The Nurse's War (31 page)

It was only feet away, but she could have cast around forever in the dark without finding it. She followed it as quickly as she could, twisting and turning, in and out of bushes, up and down steps. The path was passing again beneath an avenue of dark trees, this time so dark that not even bright moonlight could penetrate. Plunged once more into blackness, she stumbled and fell amid a heap of rubble. A tomb had broken open and its contents spilled across the path; she had fallen over part of a shattered headstone. She grasped a chunk of its stone to haul herself upwards
and a small piece, sheared from the memorial, came away in her hand. She felt it round and smooth with a trace of decoration on one side, and something made her keep hold of it. Her body was hurting just about everywhere, but she dragged herself to her feet, and once more crept forward until she found her way back into the moonlight.

The path was wider here. It must mean she was nearing the entrance. Thank God. Then down another flight of steps, beneath another clump of overhanging trees, and she emerged into a semi-circular space, a lodge guarding its one straight side. The cemetery was very old, that was obvious, and this had been a space for horse-drawn carriages to turn. A Victorian cemetery then, but where? She walked to the barred gate and read the sign.
Highgate Cemetery.
So she had come hardly any distance from the safe house. More importantly, she was only a few miles from where Grayson was waiting with Chandan Patel. A few miles from where he was about to face Sweetman’s gun. She must get to him.

The gate was locked but that was the least of her problems this night. If she could escape a stone prison, she could get over an iron gate. Dropping down on the other side, she turned up the narrow road to her left. It was a steep hill and her exhausted body made hard work of it, but at its top, the sight of a red telephone box made her heart glow. She would ask the operator to put her through to Pitt House. Even now, she had time to warn Grayson that Sweetman was on his way. But when she
reached the box, she found its glass shattered and the black Bakelite that had once been a telephone in pieces on the floor. A stray bomb had done its job. The glow vanished and her heart felt pinched. She must go on, find another telephone.

She was on a main road now, though there was little traffic so late at night. A white enamel sign above her head announced that this was Hampstead Lane. Eventually, it must lead to Hampstead village and she would follow it until she found a telephone. She started out, half walking, half running, and had travelled at least a mile before she came to another red box. A woman was talking animatedly into the receiver. Daisy sent up a prayer of thanks—this one was working. She knocked at one of the small panes and the woman turned her head and frowned. Daisy mimed using the phone, but the woman turned her back.

This was too urgent for manners, she decided. She opened the door to the box and the woman abruptly broke off her conversation.

‘Well, really!’

‘Please, this is an emergency. I must use the phone.’ She hoped her uniform might help her plea. The woman looked her up and down scathingly, and she realised she must seem no better than a tramp.

‘Then find another phone box.’ The woman turned her back again.

‘There isn’t one.’ A note of panic had crept into Daisy’s voice.

‘Of course, there is. There’s one further down the road. Now let me finish my conversation.’

‘How far down the road?’ she persisted.

‘I have no idea.’ The woman slammed the door shut.

Daisy immediately pulled it open, but the woman grabbed the door from inside and held on to it. A tug of war ensued which would have been comic, if it had not been so desperate.

‘Please, you must help me.’

‘I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to. Go away.’

‘Do you know where Pitt House is?’ It might be easier to find the house than another telephone box. ‘Is it near?’

‘Keep following the road,’ the woman snapped. ‘Turn right at Sandy Lane, then left. Now go away.’

Daisy went away. She blessed the moonlight. Without it, she would stand little chance of finding her way. The streets were unfamiliar and she had no idea of the house she was looking for. In the blackout she would soon have become lost. She was running again now, past substantial properties on both sides of the road, glancing briefly at their name boards as she ran. The woman could be wrong. Pitt House could be any one of these. But she must go faster. With a last great effort, she picked up her pace. Along the road and turn right. No sign of the house here. Then turn left. Nearly dead with fatigue, she was forced to drop down into a walk. On and on, house after house, but never the right one. She almost missed it when she got there, for a laurel hedge had grown across the discreet board, its gold
lettering faded by the weather. But this was it. This was Pitt House. She glimpsed lights shining in the distance. A long driveway led up to the house, winding its way through clumps of trees. If she never saw another tree, Daisy thought, she wouldn’t mind. She had no idea what she would find at the end of the drive and walked as quietly as she could, keeping to its shadowed edge and hoping the crunch of gravel would not signal her arrival. She could see the roof of the house now and then the windows, lit and welcoming. But welcoming to whom?

