‘Only the day. Night Sister says he wants to be back from Kent for his night round.’
‘If the RAF don’t bounce one on him in the Garden of England.’ He flexed his aching shoulders still grinning euphorically. ‘Should be very pretty down there now. Corn stubble gold ‒ apples turning red ‒ spuds burgeoning on every cottage lawn and village green ‒’ he switched into an American drawl ‘and rising to the clear blue skies the soft smoke of smouldering homesteads ‒ and so we say farewell to glorious Kent …’
Nurse Dean looked down her nose. ‘I don’t think that’s funny, Mr Jason.’
‘Trouble with you women ‒ no sense of humour.’ Suddenly, he sobered. ‘Not that it would have me laughing like a drain were I a man of Kent. Coming from Sussex should have me going yuk-yuk-yuk like a bloody sewer only ‒ oddly ‒ the humour suddenly escapes me too.’
She looked at him in a new way. She had never known him like this before.
‘I forgot you were from Sussex. Bexhill, isn’t it?’
‘Hastings. Good old Sussex by the sea.’ His eyes darkened behind his glasses. ‘Mack let me off the hook last Sunday. Got home in time for tea. Only took six hours down by train. Between first and third cups through our sitting-room window I watched the ack-ack girls shoot five into the sea. My folks didn’t reckon it worth a butchers. They only chalk one up when it flattens the old home town ‒ they call that An Incident. Ack-ack make a hellish din. You can’t see the promenade for guns. I was bloody glad to get back to London. No deep basement at home and no bricked-in windows. Damn all glass too.’
‘It must,’ she allowed, ‘be a bit worrying for you.’
He didn’t answer. He had been trying for years to persuade his parents to move inland. They said they didn’t like the thought of the garden getting out of hand and as his father had now retired from the bank he was doing wonders with his vegetables.
Last Sunday his father had taken him aside. ‘Don’t worry too much about us, boy. Your mother and I’ve survived two wars and in this house we’ve sat out the Battle of Britain, years of tip-and-runs and our new standing as one of the entrances to Doodle-Bug Alley. We’ve had Jerry only a five minute flight away for so long we’ll be quite lost when he clears off. God willing, your mother and I’ll be here to see that day. If not, we’ve had pretty good lives and more than our share of luck. Different matter for you youngsters; your youth’s been stolen and you’ve not had time to enjoy life. That’s what worries us. Take care of yourself, boy. If you can’t get down too often, give your mother a ring whenever you can. Makes all the difference to her to be able to speak to you kids. Your sister rings from Scotland whenever she can get through, but now your brother’s in Texas she has to make do with his letters. See his last, by the way? Went over in the Queen Mary with seventeen thousand other chaps. Talk about a squash! Thank God this lease-lend air training scheme’s going to keep him over there at least nine months. Now, tell me, what’s it really like in London?’
Nurse Dean prompted, ‘Must be a bit worrying.’
Jason removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes and saw his home in ruins. ‘Only one thing worries me now,’ he snapped. ‘Why was I fool enough to read medicine?’
‘You’re only a bit browned-off as you’re over-tired, Mr Jason.’ She flicked out her watch. ‘If you’ve taken root in that chair, could you hang on a tick longer until Carter gets back, and listen for the ’phone? I must do my four-hourly pulses.’
He wanted to refuse. He didn’t want to see her again tonight. He’d had it up to the back teeth and he couldn’t take any more ‒ only ‒ only ‒ if he cleared out before she got back ‒ what odds he’d see her again? Hellish shorter than on that poor wretched Mrs Mack and if she hadn’t been so dumb and had got into the Morrison she’d have beaten them. No Morrisons in Wally’s. Just three empty floors above. A doodle could go through that lot like a hot knife through butter. One had already landed on the hospital. What odds against another?
‘Okay.’
‘Thanks.’ She sailed back to her ward and reopened the screen to remind Carter she had a little more time off-duty and shut out Mr Jason. She shouldn’t have let him upset her so much. He was only being unusually tiresome because he was so tired. She shouldn’t have expected him to understand how upset she was about Mack and ‒ everything. But she couldn’t worry about Mr Jason any more. Not here. She looked slowly round her ward and breathed more easily. They were all sleeping. She stood watching from the middle of the ward and sighed with affectionate satisfaction at the chorus of snores, grunts, clucks, and snorts and the soft swish-swish of the oxygen.
