Connie’s Courage (21 page)

‘She has written me the sweetest of letters,' Elsie continued, ‘begging me not to be cross with her for taking Harry from us, and saying that she longs to meet us all. She wants me to be a mother to her, since she has lost her own mother. She says that she knows she will love all of us because Harry loves us; and she loves him so much that she could not endure to live without him. She says she loves him so much that she cannot bear to be apart from him, not even for the shortest time.

‘And, of course, there is no reason why they should wait to marry. Everything has been arranged. After they are married, Harry will move in with Rosa and her father, so that Rosa can still run her father's household for him.'

For the first time since she had met Mavis's family, Connie felt like an outsider, excluded from their shared excitement and family intimacy.

‘Oh, I can't wait to meet her. Did Harry bring a photograph with him?' Mavis asked her mother.

‘I haven't had time to ask him yet, but Rosa had sent me one with her letter.'

‘Oh, Mama, quickly let me see it please, Mavis begged. Connie told herself that she wouldn't look, but somehow her gaze was drawn to the photograph Mavis was holding. The image looking back at her, showed a very pretty young girl, her curls threaded artlessly with pink ribbon, whilst her eyes held a look of vulnerability and innocence.

‘How sweet she looks! Mavis exclaimed.

‘She is very pretty, Sophie announced.

Connie couldn't say anything.

She was as much shocked by her own feelings as she was by the news of Harry's engagement. How could she have known she would feel like this? As though something had gone from her life that could never be replaced … As though she had suffered a dreadful loss.

Technically at least, she had been the one to reject Harry, and not the other way around, Connie reminded herself fiercely.

Upstairs in his attic bedroom, Harry could not find solace and comfort amongst the books and small personal treasures – mementoes of his father, in the main – which he kept there.

Normally, he spent the first private hour of his return to his family up here, enjoying his personal transformation from a poorly paid and junior schoolmaster of no account, to a son and brother who was very deeply loved.

Normally, too, he looked forward, and longed
for, his rare visits home – but not this time. In fact he had dreaded the event, and finding that Connie was here had made it a hundred, no, Harry mentally corrected himself bitterly, more like a thousand times worse than his worst imaginings.

His mother had done her best, as he had known she would, but beneath her immediate warm acceptance of his engagement, he had seen quite clearly her hurt and confusion. She must be wondering why he had not mentioned Rosa in his letters; why he had not taken her home to introduce her to his family. But how could he tell his mother the truth, when he knew that knowing it would only hurt and distress her even more.

The now familiar feeling of black despair burned angrily inside him. His future, his life, was trapped in the sickly morass of dramatic emotion and outright lies Rosa had deliberately concocted, and there was no way out for him. Not now. Not ever.

On the third finger of her left hand Rosa was now wearing the diamond ring which had been her mother's engagement ring. It was a decision she had taken herself, without discussing it with him, announcing that people would expect her to be wearing a ring – and that she would have to wear her mother s, seeing as he had not bothered to buy her one.

As always when he had to talk to her now, Harry had been overwhelmed by a mixture of anger against her; compassion for her; and the
shocking awareness that, intellectually, they were on two different planes, with a chasm between them so deep and wide it could never be bridged.

Rosa obviously thought nothing of wearing a ring it was clear he could never have afforded to buy her. Had he really loved her her decision would have been a bitter blow to his pride, but she seemed oblivious to that fact.

‘Father is to see the Headmaster and request that you are appointed as his deputy, Harry. It is unthinkable that I should be expected to live on the miserly sum you earn – even with us living here with Father.' She had given a trill of laughter as she added, ‘Goodness, my allowance is nearly twice as much as you earn!'

Rosa's father had already dropped several hints to Harry that his daughter had inherited, through her mother, a respectable sum of money which she would receive on her thirtieth birthday, and that, moreover, Mr Cartwright himself paid her an allowance, ‘a trifling amount for her fripperies'.

