Where the Heart Is (8 page)

‘Well, at least the RAF boys get to wear a pretty decent uniform,’ Ellen reminded them, coming to sit down with them just in time to catch what had been said. ‘Not like the poor army boys.’

The table was full now and whilst the other girls embarked on an intense discussion about the merits and demerits of various service uniforms, Lou let her thoughts slip to their Easter weekend break.

Easter was quite late this year, which meant that her dad would already have been busy in his allotment, and although there wouldn’t be any chocolate eggs because of rationing, Lou suspected that there would be wonderfully fresh eggs from the hens
the allotment keepers had clubbed together to keep. Her mother was a wonderful cook. Naafi food had been an eye-opener for Lou, but she had made herself get used to it; she didn’t want the others thinking she was a softie, after all.

It would be heaven to sleep in her own bed again in the room she shared with Sasha. Her sister Grace had written to tell her that although she would be on duty at the hospital in Whitchurch, where she was now working, for most of the Easter holiday, she had got Easter Monday off, when she and Seb would be coming over to Liverpool to see everyone.

There would be no Luke there, of course. He was fighting in the desert with the British Army, and there would be no Katie either, because she and Luke weren’t engaged any more.

They were all upset about that, but especially her mother, Lou knew. She was never going to let herself get daft about a lad. It only led to problems and misery. She had made enough of a fool of herself over Kieran Mallory to know not to do the same thing ever again. Just look at the way it had changed Sasha. Lou just hoped that her twin would keep to her promise about just the two of them going out together on Easter Saturday, she really did.

‘Auntie Jean!’ Bella exclaimed with genuine delight when she stepped into the kitchen to find her aunt sitting there with her mother.

Although Vi and Jean were identical twins, the way they had lived their lives now showed in their faces so that, in their mid-forties, Jean Campion’s
expression was one of warmth and happiness, whilst Vi Firth’s was one of dissatisfaction and irritation. Vi’s hair might be iron neat in the scalloped rigid permanent wave she favoured, her twinset cashmere and her skirt expensive Scottish tweed–like her twinset, dating from before the war–but it was her auntie Jean, with her slightly untidy soft brown curls, and the kindness that shone from her hazel eyes who looked the prettier and happier of the two, Bella thought. Not that her auntie didn’t look every bit as smart as her twin sister, and a good bit slimmer. Unlike Vi, Jean had kept her neat waist, and if her jumper and skirt weren’t the exclusive models worn by Bella’s mother they were still of good quality. The pretty lilac of the jumper her auntie was wearing with her navy serge suit enhanced her colouring. But it was the quality of her auntie’s lovely smile that really showed the difference between them. Her own mother rarely smiled properly, which was why her mouth turned down, giving her a permanently dissatisfied and cross look, whilst her twin’s mouth turned upwards, drawing attention to her smile and the kindness in her eyes.

Her mother might once have enjoyed showing off to her twin and boasting about the way she had moved up in the world but it was Auntie Jean who was truly the happier of the two of them and, bless her, she hadn’t said so much as a single unkind word about how her twin might have brought some of her unhappiness on herself, Bella acknowledged as she hugged her aunt affectionately.

‘I’m really glad now that I delayed having my
lunch so that I could pop home this afternoon to remind Mummy that it’s our WVS night tonight,’ Bella told her aunt, ‘otherwise I’d have missed you. It’s so good of you to come all this way, Auntie Jean.’

‘Nonsense. It’s only a matter of coming over on the ferry and then catching the bus,’ Bella’s mother objected immediately.

‘I’ll put on the kettle, shall I, Bella love?’ Jean asked, giving her niece a motherly look. It meant ever such a lot to her to have this new relationship with her niece and to feel that Bella was now within the fold, so to speak, and a real part of her own family. Her own mother would have been that pleased. She’d always felt strongly about family sticking together.

Watching her aunt busy herself, Bella admitted to a small sad stab of loneliness. Living here with her mother wasn’t easy, and she desperately missed her own house and Lena’s company, even though she knew that in coming home she had done the right thing–for Lena as well as for her mother.

‘I had a letter from Grace the other day saying that she and Seb are hoping to come up to Liverpool over Easter,’ Bella told her aunt.

