by Nancy Revell
‘No, the friend – Mrs Crabtree – is pretty ancient. She’s just moved into a house at the bottom of Tatham Street. The old woman’s from the east end originally. She moved out to South Hylton when she got married, but now her husband’s gone, she’s decided she wants to spend her final years where she was born and brought up, or at least that’s what Gloria reckons anyway.’ Helen sipped her drink. ‘The old woman’s desperate to meet Hope, so Gloria said she’d take her round there tonight.’
‘And tell me about Hope. How’s she doing?’ Dr Parker asked. He knew how important the little girl was to Helen, and how close they’d become.
The next hour was spent deep in conversation, their chatter mainly about what had been happening at work. Dr Parker listened and chuckled as Helen told him she thought she might well lose her right-hand woman, Marie-Anne, to Rosie and her gang of welders.
‘She never used to even venture into the yard before Bel started, and now the pair of them are out there every chance they get,’ Helen said indignantly.
Dr Parker looked at Helen. He knew she was only joking, and that Marie-Anne would never forsake her warm office job for the gruelling, dirty work of a welder, but behind the jocularity he could see that Helen was envious of her secretary and the fact she had made friends with the women welders.
‘She’s even started to go out on an evening with Dorothy and Angie,’ Helen’s emerald eyes grew wide, ‘to the Rink!’
Dr Parker almost choked on his beer as he let out a loud laugh.
‘A den of iniquity if ever there was one!’ he said in mock outrage.
Helen scowled across the table at her friend.
‘No good will come of it!’ As soon as the words were out, she too burst out laughing.
‘Oh my goodness, I sound like some Bible-bashing old spinster!’
Dr Parker again looked at Helen and thought she was even more beautiful when she laughed.
The pair continued to chatter. Helen’s heart sank when she realised they’d both finished their drinks and she saw the time. John had to be back at the hospital by nine.
As if reading her thoughts, Dr Parker looked up at the clock behind the bar.
‘Why does time go so quickly?’ he asked.
‘Come on,’ Helen said, putting her coat on, ‘I’ll walk you back.’
‘Isn’t that meant to be my line?’ Dr Parker joked as he stood up and picked up their two empty glasses. Helen waited until he had taken them to the bar. As they left, the landlord shouted out cheerio to them both.
‘You’ve gone quiet,’ Helen said as they walked back to the hospital. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Oh, nothing really,’ he lied.
Dr Parker glanced at Helen, who had linked arms with him as soon as they had left the pub. He had been in turmoil all evening, trying to find the right time to ask Helen if she would like to accompany him to a dance next week at the village hall. But he had struggled with how to ask her, and, even more, with how to ask her in such a way that she would understand that he wanted her to accompany him as his date – not purely as a friend.
They walked in silence for a short distance.
‘Anyway,’ Helen chirped up, ‘you haven’t given me an update on our “poor chap” yet?’
Dr Parker smiled. Ever since he had told Helen about his patient with no name, who had nearly died several times over, she had never once failed to ask how he was doing. It was as though, to Helen, he’d come to symbolise hope. At the start of every shift, Dr Parker dreaded coming onto the ward and finding the man’s bed empty.
‘Remarkably, he’s still hanging in there,’ Dr Parker said.
‘Good,’ Helen said. ‘I’ve a feeling he’s going to make it.’
Just as they reached the hospital grounds it started to drizzle. Dr Parker looked up at the sky, which was clouding over.
‘I’m guessing you’ve not got an umbrella stashed away in that handbag of yours?’
Helen shook her head.
‘Let me fetch you one? I’m sure I’ve got one somewhere.’ Helen looked up at the sky and could feel spits of rain speckle her face.
‘All right,’ she said, secretly glad their evening was not quite at an end.
‘Anyway,’ Dr Parker said, ‘it’ll be nice for me to show you where I work.’
Opening the door, Dr Parker let Helen walk through first, before gently taking her by the elbow and guiding her down the corridor.
