‘The bastard’s hit us,’ Ken said, as the starboard engine died and a flicker of flame appeared on the wing.
They had been flying low, too low to bail out safely. He had to climb. He could fly on one engine, but if the fire spread and they lost the wing, they would be in real trouble. ‘Don’t know if we can get her home,’ he said. ‘If I can get her up, you can bail out.’
‘What do you mean “you”? What are you going to do?’
‘Stay with her. I’m going to try and make it to the English coast before bailing out. If I can’t, I’ll ditch her in the sea as near as I can and hope Air Sea Rescue find me.’ It was said breathlessly in spurts because he was busy trying to keep the aircraft on an even keel.
‘And you expect me to throw myself out and leave you to it? Not on your Nelly. I’m staying with you.’
‘Then plot a course to the nearest bit of England. If I can only get this crate up, I can weave about a bit and try to put that damned fire out.’
If he could stay in the air another half hour or so, they might just make land. Neither man had much to say; Steve was too busy trying to fly the stricken aircraft and Ken was wondering if he had been wise to say he would stay; the chances of them making it home were very slim. If the fire spread to the fuselage, they were done for. ‘We’ve done it,’ he said, jubilantly. ‘Essex marshes below us.’
‘And not a moment too soon. Get out now. I’ll radio our position and follow you.’
He watched Ken tumble out and his canopy open, then radioed base with their position and began to look for a suitable field to land in. He couldn’t just bale out and leave the aircraft to crash into houses or a school or something like that. Besides, he was losing height rapidly and was too low for his parachute to open properly. He steeled himself for the impact.
Ken landed awkwardly, but thanked the Lord he was in one piece, then turned to see where Steve was and realised he had not left the aircraft. Surely the silly bugger was not trying to land it? The plane was engulfed in flames. He watched it miss a church steeple by a hair’s breadth and disappear behind a group of trees. It seemed a lifetime before he heard the explosion and saw a sheet of flame shoot skywards. He felt sick. He struggled out of his harness and limped across the field to meet the three men who were running towards him. He was home and safe, but Steve? He stumbled into the arms of the first man. ‘My pilot,’ he muttered. ‘Find my pilot.’
Joyce, always the bringer of news, took the yellow envelope to the farm. ‘It’s not always bad news,’ she said diffidently to Kathy, who held it in nerveless fingers, unable to bring herself to open it. They were, as usual, in the kitchen. The breakfast table was still littered with the used plates and dishes. Half a loaf and a scattering of breadcrumbs lay on the breadboard. A pot of homemade marmalade had a teaspoon sticking up in it. The dog snoozed under the table, waiting for his master to rise and begin his day’s work. Jenny was cramming a pile of exercise books into her case. The boys were gathering up satchels and football boots ready for school. Meg and Josh were rattling around in the yard. It was a day like any other.
William reached up and took the envelope from her, slit it open and began to read. ‘He’s not dead,’ he said, letting his breath out in a long sigh of relief. ‘Wounded in action.’
‘Thank God for that small mercy,’ Kathy breathed, sinking into a chair. ‘Does it say what his injuries are or where he is?’
‘No.’ He looked at Joyce. ‘Was he flying with Ken?’
‘Yes. Ken telephoned me at the post office. That’s how I knew the news wasn’t bad, at least, not as bad as it could have been. They were hit by a German fighter, but Steve insisted on trying to fly home. He got them as far as Essex, when Ken baled out. Steve was going to follow but Ken never saw him leave the aircraft. He crash landed it.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know how badly he’s injured. Ken said he’d been taken to a hospital in Hammersmith.’
‘Isn’t that where Laura used to work?’ Kathy asked William.
‘I believe so.’
‘Ring them up, find out what’s happened.’
He disappeared into the hall, where the telephone stood on a table, while everyone waited silently.
He came back five minutes later. ‘They were a bit cagey. He has a broken arm and burns to his face and hands. But he’s not in immediate danger.’
