without getting notions about getting back into uniform again. And she patted the grateful fireman on the shoulder and lefthim to sip his tea as again the doors opened and another group of people came in.
    From then on it was bedlam. She poured tea and refilled urns and made more and more sandwiches and was grateful when some of the men collected the used cups and saucers and plates for her and brought them back to be washed up. Being single-handed on a night like this was hell; but it did at least have the virtue of keeping her mind off other, more personal things.
    Or did until around eleven, when one of the ambulance drivers, his face streaked with dirt and his uniform blood spattered, came and asked for ‘some tea and a bit of grub, ducky. I never got no dinner today on account I overslept after last night being such a bugger, beggin’ your pardon for the language, and I ain’t et nothing since ten o’clock this morning.’
    ‘Oh, dear,’ Poppy said and her face crumpled. ‘There was some mince and potatoes but that all went ages ago. I’ve only these few sandwiches left – ’
    The man picked up one of the thin sandwiches mournfully and lifted a bread slice to inspect the filling.
    ‘Fish paste,’ he said lugubriously. ‘Nothin’ to eat since ten o’clock and all I get now is fish paste. Don’t it break yer ’eart? What I’d like to ’ave, if I could ’ave what I liked, would be a nice fried egg samwidge. My old Mum, she used to give ’em when I was tired and couldn’t eat a proper big dinner. “Eggs, Sid,” she used to say to me. “Eggs is nature’s treasury of food, eggs is. As full of meat as