A Nightingale Christmas Wish (35 page)

‘They put up with me before.’

‘Only because you had your cousin to look out for you. Everyone kept away from you out of respect for Charlie. But now he’s gone . . .’

‘So you ain’t going to give me a job, is that it?’ Christopher’s voice was thick and slurred.

‘I can’t, son. Why don’t you stick to the merchant ships? You got a good thing going there.’ Chris must have made some reply she couldn’t hear, because Uncle Harry sighed and said, ‘Suit yourself, mate. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

Helen stood in the darkness, hugging herself, not sure what to do. She didn’t want to walk back into the kitchen because then they’d know she’d been eavesdropping. But she couldn’t stand out in the yard all night either.

While she was still trying to make up her mind, the back door opened wider and Chris stumbled out. Helen watched him lighting up a cigarette. The flare of the match briefly illuminated his handsome features.

He looked up sharply as she stepped forward out of the shadows.

‘Helen! Jesus, you gave me a fright!’ He clutched his heart. ‘What you doing out here?’

‘Just getting some air.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘It’s a lovely night, isn’t it? So warm. And did you ever see so many stars?’

‘I ain’t looking at the stars.’ He put the cigarette down on an upturned bucket and came over to her. ‘I’m glad I’ve got the chance to be alone with you at last. I’ve missed you, Helen.’

‘I’ve missed you, too,’ she said.

‘Come here and show me how much.’ He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. His mouth tasted of beer and cigarettes as he kissed her hungrily.

Helen pulled away, laughing nervously. ‘Stop it! Someone might see.’

‘I don’t care.’ His eyes glittered in the moonlight. ‘I want you, Helen. I’ve thought about nothing else since I’ve been away.’ He moved closer to her, his face brushing hers. ‘I want us to find somewhere, just the two of us. So I can show you how much I love you.’

A nice little B and B
. Penny Willard’s knowing comment popped into her mind.

‘I thought we were going to wait?’ Helen said.

‘I can’t.’ His voice was hoarse with longing. ‘Jesus, Helen, I’ve been away at sea for weeks. You can’t make me wait any more, it wouldn’t be fair!’

As he moved in to kiss her again, there was nothing gentle or sensuous about it. It was as if he wanted to possess her, to prove she was his.

Helen put up her hands to ward him off, pushing against the solid wall of his chest. ‘Stop it, Chris. I mean it,’ she said.

‘You can’t keep me at arms’ length for ever,’ he whispered. ‘Charlie might have had the patience of a saint but I’m just a man—’

The mention of Charlie’s name was like a bucket of cold water over her, shocking her to her senses.

‘Don’t,’ she snapped, pushing away his hand. Christopher lost his balance and staggered backwards, kicking over the upturned bucket.

‘I was only joking!’ he protested.

‘I don’t care. Don’t ever talk about Charlie like that.’

‘Oh, no, we can’t have that, can we? Can’t ever take the name of blessed Saint Charlie in vain.’ Chris’s face twisted, becoming ugly with malice.

‘What’s going on out here?’ Nellie Dawson appeared in the doorway, peering out into the darkness.

‘Nothing, Auntie,’ Christopher called back, his eyes still fixed coldly on Helen. ‘Nothing going on at all.’

The following morning Christopher turned up at the sisters’ home, bearing a huge bunch of flowers and with a remorseful expression on his face.

‘Helen, I’m sorry, I dunno what came over me, I really don’t. It was the drink talking, that’s all. You know I’d never force you to do anything you didn’t want to do – I love you, you know that. You do understand that, don’t you, Helen?’ he pleaded. ‘And as for all that stuff about Charlie – I’d never say a bad word against him, honest to God. I loved him like a brother, I did. And if I ever thought I’d done anything to hurt him or you—’

‘I’m sorry, too,’ Helen said. ‘You’re right, it’s unfair of me to make you wait.’

‘But I don’t mind,’ he assured her quickly. ‘I’ll wait for ever if it’s what you want. I just want us to be happy, Helen,’ he pleaded.

‘So do I,’ she said. And so she forgave him, because after a sleepless night facing the prospect of being lonely again, forgiving Chris seemed like the best thing to do. ‘I just want to be happy, too,’ she said.

‘Come here and give us a cuddle, then.’

And so she let him take her in his arms, and they held on to each other fiercely. And Helen fought off the terrible feeling that she was clinging on not to the man she loved, but to a lifebelt in a sea of loneliness.

