A Wartime Nurse (40 page)
Authors: Maggie Hope
Tags: #Nurses, #World War; 1939-1945, #Sagas, #War & Military, #Fiction
‘You remember Major Koestler?’ asked Theda.
‘Yes, of course I do.’
‘Did you know they caught him sending messages back to Germany? He had a short-wave radio hidden in his room. The funny thing is, no one suspected him at all. It was a seven-day wonder when the radio was discovered. I never could understand how he could find anything of interest to send. Not in a little place like Bishop Auckland.’
‘It’s surprising. I did hear about it actually, I was questioned about him at the time. But the war was just about over anyway. I never suspected he was a Nazi, though. He was such a good doctor, a dedicated man.’
Theda remembered the disabled children in the small ward on Block Two, remembered the POW’s attitude to them that Christmas of 1944. ‘I did,’ she said. Ken glanced at her and then away, over to the edge of the sea where Richard and Flora were still trotting in and out of the water.
‘At one time I thought he was sweet on you,’ he said. ‘And you on him. I was jealous.’
Theda stared at him. Had she heard aright? ‘What did you say?’ she asked him, but Richard had come up and was tugging at Ken’s sleeve.
‘Will you help me build a sandcastle?’ he asked Ken, then looked at his mother and added, ‘Sir?’
‘My name is Ken; you can call me that,’ he said. And they built a castle, round and high with battlements the shape of Richard’s little bucket, for they used that to shape the wet sand. Ken dug out a moat and build a drawbridge and marked out a portcullis and some windows. And Richard started the interminable journeys to the water’s edge to bring back water for the moat. After a while another little boy joined him and the two of them trotted backwards and forwards to the sea, with Flora going along at first until she tired and flopped down beside Ken, her tongue hanging out.
The boys came back yet again and dropped their buckets. ‘This is Brian,’ Richard said to Ken and Theda. ‘His mam’s over there.’ He pointed to a woman sitting knitting close by.
‘Hello, Brian,’ said Theda. ‘Are you thirsty, you two? I’ll get you some pop at the kiosk. Do you want dandelion and burdock or cream soda?’
‘Dandelion and burdock, please,’ the boys said together, and Ken hauled himself to his feet.
‘I’ll get it,’ he said, and Theda enjoyed the unaccustomed luxury of sitting back and waiting while he did. He came back with four bottles.
‘I knew you’d like one too,’ he said to her. ‘It’s all those years of doing without such luxuries during the war that does it.’
‘Your daddy’s nice,’ said Brian to Richard, and there was a sudden silence before Richard hooted with laughter.
‘He’s not my daddy!’ he cried.
The sun went in, and as sometimes happens a fret rolled in from the North Sea, damp and clinging, and it started to rain.
‘We’ll have to go indoors,’ said Theda, rising to her feet and pulling Richard’s jacket out of her bag. ‘Come on, Richard. Put this on, we’re going.’
‘I don’t want to,’ he wailed. ‘I want to play with Brian.’ But Brian’s mother was calling him and suddenly everyone was scurrying from the beach.
‘Come back to my house?’ said Ken.
‘Oh, well, I don’t think—’ Theda began. Suddenly she thought of something which hadn’t occurred to her before.
‘Your wife . . . we don’t want to be a trouble.’
‘I’m not married,’ said Ken. ‘There’s only Mrs Gascoigne who “does” for me. Every morning, nine till twelve.’ Theda felt she had been too obvious for amusement was in his eyes once again but nevertheless she felt a lightening of the heart.
‘We’ll come. Richard loves to play with Flora.’
‘And she likes to play with him.’
Richard brightened at the idea of going home with Flora and they hurried across the road and up the small drive and round the side of the house to the back porch where Flora had to stay until she dried out properly.
‘I’ll dry her,’ said Richard eagerly, and Ken handed him the towel while he and Theda went into the kitchen. ‘I’ll make some lunch,’ said Ken. ‘Mrs Gascoigne has already gone, I didn’t realise it was so late.’
