The District Nurses of Victory Walk

by Annie Groves

  Kathleen lifted Brian into his pram and set off to try to buy meat. She left early, as every kind was rationed now and she knew she faced the prospect of queuing at several different shops if she wanted to come home with the meagre portion her coupons allowed. First she tried for ham, but that had sold out. Then she went to another shop she’d registered at in the hope they would have bacon, but there was none of that either. The third shop, nearly all the way up to Stamford Hill, had just received a delivery of sausages, and had some fresh eggs too, so even though she’d had to walk further than usual she came back with enough for several meals, along with aching shoulders from pushing an increasingly heavy Brian.

  ‘You sit there,’ she said, propping him on her bed and making a little wall with her pillows to try to keep him still while she unloaded her shopping. ‘Here’s your rabbit – tell him about the morning you’ve had.’ She hummed to herself as she put the eggs on a high shelf, well away from curious little hands.

  That done, she turned to the bucket of baby clothes she’d put to soak before leaving the house. The weather was warm and a gentle breeze was blowing – perfect for a bit of laundry. She could rinse them through, peg them out in the tiny back yard and then they might be ready to iron by teatime. Keeping up with Brian’s clothing was a ceaseless task – he never had much spare as he grew too fast, but she took pride in ensuring he was always clean, with a spare set of clothes always tucked into the bottom shelf of the pram in case of accidents. She had begun to put aside anything he’d grown out of that wasn’t worn too thin in case it came in useful for Mattie’s new baby. It was another chance to give something back to the generous Banhams.

  She checked the collar of a little green shirt to see if it needed mending, and then carefully rinsed it out and set it in her washing basket. She was so engrossed in the task that she almost missed the knock on the door. Brian looked up from playing with his rabbit, his face expectant, as in his limited experience it was usually Mattie, and that meant Gillian as well.

  Mattie, however, usually let herself in immediately after knocking. Kathleen dried her hands on a threadbare towel by the sink and went to see who it was. Standing there was a boy of about fourteen in the uniform of the General Post Office, his bike propped precariously by her doorstep. ‘Mrs Berry?’ he asked. ‘Mrs Ray Berry?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kathleen automatically, and on this fine sunny morning it didn’t occur to her what this might mean. Her first worry was whether she had enough loose change to tip the telegraph boy.

  He pushed his flopping fringe out of his eyes and handed her a telegram. ‘This is for you, missus.’

  Still it hadn’t dawned on her that these few moments would alter everything. ‘Thank you,’ she said, squinting a little at the dazzling sun which had just come out from behind a small high cloud. ‘Wait there, I’ve got some pennies indoors.’

  The boy’s face grew concerned. ‘Think you should read it, missus.’

  Kathleen smiled politely and popped back inside to her clay pot of coppers, which she kept on the top shelf and tried not to touch except for emergencies. ‘Here you are, for your trouble,’ she said, making no move to read the message.

  ‘Thank you, missus.’ The boy had no time to hang around and was off away down Jeeves Place to find his next port of call.

  Kathleen shivered despite the warmth and stood in the doorway, her back against the jamb, suddenly extremely aware of all the sights and sounds around her – the familiar street, the open windows of her neighbours’ houses, the caw of birds, the squeal of the buses’ wheels from the High Street. The smell of dinner being cooked by the woman upstairs drifted down, a not very appetising chicken pie. Kathleen involuntarily wrinkled her nose, then took the plunge and read the telegram.

  Slowly she read it again. The words seemed to be moving around and she couldn’t focus properly. Lost? Was that …? He couldn’t be. Ray was never lost for anything. But here it was in black and white. In a daze, she dragged herself over to the table and sank down, her hand shaking as it held the bit of paper.

  Her head swam at the realisation that Ray was dead. Her husband, no matter what had passed between them. No more Ray. It wasn’t possible. Even when she’d hated what he’d done to her and how he’d treated Brian, even when he’d run off and not bothered to let her know where he was, she’d never imagined that she wouldn’t see him again. There was always the thought – half longed for, half dreaded – that he could turn up at any time.

