“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.”
“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.”