‘
THE COAST IS
clear, Kath – fancy a cuppa?’

Kathleen looked up with a smile as Vera stuck her head round the door. She was joined by Cissy, who’d been admitted two weeks earlier after an ectopic pregnancy.

‘Are you sure Sister isn’t about?’ asked Kathleen, throwing back the bedclothes.

‘She’s gone off to her sitting room to read her magazines. We won’t see her for the rest of the afternoon with any luck!’

Kathleen slid her feet into her slippers, shrugged on her dressing gown and followed the two women to the main ward. After nearly three weeks, they still had no idea who she was, and Kathleen preferred to keep it that way. Once they knew she was Matron, they might treat her differently, and she didn’t want that. She enjoyed being one of the girls too much.

As she made her way up the ward, Kathleen caught the eye of Jess Jago, one of the students. She gave her a conspiratorial smile and hurried off to the sluice. Even the young nurses seemed to have forgotten she was Matron. Without her black armour and starched headdress, she was just another woman.

She’d fallen into a comfortable routine with the other patients. Once Sister Wren had gone off to put her feet up, all the women who were well enough would gather together, either in Kathleen’s room or around one of the other women’s beds, to drink tea, smoke and gossip. Sometimes they flicked through magazines, sometimes they sewed or knitted. They would comfort each other when they were feeling homesick or they’d had bad news, or give vent if Sister Wren had upset them. But most of the time they found something to laugh about.

Kathleen had learned far more about the women and their lives that she would ever have found out on one of her ward rounds. She discovered that Cissy was married to a coalman, had two young children and lived in Whitechapel. She found out that Vera had had her first baby at sixteen, and almost one a year since then. Ten of them had survived, three had been stillborn and one had died of diphtheria at five years old. She also found out that mousy Mrs Grange, who spent most of her day murmuring over her rosary beads, had been caught by her husband having relations with the milkman.

‘You wouldn’t credit it, would you?’ Vera had whispered. ‘It’s always the quiet ones, ain’t it?’

‘Some people will do anything for an extra pint,’ Cissy grumbled, then looked around at them blankly when they all cried with laughter.

As she got to know them better, Kathleen was constantly amazed by their resilience. Their lives seemed to be a constant struggle to overcome poverty and to keep their families safe and well. And yet they faced death, disease and everything else life threw at them with smiles on their faces.

But today, as they gathered around Elsie Watson’s bed, the conversation turned to the war.

‘My son’s talking about joining up,’ Elsie said mournfully. ‘He reckons if he gets in now he’ll be able to choose where he goes, instead of waiting to be told when he’s called up.’

‘My husband’s the same,’ Cissy sighed. ‘He wants to go in the Navy. Dunno why, he gets sick on the boating lake in Victoria Park! I don’t want him to go. I dunno how I’ll cope with two kiddies on my own.’

‘I wish my old man had bloody well joined up years ago, then maybe I wouldn’t have kept having kids!’ Vera said.

‘It’s frightening, though, ain’t it?’ Elsie said, when they’d stopped laughing. ‘Seeing ’em go off like that. Not knowing what’ll happen to ’em, whether they’ll come back safe.’ Her voice was thick with emotion. ‘No mother wants that for her son.’

‘If this war is as bad as they reckon, there might not be anything to come back to,’ another woman, Pauline Farrell, joined in, taking a drag on her cigarette.

‘What about you, Kath?’ Cissy turned to her. ‘You got any loved ones signing up?’

Kathleen shook her head. ‘My father and brother were both killed in the last lot.’

‘Mine too,’ Vera said. ‘It’s a bloody business, ain’t it? Hardly seems fair. They all reckoned it was never going to happen again, and now look at us. At it again. Bloody men never learn.’

Cissy shuddered. ‘It’s all change, ain’t it? I don’t like change.’

‘Who does?’ Elsie said. ‘It’s horrible, not knowing where we’ll be this time next year, or even if we’ll be here at all.’

A glum silence fell around the bed. Kathleen considered her own future, too. After sleepwalking through the past few months worrying about her illness, she’d finally woken up to the upheaval going on around her.

Only that morning she’d had a frosty visit from Miss Hanley to tell her that one of the midwives in Maternity had given notice. When Kathleen had mentioned advertising for her replacement, Miss Hanley had said, ‘Surely that won’t be necessary, since Maternity will be one of the wards closing down?’ There had been a reproachful look in her eye when she’d said it.

