Fireweed (15 page)

I just stood there. It was getting dark, slowly, the rain blurring the margins of night and day. Suddenly one of the rescue squad, the one who had got me to drink some soup, called down to me:

‘Cheer up, mate! Don't stand there like you 'adn't enough to do!'

‘There's nothing for me to do,' I said, flatly.

‘Well, if I was you,' he said, ‘I'd get a bite to eat, and some kip, and then go and ask at the hospital about that girlfriend of yours. Or is she your sister?'

‘
Hospital?
' I said. I suppose the look on my face told him what I was thinking.

‘Cripes!' he said, as the lorry started up. ‘We oughter 'ave told 'im.' The lorry began to move. ‘She was alive, mate,' he called back to me where I stood. ‘We got her out alive!'

I began to walk, in a daze of weariness and hope, towards the nearest hospital. I remember being so tired that there was a swimming sensation in my head, and the stars appearing in the darkening sky spun like tops in my eyes. When I reached the hospital, I found I could hardly push open the revolving doors; I had to lean my whole weight against them, instead of turning them with an extended hand. Inside, in a brown lobby, a woman sat behind glass, writing.

I went and stood there, and she looked up and said, ‘Casualty entrance is at the back.' I couldn't think what she meant. She said it again. Looking vaguely around, I suddenly saw a dim reflection of myself in a glass door. I was indescribably ragged and filthy, and of course my hands were bandaged with grimy gauze.

‘Can you get there on your own?' she asked. A faint expression of concern had dawned on her face.

‘I'm not a casualty,' I managed to say. ‘I want to see someone, someone who was brought in today.'

‘Young man,' she said, dryly, ‘Whether you think you are a casualty or not, you certainly look like one to me. Nurse Hobbs!' she had called a passing nurse, and then of course, I was being marched down a corridor towards Casualty.

‘There's nothing wrong with me,' I told them. ‘I've come to see someone.'

‘Like that?' they enquired, disbelievingly. ‘No nonsense now, do what you're told.' So I sat down and had my hands unwrapped. The doctor picked up my hands, looked at the broken nails, said, ‘That's not much to write home about,' in the scornful voice of one used to dealing with better things, and handed me over to a nurse. She put clean dressings on me.

‘You look as if you badly need some sleep,' they told me. ‘We'll send you home in an ambulance.'

‘I'm bombed out,' I said.

‘To a Rest Centre, then,' they said.

‘I want to see someone before I go,' I protested, but they wouldn't have it, saying I needed sleep first, and I felt too weak to argue much, so off I went.

It was a good Rest Centre, much better than the last one we had been in. They found me a tub of hot water to clean up in, and new clothes, quite good ones really, that fitted better than the Salvation Army Mission's jacket; but it cost me a pang to see that jacket drop into the waste bin just the same. There were wire bunks to sleep in, and when I had eaten a little I lay down; just for half an hour, I thought, and then I will go and find her. But when I woke it was the next day. It was light, and I was already too late for breakfast. They kept asking me questions there, about who I was, and where I would be going, and I had to tell a pack of lies before I could get away, and set off again for that hospital.

Once more a woman sat behind glass there, writing. ‘I want to see someone who was brought in yesterday,' I said. She didn't look up, so I said it again.

‘Very well, then, who is it you want to see?' she said.

‘Julie. Julie something, but I don't know what.'

‘
That
isn't much help then, is it?' she snapped. ‘And you can't be a relative, or much of a friend if you don't even know her name.' I stood there. ‘Do you know what she was in for?' she asked.

‘She'd been buried,' I said, overcome by an awful cut-off feeling.

‘Wait a minute, and I'll look at the list,' she said. ‘No … sorry … No Julie admitted this week. She isn't here. You'd better try somewhere else. Unless … Julia Vernon-Greene, admitted with shock, broken collar bone and abrasions. Could that be it?'

I shook my head. That didn't sound right. I went out onto the street. I thought hard. Where was the nearest hospital, other than this? I walked. I had no money now, only a shilling they had found in my jacket pocket, before sending it off to be burned, so walking it had to be.

I walked all day. I succeeded in trying nine hospitals before dark, and I didn't find her. I spent my shilling on chips for supper, and I slept in the Underground, cold, blanketless, miserable and uncomfortable. In a strange way I didn't exactly mind that; I wanted to be cold and hungry till I found her. Not being with her, not knowing how she was: had become a pain as sharp as toothache somewhere in my chest, and getting cramp on draughty concrete platforms in some mysterious manner eased the inner pain.

