‘Seeing that ambulance driver of yours tomorrow, are you, Campion, seeing as it’s your day off? Mind you, I have to say that it’s a bit of a rum do, you and him, with you saying that he’s not said anything to you about you being his steady. You’d never catch me allowing a lad to monopolise me like that if I didn’t have a bit of a promise from him that he was serious. You don’t want to let him go messing you around, you know.’

Grace knew that Doreen meant well but that didn’t stop her from feeling self-conscious and uncomfortable. Not that she was going to show it. Instead she smiled brightly and said firmly, ‘Oh, me and Teddy are happy as we are, just as friends.’

‘Has he really not said anything to you about you and him being an item, Grace, or are you just keeping quiet about it because we’ve got to stay single?’ Hannah asked her later on, when they were on their own. ‘Only with you being such a good-looking girl I’d have thought he’d at least have tried a bit of something on, if you know what I mean.’

Grace did, but she wasn’t going to say so. She was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable when the other girls asked her about her relationship with Teddy.

Should she say something to him or should she just leave things as they were? She was happy enough when she was with him, after all, and it was only sometimes, like when she saw other couples whispering together and snatching kisses, that she felt that funny ache in the region of her heart that made her feel that she was missing out on something very special.

Did that feeling mean that she was in love with Teddy? Grace admitted that she didn’t know. And there wasn’t anyone really that she could ask. None of the other girls was going steady, not even Lillian, who seemed to have given up on the doctor she was supposed to have been chasing. According to Luke, he and Lillian were still writing to one another and it was obvious from her brother’s letters how he felt about her. Grace wished she was a bit closer to Lillian so that she could have talked to her properly about Luke and how she really felt about him, but Lillian seemed to have taken a bit against her and was making comments she knew Grace could overhear about ‘people who went around interfering in other people’s lives’ without ever coming out and saying exactly what was on her mind.

‘Take no notice of her,’ was always Hannah’s advice whenever Grace worried about what she should do. ‘Now that she’s acting like she’s keen on your Luke, she’s probably afraid that you might go saying something to him about the way she was.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Grace had protested. ‘I wouldn’t do anything that might hurt him.’

‘People like her don’t understand things like that because they don’t mind who gets hurt so long as it isn’t them,’ had been Hannah’s pithy response.

Tonight was Grace’s last stint on night duty, and she was looking forward to her day off tomorrow.

All but two of the young merchant seamen who had been admitted to the ward in February had been discharged now. Only Davie, who had had his toes amputated, and Harry, who had lost both his legs, were still with them.

Davie had had his nineteenth birthday the previous week and Sister had arranged for the kitchen to bake him a cake. His face had been a picture when he had seen it. Sister had turned a blind eye as well when both his parents and his sisters had come to see him at visiting time.

Grace had told her parents about both young men – the youngest on the ward, as Harry was even younger than Davie and only seventeen. Her mother had been moved to tears for them, like Grace herself worrying about what kind of future they would have.

Sister had said that since Davie was good with his hands he might be able to manage a factory job if he could work from a wheelchair.

Staff was just coming out of Harry’s room when Grace walked on to the ward.

‘He’s had a bad day today,’ she explained quietly. ‘Sister’s asked Dr Lewis about increasing his medicine and he’s said yes.’

Grace said nothing. Harry was on morphine, and sometimes he got the shakes so badly when the effect of it was wearing off that it was pitiful to see and hear him, but Grace acknowledged those things didn’t fill her with the fear and panic she would have felt at the beginning of her ward training, because now she not only knew the cause of them she also had the nursing experience to know how to deal with and alleviate them.

She may have learned a lot but there was a great deal more that she still had to learn, she knew. In another week or so the next lot of trainees would be coming on to the wards, and Grace and her set would be moving up a step, provided they were given good reports. She hoped desperately that she would be. She loved nursing even more than she had thought she would.

Jean had just finished drying up and putting everything away when she heard the knock on the front door. Since she wasn’t expecting anyone, and Sam and the twins were out, she wiped her hands carefully on her apron and then removed it before going to see who it was.

They weren’t back on daylight saving yet and because of the blackout she switched off the hall light before opening the door, but even though she couldn’t see her visitor’s face clearly, she knew she would have recognised her voice anywhere as she heard her younger sister, Francine, exclaiming, ‘Jean, it’s me!’

‘Francine! My goodness!’

It was such a shock seeing her younger sister so unexpectedly that Jean didn’t know what to say, or do.

It was Francine who, with a sound somewhere between a sob and laughter, moved first, hugging Jean tightly, stepping past the large trunk on the pavement next to her, as she burst into a small torrent of explanations, of which Jean could barely comprehend more than a few words.

Somehow they were inside the hallway, although Jean had no notion of how they had come to be there. She looked anxiously at her sister, almost afraid of what she might see in her face. Nine years was a long time. They might have exchanged regular letters and photographs, but they couldn’t tell what was really in a person’s eyes – or their hearts.

At sixteen Francine had been a stunningly beautiful girl with the kind of looks that turned heads in the street, and a happy-to-lucky attitude towards life, a trust and joy that had shone out of her like her own special sunshine. The beauty was still there, and if anything had grown, but the trust and joy were not, Jean recognised sadly.

