Not That Sort of Girl (27 page)

‘I was just going to shoot them, the …’

‘Why?’

‘The noise, the fucking noise. I have a revolver.’

‘I’ll ask them to be quiet.’

‘They don’t know what quiet means. They are all quite well, they only had flu. Young RAF servicemen bursting with health and high spirits.’ Mylo’s voice was venomous. ‘How long have you been here?’ Why was he not washed and in pyjamas like the others? Had he persuaded authority that he had a revolver? This was no time for games and the spirit of Edith Malone. ‘We were brought ashore the night before last, got our lines crossed with another party. The other fellows were killed in the cross fire. Get me out of here, darling.’ He shut his eyes.

‘How badly wounded are you?’

‘Nothing much. Leg wound and concussion, it’s the bloody noise I can’t bear …’

Somebody whooped at the far end of the ward, a chair was knocked over. ‘Pack it in,’ said a voice which might have been male or female. There was a succession of, ‘Sorry, sister, sorry, sister, sorry …’

‘What’s going on here? These are not visiting hours. Who are you?’

The sister was short, brisk, intimidating, busty and strong. She wore a watch pinned to her chest like a medal, she glowered at Rose, took Mylo’s wrist to feel his pulse. Mylo snatched his wrist free and reached again under the pillow for what appeared to be a revolver.

It was a revolver.

If Rose had had difficulty in recognising Mylo, he was frankly incredulous of the woman who now appeared. Gone was the shy girl he had met at the winter tennis, reduced to tears by the Thornbys’ teasing, ill at ease in company, afraid of the Malones’ guests, scared of her parents’ disapproval, immature, a prey to indecision, constantly in need of his protection. This new Rose drew herself up and spoke to the sister in a clipped authoritative voice. She asked, nay demanded, that Mylo’s bed should be moved into a side-ward. (Do you want your other patients shot?) She walked beside the bed in which he lay holding the revolver. Two nervous nurses pushed and pulled. Away from the noisy ward she bent close to Mylo and in a low voice asked, ‘What’s your boss’s name? Quick.’

‘Pye, Major Pye, but don’t …’

‘Right. Shan’t be long. Don’t speak to anyone, hang on to the revolver.’ She went away. As she went she handed the baby to a nurse. ‘Hold this, please,’ and ‘Take me to Matron,’ she said to the Sister.

Mylo was left alone in the side-ward. He felt bemused and very weak. From the ward he had left he heard renewed shouts and baying laughter. Poor devils, he thought, they feel perfectly well, they have only had a touch of flu, they have not encountered fear.

Then there came the clack of heels, the crackle of Matron’s starch, the pinched nose of Sister holding her breath in disapproval. The amused yet grave expression of a white-haired doctor who inspected the dressing on his leg, courageously felt the pulse in the wrist of the hand which held the revolver (chauvinistic bravura in front of the nurses, he looks at least sixty-nine). The doctor nodded and smiled, turned to speak to Rose standing there remote and dignified.

Then two orderlies were easing him into a dressing gown (their breath hissed as he changed the hand that held the revolver, watching it with swivelling eyes) transferring him from the bed to a wheelchair, propelling him down the corridor to the lift, down, out through the hall, out of the hospital, to help him into the front seat of Rose’s car, wrapping a blanket around his legs.

While this was going on he was aware of Rose beside him. She had at some stage regained the baby, which she put into a basket on the back seat beside Comrade who was furiously wagging her tail and moaning in pleasurable recognition.

‘Don’t faint yet,’ Rose murmured, leaning into the car. ‘Are you comfortable, darling? Where’s the revolver?’

‘Here.’

‘Better give it to me now.’ She took it from him. ‘Goodbye,’ she said to Sister (Matron had not come out with them), ‘and thank you so much. What?’ She leaned towards Sister, who was explaining something in a low voice. ‘No, of course you couldn’t, no, I understand perfectly,’ and ‘Goodbye.’ She shook the old doctor’s hand. ‘Thank you for all your care and help.’ She got in beside Mylo and started the engine. She put the revolver into the glove compartment and drove. As she drove she let out a crow of laughter. ‘That poor Sister said they hadn’t dared wash you because of the revolver.’ Mylo did not answer. ‘You can faint now,’ said Rose after half a mile. Mylo closed his eyes. After two more miles, Rose said, ‘I think they thought it was loaded.’

‘It is.’

‘Good God.’ Rose pulled into the side of the road. ‘You might have killed somebody.’

‘I meant to shoot those yahoos. I would have if you hadn’t arrived, they were driving me crazy.’

