Guarded Passions (11 page)

‘You mean you have to sleep here all on your own?' Adam asked in surprise.

She smiled up at him provocatively. ‘Does it worry you?'

‘Well … you don't look all that old.'

‘I'm twenty!'

‘Same age as my brother Gary … he's just been killed.'

‘I know. You've talked of nothing else all night.'

‘Sorry.'

‘That's all right. I know how you feel. My boyfriend was killed in action about three months ago. We was going to be married next time he came on leave.'

‘I'm sorry!' Adam's hand squeezed hers reassuringly.

‘It's this bleeding war, ain't it?' Her fingers idly traced the veins on the back of his hand as she spoke.

Suddenly Dora's arms were around his neck, her lips warm and soft as they found his, while her body, hot and voluptuous, pressed urgently against him.

With a moan he gathered her close, savaging her mouth. She responded hungrily, returning his kisses with a passion that matched his own.

As his hand pushed her skirt aside and slid up her leg, she grabbed his wrist, forcing him to stop.

‘Please,' he begged hoarsely.

‘Not here,' she protested.

Together they groped their way across the landing to her bedroom.

Feverishly he tore off his clothes, then, without waiting for her to finish undressing, pushed her down on the bed and threw himself on top of her.

Their coupling bordered on rape. As he furiously pounded into her, his thoughts were dark and hideous. It wasn't Dora's soft, vulnerable body but the whole world he was wrestling with. Anger, fury, hatred and lust went into every thrust until he was completely spent and could only collapse beside her.

He had heard neither her soft moans nor her cries of anguish. He was unaware of the scalding tears that streamed from her tight-closed eyes and trickled down her cheeks to mingle with his sweat.

When he awoke next morning he was alone. He stared around the cluttered bedroom, trying to remember where he was. Slowly, with increasing depression, he recalled the events of the previous night. Overcome with shame and remorse he dressed and went down into the pub. The bar that had been warm and friendly the previous night, now smelled acrid with cigarette smoke and stale beer.

Dora was cleaning. She stopped as he came into the room and leant against the corner of the bar.

‘You off then?'

He nodded. ‘About last night …'

‘Forget it.' She shrugged helplessly, a crooked smile curving her generous mouth. ‘I suppose you won't be coming back?'

He shook his head. ‘I'm catching the next train to Sturbury. Look, about last night …'

Lightly she placed her hand over his mouth. ‘Don't say anything more. Don't explain … or apologise. I couldn't bear that. It was something we both needed. Look after yourself.'

‘I'm sorry we should meet and part like this,' Adam said gently. ‘I wish things had been different …'

She gave a low laugh. ‘What – for us two! Don't try kidding me. I'm not really your type, now am I? I only wish I were. You're a lovely sort of feller.' Swiftly she planted a kiss on his cheek.

Adam felt abashed at having treated her as he had done. He wanted to say something, as much to ease his own conscience as to appease her feelings.

He wondered if he ought to offer her some money, then his face burned at the realisation of what an added insult such a gesture would be. Feeling helpless, he walked out into the pale winter sunshine and made his way towards the nearest bus-stop.

For several weeks after losing the baby, Helen felt listless. The weather was cold and bleak so she spent most of her time huddled over the fire at Willow Cottage, brooding and waiting for Adam to phone.

Her need for him filled every waking moment. She ached to be in his arms, to have him comfort her and reassure her that he still loved her even though there was now no baby.

She read his letters over and over again, but they brought scant consolation and didn't ease the desperate pain inside her. She had been devastated when she heard that his brother had been killed at the same time as she had lost her baby. Knowing how much he had cared about Gary, it seemed so hard that she and Adam should be apart at a time when they both needed each other so much. She sat numbly, waiting to hear that he had found somewhere for her to stay and that she could be with him until he was sent overseas.

It was Aunt Julia who eventually brought her out of her black despair by insisting she should go back to work.