When she looked at Francine now what she saw was a woman, not a girl, and yet she still stroked her heavy curls off her face, just as she had done when Fran had been a little girl and she her ‘big sister’ lovingly taking on the duties of a ‘second mother’ to her as instructed by their mother.

‘Oh, Jean.’ Francine was crying now as she gave Jean another fierce hug. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

‘I’ve missed you, an’ all,’ said Jean. She’d missed her, worried guiltily about her, wished so desperately that things might have been different for her.

‘What are you doing here anyway? Why didn’t you write and let us know you were coming back? It gave me ever such a turn, opening the door and seeing you standing there.’

‘Like a bad penny turning up when you thought you’d got rid of me for good?’

Francine’s words were light enough but Jean could see the pain in her eyes. Now it was her turn to hug her and reassure her.

‘I’ve never thought that about you, Fran. I just thought that you were settled in America, especially when you wrote that you were doing so well with your singing, an’ all.’

‘I was, but I couldn’t stay there, with all that’s happening. I had to come back, Jean, especially now with this war, and … and everything.’

A look passed between them that both understood, and it was Jean who looked away first, her heart suddenly heavy with foreboding.

‘This is still my real home, after all,’ Francine reminded her. ‘I was making plans to come back, and then what should happen but Gracie Fields decided she wanted to do her bit and she asked me if I wanted to go along with her, so we both ended up in France entertaining the boys. Poor Gracie, you’ll have heard perhaps that she’s had to have an operation, and now there’s all this fuss with the Government not approving of her having married an Italian. Ever so upset, she is. They’re in Capri now, her and her new husband, waiting to see what’s going to happen.’

‘I remember reading summat about it in Picture Post,’ Jean agreed, ‘Mind you, there are them that’s bin saying they don’t know why she should want to go and marry a foreigner in the first place.’

‘He’s good for her and he’s kind to her, and sometimes …’ Francine shook her head. ‘Never mind about Gracie, I want to hear all about the family and what’s been going on.’

‘In a minute. I want to hear what you’re doing first,’ Jean told her, taking up her old familiar elder-sister role now that she was over her initial shock.

Francine pulled a face and then laughed. ‘Very well. I volunteered for ENSA whilst I was in France with Gracie, but since they’ve gone and made such a mess of sorting out things – poor Billy Cotton was supposed to be playing for Gracie at her Christmas concert and he never even made it on account of them not getting the transport they’d been promised – anyway, I thought I might as well come home and see how you all are whilst I’d got the chance. The BBC has said that they might have some work for me, singing with Vera Lynn. Luckily I’ve brought my stage clothes with me.’

Whilst Francine was speaking Jean studied her younger sister. Jean might have kept her own trim figure but Francine looked, if anything, slightly thinner than she had done when she had gone to America. Mind you, Jean acknowledged to herself, she’d need a good figure, wearing a frock so snugly fitting on the waist before its full panelled skirt curved out softly over her hips. Not that it wasn’t smart, it was, and in a lovely shade of soft blue as well. The collar of the little fitted jacket that went with it was trimmed with fur, and Jean could just imagine how Vi’s eyes would almost pop out on stalks when she saw how glamorously Francine was dressed. Her shoes and bag were the same colour as her suit, and her hat was trimmed with the same fur as her jacket collar. When you weren’t with her it was easy to overlook the mesmerising effect Francine could have on a person, Jean admitted. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, which she was, it was more than that somehow. There was something about her that had you looking at her and not wanting to look away – warmth, somehow, and an excitement. It was hard to explain but it was impossible not to be aware of it, even though Francine herself never acted as though she cared two hoots about it. Singing, that was all that had mattered to her when she had been growing up. Mad on it, she had been, singing morning noon and night, determined right from being a little thing that she was going to be a singer. Mind you, she did have a lovely voice. Francine had a voice that was as different from other people’s as plain old walking was from dancing. You caught yourself listening for it and straining to hear more of it even when she was just talking.

‘How is everyone?’ she was asking Jean, her voice suddenly strained with a tension that sent Jean’s heart plummeting.

‘Let me put the kettle on. You just be dying for a cuppa.’

As she bustled busily about her kitchen, Jean was glad of an excuse not to have to look directly at Francine.

‘Well, Luke and Charlie are both with the BEF in France. I dare say you might even have sung for them without knowing it. Bella’s married, of course, and our Grace is training to be a nurse. The twins will be leaving school this summer.’

‘And Jack?’

‘Vi’s had him evacuated into the country for safety.’

‘She never said anything about that when she wrote to me last.’

‘Let’s have that cup of tea, and then we can sit down and talk properly.’

‘I’ve got a favour to ask you,’ Francine warned her as she took the proffered cup. ‘I hate to put on you but I haven’t made any arrangements about where I’m going to stay and I wondered—’

‘You’re welcome to have Grace’s room,’ Jean told her immediately. ‘I know she won’t mind. She’s living in at the hospital. Mind you, I dare say it won’t be what you’re used to.’