Jason rose painfully, limped over to the armchair, sat down and stretched out his legs. ‘You’re only a bit browned-off as you’re a bit over-tired, Mr Jason.’ God give him bloody strength. Not browned-off. Fried to a bloody crisp.
He leant back, removed his glasses to rub his sandpapered eyes and fell asleep so quickly his glasses dropped out of his hand on to the floor by his feet.
Chapter Six
‘Wake up, Mr Jason, wake up!’ Nurse Carter shook his shoulders. ‘Mack and Night Sister are prowling the ground floor corridor like a pair of Snowdrops.’
The urgency in her hushed voice rather than her shaking penetrated his sleep like a fine shaft of light in a lake. He struggled upwards through the deep water and recognized her blurred, anxious face before she replaced his glasses. ‘Oh God. Thanks ‒’ he groaned, leapt up and headed for the cold tap in the kitchen. She followed him slowly, waited by the sink whilst he held his face under the running water, then handed him a pillowslip and the glasses he had deposited on the draining-board.
‘Thanks, Nurse Carter.’ He folded the pillowslip and tidily replaced it on the towel rail. ‘What was that about Mack and Night Sister?’
‘They’re having a heart-to-heart in the ground corridor, coming this way and were only a few yards from our stairs when I came up.’
He whistled soundlessly, flicked back his wet forelock and ran a thumb-nail across his throat. ‘Mack on his own might’ve let me get away with it after last night. Night Sister wouldn’t. And if the old firm’s still standing when I’ll want my Martha’s testimonial in two months’ time, neither Mack nor anyone else’ll remember last night. “Found sleeping in ward flat on-duty” will be the one that stays green in hospital memories. Thanks one hell of a lot for saving my neck.’
‘That’s okay.’ She turned away to fiddle with the hot water urn. She was still appalled by the depths of her anxiety when she saw him asleep. She had now recognized precisely why she had been so anxious for him. She said brusquely, with her back to him, ‘I’ve a few more minutes off and I want more tea. Like some?’
‘Sullivan delivered the goods?’ he drawled.
She glanced at him over her shoulder and decided she had better make sure of that one too. ‘Yes. My soft-soap worked fine. Dirty trick, really. It’s not his fault he’s so green he thinks he’s God’s gift to Martha’s nurses. Most housemen do when they first qualify. I feel as if I’ve taken candy from a baby ‒ but I needed his candy.’
Jason leant against the sink, his hands in his trouser pockets and his intelligent, vulnerable eyes guarded by more than his glasses. ‘Why feel guilty? You’ve promised him a date as a quid pro quo.’
‘Put it that way if you like, Mr Jason. Me ‒ one of the things I do for England.’
He grinned reluctantly, ‘Pure patriotism?’
She faced him. ‘For God’s sake man, be your age. I know I look dumb but if I were dumb enough to fall for that line-shooting infant lecher not even Uncle Henry would’ve helped.’
‘Where ‒’ he demanded ‘where in hell does Uncle Henry figure?’
‘He’s why Martha’s accepted me. He’s my mother’s brother and a bishop. Martha’s loves a Lord Spiritual almost as much as the hereditary article, and if you haven’t either, or at least an Admiral or a Major-General up your sleeve, Martha’s is dead sticky about accepting you for training.’
She shook her head, smiling. She was so glad he had tried to find out. ‘Wrong type. Impoverished country parson type. What’s yours?’
Jason was smiling. ‘Retired bank manager. Shoe-string type after educating three kids and supporting me till this last January.’
‘Self-supporting now on all of two quid a week?’ He nodded ruefully. ‘You should worry. I only get three quid a month. If my father didn’t fork up for my fares home I couldn’t get home. Do you want some tea?’
‘Yes, please!’
‘Okay. Shift over.’ She emptied the dregs in the small teapot into the tea-bucket under the sink, decided a hot water rinse would save time and turned back to the urn. ‘On the boil. Jerry’s losing his grip tonight. The gas pressure’s only been down once.’
Jason’s new-found joy in life suddenly vanished. ‘I wouldn’t have said Jerry was exactly slipping tonight.’
He sounded so odd she looked around. ‘Why not? He’s kept out of our hair for hours.’
