Call Nurse Jenny

by Maggie Ford

  ‘And this is your room.’

  The door she had assumed to be to a cupboard was opened for her to inspect her quarters. And what quarters. Everything became a pink and white blur as, blindly, Susan stepped within as she had been bidden, a faint smell of lavender greeting her. It was neat and modest in size, though not what Susan would have called small by any means, with a single bed, a dressing table with delicate white and pink jars on it, and a mirror, a cupboard and a chair. The walls, curtains, bedspread and a fluffy rug by the bed were pink, all the furniture white, and the linoleum brown, the only contrast. Susan stifled a gasp of awe; tried to behave as though she were used to this sort of room.

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Ward,’ she managed in a whisper, while Matthew grinned and said loudly:

  ‘My room, of course, is that end, by the bathroom.’ In other words he and she would be separated by two doors, but only she was meant to detect the amused connotation he was conveying, his mother quite oblivious as she left them to go into their separate rooms to unpack what they’d brought with them.

  He did indeed go to his door and open it, but as his mother went on out of sight down the stairs, he stepped back and came towards Susan, moving silently.

  ‘I’ll help you unpack,’ he whispered purposefully and instantly she knew what he meant.

  A knot of excitement formed deep in her stomach as she went into her room. Matthew followed quietly, no longer the stranger he had seemed during lunch.

  For the sake of propriety as he pressed her down on the bed with the sun shining bright through the window, she whispered, ‘What if your mother comes up and catches us?’

  He was bending over her, his mouth ready to close upon hers. ‘She won’t. As far as she’s aware, you’ll be unpacking in your room and I in mine and good manners will prevent her intruding into either.’

  ‘But if she hears …’ But Matthew’s lips closing over hers smothered any further protest as, his weight upon her, her body responded with waves of longing surging through it.

  ‘She doesn’t like Susan, does she?’

  Matthew leaned with his back against the bench in the work room behind his father’s shop. The question was a foregone conclusion, but he had to ask it. Now was the time.

  The shop was quiet for the moment. Saturday afternoon shopping took many people up west now that they felt safer with the Blitz failing to return. Not that there was much to buy; coupons, ration books, points, had put paid to casual spending. People were forced to save up a certain amount of points to buy a dress or a pair of shoes, so all the joy had long gone out of buying. But it was an excuse to get out, wander around the main shops, perhaps take in a cinema or theatre afterwards to forget shortages, loved ones overseas, the war itself.

  With the shop quiet, the opportunity for a heart to heart with his father presented itself nicely. Susan had popped out to get some sweets with the coupons she had been saving for this weekend. She’d be back within a short while and in that time Matthew intended to tax his father on his mother’s reaction to Susan. No good asking her how she felt. She’d merely have given him a blank stare and remarked that it was his business at whom he threw his hat, the remark full of disapproval. And he already knew by her attitude that she disapproved, so why ask? Yet he needed to ask, and now his father leaned back in his creaking swivel chair and, pressing dark, pungent tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with his thumbs, frowned in deep thought.

  ‘You know your mother,’ he said after a while, effectively avoiding a direct reply. ‘Never been one to show her feelings.’

  ‘That’s what I told Susan. She’s dead scared of her.’ He saw the knowing half-smile his father gave and anger rose up inside him. ‘Why the hell can’t she be normal, like other people?’

  ‘You mean she doesn’t conform to your idea of normal, all sugar and spice.’ There was reprimand in the quiet tone. ‘Does that mean she should be discredited? She is honest and upright and has always done her best for you and Louise – in her own way, the only way she knows.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry.’ He felt chastened. No one could accuse his mother of under-handedness or paying lip service to anyone. If she called a spade a spade, everyone could be certain it was nothing else. But if only she had one gentle streak in her, let the rules be bent ever so slightly; if only she was capable of letting people down lightly with a little white lie now and again. Timid people like Susan needed a little gentle understanding.

  His intention had been to come out this afternoon to see his father, leaving Susan and his mother together to get to know each other without his having to hold Susan’s hand, but she had begged to be allowed to come with him. Looking into the pleading in those blue eyes, he knew that to refuse her would have been like leaving a lamb in a lion’s den.