Now Kathleen looked around at the women on her ward and wondered where on earth they would have their babies in future.

‘Still,’ Vera said cheerfully, ‘we know some things won’t change.’

‘Like your old man?’ Cissy laughed.

‘True,’ Vera agreed ruefully. ‘I expect I’ll be in here this time next year, ready to drop another.’

‘I thought you were going to have it all taken away?’

‘You don’t know my husband.’ Vera blew a stream of smoke out of the corner of her mouth. ‘He only has to look at me and I cop for a kid. I reckon I could get pregnant without anything there.’

‘You’re a bleeding medical miracle, Vee!’ Cissy said.

They laughed. Only Kathleen was silent.

‘You all right, Kath?’ Vera asked.

‘Yes, I’m fine. Just thinking, that’s all.’

‘You don’t want to take any notice of this lot.’ Vera grinned at her. ‘They’re all doom and gloom, but they don’t mean it. Nothing’s going to change around here. This time next year we’ll all still be here, large as life and twice as ugly!’

Kathleen watched Vera as she took another deep drag of her cigarette. If only that were true, she thought.

IT WAS BARELY
ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, but already another stiflingly hot day. The sun beat down from a brilliant, cloudless sky on the crowd gathered around Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park to listen to the leader of the Peace Society.

Frannie fanned herself with the pamphlets she was clutching, and longed for some cooling shade. She could feel the sun scorching her skin in spite of the straw hat she wore.

But it wasn’t just the heat that was making her feel uncomfortable. The Sunday-morning occasion in Hyde Park was usually a good-natured affair, but today the crowd was growing restless. They were heckling more than usual, Frannie noticed, drowning out the speaker with their booing and catcalls.

‘Nazi lover!’

‘Get back to Berlin where you belong!’

‘You lot are worse than Mosley’s bunch!’

Frannie didn’t blame them for being hostile. Although she was there to support them, even she didn’t agree with the message of the Peace Society any more.

‘All I’m saying is that if Hitler is allowed free rein there will be no need for war,’ the man on the soapbox was saying, his voice almost drowned out by the jeering around him.

‘Let him take over Europe and then he’ll leave us alone, is that what you’re saying?’ someone shouted.

‘If it’s the choice between war and being left in peace—’

The crowd started jostling around Frannie, knocking her sideways. One man in the crowd shoved another, and the next minute a fight had broken out. As the fists flew, Frannie stepped in to try to sort it out.

‘Stop it,’ she begged. ‘There’s no need for this . . .’ Then a flailing fist caught her in the side of the head and sent her spinning to the ground.

‘Get out of the way! Let me through, damn you!’ a loud voice, full of authority, shouted from the back of the crowd. As she lay sprawled on the grass, Frannie was suddenly aware of the crowd parting around her. A man in uniform appeared above her, blocking out the sun.

‘Frannie? Are you all right?’

She squinted up at him. ‘John?’

Strong hands grasped her, lifting her to her feet. ‘For pity’s sake, give her some air!’ he barked at the crowd, who immediately backed away. John turned to her, his green eyes full of concern. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Only my pride.’ She brushed dust off her skirt and looked around her. ‘And I’ve lost my hat.’

‘Here.’ He picked it up off the ground, dusted it down and gave it to her. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? You’re very flushed.’

‘It’s just the heat.’

‘Come on, let’s get you out of here.’ Taking her elbow, he steered Frannie through the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea before them.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, then couldn’t resist adding ruefully, ‘You surely haven’t come to listen to the Peace Society?’

‘Hardly.’ He looked contemptuous. ‘I came to find you. I went to the hospital but they said it was your day off. I had a feeling you’d be here.’

They had left the crowd far behind and were in a more peaceful part of the park, surrounded by fragrant rose bushes. Couples wandered by arm in arm, and in the distance Frannie could hear the clopping of horses’ hooves.

‘I’ve stayed away for as long as I could, but I needed to see you, to explain. Please, Frannie, may we talk?’ he asked.

Frannie looked up into his imploring face. She wasn’t surprised to see him. She’d been half expecting him since the day she’d left him at the railway station in Essex.

She nodded. ‘I suppose so.’ Much as she hated to admit it to herself, she had missed him. And now time had abated some of her anger, she was ready to listen to what he had to say.