Everyone Brave Is Forgiven(79)

“That’s my friend Hilda. Hates to miss a party. We signed up together.”

“You wait years, then two come along at once.”

The ambulance was a black Hillman saloon with red crosses on the door panels and four stretchers in a rack on the roof. Hilda was done up in a duffel coat two sizes too big for her. She was organizing the medical bag, and when she looked up her cap fell down over her eyes.

“Should we hug or salute?” she said.

“Shall we do both, to be safe?”

Hilda’s Red Cross brassard slipped to her elbow on the backswing.

“Idiot,” said Mary. “Let me fix that for you.”

“Thanks. You’d think I might put it on properly, wouldn’t you? I can bandage an arm recurrent, figure-of-eight or spiral reverse, and I have a brand-new certificate to prove it.”

“It’s always harder on oneself,” said Mary, repinning the band.

“I hope they’ll send us out with a proper nurse just to start with.”

“But you are a proper nurse. Look at you, with your hat and armband. All you’re missing is a fob watch.”

“I’ve had two weeks’ training! I took longer than that to learn to use a gas oven.”

“Well, if we do pick up a casualty, I shall just have to drive us to the hospital quickly.”

“Do you know if we actually have to wear the tin hats, by the way? Only mine makes me look like a mushroom. It’s all right for you tall girls, you can carry it off.”

“You know they become fashionable during the raids.”

Hilda tugged at her lower lip with her teeth. “I suppose . . . but goodness, it’s hard to make anything of this uniform. I’ve tried it like this with the skirt and stockings and I’ve tried it with the trousers, which are just urgh. I’ve been up since five, you know.”

Mary said, “You look fine.”

She had simply put on the skirt with which they had issued her, cinched the belt around the jacket, and jammed a pack of Craven “A”s into each pocket. She lit one now.

“Oh,” said Hilda, “are you cold? Let’s sit in the van, shall we?”

Mary’s hands were trembling. It was something they had done since the disaster—a bore, really—and it was sweet of Hilda to pretend it was only the cold. It was pleasant in any case to get into the Hillman. Mary settled in the driver’s seat and cracked the window an inch to let the smoke out. The interior smelled nicely of laundry, which she supposed must have been the cargo until the van was requisitioned.

In the passenger seat Hilda checked her makeup in the mirror. She reapplied her lipstick, clicked the top back on, and said, “Alistair still hasn’t replied to me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mary.

“It was a long shot, but I thought he might at least write back.”

Mary found that she couldn’t hold Hilda’s eye.

Hilda stared. “You aren’t writing to him as well, are you?”

“No,” said Mary, electing to interpret Hilda’s tense as the present simple.

“I suppose he’s just a cad, then,” said Hilda.

“I thought you liked him?”

“Only if he likes me more. Those are the rules.”

Mary nodded. “Sometimes you are almost Christlike.”

Hilda beamed. “You can say you were my first disciple.”

“I’ll say I did your hair.”

Hilda looked at her watch. “I’m terrified, aren’t you? We wouldn’t be doing this if it was really dangerous, would we?”

“You know what you should really worry about? It’s that so many girls have volunteered, it won’t seem exotic anymore.”

“You suppose men won’t care?”

“Goodness, no. Ambulance girls are two-a-penny.”

“You ruin everything.”

“Well you can’t have it both ways, can you? It’s either a dangerous duty, and dashing, or a breathtaking bore, and banal.”

“I liked it better when I was petrified.”

“Then hush and let me work this van out. It’s fine for you, Miss La-Di-Dah with your two weeks’ training. All they gave me was my bus fare here.”

Mary worked the pedals and moved the lever through the three gears in the box, plus reverse. The whole setup was far looser than her father’s Austin Windsor. It would need to be sworn at quite robustly, but she felt it could just about be driven. Now that it was happening—now that the war had put her in uniform and issued her with a steering wheel andclutch—she felt more resignation than excitement. She supposed that there would be chaos now, and fire and furious noise, and yet it seemed much less of an adventure than her class had been. How her nerves had buzzed with it, back then. Now, she felt less alive. Perhaps one died in slices, like a loaf.

“Do you suppose they’ll give us tea?” said Hilda.

“They’ve told me nothing. You’re the one who always knows things.”

“Oh, that’s just gossip,” said Hilda. ‘No one tells me facts.”

“Maybe they’re worried you’d repeat them.”

“I wouldn’t mind knowing something, even if I am only here to dish out aspirin and sticking plasters. The matron wouldn’t trust me with anything, you know. She had me on bedpans half the time I was supposed to be training, so of course I never caught sight of a healthy man.”