Call Nurse Jenny

by Maggie Ford

  It wasn’t unusual to see whole streets come to life with hurrying women. Coats, aprons, scarves billowing like schooners in full sail as they converged on some butcher’s shop from which whispers had emanated: ‘’E’s got offal!’ Jenny’s mother and even the proud Mrs Ward joined in the hasty advance. Jenny would pass a growing queue of women now waiting patiently and not leaving until every last scap of off-ration meat had gone. Nothing stopped the unending search for something nutritious to fill a plate: horse meat, goat, stringy fishy-tasting whale meat being tried out.

  ‘I got a little bit of goat meat,’ Jenny’s mum told her on one occasion – succulent, tender meat it was too, except, unused to such rich fare, they were both sick. Jenny stayed off duty all next day much to the displeasure of the ward sister. Otherwise, things went on as normal, the tip-and-run daylight raids on country towns like York and Bath and Exeter (Jenny thought of Jean Summerfield whose family had left London to escape all that) virtually ignored by Londoners, who had suffered the Blitz.

  The evening she came home from the hospital, still a little queasy from the enjoyable meal of goat meat, she met Susan wandering along by herself, her coat tight about her stomach. The early March evening was still light, summer time’s extra hour still prevailing. Susan looked wan, and hardly smiled as she saw Jenny coming towards her from the bus stop.

  ‘Have you heard from Matthew yet?’ was the first question out of her mouth. Susan shook her head.

  ‘Nothing yet. I hope he’s all right.’

  ‘He’s bound to be. Otherwise they’d have said. You’d have heard.’

  ‘It’s been nearly three weeks. I’ve not been out of the house in ages. I’m so fed up. I’d like to go to the pictures or something, but his parents don’t go. I can’t go on my own, so I’m stuck.’

  Jenny found herself amazed at how easily the girl had slipped from concern at not hearing anything from Matthew to talking at far greater length of her own boredom. She would have thought the former worry would oust everything else from her mind.

  ‘If you like,’ she offered, giving Susan the benefit of any doubts, ‘we could go to the pictures together. I’m off next weekend. Casablanca is on at the Regent in Mare Street. There are bound to be long queues, but we could go early on Saturday afternoon, if you can stand lining up.’

  Susan’s face was a picture of eagerness. ‘Oh, that’s ever so nice of you. I’d love to do that, I really would.’

  ‘Then that’s what we’ll do.’

  In her bedroom Susan stared into the mirror at the hardly noticeable lump. It would get larger and larger and she’d never be able to escape. Going to the Regent with Jenny Ross looked like being her last trip out, with Mrs Ward getting ever more attentive.

  Just over four months pregnant, and being slightly built, even that tiniest bulge made her look dreadful. There was no one to reassure her that she still looked beautiful, no one to lay a loving hand on her stomach or to gaze on her with pride in her and himself at what they had achieved, no one to tell her she was a clever girl and that he adored her. When this baby was born there’d be no one there to hold it and gaze down on it in wonder. Only God could say when Matthew would return home. As yet she’d not heard a thing from him since that last letter at the end of February. It was March now. Early March, it was true, but waiting made it seem longer. She trembled for him, dared not think of his never coming back. Whatever would she do without him? The thought made her feel sick.

  Hastily, she turned from the mirror, trying to push such dreadful thoughts from her, and feverishly got dressed. They’d get his letter soon. Military mail from that part of the world was a bugger, the time it took.

  A ring on the front doorbell swept away all her dismal anxiety. Maybe it was the postman. Hurrying from her room she leaned over the banister in time to see her father-in-law closing the door. Aware of her standing there, he looked up, his eyes wide as though with guilt, but she knew it was fear for she had seen the telegram he held. Even from here the blurred bold black letters ohms leapt out at her, searing through her brain, sending her rushing headlong down the stairs. ‘Matthew! It’s about Matthew.’

  Leonard caught her as she reached him, took her arm and guided her into the lounge through which the early March sunlight was slanting.

  ‘Lilian,’ he called as he sat Susan down in one of the armchairs; she felt struck dumb with growing terror. ‘Lilian, come here, dear. It’s important.’