  Brian would be without a father now. She glanced across to where he’d half rolled off the bed but was still clutching his beloved rabbit, chattering quietly in nonsense language to it. If only Ray had appreciated his lovely son. Now he never would. She would have to raise him alone and somehow tell him about what sort of man his father had been, without letting her bitterness show. She sighed. She’d tackle that when the need arose. Thinking about it was beyond her right at this moment.

  Kathleen went through the rest of the day on autopilot. She finished rinsing the clothes and hung them out in the tiny back yard to dry. She brought them in and ironed them. She made herself one slice of toast and poached one of the eggs to put on top of it, telling herself she still had to eat, and then forced it down although she had no appetite. Brian dozed off for his afternoon nap. She sat in the one comfy chair and watched the world go by in Jeeves Place. Mrs Coyne left with her shopping basket on her arm. After a while she came back again. Kathleen had no idea how much time had passed.

  At last she lit the gas lamp and tucked her son firmly into his cot, gently easing away the toy rabbit he liked to clutch as he fell asleep. She didn’t want him trying to eat its ears – as she’d caught him doing last week – and choking. One day she would have to wash it, but then he would probably object as it would smell of Rinso laundry soap, and so she kept putting it off.

  She watched the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed slowly, making little snuffling noises. She wondered if he would look like his father. That might be no bad thing; at least Ray had been handsome. Then again, if he hadn’t been so good-looking she might not have fallen for him and that would have been a blessing. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have had Brian. Nothing was ever simple. As long as he didn’t take after his father in terms of character … That would be up to her, to set him on the right path.

  She jumped as there was a soft knock on the door. It wasn’t exactly late, but she was still wary as she approached the door, her stomach churning because of what had happened the last time anyone had come knocking. ‘Who’s there?’ she called.

  ‘Don’t worry, Kath,’ replied a familiar male voice. ‘It’s only me.’

  ‘Billy!’ she cried, flinging the door wide open. A rush of emotions assailed her, as she realised the shock of today’s news had made her forget that Billy was missing. ‘You’re safe. You made it back.’ Swiftly she drew him in, holding on to his arm. ‘Come on in, sit down, I’ll make us a cuppa,’ she went on, remembering her manners.

  ‘You don’t have to, only if you’re having one, Kath,’ he said, eyes bright at the sight of her. ‘Just thought I should pop round and show you I’m alive and in one piece. You don’t mind, do you?’

  Kathleen tried to keep her voice steady but didn’t quite succeed. ‘Don’t be silly. We’ve been going out of our minds with worry. I’m just relieved to see you.’

  He caught sight of her as the gas light shone fully on her face. ‘Here, Kath, hang on. What’s wrong?’

  She turned her back to him, wringing her hands, almost unable to say the words. Once she spoke them out loud, there would be no going back. It would all be real. She took a deep breath. ‘Ray’s lost at sea.’

  For a moment Billy couldn’t say anything. He took a step towards her. ‘Oh, Kath.’ He could tell she didn’t want him to come any closer. ‘Kath, are you all right?’

  She wouldn’t meet his gaze but turned her face to the ceiling. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. It’s too much to take in. Look, I’ll make that tea, it�
�ll help.’

  ‘No.’ He went as if to move towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll do it, I know where you keep it all …’

  ‘Stop, Billy. Really. I want to do it.’ There was comfort in small routines, she’d learnt that this afternoon. Swiftly she boiled the kettle again and set out an extra cup, putting fresh leaves into the pot rather than reusing the ones from earlier in the day as she would have done if she’d been alone. ‘But tell me about how you got back. At least you’re home in one piece, after we thought you might be a goner.’ She set the battered tray down on the table.

  Billy shook his head. ‘No, takes more than a few pot shots from Jerry to get rid of me.’

  Kathleen’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘What, did they shoot at you? Oh my God. Are you all right, are you hurt?’

  He shook his head again and sat down on the hard wooden chair, as she perched on the edge of the armchair. ‘They shot at all the little boats. Trying to put holes in them so they’d sink, I suppose. Well, they never managed it. Our boat, the Molly May she was, she lasted all the way back to Limehouse. We didn’t know if she’d make it; she struggled a bit and she was low in the water as we packed her so tight, but she did us proud.’

