A Wartime Nurse

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Theda? Theda Wearmouth?’

  Both girls turned at the sound of the American voice. They were just entering the foyer and its brighter lights and Theda saw it was Gene Ridley and a friend.

  ‘Gene, how nice to see you!’ she cried. ‘What on earth are you doing here? I would have thought the cowboy film down North Road would be more in your line.’

  ‘Not me. I’m a sucker for films about the British stiff upper lip. Besides, I’m trying to learn a thing or two from Ronald Colman. There must be some tips on making women fall for you I can pick up from him.’

  Theda laughed and introduced Laura to him and he introduced his friend. ‘Scam – you’ll probably remember him from Dean’s wedding?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course I do,’ said Theda, and smiled as she saw the look of embarrassment crossing the gangly young man’s pleasant features.

  ‘Don’t remind me, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I truly thought I was going to die.’ He turned his attention to Laura and fell into step beside her as Gene and Theda led the way out into the dark street. Gene hesitated, loath to let them go.

  ‘Look, why don’t we have a drink together? There’s a pub just along here. It’s pretty good too,’ he suggested. ‘Now we’ve just met up again, we can catch up on all the gossip.’ He stopped walking and they formed a small group on the edge of the pavement. The crowds following them out of the cinema swirled round them as they stood close together though it was so dark they were simply black looming shapes to one another.

  Gene was smiling eagerly at her and Theda couldn’t help responding to his obvious interest after these last few weeks of feeling so rejected and unloved. She was tempted but Laura put in the voice of reason.

  ‘We can’t, we have to be back at the hospital. We’re catching the last train as it happens and if we don’t get a move on we’ll miss it and then the fat will be in the fire.’

  ‘AWOL, eh?’ Scam said. ‘We can’t let that happen, can we, Gene? How about we give you a lift?’

  ‘Oh, no, there’s no need—’ Theda began, but she was overuled and outnumbered and the four of them walked down the road to where Gene’s old car was parked.

  The car, a Humber, ate up the eleven miles from Darlington to Bishop Auckland and they laughed and sang the songs from Rose Marie with Scam doing the Mountie’s song in a surprisingly melodious baritone in imitation of Nelson Eddy and the girls joining in with the ‘Indian Love Call’, which ended in a fit of the giggles as Gene joined in too in a squeaky falsetto.

  ‘Don’t go right up to the gates. We can walk from here,’ said Laura as they drove along Cockton Hill.

  ‘You ashamed of us, ma’am? We not respectable enough for you?’ asked Scam, but he was joking really and Gene pulled up at the kerbside and they handed the girls out in the courteous way of the New World.

  ‘Will I see you again?’ Gene asked Theda. ‘I’ve thought of you a lot. I was going to come looking for you. We can have some good times together, can’t we?’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t think so,’ she said. Scam and Laura had walked a little way down the road and were out of earshot.

  ‘Why not? You like me, don’t you? I know you do, I feel it, and I like you a lot, you know I do. What’s the harm? You don’t have a boyfriend away at the front, do you?’

  Theda was silent for a moment. He had made her think of Ken. With a brief stab of pain, she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t have a boyfriend,’ she said. Not a boyfriend, no, she thought, just a man who didn’t want her any more. But she couldn’t say that to Gene.

  ‘Well, then, why not?’

  Theda hesitated. Why not indeed? Gene’s attentions were like balm to her battered self-esteem.

  ‘Theda? Are you coming?’ Laura called softly from up the road, and in the muted beam of a car headlight, newly liberated from its blue masking paper, she saw that Scam was walking back to the car.

  ‘All right,’ she said rapidly. ‘When are you free? I won’t be until next Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘It’s a date,’ said Gene, satisfied. ‘I’ll pick you up at the gate.’ Scam was getting into the car now, studiously avoiding looking at them.

  ‘No, here, in that cafe,’ she said rapidly, starting to move away and at the same time indicating a small teashop on the other side of the road. She had almost said Rossi’s but changed her mind at the last minute; Rossi’s held too many painful memories for her just now.

