Where the Heart Is

by Annie Groves

  As she had known he would, Sam puffed himself up slightly with male pride and assured her, ‘I reckon they will be ready, but I’m not promising,’ he warned her, ‘and I’m not having my Jerseys pulled up before they’re ready, no matter what.’

  Which Jean knew from experience meant thatshe could relax and they could all look forward to the delicious treat of home-grown new potatoes with their Easter Sunday lamb.

  ‘It will be a funny Easter this year, Sam, what with Grace married and Lou in uniform. We won’t be having our Luke dropping by either.’

  As she reached for her handkerchief Sam leaned across the table and took hold of her hand in his.

  ‘Aye, love, I know.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as if he’d been in Singapore, but …’

  Sam’s hand tightened over hers.

  ‘What do you think will happen, Sam? I thought that we were winning in Egypt, but now …’ Anxiety thickened Jean’s voice. The news from the desert–or rather, what they were allowed to know was going on–was increasingly worrying. In January Rommel’s tanks had started to push back the British Eighth Army with which Luke was fighting, and which had been doing so well the previous year.

  ‘They don’t call Rommel the Desert Fox for nothing,’ Sam acknowledged. ‘If you ask me, Churchill should have recalled Ritchie.’ Lieutenant-General Ritchie was in charge of the war in the Western Desert, and there was growing criticism of him, blaming him for the Eighth Army’s current plight.

  Jean knew from the sombre tone of Sam’s voice that she had good cause to worry for Luke, but being the woman she was, instead of giving way to her tears, she withdrew her hand from Sam’s and blew her nose very firmly.

  Changing the subject she said, ‘Sasha’s told me that Lou has written to her suggesting that they go out dancing together, just the two of them, when she comes home at Easter. As luck would have it young Bobby has got leave over Easter himself, but seemingly he’s told Sasha that he’s going to go home to Newcastle to see his family. He’s ever such a nice lad,’ Jean concluded approvingly.

  The other person who was in her thoughts was her younger sister, Francine. Fran wrote regularly, funny, witty letters–she had always had that gift–but although she mentioned Brandon she didn’t say anything that gave Jean any clue as to how the young American’s health was.

  At Christmas Fran had promised that she would let Jean ‘know when there is anything you need to know’, and since she had not done so Jean could only hope that Brandon was holding his own.

  ‘Dr Forbes is admitting a new patient today, Nurse, a German POW suffering from blood poisoning.’

  Grace nodded briskly as she listened to what Sister O’Reilly was telling her. She was enjoying working at her new hospital. They dealt with a variety of cases, some military and some civilian. Matron had made her feel very welcome and had told her how pleased she was to have her, and Grace was glad she was able to put her training to good use.

  ‘In the circumstances I think perhaps he should go in the private room at the end of the ward. To us a patient is a patient, and that is exactly how it should be, but some of our other patients may have other views.’

  Grace knew exactly what sister meant. The new admission was one of their enemy, and some of the other men on the ward might either be upset by his presence or antagonistic toward him.

  As a nurse, however, Grace couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the German when he was eventually brought in. His lower right leg was swollen to double the size of his left leg, the flesh red and hot to the touch and drawn tight over the swollen limb. A bandage had been wrapped around what Grace guessed must be the site of the wound, but above it she could see quite plainly the telltale red line of infection.

  Her heart gave a flurry of beats, the sight taking her back to the time when she had been training and Seb had been admitted to her hospital with a shoulder wound that had threatened to give him blood poisoning. She had been so afraid for him, so determined to do everything she could to help him, cleaning the wound and packing it with hot kaolin paste, making sure that he took his M & B tablets regularly.

  The guard who had come in with the POW, an army squaddie, stationed himself outside the small room, telling Grace, ‘You won’t have much trouble with Wilhelm here. He speaks English.’