  Kathleen smiled despite herself. ‘You’re talking like a sailor, Billy.’

  Billy wiped his hand over his face. ‘Nah, one thing I realised on that trip was what real sailors are like – how they can handle a boat, the tricky situations they can get themselves out of. I admired them, I don’t mind telling you. We just went where we was put.’

  ‘And did you rescue many soldiers, Billy? What was it like?’

  Billy’s expression clouded over. ‘I don’t want to tell you the details, Kath, I don’t want the boy to overhear,’ he said. ‘It was like a nightmare. I don’t ever want to see anything like it ever again. Those poor men. Boys, some of them. Terrible, it was.’ He paused for a moment, remembering. Then his tone changed. ‘But we got lots of them off the beach there, thousands. You know what, it was a big success. Everyone is saying so. We took dozens and dozens back with us – crowded as anything, it was, but we got them home safe. A couple were hurt bad, but with my ARP training I knew what to do to staunch the blood from their wounds. Then they got took straight to hospital when we reached Blighty.’ He stopped to take a breath. ‘And then we turned around and went back and did it all over again.’

  ‘Oh, Billy.’ Kathleen’s face was full of concern.

  ‘You should have seen the Molly May,’ he continued. ‘She was a beauty. It was like she knew she was on a rescue mission, she darted in there quick as you like, for all she was an old girl.’

  Kathleen steeled herself to ask the next question. ‘Don’t suppose you saw anything of Lennie? Or Harry? Or Pete?’

  Billy shook his head. ‘No, I never. Is there no news of them?’

  ‘No. Not yet, anyway.’

  Billy refused to be daunted. ‘We shouldn’t give up hope, Kath. There were so many men there, you can’t imagine. It’ll take ages for it all to be sorted out, it stands to reason. They could be in some town on the south coast or down in Kent somewhere, unable to get a message back home. You never know. It was a huge operation, blimey, I never seen so many men together in one place. Made me proud to be British, it did, that we could save so many of our boys and come back like we did.’

  ‘Of course.’ She poured the tea and didn’t stint on the milk, even though she was low on her ration. She added a heaped teaspoon of sugar to Billy’s. To hell with being careful. His return was something to celebrate.

  ‘I’m so glad you made it back, Billy,’ she said, passing him his cup, her voice full of emotion. ‘You were so brave to go off like that. Everyone thought so.’ Her hand brushed against his as he reached for the cup, and he caught her gaze.

  ‘It weren’t nothing more than all the others were doing,’ he said thickly. ‘I couldn’t have lived with meself if I hadn’t done it. But I’m glad you think I’m brave. Means a lot to me, that does.’

  Kathleen cleared her throat. ‘I do think so, Billy. I really do.’ For two pins she would have crossed the mean little room and thrown her arms around him. But she couldn’t.

  Even though she could read in his eyes plain as day what he felt for her, and if she was honest she’d known that for a while, she could do nothing about it. She had just lost her husband. Whatever sort of husband he had been, she had to respect him if only as the father of her child. She had loved him once with a deep and all-consuming passion, and knowing they would never share that again cut her deeply. How had she ever fallen for fickle, vicious Ray’s good looks over Billy’s quiet reliability? But she had, and couldn’t undo what she’d done so foolishly. If she gave in to the urge to welcome him back now, the guilt would haunt her for the rest of her life. She must not. ‘I do, Billy,’ she said again.

  ‘And you’re brave too, Kath. We all think so.’ He regarded her seriously. ‘If you need anything, you make sure to come to me. I’m sorry you’ve been left like this, sorrier than I can say, but you’ve got good friends. Just you remember that.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Word of the events at Dunkirk soon spread. There were plenty of stories like Billy’s, small acts of great bravery all adding up to a triumph in the face of defeat. Even though it was a retreat, everyone celebrated the ingenuity of the rescuers, old and young, who had given little thought to their own safety but had battled across the Channel to do their duty. Newspapers carried articles portraying the courage that had brought home so many of the soldiers, and the mood of the country was buoyed by the tales of escape against the odds. If the army could engineer an escape like this when up against the might of the Nazi war machine, what else might it achieve once it had found time to recover and regroup? What could have brought the nation to its knees turned out to have the opposite effect, and spirits were running high.

