Home Front Girls (46 page)

‘I reckon there’s more chance of a wheelchair crash in this mob than being bombed,’ he half joked. ‘I’d much sooner take my chances on the ward with the blokes that can’t be moved.’

‘Well, that’s just too bad, because you’re going whether you want to or not,’ Annabelle told him bossily. How could she tell him that a lot of the men who were left on the wards were too critically ill to be moved and were not likely to make it anyway? For some of them, death would be a blessing and a liberation.

Joel grinned. She was a tough little bird when she wanted to be, there was no doubt about it. In fact, sometimes it was hard to believe that she was the same girl he had met back home in Coventry. Then all she had seemed to care about was what she wore and enjoying herself, and he wondered what had brought about this transformation? Perhaps it was the nursing that had changed her. Whatever it was, he thought the change was for the better – not that they could ever be more than friends, he thought regretfully. Once the war was over she would go back to her privileged lifestyle whilst he . . . What could he do now with this gammy leg? He would be very restricted in what jobs he could take on. Driving would be out of the question for a start-off. And then there was Lucy. She needed him, and after what they had been through together, he could never think of leaving her alone. He sat back in the chair and depression settled about him like a cloak.

‘Oh Lawdy, not again.’ Mrs P sighed as the sound of the siren sliced through her fragile sleep. Then digging poor Fred in the ribs she ordered, ‘Come on, luvvie. Looks like it’s the shelter again tonight fer us lot.’

A mumbled groan sounded as Fred tried to pull the blankets over his head but his wife was having none of it. She whipped them off him.

‘You go an’ get young Lucy an’ Harry, an’ I’ll stay here an’ take me chances,’ he muttered, groping for the eiderdown.

‘Then I’ll stay an’ all,’ she said stubbornly as she leaned back against the headboard and crossed her arms across her plump chest, which made him pull himself up onto his elbow. It was one thing risking his own life, but quite another to risk his old girl’s. Clambering out of bed he pulled his trousers on over his long johns, then snapping his braces into place he told her resignedly, ‘Come on then. But I hope you’ve put some extra blankets in that bloody shelter. It were freezin’ in there t’other night.’

‘Happen bein’ freezin’ is better than bein’ dead,’ she told him perfunctorily and he followed her from the bedroom as meekly as a lamb, knowing that she was quite right.

‘You give Lucy a knock while I go in an’ light the candles,’ she told him once they were in the yard. It was bitingly cold and he nodded as she hurried towards the shelter.

Lucy joined them five minutes later, just as the drone of the enemy planes reached them.

They glanced at each other in the dancing flames from the candles, each wondering if this would be their time to die.

It was the early hours of the morning before they emerged, feeling dazed and disorientated. It had been a particularly bad raid again, and at one point the very ground beneath them had shaken and Mrs P had started to pray, sure that the time to meet her maker had come.

Again they saw that the sky above their city was as bright as daylight from the many fires that were burning, and fire engines and Army troops in jeeps were rushing to the worst-affected areas.

‘Looks like there’ll be a few more graves to be dug in London Road Cemetery,’ Mrs P said bleakly. ‘Come on, we may as well go an’ have a cuppa – if they ain’t hit the water mains again, that is.’

In London, Dotty was very happy getting used to being Mrs Brabinger and living in newly wedded bliss with Robert. It was just a week now until the release of her first novel,
War-Torn Lovers,
and she was very excited about it. She was now also happily working part-time in the
Woman’s Heart
office and still producing her short stories for them on a monthly basis. Sometimes she wished that there were a few more hours in each day.

‘You’re doing far too much,’ Robert would scold her. ‘There’s really no need for you to work, Dotty. It isn’t as if we need the money.’

But she would simply smile and tell him that she enjoyed it, which she did.

At breakfast this morning she was delighted to find that there was a letter from Annabelle and one from Lucy in the post. She quickly read them as Robert put a tiny bit of marge on his toast and poured the tea. It still gave her a thrill to see the name
Mrs Brabinger
on the ones that were addressed to her.

‘What do they have to say?’ Robert asked.

