She tried to make amends by offering him a cup of tea after the round, but Dr Drake refused abruptly. Jess wanted to grab him by the lapels of his creased white coat and shake him. Why did he have to be so cold all the time? She understood he was shy, and she had even caught the odd glimpse of a nice man underneath that chilly exterior, but shyness was no excuse for rudeness in her book.
Midnight struck as he was leaving. Jess did another quick round of the ward, taking temperatures, checking pulses and swabbing throats. Then she made herself a cup of tea and went outside to catch her breath.
The cold February night air felt fresh and untainted after the cloying, sickly reek of the diphtheria ward. Jess wrapped her hands around her hot cup to keep herself warm as she stared up into the starry night sky. In the distance, she heard the heavy thrum of approaching planes as the bombers returned home from another mission. She found herself counting the planes as they passed overhead, the way Harry and his pals always did. He’d told her how they ran up to the roof of the manor house to watch them come home safely, no matter what time of day or night it was. Jess had no idea how many planes there were supposed to be, but she counted them anyway.
It was a quiet night, thank God. But by the time Jess had woken the patients, offered them their morning tea and done the bedpan round, she was wearily ready for her own bed.
Night duty took a lot of getting used to, she decided as she trudged the long path from the Fever Wards to the main hospital building in the grey dawn light. She hoped it wouldn’t be too long before the night nurse came out of isolation and Jess could be allowed to return to the land of the living.
She turned the corner of the hospital building, hoping against hope that Sulley would be waiting at the gate with his horse and cart. Perhaps if he was he would be in a good mood and give her a lift back to the Nurses’ Home. She didn’t fancy the two mile trudge in cold, wet drizzle.
Her luck was in because Sulley was there. He’d just arrived with the last of the day nurses. Jess could see Effie and Daisy, one tall and dark, the other small and blonde, climbing down from the back of the cart.
‘Wait!’ Jess hurried down the drive towards them, desperate to reach the cart before it left. ‘Don’t go without me!’
At the sound of her voice Effie and Daisy both looked up. Then, suddenly, they were running towards her.
Jess stopped. This wasn’t right. Nurses weren’t allowed to run, except in case of fire and haemorrhages. They would catch it from Matron if she noticed them …
Then Jess saw their faces and forgot all about the cart she was supposed to be catching. Effie was as pale as milk, and Daisy’s eyes were swollen and red-rimmed from crying.
‘What is it?’ she said, staring into their stricken faces. ‘What’s wrong?’
They looked at each other, then back at her. ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Daisy said.
‘Heard what?’ A trickle of fear began to work its way down her spine. ‘What are you talking about?’
Effie reached out and put her hand on her friend’s arm. ‘Oh, Jess,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘It’s Harry …’
Chapter Forty-Three
THE PLANE HAD been on a training flight with others, but had encountered some flak over the French coast. The last the radio operator had heard was just after midnight when they had reported two of their engines out, and the loss of their tail fuselage and rear gunner. They were making their way home but two hours later still hadn’t returned.
Millie had woken up in the early hours with a horrible sense of panic, knowing something was wrong. Without thinking, she had got up, put on her coat over her nightdress and slipped out of the Lodge.
Up at the airfield she had found dozens of people on the runway, scanning the skies, counting the planes as they came back. They all talked about the possibility of the crew escaping safely, using their parachutes, until the news they had been dreading came through just before dawn. The plane had crashed on the Kent coast with the loss of all crew.
Millie returned to the Lodge to dress, then went to look for William. She found him in the rear gunner’s room, packing up the airman’s belongings into a brown leather suitcase. The bed had already been stripped down to the iron frame, the mattress segments stacked neatly on top.
‘We have to get rid of everything quickly,’ he explained in a quiet, flat voice that Millie scarcely recognised. ‘It’s bad for morale otherwise. And the bed will have to be moved, too, so the men don’t have to see it …’
He picked up a battered old cap from the chest of drawers and stared at it, lost in thought.
Millie took it from him gently and put it in the suitcase. ‘Let me help you,’ she said.
Together they packed up the airman’s belongings, moving in silence, unpacking drawers and folding clothes. In his bedside locker, Millie found a half-empty packet of Canadian cigarettes, a bundle of well-thumbed letters, and a photograph.
She stopped for a moment, staring at the pretty woman nursing a plump, smiling baby in her arms. Once upon a time, a stranger must have packed a similar photograph of her and little Henry, sending it back to her in a cardboard box with the rest of Seb’s belongings.
‘Will you write to his wife?’ she asked.
William nodded. ‘She’ll be informed by telegram, of course, but I’ll also write and explain exactly what happened.’ He sighed. ‘I just wish I knew what to say.’
Millie thought about the letter that had come for her. It had been two weeks before she could bring herself to read it.
‘It doesn’t matter what you write,’ she said quietly. ‘It won’t mean anything to her, except that her husband is dead and her world has fallen apart.’
William stared at her, realisation dawning on his face. ‘Oh, God, Millie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.’ He looked around at the room. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this. You shouldn’t have to see it.’
‘I want to,’ Millie insisted. Unlikely as it seemed, she liked to think that another woman, a wife and a mother, had packed Seb’s things for him. That someone had cared, even at the very end.