‘That’s one of the reasons why I’m here,’ Jean said. ‘I was wondering if you and Vi would like to come to us for your tea on Easter Monday. It won’t be anything much, what with the war and everything, but Grace and Seb will be there, and Lou’s got leave as well.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that, Jean,’ Vi began
before Bella could say anything. ‘I don’t know what Charlie and Daphne’s plans are yet.’

‘We’d love to come, Auntie Jean,’ Bella overrode her mother.

‘But what if Charles and Daphne are here?’ Vi asked.

‘Well, they’d be very welcome too,’ Jean hurried to assure her sister.

‘I thought you said that when you wrote and asked Charlie what they were doing for Easter, he wrote back that Daphne’s parents were having some friends to stay, and that he didn’t even know if he would get leave,’ Bella reminded her mother.

Personally the last thing Bella wanted was for Charlie to come home. There was the matter of Lena and the baby, for one thing, and there was no way she wanted her young friend upset or embarrassed in any way by Charlie’s presence.

After they had drunk their tea, and Bella and Jean had finalised the arrangements for Easter Monday, Bella offered to travel back to the ferry terminal with her aunt.

‘Oh, Bella, that’s kind of you but there’s really no need,’ Jean protested.

‘No need at all,’ Vi agreed. ‘I can’t for the life of me think why Jean would need you to go with her, Bella, especially when she knows that I’m here on my own day in and day out with no one to speak to until you come home from that nursery. I don’t know why you work there, I really don’t. Not when you could have been working for your father, and if you had …’

Her mother was working herself up to one of
her angry outbursts, during which she’d blame her for Pauline’s presence in her father’s life, Bella recognised, stepping in quickly to deflect it by saying calmly, ‘It was Charlie Daddy wanted to have working for him, Mummy, not me. Now, why don’t you go and start getting ready for the WVS tonight?’

‘Oh, the WVS. I don’t think I want to go, Bella. Mrs Forbes Brown cut me at church last Sunday.’

‘Don’t be silly, Mummy. She just didn’t see you, that’s all.’

‘Bella, you are such a good daughter to your mother,’ Jean praised her niece later as they walked to the bus stop together, Jean now wearing a neat little navy hat she had trimmed up last year with a scrap of cream petersham ribbon.

Jean thought approvingly that Bella’s businesslike dark green suit and a matching beret had a bit of a look of a uniform about it and certainly suited her niece’s trim figure. A pair of court shoes showed off her dainty ankles, and Jean thought how well that style would suit Grace, who had to wear such ugly shoes for her work.

‘There’s really no need for you to come all the way down to the terminal with me, Bella,’ Jean insisted. ‘I know how busy you must be.’

‘We are,’ Bella agreed with a smile, ‘but not so busy that I’m prepared to give up the opportunity to spend time with you, Auntie Jean.’

As Jean said to Sam later, once she had returned home and the two of them were sharing a cup of
tea in the warmth of the kitchen before Sam went out to take advantage of the last of the daylight to work on his allotment, ‘You’d never know our Bella for the same girl. She’s changed so much, and for the better. I feel sorry for her too having to put up with Vi, the way she is, always finding fault. I know that Vi’s my own sister, my twin, and heaven knows I feel sorry for her after what she’s been through with Edwin treating her like he has, but she doesn’t make things easy for herself, Sam, or for those around her.’

‘Well, you know what I think,’ Sam responded. ‘Your Vi and her Edwin were a perfect match for one another, both of them as selfish as bedamned, but I know you, with that soft heart of yours, never able to resist helping others even when they don’t deserve it.’

Jean gave her husband a tender smile. They’d had a good marriage, her and Sam, a happy marriage, but she knew how uncomfortable ‘soppy’ talk made him feel so instead of telling him how much she loved him and how glad she was that she had married him, she asked him anxiously, ‘Do you think those Jersey potatoes of yours will be ready for Easter, Sam? Only there’s nothing quite like your Jerseys with Easter Sunday lamb, and any that’s left over will do nicely cold on Easter Monday.’

As she had known he would, Sam puffed himself up slightly with male pride and assured her, ‘I reckon they will be ready, but I’m not promising,’ he warned her, ‘and I’m not having my Jerseys pulled up before they’re ready, no matter what.’