In the eyes of the world he would be making an advantageous marriage, Harry recognised bitterly, but in his own eyes; in his own heart; there was no advantage at all in binding himself to a woman he did not love and could never love.

He was committed to Rosa now though. In her eyes, in the eyes of the world, and now in the eyes of his family, too.

‘Connie, my umbrella!

Although Connie made a valiant bid to grab hold of Sophie's umbrella, the wind caught it and turned it inside out, dragging it from her grasp. It was soon sailing over the pier and across the waves.

‘I'm afraid you've lost it, Sophie,' Mavis sympathised, as she cuddled closer to Frank under the much stouter brolly he was holding.

‘Urgh, some Bank Holiday this has been … Sophie complained, as the four of them huddled together trying to seek shelter from the heavy rain.

It was 4th of August, the Tuesday following the Bank Holiday Monday – Mavis and Connie having arranged to extend their short holiday by an extra day.

‘I'm wet and I'm cold, Sophie grumbled.

‘Come on, there's a cafe not far away. Let's go and get a pot of tea and some teacakes. My treat! Frank suggested.

As Sophie slipped her cold hand into Connie's own, Connie tried to summon a cheerful smile for the younger girl's sake. But the truth was that it wasn't just the awful weather that had lowered her spirits.

The previous evening, after dinner, his mother and two sisters had plied Harry with questions about his wife-to-be, whilst Connie had sat silently, wishing herself a thousand miles away – just as she was sure Harry had been doing, to judge from the discomfort she had seen in his face. In the end, unable to bear it any longer, she had excused herself saying that she had a headache. But first
she had made sure that she had openly, and publicly, congratulated Harry on his good fortune in securing Rosa's hand. Connie wasn't going to have him thinking she was having second thoughts.

They had just reached the end of the pier, when Sophie tugged excitedly on her arm and called out, ‘Look, here comes Harry!'

Immediately Connie's heart turned over and for a moment she was tempted to do as Sophie was doing, and run toward him.

‘He looks very serious. I expect it's because he's missing Rosa,' Mavis whispered to Connie.

‘Then perhaps he should have brought her home with him to introduce her to your mother,' Connie couldn't resist replying tartly.

She had seen how, behind her loving smile, Elsie Lawson was secretly disappointed to have received the news of Harry's engagement without having met his wife-to-be. Privately Connie thought it thoughtless and selfish of the couple not to have considered, in the midst of their own excited happiness, Elsie Lawson's feelings. And now, no doubt, Harry would be wanting to talk about his wretched fiancee again!

‘Harry, you are just in time to join us for tea,' Frank announced jovially.

Immediately Harry shook his head. ‘No thanks. I am glad I have found you though. There is the gravest news.'

‘Oh Harry, what is it?' Mavis demanded anxiously.

‘Mr Asquith has just announced that there is to be War!'

Bodies:

They were everywhere. All the time. Her hands, her skills, her time and those of her fellow nurses – no matter how fast and ceaselessly they worked – were just not enough to stem the unending tide of them. Some of them still alive; some of them not; but all of them hideously, horrifyingly damaged and wounded, so that the stench of gangrenous flesh and gas-damaged rotting lungs was one that filled Connie's days and nights.

The War, which so many had believed, as Mr Asquith had predicted, would only last a handful of weeks, was in its second year with no end in sight. Those who had stoutly believed and supported Lord Kitchener's harsh warning that it would be a long and bloody business, had been proved right.

The Infirmary had become a hospital for wounded
soldiers from local regiments, its wards crammed and overflowing.

Connie was glad that she was working on Mr Clegg's ward – there at least, once they had passed through his caring and skilled hands, although they might be without a limb, the soldiers did stand a good chance of survival.

On the other wards lay men in the most pitiful condition, who no amount of skilled surgery or nursing could restore to health; some of these men had been exposed to gas attacks – and Connie's heart wept when she heard the tales of how, without gas masks to protect them, the first wave of men had faced attack with nothing more than handkerchiefs and cloths to cover their faces.