William ran his hand through his dark hair. ‘I know I should be used to doing this. God knows, I’ve done it enough times. But every time it’s just so damn’ hard …’
‘And so it should be,’ Millie said. ‘This isn’t just a death to be processed and packed away. This was a real person, someone with a life and a family. It’s only right they should be mourned. The day you get used to it is the day you lose your compassion.’
‘You’re right,’ William said heavily. ‘It was the same when I was a doctor. I never got used to losing patients, either. But at least then I knew I’d tried to help them, not just sent them off to their death—’
He sank down on the iron bedframe, his head in his hands. ‘Oh, God, this is just such a waste, isn’t it? Those young men going off to die, leaving their families behind. And I can’t help feeling it’s all my fault.’
Millie dropped the shirt she had been folding and went to sit beside him. ‘How can you say that?’
‘I was supposed to be training them. If they got into trouble it must mean I’ve failed them in some way …’
‘You can’t think like that. You weren’t responsible for what happened.’
‘Then perhaps I should have been there in their place?’
‘Then you would have been dead instead of them.’
‘But would it have mattered?’ He took the photograph from her hands and stared down at it. ‘I don’t have a wife or a child to leave behind. I don’t have anyone—’
‘You have me,’ Millie said. ‘You matter to me.’
William’s eyes met hers. ‘Do I?’ he said hoarsely.
Her gaze trailed over the angular planes of his face, with its straight dark brows and sharp cheekbones, then his mouth. The next moment she was kissing him, her hands buried in the silky thickness of his dark hair.
It took them both by surprise and afterwards they sprang apart
, neither of them knowing what to do next. Millie stared into William’s eyes. She had forgotten how the dark brown irises were flecked with so many colours, from amber to deepest black. Today they were red-rimmed from exhaustion.
‘Millie?’
There was a question in his voice that she couldn’t answer with words. She put her hands up to his face, feeling the roughness of his unshaven jaw under her fingers. Then slowly, deliberately, she allowed her lips to meet his. She hoped that would be answer enough for him.
‘What did you think?’ Daisy said, as they watched Jess walking away. She seemed unnaturally calm for someone who had just been told her friend was dead.
‘She didn’t seem to take it in, did she?’ Effie agreed. ‘Poor girl, she was closer to Harry than the rest of us were.’
‘Perhaps one of us should stay with her?’ Daisy suggested. ‘In case shock sets in later?’
‘Better not. You know Jess, she likes to keep her feelings to herself.’
Daisy watched her friend climbing stiffly on to the back of Sulley’s cart. She wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to stifle emotions like that. Sooner or later they would have to come out.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Effie said as they climbed the stairs to their respective wards. ‘When I heard it was D-Dragon that had crashed, I was so sure—’
‘I know,’ Daisy said. They’d talked about little else since they’d heard the news that morning.
She got to the ward, and the first person she met was Grace. She rushed up to her sister, white-faced.
‘They’re all talking about a plane crashing,’ she blurted out. ‘Is it true? Was it D-Dragon?’
Daisy nodded. Grace let out a moan of anguish.
‘Max … is he—?’
Daisy stared into her sister’s pain-filled face. In spite of her anger, she couldn’t help but feel compassion for her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Kit and Max were told to make way for a pair of rookie pilots.’
‘Oh, thank God.’ Grace closed her eyes. Tears squeezed through her closed lids and spilled down her cheeks.
Daisy was about to open her mouth to speak when the doors opened and Miss Wallace arrived on the ward. Immediately they abandoned their conversation and hurried to gather around her desk.
Daisy watched her sister, surreptitiously wiping her cheeks with the sleeve of her dress. She realised with a shock that when she’d first heard about D-Dragon crashing, it hadn’t occurred to her to think about Max.
What did that say about her love for him, she wondered.
Millie was shocked by how quickly things returned to normal after the aircraft crash. At dawn, everyone had been devastated. They had stumbled around, hollow-eyed with shock, barely able to speak. But by the time she returned to the house that evening, the daily routine had reasserted itself and people were going about their business as if nothing unusual had happened at all.
Perhaps that was the way they learned to cope with it, Millie thought. In the same way that nurses hardened themselves to the loss of patients, perhaps the crews had to close their minds to the risks that awaited them and their friends every day.
But in spite of their brave faces and determination to carry on with business as usual, she was sure that they felt the loss of their comrades very keenly. Millie had been racking her brains all day to come up with a way she could help them, and she’d finally had the idea of allowing the men to hold a service of remembrance in Billinghurst’s private chapel. It wouldn’t bring their friends back, but it might help if they were allowed to show their respect properly.
Millie went up to the house to see William and tell him about her idea. But it wasn’t just the memorial service that was on her mind. All day long she’d been thinking about their kiss. She wanted to find out if it had been just an impulse brought on by the heat of the moment, or if, as she hoped, it was the start of something more serious.
Jennifer Franklin and Agnes Moss were typing away at their desks when she walked into the hall. They greeted her in their usual way, Franklin with a polite smile and Moss with a scowl.
‘Where is Squadron Leader Tremayne?’ Millie asked.