‘No it won’t,’ Francine agreed quietly. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve lived in a proper home. Everyone thinks that being a singer is glamorous. Well, it might look like that when I’m up on the stage, but it’s not much fun going back to a single room in a boarding house every night.’

Jean frowned as she heard the weariness and sadness in her sister’s voice. Francine’s voice betrayed her feelings in the way that other people’s expressions would betray theirs.

‘I thought you was doing really well in America, making records and that.’

‘I was, but then there was a problem.’ Francine gave a dismissive shrug.

‘A man?’ Jean guessed.

Francine gave her a small smile. ‘That was quick of you, but then I suppose …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘I suppose I was naïve. I thought I wasn’t, of course. But Hollywood is a different world, where they live by different rules. “Casting-Couch Rules”, they call them.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Only I didn’t want to play the casting-couch game, and because I didn’t all that talk of records and big deals remained just talk. Luckily for me Gracie took pity on me, otherwise I’d have ended up working in a car wash – or worse.’

‘Well, you won’t find the luxury here that you’ll have got used to, love. Especially not now with this rationing.’

‘It isn’t luxury I want, Jean. That’s not what I’ve come home for at all.’

There was look on her face that made Jean’s heart sink a little.

* * *

‘Come along, Campion, don’t dawdle.’ They were doing ‘beds and backs’, a process in which each patient had to have his sacrum, heels and elbows washed with soap and water and then rubbed with methylated spirits to harden the skin, which was then dusted with talcum powder. This was to help prevent bed sores, and it was Grace’s job to apply the methylated spirits.

Once that had been done, Staff Nurse Reid asked her, ‘Have you given morphia to a patient yet?’

Grace shook her head.

‘Come with me and listen carefully. Harry is due to have his next injection.’

First, Staff Nurse went to the Dangerous Drugs cabinet and removed one quarter of a gram of morphine, which Grace then had to dissolve over a spirit lamp in 5.5 cc of water in a teaspoon, and then place the liquid into a hypodermic syringe.

After Staff Nurse Reid had relocked the Dangerous Drugs cabinet she beckoned Grace to follow her into the private room where Harry was.

The young man was in a great deal of pain, his face lacking colour and his skin sweaty. Grace felt for him as she injected the morphine into his upper arm, holding her own breath a little as she waited for the drug to take effect. She could see a telling sadness in Staff Nurse’s expression as she leaned over him and spoke to him before straightening his bedclothes.

Once they were both back outside the room Staff Nurse turned to Grace and said quietly, ‘As you know, morphine is addictive and we have to be careful about how much we give, but thank heavens Sister believes that if someone is dying then it doesn’t matter if they become addicted, and that it’s far more important that they remain free of pain.’

She didn’t say any more; she didn’t need to. Grace understood what she was being told and it both shocked and upset her. Harry was, after all, only seventeen – not much older than her own twin sisters and younger than she was herself.

Harry was very much on Grace’s mind the next day when she met Teddy.

They might be in March now but she had noticed that increasingly Teddy was having to slow down when they were walking together, complaining that the cold winter had got on his chest and left him struggling sometimes with his breathing. Grace had felt like a bit of fresh air and so they had gone to Wavertree Park or ‘the Mizzy’, as the park was fondly known by locals. Its nickname had come about because the land itself had been given to the people of Wavertree by a ‘mystery’ donor who had specified that it was to be used to create a large open playground for children, and for recreation rather than a formally landscaped park. The original lake had been filled in but there was still a pretty circular structure, which was used as a bandstand on fête days, and before the Great War the park had even hosted the Royal Agricultural Show.

It was, Grace knew, because he was sensitive about having had rheumatic fever as a child, which had prevented him from joining up, that he didn’t like talking about it, but she still couldn’t stop herself from frowning as she watched him having to stop walking, his hand on his chest.

‘You should see someone about that, you know,’ she told him gently.

‘Oh, give over, will you? I’ve already told you it’s nothing serious.’

‘You mean, like you and me are nothing serious?’ Grace replied impulsively. What on earth had possessed her to say that? She felt mortified by her own silliness.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Teddy sounded angry.

Neither of them was making any attempt to walk now. Instead they stood in the park, confronting one another, oblivious to the curious glances they were attracting.

‘You know what I mean,’ Grace told him miserably. ‘I know you do. All the girls keep on asking me if you and me are going steady, and if you’ve asked me to be your girl. They want to know if … I need to know where I stand with you, Teddy, I really do ’cos the way things are is making me feel ever such a fool. What with me not knowing … and you never so much as …’ Her face was burning with self-conscious embarrassment now, but despite that a part of her was glad that her concern about their relationship was finally out in the open.

‘I’m not staying here to listen to silly stuff like this,’ Teddy told her angrily. ‘I thought you and me was friends, Grace. I thought you were a sensible sort of girl, not the sort who’d go acting daft and listening to what others have got to say …’ He shook his head, his mouth compressing, and then to Grace’s shock he turned on his heel and walked off, leaving her standing on her own.

At first she was too shocked to do anything and then she started to hurry after him, but he was already halfway across the road, and jumping onto a bus. Tears blurred her eyes. Well, let him go then. He was right about one thing. She was a sensible sort of girl, the sort of girl who would never ever go running after a lad who didn’t want her.

