Call Nurse Jenny (17 page)

‘Enough to make anyone lose heart. But it comes to something when you hear people say we might have to negotiate peace terms with Germany.’

‘Rumours,’ Matthew snorted. ‘Like the bomb that chases people around corners – the German secret weapon. Some are actually believing it.’

‘Everyone’s on edge, that’s why.’ Leonard began unscrewing the casing of the wireless cabinet, lifting it up to reveal coloured wires and oblong valves. ‘London blitzed to buggery, Coventry too, then suddenly, silence, everyone wondering what Hitler has up his sleeve next. Invasion probably. I don’t know.’

Matthew nodded glumly. He’d seen the scenes of devastation as he and Susan took a bus from Euston railway station to home. He had rejected taking the underground, not wishing to subject Susan to the wretched bits and pieces of the thousands who had used the platforms as shelters during the nightly air raids and who still stubbornly went down there at nightfall, refusing to believe the Blitz would not return.

Above ground had looked just as dismal, pitiful. Through the bus windows they had gazed at acres of blackened ruin still uncleared, walls precariously hanging, charred timbers, twisted girders pointing skyward with accusing fingers, the air still heavy with an acrid effluvium of burning that remained in their nostrils long afterwards, a memento of all London had suffered. And even in his own long road fronting an open park some houses had gone. After those guns and searchlights sited in the park itself, he supposed.

He watched his father extract a valve from the set. Testing it, he shook his head with tacit sympathy, then replaced it with one salvaged from another old set already beyond repair. Plugged in, the set crackled into life with tinny music.

‘Ah, she’ll be pleased,’ he breathed. ‘Defeated by a dud valve. I won’t charge her for that. Husband died two years ago and she hasn’t a soul to turn to. Though she keeps telling me her son is serving on the
Royal Oak.’

‘
Is
?’ Matthew queried. ‘The
Royal Oak
was sunk at Scapa Flow at the beginning of the war. All hands lost.’

‘Exactly.’ Leonard nodded, replacing the casing. ‘Not a soul to turn to. I’ll get this back to her this evening. She’ll be pleased.’

The shop bell tinkled again. This time the back-room door burst open and there stood Susan, her small oval face brighter and happier than he’d seen it all day, his mother forgotten.

‘I bought some toffees,’ she announced. ‘Do you want one, Mr Ward?’

As his father shook his head congenially, Matthew came over and put an arm around her, his mind on her alone, the poor bereaved woman still living in the past put aside. Her empty life wasn’t his problem. Everyone had problems these days.

‘So you’re really going to get married?’

Louise had come home on a weekend leave, declaring it fortunate to have fallen the same time as her brother’s. She, as yet still in her WRNS uniform, sat opposite him and Susan in the front lounge regarding him with the steady critical gaze of a nineteen-year-old who felt she knew the world. Two weeks ago she had just seen one of her comrades break down after hearing the news that her fiancé’s ship had been torpedoed; he had gone down with it. Her gaze was now fraught with concern as well.

‘Not much joy being in love in wartime, that’s my opinion. But I wish you both all the luck in the world. I don’t suppose it’ll be a white wedding, but the result’s just the same I reckon.’

Susan simpered and sat close to Matthew, looking up at him for guidance. He gave his sister a rueful grin. ‘I hope to get a twenty-four-hour pass for it if I’m lucky. We’ll have to make do with that. It’ll have to be in a registry office, I expect.’

‘Well, perhaps I might wangle some leave. When’s it to be?’

Matthew’s smile hovered. ‘We’re not quite certain yet. Whenever we can. Probably at short notice. You should know what the forces are like. It’ll have to be in Birmingham, near where I’m stationed. And with Mum and Dad down here, and Susan’s people up there, I don’t suppose there’ll be many of our side there at all. It’s going to be a rush in the end.’

Louise looked distinctly put out. ‘You don’t want me there, that it?’

‘No, that’s not it, Sis.’ He was looking dark. ‘I want you there. I want all our people there. I’d have liked to have a big white wedding, for Susan’s sake. I wish we could.’

At which Susan clung closer to him, his arm tightening reassuringly about her. Louise, Susan thought, for all she was only a year older than herself, had a lot of her mother in her. And as Mr and Mrs Ward came in from the dining room where they had been lingering over a leisurely cup of tea Louise, it seemed, wasn’t ready to pull her punches.