‘But not Mrs Mack’s,’ he reminded her coldly.
She stared at him in sudden apprehension. She had never before seen his present expression on his face, but she had seen it on too many others not to recognize what it must signify. ‘Jerry?’ she queried automatically and read the answer in his eyes. ‘How? Mrs Mack lives miles out of range ‒ I forget where ‒ but miles out. How?’
‘Dean hasn’t told you?’
‘What? For God’s sake, what?’
He hesitated, then leant back against the sink, dug his hands deeper into his pockets and very quietly told her.
She had guessed what was coming but was still stunned to silence. She put the empty teapot on the table, walked round to the breadbin, sat down and folded her cold hands in her lap. When she looked up her eyes were great navy bruises in her waxen, lifeless face.
He had to move nearer and propped himself against the table in front of her. ‘I’m sorry. I thought Dean must’ve told you.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘no. She hasn’t had much time but even if she had, she wouldn’t. She’d think bad news bad for the troops’ morale. She can’t have told Smith or she’d have told me ‒ just as well she hasn’t told Smith ‒’ she shuddered violently and looked down at her hands. ‘Mrs Mack. Poor kid,’ she murmured. ‘I mean, she was pretty young, wasn’t she?’
He gazed at her lowered head and slender drooping shoulders feeling as if he had hit her, physically. ‘Twenty-eight ‒ I think.’
‘And ‒ just down there for tonight?’
‘Yep.’
She nodded to herself, glanced up momentarily and he saw the tears in her eyes and on her dark lashes. ‘You did say outright?’
‘Yes.’ He crouched by her, took both her hands in his. He forgot the door was open and they were on-duty and wouldn’t have done otherwise had he remembered. He said unsteadily, ‘I know this sounds bloody awful but if she had to get it, that could be the best way.’
‘I know that.’ She looked and sounded old. ‘Victoria was my last ward before Wally’s.’
Victoria was the ward in the country hospital that received the women patients transferred from Rachel. Later, some of those patients were transferred to other wards in other more specialized hospitals for plastic surgery.
He had to comfort her. He had to remove that look from her face and he didn’t know how to do it. He held her small, icy hands more tightly as he searched for consoling words and then heard his voice speaking his unspoken thoughts about the girl in Rachel, and about other girls and other women on other nights, other days. She listened in silence watching the face a few inches from hers that for the second time that night was no longer a young man’s face. She saw the passionate anger and passionate concern in his eyes and heard the undercurrent of both in his deep, gentle voice.
He said, ‘This is no line. I’d rather see even you dead outright than like that, even though I love you like hell. And I do,’ he added simply. ‘Probably sounds bloody daft as well as bloody awful to tell you now, but it’s true.’
He flushed deeply. ‘True as the rest.’
‘Yes. I know it is.’ She removed one hand from his clasp and laid it over his covering hands. ‘Whilst you’ve been talking I’ve been thinking the same about you.’
His whole body tensed. ‘You ‒ have? You ‒ go ‒ for me?’
She nodded. ‘Plus, plus.’
For a long moment of recognition they looked at each other and forgot past and present disasters, the war, the rest of the world. Slowly, hesitantly, youth crept back into their faces and an instinct they had both forgotten they possessed upsurged in their minds with the power of a V2 rocket. It was hope. It was a glorious, unreasoned hope for themselves and their future. They saw it in each other’s eyes, but the war had scarred both too deeply for either to dare admit that hope even to each other.
Jason broke the silence, not the spell. ‘I think’, he muttered unevenly, ‘I’d better make us that tea.’ He kissed both her hands, jerked himself to his feet and backed away. ‘If not I’ll have us both out of a job by morning.’
She stood up wondering if her legs would carry her. ‘I ‒ I should get Smith’s meal ready.’
‘Can’t it wait a couple of minutes?’ He dodged out into the empty flat, paused to listen, then dodged back. ‘All clear. They can’t have been making for Wally’s.’ He lit a cigarette and dropped the match in the sand bucket just inside the kitchen door. ‘Okay in here?’
‘Okay for you. We aren’t allowed to, but I don’t.’
‘Then sit down. Please,’ he urged. ‘I daren’t touch you again here but I must look at you. And you’re so lovely to look at ‒ oh, hell! I must make that bloody tea!’
