by Maggie Ford
If only her mother would make some attempt to join some women’s group or other. There were plenty of them: wives whose husbands had been called up, elderly widows, spinsters, all knitting socks and scarves for ‘the boys’, or planning charity events, all an opportunity for socialising and filling in their lonely lives, but her mother had never been outgoing and that first approach towards a group of virtual strangers was always the hardest step for anyone to take.
‘I couldn’t go alone. I wouldn’t mind if I had a friend to take me.’
‘Then find a friend. Mrs Crompton next door. She lives alone. Or your other neighbour. I know she’s younger than you, but she’s on her own with her husband away.’
It was easy to say, but she wasn’t the one having to do it. Her mother had gripped her arm hopefully. ‘Perhaps you could come with me.’
‘I’m a nurse, Mumsy. I can’t have afternoons off whenever I please.’
She had hated the reluctance that made itself felt, wished she didn’t feel so glad at having an excuse not to have to sit with those women with little else to do but discuss children, home life and the ever-tightening restrictions on food rationing as they knitted or planned their events.
Her mother would never understand. Hospital was another world, a little kingdom behind whose walls existed a strictly graded society of doctors and nurses, over which, next to the Matron’s, the sister’s authority was law. The outside world never penetrated that kingdom; even patients became changed creatures once they came in, lying in their beds in stiff rows, obedient to the ward sister. But Jenny loved it.
Soon to be a second-year nurse, at the moment on the men’s medical ward, she was slowly climbing the ladder to the day when those magic letters SRN could be put after her name. Her feet had long ago stopped swelling like balloons and her back aching from long hours on her feet. She could take twelve hours on them almost, if not quite as lively as when she’d begun. She could fold counterpane corners to perfect angles; her mistakes were far fewer than they had once been, her intricate cap folded just right, the leg o’ mutton sleeves of her uniform perfect. She’d be sitting for her second state examination early next year and after that her Preliminary. Still a long way to go, but she would get there in the end in spite of Mumsy looking towards the day when she’d leave nursing and go back to doing a nine to five job.
They were coming back home, turning into Victoria Park Road, when two young people came towards them out of the mist through which the sun was at last beginning to struggle. Jenny immediately recognised the figure of Matthew Ward and they halted simultaneously, she pulling her mother to a stop just as he did the girl on his arm. His face lit up.
‘Ye gods, Jenny! Didn’t expect to see you!’
‘Home on leave then?’ she asked, trying to control the joy that leapt inside her at seeing him, angering her in remaining as acute as ever, for all the girl with him.
There was a noticeable tightening of his features but he grinned, she was certain, with forced cheerfulness. When he spoke it was in a similar vein, an effort at banter. ‘You’re not going to ask me when I’m due back, are you? Everyone asks that, as though they’ll be only too glad to see me gone again. But, no, I’ve been given fourteen days’ leave – out of the blue.’
Adding that last on a more intense note, it needed no lecture to know what it meant. The obvious effort he was making to be cheerful helped bear out the message. Her next question, ‘Where are they sending you?’ sounded stupidly superfluous. How could he know that? He obliged with a shrug, then collected himself and turned to the small, neat girl beside him.
‘By the way, this is Susan – my wife. Susan, this is Jen … This is Jenny Ross, an old friend from the crowd I used to go around with before the war. Jenny lives nearly opposite my parents.’
His use of her full given name, the first time she could ever recall, now spoken so formally, so neatly severed her from him that she actually felt pain. They’d gone their separate ways, yet even now her heart cried out to be the one on his arm instead of the girl to whom she now cordially smiled, saying it was nice to meet her and politely introducing her mother.
‘Me and Matthew’s staying at his parents,’ the girl supplied in a broad Birmingham accent, her small oval face quite beautiful and full of adoration as she glanced up at him; Jenny could clearly see why he had married her. ‘I’m going to live with them while he’s away. You living so near then, I might probably see something of you.’
‘I expect so,’ Jenny obliged, her eyes travelling to Matthew. All she wanted now was to be away from here to suppress the sick thumping in her breast. It wasn’t fair. ‘Well, I won’t keep you. This damp weather is chilly.’ On an impulse she took off a glove and held out her hand to him. ‘Well, wherever it is they send you, Matthew, keep safe, and …’
Words echoed inside her head, a sharp recollection of what he had once said to her: ‘And whatever happens, you’ll always be one of my nicer, memories.’ She had once had the audacity to think they might have been words of affection, a prelude to something more. But they had not presaged anything.
She had nearly begun to repeat them word for word. Would he have recalled himself saying them? And if so, would he have thought she was being just a little bitter? No, he’d probably forgotten, had never really meant them in the first place, flippant as he’d been those days. And yet, her mind conjured up the look in his dark eyes at the time. He had meant them when he said them, she was certain, but much water had flowed under the bridge since then, and now he was married and in love with his wife, his Susan – that could be seen with half an eye.