I felt very light-headed the next day. I walked some more, asked at a few more hospitals, but not in the desperate haste that had driven me the day before. Sometime around midday I thought I would try St Thomas's, even if it was on the far side of the river. Perhaps that awful raid had filled up all the nearer hospitals, and they had taken here there … I set off towards Westminster Bridge. And on the way there, outside the gates of the Embankment Gardens, by the Temple Station, I suddenly saw Marco.

He had a little cart with him, the sort you wheel by hand, with sandwiches on it, and a vast brass samovar of tea. He was wrapped up against the cold in a shabby brown greatcoat, and he was holding out both hands, and yelling with joy at seeing me.

‘Amico! Amico!' he cried. ‘You no come, you no come at all. And then the place all go caput, and you not know where to come. You are hungry, no? I give you good food; look, you like cheese? You like cucumber? And where is Miss Julia? You tell Marco all about it.'

I shook my head. ‘She's in hospital, and I can't find her,' I said. ‘And I can't have any food, Marco, I'm afraid. I'm sorry, but I haven't any money.'

‘Did Marco ask you for the money?' he said. ‘You Marco's good friend. You eat some food now, drink some tea.' I hesitated. ‘You a good boy,' he said. ‘I know that. You never call me dirty I-tie, not like some. I can give some food for my friend, no?'

And as soon as I started to eat, I realized that the light-headed feeling was hunger; I could feel it going away with every mouthful I got into my stomach. As the hot tea got down there, I really began to feel myself again, and a thought began to form in my head. It was Marco who had reminded me – he had said, ‘Miss Julia.' Hadn't she looked a little startled to be called that, once? Could she have called herself Julie to make herself sound more ordinary, just as I had told het my name was Bill? If only I had asked her her name, or read that disc of hers properly! The disc! With her number on – of course! Her number. I knew her number!

I thanked Marco, and set off with the wind in my heels for the hospital I had first tried; I burst through the revolving door at about twenty miles an hour, and rushed up to the desk.

‘I want to see someone called Julie …' I began.

‘Oh, it's you again, is it?' The receptionist was annoyed. ‘I thought I looked, and she wasn't here.'

‘Her number,' I said. ‘I've remembered her number. Please look again.' I thought I was about to be let in, to run up those stairs, and be laughing with Julie again, and my voice bubbled with excitement.

‘Julia Vernon-Greene,' she said. ‘That was the only one it could have been, wasn't it?'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘ZKDN stroke seventy-four stroke eight.'

‘That's right,' she said. ‘That's her number.'

‘I want to see her,' I said, joyfully.

‘Sorry. No visitors.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘No visitors. It's against her name in the book. She's too ill to see anybody.'

‘But you
must
let me see her …' I was bewildered. ‘I'm the only person she knows, the only person she's got. You've got to let me see her!'

‘Are you sure?' the woman said. ‘Well, in that case, let me have your name, and then just wait here while I go and see. There's a seat there.'

I sat there. The hospital corridor was painted dark green with a brown stripe, and then cream. The reception lobby was painted all chocolate brown. Where the two schemes met there was an extra dark green line.

Then, just down the corridor, I heard voices breaking the antiseptic hush. The reception nurse was talking to another nurse, an important-looking nurse, with a tall starched cap, and a starch-stiff face.

‘He says he's the only person in London that she knows. In that case, could he see her?'

‘Nonsense!' she said, sharply, loudly, making sure I could hear. ‘Julia Vernon-Greene's family have been traced. Her mother is here now. She is far too ill to receive visitors other than her family, and there is no need for any outsider to be concerned.'

The receptionist was coming back. ‘Sorry, son,' she said, ‘but no!'

By then, so much saying she was too ill, had made a worse fear overwhelm me; perhaps she was dying … perhaps the falling house had done awful things to her, broken her …

‘How ill is she, really?' I asked, in a hoarse voice. My voice was thick with tears. I couldn't help it, there I was, crying. In theory crying isn't so bad – a way of expressing deep feelings. But when one is really doing it, it's all the things that go with it that make one ashamed – having a wet nose, and a shake in one's voice, and a smeary feeling on burning cheeks.

