Once a Land Girl (41 page)

Ivy did not suggest leaving till after six. ‘Oh, Arnold, such, such fun.’

‘So good we’re so near at last. You must come often.’

‘And you to me. Soon, soon.’

‘I most certainly will.’

‘Dear Arnold. Thank you so much.’

‘Dear Ivy.’

They stood in the stone porch, the three of them, looking at the rush of hard rain that bent the trees. The sky was nightfall dark, no streak of light. Arnold did not suggest fetching an
umbrella from his collection. Perhaps Ivy had misremembered that part of the past. He suggested, in a brave voice, that they all make a dash.

The short journey to the car, through thrashing rain, was perilous. Prue took one of Ivy’s arms, Arnold the other, which impeded rather than helped the treacherous journey. Somehow the
door was opened and Ivy was bundled in. Prue stooped to pick up her long damp skirt, Arnold bent awkwardly into the car to give his old friend a farewell kiss. Prue stood patient, soaked, while his
face awash with raindrops slid across Ivy’s sparkling cheek, and they both muttered promises Prue could not hear.

Farewells over, Arnold had difficulty in regaining an upright posture outside the car. Prue heaved at one arm. Ivy pushed at him with both her small hands while he uttered several ancient curses
that made both women laugh. At last he was securely on his feet, rain pouring through white whiskers and hair, and dazzling his scarlet cheeks. Prue ran to the driving seat.

‘That’s right! Make a dash! Good girl.’ Arnold waved. They drove away.

‘Oh, what fun that was, wasn’t it? I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for ages. Isn’t Arnold a dear?’ Ivy wiped the rain from her face with a tiny handkerchief.

Prue was peering through the fan shape of clear windscreen made by the wipers. It only lasted a second before rain obliterated everything again. It was impossible to see anything clearly. She
switched on the headlights.

‘I think we should hurry home, dear Prue,’ Ivy said.

‘I can’t hurry in this. I can’t see anything.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Ed used to drive fast in all conditions. He said he liked a challenge. He was very skilled, but I must admit we did have a few mishaps. It was exciting, though.
But I’ll let you concentrate.’

Prue drove slowly along the lanes, listening to the noisy swish of water parting beneath the tyres and the battering of rain on the windscreen. She considered stopping altogether till the worst
had passed, but thought Ivy would regard that as feeble. On a straight stretch she put her foot on the accelerator harder than she meant to – her wet shoe slipped – and the car bounced
forward. Ivy squealed with delight.

Two headlights appeared round an invisible corner in the middle of the road, coming straight towards them. Prue’s hands on the steering-wheel turned to liquid.

‘Fast, Prue! Left, and we’ll miss him. There!’ Ivy shouted, her voice so high it tumbled over itself, prepared for one last screech of encouragement. ‘Good
girl!’

Prue missed the oncoming vehicle but skidded violently into the trunk of a huge oak tree by the side of the road. There was a very loud bang, a crunch, an almost inaudible whimper from Ivy.
Then, just the thud of the rain.

Prue glanced to her left. Ivy had been thrown forward onto the windscreen, which had shattered. Prue herself, also thrust forward, had been saved by the steering-wheel. She tried to sit upright,
but acute pain severed her ribs. She tried again, succeeded, and pulled Ivy gently back into her seat. Strings of blood moved in various directions over her face. She was deadly pale. Her eyes were
shut. Prue whispered her name. There was no answer. She looked through the clouded liquid windscreen, could see that the scarlet bonnet of the Sunbeam had reared up and was scrunched into a weird
shape. The ghostly outline of a van, or a large farm vehicle, was just visible.

Prue held Ivy’s hand, kept whispering her name. The passenger door, which she tried to open – the effort pierced her ribs agonizingly – was stuck. She did manage to wind down
the window a few inches. A blast of horizontal rain shot through the space. It would not shut again. She sat there, in the cage of attacking rain, wondering, stunned, and moved her hand to
Ivy’s wrist. She thought there was a very faint pulse. She did not like to feel Ivy’s heart, did not know if she could even tell if it was beating. In a misted way she wondered what to
do. How long till someone came?

She had no idea how long it was – minutes? half an hour? – before a scared face loomed at her through the passenger window. A farm worker, she thought he must be, his clothes sodden
and dark.

‘Awfully sorry, my duck,’ he said, his voice shaken. ‘I was trying to avoid . . . You all right?’ He peered into the car. ‘The old girl looks . . . There’s a
pub up the road. I’ll go and ring for an ambulance.’

