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Jessie, she thought then. She makes me laugh too. And suddenly sat up in bed. There was no hope of sleeping any more, she told herself as she swung her legs out. And I’m absolutely starving. She hadn’t realized it, but she was empty because she’d been far too weary to eat when she’d come off duty this morning. The answer was either scrabbling for whatever she could get in the canteen – pilchard sandwiches or something equally revolting – or taking a cab up to Cable Street, to see what Auntie Jessie had to offer.

And she hummed a little as she scrambled into her new
trousers – bought especially for being in the shelters, if she ever got caught in a raid when she was off duty – and the cream silk blouse Ma had made for her out of one of her own old ones. She felt and looked cool and she leaned towards her mirror to brush her curly hair into some sort of order and made for the corridor.

And as she closed her door softly the adjoining one opened and Chick put her head out and grinned at her.

‘Two minds with but a single,’ she whispered, for they were on the night nurses’ floor, and making any sound at all was considered a crime fit for hanging by Home Sister. ‘I’m absolutely starving – are you going on a recce?’

‘I can do better than that,’ Robin whispered back. ‘I’m going down to my Auntie Jessie’s. Do you want to come?’

‘Do cats eat kippers?’ Chick retorted delightedly and came out of her room. She was wearing trousers too, a very racy pair in checks with a matching cotton shirt which she’d bought in New York in the last summer before the War broke out and which she had brought on the long tour of Europe she had planned. Robin had only a hazy knowledge of her life in her own country but had a distinct impression that Chick came from a rich family. She certainly seemed to have plenty of cash and had none of the problems some of the other nurses had, lacking adequate support from their families. But she never showed off or made reference to such things, so neither did Robin. It was one of the most comfortable things about their friendship, she thought. You talked of what you wanted to, and didn’t have to talk of things you didn’t want to. She herself had told Chick lots about her family and had indeed taken her home to Norland Square to meet them but she had never told her of the awful Chloe. That would be too shaming –

The street outside sobered them both. The smell of explosives still hung in the air, and everywhere they looked dust motes floated in the long rays of the September sun to create a golden haze over the battered buildings. Across the road the last of the flames had at last been extinguished, leaving behind the heavy reek of wet rotten wood and newly distributed mildew as well as the hint of coal gas that still hung around; and Chick shivered a little even in the sunshine and tucked her hand into Robin’s elbow.

‘Come on, kid. We’ll leg it down to Cable Street. I can’t
imagine there’ll be many buses this afternoon, one way and another, and it’ll add to an already terrific appetite – it shouldn’t take long – ’

It didn’t, as they stepped out with long strides, and even in the smoke-filled reeking air, laden with the smell of demolition, and even walking past the wrecked buildings that seemed to be everywhere, Robin felt the vigour that exercise always created in her, and the sheer delight in being alive that was so much a part of her, and knew a moment of guilt. She shouldn’t feel so when all around her was destruction and death; but then she felt better, because people they passed smiled and waved, and some of the air raid wardens, who knew all the nurses from the hospital by sight, spotted them as they went past a particularly high pile of rubble and waved and shouted cheerfully. Even the shops had cheeky signs on them; ‘Special Sale, Courtesy the Nasties’ read one in a shoe shop and on a china shop, ‘Business as bloody usual. To hell with Adolf.’ With that sort of attitude in everyone around her, it was all right, she decided, to feel tolerably good. And her step lengthened and they went belting arm in arm along the tired battered road until Chick gasped and laughed and complained of breathlessness.

‘Are you sure your aunt won’t mind me coming too?’ she said as soon as she could talk easily. ‘I mean, what with shortages and all – she can’t stretch her rations that far, surely? A woman on her own – ’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Robin said blithely. ‘She’ll not worry, you can be sure of that – she’s only happy when she’s feeding people. That’s why she runs a restaurant. She’ll be all right – ’

‘Black-market?’ Chick said and grinned at her. ‘No, don’t look like that! From all I hear everyone who can does and everyone who doesn’t wishes they could. People always try to do the best they can for themselves when times are hard.’

‘Not my Auntie Jessie. She’s the straightest person you ever saw. Says what she thinks when she thinks it. And she certainly wouldn’t black-market. She says you don’t have to – she gets lots of fish and so forth and she manages fine. I hope you like fish – ’

‘I like food,’ Chick said simply. ‘All I can get. God, I’m hungry! I’d kill for a hot dog.’