The receptionist's face swam above me. ‘It's shock. She badly needs a rest, and she doesn't quite know where she is, just now, but it's nothing serious, it will wear off in a day or two,' she was saying.

I recovered my self-control. ‘Look when it does wear off, she'll want to see me; I know she will.'

‘Well, now,' she said, not unkindly, ‘Why don't you come back at visiting time tonight? You leave your name, and as soon as she's well enough, I'll see that she's asked if she wants to see you.'

‘I'll wait,' I said.

‘It's a long time,' she said. ‘It's only half past three. But I suppose that's all right, as long as you keep out of the way.'

So I waited. All that day. Nurses walked by me, and doctors in white coats. Once a patient was wheeled by on a trolley. Most of them glanced at me as they passed. I stared at them – a change from facing with vacant eyes the borders of the areas of paint. Sometime around five there was an air-raid warning outside. The receptionist reached up – took off her white cap, and put on a tin hat instead. ‘Time crawled on. About an hour after the air-raid warning an ambulance, ringing wildly, drew into the yards outside; nurses and doctors ran; their feet clattering grotesquely loudly down quiet corridors. A trolley loaded with bottles and kidney-shaped trays was wheeled past me at a run. One of its wheels squeaked. Then more time, more looking at paint.

Visitors began to arrive. After hours of looking at white-aproned, white-coated people moving in drab-painted places, the visitors struck me as very coloured. Their clothes seemed garish, like the middle pages of a comic. And the quiet of the place had not yet reached them, so they talked to each other, quite loudly. They brought grapes in cellophane wrappings, and bunches of flowers, and books. They were let in to see their friends. It occurred to me that anyone of them might be Julie's family, being let in to see
her
. Hating them, I lowered my eyes and glowered at my boots as they passed me.

Considering what they had been through, my boots were in quite good shape. They hadn't let in water yet; the Dubbin had been worth it. Dimly it occurred to me to wonder if Mrs Williams had been worried about me; not that she could have cared much. It couldn't be anything like worrying about Julie was for me. Even so I felt a tenderness for any feeling like that, however pale a shadow of my own. When I had seen Julie, I would send Mrs Williams a postcard.

A bell rang; visiting time was over. People trooped out. The nurse said to me, ‘Go home now. You'll have to go now. Try again tomorrow.' I got up, stiff with sitting so long, and went out. It was dark outside, and cold. I went to find a shelter to sleep in.

I slept so little that night, was so cold and so lonely, that I came up again into the streets, very early, and walked about in the grey light, hoping that walking would thaw my cramped limbs. There had been more bombing in the night. I remember seeing the usual mess and chaos, but though I saw I hardly noticed. I climbed up Hungerford Bridge, and stood on the footbridge, looking down over the Embankment, seeing the grey road under a grey sky, seeing grey water through the branches of bare black trees. The cold dawn in the east was casting a cold light, and the tram-lines below me shone sleekly in the tarmac. I wondered what I would do. I wondered where she would be; where they would take her. I thought the paper said there would be no more boats to Canada, but unless she was going to stay in London, things could well be nearly as bad. I would have to go and get my cart, and do some work again, sometime … no, I hadn't the heart for that; as soon as I thought about it, I knew I couldn't do it without her to do it for. I'd have to find my aunt. Or perhaps Julie would think of something. Perhaps she'd run away again, and come and join me.

At nine I went back to my seat in the hospital corridor. Time crawled. A uniformed delivery boy came in with a huge bunch of flowers, and said, ‘Miss Vernon-Greene'. I watched them intently, out of the corner of my eye, pretending not to notice. After a while a porter came by, and the receptionist pointed to them, and said, ‘Room Nine'. He picked up the flowers and went off. She wasn't looking at me. I got up, and slipped along the passage. I looked at the notices at the foot of the flights of stairs. ‘Wards one to five' ‘Wards five to nine'. Up I went. Up three flights. Turn right, my heart in my mouth, in case someone stopped me … I opened the door. The ward was wrecked. The roof had been blown off, the beds were broken and twisted, debris was spread across the floor, and broken glass and furniture. A piece of roof tarpaulin over the hole in the ceiling flapped in the wind. There was no nobody there. I climbed slowly down the stairs. Hadn't she said Ward Nine?