‘Well, Annabelle sounds OK. She says Joel is well on the way to recovery now,’ she confided, ‘Between you and me, I think she and Joel have a little spark between them, although they haven’t admitted it yet.’

‘I dare say they will when the time is right, if they’re anything like we were,’ he answered with a grin. ‘And what does Lucy have to say?’

Dotty glanced at the other letter again. ‘Not a lot really. But then she never does just lately. She just hasn’t been the same since she lost her mother and Mary. She seems to have sort of gone into herself, if you know what I mean?’

‘Time is a great healer,’ Robert answered as he scraped some marmalade onto his toast.

Dotty nodded, hoping that he was right, then lifting the last letter she frowned. ‘It’s from the solicitors,’ she told her husband as she slit it open with the end of her teaspoon. Then as she scanned the page, she went on, ‘He’s asking when I’m next visiting Coventry as he would like to see me on a personal matter. What do you think that might be?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Robert replied. ‘But perhaps he has some papers or something for you to sign?’

Dotty shook her head. ‘I doubt it. I think I’ve done all that part of it now, and he does say it’s personal.’

‘Well, you were hoping to go back to Coventry in the next couple of weeks for a visit anyway, weren’t you? You could perhaps call and see him then.’

‘I will,’ Dotty agreed, and then there was a mad scramble as the couple got ready for the office.

‘Young Lucy is worrying me,’ Mrs P remarked a few days later as she got Fred’s snap tin loaded for work. He’d enjoy his dinner today; cold tongue and mustard was one of his favourites. ‘She just seems to have gone into herself, don’t she?’

‘I suppose she is a bit quiet,’ Fred agreed as he wound his scarf around his neck. ‘But then everyone is out of sorts at present. Seems the whole bloody world is at war now. There’s the Japs, the Italians, the poor bloody Jews . . . they’re all involved now an’ still there’s no end in sight. I’ll forget what me kids look like at this rate,’ he added gloomily.

Mrs P glanced towards the photographs on the sideboard and her eyes filled with tears. ‘An’ they’ll be shootin’ up an’ all,’ she said in a wobbly voice. ‘Happen nothin’ will fit our Barry an’ Beryl by the time they come home.’ She and Fred had written to tell them that their elder brother had died bravely in combat, and to think of him as a hero. But oh, how Gladys Price had longed to comfort her little ones in person!

‘That’s the least of us worries, so long as they do come ’ome safe an’ sound,’ Fred retorted, and then after planting a hasty kiss on his wife’s cheek, he snatched up his snap tin, went out into the yard to collect his bicycle and pedalled off for work.

Alone with her thoughts, Mrs P pondered about Lucy, who had just collected Harry after working a night shift. It was hard to get more than two words out of the girl nowadays, and she seemed to have lost all her vitality and sense of humour. Admittedly, Lucy had always been very guarded when it came to discussing anything about her family life, but things were going from bad to worse. Still, Mrs P thought optimistically, the girl had mentioned that Dotty and Annabelle were coming home for a visit the following week, so happen that would cheer her up a bit. Humming ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, she shook out her duster then and began to polish her children’s photographs, just as she did every single day. It was as close as she could get to them for now, and the way she saw it, that contact was better than nothing.

‘So what made you become a VAD then?’ Joel asked one day as Annabelle plumped up his pillows and straightened his blanket ready for Madam’s inspection. ‘What I mean is, you lot seem to get all the dirty work to do, what with emptying bedpans, washing smelly bandages and cleaning. Wouldn’t you have preferred to become a State Registered Nurse?’

‘I have thought about doing that once the war is over,’ Annabelle replied, ‘but when Owen Owen was bombed I needed to get a job fairly quickly so I became a VAD instead. After all, someone has to do the dirty jobs, don’t they? I was helping out in the operating theatres, but I don’t mind being back on the wards. As Madam always tells us, keeping the patients happy and the wards clean is as important as the job the trained nurses do.’

‘I suppose it is when you put it like that, but I still never pictured you doing something like this. You always seemed so . . .’ He tried to find a tactful way of saying what he was thinking, but Annabelle actually finished his sentence for him.