‘Nearly there,’ Dr Parker said as they came to a set of swing doors. Above it was a sign that read ‘Post-Operative Ward’.
‘Don’t be put off by the matron; her bark’s worse than her bite.’
He pushed open the door, putting his arm out for her to go first.
Seeing Helen, the matron’s mouth opened, but before she had time to ask her what on earth she thought she was doing visiting at this time of night, Dr Parker appeared.
‘It’s all right, Mrs Rosendale. She’s with me,’ he smiled, causing the matron’s face to soften.
As Helen let Dr Parker take the lead and walk through the ward, she tried not to stare at the dozen wounded soldiers who were either lying unconscious in bed or were propped up, their legs or arms, or both, in plaster casts.
‘Hey! Bonny lass!’ one of the men called out.
Helen looked to see a young man, his head bandaged and his arm in a sling and hoisted up in a pulley. She smiled at him, before noticing that the bed next to him had been stripped bare. The sheets had been balled up at the bottom of the mattress. Whoever had occupied that particular bed had either recovered enough to leave, or else had died. She feared it might well be the latter for John normally told her if he had been able to send any of his recruits ‘packing’.
‘I think I’ve died ’n gone to heaven!’ one of the soldiers, who was playing a game of solitaire, shouted out.
‘Enough of the cheek, Sergeant Perivale,’ Dr Parker reprimanded.
Helen winked across to the soldier.
‘That may be, Sergeant Perivale, but I’m no angel!’
There was uproar from the men who were awake, and a few groggy exclamations from those who were just waking up.
‘Don’t forget I work in a shipyard,’ she whispered to Dr Parker.
As Dr Parker showed Helen through to his consultation room, the men quietened down.
While he started to search for the umbrella, Dr Parker’s mind could only think about the dance at the village hall. This would be the perfect chance to ask Helen – might well be his only chance. He was hopeless on the phone at the best of times. Besides, when he asked her, he needed to see her face, determine her reaction. See with his own eyes if she understood he wanted to take her there as his date.
‘There it is!’ Helen stepped around the piles of paper and files that littered the floor.
‘Honestly, John, I’ve never seen such chaos!’ She grabbed the umbrella that was hanging exactly where it should be – on the hatstand in the corner of the room.
‘Oh, that’s great!’ Dr Parker looked at the umbrella held triumphantly in Helen’s hand and then at Helen. For the briefest of moments their eyes locked. Dr Parker felt his heart pumping hard. He stepped across the room towards her. All logical thought went out of his mind. At that moment all he wanted to do was simply to take Helen in his arms and kiss her.
As he reached her, Helen dropped her arm – and the umbrella. She looked up at her friend, whose face she knew so well, whose brown eyes she had looked into so many times these past months when she had been distraught and desperate, when she had nearly died, and, more recently, when she had started to feel the stirrings of happiness – something she had thought she might never feel again.
‘Dr Parker!’
The slightly panicked voice of the matron made them both jump back.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Mrs Rosendale looked from the doctor to Helen, ‘but one of your patients is coming round.’
Hurrying back onto the ward, Dr Parker made a beeline for the wounded
soldier, who was clearly in distress and was thrashing around in his bed, shouting out unintelligible words.
As Dr Parker reached the bed, he checked the man’s pulse, and felt his forehead whilst telling the matron to prep ten millilitres of morphine.
The soldier had tossed his bed sheets off in his tussle with consciousness and Helen could see he was bandaged around his torso.
‘This, my dear, is your “poor chap”,’ Dr Parker said, all the while keeping his eyes on his patient. ‘He’s been like this since he was brought in. In and out of consciousness. Semi-lucid.’
‘Can I do anything to help?’ Helen asked, just as the matron arrived with a sterile wipe in one hand and a syringe in the other.
‘Could you hold down his other arm, please?’
Helen hurried to the other side of the bed, her heart thumping as she grabbed the soldier’s arm, which was flailing around.
‘Keep him still if you can,’ Dr Parker said. His voice was commanding but not harsh. He quickly took the antiseptic swab from the matron, wiped the soldier’s bare arm, and carefully injected him.
