Call Nurse Jenny (6 page)

‘All my life …’ He paused as though thinking it out, then began again. ‘All my life Louise and I have been nursed along, protected, pampered. Our parents have always been there to fight our fights, solve our problems, especially my mother. I know she always meant well so I let her get on with it. I even thought it funny. But I took it all for granted. My fault. But there comes a time … I’ve just begun to realise the harm it’s done. It’s like being smothered by a blanket, warm and safe, but – well, suffocating if it’s pulled too close. Throw it off and you realise just how fresh the air can be. D’you know what I’m trying to say, Jenny?’

He didn’t wait for her reply. ‘I’ve got to break away. Make my own life. But how the hell do you say to someone you love, someone who loves you: “Thanks for everything, but I’m off”? She does love me, but so, I don’t know, so selfishly, and she doesn’t even realise it.’

His words trailed off as he became lost in his thoughts while Jenny stood by not knowing what to say.

He began to talk again. ‘This war. It seemed my chance to get away without hurting her feelings. But she’s cheated me even out of that. And she can’t see it. Had it all worked out for me, trying to help, holding my hand yet again, making enquiries to get me into some officer cadet training unit or other. I don’t know what she had in mind or thought she could do – I’ve not been listening that much. All I know is that this time I want to do things for myself. I’m twenty-one. I don’t want her to keep holding my hand.’

Jenny found her voice. ‘Can’t you explain to her how you feel?’

‘Explain!’ His voice was still slurred. ‘Don’t think she’d understand. Only hears what she wants to hear. Diff’rent for Louise. She’s a girl. She’s nat’rally happy to cling to her mother. But me. Got to let go. Let it go on too long. Should’ve volunteered for the Territorials last year, but she talked me out of it. Scared then at me going off and getting m’self killed. Everyone was panicking a bit at that time. But now she can see it’s inev … inevitable she’s doing her damnedest to see me in the best possible situation, going into an officer cadet training college, getting a safe job. But I don’t want a safe job. I’d have liked to become an officer, but
I
wanted to sort it out.
I
wanted to. She’s spoiled that for me. Now, Freddy’s got married and joined up. Dennis – that soft idiot – is having a go. Suddenly I’m still a boy in a world of men, and it’s shaken me. I decided I wouldn’t sign on under her rules – thinking she can sort it all out for me. I’m going to wait ’til I’m called up, take my chances.’

‘That could be rough on you,’ Jenny said. ‘You’d just be in the ranks.’

‘Exactly. I want to rough it, start from the first rung for a change, on my own. If I get a couple of stripes, it’ll be on my own merit. If I get as far as a commission, it’ll be my own doing. I probably will get a commission – my education – but it won’t be my mother getting me there. I want to do it all on my own, and if … if …’

He broke off. ‘Oh, God, I feel sick.’

In sudden urgency, he leaned towards the kerb and retched quietly.

‘You see, Mumsy?’ Jenny cried first thing next morning at breakfast after relating Matthew’s explanation for not apparently leaping headlong into the forces, her faith in his intentions now unshakeable. ‘He isn’t a coward. He simply wants to do things his way.’

Mrs Ross’s smile was one of sad experience. ‘Doing things his way could be biting off more than he can chew. He’s always been used to the soft life by all accounts. He’ll be in for a shock, I should imagine.’

‘So will a lot of men,’ Jenny said firmly. ‘They’ll have to get used to it. I can’t see why he should be any different. He’ll learn to adapt, like most people do when there’s no going back. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a side of Matthew no one ever saw before.’

‘Well, we shall see, I suppose.’

‘Yes, we shall,’ Jenny stated with conviction, rising from the breakfast table to start clearing away, confident in the eventual fulfilment of her conviction. She didn’t have to wait for long.

Two weeks prior to Christmas, the autumn having been so uneventful it hardly seemed they were having a war at all – people were calling it the phoney war, the funny war, even the bore war, and some evacuees were even returning home – Jenny opened the door to a knock. There he stood, one leather-gloved hand clutching a small suitcase, his overcoat collar turned up against the chill wind, the well-cut suit beneath soon to be exchanged for the rough khaki of a private in the Royal Corps of Signals. His smile was wide, his long narrow eyes bright. He looked as though he had been given a birthday present.