Too unhappy to bear the thought of spending the rest of her day off on her own, she decided to go home.

If her mother was surprised to see her so early when she had told her that it would be teatime before she came round, she didn’t say so, simply looking searchingly at her pale face and then saying placidly, ‘Sit down, love; I was just about to put the kettle on.’

‘Jean, I still haven’t heard back from Vi. I’ve got half a mind to go round and see her … Oh, Grace, hello, love.’ Francine gave Grace a warm hug as she came into the kitchen.

Grace had been surprised and just a little bit wary when she had learned that her mother’s younger sister was back in Liverpool and sleeping in her own old room, but then when she had come home and Francine had been so warm and loving and such fun, Grace had immediately stopped feeling stiff and just that little bit jealous that someone else might be taking her place in the family.

Of course, the twins adored Francine and were forever plaguing her to listen to them singing, but she was very firm with them, telling them that a career as a singer was more hard work and disappointments than glamour, whilst at the same time assuring them that they did indeed have very pretty singing voices.

‘I hope you’re eating properly at that hospital Grace, only you’re looking thin,’ Jean fussed maternally.

‘I dare say she’s run off her feet,’ Francine defended Grace.

‘We are busy,’ Grace agreed, giving her aunt a grateful look. The truth was that her growing anxiety over her feeling that something about her relationship just wasn’t right had led to her losing her normal appetite.

She could see that despite Francine’s reassurance her mother wasn’t looking convinced, and with her recent upset still very much on her mind she acknowledged that she couldn’t keep what she was feeling to herself and that she desperately wanted to unburden herself. There was something she just had to know, even though she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at her mother as she asked the question that had been burning so painfully inside her.

‘Mum, how do you know when you’re in love?’

Over her downbent head Jean and Francine exchanged helpless looks.

‘Well, love, it’s hard to explain but you just do. But why are you—’

‘What your mum’s trying to say, Grace,’ Francine intervened firmly, ‘is that if you were in love you wouldn’t need to ask, because you would know you were. It’s because you aren’t in love that you need to ask.’

‘So you can’t be in love with someone and not know?’

‘No.’

‘Not even the first time?’

‘Especially not the first time,’ Francine assured her.

Grace looked from her aunt to her mother.

‘Francine is right, love. If you were you would know,’ Jean assured her. ‘I suppose you’re thinking about this Teddy you’ve bin seeing? If he’s bin pressing you about, well, anything, just you remember that you’re training to be a nurse.’

‘It isn’t that, Mum. Teddy isn’t asking me do anything I shouldn’t be doing.’ Grace got up and paced the room, her colour high, but having come this far she might as well come out with what was really bothering her. Normally she’d have felt really uncomfortable talking like this with her mother, but having Francine here, who was closer to her in age and who had travelled all over, and must know so much as well as being her mother’s sister, somehow made it all so much easier.

‘It’s just that … well, even when we go to the pictures he never puts his arm round me or … or anything else … and the other girls … well, they keep asking me …’

‘Never mind the other girls. It sounds to me as though he’s a decent well-brought-up young man who knows what’s proper,’ Jean told her with relief, deliberately choosing not to remember the passionate kisses she and Sam had shared in the dark privacy of the cinema in their own courting days.

Francine, on the other hand, was frowning slightly and Grace found that it was to her aunt she was looking for an explanation of Teddy’s unfathomable behaviour and not her mother.

However, before she could say anything the twins came bursting in in their normal noisy fashion, hugging Grace, and chattering nineteen to the dozen and making the kind of discussion Grace had wanted to have impossible.

Instead they wanted to talk about the ENSA variety show Francine was rehearsing for, which meant she would be staying in Liverpool for the duration whilst the show toured local Armed Forces bases and some of the factories where women were working long shifts making parachutes and munitions.

They were going through one of their periods of wanting to look as alike as possible and so were wearing matching plaid skirts and green jumpers, with red ribbons in their plaits.

‘Fancy singing here in Liverpool.’ Lou pulled a face. ‘If it was me I’d much rather be going overseas, wouldn’t you, Sasha?’

Before her twin could reply Francine was saying calmly, ‘After the mess that was made of getting us to our venues when we were in France, the last thing I feel like doing at the moment is being sent overseas. Billy Cotton was fit to spit feathers, I can tell you when a bridge went and collapsed when him and his band were on their way to a show. You should have seen his face when he ended up with a coachload of players on one side of the river and their instruments on the other. We might not have been crossing the blue Danube, but the air was pretty blue, I can tell you. It’s all right for Basil Dean running ruddy ENSA from Drury Lane and never putting a foot outside the Theatre Royal. Billy Cotton completely missed his Christmas Day concert with Gracie.’

‘Was that the one you were singing in as well, Francine?’ Lou asked eagerly.

‘That’s right. Three numbers, I had.’

‘And you wore that blue dress with the silver embroidery, didn’t you?’

The twins were entranced with everything about their young aunt. They had only been five when she had left for America, but they were approaching the same age Francine had been when she had first started to sing on stage.