‘And come back soon,’ she finished instead, hardly realising that her voice had dropped to a whisper, almost a prayer, a secret shared between herself and him. But he hadn’t noticed as he too removed his leather glove and took her hand, his warmth on her chill flesh making her senses leap. Was it her imagination or did his hand hold hers just that bit longer than was necessary? Was there a spark remaining of that which she thought she had seen in his eyes that day? Silly fool, it had to be her foolish imagination, nothing more.
After they parted she repeated those last words to herself: ‘Come back soon.’ Now they had become truly a fervent prayer for his safekeeping as she fought the heavy lump in her heart.
Chapter 13
He had meant to make his last night with Susan memorable. Instead, beset by anxiety, he’d failed her, the first time ever. She had been wonderful about it, told him it didn’t matter, but he knew she was tearful when she finally turned over to go to sleep, he with his arms about her, cuddling her close.
Mortified by his inability to fulfil her, and himself, Matthew lay awake listening to her occasional sighs as though she was grieving the loss of something precious, yet he knew she was asleep because when he asked if she felt all right there was no reply. Loath to disturb her he left unsaid the words he needed to say.
Awakening to grey light filtering through the curtains and immediately conscious of a deep anger at sleep itself having robbed him of those last few hours with her, he turned to gaze at her sweet face on the pillow beside him, the full lips in gentle repose. He was about to waken her and would have made perfect love to her but for the knock on the door and his father entering in response to his reluctant bidding with a cup of tea for them.
From then on things took on a sense of urgency, washing, dressing, packing his kit, forcing down the boiled egg and toast his mother insisted would ‘keep him going’, everyone’s conversation stilted, shallow, tense.
It had been agreed they’d say their goodbyes here in the privacy of their own home, the severing made clean, but at the last moment Susan pleaded to be allowed to accompany him the whole way to Charing Cross where he was to board the train for Southampton. The prospect of seeing her standing there, a small isolated figure among the seething crowds in that vast station as his train took him from her, was more than he could bear to contemplate; shattering him as well as her. He took her in his arms.
‘No, darling, I want you to stay here. It’ll only be dragging things out if you come, and the end will be just the same. On top of that you’ll have to come all the way home without me.’
She would not see it. In fact his final goodbyes turned into something like pandemonium. Having said farewell to his parents, his father gripping him firmly in a bear hug, telling him to watch himself, his mother kissing his cheek, assuring him she would look after Susan, charging him to look after himself in that cold, stiff manner which he knew hid emotions she had long ago taught herself never to show, Susan standing away from him with her back pressed against the wall of the hall, her naturally pale face now chalk-white, her small slender body as rigid as the wall that alone seemed to be holding her up, she flew at him as though unseen hands had suddenly propelled her forward.
‘Matthew, don’t leave me! Oh, don’t … please don’t leave me.’
He had to struggle to extricate himself, physically handing her to his mother who held her in a firm grip, her older face like granite. He’d wanted to crush Susan to him, but her demonstration threatened to undermine his own resolve not to give way to too much emotion, so while her tears flowed shamelessly unchecked, his had to remain unshed as he’d put her from him with futile words. ‘It’ll be all right, love. I have to go. You’ve got to be brave.’ Though what order he said them in he did not know.
He could still hear her calling his name, her voice echoing down the street after him as he stood now on Southampton docks amid long, snaking, khaki queues waiting to board the ship that would take them to God knows where – no one knew as yet, except that they all carried tropical kit.
A fine drizzle sifted down upon the shoulders of the slowly moving queues, upon the loose piles of kitbags ready to be loaded on board, and on trucks and other equipment to be transported the several thousand miles to, where? North Africa? India? It might be India, Matthew prayed. Far away from any war zone. It could be that those in charge thought there was some need of men in that region or perhaps South or West Africa? There they could expect a life of relative luxury, and in time to come back safely. Matthew crossed his fingers as he took his turn to move up the gangway leading to the ship’s dark innards.
As soon as permitted, he would write to reassure Susan how well he was and that there had been no need for her to worry about his safety – fair enough, only that he wished he was back with her instead of here. But one must not think of that. Every man here must have loved ones on his mind but knew better than to give too great a thought to it. Pushing that last sight of Susan’s tear-ravaged face from his mind, he looked down at the oily green swell rising and sinking between the troopship and the quayside. It was like some slow-breathing animal waiting to engulf them all. From it rose a reek of decayed seaweed, engine oil and bilge water which he could see gushing in small spurts from an outlet below him amid a wreath of steam.
Gaining a position against the deck rail as he and his platoon made it into the ship, he leaned over to watch the water still heaving and sinking, heaving and sinking below the slow climbing of soldiers up the three sets of gangways.
‘Get yer arse away from there,’ Sergeant Pegg interrupted his reverie. ‘All of yer – this way.’
