Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE PORCELAIN ON THE TRAY ROCKED AND CLINKED TOGETHER AS SHE WALKED. Matron Merrywinkle had advised her with a good rhyme to help her with her medicinal learning. "The bones in the arm: cauldrons sometimes have rotary utensils causing massive problems. Cauldrons, clavicle; sometimes, scapula; have, humerus; rotary, radius; utensils, ulna; causing, carpus; massive, metacarpus; problems, phalanges. Clavicle, scapula, humerus, radius, ulna, carpus, metacarpus, phalanges. Cla-vicle, sca-pula, hum-erus, rad-ius ..."
An old woman shook a tin on the doorstep of the local church. Her stark white hair was swathed in a silk scarf, and her eyes were dark inside her head, deep-set back in their sockets. "For the war widows," she croaked, shaking the tin. Robin could hear the small pennies chattering in the jar. FOR THE WAR WIDOWS! it said on the side in cobalt-blue paint, "For the war widows."
Robin dipped her head. She didn't have any change on her, and even if she did, both of her hands were occupied by the rickety tray. The masses had been bandaged and dressed after the incident, and Matron Merrywinkle decided that the brunette would be best suited to take out tea and biscuits to the ambulance drivers waiting on call. She didn't so much mind, as she enjoyed chatting with the cooks in the hospital. They were all very pleasant, and sometimes set aside biscuits for herself and Prudie for when they came off their shifts.
They'd take them and sit on the steps of the hospital for a breather, dipping their snacks in their steaming tea. Prudie would chatter giddily about her many lovers, and Robin would think about her sweet soldier, Jim. Actually, she thought about him almost every minute of every day, especially when she was making her apple pie. As American as apple pie, was something she'd heard Olive say once or twice, Jim's as American as apple pie. She smiled sillily to herself, my apple pie boy.
There was a hoot that walloped her right in the middle of the chest, knocking dizzily her from her daydream. The sound of a bomb alarm rose and fell so violently that she felt as if she could scarcely breathe from where she stood, paralysed in the middle of the pavement, the tray occupying her hands, stopping her from throwing both arms above her head as a reflex reaction.
"Save the lights!" a man's voice cried from nearby, and she whizzed around in a circle like a roundabout to try and find the source of the noise, her nursing skirt swishing out around her body as it would a swing dancer. The tray of tea fell from her hands and the porcelain saucers and teacups shattered onto the tarmac. Matron Merrywinkle was going to have her guts for garters when she found out what she'd done to the hospital's china. She yelped and stumbled back, away from the broken crockery.
"Not much you can do about that now, sweetheart! Over here! Nurse!"
She hurried herself into the passenger seat of the van that the person had called to her from, abandoning the tray in the street. There was a man at the wheel in an ARP tin hat; he looked thoroughly exhausted, and Robin knew full well why. She'd heard from Prudie, who's sister's lover was an ARP warden, that they worked eight hours on, and then eight hours standby, and eight hours off, so they were constantly on edge. Apparently, the man had once been called out midway through indecency with Prudie's sister, Ida, and had hurried out of the door in just his tin hat and trousers.