‘Yes. I bought it in Bloomies just before we left New York. That’s Bloomingdale’s,’ Francine explained for Grace’s benefit. ‘It’s a big famous store in New York.’

‘I wish we could go to New York,’ Lou breathed enviously. ‘We’d volunteer for ENSA if we were old enough, wouldn’t we, Sasha?’

When her twin nodded, Jean told them both firmly, ‘Well, it’s just as well you aren’t because your dad would never agree to you going.’

‘Why not? Auntie Francine does it,’ was Sasha’s wide-eyed response.

‘Ah, but there’s only one of me,’ Francine told them quick-wittedly, earning a grateful look from Jean.

‘It’s not that me or their dad have anything against singing,’ Jean told Francine later when the twins were upstairs and Grace had gone back to the hospital, ‘but they haven’t got a sensible thought between them and that’s the truth. They egg each other on and, never mind double trouble, it’s more like four times the trouble of having one.’

Francine laughed dutifully. ‘I don’t blame you and Sam for not wanting them to follow in my footsteps, Jean.’

‘Oh, it isn’t that,’ Jean assured her quickly – too quickly, she realised, when she saw Francine’s expression.

‘I thought I might go over and see Vi this week, seeing as she hasn’t written back to me,’ Francine announced, changing the subject.

Now it was Jean’s turn to look wary. She could feel the heavy anxious thud of her heart, and that same feeling of foreboding she had already experienced returned.

So much had happened since Francine had left; she and Sam had moved so that they could put the past and their loss behind them, and have a fresh start; Edwin and Vi had left Liverpool for Wallasey. As much as she loved her younger sister she was afraid of the problems her return could bring – for all of them, but most of all for Francine herself.

There were some things – some sadnesses, some secrets – that were surely best left undisturbed.

‘Why don’t you give it a few more days?’ she urged Francine. ‘Vi might not have had your letter yet, and you know what she’s like, she’s never been one you can get round easily, unless you’re her Bella, of course. Spoils her rotten, she does, and talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees and not seeing how she’s winding her round her little finger …’

‘She should never have had Jack.’

Francine’s statement was so abrupt that it left Jean floundering for a response.

‘Well, he’s so much younger than the other two.’

‘She doesn’t love him, I’m sure of that.’

‘Of course she does,’ Jean automatically defended her twin. ‘But she’s had a lot on her mind this last year, what with Edwin’s business and them moving house again, and then Bella getting married.’

‘She’d never have sent him away like she has if she did,’ Francine continued, completely ignoring Jean’s attempt to defend Vi.

‘She’s only done what she thought was best for him, Fran. Me and Sam were in two minds about evacuating the twins,’ said Jean. ‘We only decided against it because I couldn’t have gone with them, not knowing that Sam would then be fending for himself.’

‘You see,’ Francine pounced triumphantly, ‘you would have gone with them. You’ve just said so yourself. You wouldn’t have sent them off on their own. Can you imagine what Mum would have said, Jean? She’d never have done anything like that to one of us.’ Tears had filled her eyes and Jean’s heart ached with a pity that overwhelmed her anxiety.

She couldn’t deny Francine’s claim, but encouraging her wasn’t going to do any good and wouldn’t help anyone, least of all poor little Jack.

Francine and Vi had never really got on. They had always been complete opposites, and Francine’s decision to become a singer, and Vi’s marriage to Edwin, had not just widened the gap between them, it had also armed it with hostility.

Jean knew there was some truth in Francine’s accusations but she also knew that getting Vi’s back up with hostile remarks about her role as a mother wasn’t going to improve things and could end up making them even worse. On top of that she had her own burden of guilt to carry.

‘Me and Sam would have had Jack …’ she began, ‘but …’

Immediately Francine hugged her contritely. ‘I wasn’t getting at you, Jean.’

‘Vi’s got Edwin to deal with, remember? I don’t like speaking ill of folk behind their backs, but well, he wouldn’t be my choice of a husband.’

‘He never wanted her to have Jack, not really.’

Jean said nothing. She knew after all that it was the truth. Much as she loved her younger sister and had been delighted to have her back home and living with them, there was no getting away from the fact that there were old sores in their shared past that it wouldn’t be wise to go disturbing.

‘I’d better look sharp otherwise you’re going to be late for your rehearsal,’ Jean told her, deliberately changing the subject.

‘Yes,’ Francine agreed. ‘We’ve got our first show coming up soon at Seacombe barracks. I reckon they’re testing out the shows here to see which work best, ready to send the cast overseas, so with a bit of luck you won’t have me hanging around making a nuisance of meself for too long, Jean.’

‘There’s no need to go saying that. You aren’t a nuisance. Me and Sam are glad to have you here, Fran,’ Jean told her stoutly.

She was glad to have Francine here, Jean insisted to herself after her sister had left, of course she was, but at the same time a part of her couldn’t help worrying, about what was going to happen when Vi and Francine met.

‘And where do you think you’re going, with my kitchen floor not washed and the rations not collected yet?’ Bella accosted Bettina angrily, folding her arms and standing in front of the back door.

‘I have to go to my work,’ Bettina answered her equally furiously, her dark eyes flashing with pride and temper.