The matron took the empty syringe and hurried off, leaving Helen and Dr Parker on each side of the bed.
‘You can let go now.’ Dr Parker looked across at Helen, who was still pushing down on the man’s arm, even though he had stopped trying to punch his invisible opponent. ‘You did a good job there.’ He smiled at her.
‘You don’t fancy a job as a nurse do you?’ he joked, looking back down at the man, who was now starting to relax. His body had stopped thrashing around and his shouts were now reduced to incoherent mumbles.
Helen smiled back at Dr Parker.
‘So, this is our “poor chap”?’
‘It certainly is,’ Dr Parker said. ‘He’s a fighter – that’s for sure.’
Helen looked at the man, whom she felt she knew thanks to the regular updates she had been given by Dr Parker these past couple of weeks.
And then she looked more closely.
Dr Parker glanced up at Helen and noticed that the expression on her face had changed.
He saw her hand gently brush the man’s hair away from his eyes, which were flickering open as he tried desperately to fight the effects of the morphine.
‘Tommy?’ Helen’s voice was barely a whisper.
‘Tommy!’ She put both her hands around the man’s unshaven face.
‘Is it you? Tommy?’ Helen’s mouth was close to the man’s as she gently repeated his name.
The man’s eyes flickered open but only momentarily. He tried to say something but he couldn’t get his words out.
‘Tommy. It’s me!’ Helen gasped in disbelief.
‘It’s me … Oh, thank God!
‘You’re alive!’
Chapter Fifty-Six
‘Oh, Tommy, I can’t believe it – you’re alive!’
Helen held the face of the man whom she had only just recognised – who looked very different from the one who had left to go to war.
He was a shadow of his former self, but it was Tommy! The man she had known since they were children.
The man she loved.
It was Tommy.
Her Tommy.
And he wasn’t dead.
‘Tommy. You made it! You made it!’ Helen repeated, still not quite believing it.
As Tommy fought to open his eyes, he took Helen’s hand and put it to lips that were dry and cracked and kissed it, before his head sank back into the pillow.
‘You’re back home now, Tommy,’ she told him, tears pouring down her face. There was so much she wanted to say to him. The words were bubbling up, desperate to escape and tell him how distraught she had been thinking he was dead, how much she loved him, how much she wanted him – that they could have a wonderful life together.
As Helen’s tears fell onto Tommy’s face, his eyes opened wide.
‘Is it you? Is it really you?’ he said, a wide smile spread across his gaunt face. ‘I’ve waited … so long.’ His voice was raspy. He swallowed hard.
Helen could hear Dr Parker asking the matron to bring some water.
‘I’m here, Tommy.’ Helen was holding his hand, squeezing it. ‘I’m here. I’ve always been here for you. I always will be here for you.’
She was crying with happiness.
Tommy wanted her.
She felt euphoric.
‘Oh, Tommy, I love you,’ she said breathlessly.
Tommy’s eyes flickered shut.
He started mumbling again, trying to talk.
As Helen gently held his hand and put her ear to his mouth, she listened intently to what he was trying to say.
Finally she heard.
Tommy’s voice was croaky and frail, but there was no mistaking what he was saying.
‘Polly … My Pol … How I’ve missed ya.’
He smiled again, his eyes still closed.
‘Ah Pol …’ his voice was now slurred with the effects of the opiate ‘… there’s not been a day gone by when I’ve not thought about yer …’
The morphine was winning the battle.
Tommy slowly slipped into a pain-free slumber.
Helen’s heart, which had just soared to the highest Heaven, now plummeted back down to earth and shattered into a thousand pieces.
Tommy. Her true love. Her first love.
He was alive.
But he didn’t want her.
He wanted Polly.
He had always wanted Polly.
Helen looked up to see John’s face, watching.
‘So, this is Tommy,’ he said.
He kept his voice strong, his face impassive, as his own heart broke.