  His father lit his pipe, its acrid smell mixing with that of solder and flux and dust. It brought a sense of nostalgia, of belonging, that Matthew had once taken for granted, had thought would last forever, but now made his thoughts keen-edged with the knowledge that at any time he could be sent away to God-knows-where, perhaps never to come back. He felt his heart grow pinched and small with the fear of all this being taken from him.

  ‘Your mother,’ Leonard was saying, puffing a cloud of blue smoke into the air. ‘She has always had high principles, from the day I first saw her. She frightened the life out of me, you know. Me, who always saw girls as soft, pretty creatures with no brains, whom men could command, to see a young woman come striding into my father’s draper’s shop as though she owned it, really got up my nose at the time. But I couldn’t get my mind off her. She fascinated me. She was a beautiful woman, your mother, beautiful and straight-backed, and she held her head high. I used to look for her coming in. But I couldn’t get up the courage to tell her how I felt about her. When I did, she turned me down flat.’

  Leonard gave a small quirky grin at the recollection, his pipe gripped firmly between his teeth. ‘You could never know what that’s like, to open up your heart to a woman when it’s not in your nature to do so and be turned down the way she turned me down. But finally we did start walking out together. She’s a woman in a million, Matthew, believe me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to discredit her,’ Matthew said, shamefaced. ‘But she’s got to understand that I intend to marry Susan. I don’t want her resenting Susan. I know she does already and I don’t know why she should. She’s only just met her, and Susan’s the most likeable person I know. She’s sweet-natured and loving. She’s not pushy and loud. So why?’

  The old chair creaked as Leonard leaned back into it again. ‘Maybe she considers you both a little young and hasty. You and Susan have known each other only a few months. You’ve hardly had much chance to see each other regularly. Perhaps if you both waited a while longer.’

  ‘What’s there to wait for?’ This was his life. They had theirs to look back on, had been fortunate, but what had he got to look back on so far, and how much future would be allowed to him? ‘This isn’t peacetime with long, well-arranged white weddings and strings of bridesmaids and a fine honeymoon afterwards. We might not have tomorrow and forever. I could be sent overseas at any time. I might not see her for years. I might even be …’ He checked the words quickly, then reverted to the hackneyed idiom of defiance: ‘We have to have something to cling to in this war.’

  ‘Yes.’ The pipe stem clicked audibly against Leonard’s teeth. ‘This bloody war.’

  The shop bell tinkled. To its peremptory summons, he hoisted himself out of the chair, knocking the pipe out on the bench.

  Matthew listened to the murmur of voices beyond the opaque glass of the dividing door, the conclusive note of a customer departing. The bell tinkled again, fell silent. Leonard came back into the back room bearing a domed, fretwork-fronted wireless set which he set down on the bench. He chuckled, making a joke against himself.

  ‘Look what I’ve come down to. My father loved his little drapery shop and said I would inherit, but he died in debt
and lost nearly all of it. It was your mother who was my widowed mother’s mainstay. She made her sink what little was left into another shop after the last war, saying that electrical goods would be the coming thing. She was right. We did well. That’s how we came to live in a nice area like Victoria Park Road. I’m no snob and I know where I came from, but your mother wanted better things for you and your sister. That and her love of the old order of things makes her seem to act above herself, but her heart’s in the right place where you and Louise are concerned. I’ve got a lot to thank your mother for.’

  The last words had a ring of finality about them. There was no more to be said on that score. Besides, any minute Susan would come running in, waving her few ounces of sweets in triumph. Matthew changed the subject, nodding towards the wireless come in for repair.

  ‘Bloody ancient thing, that one. Looks a bit beyond it to me.’

  Leonard grinned compassionately. ‘She’s a widow. Can’t afford much. Asked if I could do anything with it before Tuesday. Doesn’t want to miss ITMA. Tommy Handley’s her only bit of pleasure these days. God knows, she needs someone to cheer her up, if only on the wireless. There’s little to cheer anyone up lately. Every time you tune in there’s another setback – what with Rommel and Tobruk. And Crete, us having to pull out, five thousand killed …’

  ‘I heard,’ Matthew said tersely.