  Summoning a junior nurse, Grace began to remove the dressing from the German’s leg. He was a pleasant-looking man with unexpectedly nice eyes, and if she hadn’t known he was a German she’d probably have thought of him as a decent sort.

  The wound, once she’d removed the bandage, might not look much–a single small puncturewound that had healed over–but Grace knew how serious it was. It would have to be opened and drained of the poison inside it, the rotting flesh removed, and that telltale red line brought down because if it wasn’t, well then at best the POW could lose his leg and at worse, his life. His ‘Thank you’ as she made him as comfortable as she could to wait for the doctor surprised her and caught her off guard. A little guardedly she smiled at him. He may be ‘the enemy’ but as a nurse it was her duty to take care of him.

  Why doesn’t Wilhelm come any more?’ Tommy asked Emily when they were sitting having their tea.

  ‘I dare say he’s got better things to do. Now how about you and me starting to read A Tale of Two Cities tonight?’ she suggested, wanting to change the subject.

  Not for the world did she want anyone, including Tommy, guessing how upset she was over Wilhelm.

  ‘We could ask the farmer, and tell him that we want Wilhelm to come back,’ Tommy continued, ignoring her suggestion about the book.

  ‘We’ll do no such thing.’

  ‘But I liked him,’ Tommy protested.

  ‘That’s as maybe, but Mr Churchill’s got better things to do with POWs than send them to places because little boys want him to,’ was all that Emily could come up with to bring an end to the conversation. After all, Mr Churchill’s decisions carried a lot of weight with Tommy, as they did with the whole country, and were not to be questioned.

  SEVEN

  ‘Come on, Lou, don’t let her get away with it,’ Ruby called out mischievously and challengingly, as a sponge filled with water hit Lou on the side of her face.

  ‘Yes, come on, Lou,’ Betty, who had thrown the sponge, teased her.

  ‘I’m going to get you for that,’ Lou warned mock threateningly as water ran down her face.

  They were in the showers, in their bathing suits, having just been put through their paces in the gym by the PT instructor, and were in high spirits knowing that their Easter weekend break was only a handful of days away, especially Lou, who only the previous day had been praised by their instructor for her riveting skill, an essential component of their training to become aircraft repair mechanics.

  Still laughing, Betty threw another water-laden sponge at her, mocking, ‘You’ll have to catch me first,’ as she did a triumphant dance on the tiled floor outside her shower cubicle.

  Spluttering and laughing herself, Lou set to work soaking both sponges, along with her own and afourth she quickly grabbed from Ellen, who was standing just outside the shower adjoining her own, Lou’s back to the room as she worked to gain her revenge, knowing that Betty would be working equally hard to beat her.

  The silence that now filled the room as the others obviously waited for her return attack only added to her determination to score a hit so, when she turned round, a dripping sponge in each hand, she was already raising her arm to let fly, only realising when it was far too late that the reason for the silence was the presence of a sergeant between her and her intended victim, watching her, a sergeant whose face and uniform was now soaked in the water from the two sponges. Betty was now standing white-faced behind the dripping sergeant with a mixture of guilt and shock. It might seem a small offence and nothing more than a silly prank, the kind of thing that Lou herself would have shrugged off dismissively in her old pre-WAAF life, but, as she had quickly learned, Forces life was very different
from civvy life. Once you were in uniform very strict and rigid rules controlled every aspect of your life, right down to the smallest detail. That breaking the rules was a serious crime had been dinned into them all from the moment they joined, and now Lou felt sick with the same shocked horror she could see so strongly in the faces of her pals. No one was laughing now. What Lou had done, no matter how innocently inspired, and despite the fact that her sponges had been intended for someone else, was tantamount to an assault onan NCO. And for that she could be drummed out of the service in absolute disgrace.

  Where the old Lou would have had to fight back laughter at the sight of her unintended victim, her hair and the shoulders of her uniform wet, the new Lou was instead filled with stomach-curdling dread, and a very deep sense of regret.