‘Burns. Oh no,’ Kathy said. ‘William, we must go to him. They’ll let us see him, won’t they?’
‘So they said. We’ll go tomorrow.’
‘The Hall,’ Kathy said suddenly. ‘We’ll get him moved to the Hall. Laura will look after him and we can see him every day until he’s well again.’
She had perked up with this and he didn’t like to tell her he didn’t think they would be able to dictate where their son was treated.
Steve surfaced from a drug-induced sleep only to wish he hadn’t. He’d been having a lovely dream. It was high summer and he was in the air, but the aircraft he was in made no noise; it flew silently, swooping about the sky like a bird. Below him was his father’s farm and in the yard stood his parents and sister and old Josh and Laura. Laura was in her nurse’s uniform. They were looking up at him and waving, and he could hear them calling to him. Now all he could feel was a pain so agonising he couldn’t stop himself whimpering like a child.
‘Steve, can you hear me?’
That was Mum. He tried to open his eyes, but they were so filled with mucous he couldn’t see properly. Instead he tried to lift his hand. That didn’t work either. He groaned and mumbled, ‘Mum, what are you doing here?’
‘I can’t understand him,’ Kathy said to William. Tears were rolling silently down her face. Her son, her lovely boy was unrecognisable. His face was covered with a dressing with only a tiny hole for his mouth and slits for his eyes; his hands were enclosed in huge mittens. There was a drip attached to one arm and the other was in plaster as far as the wrist. ‘Did you hear what he said?’
‘No, couldn’t make it out.’
‘I wish I could see him properly and touch him. Do you think he knows we are here?’ she asked the nurse who had shown them to Steve’s bed.
‘You can touch his legs. I’m sure he knows it’s you. He’s had quite a lot of morphine so he isn’t making much sense at the moment.’
They stood and looked down at him. Kathy put a hand on his knee. ‘Can you wiggle your toes, sweetheart?’
He mumbled again, but his toes did a little dance. ‘Oh, he can hear us. Steve, you are not to worry. You are going to be all right. I’m going to see if we can get you to Beckbridge Hall…’
This piece of information brought on a great agitation and more mumbling. He didn’t want to go to Beckbridge. He knew he must look grotesque and everyone would turn away from him in disgust. He wished he knew how badly he was burnt, but he had been refused a mirror. He had seen his hands when they dressed them. One arm was in plaster but the other was covered in weeping boils and both hands, from wrists to fingertips, were black as an undertaker’s hat. ‘It’s only tannic acid,’ he had been told. ‘It acts as a coagulant and forms a kind of temporary skin while your real skin heals.’ Was his face like that too? He shouldn’t have been so stubborn about not bailing out. He might have escaped this agony if he had; he might have been picked up by a Dutch trawler and smuggled home. Instead, not only had he put his own and Ken’s life at risk, he had hazarded the lives of a vicar and one of his parishioners who had been in the churchyard and had run to drag him out of the plane before the whole thing exploded. He had been out for the count most of the time, which was a good thing because when he came to he was in an ambulance careering at break-neck speed to the nearest hospital, and every bump in the road sent red-hot needles of pain shooting up his arms before he passed out again. At the hospital they had given him morphine, cleaned him up with saline solution to get the little bits of clothing out of his wounds, dressed them with gauze netting impregnated with paraffin and halibut liver oil, and sent him on to the Royal Masonic.
Since then he had been in and out of consciousness, and he much preferred the comatose state; being awake was hell.
‘He’s very tired,’ the nurse said to his parents. ‘Perhaps you could come back another time.’
‘Can we see the doctor in charge?’ William asked.
The nurse took them away and then the ward sister came to change his dressings. He had to bite his tongue to stop himself yelling and, what was worse, swearing abominably. He tried to control himself by thinking of Laura. He mustn’t shout. Mum and Dad were only just down the corridor and he didn’t want them to hear him.
Kathy and William were shown into an office where they were joined by a middle-aged doctor. ‘Mr and Mrs Wainright?’ He shook hands with them both. ‘I’m Dr Gibbs.’