‘Thought I’d pop over to say cheerio.’

Not knowing what to say, all she said was, ‘Come in out of the cold for a second,’ and all but dragged him across the doorstep as her mother came from the living room to wish him well and invite him to come and sit by the fire for a moment.

‘It’s warm in there, Matthew. There’s such a draught from the door.’

‘No thanks, Mrs Ross,’ he said as Jenny dutifully closed the door a little. ‘Got a train to catch. Just thought I’d say a quick goodbye to Jen … Jenny.’

Despite the miserable feeling inside her at Matthew’s going, Jenny couldn’t help but smile at the hasty correction before her mother as the woman melted discreetly back into the living room, leaving the pair of them to say their goodbyes. She wondered if her mother suspected the feelings she had for Matthew. If she did, she had never betrayed it.

Alone with him, she still couldn’t come up with anything wise or clever to say.

‘So you’re off then.’ It was the only thing she could find, obvious, inane, feeble, betraying nothing of the desolation churning in the pit of her stomach.

‘Yes.’

‘I hope you get by all right.’

‘I hope so too.’

‘Nice of you to come over to say goodbye.’

At this he gave her one of those searching looks that never failed to set her heart racing with useless hope. ‘Well, I would, wouldn’t I?’

‘Why?’

‘Because … it’s you. My best friend.’

It wrung her heart. She would always be his best friend, no more than that. That was obvious now.

‘I’ll miss you, Matthew,’ was all she could find to say, a catch in her throat that she hadn’t wanted to be there, to her annoyance quite audible.

On impulse she reached up and touched his smooth cheek, then with the same spontaneity, leaned forward and planted a kiss where her hand had momentarily touched. The flesh felt cold from the biting wind outside but the spicy fragrance of his skin warmly filled her nostrils. She stood back, alarmed by her own temerity. For fear of ridicule she had never before dared kiss him. What would he think now?

‘Take care of yourself, won’t you?’ she heard herself say.

His smile was not at all taunting. ‘Don’t worry, I will.’

Some of her composure returned. ‘I’m glad you got your own way in the end.’

‘Don’t know about that,’ he laughed, the laugh light and confident in a way she’d never heard before; before it had always been touched by a tinge of defiance. ‘It’s up to me now to prove myself right. Anyway, if I don’t swim, I can only sink.’

The old defiance coming back, the caustic quip.

‘Don’t say that.’ She experienced a shudder of sudden apprehension, a premonition, dread, so light that it went as quickly as it had come. His was a charmed life, bright with promise. He’d be all right. People like him always were. He had to be.

The easy expression had faded to be replaced by a thoughtful, almost affectionate regard. ‘I’d like to thank you, Jenny, for making up my mind for me – the night we had that dinner together.’

Her face grew hot. ‘I did nothing …’

‘You listened. It was enough.’

She was startled by his arm coming around her waist, pulling her gently towards him; then he kissed her full on the mouth. It was a long lingering kiss, revealing the passionate core of him that she had always imagined yet thought she would never be invited to probe. Even now she knew it came purely from regret at leaving a dear friend, or perhaps from his trepidation at the unknown into which he was about to step, but no more than that.

Curiously dizzy, she felt herself put gently from him. When she spoke she was annoyed to find that her voice shook. ‘Lots of luck, Matthew.’

‘You too, Jenny. I’ll write, let you know where I am. Although God knows where I … where any of us will end up. But things will never be the same again.’

‘I suppose not,’ she replied lamely, her shaken nerves calming at last.

For a moment he looked searchingly at her. Then he held out his hand, unaware of anything behind her candid grey-green eyes but what she knew she dared convey – a friendly regret of his going. Yet, oh, how she wished it possible to show him how she truly felt as she took the offered hand, the cool slim fingers closing over hers in a firm and steady grip that had the essence of real friendship in it. How she wished it was love rather than friendship, but she wasn’t prepared to fool herself.

‘I don’t know when our paths will cross again,’ he said, his tone low and full, ‘if they ever do. But whatever happens, Jenny, I want you to know that you’ll always be one of my nicer memories.’