  As Mrs Ward came hurrying in, Susan found her voice. ‘It’s Matthew! Oh, God, it’s Matthew!’

  Neither took any notice of her or seemed to hear her as Leonard tore open the envelope, extracting the buff paper to read. He looked up bleakly.

  ‘It says Matthew’s missing.’

  ‘No!’ Susan’s voice rose to a scream. She leapt up, tore the telegram from his hands, but the words blurred, her brain seemed to be exploding and the scream that came from her lips seemed not to be her own, a hollow screaming that went on and on: ‘He’s dead … Matthew’s dead …’

  The telegram fell from her fingers and she felt herself taken on a blind, headlong rush from the room, though where she was going she had no idea; she found herself clinging on to the newel post of the stairs, unable to let go of it. And still the hollow, terrible screaming continued, consuming her.

  What happened next was a vague blur of being picked up, of being carried, of being laid down, then shaken until her head felt it would fall off her shoulders. That irrational fear was what brought her to her senses and she found herself looking into the stern face of her mother-in-law.

  ‘Get a hold of yourself, Susan. You must remember the baby – his baby.’

  Damn the baby! Tears squeezed between her eyelids as she screwed them tight. ‘Matthew’s dead …’

  The hands holding hers were like stiff, dry claws giving no comfort at all. ‘He’s not dead, Susan. It says he’s missing. They will trace him soon. We must cling to that hope. You must cling to it. For his sake. For the sake of his baby.’

  ‘That’s all you care about,’ she burst out in her grief. ‘His baby – a baby to take his place. You don’t care about me at all, how I feel.’

  ‘We do, Susan.’ They didn’t, but she had no strength left to argue.

  ‘The pain’s still there in my stomach,’ she complained from her bed. She’d been in bed for two days, ever since the dull ache had started. Now she saw Mrs Ward’s expression of sympathetic concern change to one of apprehension.

  ‘The doctor said it isn’t what we thought it might be, but that you are upset and probably strained yourself when you lost control of yourself, and that we must just keep an eye on you. But doctors can be wrong and I really think we ought to get you to a hospital if this doesn’t improve.’

  ‘No!’ Susan’s voice rose in terror. She had a naked fear of hospitals; it dated from when she had been a child and had had her tonsils out. It had been an awful experience. The smell of the place, a mixture of antiseptic and ether, its green and cream tiled walls and age-yellowed ceilings, all pressed in on her, and the hush of the ward as night had come down emphasised the feeling of being alone away from her parents, shut away from the cosy world outside as though it was a different place – as hell might be, or death. She’d cried for her mother and a stern-faced nurse had told her to be quiet. Taken on a hard, rumbling trolley along corridors and into a stark white room with horrid glittering steel instruments hanging from the ceilings, an evil-smelling rubber mask had been put over her face until her mind seemed to swirl away into a roaring blackness. The next day her throat had hurt terribly and she wasn’t allowed to eat and when she cried another nurse had told her off. And all the time that peculiar rustling hush and muted voices and that horrible disinfectant smell. She’d never been near a hospital since, unable even to bring herself to visit anyone in there. The mere thought of going into one brought back the memories of its smell. It must have done something to her because to this day her whole body would cringe from anything savourin
g of it, from those with a hacking cough to someone with a cut finger. Even an unsightly scar could make her body tingle with revulsion. How Jenny Ross or anyone could bring herself to be a nurse was beyond her.

  Mrs Ward was looking down at her. How could she be expected to understand? ‘If the pain gets any worse, you will have to go to hospital.’

  This left Susan gritting her teeth against the dull ache for fear of the threat being carried out. Bidden by the doctor to lie as still as possible in bed for the next week, she did all that was asked of her, determined no one would get her anywhere near the gates of any hospital.

  Mrs Ward wrote to Susan’s parents. They came hurrying down from Birmingham; the content of Mrs Ward’s letter had frightened them. They found Susan looking much better than they had thought, with the pain almost gone, but she was still confined to bed – just in case, said the doctor.

  As soon as Susan saw them, she burst into tears and, when Mrs Ward prudently retired from the room, she threw her arms around her mother to be cuddled and crooned over in privacy. She hadn’t realised until then how much she had missed her mother.