  ‘Enough to make anyone lose heart. But it comes to something when you hear people say we might have to negotiate peace terms with Germany.’

  ‘Rumours,’ Matthew snorted. ‘Like the bomb that chases people around corners – the German secret weapon. Some are actually believing it.’

  ‘Everyone’s on edge, that’s why.’ Leonard began unscrewing the casing of the wireless cabinet, lifting it up to reveal coloured wires and oblong valves. ‘London blitzed to buggery, Coventry too, then suddenly, silence, everyone wondering what Hitler has up his sleeve next. Invasion probably. I don’t know.’

  Matthew nodded glumly. He’d seen the scenes of devastation as he and Susan took a bus from Euston railway station to home. He had rejected taking the underground, not wishing to subject Susan to the wretched bits and pieces of the thousands who had used the platforms as shelters during the nightly air raids and who still stubbornly went down there at nightfall, refusing to believe the Blitz would not return.

  Above ground had looked just as dismal, pitiful. Through the bus windows they had gazed at acres of blackened ruin still uncleared, walls precariously hanging, charred timbers, twisted girders pointing skyward with accusing fingers, the air still heavy with an acrid effluvium of burning that remained in their nostrils long afterwards, a memento of all London had suffered. And even in his own long road fronting an open park some houses had gone. After those guns and searchlights sited in the park itself, he supposed.

  He watched his father extract a valve from the set. Testing it, he shook his head with tacit sympathy, then replaced it with one salvaged from another old set already beyond repair. Plugged in, the set crackled into life with tinny music.

  ‘Ah, she’ll be pleased,’ he breathed. ‘Defeated by a dud valve. I won’t charge her for that. Husband died two years ago and she hasn’t a soul to turn to. Though she keeps telling me her son is serving on the Royal Oak.’

  ‘Is?’ Matthew queried. ‘The Royal Oak was sunk at Scapa Flow at the beginning of the war. All hands lost.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Leonard nodded, replacing the casing. ‘Not a soul to turn to. I’ll get this back to her this evening. She’ll be pleased.’

  The shop bell tinkled again. This time the back-room door burst open and there stood Susan, her small oval face brighter and happier than he’d seen it all day, his mother forgotten.

  ‘I bought some toffees,’ she announced. ‘Do you want one, Mr Ward?’

  As his father shook his head congenially, Matthew came over and put an arm around her, his mind on her alone, the poor bereaved woman still living in the past put aside. Her empty life wasn’t his problem. Everyone had problems these days.

  ‘So you’re really going to get married?’

  Louise had come home on a weekend leave, declaring it fortunate to have fallen the same time as her brother’s. She, as yet still in her WRNS uniform, sat opposite him and Susan in the front lounge regarding him with the steady critical gaze of a nineteen-year-old who felt she knew the world. Two weeks ago she had just seen one of her comrades break down after hearing the news that her fiancé’s ship had been torpedoed; he had gone down with it. Her gaze was now fraught with concern as well.

  ‘Not much joy being in love in wartime, that’s my opinion. But I wish you both all the luck in the world. I don’t suppose it’ll be a white wedding, but the result’s just the same I reckon.’

  Susan simpered and sat close to Matthew, looking up at him for guidance. He gave his sister a rueful grin. ‘I hope to get a twenty-four-hour pass for it if I’m lucky. We’ll have to make do with that. It’ll have to be in a registry office, I expect.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I might wangle some leave. When’s it to be?’

  Matthew’s smile hovered. ‘We’re not quite certain yet. Whenever we can. Probably at short notice. You should know what the forces are like. It’ll have to be in Birmingham, near where I’m stationed. And with Mum and Dad down here, and Susan’s people up there, I don’t suppose there’ll be many of our side there at all. It’s going to be a rush in the end.’

  Louise looked distinctly put out. ‘You don’t want me there, that it?’

  ‘No, that’s not it, Sis.’ He was looking dark. ‘I want you there. I want all our people there. I’d have liked to have a big white wedding, for Susan’s sake. I wish we could.’

