by Annie Groves
The dim light etched hollows beneath the sharp slant of his cheekbones, emphasising his weariness as he studied the two sleeping children, and it was them that Sally saw first as she woke up and opened her eyes, sensing someone’s presence.
Without moving she watched as Dr Ross bent over Tommy, checking his pulse and then gently smoothing his hair back from his face. The dim light revealed an expression of exhausted anguish shadowing his face. A lump formed in her throat, her chest seizing up with inexplicable pain at the sight of this man who was a stranger to him touching her son as a father might do, with tenderness and love. But how could that be when she had seen for herself his cold sharpness with them in the street?
He had turned away from the bed now, his shoulders bowed as though he carried the sorrows of the world on them, giving both boys a final look before he left the small room.
TEN
‘Lord, but I’m glad today’s over and done with. Had me running about all over the place, they have today,’ May complained, dropping down onto her bed. ‘Lend us a cigarette until I can buy some tomorrow when we’re at the barracks, will you, Alice?’
‘You said that last week and you never gave me one back,’ Sam heard the other girl complaining.
‘Well, that’s not my fault. I came looking for you, only you was out with some chap. Speaking of chaps, what about that sergeant you was fancying then, Lynsey? Proposed to you, has he, yet?’ May teased.
‘I was supposed to be seeing him tonight,’ Lynsey responded, glowering at Sam. ‘Only we’re all confined to quarters, thanks to a certain someone.’
‘Give it a rest, will you, Lynsey? You’ve done nothing but go on about it all the way back on the bus,’ Hazel told her sharply.
‘Well, you don’t expect me to be pleased about it, do you?’ Lynsey demanded bad-temperedly.
‘At least we haven’t been given jankers, like Sam, and made to skivvy all day in the kitchens.’
‘It’s her own fault she got put on a charge, and I don’t see why the rest of us should end up getting punished as well, having to get up an hour earlier and march round that ruddy parade ground, with Toadie watching us just in case one of us should miss a step.’
Since the former school wasn’t a proper military establishment, its tennis courts had been adapted to make a parade ground. All the girls billeted at the school had to turn out for parade every morning before breakfast as a matter of course, but Sam and the others were having to spend an extra hour ‘square-bashing’ every morning as part of their punishment. And, of course, the other girls blamed her and Mouse for this.
Sam looked down at her hands, red raw from hours of peeling potatoes over a bucket of cold water.
‘That’s the army for you,’ Alice sighed, adding with a grin, ‘I hope you haven’t gone and left any eyes in them spuds you’ve bin peeling, Sam.’
‘Huh, it wouldn’t matter how many eyes she left in ’em, they taste that bad. I reckon that the Naafi lot that does the cooking here must think that mash has to have lumps in it,’ May said.
‘It’s because there’s no butter to mash them with. I remember how, before the war started, my mother used to put in a good dollop of butter and a bit of onion and then—’
‘Don’t,’ May groaned. ‘You’re torturing me. How do you think I’m going to be able to eat me dinner after what you’ve just been saying?’
‘Same way you always do, I reckon,’ Alice responded cheerfully. ‘Come on, everyone, get a move on otherwise we’ll be late for supper and that will be another black mark against us.’
‘Where’s Mouse?’ Sam asked.
‘I dunno. She came back on the bus with us,’ May answered. ‘She was sitting with you, wasn’t she, Lynsey?’
‘Driving me mad. She was going on and on about that ruddy bear. I mean, there’s me not being able to go out on a date and all she can go on about is a bear. As if it were real or something. Told her straight, I did, that she wanted to stop going on to us about it and go and tell Toadie she wanted it back. That way we’d all get a bit of peace.
‘What’s up with you?’ she demanded defensively when Sam looked at her in angry disbelief.
‘Do you really need to ask? You know how afraid of Toadie Mouse is. You shouldn’t have said anything to her.’
‘Oh, shouldn’t I? And since when have you had the right to tell me what to do, may I ask?’
‘That’s enough,’ Hazel warned.
‘Oh, I might know you’d take her side. She’s been sucking up to you ever since she got here.’
‘That’s not true,’ Sam defended herself indignantly.
‘Give over, Lynsey. You’re just in a foul mood because you can’t see your sergeant,’ May objected.
‘And whose fault’s that?’
‘I’m going to look for Mouse,’ Sam announced.
‘You’re on a charge, remember, Sam,’ Hazel reminded her, ‘and if you get yourself into any more trouble …’
‘I’ve got to find her. She’ll be upset.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about. She’s probably crying for her mummy in the lav.’ Lynsey pulled an unkind face. ‘She gets on my pip at times, she really does. I mean, all this fuss over a kid’s toy.’
‘That bear isn’t a kid’s toy to her. Her mother gave it to her and she feels it’s all she’s got left of her,’ Sam pointed out angrily.
Lynsey tossed her head stubbornly.
‘Look, Sam, it’s almost suppertime – why don’t you leave it until after supper and then I’ll go and look for her?’ Hazel offered. ‘We all know that she doesn’t like the food here and that she tries to avoid eating it if she can. She probably won’t thank you if she’s deliberately avoiding having to go in for supper.’