Bella’s expression hardened. It was bad enough having the two of them here, what with the mother spending nearly all her time in bed claiming not to be very well, without having to put up with the daughter somehow having managed to persuade the Government into giving her some trumped-up job working as a translator, when she could have been earning her keep here doing Bella’s cleaning.

‘Well, you’d better be back in time to feed that mother of yours,’ Bella told her spitefully, ‘because I’m certainly not going to do it. Making out she’s too poorly to get out of bed.’

Once again fury flashed in Bettina’s eyes. ‘Mama is very poorly with her chest. The doctor has said so.’

‘A bit of a cough, that’s all she’s got. If she was that poorly she’d be in hospital instead of here, keeping me awake all night with her coughing.’

That much was true, and Alan was already complaining about it.

They were over six months into the war now and Hitler hadn’t invaded. Optimists were beginning to say that the BEF would soon rout the Germans if they dared try marching into France, and some were even saying that it would all be over by summer and the men would be home. Grace didn’t feel like being optimistic, though, as she got off the bus outside the hospital, not when she was still upset about what had happened with Teddy earlier in the day.

She had almost reached the entrance when she heard him calling her name, and was half minded to pretend that she hadn’t, but she wasn’t really the sort that could ignore a person just because they had caused her to be upset, so she stopped walking, turned round, and was rewarded with a relieved smile from Teddy as he caught up with her.

‘I’ve been looking out for you all afternoon, and then I nearly went and missed you.’

Grace said nothing. After all, it wasn’t her fault that they had spent the day apart.

As though he knew what she was thinking, Teddy said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Grace, about … about what happened earlier. That’s why I’ve bin waiting for you, so that I could explain.’

‘I’ll have to be in the nurses’ home in half an hour otherwise I’ll miss supper.’

He needn’t think she was going to go and act all soft as if he could treat her any way he liked, because he couldn’t. He might not be in love with her, but she wasn’t in love with him if what Francine had said to her was true. He had hurt her, though.

‘I’ll buy you a bag of chips to make up for it.’ He was teasing her, trying to lighten the mood between them, Grace knew. It wasn’t in her nature to sulk or be difficult and so she exhaled shakily and said, ‘I was upset by what you did, Teddy, and I can’t pretend that I wasn’t, but since you’ve said you want to explain—’

‘I do.’ He reached for her hand. ‘Come on, we can go and sit in the ambulance so that we can talk properly.’

‘What if you’re called out?’

‘I’m not on duty, but if we was to be, then the lucky so-and-sos will have a nurse to look after them, as well as an ambulance, won’t they? Come on …’

That was typical of Teddy. He always had an answer to everything, Grace acknowledged, as they walked towards the ambulance.

‘So what was it you want to say?’ Grace demanded once they were inside.

Instead of answering her immediately, Teddy offered her a cigarette, lighting one for himself when she shook her head.

‘You know you was asking me earlier about you and me, and how I hadn’t said anything about us going steady or you being my girl?’

Grace nodded.

‘Well, the thing is, Grace …’ he took a deep drag on his cigarette, and then exhaled, ‘it wouldn’t be fair to you if I was to do that, and … and it’s for your own sake that I’ve not said anything.’

‘You mean that you don’t want to go steady with me?’ said Grace. She could feel tears pricking the backs of her eyes. Everyone knew that when a lad didn’t really want you he made out that he was holding himself back for your sake.

She heard Teddy curse suddenly and then he put out his cigarette and reached for her hands, holding them tightly.

‘No! Of course I want to go steady with you, but I can’t, Grace. Like I just said, it wouldn’t be fair or right. You see the thing is …’ he took a deep breath, ‘well, you know that thing I told you about when we first met, about how I wasn’t medically fit for the services, on account of me having had rheumatic fever when I was a kiddie?’

‘Yes …’

‘Well, after I’d had me medical they sent for me, and seemingly, this rheumatic fever wot I’d had has left me heart a bit dicky.’

Grace felt her own heart give a sudden flurry of anxious thuds.

Teddy was still holding her hands but he wasn’t looking at her, and Grace remembered how badly the cold weather had affected him and how he’d struggled to walk and breathe in the cold. She’d thought nothing of it at the time, but now …

‘The medics wanted me to wrap meself up in cotton wool and lie in bed for the rest of me life ’cos they’ve said that me heart won’t stand me doing too much. But I can’t do that, Grace. That’s no kind of life for a grown man. In fact it’s not living at all and I might as well be dead. It’s like I’ve told them, I’d rather have a few months of proper life than years of lying in me bed watching others get on with their lives around me.’

‘A few months of life?’

Grace wasn’t aware that she had spoken the shocked words aloud until she realised that Teddy was now looking at her. In his eyes she could see confirmation of what he had said, along with his fear and his pride.

She wanted to reach out to him and hold him as tenderly as she might have done a child. She wanted to comfort him and tell him that everything would be all right and he would be well, but she knew that she could not do those things.