‘Please, tell us what’s going to happen to our son,’ Kathy said. ‘How bad is he? He will be all right, won’t he?’
‘Eventually.’ How many times had he had to say that to anxious relatives? A lot depended on what you meant by ‘all right’. ‘You may not believe it, but it could have been worse—’
‘He could have died.’
‘There is that, but I meant his injuries. He was wearing his helmet, though not his face mask, so it was his eyes, nose and cheeks that got the worst of it. His hands are badly burnt even though he was wearing gloves.’ He didn’t tell them they had had a devil of a job picking bits of burnt leather out of the blistered skin. ‘Fortunately, a great deal has been learnt about treating burns since this war started and Mr McIndoe is working wonders—’
‘Mr McIndoe?’ Kathy said. ‘I heard Laura mention him. He comes down to Beckbridge Hall quite frequently. It’s been made into a hospital for burns casualties. Laura Drummond is the nursing sister in charge.’
‘Sister Drummond. Why, I knew her. I wondered what happened to her after…’ He stopped, not knowing how much they knew about Laura’s past.
‘We were hoping he could be transferred to Beckbridge Hall. Would that be possible?’
‘It isn’t up to me, Mrs Wainright; Mr McIndoe will decide when the squadron leader has been to see him at East Grinstead. He will be able to tell you more, but I would be failing in my duty if I did not tell you that he is in for a long and painful journey.’
‘Will he be badly scarred?’
‘I’m afraid he will, but some of it can be dealt with by skin grafts and the rest will fade in time, but the important thing to remember is that he is still your son, still the man he always was. He will probably tell you differently; he will have some very black days and you will need all the patience you can muster. But he will recover and you must keep that thought constantly in front of you.’
‘When is he going to be moved?’
‘When he is well enough to withstand the journey. I will let you know if you leave your telephone number.’
They thanked him and wandered out of the hospital in a daze. ‘As soon as we get back, I’m going to see Laura,’ Kathy said, as William took her arm and guided her along the street towards the Underground station. They were so immersed in their troubles they hardly noticed that London itself was badly scarred; the spaces between some buildings were water-filled pits and many had their windows boarded up. ‘She will tell us what’s going to happen and whether she can get him to the Hall.’
Imagining that everyone in the village knew the truth, Laura couldn’t bring herself to meet any of them and it was easy to stay in the hospital grounds and pretend she didn’t have time for anything but work. Consequently she had not seen Joyce; what Wayne had told his aunt, she did not know, did not want to know. It was enough that she had to come to terms with having a new mother, one who was alive and well, without having to cope with a moody half-brother. She was unprepared for the news that Kathy brought. It was enough to drive her own problems from her head in order to concentrate on Steve’s. Poor, poor man.
‘Can he come here?’ Kathy asked at the end of a tale that was difficult to follow, though the gist of it was plain enough. ‘You’d nurse him, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course I would, but it would be up to his doctors what his treatment should be.’
‘Laura, I’ve got to do something. It was terrible seeing him like that. I’m sure he’ll do better near home. I could come and see him and… Oh, Laura, I don’t know which way to turn. My boy, my lovely boy is…’ The tears rained down her cheeks and she fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief.
‘He is still your lovely boy, Kathy. You must always remember that. What did they tell you about his injuries?’ She was trying desperately to be calm and practical but she felt a bit like Kathy did, distraught that someone she loved so dearly could be hurt and in pain. And she knew only too well what burns victims had to go through.
‘Nothing much. He has to go to East Grinstead when he’s well enough to travel.’
‘He will be in very good hands there.’
‘Will you go and see him?’
‘Of course I will.’ Wild horses wouldn’t keep her away.