Sam hesitated, then shook her head. ‘No … If she did try to see Toadie and ask for her bear back,’ she paused meaningfully and looked at Hazel, relieved to see from the small nod she gave her that she hadn’t forgotten what its fate had been, ‘I can run down now and be back before we have to go in for supper.’
‘Very well then,’ Hazel agreed, adding, ‘She’d have had to make a formal request to see the warrant officer, so it’s bound to have been recorded. You could ask whoever’s on the desk to check for you, but remember – no getting into any more trouble. You go straight down there, you speak to whoever is on the desk and then you come back and tell me what they said.’
Sam nodded, already halfway out of the room.
The girl on the desk looked up at her and then back at what she was doing, announcing mechanically, ‘If you’ve come down to ask for a weekend pass, you’re wasting your time. If you want cigarettes, you are also wasting your time. If you want—’
‘I wanted to know if there’ve been any requests from Private Hatton to see the warrant officer,’ Sam stopped her.
‘That’s not the kind of information I can give you,’ the girl answered immediately, but Sam could see that she was looking at the book in front of her and that she had moved her arm as though to conceal something.
‘She said that she was going to ask to see her,’ Sam persisted stubbornly, ‘but that was when she came in off the bus, and no one’s seen her since. If she did see T— Is the warrant officer in her office?’ Sam looked over to the closed office door.
‘I really can’t say, I’m afraid. What do you think you’re doing?’ the other girl demanded sharply when Sam started to head for the closed door. ‘You can’t go in there …’ She made to bar the door but she was too late, Sam had moved too quickly for her and was already turning the handle. Only the door wouldn’t open properly, as though there was something wedged against it.
‘You’re wasting your time. The warrant officer is not in there.’
‘But Mouse did ask to see her, didn’t she?’ Sam demanded, still pushing at the door.
‘It’ll be a court martial you’ll be facing, not a charge, and no mistake if the warrant officer comes down here and finds
you trying to break into her office.’
Sam gave another firm push and then exhaled in satisfaction as she finally managed to get the door open.
‘You can’t go in there …’ the girl repeated.
Ignoring her, Sam stepped into the small room, and then realised what had been jamming it.
Somewhere in the distance she could hear the angry voice of someone saying something to her, but she didn’t pay it any attention. She couldn’t. All she could do was stand and stare in paralysed disbelief and horror at Mouse’s body as it swung from the rope with which she had hanged herself. On the floor beneath her feet Sam could see some small pieces of gold fur. She kneeled down and picked one up. Mouse’s bear. Toadie must have kept some of the pieces after she had destroyed it. Had she shown them to Mouse? Tormented her by telling her that she had done? Sam shuddered violently, knowing what that would have done to Mouse.
‘Can’t you hear me? I said come out of there, otherwise—’ the voice was getting louder as the other girl came towards her, her angry objections followed by a small silence, and then the sound of her screams tearing into the musty air filling the hallway, bringing girls and officers running to see what was going on.
Sam was distantly aware of the commotion going on all around round her, but it couldn’t touch her. Without knowing she had done so, she had reached for Mouse’s hand, and was trying to chafe warmth into it with her own.
‘Let go of her hand … Yes, that’s a good girl …’ The captain’s voice was quiet and calm, the medical officer taking her place at Mouse’s side. Their faces shimmered in front of her as though they were reflected in a puddle, and it took her some time to recognise that the puddle was her own tears.
‘She couldn’t live without her bear. It was all she had left of her mother, you see,’ she told the captain dully.
ELEVEN
‘Mum …’
Immediately Sally was at her elder son’s bedside, reaching for his hand whilst she smoothed back his hair from his forehead.
‘What is it, love? Are you feeling sick again?’
‘No. I want to go home.’
He wasn’t the only one, Sally acknowledged. They had been at the hospital all day, confined to this small room, but the ward sister, still tight-lipped with a disapproval that Sally suspected had now turned into outright dislike of her, had refused to hand over the boys’ clothes, saying that they couldn’t leave until Dr Ross had been in to see them. And the truth was that much as she wanted to take them home, and healthy though they both looked, Sally was too much of a protective mother to want to risk Tommy having a relapse because of her impatience.
Harry, too young to understand properly what was happening, was hungry and grizzling, whilst Tommy was bored with being in bed and playing the games Sally had made up to keep him occupied.
‘Mum, I’m hungry,’ Tommy complained.
All Sally had to give them were the egg sandwiches Doris had brought her when she had come to see how things were before returning home. Still too upset to feel like eating herself, Sally had put them in her bag.
Carefully dividing them into two, she gave Tommy the large portion before breaking the other one into small pieces to feed to Harry, who finished his in double-quick time.
She was just wiping the egg from round Harry’s mouth when the sister came in, a look of horror widening her eyes as she demanded, ‘What do you think you are doing?’
‘What does it look like?’ Sally retorted. ‘I’m feeding my kiddies. Starving, they were.’