In the shadows of the last clump of trees, she came on the car. It was unpretentious, slightly shabby. It seemed not to belong here. She stole up to it and felt the bonnet. It was still warm. She peered through the windows. A battered leather suitcase sat on the back seat. It was Sweetman’s car, it had to be. He was here and she was too late.

Then she heard the voices and ducked back into the shadows. A man was at the entrance to the house, his feet scraping noisily at the gravel. She came out of hiding and stared at his back. She knew the jacket he was wearing. It was Mike Corrigan’s. She wasn’t too late. The man was waving a pass at the guards and, when they seemed reluctant to let him through, he tried to push past.

She heard one of the guards say, ‘Just a minute, sir. We’ll have to check. Mr Harte is already here and he’ll vouch for you.’

No, her heart was saying. Don’t bring him to the door. Please don’t. But the guard had gone inside the house.

‘I don’t need Grayson to vouch for me,’ the man was saying in his slightly odd accent. ‘Now let me through, old chap.’ And it seemed as though he would try to shoulder the remaining guard to one side.

She started forward as though every demon in hell had just landed on her shoulders. ‘Don’t let him through.’ Her voice was cracking. Find your voice, she begged herself, shout it loud and clear. ‘Don’t let him through,’ she yelled. ‘He’s not Mr Corrigan.’

The guard must have heard her because his hand went immediately to his gun. Sweetman heard, too, and spun around, pulling a gun from inside his jacket. For a moment when he saw her, it looked as though he would drop it in sheer astonishment. But a voice from the door made him turn again, and this time he levelled the weapon.

‘What’s this about?’ Grayson’s figure was silhouetted in the doorway. ‘Is that you, Mike?’ He peered into the darkness, his hand above his eyes.

‘Unfortunately not,’ Sweetman snarled and his hand was on the trigger. The guard was raising his rifle to take aim, but it was too late. Too late, she thought. The stone in her pocket became large, urgent. She fumbled for it and, with all her waning strength, hurled the stone at the back of Sweetman’s head. It hit him dead centre, pitching him to the ground and sending the gunshot flying harmlessly into the air. Throwing a mean stone was something else she’d learned at Eden House.

C
HAPTER
18

‘
H
ow are you feeling?’

Her friend’s face leant towards her. What was Connie doing here? Where was here?

‘How are you, Daisy?’ Connie’s voice was a little shaky.

‘I’m fine,’ she murmured automatically. That’s what you always said, wasn’t it? She tried to raise her head but the effort was too great and she slumped back onto stacked pillows.

‘You’re not to think of getting up,’ Connie warned. ‘You need to rest.’

‘I’m in the sick bay?’ she hazarded.

Her friend nodded. ‘And you’re staying here until you’re completely recovered.’

She’d hardly ever been to the sick bay. She knew nurses were sent here immediately they felt at all unwell, not so much as a sniffle was allowed to pass unnoticed on the ward. But she’d managed to survive eighteen months’ training without a sniffle, and her only visit to this part of the hospital had been on errands for Sister Elton.

‘I’m fine, really I am,’ she repeated. Her neck was still
sore and inflamed and she ached from head to toe, but otherwise there didn’t seem a great deal wrong. Her mind, though, was cloudy.

‘You may think you’re okay but you’ve been through a tremendous ordeal,’ Connie soothed, ‘and you need time to get over it.’

Her mind grappled with the idea of an ordeal and memory kicked in just a little. There had been guns, she recalled, and a dark, gravelled drive.

‘Grayson,’ she said suddenly.

‘He’s fit and well. He’s been here most of the time you’ve been sleeping. He’s only just left.’

‘He’s been here, in the sick bay?’ She was incredulous.

‘He was given special permission—under the circumstances. But he had to leave and check in at Baker Street. There’s a lot of sorting out to do apparently. He promised to come back later—that’s if you want to see him.’