  ‘Mum, oh, Mum – take me home. I hate it here.’

  Her mother let go of her slightly to gaze around the pretty pink bedroom. ‘Whatever for, love? This is really lovely. Matthew’s parents look after you so well, better’n like I ever could in our crowded house.’

  ‘Don’t talk of Matthew,’ Susan pleaded tearfully. ‘The telegram said he’s missing, but it’s only another way of telling us he’s bin killed.’

  ‘Don’t say things like that, Sue.’ Her mother leaned back to look up at her husband, seeking help from him, to which he responded in his usual way, merely repeating what had already been said as though that cemented it all perfectly.

  ‘No, don’t say things like that, Sue.’

  ‘You’ve got to ’ave faith, love. He’ll come back, right as rain, you’ll see. When this war’s all over, love, you and him, you’ll both pick up like where you left off, and you’ll ’ave a little baby then to look after, like. So you got to be strong and look after yourself, for Matthew and for his baby’s sake.’

  ‘I could do, at home,’ Susan whimpered as her mother gently broke free of her arms, almost as though she were glad to be released of them. ‘If I was home, Mum, with you to look after me, everything’d be all right. I hate it here. With Matthew gone, I don’t feel I’ve got any business here.’

  ‘Sue, love, he ain’t gone. He’s alive somewhere, waiting to be found by the Army. You make it sound as if you think he’ll never come back. And look, love, we couldn’t have you home with us. You know there’s no room. There was hardly no room when you was single, much less when you’ve got a baby with you. And honestly, our Sue, look what you’ve got here. No, love, I do think you’re better off staying here with Mr and Mrs Ward. They really are nice people and you’re being so well looked after.’

  So that was that. Abandoned by her own family. Over the next couple of weeks, she rested, slowly recovering, the baby still firmly entrenched inside her. There had been moments when she would have put her hands together if she had lost the baby. Growing more convinced that Matthew must have been killed, lying unfound somewhere in the jungle with creepers and undergrowth hiding his body and (the mere thought made her weep until her eyes appeared permanently red and swollen) the horrid creeping things slowly devouring it, a baby would only be a painful reminder of the love and happiness they’d once shared. She couldn’t give her love to a baby when her love for Matthew was of no use to anyone any more. Then, as she recovered, she wasn’t so much glad as relieved that she hadn’t lost the baby after all. It hadn’t grown so much that she was yet attached to it in her mind, but if Matthew had really been killed and was at this moment actually looking down on her, he’d never forgive her for such thoughts about it as she’d had.

  If only she’d been asked to go home, it might all be so different. But now she was being pampered all the more by Mrs Ward, who was nothing to her, this in-law business thrust on her, yet was assuming the role of loving mother. She could see no escape. At home she might for the time being go out and enjoy herself, still go off to dances, perhaps dance with some of the young servicemen, Yanks, Canadian, the Free French, the Polish and the British boys, and still be admired for a while. Here, she was trapped, expected to play the wife when there was no one to play wife to.

  To escape the sensation of being smothered and continually watched over, she would spend hours in her room reading the limp, buff-coloured magazines that wartime austerity forbade shiny covers. Sometimes she read increasingly tatty books from the library, love books mostly – easy-to-follow love stories with handsome heroes and violet-eyed heroines. They’d bring back a flood of memories, desolate now, of when she and Matthew had made love, had been in love. She’d pretend he was still making love to her, but it brought such wishing that she tried not to imagine it too much. Then she’d throw the book down and weep with loneliness, stifling her sobs in her pillow in case Mrs Ward came hurrying in to see what was the matter. As if the woman couldn’t see why she was crying.

  Chapter 17

  Halfway through April, when her stomach was really beginning to show and not much chance of going out anywhere presented itself, there was no one to talk to. With Matthew’s sister serving as a Wren in Southampton even Louise’s company was denied her. She’d have felt even more trapped if it hadn’t been for Jenny Ross popping in now and again. She’d become a good friend and confidante.

  For Jenny, an hour or two with Susan on those evenings when she wasn’t with her friends from the London could be a change from sitting with her mother who seemed to want to lean on her more and more. She often wondered how Mumsy would have coped had she married Ronald.