‘That’s why I haven’t said anything to you about you and me. No matter what I might feel about you, Grace, it would be wrong of me to let you fall in love with me, knowing that I’m not likely to be around for very long. When I do go I don’t want you getting yourself upset and grieving, and thinking that you’ve got to mourn me on account of us being an item when you should be out enjoying yourself and falling in love with a chap who’s got his health and strength, and who can give you the future that I can’t.’

She must not cry. She must not, not when Teddy was being so brave and so decent. Why hadn’t she thought of something like this for herself? She had seen how he sometimes struggled to walk and breathe. She knew from her lectures that there was a connection between childhood rheumatic fever and heart weakness.

‘I wasn’t going to tell you any of this because … well, I just wanted to live like any other chap would and … and I didn’t want to go burdening you with all of this or have you pitying me. But when you said what you did today, I knew that I wasn’t being fair to you, not being straight with you, and that I’d have to say summat. I couldn’t have you thinking that I don’t care about you, Grace, or that I wouldn’t ask you to be my girl like a shot if I could and I thought it would be right. You’re all the girl I could ever want, and if things were different …’

He was making it all sound so cut and dried. So final and unavoidable.

‘You shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing, Teddy, not with a bad heart. You should be resting.’

‘No! I’m sorry,’ he apologised when he saw how upset she was. ‘It’s just … well, I can do all the resting I want when I’m dead, can’t I? I want to live my life, Grace, even if that means I won’t have as much time to live it in. I don’t want to look at life through me bedroom window, I want to feel it. I want to be part of it. That’s why I volunteered for this lot. I want to feel I’m part of what’s happening and at least wi’ me doing the driving I’m not overdoing things. They weren’t going to take me on at first – the doctor who examined me was dead against it – but in the end I managed to talk him round.’

Grace just did not know what to say. His revelations were so very different from anything she might have expected, and so much more painful. She’d been acting like a silly girl fretting over a lad not wanting to kiss her, when all the time poor Teddy was facing what he was. A huge wave of emotion rolled over her and sucked her down into its undertow. She looked at Teddy, wanting to tell him how much she wished things were different. She tried imagining how she would feel if she was in his shoes, but couldn’t. It frightened her to think what it must be like and how much he must want to live as she would herself. Love for him filled her. Not so much a woman’s love for a man, as a human love for another human that was truly caring and giving.

He was still holding her hands. She lifted one of his to her face and placed her cheek against it. It felt so cold.

‘I am your girl, Teddy, whether you want me to be or not.’

Suddenly he was holding her and kissing her, not as she had imagined but just like they did in the films, his mouth hard against her own, his heart thudding into her chest. Too hard? That fear came between her and his kiss, her anxiety for him making her ache to be able to protect him and keep him safe.

It was hard to go on the ward and act as though everything was normal after what Teddy had told her, but Grace knew that she must. He had made up his mind, Teddy had said, that he intended to live as though there was nothing wrong with him, and Grace knew that he had meant that.

It made her heart ache to know that he had wanted them only to be friends because he had wanted to protect her, and it had made it ache even more when he had admitted to her that he could very easily fall in love with her, and that she was not to fall in love with him.

‘I mean what I said,’ he had insisted. ‘If it does happen and I go, then I don’t want you spoiling the rest of your life thinking that you owe it to me not to fall in love with anyone else. And don’t try telling me that you aren’t that sort,’ cos I know you too well.’

‘But if they could do something for your heart …’ Grace had protested.

‘They can’t,’ he had answered her. ‘The doc has already told me that. He can’t say either how long I’ve got, only that it will be longer if I rest up all the time and, like I said, I’m not doing that.’

She had desperately wanted to beg him to be careful but she had known that she mustn’t and that that was not what he wanted. What he wanted was to be treated like a man and not an invalid, and Grace wasn’t sure if she had the womanly strength to do that.

Since it was her first night back on nights, she knew from past experience that she would be struggling to stay awake by the time it got to three and four in the morning. It got easier after the first few nights, of course.

The now familiar routine of the ward absorbed her, demanding her physical and mental attention. Visiting time came and went; lockers had to be cleaned and water glasses refilled, bottles had to be taken round, charts had to be written up and Night Sister herself had to be accompanied on her ward round, and then finally at last it was time for Grace to take her tea break.

The dining room was always quieter on nights, even though the same number of nurses were there as were on days. No one wanted to say much and when they did, voices were lower. Somehow nights were like that.

Back on the ward it was time for the patients’ medication.

Her first patient was Harry, and Grace frowned as she checked his chart.

‘It says half a gram of morphia, Staff.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Staff Nurse Reid confirmed. ‘Dr Lewis has increased his dosage. He’s in a lot of pain, poor boy, and it doesn’t look as though his amputation wounds are healing as well as they might.’

Grace knew what that meant, even if the putrid smell of his wounds whenever they changed his bandages had not told her. Slowly, inch by inch, Harry was dying, killed by his own flesh as it rotted away, and there was nothing any of them could do to stop that, no matter how devotedly they nursed him.

He was only semiconscious when she gave him his morphine injection, his flesh burning hot to the touch and his temperature up over 103.

Another bottle round, the last one before lights out. Sister didn’t look up from her dimly lit desk where she was writing up reports as Grace went past on her way to the sluice room, to do the necessary urine tests. By the time she came out again all the patients were asleep and several were snoring.