‘She might even manage that,’ Robin said and grinned at the
look of sheer greed that crossed Chick’s face. ‘She runs a delicatessen, remember, and they have all sorts of odd foreign things in them, don’t they?’

‘Foreign! Don’t you dare call me foreign! Daughter of the Empire, that’s me, fighting for the Mother Country, or some such. Foreign, forsooth – I’ll have your guts for garters, you talk to me that way – ’

‘Of course you’re foreign,’ Robin said cheerfully. ‘That accent of yours, you could cut it with a knife, and the clothes you wear – you never saw anything like
that
in Swan and Edgar’s, now, did you?’

‘You’re damned right – I never saw anything I’d be caught dead in in Swan and Edgar’s – listen, is it the next road on the left or – ’

‘Good for you, remembering! Yes, it is. And here’s hoping Jessie’s got something ready to eat and doesn’t have to start making things. I don’t think I can wait another moment – ’

They ran the last few yards, bursting with an energy neither knew they had, and stopped outside the neat shop half-way down Cable Street. Over its fascia a sign read, ‘Jessie’s Best Foods’ and below that an elegantly painted hand pointed to the right and a smaller sign that read, ‘Trade Counter. Ring Twice’.

‘Oh!’ Chick moaned ecstatically and lifted her nose to the air. ‘I smell pickles and pastrami, I swear it – ’

‘And salt beef and cheese and a lot of other goodies besides. Come on.’ And with a proprietorial air, Robin ushered her friend into the shop.

It hadn’t changed in all the years Robin could remember. She had first been brought here as a very small child and she could still remember the bewildering effect of the shelves full of exotic-looking packages and tins and the long glass-covered fitting below the counter where dishes of the most remarkable concoctions waited to be weighed out into small measures: cream cheeses and chopped herring mixtures, rows of different kinds of pickled fish and sides of rich rosy smoked salmon and umpteen different kinds of sausages. There weren’t any sausages there now, for they had come from France and Italy and Germany in the old days before the War, and supplies had vanished with the first air raid, but there were instead dishes of delectable-looking salads and piles of crisp rolls, some garnished with scraps of fried onions and some round and glistening
with a rich golden brown crust and holes in their centres, and Chick looked at those and crooned, ‘Oh, as I live and breathe, bagels! Am I in London or New York? Who is the angel who did this? Let me at ’em!’

The woman behind the counter, who had been serving an elderly customer with a pot of cream cheese, came and peered at her, and Chick looked up at the wizened little face under its mop of highly regrettable yellow curls, which looked so ferociously out of place that they made the shop look almost toylike, and grinned widely. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m the bagel maven!’

‘Maven?’ Robin said, mystified, and smiled at the little woman who now saw her and was coming out from behind the counter in an eager bustle. ‘Hello, Lily. Are you well?’

‘All the better for seein’ you, lovey! There, but you look tired! The way they work you down there, it’s a sin and a crime, that’s what it is. So, what’s this already? I ain’t never seen this one before, have I?’

‘I think you’ve always been at the restaurant, or in the kitchens,’ Robin said. ‘This is my friend Chick Chester. She’s been here with me before. What’s a whatever you said, Chick?’

Chick’s face split in a wide grin. ‘Maven. A connoisseur, ducky. One who knows all there is to know on a subject. Here’s me, a good Toronto Catholic, and I know more Yiddish than you do, and you’re part Jewish!’

‘Not difficult to know more than I do,’ Robin said and felt a sudden pang as she always did when the subject came up. ‘I know damn all about it. No one ever taught me – ’

‘So what?’ Lily said comfortably and led them towards the back of the shop. ‘You got enough on your mind, ain’t you? Listen, your auntie’s in the kitchen. See yourself through, eh? And you want to eat? I can get a plate or two ready here for you both or you can talk to your auntie and she’ll have maybe hot – ’

‘Both!’ Chick said greedily and followed Robin through the little room at the back of the shop and out of the big doors at the back which led to the preparation kitchens that spread to the other side of the establishment.

