London Pride (55 page)

Peggy was so relieved that her legs gave way under her and she had to sit down quickly on the bedside chair or she would have fallen over.

‘She's all right,' she said. ‘Oh thank God!'

‘She's just come down from theatre,' the Sister told her, ‘but she's as well as can be expected in the circumstances.'

Peggy looked at the cradle over her mother's legs and nodded to show that she understood, but she was so stunned with relief she missed the warning tone in the Sister's voice.

‘Could I stay with her till she comes round?' Peggy asked.

‘It could be quite a long time.'

‘I don't mind. I'm not on duty till eight tomorrow morning.'

So she sat by the bed in the groaning darkness and waited. At a little after ten o'clock the all-clear sounded, and around midnight the ward lights came on again to an audible sigh of relief from the nurses. And as if the light was a signal Flossie stirred and opened her eyes.

‘That you, Peg?' she said thickly. ‘Where am I, gel?'

‘In hospital,' Peggy said. ‘You're all right.'

‘Thought I was at the pictures,' Flossie said. And slept again.

The second time she woke she sipped a little water and complained that the light was hurting her eyes. The third time was at six o'clock and by then Peggy was beginning to think she ought to go home.

‘You been here all night?' Flossie said.

‘Yes.'

‘I've been here all night then.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll get up presently and fix that stove,' Flossie said. ‘It's ever so cold in here. Fancy being here all night. What is the world coming to? I'll have a little nap and then I'll get up.'

‘I'll come in and see you tonight,' Peggy promised, as Flossie closed her eyes.

‘Um.'

It was cold and slightly foggy out in the street and the red light was still casting an eerie patina over the bomb site. But the bodies were gone and so were the rescue teams and the street was silent and empty.

Her bicycle was still where she'd left it the night before, so she pedalled wearily home. Now she realized that her neck was aching and her feet were sore and her eyes were smarting with smoke and unshed tears. So as there was no one to see her she cried all the way home.

Baby was still fast asleep in her bed on the kitchen floor and she stirred and grumbled when Peggy came in.

‘What's a' time?'

‘Quarter to seven,' Peggy said. ‘Get up, Baby, I've got something to tell you.'

‘Tell away,' Baby said easily, staying where she was.

‘Mum's in hospital.'

Baby woke up at once and sat up in a fury. ‘She ain't,' she said. ‘You ain't to say such things.' But now she remembered that Mum hadn't been in the house when she got in last night. ‘She was down the road with Mrs Roderick, wasn't she? Well then, how can she be in hospital?'

‘Don't be a fool,' Peggy said. She was too tired to cope with one of Baby's tantrums. ‘She is. She's been hurt.' Now that she was home she realized that she hadn't asked anyone about her mother's injuries. ‘Her legs are hurt. I told her we'd go in and see her tonight.'

‘She can't be hurt,' Baby insisted. ‘If she's hurt who's going to look after the kids? Joan'll be here with them in half an hour, I hope you realize.'

Peggy had forgotten all about the practical details she'd have to attend to now. ‘We'll think of something,' she said. ‘Just get up, will you? I'd like to get these beds cleared before they come.'

‘And who'll get the shopping?' Baby went on. ‘I can't, I hope you realize. Not when I'm at work all day. I shan't be able to do anything.'

And she didn't. Of course. It was Mrs Geary who looked after the kids all day and Joan and Peggy who queued at the shops in their lunch hour. And that evening it was Joan and Peggy who went to the hospital because Baby said she couldn't possibly go, not when there was a raid on.

Flossie was wide awake and complaining. Her face was deathly pale and there were two bright spots of unnatural redness in the centre of her cheeks, but her speech was clear and she could focus her eyes and she looked much more like herself than she'd done the night before.

‘I've got the most awful pain in my legs,' she said, when they'd kissed her and settled into chairs beside her bed. ‘They won't give me anything for it. I do think it's mean. Go and see if you can persuade 'em, Peg, eh? They'll do it for you.'

‘I'll see the Sister,' Peggy promised. ‘In a minute. How d'you feel apart from that?'