‘Did you know they plan to get married in a registry office? It’s going to have to be done on the quick, so he says. No time for me to arrange leave to be there to see him married. Him, my one and only brother.’

‘That’s unkind, Louise,’ Matthew shot at her, but it was evident she was disappointed. ‘Of course you’re invited if you can make it. You’d be the first one to be invited. My one and only sister.’

That last sounded dangerously like sarcasm and probably was, and Leonard Ward looked at his son while Lilian stood aside, her face tight. But his was benign. ‘Where do you plan to live afterwards, Matthew?’

It was a practical question, but one that betokened acceptance of his intentions, and Susan, feeling Matthew’s body relax, realised it had become taut as Louise had railed on.

‘We’ll get ourselves a furnished flat for the time being, where I can get backwards and forwards from with a special pass.’

Leonard frowned. ‘Not much of a start, a furnished flat. You’d need something unfurnished. Something to call your own. Your own furniture, not someone else’s rubbish. Your mother and I aren’t broke …’

‘No thanks, Dad.’ Matthew stopped him sharply. ‘We can manage.’

‘I want to say something else, son. It’s that if you’re posted away at any time or, God forbid, sent overseas, Susan will always be welcome to come here and stay with us.’

Susan’s face went blank and Matthew hurried to her rescue. ‘That’s nice of you, Dad, but we’ll get by. Lots of married women have to manage on their own these days when their men go away. And I expect her own family will be there to help.’

‘Just a suggestion.’ Leonard went to sit in one of the armchairs but Lilian remained standing, her hands clasped firmly in front of her.

‘This is all very well. No one has any
idea
when this is to happen. All we know is that it is going to happen. We have merely been
told.
It would be nice if you discussed it more fully with us, your parents, Matthew?’

He matched her hard stare. ‘I thought that was precisely what we were doing – discussing Susan and me getting married.’

‘Would you be discussing it now if Louise hadn’t blurted it out a few moments ago?’

‘Probably,’ he returned succinctly, at bay.

Susan cut in, amazed at her own boldness. ‘We want to get married ever so much, Mr Ward.’ It was far easier to appeal to him than his wife. ‘I know we’ve not been together very long, but me and Matthew do love each other a lot. It don’t have to take years just to know that. It can happen very quickly sometimes.’ She paused for breath, anxious now at having said so much, uninvited.

He smiled at her. ‘I know. So how soon would you
like
it to be?’

‘Could be next month,’ Matthew replied for her, his tone easier now. ‘It’ll have to be in Birmingham. I’ve exhausted all my leave so I’ll only get a special day off, I suppose. I’ll have to beg for that, I expect.’

‘We’ll try to make it up there if we can,’ added his father. He gave a small apologetic chuckle. ‘That sounds terrible, I know – try. But nothing’s easy these days. Send us a telegram the second you know, and we’ll be straight on a train. If I can get some extra petrol coupons …’ again he gave a chuckle, a somewhat knowing one this time, ‘we’ll get the car out and use that. It’s kept in good working order, you know, but we don’t use it, at least very seldom these days. It’s yours still, Matthew, sitting there, your twenty-first present. It’s in a garage near the shop, waiting for the time you can use it again, Matthew. And talking of presents. Wedding presents of any good quality being hard to come by, would money be okay?’

‘That’ll be fine,’ Matthew said a little tersely, making Susan look at him in surprise. ‘But I still have that trust Grandfather left me. We won’t go short.’

‘Just a token wedding present.’

Susan felt sorry for Mr Ward, hearing the lame ring in his voice. She even felt faintly annoyed at Matthew. Why should he react so unthankfully to his father’s generosity?

As Matthew travelled on the train back to Birmingham the following day to be in camp by Monday morning, Susan taxed him on it.

‘You shouldn’t have gone off at your dad like that, darling. He was only being kind. You acted as if you were bent on having a row with him.’

Matthew was staring out at the passing scenery beyond the carriage window. ‘Did you see my mother’s face?’ he queried without turning. ‘In my family we don’t need to row. Never a raised voice, but the result’s the same – no winners or losers. In a way, worse than any full blown row – no chance for anyone to release their pent up anger.’