Here was bustle of a high order and the two girls stood hovering in the doorway for a moment, watching. There were long metal preparation tables and huge ovens and cooking hobs
and sinks and, everywhere where they could be put, long shelves crammed with pots and pans of all sorts and sizes. Standing at each of the preparation tables were women, all of them clearly well over fifty, wrapped in voluminous overalls and with their hair tied back in cotton scarves, chopping vegetables, mixing salads and cakes and beating eggs. In the middle of them stood a woman who was not wearing an overall, even though her dress, of rich crimson silk, was clearly an expensive one, who was rolling pastry with lusty thumping strokes, and pulling at it with big capable hands.

‘There, you see?
That’s
how I like to see my strudel dough – so thin you could read the newspaper through it. None of your heavy great slabs for Jessie’s, and don’t you forget it, dolly, don’t you ever forget it –’ And the woman beside her muttered, but reached for the rolling pin and took over the pulling and thumping of the pastry under the other’s very watchful eye.

Looking at her, Robin experienced the wash of feeling that Jessie always created in her; she looked so comfortable, so sure, so reliable in a hard world, with her great size, and her magnificent bust pushing so imperiously against the silk of her dress. She looked older now, of course she did, for her hair, once so vigorous and thick and exuberant, was whiter and much less pleased with itself, and the vast bulk that had always distinguished her seemed to have collapsed in on itself a little. But there was still a great energy in her and she displayed it to the full as she lifted her head and caught sight of the two girls in the doorway.

‘Boobala!’ she shrieked. ‘It’s my boobala! Come here, you dolly, you – come and give me a hug. Have you eaten? Of course you haven’t eaten – listen, what’ll you have? Fish? I got a bissel the best fried plaice you ever tasted – or there’s some chicken, gedampt just the way you like it, and I got some oil, I could make you some chips. Oh dolly, it’s good to see you!’ And she folded Robin in a huge rosewater and frying-oil and fish-scented grasp, burying her head in that ample bosom and squeezing her till her ribs seemed to crack.

And Robin, who had once found those hugs a bit overwhelming, gave her back as good as she got, and hugged her with all the fervour she had in her. Never mind air raids and the hateful Staff Nurse Puncheon and aching feet and sleeplessness; this was what living was all about.

‘Sugar,’ said Mrs Crighton in loud patrician tones. ‘I must have sugar. You can’t run a canteen without sugar, now can you? Be reasonable, Mrs Deveen!’

‘I’m trying to be,’ Poppy said, controlling her anger as best she could. This woman made more fuss than all the rest of the volunteers put together; the sooner she could be shifted somewhere else the better for all of them. If she had to find another canteen somewhere for her, she’d do it, damned if she wouldn’t. ‘I’m afraid it’s you who is being a little less than reasonable. I simply
can’t
get any more. They’re having enough trouble with supplies for people to get their ration as it is. I’ve managed to get some saccharin, however, and – ’

‘Saccharin?’ Mrs Crighton actually snorted. ‘What good is that? It won’t give these poor creatures any nutrients, will it?’ And she rolled the word round her tongue with relish. ‘Nutrients are what it’s all about, surely?’

‘No it isn’t,’ Poppy snapped, her patience at last exhausted. ‘It’s about providing a few minutes to sit down and rest with a cup of tea and a sandwich or two before they have to go back and work again. They understand that even if you don’t. And I really must say’ – and here her control totally slipped and she let her anger show, well aware of her self-indulgence – ‘I really can’t understand how so much gets used when I’m not here. You’d almost think some people were taking it home with them.’

Mrs Crighton looked at her with a face of stone and then, very magisterially, took off her frilled apron.

‘That does it. I shall leave now and I shall not return. If you can do no better when your errors of management are pointed
out to you by an experienced person than hurl insults and accusations, then it is better that I take my valuable services where they will be appreciated. You will have to find someone else to handle tonight’s shift; I shall not be here. Good afternoon, Mrs Deveen!’ And she went stumping out of the canteen as a few weary firefighters and air raid wardens crouched over their tea and tired buns watched her with dispirited eyes.

‘Good riddance to that one.’ Maria, the tall and rather thin helper from the other end of the Whitechapel Road sounded deeply satisfied. ‘Rotten old bat – and I reckon you was right, Mrs D. She’s been ’elping herself to more sugar than anyone’s got any right to. A little bit’s fair enough, but not ’ole packets, like!’ And she mopped the counter with a vicious sweep of her dishcloth that wiped the haughty Mrs Crighton out of existence, and looked smug.