  Getting ready for bed later, she wondered why she had agreed to meet Gene. She could say there was no harm in it – after all, she and Gene could just be friends, and goodness knows she needed a friend just now. But in her heart she knew that he wanted to be more than a friend. She put out the light and jumped into bed and lay quietly in the dark, trying to sort out her feelings.

  Gene was a nice man, of course he was, and there was a great temptation to lean on him, the knowledge that he was there and interested in her was comforting. What a drip she was, she thought, so determined one minute to rely on herself alone and yet now she was hoping for a manly shoulder to cry on. Poor man! He would run a mile if he knew the truth about her, she was sure. Theda turned over on to her side and closed her eyes, trying to sleep. There was no point in thinking about it.

  ‘You were very friendly with that Yank, weren’t you? Or should I say he was very friendly towards you?’

  Theda glanced up from her mid-morning coffee to see Laura approaching her table, cup in hand. She shrugged. ‘Not really. Well, I know him, I told you. He’s a friend of Clara’s husband. And, besides, you must remember – it was he who crashed his plane on the Grammar School field.’

  ‘I never actually saw him at the time, though I heard all about it. It was nice of him to bring us home. He has an eye for you, I could see, though. You want to get yourself out with him, have a good time. It’ll do you good.’

  ‘I’m meeting him at the weekend,’ Theda admitted.

  ‘There you are then. It’s time you went out with a man again. Go and enjoy yourself.’

  ‘You don’t follow your own advice.’

  ‘No. I’m too old for men, I’ve given them up. Too set in my ways now.’

  Laura finished her coffee and stood up. ‘Must get on, there’s a lot to do this morning.’

  Theda watched her go, feeling depressed. If only things were as simple as Laura thought.

  Gene was waiting for her in the teashop on Sunday afternoon and they went for a drive up the dale, Theda feeling guilty about wasting the petrol on such a frivolous outing.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said firmly. ‘You should learn to relax and enjoy yourselves, you British.’

  The sun shone on an empty road as they drove on. Wolsingham in Weardale was closed and shuttered, the only signs of life in the chapel and church where children were coming out of Sunday School, looking unnaturally clean and tidy. As they climbed higher up the dale to Frosterley and then Stanhope, the tensions in Theda eased and for once she didn’t feel the slightest bit queasy. They crossed over the ford at Stanhope and went up on to Bolihope Common where Gene parked the Humber by the side of the road, right on the summit.

  ‘This place reminds me of home,’ he said, staring out over the expanse of the moor, the miles of heather just coming into leaf, the white patches where snow still lay from the winter. His eyes had a faraway look as he sat back in his seat and opened the window so that the sharp moorland air came into the car. ‘I can breathe here.’

  The hardy black-faced sheep came right up to the car, searching for new blades of grass peeping through the gravel. There were a few tiny lambs beside them, bleating in terror when their mothers got too far away and running and jumping after them. Theda watched them, their coats so white and new compared with the bedraggled winter coats of the ewes.

  ‘A sign of spring,’ she said softly. They made her think of the baby she was carrying herself and she stirred uncomfortably. She didn’t want to think of it, not now. Now as the time for make-believe, the time to pretend that she was just a girl out
with a bloke on a first date – and perhaps more would come of it, who knew?

  ‘Come on, let’s take a walk,’ she said, and opened the car door and jumped out. She pulled up the collar of her coat as the keen wind hit her, cutting through her clothes. She had forgotten how cold it could be on the moors.

  Gene took her hand and they set off at a good enough pace to make the sheep, and especially the lambs, skip out of the way, up the track along by the snow poles. After a while they stopped by a low wall which was really part of a bridge over a burn. Out of breath, they leaned on the wall and looked down on the clear water tinkling away beneath.

  ‘Cold?’ asked Gene.

  ‘I forgot my gloves.’

  He drew her hands to him, wrapping them in his, and blew on them gently. ‘The wind has blown colour into your cheeks. You look lovely, Theda,’ he said.

  She lowered her eyes and stared at their hands. His were so warm and capable; his shoulders broad in the Air Force blue uniform. He would make a good father, she thought. A grand man.