She blushed and sat back on the bin. ‘Go easy on it. Poor old Mother B.’s just promised to send me some when she gets home but she’s so punch-drunk she probably won’t remember anything she’s said tonight.’
‘I’ve only used three spoons ‒ right? Right.’ He put the pot on the table, set two saucerless cups on either side and pushed her the milk jug. ‘Help yourself. I’ve gone off milk now.’ He watched her tenderly over the rim of his cup. ‘Like you were saying, the things one does for England.’ He saw her expression change. ‘What’s up?’
‘Just remembering I’d just prayed off another when I tapped Sullivan for this. Maybe ‒ oh God ‒ maybe I prayed off the one that got Mrs Mack?’
‘You couldn’t! That one didn’t reach London.’
She said gravely, ‘All the ones I’ve prayed off had to get someone. I’ve always known that but usually I’ve managed not to think about it. If I couldn’t not think, they’d have me as far round the bend as Smith.’
‘You and me, both. You and me, both.’ He paused. ‘That’s another diagnosis I missed out on earlier. I didn’t realize you’d got taped what ails her.’
Her eyes smiled at him, ‘Not to worry, Mr Jason. Most people fall for my dumb blonde line.’
Jason’s flush reappeared. ‘Not only the line, my sweet lovely Nurse Carter ‒ what the hell’s the C for?’
‘Catherine. What’s the M.? Michael?’
‘Mark.’ He was worried. ‘Like Michael best?’
‘No. Not now.’
They exchanged the same smiles and it took him a conscious effort to drag his thoughts from their unspoken conversation to Nurse Smith. ‘I feel I should tip off Mack but I haven’t had a chance to get him alone since I caught on to her state. Where do you suppose he and Night Sister’ve gone. Luke or Thomas Holtsmoor?’
‘Probably.’ She looked troubled again. ‘Even if you tip him off on the quiet, it’ll still be sort of official.’
‘I know. Make me a right heel if I do, but if I don’t ‒ how about her DILs and the fact that she needs treatment herself? Bloody awful H-S. I’ll be to keep my big mouth shut on either. What’s my choice?’
She looked him over as she thought it over. ‘You have
n’t got one. I don’t know you very well, but I don’t think you could be a heel if you tried. Only as I do know you’re a good H-S. I guess you’ll have to tell Mack as she shouldn’t have been sent back. Snag is ‒’ she sighed, ‘I can see why Matron picked her. She’s a wizard special. She’s a lousy night senior as she’s lousy at admin., but give her a few really ill patients to concentrate on and she sort of takes off. The patients like her a lot and so long as Jerry keeps out of her hair they couldn’t have a better nurse. If I were Briggs now, I’d far rather have her than Dean. He’s a sweetie without a hope in hell. Smith’ll see him out very kindly. Dean’s kind enough in her way, but she will try and keep everyone alive, regardless. No one with even a glimmer of a hope has a hope in hell of dying with Dean on the job. If she’d been around Lazarus wouldn’t have needed raising. Chip off Sister Wally.’
‘So,’ he reflected unhappily, ‘was that poor kid Mrs Mack.’
She sat straighter, ‘Dean’s type?’
He nodded, stubbed out one cigarette and lit another. ‘If they couldn’t have been sisters they could’ve been first cousins.’ He inhaled thoughtfully. ‘Mack’s got a good mind, but he never seems to use it when he picks a woman. Could be because he only seems to pick one when he’s too busy to use it in his private life.’
She looked at him with quick comprehension. ‘If that’s only when, couldn’t it be because he’s too tired to use off-duty? Didn’t someone tell me he met Mrs Mack during the first blitz and married just after it stopped?’ He nodded. ‘Adds up. I mean, he’s never played the field, has he? Isn’t Dean the only Martha’s girl he’s made a pass at?’
He looked at her with an additional appreciation, ‘Far as I’ve heard. And I would’ve.’
‘Yes, you would. Adds up,’ she repeated. ‘Jerry starts playing up again, Mack’s too snowed under to get home to the wife, looks up in a weak moment, sees Dean and doesn’t know what’s hit him.’
‘That’s just how I’ve been adding it. Does she know what’s hit her?’
One Night in London: a hospital in wartime (The Jason Trilogy Book 1) Page 10