‘Well, of course they are. Them was Dr Ross’s orders. No food until after he’d seen them.’ The thin lips pursed. ‘You do realise what this means, don’t you? Dr Ross will have to be told, of course, and he won’t be pleased!’
Unlike her! She certainly looked pleased to have caught her out in a wrongdoing, Sally reflected.
‘I hope you realise that if they take sick again it will be your fault?’
Sally’s anger turned to fear and guilt, which she disguised by snapping, ‘If I’d been told they weren’t to have anything to eat then I wouldn’t have given them anything.’
‘After all the trouble Dr Ross has taken with them as well, insisting on paying for a private room for them himself when I told him I had no room on my ward for them. He won’t want to be having to pay for them for a second night.’
Sally had gone rigid with humiliation and shock. The doctor had paid for this room?
‘I’m taking my kiddies home right now.’
‘You can’t do that. They can’t leave here until Dr Ross has given his permission.’
‘These are my sons and I don’t need anyone’s permission to take them home with me, and if you don’t give me their clothes, then I’ll take them in what they’re wearing.’
‘Those nightclothes are hospital property.’
How dare someone, anyone, but most of all this doctor, who was a stranger to them, humiliate her by forcing on her unwanted charity? The whole of Liverpool probably knew by now that Sally Walker couldn’t afford proper medical care for her sons and had had to be treated like a charity case. It was all very well having all this talk about what was going to be done for folk after the war was over, with free medical care for them that needed it, but what about what was needed now? Sally’s pride was in open revolt. She stormed over to the cot, and reached into it to lift out her younger son.
‘Sister, Dr Ross is asking to see you.’
Sally’s heart sank and she could see the triumphant gleam in the sister’s eyes.
‘Stay here with this mother, Nurse. She is not to leave this room until I have seen Dr Ross.’
This nurse was a different one from the one Sally had seen last night, a pretty pert-looking girl with a wide smile.
‘You’re one of them singers from the Waltonettes, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I recognised you straight off on account of my cousin Cedric being mad on you. Goes to the Grafton every week, he does, hoping you’ll be singing. Says you could put Gracie Fields in the shade and no mistake. These your kiddies, are they?’
Sally nodded.
‘That’ll disappoint him. Hoping you was single, he was. Not that he’d ever pluck up the courage to ask you for a dance, never mind a date,’ she laughed. ‘A proper softie, he is.’
Sally felt the small eddy of cold air against her calves and knew even without turning round and before she heard him speak who had entered.
‘Sister tells me you wish to take the boys home. I would prefer it if they stayed here for another night.’
‘In a private ward that you’re paying for?’ Sally shook her head and then stopped as she saw the betraying tide of colour seeping up under his skin. So now he knew how it felt to be wrong-footed. Good.
‘Sister also told me that you’ve given the boys food, although I specifically said they were to be put on a starving diet for twenty-four hours.’
‘No one told me.’
Ignoring her, Dr Ross had gone across to Tommy, who, to Sally’s surprise, seemed pleased to see him, greeting the doctor with a wide smile as he placed his hands on his stomach and gently examined him.
‘Does that hurt?’
‘No. Tell me some more about your train set.’
‘In a minute. I want you to tell me first if this hurts.’
It seemed an age to Sally, waiting and watching anxiously before he had finished.
‘The reason I did not want them to eat was because I wanted to make sure your elder son’s system was clear of whatever it was that poisoned it in the first place. The Government takes this kind of thing very seriously indeed, especially in children.’
‘He ate something that disagreed with him. I’ve never heard of the Government worrying itself about a fish paste sandwich.’
‘Then obviously you don’t read the newspapers, Mrs Walker, because if you did you’d be aware that earlier this year there were reports all across the country of people suffering similar symptoms to your son’s. Several people died as
a result of that outbreak.’
Sally put her hand to her mouth to stem her frightened protest.
‘However,’ Dr Ross continued, ‘fortunately Tommy seems to be fine.’
‘Does that mean I can take them home?’
‘Not yet. Before you leave I have some questions I want to ask you about the source of the possible contamination, but first I have another patient I need to see. So if you’d just wait here for a few minutes …’
‘I’ll be needing their clothes then, so that I can get them dressed ready to leave,’ Sally told him, giving the sister a challenging look.
When in response he gave a brief nod in the direction of the nurse, Sally felt her tense stomach muscles start to relax.
‘But I want to see my doctor,’ Tommy wailed as Sally hurried him into his clothes, one eye on her younger son, ready dressed and waiting in the cot the other side of the door. Heaven alone knew how she was going to find the extra money to repay the doctor, but somehow she would find it, she assured herself grimly.
‘Come on,’ Sally instructed her elder son, picking up Harry. ‘We’re going home.’
They had taken less than half a dozen steps down the corridor when the doctor appeared at the other end of it. Sally exhaled grimly, tightening her hold of Tommy’s hand when he tried to pull free.
‘You can’t force me to let them stay,’ she announced fiercely.
