Mts P's answer was drowned by what sounded like a plane skimming our roof. Instantly, the worst hell of that, or any other night, for me that summer, was let loose. Impossible to differentiate between ack-ack shells, traces, aircraft engines and explosions, but we all heard the whistle of one falling bomb. Every instinct I possessed demanded that I dived under Mrs N's labour bed, but her baby's whole head had shot out and with the bomb's explosion he catapulted from the virgina into my hands trailing a long blue veined cord. He was covered in grease and and so furiously flaying the air with minute arms that I was too busy trying not to drop him to be more than semi- conscious that medicine and lotion bottles, metal kidney dishes, enamel bowls, jugs and blackout screens were dropping around us.
Sister dodged back from the other bed to tie the baby boy's cord in two places and cut between the ties. He lay on the bed in the curve of his mother's legs, bellowing with more strength than I had ever heard from a new born baby. Sister told me to wrap him in towels and blankets, tie round his wrists the waiting name tap, put him in the waiting cot. "Then get that large kidney dish in position for the placenta.' She shouted, but not as loudly as before. 'You've got a son, Mrs N, with good lungs. Just the afterbirth, dear!' She noticed the blackout screens. 'Andrews! Get those screens up, fast! I must have the lights on.'
Two screens needed replacing. A third had been blown out of its frame and torn in half. I stuck it together with rolls of three-inch adhesive strapping, and then noticed the raid over. The guns were firing spasmodically and the sound of engines had gone. I looked properly at the patients faces for the first time. Mrs P had her baby in he arms, her eyes closed, and looked exhausted. Mrs N did not even look tired. She was smiling to herself but breathing as if she had been running hard. Sister told me to go back to my shelter family. 'I can cope here, thanks.' She held the baby boy, and as I left the labour ward I saw her put him in Mrs N's arms, 'Meet your son, my dear,' she said.'
Lucilla Andrews No Time For Romance Corgi Books price £7.99 pages 154-156.
Mrs Andrews' daughter, Veronica (who will be known as a formidable Labour Party press officer by some readers) was a guest at our wedding held a City Road Methodist Church where we will read this extract during our Remembrance Service this morning.