  He put an arm round her shoulders and they walked on up the close-cropped verge and along a sheep track, which meandered round clumps of old bracken and heather. A curlew, disturbed in its nest-building, took to the air and skimmed low over the ground, calling its shrill, plaintive cry, which sounded almost human. Storm clouds gathered on the rim of the moor, threatening a spring shower. Theda shivered.

  ‘Come on, we’d better get back to the car,’ Gene said, and they rushed down the road and climbed in, just beating the first drops of rain.

  ‘English weather,’ he commented when he got his breath back, then leaned across to her and tilted her face up to his and kissed her on the lips. Theda sat there and just let him. She felt as though it was all unreal, nothing to do with her.

  They drove down into Middleton in Teesdale and on up the road through Forest. The rain was lashing down now but it was warm and cosy in the car. At High Force they parked by the hotel and went in to the empty bar, and by some miracle Gene had a word with the barman and brought two brandies back to the table close to the fire where Theda sat.

  They sat together and sipped the spirit and let the heat from the fire seep into their chilled bones. Gene held her hand. It didn’t matter, she told herself, he just wanted the comfort of female company and he was far from home and anyway he would be going back to America soon, the war over bar the shouting. Why shouldn’t they console each other?

  Later they drove back down Teesdale, stopping in Barnard Castle to look for somewhere to eat and in the end having to make do with sandwiches and tea at a small cafe where they were the only customers. The owner watched them all the time, waiting so that he could close up and go home to spend Sunday evening with his family.

  ‘Thank you, Gene,’ she said when he dropped her back in Bishop Auckland. ‘It has been the nicest time I’ve had in ages.’ Her face darkened for a moment as she remembered the last time she had had such a lovely afternoon, the day she had gone to Marsden with Ken.

  ‘Don’t look so sad,’ he said, mistaking her expression. ‘You looked so lost there for a minute, I wanted to gather you up and run away with you.’

  Theda smiled, forcing herself to speak lightly. ‘I might just let you,’ she said, and could have bitten her tongue as she saw his face brighten.

  ‘I’ll call for you tomorrow evening,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no, I won’t be free.’

  ‘When then?’

  ‘Er . . . Friday evening?’

  If she was going to Sunderland – no, she was going to Sunderland, no ifs about it. She was going to start her midwifery course. She would be going at the end of the month, there was plenty of time to tell Gene. Why not go out with him meanwhile. They got on well together, didn’t they?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘Well, thank goodness that’s over for a while.’ The speaker, a long-serving officer in the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps, QAs for short, pushed the trolley of dirty instruments into the sluice for the orderlies to clean and sterilise and went with Major Collins into the make-shift office to write her report.

  ‘If I were you, I’d have an early night,’ she advised, casting a motherly eye over him. ‘You look about ready to keel over. And God only knows what will come in tomorrow.’

  Ken smiled briefly and went back to finishing his notes. ‘No doubt you’re right, Nanny,’ he replied, giving her the nickname which she seemed to appreciate rather than resent. ‘I’ll just finish these and then I’m off.’

  Later, the notes finished, he sat back in his chair and stretched his legs before him, easing the one that had been wounded, for it tended to stiffen after a day at the operating table. There had been a great number of casualties today requiring his services; at one point they’d seemed never-ending. And he still had to make his final rounds in the make-shift wards of the old German manor house, which by some miracle had escaped the attentions of the allied air forces and remained intact.

  His mind drifted back to the letter he had received that morning from Uncle Tucker and he took it from his inside pocket and opened it out. Tucker didn’t write that often, not unless he had something definite to say, and this time had wrapped his message up in chit-chat about the mine and the village and how the family had been the last time he had been over to Marsden. But his message was still clear.

  ‘I saw that girl you sometimes gave a lift back to Winton and the hospital – Theda Wearmouth. I’ve seen her about a few times as it happens. She enquired after you a few weeks back, I think I told you. Now she seems to have a new boyfriend, an American, though he’s in the RCAF. Her sister Clara married one of their pilots – you could hear the jollifications all over the village. Matt Wearmouth is a good worker and the younger son, Charles, shows great promise. He has ambitions to take over from me, as a matter of fact. But I’m afraid the girls seem a bit flighty, though now the younger one is married she might settle down.’