  The man who ran the newsagent’s closest to Victory Walk, Mr Cooper, brought out copies of several papers he’d kept back for Alice, knowing she would collect them at the end of the day. ‘Here you are, Nurse,’ he said as she came through the door, the brass bell heralding her arrival. He could see she had propped her bicycle next to the plate-glass window outside – the handlebars were visible through the criss-cross of brown tape he’d put up in case of explosions. ‘I knew you’d want to have these.’

  ‘Thank you! Yes, these are headlines to keep, aren’t they,’ she said, reaching for the papers and flicking through the opening pages.

  ‘Our brave boys lost the battle but won the day,’ Mr Cooper declared, giving his wire-rimmed glasses a quick polish on the sleeve of his brown overall.

  Alice nodded, digging out her purse. ‘You’re very kind to have put these aside for me,’ she said warmly.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ Mr Cooper hastily replied. He was proud to have so many of the nurses as regular customers. They were respectable young women and of course it never hurt to know a nurse, as you never knew what would happen in times like these. Even so, today he wasn’t going to give in to such thoughts. What could have been a disaster had turned into a triumph to savour.

  The sun had almost set over Victory Walk when Stan made his way along to the far end, to the nurses’ home. He stood for a moment before its imposing front, the immaculate big navy-painted door with the highly polished brasswork. Looking up he could see that some of the attic rooms had their windows open. He remembered Edith saying that she and Alice were on the top floor, and how much they liked it because of the views, despite the effort of climbing the extra flight of stairs. She wasn’t going to like what he had to say now though.

  Fiona Dewar opened the door when he knocked, being on the way out herself. ‘Mr Banham!’ she exclaimed. ‘Now don’t tell me you’re here to discuss an infringement of the rules. We keep our blackout blinds in top order, I’ll have you know.’ Her friendly greeting petered out when she took in how haggard his face appeared. She had been at several committee meetings with him and had always been struck b
y how young he looked compared to how old she guessed he really was. Now he had suddenly aged twenty years and his pallor was grey under his weather-beaten face.

  ‘Ah.’ She quickly recognised the likely reason for his visit. ‘You’ve come to find Edith Gillespie, then?’

  He nodded briefly.

  ‘Would it help to talk to her in a private room?’ she asked.

  He nodded, almost unable to speak, and then mastered his emotion. ‘Yes. Thank you. That would be best.’

  Fiona turned around. ‘Follow me. We shall go to my office, where you won’t be disturbed. This way.’ She walked swiftly down the hallway, pausing at the foot of the stairs as she caught sight of Gladys coming out of the cloakroom. ‘Ah, Gladys, just the person I wanted to see. Will you find Edith, please, and send her to my office? And then ask Alice Lake to go there after about ten minutes. Don’t tell anyone else yet. Good, off you go.’ She nodded briskly. ‘This way, Mr Banham.’

  Alice was on her way to the mysterious summons when she heard the cry from behind the closed office door. It was almost like that of an animal – an animal in agonised distress. Forgetting the rule about never running, she plunged down the corridor and threw open the door, knowing this was no time to stand on ceremony.

  Stan stood at the window, staring out, wiping his face with his hand, his shoulders hunched over and looking worse than she had ever seen him. Here was a man who could do consecutive night shifts, go to work in the daytime and still find time for his family, but now it seemed as if all his steady energy had been taken from him. He was the picture of exhausted grief.

  Curled up on the matron’s sofa was Edith, huddled into a ball, and the sounds issuing from her were barely human. Alice took in the scene and her heart plummeted. It could mean only one thing.

  Hurriedly she went to Edith and flung her arms around her. ‘Shush, shush,’ she said, more to soothe her friend than in any belief that she would stop crying. If the cause was what Alice thought, then Edith had every reason to cry her heart out. Alice rocked the smaller woman to and fro, rubbing her back, as if she were a little child in need of comfort. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Edith’s cries turned to sobs and then gulps. ‘Harry,’ she gasped eventually. ‘He’s gone. Harry’s gone.’