  The sergeant–not one Lou knew–looked so implacably stony-faced that Lou didn’t even dare try to stammer an apology in case it was interpreted as an attempt on her part to cheek her unintended victim. The atmosphere in the showers, so light-hearted and filled with laughter only a few minutes ago, was now thick with apprehension, and no one, Lou knew, felt that more strongly than she.

  Easter was only a matter of a few days away. Katie had volunteered to work over the holiday, feeling that she would far rather one of her colleagues enjoyed a well-deserved break than that she herself was off with time on her hands and nothing to do but think about last year when Luke had loved her.

  She was on her way for her morning tea break when Gina Vincent, who had been so friendly since Katie’s first day, called out to her to wait.

  ‘Look, I know we’re both down to work over Easter, and that we’re getting a long weekend leave to make up for it later in the month. I was thinking of going away then for a bit of a break. I’ve always wanted to visit Bath–I’m a Jane Austen fan–and I wondered if you’d like to come along. No offence taken if you don’t, mind,but it’s always more jolly if you’ve got a pal to share things with.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ was Katie’s immediate and genuinely delighted response.

  It was the way of things now with the war: friendships were often quickly made, people seizing the moment because time was precious; people, especially young women working together, finding that they were making friends with a speed they might never normally have done and with girls from a wide variety of backgrounds. Katie was by nature solitary, enjoying her own company and hesitant about ‘putting herself forward’, but the warmth she had found within the Campion household had shown her how much happiness there was in being close to like-minded others.

  She might only have known Gina for a few short weeks but what she did know of her she liked.

  Tall, with mid-brown wavy hair and a calm manner, Gina was friendly to everyone, but not the kind of girl anyone would ever describe as ‘bubbly’–not like Carole, whom Katie had once thought was her best friend.

  ‘Good show,’ Gina smiled, putting her arm through Katie’s. ‘We’ll have tea at Joe Lyons one evening, shall we, and make plans? I have a pal in the navy–we grew up in the same village. He recommended an hotel in Bath to me that he says is pretty good.’

  Katie nodded.

  Living and working in London as a single young woman, as the ATS girls were keen on proving, meant that one need never be short of a date. The city was constantly full of men in uniform on leave, determined to enjoy themselves.

  Katie had quite got used now to being stopped in the street and asked for a date by some young man eager for female company on his precious time off. One learned to accept that eagerness and not be offended by it, whilst determinedly checking it–or not, if you happened to be the kind of girl who was as keen to enjoy all the fun that came your way, just in case there was no tomorrow. ‘Good-time girls’, some people referred to them disparagingly, but not Katie. She felt she understood what lay behind their sometimes desperate gaiety, and she sympathised with them.

  Not that the number of testosterone-fuelled young men visiting the city was without its problems. Already there had been ‘words’ and a distinctly frosty atmosphere in the billet because Gerry had been dating an American serviceman.

  The six of them–Sarah, Alison, Hilda, Gerry and Peggy as well as Katie herself–had been in the small dark basement back kitchen at the time, and Peggy Groves, who had been making tea for them all, had been unusually outspoken on the matter, making it plain that she disapproved, and asking pointedly, ‘What about that Royal Navy chap you’ve been writing to, Gerry?’

  ‘What about him?’ Gerry had responded with a defiant toss of her head.

  ‘Peggy’s right,’ Hilda had stepped in. ‘He isn’t going to be very happy when he finds out that you’re dating someone else, especially an American.’

  ‘Who says he’s going to find out?’ Gerry hadchallenged. ‘A girl has to have some fun, and Minton is fun.’

  There the matter rested, for now, but privately Katie agreed with Peggy and Hilda.

  As a result of the sponge incident Lou had been put on a charge and had been marched out to the guardroom, which was a small room in the admin building, in which she had been locked for twenty-four hours before being taken in front of the WAAF commander to have her case heard and punishment handed down.