  It had been strange not seeing his face about the hospital. She had found herself looking for him, missing him, but as anyone would miss a face no longer there, she told herself. One didn’t have to love the person in order to feel keenly that empty place his going had left. She busied herself and put him from her mind.

  As promised, he had written to her, a friendly letter, a little formal perhaps, wondering if she had thought any more about the things he’d last spoken of. He phrased the question itself slightly obliquely – no mention at all about the ring, which she still had tucked away in a box. She had replied, sounding just as friendly, just as formal, skirting the question. She had not meant it to be such a short letter, but there wasn’t much to say. Time had gone on too long for that. She had wanted so much to say she’d changed her mind but when it came down to it, couldn’t.

  As time went on the wish had diminished, the dilemma’s sharp edges had blunted somewhat. His departure had left a hole, but had she truly loved him, surely it would have left a much larger hole that would have taken a lot more to fill. And that impulsive statement she had made at the time about joining the QAs, then just a silly idea to get out of a spot, began to take more shape. The more she thought about it, the more attractive it was becoming. She’d be given a chance to travel overseas, to see the world, to meet new people, to expand her life. Mumsy wouldn’t be too pleased but she had to get out of the rut that Ronald had accused her of being in. The QAs had such smart uniforms too, grey and scarlet with ties and snappy-brimmed hats, unlike the drab dress of ordinary nurses. She’d be tending fighting men instead of, now the Blitz was over, ordinary civilian ills and ailments. But first she had to pass her remaining exams. Prepared to work hard, she’d thrown herself into her work and looked very like passing her exams with flying colours come summer. All that would remain then would be to sit her finals that would turn her into an SRN. Then it would be off into the QAs in earnest.

  She sat now talking to Susan in the living room. Mrs Ward was out at one of her many women’s meetings, Mr Ward in the lounge listening to the evening news on the wireless and reading his evening paper.

  ‘The Red Cross hasn’t come up with anything at all,’ Susan was saying, sitting back in a fire
side chair nursing the growing bulge over her stomach. She looked particularly down this evening. ‘His parents have made lots of enquiries, but he’s never been traced. They can only guess he might be a prisoner of war but the Japanese aren’t giving out any lists.’

  ‘But they should,’ Jenny said, aghast. She had felt the news of Matthew, or lack of it, as keenly as anyone, and in private had shed tears. ‘The Geneva Convention says all sides must declare lists of prisoners.’

  ‘The Japanese apparently think they’re exempt because they never signed anything, or whatever. So no one knows if Matthew’s been captured or gone missing or been … you know.’ Tears flooded the deep blue eyes.

  ‘You mustn’t give up hope,’ Jenny said in an effort to console.

  ‘What’s the point?’ Susan got up and began pacing the room, going to fiddle with the heavy curtains that concealed the blackout material, drawn now with the gathering dusk outside. Jenny watched her.

  ‘If he’s been taken prisoner, that has to be better news than it might have been.’ Meant to give comfort, it only came out clumsy and tactless. She tried to amend it. ‘You’ve just got to hang on to hope.’

  Susan swung round, almost viciously. ‘Hope! It’s all right for you to talk. You didn’t love him like I did, so how do you know what it’s like not knowing what’s happened to him?’

  To combat the pain that retort invoked, Jenny got up and came to stand beside her. When she spoke her voice sounded flat even to her. ‘Can you be that sure no one knows how you feel?’

  Susan gave a sullen shrug. ‘All I know is that if he’s a prisoner of war, it’ll be years before he ever comes home again, not till the war’s over, and that could be God knows how long. And in the meantime, there’s me stuck here. If I go on living in this mausoleum much longer, I’ll go mad. I’ve got to get away from here before I get any bigger and can’t at all.’

  Again came the feeling that Susan wasn’t thinking so much of Matthew, possibly in danger if indeed he hadn’t been killed, as of herself and the loneliness she felt. Everyone was lonely who had a loved one away fighting, not knowing if they’d be killed or captured, but they usually kept it to themselves. Susan was too outspoken for her own good. It made her look bad.