‘They won't tell me where my shoes are either,' Flossie said. ‘I had my new shoes on. I remember particularly. They say they don't know. What a lot a' nonsense! They must have took 'em off before they put me to bed. I don't want 'em lost. Good money they cost me.'

They let her talk for the half hour that was left of visiting time and then they went down to see the Sister.

‘She's got rather a lot of pain in her legs,' Peggy said, tentative and polite, but hopeful. ‘Could you give her something for it?'

The Sister looked at them carefully before she answered, which was rather disconcerting. ‘If there were anything we could give her to stop this pain, we would,' she said. ‘But the truth is, there isn't anything. The truth
is … it's a phantom pain you see. It wouldn't matter what we gave her, she'd feel it just the same. The truth is …'

The two sisters looked at her questioningly. ‘A phantom pain?' Peggy prompted.

‘Her legs were blown off in the explosion,' the Sister said. ‘I
am
sorry to have to tell you. The left leg is gone below the knee, the right went six inches below the hip socket.'

Peggy felt sick and stupid with shock. ‘But she's feeling pain in them,' she said. ‘There must be some mistake.'

‘They often do,' the Sister said sadly. ‘We don't know why it is, but we see it over and over again. There's no mistake, I'm afraid. What I'm telling you is true. She is feeling pain in limbs that aren't there any more.'

The two sisters left the hospital that night in a very bad state.

‘Poor Mum,' Joan said, ‘how will she manage?'

‘We'll have to manage for her I expect,' Peggy said. ‘The first thing is to get her over the operation and well enough to come home.'

‘She looked awful,' Joan said.

‘Never mind,' Peggy tried to comfort. ‘Perhaps she'll be better tomorrow.'

‘Are we going to tell Baby how bad she is?' Joan asked.

Peggy considered it. ‘Not just yet,' she decided. ‘You know what she's like. We don't want her going hysterical and upsetting the kids. Time enough when Mum's back home. We'll be more used to it ourselves by then.'

The next evening Baby suddenly decided she ought to visit her mother too, so all three of them went to the hospital. Flossie looked a great deal worse. She slept through most of the visiting hour and groaned in her sleep.

‘I can't see the point if she's going to sleep all the time,' Baby grumbled. ‘Why didn't you tell me she was like this?'

‘Just shut up,' Joan said, frowning at her. ‘Can't you see how ill she is? She's ever so bad. Worse than you know.'

Baby decided to ignore that remark. It was altogether too painful. ‘Hospitals make me nervy,' she complained.

‘You make us sick.'

‘I shan't come again if you're horrid.'

It upset Peggy to hear them quarrelling. And as her
mother was still deeply asleep she went off to find the Ward Sister and see what she had to say. It wasn't encouraging.

‘Yes,' the Sister agreed, ‘she is a bit worse today, I'm afraid. But you must remember she sustained very serious injuries and we are doing all we can.'

The next night Joan had to stay at home with the kids because Mrs Rudney was out at work, and Baby said she'd had enough of hospitals for one week and what was the point anyway, so Peggy went alone. Her mother was awake but she seemed feeble and small as if she was shrinking and fading.

‘I've been lying here thinking about your father,' she said. ‘He was a good man, you know, and I wasn't always as kind to him as I should've been.'

Peggy decided to ignore the confession and concentrate on the praise. ‘He was a very good man,' she said. ‘A dear.'

‘I couldn't help it, you know,' her mother said, reaching for her hand. ‘It was my blessed nerves. I've always suffered terribly with my nerves.'

‘I brought you some flowers,' Peggy said, taking her hand and giving it a little squeeze. ‘I put them in the vase, see? Ain't they pretty?'

But Flossie didn't look at the flowers. ‘If anything was to happen to me,' she said, ‘you know, you would look after Baby wouldn't you?'

‘Nothing's going to happen to you, Mum,' Peggy said, swallowing her tears. ‘You're going to be all right.'

‘She's always been delicate,' Flossie went on. ‘Even as a little thing. I used to have to boil the milk for her. She couldn't take it cold, you know. Upset her poor little stomach. Nerves, you see. She's nervy. Like me. Always took after me, much more than the other two.' Her voice was getting softer and slower, drifting away. ‘You will look after her, won't you?'