‘Thanks,’ said Prue. She bent forwards, trying to ease her own pain, but did not let go of Ivy’s cold wrist. The rain began to jitter before her eyes in a way rain did not
normally behave. The raised smashed bonnet of the car moved sickeningly from side to side. Prue wondered if she was going to faint. Several times she begged Ivy to say something. But still there
was no answer.

An immeasurable time later, from a long way off, she heard the wail of an ambulance, the now familiar slash of tyres cutting through water. She felt a rush of cold as the stuck door was pulled
open. Then there were gentle hands and gentle voices. She heard distant words: ‘old girl unconscious’. . . ‘could be broken ribs, the young ’un’ . . . ‘Better
hurry.’

They must have hurried, these gallant men, for suddenly – time was unaccountable – Prue saw curtains jumping with bleached flowers all round her. A dull ache had replaced the acute
pain. There was a stifling smell of cleanliness. A young nurse, blown about by her starched white headdress, pushed through the curtains like a modest singer. A word came up in Prue’s mind as
if it was being typed on a sheet of white paper, each letter separate: ‘h o s p i t a l’.

‘How’s Mrs Lamton?’ she asked, surprised to find she had a clear voice. ‘Where is she?’

Ivy was in a room some distance away, but Prue was not allowed to see her until her condition had been further assessed by the doctors.

‘So she’s not dead, then?’

The nurse looked shocked, ignored the question and enquired how Prue felt.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. There was some kind of strapping round her ribs. She could feel it beneath the hospital nightdress. The nurse
moved to help her try to stand. She felt nauseous, still, and dizzy, but remained on her feet.

‘I should get back into bed just now,’ said the nurse. ‘Someone will be coming round for details.’

‘Details?’

‘Names of relations to be telephoned. The old lady’s name and address. And someone who could bring you clean clothes. They’ll want you in overnight, but I’m sure
you’ll be able to go home in the morning. Cracked ribs heal quite well once they’re bound up.’

‘Right,’ said Prue. ‘But please tell the doctors I want to see Mrs Lamton as soon as possible.’

‘Are you a relation?’

‘She’s my grandmother.’ The lie might be her only pass to see Ivy.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said the nurse, and sailed back through the horrible curtains.

Prue was taken to see Ivy later that evening. A young doctor in a white coat led her along passages that smelt of disinfectant mingled with another, more lurid, smell. He had a
wide, appealing face. Different time, different place, Prue might have thrown him an interested look. As it was, walking was painful. She found it difficult to keep up with him.

‘Your gran, is she?’

‘That’s right.’ The doctor opened the door into a small white room.

Ivy lay propped on a mound of pillows in the high bed. Her eyes were shut, her face had been cleaned of the blood. Now the white skin was covered with a tracing of thin scratches, as if she had
been caught by a bramble bush, nothing more. A single piece of plaster secured a wad of lint at the corner of one eye. Prue put a hand on the bed, avoiding the ridge of Ivy’s legs.
‘Will she be all right?’ she asked. ‘How long till she comes round?’

The doctor shrugged. He put a large hand round Ivy’s wrist. ‘Who knows? We don’t think there’s any internal bleeding. Could be just shock. Chances are she’ll be OK.
But she’s not in her first youth, is she?’

‘Can I stay with her?’

The doctor gave a sympathetic smile. ‘As far as I’m concerned, but I’m not in charge – I’m very junior,’ he added modestly. ‘Why don’t you just
stay till someone turns you out?’

When he had gone, Prue moved closer to Ivy’s head, very small on the large pillows. The white hair, the bun, was awry. One side of her mouth was turned down, the other seemed stuck at the
beginning of a smile. Her hands were clenched into two small fists: Prue had never seen them like that. Gently she tried to prise open the fingers of one hand, so that they could lie straight out,
as they always did on her skirt while she talked. But they would not move. It was as if rigor mortis had already set in. This thought made Prue back away. She did not want to see Ivy dead: she
wanted to remember her alive. At the moment she did look dead, but the fact that her heart was still beating made her less alarming.

Prue sat on the chair beside the bed. She could not think what to do. She could not think what might happen. She shifted her position to try to relieve the aching of her ribs, but it did no
good. Above her was Ivy’s profile: beautiful cheekbone, closed eyelid the shape of a horizontal petal nesting in its purple hollow. The side of her mouth that was turned down made a long
thread to her jaw. Prue longed for her to wake, smile, so that the line would disappear. She turned away. She could only think that it was her fault.