‘Perhaps we could keep in touch,’ she said quickly and he smiled, almost gratefully.

‘Perhaps we will. I’ll try and write to you, Jenny. Look after yourself.’

Then he was gone, out of the door and down the steps to the street, turning towards Cambridge Heath Road and the nearest bus stop, moving on swiftly with that fast springy step of his.

The fierce wind battered at his trilby on which one hand was keeping a tight hold. Perhaps that was why he didn’t turn and wave, she thought as she stood watching him going out of her life.

Whether his own family had stood at their door to see him go on his way, she had no idea. Her eyes had become too misted to see that far, which she blamed on tears caused by the bitter wind. She couldn’t recall when she had cried last, apart from when her father had died, of course. She wasn’t really crying now, except that the wind touched a little colder against a small part of her cheek where a rivulet had begun to trickle down as finally she turned and came back into the house.

A few weeks later, as promised, came a letter from Matthew, from Catterick in Yorkshire, full of his traumatic introduction to the regimental sergeant major, to his platoon sergeant, to square bashing and to evil food and hard beds.

Slowly getting to be a proper soldier – in hot water all the time. Uniform fits where it touches. The chaps in my hut took the mickey out of my accent at first. I never knew I had one. Said I sounded a bloody snob (their words) and damned arrogant, which I didn’t like that much. They started to call me College Boy, but after I had a set-to with one of them and duffed him up, and got seven days C.B. – not College Boy, but Confined to Barracks, they have started calling me Matt and sometimes Wardy after my surname because there’s another Matthew in the platoon. So I suppose being called that must stand for something. They’re not a bad bunch once you get to know them. I still can’t get used to being bawled at …

There were two pages of cheerful grousing. He seemed quite genuinely happy, a vastly different man to the one who had said goodbye to her that day. If anything, he seemed happier than he had been in his carefree days before war had broken out, despite the restrictions of army life. Jenny could only think poetically of a bird released.

He had concluded his letter by writing that he was off down the local with a few mates for a couple of jars.

Jenny wrote back, heartened by his writing to her, but he did not reply. In his usual careless fashion he had written as promised and had already forgotten her. She could imagine him skipping through her reply, thinking he’d answer it when he had the time, but with his thoughts on other things he had probably put it away and lost track of it, his promise pushed further back into the corner of his mind, eventually to die altogether.

Taking what struck her as an obvious hint, she didn’t write again, so that the only news she gleaned of him was what filtered through from his mother to others and thence now and again to her mother.

The only one left at home out of the old crowd she’d once gone about with, Jenny began to experience a very real dread of being tied to her home forever, staying in night after night after work, keeping her mother company through the long dreary winter days stretching ahead.

Her whole life had become dreary. Coming home on slow buses in the blue glow that enabled the conductor to see the coins he was given, masked headlamps just penetrating a stygian winter evening although street lamps gave out a tiny downward pinprick of light with the slight relaxing of blackout regulations now that no air raids seemed forthcoming, all made for a miserable existence. There was no point her going out for an evening. The West End was no longer lit up like a Christmas tree. And although cinemas, theatres, dance halls and restaurants had all reopened, football stadiums following suit, what fun could be had going anywhere alone?

Even Matthew’s sister had gone away to stay with relatives in Surrey. True, Jenny was again helping run the Girl Guides, the vicar of St John’s having restarted all its groups, but it wasn’t the same any more. There now seemed just her and Mumsy, the two of them even spending their Christmas alone.

She nurtured wild thoughts of joining one of the women’s services – anything to escape this purposeless role of companion to a parent who was prone to seeing herself as already approaching old age. Sympathise with her as she did, Jenny longed for something to give her life meaning, to be somewhere where she didn’t have to make understanding noises or give her mother comforting pats on the hand. It was unkind to think like that but she couldn’t help it. Everyone was off somewhere. She alone was stuck at home. But when it came down to brass tacks, how could she be so cruel as to desert Mumsy who’d always had a need to lean on her as she had leaned on her husband? Yet were circumstances to call on her to stand on her own two feet Mumsy might surprise everyone by coping admirably, as people often do when forced to battle on alone.