  She had been left in no doubt how serious her assault on an officer was, even if it had merely been a prank and its intended victim not the NCO but her pal. Now she wouldn’t be going home for Easter. Lou felt sick with misery and close to tears, but of course she wasn’t going to show that. Not when she was standing in front of a grim-looking commanding officer and about to be marched back to the guardhouse.

  Not only was she on a charge but her hut had also had twenty points removed from it because of her behaviour, and she herself was going to have to do ‘jankers’ as punishment for seven days.

  Lou had learned enough about being in uniform to know that there would have been no point in her protesting that she had simply been retaliating to another’s deliberate provocation, no matter how strongly she had been tempted to speak the hot words in her own defence. The Forces didn’t care about the whys and wherefores that might prompt an offence, only the offence itself. Not, of course,that Lou would have given Betty away anyway; that was simply not done. No, it was her own fault for not realising what the silence meant and checking before she had thrown those sponges. Her fault. How many times when she and Sasha had been growing up had she been told off for being ‘too impetuous’ and ‘not thinking’ through the consequences of her actions? Then she had shrugged off those criticisms because there had always been Sasha to share the blame with her, the two of them together against everyone else. Now, though, Lou was beginning to see that she had always been the one to institute things, dragging Sasha along with her whether or not her twin shared her desire to be rebellious. Then she had hated and resented rules of any kind, and having to do what other people did because someone else said so, but now that she was in uniform she was beginning to understand that discipline was necessary in order to achieve goals. Even something simple, such as parade ground marching, had a purpose to it. How would it be if they all marched in their own way and to their own tune? What a muddle it would cause. More important, though, than enforced discipline was, Lou recognised, learning the virtue of self-discipline, and of thinking for oneself–knowing one had to think beyond one’s own immediate wishes and look to what was right for everyone in a group. Lou had a great deal of respect for the manner in which the services’ way of doing things made a person feel different about themselves. For the first time in her life she was actually enjoying working for praise, and awareof how horrid it felt to be criticised and told off. Poor Sasha, was that how she had sometimes felt when she, Lou, had got them both into trouble? She’d make it up to her, tell her how much she had learned and how sorry she was for the way she knew her own past rebelliousness had sometimes upset her twin.

  Sasha. Only now could Lou admit how desperately she had been longing to see her twin. But now she wasn’t going to. She’d be
en thinking about her parents too. Her mother had been upset over Christmas when she’d told them out of the blue that she’d joined up, and her father had been angry. Then she’d shrugged aside their reaction, but even though she’d written to them telling them how happy she was, and had received loving letters back from them, Lou felt that she owed them an apology for not discussing her plans with them first and for not being grown up enough to explain how stifling and depressing she had found the telephone exchange, instead of going off like that and joining up behind their backs.

  ‘Halt.’

  Obediently Lou stopped walking. They were outside the WAAF guardhouse again. Her stomach was churning with misery in a way that reminded her of being a little girl and wanting to cling to her mother and Sash on the first day at school, but there was no Sasha here now to share that feeling with her, and no mother either to hold them both tight for a few precious extra seconds of comfort.

  Her mother would be disappointed and upsetwhen she learned that Lou wasn’t going to be home at Easter. For a few desperate seconds Lou tried to think of some suitable excuse she could make that would enable her to conceal the truth from everyone, but there was no story she could tell that her mother would accept. She had felt so proud about being able to go home and tell them how well she was doing, but now that wasn’t going to happen.

  At least Sasha’s boyfriend would be pleased, Lou reflected bitterly, as she heard the guardhouse door being locked with her inside it.

  Doing jankers would no doubt mean that she’d be set to work in the mess, peeling potatoes, washing up and scrubbing dirty floors, and of course everyone who saw her there would know that she was being punished.

  Now that she was finally on her own, a solitary tear was allowed to escape.

  ‘Oh, Mum, it’s so good to see you,’ Grace greeted Jean as they exchanged hugs in the Campion kitchen.