A Wartime Nurse (5 page)
Authors: Maggie Hope
Tags: #Nurses, #World War; 1939-1945, #Sagas, #War & Military, #Fiction
Inevitably they kissed and inevitably it got out of hand while the picnic basket lay forgotten. It was like a drug, thought Theda, once you’d started it was so hard to stop. Alan loosed the top button of her blouse and put his hand inside and she weakened at the feel of his hand against her breast, the sudden thrusting of her nipple taking her by surprise.
‘Please, Alan,’ she whispered.
‘Please yes or please no?’
‘Alan, don’t spoil it now, let’s wait until we’re married. When you come home, Alan, after the war.’
‘Suppose . . . Suppose I don’t come home,’ he said, holding her close against his shoulder, her head cupped in the hollow of his neck. His mouth was very close to hers as he bent over her and his hand lay still on her breast and she was filled with a terrible fear.
‘Oh, no, don’t say that, please don’t say that,’ she whispered. The day seemed to have darkened as though by an eclipse.
She could not see her own reflection in his eyes. If he had gone on then she would not have had the strength to stop him. He was going to war, for God’s sake, how could she deny him? What sort of heartless fool was she? ‘I’ll do anything, Alan, I love you,’ she said. ‘But don’t say that.’
Abruptly, he let go of her so that she fell against the grassy bank. He jumped to his feet and pulled her up after him. ‘No, pet, no, you were right. I don’t want you to do anything you’re not ready for. There’s plenty of time, we have our lives together. Nothing’s going to happen to me, I’m too fly for Adolf, just you wait and see. Come on, love, let’s go home.’
He lit a cigarette and stared at the stream while she adjusted her clothing and pulled a comb through her hair. He whistled tunelessly and when she came to join him, took hold of her hand and strode off up the bank to the path. She wondered if he realised he was whistling a song about angels and whether they would watch out for him. Probably not, she decided.
Theda walked up the yard to the back door, feeling dispirited. It was Friday, her day off, and almost a month since Alan had gone back to wherever he was going.
‘I wouldn’t tell you love, even if I could,’ he’d said to her. But she knew that wherever it was it must involve parachuting out of planes and most likely over enemy territory. She was at the pictures with Clara and the news came on. She could hear the plummy voice of the announcer: ‘This is Gaumont British News,’ and there were pictures of paratroopers saluting cheerily before stepping out of a plane and floating down to earth. Except that one of the parachutes didn’t open and the camera followed him down and got closer and closer, and when it was close enough she imagined it was Alan.
Sometimes, the parachutes all opened and she was ecstatically happy as they floated down but when they reached the earth they were surrounded by German soldiers with bayonets on their rifles and they were prodding at the paratroopers . . .
Theda shook her head to clear it and opened the door and walked into the kitchen. Her mother had a visitor, a man. Oh, God. Theda stood, just inside the door, staring as he got to his feet. It was Mr Price. Even as she saw the buff envelope in his hand she was telling herself that there were other reasons why he had come visiting; he could have had the day off and been out walking and just happened to be passing, he could be there for many a reason. Why should she jump to the worst conclusion?
Mr Price had risen to his feet and she gazed at him, begging him not to say the words. And Bea Wearmouth moved to her daughter’s side and took hold of her arm and drew her in towards the fire.
‘Theda, pet,’ she began.
Chapter Four
‘Oh, I wonder, how I wonder,
When the pit starts work on Monday,
Will the galloway pull the tub for me?’
Charles Wearmouth, resplendent in his Sunday suit, utility though it was, combed back his Brylcreemed hair before the press mirror as he sang. Bea frowned at his reflection in the glass.
‘Hush, lad,’ she whispered. ‘Can you not show a bit more sense? You know Alan was always singing that tune.’ She nodded towards Theda who was sitting in her dad’s rocking chair, one elbow propped on its wooden arm. She was staring into the fire as in a dream, her thoughts far away.