He sounded so dark that Susan quickly changed to a lighter subject. ‘Your dad said about some money left to you.’

He remained thoughtful for a moment. ‘For when I was twenty-one. About five thousand, but I haven’t touched it. Wanted to wait until the war was over and I came out of the Army. I expect many of us will come out without a bean, so it’ll come in handy.’

‘And it’ll have made interest,’ she added. At the mention of such an amount her eyes had widened. Five thousand pounds. A fortune. To think, being married to someone really well-off. She could hardly wait.

‘Let’s get married as soon as we can,’ she entreated and had him turn to her to put his arm about her shoulder and cuddle her close, prompting quiet smiles from the others in the carriage with them.

Jenny gazed through one of the pub windows near which she sat, many of them still damaged by the Blitz and patched up as best as could be until shortages allowed for new windows to be put in. God knows when that would be.

Outside, Whitechapel Road was buzzing with stalls and people this Tuesday lunchtime. Whitechapel Road was exceptionally wide for London. It had apparently been made that way in the days of footpads so that they had no cover from which to spring out on passing horsedrawn mail and passenger coaches. Part of that wide road had, she’d been told, for this last hundred years been railed off for a market which still thrived and the noise of buying and selling came loud through every hole and crack in those of the pub’s windows not yet completely repaired.

Despite the war, the market was in full swing; maybe now it evoked the days before the motor car. These days hardly any private cars were being used with petrol rationing the order of the day. Some lorries, though, still tried to make deliveries when they could. But there were a lot more handcarts than in peacetime, and the horsedrawn wagon could be seen in great numbers.

Across the still wide road beyond the hubbub and movement sat the London Hospital, a serene potentate, quieter now that the nightly air raids had passed. The injured were being seen to and sent home with no more being brought in to replace them; the hospital had started getting back now to the normal traffic of poorly children and the ailing elderly, those injured by accident instead of design, pregnant women needing treatment, and the ordinary sick; the outpatients department too had reverted to its normal routine rather than the unending stream of bloodied, bomb-torn bodies. Everyone now had time at last to let out a sigh of relief, Jenny included. She had gone back to work after her first weekend off in ages to find that even in the short time away things at the hospital had quietened still more.

‘Penny for them.’ Ronald’s warm hand closed over her fingers and she quickly withdrew hers.

‘Not worth a penny.’

‘Ah, well, a ha’penny then.’ His light brown eyes were searching her green ones as she looked briefly at him. They were full of adoration. ‘No, on second thoughts, Jenny, the smallest thought of yours has to be worth more than a million to me.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She hated him behaving like this, specially when her inability to return his feelings made her seem hardhearted and his obvious love for her so pitiful. But one couldn’t make love happen. ‘I was thinking about the people out there, and the hospital. That’s not worth a light.’

‘Talking shop isn’t. Let’s talk about us instead.’

‘Not just now, Ronald.’ She didn’t mean to sound so sharp.

Her thoughts as his hand closed over hers had been dwelling on the news she had received about Matthew while home, and then on the surprise glimpse she’d had of him from her bedroom window on the Sunday, his arm around the dainty dark-haired girl he was intending to marry. From her vantage point, Jenny had seen her lift a pretty face ardently to his as they passed underneath her window, and he had paused and kissed her lips. Jenny had felt the passion of that kiss writhe in her bones. It still did.

Gazing through the pub window she savoured a masochistic urge to retain the memory in a moment of self-torture, utterly futile for all it made her feel nearer to the man she knew she could never have. Matthew would marry his Birmingham girl and Jenny would never see him again.

Then Ronald laid his hand over hers, and instead of her private moment being gently suffered as it needed to be, those precious thoughts had raced through her head like a damned whirlwind, to be swept away.

They departed the Birmingham registry office in a thin shower of home-made confetti and a host of good wishes. The reception had been short, a modest gathering filling the little room with perfume, cigar smoke and perspiration.

‘I just hope he knows what he is doing,’ Lilian Ward said, watching the happy pair go off.

‘Of course he knows what he’s doing.’ Leonard’s own gaze followed the taxi taking Matthew and his new wife off into the unknown; it softened reflectively at the recollection of his son’s departing words to him. ‘If anything happens to me, Dad, you two will look after Susan, won’t you?’