Chapter Eleven
WALKING DOWN THE long ward towards Steve’s bed, Laura was transported back in time. She was once again the young nursing sister, dressed in a sparkling white apron and cap so stiffly starched she crackled as she walked. It was a time when the full horror of the war and its casualties had not yet flooded the hospitals, when she could laugh and tease the patients. It was a time when she had been in love for the first time; when Bob hovered about the hospital when he was not on standby, waiting for her to come off duty; when she had a mother who loved her and whom she loved. Was that only two years ago? It seemed like an age, so much had happened – not only to her but to everyone around her. She pulled herself together as she approached Steve’s bed. It was no good dwelling on it; she couldn’t change one iota of it.
A nurse was helping Steve to drink through a straw placed gently between scorched lips. His face was swollen to twice its normal size and though she could not see much of it under the dressing, experience told her what it would be like. His eyes, slits in his bandaged face, were almost closed, as if he did not want to look out on a world he could no longer relate to. Silently, she took the glass from the nurse and sat on the edge of the bed to help him herself. He felt the movement of the bed, opened his eyes and spat out the straw. ‘Laura, what are you doing here?’
‘Come to see you, of course.’
‘Mum sent you.’
‘I did not need to be sent, Steve. Did you think I wouldn’t want to come? You know me better than that, surely?’
‘Better if you hadn’t. I’m a ghoul.’
‘Rubbish! You are Steve Wainright, my rock.’
He attempted a laugh and winced when it hurt. ‘Fine rock I am. Couldn’t lift a finger to help you.’ He raised the plastered arm and let it drop again.
‘Oh yes you could and I’m counting on it. In the meantime, I’ll be your rock. Do you understand me?’
‘Why do I have a feeling I’m being lectured?’
‘Not lectured, Steve, gently chided, but if you let me down it will be a lecture.’
‘It won’t work.’
‘What won’t?’
‘I’m not coming to Beckbridge to be viewed by all and sundry like some specimen in a glass case. “Poor Steve! He’ll never be the same again. Keep the children away from him in case he gives them nightmares.”’
‘Now I am cross with you. For a start, you won’t be coming to Beckbridge until you’ve been to East Grinstead, and only then if Mr McIndoe sends you. And secondly, do you think I would allow you to be viewed by all and sundry, as you put it. I suppose you mean your parents and sister and all the people in the village who love you.’ He did not answer and she put the straw back into his mouth. ‘Now drink.’
He sucked dutifully but she saw him wince; it was probably time for his next shot of morphine, without which the agony would be unbearable. She could see Dr Gibbs coming down the ward towards them. ‘Here’s the doctor. I’ll have to go, but I’ll be back.’
‘Don’t let Mum come again, will you? I can’t bear the look on her face.’ He could hardly get the words out, the pain was so awful.
‘She was shocked, that’s all. It would be cruel to stop her coming if she wants to, but I’ll suggest waiting until after you’ve seen Mr McIndoe and things have quietened down a bit.’ She meant the rawness of his features and his own inner struggle to come to terms with what had happened.
‘Sister Drummond, by all that’s wonderful.’ Dr Gibbs was looking thinner than when she had last seen him and his face was drawn, but he smiled broadly when he saw her. ‘How are you? What have you been doing with yourself?’
‘I’m well and busy.’ She went on to tell him what she was doing. ‘Squadron Leader Wainright is an old friend.’
‘Yes. He’s in a bit of a mess, but we’ll soon have him sorted.’ It was said cheerfully and made Steve grunt in annoyance. Sorted indeed! How could he be sorted when his whole world was falling apart? Laura was used to seeing badly burnt faces, but that didn’t mean she wanted to marry one. He wouldn’t want it either, knowing it was pity that kept her by him and not love, not the kind of love he craved. And there was Wayne Donovan, still handsome, still visiting the village… He felt the needle go in and knew that he would get a little blessed relief, not only from the pain but also from his embittered thoughts.
‘How was he?’ Kathy demanded. Laura had gone to the farm immediately on her return as she had promised to do.
‘As well as can be expected considering his injuries. It’s early days yet and he’s still not able to take it in. It will take time to adjust.’
Summer House Page 31