‘Aw, Mam, he always sang the proper words, you know he did,’ Chuck said, raising his eyebrows in pained innocence. It sometimes seemed to him that he spent his life tip-toeing round people’s feelings. Why shouldn’t he feel happy that it was his day off and he was going to meet his sweetheart? But still, Theda was his sister and remorse struck him.
‘It’s the tune, Chuck,’ his mother began, but Theda interrupted her. She had not been so lost in thought after all.
‘Never mind, Mam, I hear it often enough on the wireless anyway.’
By, thought Bea as she regarded her elder daughter, a large family was supposed to be a consolation in your old age. But these days, the more children you had, the more worry and heartache you had to go with them. She noted the shadows under the girl’s dark eyes, and how pale she was. Were they working her too hard in that hospital? After all, she could hardly have got over poor Alan being killed, and so soon after he had been home on embarkation leave. Bea glanced at the girl’s hand, noting she was no longer wearing his engagement ring.
Theda put the hand up to her stiff white collar and loosened the stud as though it had suddenly become too tight. She was still in her nurse’s dress though she had removed her apron and white cap, revealing the way her hair was pinned up off her neck. Some dark tendrils had escaped the pins and curled over her nape and around her temples. Bea sighed. The poor lass seemed so vulnerable somehow. She cast around for something to engage the girl’s attention; Bea didn’t believe in morbid thoughts.
‘Why don’t you and Clara go out for a walk before chapel, pet?’ she suggested. ‘You look really peaky. The fresh air will do you good after being cooped up in that hospital all week.’
‘Oh, I would but I promised to go over to Violet’s house today.’ Clara was just coming down the stairs and heard her mother’s suggestion. Her dark, curly hair, so like Theda’s and indeed all the Wearmouth family’s, was strained into rolls on top of her head in imitation of Lana Turner.
Bea tightened her lips in annoyance. Did Clara think of no one but herself?
‘It’s all right, Clara,’ said Theda, who was well aware of her sister’s plans for the day and certainly didn’t want to spoil them. All she wanted was for her mother to stop treating her like a convalescent.
Clara grinned in relief and held out a black eyebrow pencil to her sister. ‘Will you draw me in some seams?’
‘Righto.’
Theda took the pencil from her sister’s hand, which was stained as much as her legs from the ‘liquid stockings’ she had been painting on. ‘Stand on a chair then,’ she said, and carefully drew straight lines from the top of her sister’s wedge-heeled shoes to the middle of her thighs, lifting her skirt to reach the last bit.
Behind her, Chuck finished combing his hair at last and stuck the comb in the top pocket of his jacket, ready for the frequent touching up he felt his hairstyle would need during his walk with Norma Musgrove, the overman’s daughter. They had been walking out for a year now and still he dithered about getting married.
‘Ta-ra,’ he called as he strode out of the kitchen and down the yard. Bea watched him go up the row before looking back at the girls.
‘Why don’t you go with Clara, pet?’ she asked Theda. ‘I’m sure Violet won’t mind. You can all come back for your tea; I’ll open that tin of salmon I’ve got saved from last month’s ration.’
Theda was hard put to it not to burst out laughing when she saw her sister’s dismay. Clara and her friend had dates with a couple of soldiers, or were they Canadian airmen? She remembered Violet and Clara had been talking about the Canadians stationed at Middleton St George. They were going into Bishop Auckland to the pictures at the King’s Hall. There must be more to it than usual too, Theda reckoned, for the airmen to come into Bishop Auckland; Middleton St George was nearer Darlington.
‘No, Mam, I don’t want to. I’ve made plans of my own for this afternoon,’ she said quickly, and Clara’s face cleared.
‘Oh and what might they be?’ asked Bea.
‘I’m . . . I’m going to change and then I thought I would go over to see Alan’s mum and dad. They’ve been asking me to go to see them and I said I might today.’