  At which Susan clung closer to him, his arm tightening reassuringly about her. Louise, Susan thought, for all she was only a year older than herself, had a lot of her mother in her. And as Mr and Mrs Ward came in from the dining room where they had been lingering over a leisurely cup of tea Louise, it seemed, wasn’t ready to pull her punches.

  ‘Did you know they plan to get married in a registry office? It’s going to have to be done on the quick, so he says. No time for me to arrange leave to be there to see him married. Him, my one and only brother.’

  ‘That’s unkind, Louise,’ Matthew shot at her, but it was evident she was disappointed. ‘Of course you’re invited if you can make it. You’d be the first one to be invited. My one and only sister.’

  That last sounded dangerously like sarcasm and probably was, and Leonard Ward looked at his son while Lilian stood aside, her face tight. But his was benign. ‘Where do you plan to live afterwards, Matthew?’

  It was a practical question, but one that betokened acceptance of his intentions, and Susan, feeling Matthew’s body relax, realised it had become taut as Louise had railed on.

  ‘We’ll get ourselves a furnished flat for the time being, where I can get backwards and forwards from with a special pass.’

  Leonard frowned. ‘Not much of a start, a furnished flat. You’d need something unfurnished. Something to call your own. Your own furniture, not someone else’s rubbish. Your mother and I aren’t broke …’

  ‘No thanks, Dad.’ Matthew stopped him sharply. ‘We can manage.’

  ‘I want to say something else, son. It’s that if you’re posted away at any time or, God forbid, sent overseas, Susan will always be welcome to come here and stay with us.’

  Susan’s face went blank and Matthew hurried to her rescue. ‘That’s nice of you, Dad, but we’ll get by. Lots of married women have to manage on their own these days when their men go away. And I expect her own family will be there to help.’

  ‘Just a suggestion.’ Leonard went to sit in one of the armchairs but Lilian remained standing, her hands clasped firmly in front of her.

  ‘This is all very well. No one has any idea when this is to happen. All we know is that it is going to happen. We have merely been told. It would be nice if you discussed it more fully with us, your pare
nts, Matthew?’

  He matched her hard stare. ‘I thought that was precisely what we were doing – discussing Susan and me getting married.’

  ‘Would you be discussing it now if Louise hadn’t blurted it out a few moments ago?’

  ‘Probably,’ he returned succinctly, at bay.

  Susan cut in, amazed at her own boldness. ‘We want to get married ever so much, Mr Ward.’ It was far easier to appeal to him than his wife. ‘I know we’ve not been together very long, but me and Matthew do love each other a lot. It don’t have to take years just to know that. It can happen very quickly sometimes.’ She paused for breath, anxious now at having said so much, uninvited.

  He smiled at her. ‘I know. So how soon would you like it to be?’

  ‘Could be next month,’ Matthew replied for her, his tone easier now. ‘It’ll have to be in Birmingham. I’ve exhausted all my leave so I’ll only get a special day off, I suppose. I’ll have to beg for that, I expect.’

  ‘We’ll try to make it up there if we can,’ added his father. He gave a small apologetic chuckle. ‘That sounds terrible, I know – try. But nothing’s easy these days. Send us a telegram the second you know, and we’ll be straight on a train. If I can get some extra petrol coupons …’ again he gave a chuckle, a somewhat knowing one this time, ‘we’ll get the car out and use that. It’s kept in good working order, you know, but we don’t use it, at least very seldom these days. It’s yours still, Matthew, sitting there, your twenty-first present. It’s in a garage near the shop, waiting for the time you can use it again, Matthew. And talking of presents. Wedding presents of any good quality being hard to come by, would money be okay?’

  ‘That’ll be fine,’ Matthew said a little tersely, making Susan look at him in surprise. ‘But I still have that trust Grandfather left me. We won’t go short.’

  ‘Just a token wedding present.’

  Susan felt sorry for Mr Ward, hearing the lame ring in his voice. She even felt faintly annoyed at Matthew. Why should he react so unthankfully to his father’s generosity?