It was getting dark, but she did not want to put on a light, make new shadows on Ivy’s face. For something to do, she got up and drew the curtains. They were made of hard green rep,
covered with bad drawings of parrots, hardly the sort of thing to cheer a patient. But maybe this room was reserved for patients who were too ill to be affronted by hideous birds.

There was a knock at the door. A nurse Prue had not seen before came in. ‘You’ve a visitor,’ she said. Johnny followed her into the room. He carried a small case. The nurse
left.

‘Oh my God,’ he said, quickly glancing from the bed to Prue. ‘I’m not staying.’ He put down the suitcase, laid a hand on Prue’s head. ‘Just brought you
something to wear, your toothbrush. They rang me, said you’d given our number. How badly are you hurt?’

‘Hardly at all. Just my ribs.’

Johnny nodded. ‘And Mrs Lamton?’

Prue shrugged. ‘No one seems able to tell me. Apparently there’s no huge physical damage. Perhaps it’s just shock.’

‘Hope so. Some of these old things are tough as anything. What happened?’

‘Terrible rain, I could hardly see a thing. Then two headlights in the middle of the road. I knew I had to avoid them.’ Her voice sounded faraway, flat, metallic. ‘I did avoid
them. But I skidded. I couldn’t see a thing in the mist. There was this tree . . .’

‘What about the car?’

‘I don’t know. Pretty bad. I don’t know what to do about it . . .’ Her eyes went back to Ivy.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll get all that seen to. Are you coming home?’

‘Of course I’m not coming home. I’m staying with her till – she comes round.’

‘Right. Well, let me know when you want to be collected.’ He tipped up her chin, kissed her gently each side of her nose. ‘So sorry,’ he said. ‘What a ghastly . .
.’

The door opened again. No nurse preceded Gerald. He strode into the room, tweed jacket, yellow tie, a look of curiosity rather than concern. He stopped dead when he saw Johnny. Prue had no time
to think. ‘Johnny, this is Gerald,’ she said. ‘Gerald, this is Johnny.’ The two men nodded at each other. ‘Johnny’s making gates for Ivy,’ she heard
herself say.

‘I’m just on my way out.’ Johnny, after a look at Prue, hurried from the room avoiding a further glance at the figure in the bed.

Immediately, astonishingly, Gerald came up to Prue and put his arms round her. She gave a great, quivering sigh. ‘You poor darling,’ he said, and moved to stand by the bed. He stood
looking down at his aunt for a long time without speaking.

The embrace he had given Prue remained ghost-like round her. It was not a comfort, but it was there.

‘What do they think?’ Gerald asked, after a while. He touched his aunt’s clenched hand.

Prue went to look out of the window. ‘They don’t seem to know. Nothing broken. Just unconscious.’

‘She’s a tough old thing. I reckon she’ll pull through.’

‘Hope so.’

‘And how about you?’ Gerald came over to Prue and again put an arm round her shoulders. He smelt of his expensive smoke.

‘I’m OK.’

‘I’m not going to ask you about it now, but you can tell me what happened some time.’ Prue nodded. The tweed of his jacket was scratchy against her neck. ‘I’m going
to take a week’s leave, stay at the Old Rectory, come in every day. What about you?’

‘They said I can go home tomorrow, but I’m going to stay with her.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’ Prue shifted a little to ease her own pain, which came and went in unnerving gusts. Gerald moved his arm. At least she had a lovely afternoon with her old friend
Arnold.’ Prue heard her voice break, so did not try further to explain.

‘Arnold?’ Gerald smiled. ‘That old bugger. They were very fond of each other. Now, I’m going to leave you, organize a few things. I’ll have a word with the matron,
see what I can do about making things comfortable for you.’

‘I’m afraid I said I was Ivy’s granddaughter. I thought it was the only way they’d let me see her.’

‘Quite right. I’ll stick to the story.’ He went back to the bed, lowered his head and silently kissed his aunt on the cheek without the dressing. ‘Ring me any time at the
Old Rectory if you want me. I’ll be back in the morning.’ He gave Prue an identical kiss, and left.

When he had gone, Prue returned to the chair. She thought how odd it was that Ivy, lying unconscious in hospital, had inspired a certain warmth and affection in her nephew who, when offered Prue
on a plate at the Savoy, had shown neither warmth nor interest.