‘Unload it at once.’ Rose reached into the glove compartment and fished out the revolver. ‘You must be out of your mind.’

Meekly Mylo unloaded the revolver. Rose threw the bullets into the ditch. ‘Really, Mylo,’ she was trembling, ‘I thought you were averse to killing people.’ She was near tears.

Mylo was interested to see that her hands shook. This was the Rose he knew. ‘I’d rather like to kiss you,’ he said. Then he said, ‘How the hell did you find me?’

‘I got your message; a man rang up.’

‘So I didn’t dream it.’

‘No.’

‘Whose baby is that?’

‘Mine.’

Mylo felt confused; he had forgotten that she had been pregnant. ‘The man said he wouldn’t telephone you unless I paid him. I had no money.’

‘He must have thought better of it.’

In his basket on the back seat Christopher began to scream.

‘Sorry,’ said Rose, ‘he’s hungry. I must feed him, won’t be long.’ She moved the car closer to the side of the road and got out. ‘You’d better have a run,’ she said to Comrade.

Mylo watched the dog sniffing about in the grass, then Rose was sitting beside him with the child, undoing her blouse and thrusting her nipple into its violent mouth, silencing the screams. Her breast was swollen, marbled with veins. ‘Will they recover?’

‘What?’

‘Your breasts, will they …?’

‘Back to normal. When I wean him.’

‘So that’s how it works.’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah.’ So peaceful. Only what, two days ago? The violence in the dark on the rough sea, the pain, fear, seasickness … and now. ‘This is all rather unreal.’

‘I don’t think you should talk. That doctor said you should be kept quiet at home, and rest.’

‘Is that so?’ (Soon I shall be able to laugh. Home.)

‘Yes.’ She moved the baby from left breast to right.

Mylo watched the child’s gums bite on her tender nipple. ‘You said it hurt when I …’

‘One gets used to it. You mustn’t talk. I’ll give you a hot drink in a minute. Mrs Farthing lumbered me with supplies. She asked me to call her Edwina and, guess what, she and Farthing are not married, isn’t that a turn-up for the book?’

‘Nor, alas, are we.’

Rose did not answer. He watched her burp the baby, change it and settle it back in the basket, then as they sat drinking hot chocolate he said, ‘Excuse me asking, but where did the extraordinary bossy act you put on with the nurses and doctor come from? You ordered those dragons about and twisted the old doctor around your little finger.’

‘It’s not an act. It’s me. If sufficiently frightened or enraged, it comes naturally. I found I could do it when the Min of Ag sent people to shoot our rooks.’

Mylo noted the our.

‘And what did you tell them that allowed them to release me into your charge?’

‘I said you were top secret, working hush-hush for General Pye (I promoted him), and that since you were fit to move, it was better all round for you to be at home with me. Your revolver had rather unnerved them, they are not really a military hospital.’

‘Did they think you were my wife?’

‘Of course.’

‘You are not far wrong.’

‘How so?’

‘The intelligence bit. I shall have to contact the bastard, let him know I’m not dead.’

‘Let him go on thinking it for a bit,’ said Rose. ‘I’m in no hurry to lose you again.’

‘The war.’

‘Let the war wait.’

Rose screwed the top back on the thermos. ‘Now shut up and let me get you home before Christopher starts screaming again. He’s terrible when he puts his mind to it, he’s been good so far.’

Some time later, waking from an uneasy sleep, Mylo asked, ‘Did we eat the Camembert?’

‘What Camembert?’

‘The Camembert I brought you last summer when I brought Picot over …’ She did not ask who Picot might be, but she remembered the cheese. Delicious, a little squashed on its travels, over-ripe. They had eaten it in bed, washed down with a bottle of Ned’s claret, what a peculiar thing to remember now. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I remember. I remember it well. Try to sleep, darling, it won’t be long now, we are nearly home.’

Home, thought Mylo wryly. What home, whose home?

T
IME WAS, THOUGHT ROSE,
pausing out of breath to sit on a granite boulder, when I would have reached the top of this hill without effort. But then, she thought as she stretched her legs, I would hardly have noticed the view.

Noticing the view comes with age, she thought, looking down the valley where mist still laced around the tops of the trees she had walked under, drifted across the waters of the creek, reluctant to give way to the sun which now warmed her back. It was going to be a perfect autumn day, blue and gold, no breeze to ruffle the water, pewter flat and deep, or loosen the leaves of oak and beech on the turn from dark green to rust to gold. Unaware of the view, one missed a lot in the hunger of youth, one wasn’t prepared, one was taken by surprise, she thought, casting her thoughts back to the day when in weather of sleepy beauty she had arrived back with Mylo from the hospital in Cornwall to cherish and heal him in privacy and love.