‘Oh, don’t bother, we can eat at the Britannia,’ said Theda.
But Ken wouldn’t hear of it and in the end they made up a meal together, he washing salad stuffs at the sink while Theda sliced tomatoes and cheese to eke out the ham that Mrs Gascoigne had left in the fridge for Ken.
When it was ready they went to call Richard but there he was, beside Flora, boy and dog asleep on the rug, the boy’s head on the dog’s neck and one thin brown arm flung over her back.
‘Leave them,’ whispered Ken, and drew her inside, through the kitchen and the hall and into the sitting-room. She went obediently, drugged by his nearness and the feel of his hand on her wrist. He pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips, gently at first and then insistently, and it was as if the intervening years had never been. If a warning bell rang in her head Theda was quite deaf to it, all she could hear was the clamouring in her blood, the long denied desire for him, and could feel him harden against her through the thin cotton of her dirndl skirt.
She was drowning, smothered by the strength of the feelings she had denied for so long. His fingers moved on her back, sending electric shocks through her system until she thought she couldn’t bear it. She was desperate, moaning, as she leaned into him. Ken was drawing her towards the couch, bending his head to her breast, pulling down her blouse impatiently, and there was no way she could have stopped him, though a flicker of sanity did run through her head and she knew she should. And then his arms were dropping from her and she swayed, eyes only half-open. For a minute she thought she would fall.
‘Are you my daddy?’ said Richard’s voice and her eyes flew open. He was there, standing in the doorway, one hand on the door knob. Even in her febrile state she registered his expression of hope and eagerness. ‘Daddies and mams do that, Billy Carter said.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
If the proverbial ground had opened and swallowed her, Theda felt she would have been happy. As it was, she sat in a corner of an out-of-the-way cafe with Richard and watched while he ate egg and chips. She drank a couple of mugs of tea and the rain trickled down the window pane, echoing her mood.
‘I don’t want to go now!’ Richard had cried as she’d grabbed his coat and bundled him into it and out of the house, making an incoherent response when Ken tried to stop her, not looking at him, she couldn’t.
‘What about lunch?’ Ken asked bewildered. ‘Oh, come on, Theda, kids say these things. They don’t mean anything. Why get in a state?’
‘I’m hungry,’ Richard protested, and she dragged him round the corner and another corner and away from the front of Seaburn to get as far away from Ken as possible.
‘I’ll have another cup of tea,’ she said to the waitress, and watched as Richard puddled a chip round and round in his egg yolk, making her feel slightly nauseous. ‘Stop making a mess and eat it up, Richard.’
His bottom lip jutted out. ‘I wanted to stay and play with Flora,’ he said, looking mutinous. ‘Why couldn’t I?’
‘Because,’ she said, sounding like a cross child herself.
What Theda wanted to do was go home now but she had promised the boy they were there for the weekend and it was only Saturday, Whit Saturday at that, and what was she going to do until Monday? How was she going to avoid Ken until then?
It wasn’t the fact that Richard had embarrassed her by thinking Ken might be his father, although he had right enough. But Richard was looking for his father everywhere nowadays. No, it was the way her body had responded to Ken, her treacherous body. Why, she had been ready to make a fool of herself over him all over again. If Richard hadn’t come to the door just then she would have done. And Ken . . . he seemed to think he just had to kiss her and put his hands on her and she was his for the taking. As she almost had been.
‘Would you like to go and see Uncle Joss and Aunt Beth?’ she asked Richard out of the blue, and he looked up at her reproachfully.
‘You said we could stay here till Monday.’
‘I know. But really, I have to go to see Uncle Joss. And it’s not going to be any good on the beach, is it? It’s raining too hard.’
Richard sighed. ‘It might not rain tomorrow,’ he pointed out. ‘And if we stay in Ken’s house we won’t get wet, will we?’
‘Look,’ she snapped suddenly, ‘I have to go to Sunderland and you have to come with me. I’m your mother and you are just a little boy. So no more arguing, we’re going. Or else we go straight home.’