‘Mrs Rosendale, can you keep an eye on him, please? If he wakes, try and get some liquids down him. That would be great. Thank you. He should be all right for the next few hours. If there are any problems, get Dr Kayne, I believe he’s also on duty tonight. I should be back in a couple of hours at the most.’
The matron nodded, glancing at the young woman who was standing stock-still by the side of the bed, staring down at the patient they now knew was called Tommy.
Dr Parker walked around the bed, gently touched Helen’s arm and guided her out of the ward. The other patients watched but didn’t utter a word.
When they finally made it out of the hospital and were standing on the front steps of the main entrance, breathing in the fresh night air, Helen turned to Dr Parker.
‘God, I feel like the stupidest woman on this planet!’
She looked into her friend’s eyes, but could not read them.
‘You’re not stupid at all, Helen,’ he tried to reassure her. ‘Just overwrought … And you’ve had one hell of a shock.’
He paused.
‘I do think, though, that we need to get a message to Polly to tell her that her fiancé is alive.’
The word ‘fiancé’ felt like another slap in the face.
Helen took a quivering intake of air.
‘Of course,’ she said, nodding her head and wiping her tears away. ‘Polly … Of course … Gosh, she’s going to be beside herself. She’s not going to believe it … I can’t believe it! This really is the best news ever.’
She started down the stone steps.
‘I’ll go now and tell her … I know where she lives.’
Dr Parker caught Helen’s arm to stop her leaving. She looked in a daze. It was clear she was in no fit state to go anywhere by herself.
‘I think that sounds like an excellent idea,’ Dr Parker said, ‘but you’re not going on your own. I’m coming too. They can manage without me for a few hours.’
Helen looked at Dr Parker and didn’t argue.
‘If you think they can spare you? And Tommy’s all right?’
‘There are other doctors they can call on if needed. And don’t worry, Tommy’s going to be fine. He’s made it this far, I don’t think he’s going to give up now.’
He smiled at Helen. She seemed so bereft. So lost. Almost vulnerable.
‘Now wait here while I go and get our coats and your handbag,’ he said. ‘It’s not exactly warm this evening.’
He looked up at the sky. It was still spitting rain.
Helen watched as Dr Parker turned to go back into the hospital.
‘And the umbrella,’ she shouted out after him. ‘Don’t forget the umbrella!’
Dr Parker turned to see Helen giving him a smile, a weak one, but a smile all the same.
‘You must think I’m a prize fool,’ Helen said to Dr Parker as they sat on the bus back into town.
Dr Parker looked at Helen and for once was at a loss for words. He was reeling himself from shock, not only that his patient was the Tommy Watts, but at the intensity of feelings that Helen still harboured for the man she had once loved.
Clearly still did love.
Helen linked arms with Dr Parker as they sat next to each other in the single-decker bus slowly making its way along unlit roads.
‘Talk about making a complete spectacle of yourself,’ Helen said, resting her head on his shoulder.
Dr Parker looked at Helen as she closed her eyes.
‘Don’t be so tough on yourself,’ he said. ‘I think it’s hard when you love someone and that someone doesn’t love you back.’
Half an hour later the bus pulled up at the stop at the top of Toward Road. Helen had been dozing, thinking about what had just happened. The more she thought about it, the more mortified she felt by her actions. It was as though she had seen Tommy as her salvation. She had desperately wanted to believe that if he was hers, he would miraculously make everything go back to the way it had been before.
God, hadn’t she learnt anything from her disastrous relationship with Theodore? She’d thought Theo too had possessed such magical powers. That he would change the way she felt. She had looked through the warped reality of Alice’s Looking-Glass and seen her very own knight in shining armour – someone who was the answer to all her problems.
And now here she was doing it all again.
‘I think the next stop is ours.’ Dr Parker turned his head slightly as he spoke quietly to Helen. He too had been lost in his own world, rerunning the evening’s events – his mind dragging him back to the moment he had gone to kiss Helen while they had been looking for the umbrella. He was sure she had realised what his intentions were, and yet she had not recoiled. Was it possible that she would have kissed him back?