‘Yes, all right, I promise,' Peggy said.

‘Good,' her mother said. ‘I shall go to sleep now. You can go home if you like.'

But Peggy sat out the hour and afterwards she was glad she had. For when she presented herself at the ward at eight o'clock the next evening the bed was empty.

There were things that had to be done. She knew it, but she couldn't think what they were or where she was supposed to do them. She was overwhelmed by fatigue, as if she were walking about at the bottom of the sea, dragging an enormous anchor behind her, wading with ponderous slowness through an obscurity of heavy waters, where faces ebbed away in mid sentence and voices went echoing in long distorted reverberations like tangled weed.

The doctor was talking to her, occasional words wriggling into her ears like minnows, in – slick slick and out again without leaving a trace of their meaning behind. ‘Septicaemia,' he said, ‘very serious injuries' ‘so very sorry', and she could hear her own voice agreeing with him, ‘Yes – Yes,' as she wondered why the light was so green.

Afterwards she supposed she must have done all the things that had to be done, for her mother's body was returned to the house and an undertaker arrived who seemed to know what he was doing, and there was a pile of letters ready for the post and addressed in her handwriting. But she passed the days in a stupor, numb with exhaustion and grief, accepting Baby's howling incomprehension and Joan's frozen-faced sorrow with equal calm. Even the air raids were distanced. She could hear them going on overhead as she lay wakeful in her bed in the kitchen, but they meant very little to her, and nor, even more oddly, did the knowledge that she ought to have been
on duty at the wardens' post. Mr Goodall had told her not to come in until the end of the week and she'd obeyed without question or thought, as though it didn't matter.

It wasn't until the day before the funeral that her senses returned to her in a flood of grief so severe that she had to put her face in her hands to prevent herself from crying aloud. She was standing in Leslie and Ernest's florist shop waiting to see the wreaths, breathing in the woody scent of the chrysanthemums and thinking how pretty flowers were when they were massed in vases one above the other, and it suddenly struck her that her mother would never see flowers like that ever again. The tears were rolling from her eyes before she could control them.

‘Oh!' she wept, as Leslie leapt towards her. ‘Oh dear. I'm so sorry.'

‘Now don't you worry, my dear,' the old man said, leading her gently to a chair. ‘The most natural thing in the world.'

‘I promised Dad I'd look after her,' she sobbed. ‘I gave him my solemn word. And now she's dead. I couldn't stop her going to the pictures, you see. If I'd known I'd have stopped her. I would. I would. If I'd known. And all them others. That poor man with half his face gone and the woman with her chest smashed in and the boy with no legs. So many, all covered up. Full of life one minute, blown to bits the next. Oh it's awful. Why can't we stop it? We ought to stop it.' Grief was making her incoherent, the words tumbling into one another. ‘So many good people dead. I can't bear it.'

Ernest's round face loomed into focus, more wrinkled than ever in his anxiety, that long white hair of his falling towards her. ‘You must come home with us at once,' he said. ‘She must, mustn't she, Leslie? You need looking after my dear, that's what it is. You've carried too many burdens for far too long. We'll shut the shop. I'll put the notice up.'

They dried her tears and waited until the first rush of her grief was over and then they led her home, one on either side, holding her tenderly by the elbows as though she might fall if they weren't there to prevent it. Which in her present state might well have been the case.

Once they were in Paradise Row they took her into their house, wrapped her in a blanket like a swaddled baby and sat her in a chair with a glass of brandy to sip while they busied themselves, lighting the stove, arranging flowers, setting the table. It was soothing in the kitchen, everything was so neat and so richly coloured. They'd got green flock wallpaper on the walls so it was really more like a dining room than the all-purpose workshop she lived in next door. The table was oak and there were four upholstered chairs to match and a really rather splendid oak dresser crammed with brightly coloured china, and flowers everywhere she looked, printed on the curtains, embroidered on cushions piled on an oak settle, linked petal to petal in a border strip underneath the picture rail, and standing alive and sweet-smelling in vases and jardinières all over the room.