What possessed me, what gave me the nerve to kidnap him from the hospital, over-ride the objections of the staff? What did I think I was doing? It is difficult at sixty-seven to recall the emotions of twenty. I wish I still had the nerve, the mix of bloody-mindedness and innocence. Have I quite lost it, she wondered? Am I blunted, am I too aware?

She had not that day been aware of anything other than Mylo’s need. It was vital that he should have peace and quiet, to protect him. If his nerves were shaken by whatever embroilment had resulted in his wound, she would heal them. They would be together, her passion would revive him. Had he not in distress sent for her? Beyond this she had no plan.

It was a shock and surprise to be met on arrival by Edwina Farthing wearing an air of warning, drooping the corners of her mouth, raising her eyebrows, whispering, ‘Watch out,’ as she leaned into the car.

‘What’s up?’ asked Rose, startled, pulling on the handbrake, switching off the engine.

‘Mr Loftus and Mrs Malone,’ hissed Edwina. ‘I have made up the gentleman’s bed in the yellow room,’ she said loudly, ‘and the other gentlemen, the young chap from Down Under, the pilot, is quite happy in the blue room. Mr Loftus and Mrs Malone think that will do very well. That’s what you ordered, isn’t it?’

Blue room? Yellow room? What was the woman up to putting on this air of servility? Rose was amazed to see Edwina semaphore with her eyebrows, hiss breath in through her teeth. She had not previously particularly noticed Edwina’s teeth. Large and slightly crossed, they brought to some errant corner of her mind a likeness to the evacuee waifs when they would not admit an urgent need to leave the room and go to the lavatory in case they missed something of interest. Edwina’s act of an old retainer was putting a message across: she was under strain.

But then Archibald Loftus had come hurrying from the house: ‘Rose, my dear! Good girl! Great minds think alike.’ He had kissed her as she got out of the car. ‘When Edith told me—when I suggested—when we found you had thought of the same scheme and gone to fetch—it
is
young Cooper, isn’t it? That’s what Edith said. I wasn’t quite sure myself. We’d better get you into the house, my dear fellow, let Mrs Farthing give me a hand with you, you look just about done in, they should have kept you a while longer, shortage of beds, I dare say. Ah, here is Edith—now give me your arm—oh, I see, you can manage with a stick, jolly good.’ (Had Mylo winked as he caught her eye?)

As Edith Malone embraced Rose she watched Mylo hop and hobble into the house between Uncle Archie and Edwina. He did not look back as he adapted himself to the unexpected. (This is how he survives doing whatever it is he does in enemy France.) Rose let Edith press her to her breast. ‘I
thought
I had sent you all the particulars of the scheme, you must have answered but in my usual stupidly vague way’ (Edith vague? Come on!) ‘I mislaid your letter. I was so enraged with Emily and Nicholas I tore their letter up. I must have destroyed yours with it.’ (Oops, clever one.) ‘They really are too selfish for words; they have at the very least two spare rooms in that house of theirs; people with far less convenient houses have joined the scheme and are putting themselves out, and look at you, living alone and willing. Nobody will persuade me that one small baby and part-time work—she’s only part-time now at the Ministry of Agriculture, I took the trouble to find out before asking her—take up all her time. Why, look at you with Christopher, you took him with you to fetch—oh, by the way, my dear,
don’t
take me amiss, but it was a
little
over-zealous to fetch him yourself. Where, by the way, did you get the petrol? Another time, leave it to the ambulance people, it is their job, you know, all the forms and so on. Never mind, you’ll know another time …’

Tactfully, a quality he lost as he grew up, Christopher had begun to scream. Comrade, anxious to be of use, licked the baby’s face, switching Edith Malone onto another tack. ‘Do you think it’s a good idea to let the dog lick him? I know there is a school of thought which says it doesn’t matter, but when you think where dogs put their noses and the things they pick up and eat—please don’t think I am interfering …’

‘Oh, no, of course not, not at all. I think he is hungry.’ Rose had picked Christopher out of his basket, grateful that he saved her the necessity of answering Edith’s flow (she is gabbling to hide her embarrassment, to save me from mine. Why should I be embarrassed?) ‘Gosh, he’s soaking, rather overdone his jobs too, needs changing, would you like to hold him a minute?’ She had offered Edith the bundled, stinking baby.