‘There are men losing their arms and legs from gangrene, and dying because they're so short of nurses, and all you're doing is sitting around feeling sorry for yourself,' she told Helen sharply.

Shocked into action, Helen went back to Bulpitts and once again became immersed in hospital life. She still worried about Adam. As spring turned into summer, the uncertainty about where he was troubled her. There were no letters from him in the weeks after D-Day, and she became convinced he'd finally gone overseas.

When Paris was freed at the end of August she had listened avidly to every news bulletin on the wireless, hoping to pick up some clue about where Adam's unit was likely to be. She went to the cinema in Winton three nights in a row, just to see the Pathé News because it showed British Guards marching through Paris and she thought she might catch a glimpse of Adam amongst them.

Like so many others, Helen thought that liberating France would mean an immediate end to the war, but instead it seemed only to create new horrors. The newspapers were full of horrendous stories of the sick and suffering people the troops encountered as they travelled through Europe, and of the atrocities they were finding at the countless prisoner of war camps as they advanced into Germany. She had no way of knowing whether Adam was involved in any of this or not. The letters she now received were always censored, so Adam wasn't even explicit about where he was or what he was doing.

When they were first married Adam had written warm, passionate letters, filled with hope and plans for their future together. As time passed, his letters had become more pragmatic. Now, after almost a year and a half, apart from
Dear Helen
and
All my love, Adam
there was nothing to lessen the ache in her heart; no words to bridge the terrible separation.

When she wrote to him, knowing that some other eye would read every word she'd written cramped her style, too. As time passed, her letters also became tight and formal.

On her nineteenth birthday, when the only card she received was the one left on the kitchen-table by Aunt Julia, she arrived at Bulpitts with a lump in her throat. She knew that when any of the other nurses had a birthday they organized an impromptu party and that she could have done the same. Even though she generally treated both fellow staff and patients with cool reserve, they would have joined in, yet she had said nothing.

New nurses tended to laugh behind her back because she was so reserved. At the same time, they treated her with grudging respect, admiring the way she turned aside invitations and mild flirtations without any of the men resenting her attitude.

Aunt Julia was forever trying to persuade her to have some sort of social life.

‘You don't suppose Adam refuses to go for a drink in the NAAFI, or mess, or wherever it is they relax, just because you're not there, do you?'

‘It just doesn't appeal to me.' Helen shrugged.

‘There's no need to become a recluse or a martyr,' Aunt Julia told her drily. ‘When Adam comes home you want to establish right from the start that you intend keeping your own friends and interests.' Her face relaxed into a smile. ‘Maybe that's why I never got married. I couldn't bring myself to sacrifice my independence. Mind you,' she added tartly, ‘you might feel the same way yourself when you've lived with Adam for two or three years and discovered just how selfish men can be.' She sighed. ‘Take a lesson from your own parents. If your mother had been firmer with your father over financial matters then you might not have ended up penniless. And,' she added darkly, ‘I would say you are lucky that it is just penniless and not in debt.'

Helen had quickly changed the subject. She knew she was on dangerous ground. The home she'd grown up in and loved so dearly, was now occupied by strangers. Other children scampered in the garden and people talked about ‘young Dr Peterson' instead of Dr Price as they had done before.

She was grateful to Aunt Julia for letting her make her home at Willow Cottage, but she yearned for Adam to come home so that they could have a place of their own.

In moments of despondency, when the war news was particularly depressing, or when she hadn't heard from Adam for several weeks, Helen sometimes wondered if she should have listened to her father and not rushed into marriage. She and Adam had spent so little time together that he was still almost a stranger, and it was daunting to think they would spend the rest of their lives together. Yet how well did you ever know anyone? she thought, sadly.

The picture Aunt Julia had painted of her father, philanthropic to the point of being careless about his own financial welfare, hardly fitted her own memory of him.

Discovering that he had mishandled his affairs so badly that he had been heavily in debt, had come as a great shock. She had always looked up to him and thought him to be a man of great integrity, and she wondered how he would have resolved his problems had he not been killed.