She had to take Harry’s temperature again. When she went in he was rambling feverishly and still only semiconscious. His temperature was now nearly 104.

As though somehow he had sensed her presence suddenly, he opened his eyes and cried out quite clearly, in a boy’s voice, ‘Mam, Mam. Please make the pain go away. I can’t bear it, Mam, it hurts so much,’ before lapsing back into unconsciousness.

Tears stung Grace’s eyes. Hurriedly she wiped them away and went in search of Staff Nurse Reid, who was down at the end of the ward.

‘It’s Harry, Staff,’ said Grace. ‘His temperature’s up at 104.’ She hesitated and then added, ‘He thought I was his mother.’

Staff Nurse Reid, who had been writing up a chart whilst she listened, suddenly stopped writing and looked at her.

‘What did he say?’ she asked.

‘He said, “Mam, Mam. Please make the pain go away.”’

Staff had the chart replaced and was on her way towards Sister.

‘Campion, go down to the desk and ask one of the porters to send up the chaplain. Tell them we need him quickly.’ When Grace’s eyes rounded, she explained quietly, ‘Most patients, but especially the men, call out for their mothers when they are near the end. Quickly now, but remember, no running.’

The porter was sympathetic and understanding. ‘Yer first death, is it, love? Well, never mind, you’ll get used to it. You get back to yer ward. I’ll tell the chaplain and make sure he gets there.’

It was all over so quickly Grace could hardly take it in. She had only been back on the ward a matter of seconds when the chaplain arrived and was ushered into Harry’s room by Sister.

Staff had instructed Grace to refill all the water glasses even though most of them didn’t need it, and Grace suspected she was just trying to keep her occupied and her mind off what was happening in the side ward.

She hadn’t even reached the end of the ward when the chaplain emerged, accompanied by Sister.

‘Gone has he, then, young Harry?’

Grace nearly dropped the water jug. She hadn’t even realised the patient who had just addressed her was awake, never mind aware of what was happening.

‘You should be asleep, Mr Whitehead,’ she told him, imitating Staff’s firm voice. ‘And if Sister catches you talking we’ll both be for it.’

‘Poor lad, but I reckon he’ll be better off where he’s gone now. Had a bad time, he has, and we all reckoned he wasn’t going to pull through.’

‘When you’ve finished filling those glasses, Campion, Sister wants a word with you.’

Grace nodded, dutifully going over to the table.

‘Staff is going to lay out the patient’s body now, Campion,’ Sister told her. ‘You will assist her with this.’ Grace felt sick. And afraid. She had never seen a dead body, never mind touched one, but Staff was waiting for her and she knew she couldn’t disgrace herself by giving way to her feelings.

‘You’ve already been taught how important it is to respect a patient’s dignity, Nurse. Well, that respect is just as important now.’

As she spoke Staff was carefully folding back part of the sheet, preparatory to washing Harry’s body, taking the same care not to expose more of him than needed to be exposed as she would have done were he still alive.

The smell from his flesh was appalling, especially once they had removed the bandages, but Staff worked as calmly as though it wasn’t there. Grace’s hands trembled as she helped her to re-bandage his poor stumps with their blackened flesh, but for the most part, Staff Nurse Reid simply instructed her to watch whilst she worked busily but carefully.

All Grace could think of was that one day soon this might be Teddy … that one day soon Teddy might be dead and his body the one that received this final service. Teddy, who had told her she must not love him but who she knew now did love her. How would she be feeling now if she had fallen in love with him? Guilt filled her because she wasn’t; because what she felt for him was the love of a friend and not a woman’s love of a lifetime.

She must concentrate on what was happening here in this room and not think about Teddy.

Already Harry’s face was relaxing out of pain and into peace, his features softening and becoming slightly waxen and not quite real somehow. She mustn’t think about death; she must watch Staff carefully instead, and remember everything she was showing her.

Harry’s fingernails had to be pared and his hands washed, his hair combed and then those things done for him that were part of the laying-out process: the packing of mouth, nostrils and rectum, and the tying up the jaw with a chin strap.

Only when it was time to cover Harry’s body with its shroud did Staff summon Grace to assist her.

Grace was trembling so much she felt sure she would be sent off duty in disgrace, but all Staff said to her was a quiet, ‘Brace up, Campion. You’re doing very well. Don’t let the side down now.’

Harry’s body was covered with a sheet and then it was time to summon a porter to wheel him down to the mortuary, his journey there accompanied by a nurse. Grace had feared that she might be sent but as though she sensed what she was feeling, Staff summoned one of the other junior nurses instead.

Death. Grace had never really thought about it in any great detail, not really. Nursing was about helping people to get better, after all, but today she had been confronted with the reality of death and its harshness, not once but twice.

It was four o’ clock in the morning. Nearly two hours since Harry had passed away. Grace remembered that she had heard other nurses calling two a.m. the death hour. She started to tremble sviolently that her teeth were chattering together. All she could do was take refuge in the sluice, but once there Grace found that she couldn’t cry. What she was feeling was too raw and went too deep for the release of tears.