She caught the sideways look Agnes Moss gave Jennifer Franklin, but this time she had too much confidence to let the girl’s sly attitude bother her.
‘He’s on the airfield, Lady Amelia,’ Franklin said. ‘Would you like to leave a message?’
‘Thank you, there’s no need. I’ll walk up there and see him myself.’
‘You’ll have to be quick,’ Agnes Moss muttered, not looking up from her typing. ‘He’s due for take off in ten minutes.’
Millie looked at her, not sure if she’d heard properly. ‘He’s flying tonight?’
‘According to the schedule,’ Agnes shrugged. ‘He’s co-pilot of G-Grasshopper.’
Millie ran all the way up to the airfield. She reached the guardhouse just in time to see the planes taxiing into position on the runway. There were six of them lined up, one after another.
One of the ground crew was passing, and lifted his hand in greeting.
‘If you’re looking for Tremayne, he’s just taking off,’ he shouted over the deafening sound of half a dozen Halifax engines roaring into life.
Millie watched the planes soaring into the sky, her heart in her mouth. It was an awesome, terrifying sight.
She went back to the Lodge, but couldn’t rest or eat. She tried to play with Henry to distract herself, but she kept looking out of the window.
Of course her grandmother commented on it. ‘Really, Amelia, will you sit still? You’re up and down like a Jack in the Box. What are you looking for anyway?’
‘Nothing, Granny.’ But she kept her nose pressed against the glass, straining to hear the tell-tale sound of aircraft engines telling her William had returned safely.
It was exhausting. Every nerve in her body seemed stretched to breaking point, just waiting for news.
It was nearly midnight when she heard the roar of the planes overhead, by which time she had lain awake for several hours, imagining flak storms and diving German fighters, and burning planes crashing into the sea. She got up and dressed quickly, throwing on her coat against the chilly February night.
William was climbing down from the cockpit by the time she reached the airfield. He’d taken off his helmet and his dark hair was ruffled. His flying suit emphasised the long, lean lines of his body.
He saw Millie standing at the end of the runway and strode towards her. ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for you.’
‘That’s nice.’ He opened his arms to her, but Millie held herself back.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were flying?’
‘I didn’t know myself until this morning. A few of the rookie pilots were a bit unnerved by what happened last night, so I was told to take a couple of them up and show them how it’s done.’ He was smiling, but Millie’s face was too rigid to respond.
‘And will you be flying again?’
‘Probably. We’ve been losing so many men lately, I’m likely to be back on active service within the next month, if not sooner.’ He tugged at the straps of his gloves with his teeth to loosen them. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I don’t want you to fly.’
He stopped, halfway through peeling off his gloves, and stared at her. ‘What?’
‘I don’t want you to fly. It’s too dangerous.’
He smiled uncertainly, as if he wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. ‘I don’t think I’ve got much choice in the matter!’ he said. ‘Besides, I want to go. It’s my duty. How can I send those boys up if I’m not willing to go myself?’
He was talking but Millie wasn’t listening to him. She was thinking about the hours she’d just spent lying awake, her heart pounding with fear, waiting for him to come home. She couldn’t put herself through that again, night after night. Not after losing Seb the same way.
‘What if something happened to you?’ she whispered.
‘Nothing will happen, I promise.’
‘How can you say that? How can you make a promise like that after what happened last night?’ Her voice shook.
William looked at her for a long time. ‘You’re right, I can’t,’ he said flatly. ‘But as I said, I don’t have a choice in the matter.’
‘No, but I do,’ Millie said quietly.
‘What do you mean?’ He frowned.
‘I mean I can’t allow myself to – be with you if this is the kind of life you lead. I don’t want to get hurt again. I don’t think I could bear it.’ She lowered her gaze. ‘I think we should end this before it goes too far.’
William stared at her. ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said flatly.
‘I do. I’m sorry, William, but I’ve already been through enough heartache. I can’t do it again. I’m not strong enough.’
‘Or you don’t care enough?’
His words lingered in the air behind her as she walked away.
Oh, William, she thought. Couldn’t he see, she already cared far too much?
Chapter Forty-Four
THE TINY CHAPEL at Billinghurst Manor was full for the remembrance service. The pews were a sea of slate-blue uniforms, while more airmen crowded in at the back with the locals. It seemed as if everyone in Billinghurst had come to pay their respects to the airmen they had taken to their hearts.
Squarely at the front of the chapel, as usual, sat Mrs Huntley-Osborne, surrounded by her cronies. She bristled with self-righteousness, as if the entire congregation was there for her benefit. The rest of the village filled the sides of the chapel.
Daisy sat at the back with the other nurses. Many of her friends were sniffing back tears, handkerchiefs pressed to their faces. At the far end of the row, Janet Carr sat with her back perfectly straight, staring unblinkingly ahead of her. Her fiancé David had been navigator on the ill-fated D-Dragon flight that night.
Max sat a few rows in front of her, his head bowed. Daisy fixed her gaze on the shorn blond hair at the back of his neck. She felt so sorry for him, she couldn’t hate him any more. He had lost his best friend, and anyone could see it had drained the life from him.
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