‘I always seemed so self-centred and spoiled? Is that what you were going to say?’

‘No, no of course I wasn’t,’ he muttered hurriedly.

‘Well, looking back, I was,’ she told him calmly.

‘So . . . what happened to change you?’

Annabelle straightened and eyed him thoughtfully, wondering if she could confide in him. The secret her grandmother had let slip had been festering like a boil inside her and it would be nice to speak to someone about it. But now wasn’t the time, not with Madam’s ward inspection imminent. ‘I’ll tell you another time,’ she said, then collecting the dirty sheets she had just changed she walked briskly away, leaving Joel to stare after her.

As Madam was leaving the ward, she stopped Annabelle, who was entering the sluice room, to tell her, ‘I’d like to see you in my office, Smythe. Shall we say about two o’clock after you’ve had your lunch?’

Annabelle’s heart skipped a beat as she tried to think of what she had done wrong, but she nodded politely. ‘Certainly, Madam.’

The woman walked away with the doctors as Annabelle chewed on her lip. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of a single thing that might have annoyed the woman . . . but as worrying about it wasn’t going to get the rest of her jobs done, she hastened away and got on with things. VADs were famous for being good at that. They had to be.

‘So, Smythe, the Ward Sister has spoken very highly of you,’ Madam told Annabelle as she stood before her desk a few hours later. Annabelle still felt apprehensive, but at least the woman’s opening words had sounded hopeful. Perhaps she wasn’t in trouble, after all?

‘As you know, I don’t usually encourage friendships between staff and patients, but the Ward Sister has informed me that your company seems to act like a tonic for young Mr Ford, which is why I have let you stay on that ward.’

Annabelle shifted uneasily from foot to foot but remained tight-lipped as the older woman went on, ‘Because Mr Ford is so much improved now, we are thinking of transferring him to a convalescent home sometime next week. We desperately need the beds and find that patients tend to recuperate much better when their relatives can visit. However, I understand that Mr Ford has recently lost two members of his family and so I hoped that you would be able to tell me if there is anyone left to visit and care for him when he is eventually discharged?’

‘Oh yes, there is,’ Annabelle told her. ‘My friend, Lucy, is Joel – Mr Ford’s sister. They share a house in Coventry.’

‘And do you think she would be capable of caring for him? I’m afraid his leg is still very fragile and it may be some long time before he can get about on it properly again, even after he leaves the convalescent home.’

‘I’m sure Lucy would cope. In fact, I know she’d be delighted to have him home. He is all she has left in the way of family now.’

‘In that case I shall arrange a transfer just as soon as I can. Thank you, Smythe.’ Annabelle smiled and turned to go, but Madam stopped her then when she added sternly, ‘And Smythe, whilst I accept a friendship, I would frown on a romance. Do you understand what I am saying?’

‘Yes, I understand, Madam,’ the girl said quietly. ‘And I assure you there is nothing between Mr Ford and myself other than friendship.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it. It just wouldn’t do to go setting a precedent for the other girls, would it?’

Annabelle’s chin set as she marched back to the ward. It was commonly known that the patients flirted outrageously with the nurses and most of the girls could give as good as they got. Annabelle had even heard of the odd romance or two that had flared up. But she could understand why Madam insisted on that rule. Not that there was anything to worry about with her and Joel. He had never behaved as anything other than a perfect gentleman, and even if he had – what good would it have done? Who would ever want her now when they discovered that she didn’t even know who her birth mother was? Shaking her head, she went off to resume her duties. She had learned the hard way that there was no sense in wallowing in self-pity. She just had to make the best of things now.

The Ward Sister was waiting for Annabelle when she got back onto the ward and without preamble she told her, ‘I’d like you to go and sit with young Private Reed in the side ward if you wouldn’t mind, Smythe.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘He’s deteriorating rapidly now and there’s nothing more that we can do for him, poor soul. But at least somebody can be there to hold his hand at the end. That’s the least we can do for him, isn’t it? No one should face death alone. His name is Johnny, by the way.’