She wasn’t sure she did. There was a lot of sorting out for her to do too. But she was overcome by such heartfelt relief that he was safe and not dead at Sweetman’s feet that she pushed the doubts aside. Instead, she tried to concentrate on remembering. In her mind’s eye, she saw the house, Pitt House, and then Sweetman levelling his gun at the figure in the doorway. She felt the stone in her pocket and that last desperate effort, using every ounce of her remaining strength to deflect the gun. But everything else was a blank. How had she got there? How had she come here?

‘You blacked out and you’ve been unconscious ever since,’ her friend explained, sensing her confusion. ‘But it’s so good to see you awake and talking.’ She bent over the bed and gave Daisy an enormous hug.

‘What time is it then?’ She struggled to see the clock, but once again had to slump back onto her pillows.

‘It’s four in the afternoon. You’ve been out for sixteen hours. That wicked man injected you with insulin, and you’ve been in a delayed coma. I can’t believe how you managed to do what you did.’

It seemed there had been trouble and she’d been in the middle of it, but she could remember nothing beyond that one scene. And what was Connie doing here in the middle of the afternoon?

‘Shouldn’t you be on the ward?’

‘More special permission. I’ve been given an hour off to come and see you. I’ve been sitting here willing you to wake up, and then you did! Evidently, I’m just the medicine the doctor ordered.’

‘Evidently.’ For the first time, Daisy’s face creased into a smile. ‘And you say that Grayson was here.’ Her tone was wondering.

‘For hours.’

She was overcome by a rush of vanity. ‘What must I look like?’

‘You don’t look too special,’ Connie said frankly, ‘but then you have been through the wars.’

‘Give me a mirror.’

‘I wouldn’t, really I wouldn’t.’

‘Give it to me this minute, Telford.’

Connie shrugged her shoulders resignedly. ‘Okay, but remember you’re the heroine of the hour, so it doesn’t matter what you look like.’

Daisy took a quick glance in the mirror. No almond cream skin greeted her but a sallow wash, enlivened only by strips of pink sticking plaster dotted at intervals around her face. One cheek sported a very large, mauve bruise.

‘How did that happen?’ She pointed to the plasters and then to the bruise.

‘Don’t ask me. That’s how you were when you were brought in. Your legs and arms are pretty trashed too.’ Daisy pushed up the sleeves of her nightdress. A neat row of darkening bruises greeted her, interspersed with a lattice-work of cuts.

The inspection left her silent and brooding. ‘Would you like some tea?’ Connie asked brightly.

‘Thank you, that would be good.’ Her response was automatic, her mind elsewhere. ‘Those cuts … I climbed through broken glass. I remember now.’

‘You’re not to worry about them. They’re not too deep and they shouldn’t leave a scar.’

‘And the bruise,’ she continued without hearing her friend. ‘I fell. That’s right, I fell into a grave. I was in a cemetery. The grave had broken open and I tripped on some gashed stone.’

‘Think about it later,’ Connie advised. ‘When you’re back on form.’

But her mind was chasing memories and wouldn’t let go. It was all coming back. ‘I picked up one of the broken stones. It was the one I threw.’

Her companion shook her head. ‘You won’t give up, will you?’

‘What happened to Sweetman?’

‘The baddie, you mean? He must be in prison, but other than that, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Grayson when he gets back. That’s if you’re willing to see him. He told me you’d given him the heave-ho.’

Daisy looked down at the starched white sheet and plucked at its trimming. ‘I can’t have been thinking straight.’

‘You can’t have,’ Connie agreed. ‘What made you do it? The last I heard you were both deliriously happy. I know you felt bad about Willa, but why dump Grayson?’

‘I can’t expect you to understand.’ She closed her eyes, as if to shut out thoughts she still found painful. ‘I don’t really understand it myself.’

‘Try me.’

She opened her eyes again and looked uncertainly into Connie’s. ‘I was overwhelmed … bad memories crowding in on me. Such a lot of hurt. Memories of all the people I’d known who had died. I felt as though it must be my fault, that I had to make up for it in some way.’

So many deaths, she thought. A mother she’d never
known, Anish and Gerald, Willa, her own small baby all those years ago on-board ship. For a while, her life has seemed nothing more than one long roll call of the departed. No wonder she’d refused to welcome happiness when it came calling.