‘It’s not fair!’
It wasn’t fair, and she knew she wasn’t being fair, but she had to go. She paid the waitress and hurried the boy out of the cafe. At the Britannia she settled her bill, not even protesting when the landlady insisted she pay for the extra two nights.
‘You booked them, Mrs Wearmouth,’ she said. ‘This is a bank holiday weekend. I could have let the room over and over.’
‘Well, don’t let the room again for the two nights. I’ve paid for it and I might come back,’ was her parting shot as she banged the front door behind her. It opened almost immediately.
‘An’ another thing,’ said the landlady. ‘This is a respectable place. I’m not having men hanging around the place after such as you!’
Theda stopped and turned round to face the woman who was standing, arms akimbo, in the doorway. She opened her mouth to demand what she meant but decided against it. She hadn’t the heart for that sort of argument, not in front of Richard. So she took the boy and put the hastily packed cases in the boot and they got in the car and headed down the road for Sunderland and Laburnum Avenue, only ten minutes away.
Ken was walking up the promenade away from the beach when he saw the car heading south. He waved his arms, jumped in the air, but unluckily there was a Co-op van going past and it obscured his view for that vital moment and then she was gone. All he could see were her tail lights as she stopped for the crossing, too far down the road for him to run after though for one insane moment he started to.
He was stamping with frustration, and soaking wet with the rain for he hadn’t even stopped to put on his mac. He had raced to the Britannia to catch her but the landlady had told him she wasn’t there.
‘May I wait for her?’ he’d asked.
‘Certainly not,’ was the frigid reply. ‘You’re not her man, are you?’ And when he admitted that, no, he wasn’t her husband, ‘This is a holiday boarding house. We can’t have men hanging around waiting for young women.’
Theda’s car was there, parked on the road. She must have taken the boy back on the beach, maybe to the fun fair, however unlikely in the rain. Ken hurried round the small resort looking everywhere, or so he thought. He had just decided to wait by her car since she must be coming back to it sometime; he would just sit on it until she did. But he was too late, though not too late to see her go.
Ken was in a lather, not a panic exactly but a lather. He dashed for his own car and raced after her, catching the lights on green so that in a very short time he was near enough to see her turn into the small estate of prefabricated houses and on to Laburnum Avenue. He saw her park the car and go up to one of the houses, and, from a short distance away, saw the petite blonde who had been with her brother at the funeral open the door.
He waited, considering what to do, but in the end drove up to the house and got out of the car and marched up to the front door and rang the bell.
If Beth was surprised to see them on her doorstep she was also welcoming and took Richard through to the kitchen to give him a bowl of homemade icecream.
‘Joss is working this afternoon,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t very happy about that, it being bank holiday weekend, but now the weather has turned out so bad I don’t care. Come on into the sitting-room. We can sit round the fire and have a proper gossip. What’s wrong? I can tell something’s upset you, so come on, you can tell me all about it. I would have thought you were having man trouble except that you don’t bother with men.’
‘Well,’ Theda began, sorely tempted to pour it all out to her sister-in-law, ‘you won’t say a word to Joss, will you? It’s . . . it’s about Richard’s father.’
‘What?’
Beth was shaken. In all the years she had known Theda she had never heard her say a word about who the father was or anything about him. But Theda was white-faced and obviously distressed.
‘Are you sure you want to tell me? I mean don’t, not if you’re going to regret it tomorrow. What’s brought this on, anyway? I thought you were over him, whoever he is. You haven’t met him again have you?’ Uncannily she’d hit on the truth.
‘I have. I did. And he’s just as big a bastard as he always was.’ And Theda burst into tears.
‘Howay now,’ said Beth, putting an arm around her shoulders and leading her to the sofa where they both sat down. ‘Don’t upset yourself, pet – they’re not worth it.’
Theda had just opened her mouth to start her story when there was a knocking at the door and Beth swore under her breath.
‘Sit still, I’ll go and see who that is. Probably the milkman, he hasn’t been for his money yet. I’ll soon get rid of him.’
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