Following him, Matthew found himself in the place where he and the others were to live out the next few weeks; a place with all its port holes well screwed down so no light could escape across a pitch-dark sea to lurking U-boats, their quarters thus promising to become hot and unbearable as they approached the tropics; a place where narrow wooden bunks had been built almost side by side, forcing men by lack of space to share with their fellows most of their personal functions, including seasickness. The all too few, once-elegant toilet facilities for paying passengers, now to be called latrines, had had all but their basic amenities torn out, even their doors, and were painted overall-grey. They needed to accommodate four times as many troops. A line of convenient buckets fixed nearby to make up for the lack of facilities would soon waft their stink to the quarters as they filled before being emptied by fatigue squads. It was a place where snoring, coughing, farting, scratching, conversation and talking in one’s sleep would be no secret from anyone.
In this impending claustrophobic atmosphere, Bob dropped his kit down on to a so-far unclaimed area, once beautifully carpeted, now mere metal deck where he and the rest of them would be expected to share their lives in close harmony with all walks of life.
‘Like a bloody cargo of meat,’ he observed drily and everyone agreed, finding the quip unfunny.
Settled on a top bunk, Matthew wrote his first letters home, the first a brief one to his parents, the second to Susan pouring out all that he had been unable to say to her face. He’d have given the world to see her read it, see her smile with all the confidence he was instilling in her of his safe return.
He could hardly wait for the letter to be collected along with everyone else’s and taken ashore for posting prior to moving off, yet it would go with his mixed feelings. In a couple of days it would reach Susan. By then he’d be nearly a thousand miles away. So he concentrated on visualising her beautiful oval face, her tremulous smile as she read, her expression glowing with love, with the certainty of his coming back to her. He worked on retaining that vision. It was one he must carry with him to whatever ends of the earth he was bound for as with the clanging of bells and the deep rumbling of engines vibrating through his whole body, diminishing, then building up again, the great ship began to slide away from the dockside.
His letters sent on their way, Matthew went up on deck – better than meditating below – to watch the huge one-time P&O liner do its majestic about-turn in the incredibly narrow channel, the deep heavy pulsating of engines finally dying away to a regular thumping that in a while would be hardly noticeable, a rhythm to which its cargo of troops would work, rest and think for weeks to come before again setting foot on terra firma.
Jenny sat on the cold park bench staring down at the ring, a band of three diamonds, sitting snugly in the box he had brought from his pocket. What on earth was she to say to him?
‘You gave me no warning or what you intended, Ronald.’
It was almost an accusation. What was she supposed to say – this is so sudden – like in those Hollywood films they turned out, those love-scene dialogues so unreal? Don’t ask for the moon, darling, when we have the stars … Was that it? It would seem laughable if this wasn’t so serious.
She turned her eyes from the surprise engagement ring to the man who now held it up for her inspection, ready to be slipped on to her finger. But she had her gloves on. Was she supposed to take them off, or would he? It all threatened to become a clumsy business, stripping it of any romance there might have been. Romance? Really, she wasn’t sure she loved him enough to accept his ring. The thing was, she’d let him make love to her. Well, not actually make love, although he’d seen more of her than she’d intended him to see, for every time they got into a clinch, something stopped her, almost as if she were saving herself for someone else. But what someone else? Well, she knew who that was. But it was silly. He was beyond any hope of hers. Married, overseas, his wife waiting for his return. And yet, to accept this ring, this contract for marriage, would be to finally accept the absurdity of that dream to which she had clung for so long.
‘You must have known, Jenny,’ he was saying, his eyes full of query, his good-looking face a picture.
She looked back at him. Yes, he was handsome. Any girl would have taken him immediately. He could have his pick, but he had chosen her. What did he see in her? What did he see that Matthew had never seen? Yet handsome as he was, there was something missing. What it was she couldn’t say. Whatever it was, it wasn’t right to hurt him. Ronald, I don’t love you.
‘I suppose I should have expected it,’ she answered instead.
‘Then put it on, my love.’
Grasping the fingertips of the woollen glove with her right hand, she pulled it off carefully, finger by f
inger, making a meal of it, the damp cold December air touching her exposed hand, and held out the hand for him. She watched him slip the ring over the knuckle of her engagement finger with a sort of ritual reverence. It went on so easily, she wondered how and when he had discovered her fit, pondering over it when she ought to have been gasping with pleasure at his wordless proposal.
Hardly giving her time, sitting there in Green Park, to admire what glitter the stars afforded the diamonds with no other lighting, not even a moon visible, he gathered her into his arms.
‘Darling Jenny, you’ve made me the happiest man. The first moment I get, I’ll take you to meet my parents. They’ll be so surprised.’
Silently Jenny allowed herself to be held, leaning against him at an awkward angle. Seeing her ring glittering but faintly in the darkness over his shoulder she thought of what lay ahead. His parents lived in Bristol. All she could think of was having to go all that way to meet them, of being introduced into his life, quite expected to leave her own behind her. There was her mother to think of. She had no one else but her. Left behind and lonely. There were all the things she had known. Left behind. And there was Matthew, part of her past. Left behind. Panic seemed to take a great bite out of her heart.
‘No!’ She pushed him away, so hard and suddenly that he all but fell off the seat, regaining his balance with an effort. ‘No, Ronald, I can’t.’