Which Jean knew from experience meant that
she could relax and they could all look forward to the delicious treat of home-grown new potatoes with their Easter Sunday lamb.

‘It will be a funny Easter this year, Sam, what with Grace married and Lou in uniform. We won’t be having our Luke dropping by either.’

As she reached for her handkerchief Sam leaned across the table and took hold of her hand in his.

‘Aye, love, I know.’

‘It’s not as bad as if he’d been in Singapore, but …’

Sam’s hand tightened over hers.

‘What do you think will happen, Sam? I thought that we were winning in Egypt, but now …’ Anxiety thickened Jean’s voice. The news from the desert–or rather, what they were allowed to know was going on–was increasingly worrying. In January Rommel’s tanks had started to push back the British Eighth Army with which Luke was fighting, and which had been doing so well the previous year.

‘They don’t call Rommel the Desert Fox for nothing,’ Sam acknowledged. ‘If you ask me, Churchill should have recalled Ritchie.’ Lieutenant-General Ritchie was in charge of the war in the Western Desert, and there was growing criticism of him, blaming him for the Eighth Army’s current plight.

Jean knew from the sombre tone of Sam’s voice that she had good cause to worry for Luke, but being the woman she was, instead of giving way to her tears, she withdrew her hand from Sam’s and blew her nose very firmly.

Changing the subject she said, ‘Sasha’s told me that Lou has written to her suggesting that they go out dancing together, just the two of them, when she comes home at Easter. As luck would have it young Bobby has got leave over Easter himself, but seemingly he’s told Sasha that he’s going to go home to Newcastle to see his family. He’s ever such a nice lad,’ Jean concluded approvingly.

The other person who was in her thoughts was her younger sister, Francine. Fran wrote regularly, funny, witty letters–she had always had that gift–but although she mentioned Brandon she didn’t say anything that gave Jean any clue as to how the young American’s health was.

At Christmas Fran had promised that she would let Jean ‘know when there is anything you need to know’, and since she had not done so Jean could only hope that Brandon was holding his own.

‘Dr Forbes is admitting a new patient today, Nurse, a German POW suffering from blood poisoning.’

Grace nodded briskly as she listened to what Sister O’Reilly was telling her. She was enjoying working at her new hospital. They dealt with a variety of cases, some military and some civilian. Matron had made her feel very welcome and had told her how pleased she was to have her, and Grace was glad she was able to put her training to good use.

‘In the circumstances I think perhaps he should go in the private room at the end of the ward. To us a patient is a patient, and that is exactly how it should be, but some of our other patients may have other views.’

Grace knew exactly what sister meant. The new admission was one of their enemy, and some of the other men on the ward might either be upset by his presence or antagonistic toward him.

As a nurse, however, Grace couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the German when he was eventually brought in. His lower right leg was swollen to double the size of his left leg, the flesh red and hot to the touch and drawn tight over the swollen limb. A bandage had been wrapped around what Grace guessed must be the site of the wound, but above it she could see quite plainly the telltale red line of infection.

Her heart gave a flurry of beats, the sight taking her back to the time when she had been training and Seb had been admitted to her hospital with a shoulder wound that had threatened to give him blood poisoning. She had been so afraid for him, so determined to do everything she could to help him, cleaning the wound and packing it with hot kaolin paste, making sure that he took his M & B tablets regularly.

The guard who had come in with the POW, an army squaddie, stationed himself outside the small room, telling Grace, ‘You won’t have much trouble with Wilhelm here. He speaks English.’

Summoning a junior nurse, Grace began to remove the dressing from the German’s leg. He was a pleasant-looking man with unexpectedly nice eyes, and if she hadn’t known he was a German she’d probably have thought of him as a decent sort.

The wound, once she’d removed the bandage, might not look much–a single small puncture
wound that had healed over–but Grace knew how serious it was. It would have to be opened and drained of the poison inside it, the rotting flesh removed, and that telltale red line brought down because if it wasn’t, well then at best the POW could lose his leg and at worse, his life. His ‘Thank you’ as she made him as comfortable as she could to wait for the doctor surprised her and caught her off guard. A little guardedly she smiled at him. He may be ‘the enemy’ but as a nurse it was her duty to take care of him.