It was only very occasionally Helen found herself dwelling on such matters. Generally she was much too busy. The Allies continued to advance across Europe, war still raged in the Far East, and sick and wounded soldiers constantly arrived at Bulpitts. No sooner was a bed empty than someone else was brought in to fill it.

She kept telling herself that it must all end soon. It was almost a year since D-Day, and the Allies were pushing deeper and deeper into Germany. In March they had taken Cologne, so surely the Germans must know they were beaten and Hitler must realise there was no point in holding out any longer?

It was a beautiful May day. Before sitting down to enter up reports and records in the day book, Helen walked down the ward, opening windows to let in the light spring breeze, that brought with it the scent of lilac and the promise of summer.

‘Helen, it's over … the war's over!'

Phyllis Lane, the Ward Sister, face beaming, hazel eyes dancing with excitement, came hurrying up to her.

‘Over … what do you mean?' Pen poised in mid-air, Helen stared in disbelief.

‘The Germans have surrendered … it's victory!'

‘Are you quite sure?' Helen looked doubtful.

‘Of
course
I'm sure. Winston Churchill made the announcement himself. I heard it on the wireless, and Matron's had a phone call from Army HQ confirming it.' She struck a pose and, pitching her voice as low as it would go, announced dramatically, ‘The German war is now at an end …'

‘I can't believe it …'

‘Neither can I! I wonder how long it will be before they start sending the men home and demobbing them?'

‘If it's anything like the time when they reached Paris last year, we'll need a lot of patience. We all thought then that the war was over – and look what happened.'

‘That was just a breakthrough. This time it's completely over. German forces in Italy, Germany, Holland and Denmark, have all surrendered unconditionally.'

‘In the Far East as well?'

‘No.' A note of caution crept into Phyllis Lane's voice. ‘Only in Europe. The Japs are still holding out.'

‘Then our boys might not come straight home. Leastways not all of them,' Helen said slowly.

Phyllis Lane's hazel eyes clouded. ‘You think they might send some of them on out to the Far East? Hell, they can't do that, not after what they've gone through in Europe.'

‘I don't see why not. If they need reinforcements, it makes sense to send troops who are already battle-trained.'

‘My God, you're a cool one! How long has your Adam been over there?'

‘Almost eighteen months.'

‘And all you can think of is that they might ship him straight out to the Far East!'

‘I may as well be realistic. Not much point getting all excited and then for it to come to nothing, now is there,' Helen stated, shrugging, her grey eyes hard as flint.

Phyllis Lane looked deflated. ‘I'll never understand you,' she said.

Helen bent her head over the day book and started to write. ‘I've been disappointed too many times in the past,' she said, and though her tone was even there was an undercurrent of bitterness in her voice.

‘Well,
you
may not be ready to celebrate, but
I'm
going to tell the whole ward – the entire hospital if it comes to that,' Sister Lane declared. ‘I'm so happy I want to shout it from the roof-tops.'

‘Do you think it's right to raise their hopes?'

‘Helen, what's wrong with you! You're not normal! Of course I'm going to tell them. It will do them more good than all the pills and medicines we keep pushing down their throats. It means they're one day nearer to getting back home to their families.'

‘Even that won't do some of them much good,' Helen retorted bitterly. ‘From what they tell me, most of them have been sacked or are too badly injured to ever work again. So what sort of future will they have being pushed about in a wheelchair, or hobbling around on crutches?'

‘Shut up, Helen, for goodness' sake. You're too morbid for words. The war is over –
isn't
that enough to make even you rejoice?'

‘It's not over, not completely,' Helen argued stubbornly. ‘Until the Japs surrender and all our boys are home from the Far East, it isn't over.'

Once the news broke, everyone in the hospital seemed to be in celebratory mood. The shortages, the fatigue, the cold and heat, the searing pain, the hours of misery and frustration, of black despair and discomfort, were all forgotten.