And then there were other men, separated when they could be from their fellows, and whom no one talked about: men with their minds destroyed by the War; and who ranted day and night, sobbing and sometimes screaming about the horrors of the trenches.

It took nerves of steel to nurse these poor creatures, but both Connie and Mavis had volunteered for extra duty in order to do so.

Regular shifts were something that had become almost forgotten, as every nurse who could went on duty so that she could be there to receive the wounded when they arrived off the trains.

Solemnly by night, the trains brought an unending line of grey-faced, exhausted, injured men – and, more often than not, the bodies of those
who had been alive at the start of the journey, but who had not survived it.

Connie couldn't count the number of times she had heard a Tommy telling her brusquely, with tears running down his face, ‘I knew he was a goner, Nurse, but I ad to bring him ‘ome. It was what 'e would have wanted, aye, and me, too. I couldn't leave ‘im there to die in the mud.

And so the bodies were taken and cleaned and laid out – all of which took up precious nursing time, but no nurse trained under Matron's regime would have thought of denying a dead soldier this last respect.

‘Connie, over here, she heard Mavis calling out wearily to her, as she held on to her supper tray and looked round to find somewhere to sit.

She and Mavis were lucky if they saw one another in passing these days, and she gave her friend a warm smile as she sat down beside her.

‘Sorry if I don't stay long – we re expecting another trainload tonight. We've got the ward so full of truckle beds you can hardly move, and Mr Clegg is concerned that having so many wounded men in such close proximity might lead to the spread of infection – so we re double-scrubbing everything and everyone.

‘Sometimes, Connie, I think this War is not going to end until every single able-bodied man is either dead or wounded,' Mavis responded sadly. ‘I swear I can smell putrid flesh in my sleep.'

‘How is your great-aunt?' Connie asked her, deliberately changing the subject.

‘Her heart is getting weaker, but Mother nurses her so devotedly her doctor says she will probably outlive us all.'

‘Like Frank's mother?' Connie suggested drily, and then wished she had been more tactful as she saw Mavis's eyes fill with tears.

‘Connie, she is so very angry with me. Now that the Government have brought in the conscription bill, she wants me and Frank to get married quickly, as married men are exempt for conscription. But neither Frank nor I feel that it would be morally right to do something like that. As a policeman, he isn't subject to conscription anyway – although at Christmas he confessed to me that he feels that he should join up,' she admitted heavily.

Connie gave her a sympathetic look. Mavis, like many other nurses, had chosen to put her marriage plans on one side so that she could continue nursing, and because she felt the help she could give others was more important than her own personal happiness.

‘I know how torn he feels. His conscience is urging him to serve our country, but he also has his mother to think of.'

‘And not just his mother, Mavis, he has you to consider, as well,' Connie reminded her fiercely.

‘I would not hold him back, Connie. Even though what we see here in the wards makes me so very afraid for him.' Mavis gave a small shudder. ‘One
sees the merest boys – for they are no more, Connie, you know that – pitifully wounded and yet so grateful for what little we can do for them, and so proud to have given their best.

Their best, and in so many cases their health and their lives, Connie acknowledged inwardly.

‘I saw Josie the other day. She has gone so thin, Connie.

‘You cannot know how much I wish I had not made that cruel comment about Ted, Connie admitted in a low voice.

Immediately Mavis covered Connie's hand with her own and the two friends exchanged understanding looks.

Ted, the delivery boy, had joined up in the first wave of enthusiastic volunteers. He had also been in the first wave of men to be gassed by the Germans.

He and Josie had been married within days of his return home, a sad, quiet, little wedding conducted more as though it was an occasion for mourning rather than one for celebration.

Josie had been devotedly nursing him ever since, lovingly tending the body that was now merely a rotting carcass, whilst Ted died slowly and painfully in the narrow bed they had never been able to share.

All over the country there were thousands of other Teds and thousands of other Josies too.

‘Have you heard anything of Vera? Connie asked.