The idea of going to see Mr and Mrs Price had but that moment jumped into her head and she surprised herself by putting it into words for she dreaded having to go. But when she thought about it, it was true: Alan’s parents had invited her and she had to go sometime. Might as well get it over with.
‘Mind, I don’t want you going upsetting yourself again,’ warned Bea, looking grave.
‘No, Mam, I won’t. I’m all right now. And, after all, I’m not the only one to lose her fiance in this war, am I?’
Bea nodded. ‘Though, please God, not many more now, eh? Surely it can’t go on forever.’
It was almost six o’clock when Theda came out of the Prices’ house in Shildon. The Eden bus wasn’t due for nearly half an hour but she had made the excuse that she felt like walking the two miles home for she’d felt that if she didn’t get out then she would go mad.
‘The fresh air will do me good,’ she had said to Mrs Price. She was too late for chapel but that didn’t worry her much; chapel didn’t mean a lot to her since Alan had been killed at Arnhem. Killed at Arnhem . . . Dear God, just hearing the words in her head sent such distress coursing through her; she wondered clinically if she could go mad.
She set off down the road, desperately seeking something else to think about other than those awful words. The wind lifted her hair off her forehead where it had escaped from her headscarf, cold and damp on her flushed skin.
It had been an ordeal sitting in the front room of Alan’s home, surrounded by photographs of him and listening to his mother talking about him. She had forced herself to respond, to add her own reminiscences to those of Mrs Price. The older woman needed to talk about her lost son. Poor soul, he had been her only child.
Theda had steeled herself to sip the too-weak tea from one of the best china cups and eaten a piece of eggless sponge cake filled with home-made plum jam, though it had taken an effort of will to swallow it. And the feeling of desolation she had been keeping at bay ever since Mr Price had called to show her the telegram from the Ministry of War with the bald statement that Alan had been killed in action rose in her and threatened to engulf her altogether.
Walking down the bank from Shildon, the fresh air made her feel somewhat better. At least she had got the visit over. As she walked, she found the tune that her brother had been singing so light-heartedly earlier in the day running through her mind, but this time it was Alan’s voice she seemed to hear singing it:
‘Oh, I wonder, how I wonder,If the angels way up yonder,Will the angels play their harps for me?’
Oh, yes, she told herself as she rounded the corner into the pit rows of Winton Colliery. Oh, yes, Alan, they will indeed. And for her own brother, Frank, only eighteen when he was killed on Dunkirk beach.
Frank had been one of the young ones who had been in the territorials and so had gone with his marras, his mates, who had all been out of work practically since leaving school, until the year before the war when the country found a need for coal and the pit winding wheels started rolling again. Of course, that was before the government stopped the miners going to war.
‘The young lads didn’t stand a chance on those French beaches, strafed by the Luftwaffe,’ Joss had said. She remembered it now and her mind filled with bitterness. But these days, even with the war nearing its end, she was bitter about everything. It kept her from thinking about . . . Her mind shied away, back to Joss.
Joss had returned with the troopship coming from Bombay, just like in that other song, he had gone through the North African campaign and on to the Italian one with the Durham Light Infantry, and had survived, thank the Lord. Did the German wives and mothers and sweethearts thank God? she wondered.
Theda controlled her rambling thoughts as she approached home. She stopped just before she got to their gate and blew her nose and took out the powder compact, which had been Alan’s present on her last birthday, to powder her nose. Best not to let Mam see she had been upset again. Pinning a bright smile on her face, she walked up the yard to the back door.
‘Was it all right, pet?’ asked her mother anxiously as she went in.
‘Yes. Don’t worry, Mam, it was fine.’
Bea lifted the iron kettle, weighing it in her hand to see if it held plenty of water before setting it on the fire.
‘Well, I’m glad you went to see them then, Theda,’ she commented. ‘It was only right. Mrs Price is a decent woman and Alan was her only lad. Now, I’ll open that tin of salmon and if you butter the bread we’ll have sandwiches for supper. Go and call your dad, will you? By the time he gets downstairs it will be ready.’
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