  Even though the news that Theda had a new boyfriend depressed him, Ken couldn’t help smiling at the old-fashioned term. Poor old Tucker. He always had been a stickler for moral rectitude. Not surprising really. He had been very young when his father, Wesley, Ken’s gran’s first husband, had left his family to move in with the notorious Sally Hawkins. And then all that trouble in the twenties. No wonder he had a horror of ‘flighty women’, as he was wont to call them.

  Ken folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. Theda wasn’t one of those women, he knew it in his heart. And anyway the war did funny things to women, and men too. It had been so good that New Year’s Eve and she had been a virgin, he was sure. But what the hell did it matter anyway?

  These last few weeks in Germany he had been thinking more and more of Theda Wearmouth, his memories of Julie fading naturally. He had been on the verge of writing to Theda more than once, the first time soon after he had left. He liked her, perhaps loved her or thought he did. But when you asked a girl to spend the rest of her life with you it was best to ask her face to face and he hadn’t expected to be in Germany so long this time. Besides, he had sworn not to marry until after the war, not to get involved even. He couldn’t go through all that pain, not again. Then he had almost forgotten his vows when he met Theda.

  He had expected this appointment to be temporary. Relief surgeon, he had been told, six weeks at the most, just until the regular man got back from sick leave. Six weeks was not very long for a girl to wait. But the regular man was not returning, it seemed, he had been invalided out. So here Ken was for the duration. Like most other folk he had nothing to complain about really, except that it seemed the girl he loved had not waited.

  An American. A Yank. Overpaid, oversexed and over here, as they said. Couldn’t blame them, really – so far from home.

  Ken’s rambling thoughts went back to Theda as they often did these days. He thought about that day at Marsden – how he had meant to ask her to marry him after the war. Why had he let that stupid remark of Walt’s about J
ulie disturb him? What a fool he had been. Now he had lost her, most probably. Still, nothing ventured . . . he might write to her tomorrow. So what if she was having dates with a Yank? There was probably nothing in it.

  He got to his feet, feeling the familiar intensification of the ache in his thigh as it took his weight. Nanny was right. He’d better get some rest. There would be more work to do tomorrow, even if the war ended tonight.

  ‘Are you not going to invite me to your parents’ home?’ asked Gene. He and Theda were sitting in the Bishop’s Park, their backs against the ancient stone wall of the deer house. The sun was filtering through the branches of the trees, lighting up the green buds just coming into leaf. Though the summer was not yet in and there was a cool wind blowing down the dale, here in the shelter of the deer house it was pleasantly warm.

  Theda looked at him. Oh, he was a nice man. Going out with him on the times they were both free together had been the only bright spots in the last few fraught weeks. He deserved the truth from her.

  ‘You know my parents,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Not very well. Theda, you must know how I feel about you? I’m serious. I don’t want this to be some hole in the corner affair. I want it to be out in the open. I want to meet your parents, come to supper maybe . . . try to convince them that I am just the man for their daughter. I want to court you properly.’

  She felt dismayed and guilt-ridden at the same time. ‘Oh, Gene, I don’t know—’ she said helplessly.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, and put his arm around her, drawing her to him. ‘I want you to love me. I think you could if only you’d let yourself. Theda, you would love it at home – the space, and the folks are so friendly. My grandparents are from Newcastle, did I tell you? They still have the accent, a little anyway. You remind me of them.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know. But, of course – Ridley. It’s a local name.’

  ‘Tell me you love me?’ he commanded.

  She shook her head. ‘I—’ she began, but Gene stopped her mouth with his and his brilliant blue eyes hazed over as he kissed her, forcing her lips apart, slipping the tip of his tongue into her mouth. Theda closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the feel of him. Where was the surge of feeling she should experience, the rapid pulse, the feel of her body responding to his lovemaking?