Читаем Winter of the World полностью

She sat in a school classroom, drinking sweet English tea out of a cup with no saucer. She wore a steel helmet and rubber boots. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and she was still weary from the night before.

She was part of the Aldgate district Air Raid Precautions sector. Theoretically, she worked an eight-hour shift followed by eight hours on standby and eight hours off duty. In practice, she worked as long as the air raid continued and there were wounded people to be driven to hospital.

London was bombed every single night of October 1940.

Daisy always worked with one other woman, the driver’s attendant, and four men forming a first-aid party. Their headquarters was in a school, and now they were sitting at the children’s desks, waiting for the planes to come and the sirens to wail and the bombs to fall.

The ambulance she drove was a converted American Buick. They also had a normal car and driver to transport what they called sitting cases – injured people who could nevertheless sit upright without assistance while being transported to hospital.

Her attendant was Naomi Avery, an attractive blonde Cockney who liked men and enjoyed the camaraderie of the team. Now she bantered with the post warden, Nobby Clarke, a retired policeman. ‘The Chief Warden is a man,’ she said. ‘The District Warden is a man. You’re a man.’

‘I hope so,’ Nobby said, and the others chuckled.

‘There are plenty of women in ARP,’ Naomi went on. ‘How come none of them are officials?’

The men laughed. A bald man with a big nose called Gorgeous George said: ‘Here we go, women’s rights again.’ He had a misogynist streak.

Daisy joined in. ‘You don’t really think all you men are smarter than all of us women, do you?’

Nobby said: ‘Matter of fact, there are some women senior wardens.’

‘I’ve never met one,’ said Naomi.

‘It’s tradition, isn’t it,’ Nobby said. ‘Women have always been home-makers.’

‘Like Catherine the Great of Russia,’ Daisy said sarcastically.

Naomi put in: ‘Or Queen Elizabeth of England.’

‘Amelia Earhart.’

‘Jane Austen.’

‘Marie Curie, the only scientist ever to win the Nobel Prize twice.’

‘Catherine the Great?’ said Gorgeous George. ‘Isn’t there a story about her and her horse?’

‘Now, now, ladies present,’ said Nobby in a tone of reproof. ‘Anyway, I can answer Daisy’s question,’ he went on.

Daisy, willing to be his foil, said: ‘Go on, then.’

‘I grant you that some women may be just as clever as a man,’ he said with the air of one who makes a remarkably generous concession. ‘But there is one very good reason why almost all ARP officials are men, nevertheless.’

‘And what would that reason be, Nobby?’

‘It’s very simple. Men won’t take orders from a woman.’ He sat back with a triumphant expression, confident that he had won the argument.

The irony was that when the bombs were falling, and they were digging through the rubble to rescue the injured, they were equals. There was no hierarchy then. If Daisy shouted at Nobby to pick up the other end of a roof beam he would do it without demur.

Daisy loved these men, even George. They would give their lives for her, and she for them.

She heard a low hooting sound outside. Slowly it rose in pitch until it became the tiresomely familiar siren of an air raid warning. Seconds later there was the boom of a distant explosion. The warning was often late; sometimes it sounded after the first bombs had fallen.

The phone rang and Nobby picked it up.

They all stood up. George said wearily: ‘Don’t the Germans ever take a ruddy day off ?’

Nobby put the phone down and said: ‘Nutley Street.’

‘I know where that is,’ said Naomi as they all hurried out. ‘Our MP lives there.’

They jumped into the cars. As Daisy put the ambulance in gear and drove off, Naomi, sitting beside her, said: ‘Happy days.’

Naomi was being ironic but, strangely, Daisy was happy. It was very odd, she thought as she careered around a bend. Every night she saw destruction, tragic bereavement, and horribly maimed bodies. There was a good chance she herself would die in a blazing building tonight. Yet she felt wonderful. She was working and suffering for a cause, and, paradoxically, that was better than pleasing herself. She was part of a group that would risk everything to help others, and it was the best feeling in the world.

Daisy did not hate the Germans for trying to kill her. She had been told by her father-in-law, Earl Fitzherbert, why they were bombing London. Until August the Luftwaffe had raided only ports and airfields. Fitz had explained, in an unusually candid moment, that the British were not so scrupulous: the government had approved bombing of targets in German cities back in May, and all through June and July the RAF had dropped bombs on women and children in their homes. The German public had been enraged by this and demanded retaliation. The Blitz was the result.

Перейти на страницу:

Все книги серии Century Trilogy

Fall of Giants
Fall of Giants

Follett takes you to a time long past with brio and razor-sharp storytelling. An epic tale in which you will lose yourself."– The Denver Post on World Without EndKen Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep, beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics as "well-researched, beautifully detailed [with] a terrifically compelling plot" (The Washington Post) and "wonderful history wrapped around a gripping story" (St. Louis Post- Dispatch)Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families-American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh-as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man's world in the Welsh mining pits…Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson's White House…two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution…Billy's sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German embassy in London…These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from Washington to St. Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty. As always with Ken Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. It is destined to be a new classic.In future volumes of The Century Trilogy, subsequent generations of the same families will travel through the great events of the rest of the twentieth century, changing themselves-and the century itself. With passion and the hand of a master, Follett brings us into a world we thought we knew, but now will never seem the same again.

Кен Фоллетт

Историческая проза

Похожие книги