Call Nurse Jenny

by Maggie Ford

  There was never a word from her unless Lilian made it her business to seek her out.

  ‘Aren’t you interested in how your daughter is getting along?’

  Susan, displaying sullenness at her insistence in coming, had merely shrugged. ‘I know where she is if I want her.’

  Come Christmas, heavy with her bastard, off-handed and rude to her mother-in-law, Susan had apparently made up her mind that she had been right about Matthew. Now certain she was a widow, she treated Lilian as an interfering old busybody who no longer had any jurisdiction over her actions. Lilian, keeping to her rigid faith, fostered hatred of the weak-willed girl for it.

  The International Red Cross, with so much on their plate, were still working hard tracing prisoners of war, and had said that they’d made contact in certain quarters and the name Matthew Ward had been on a list which the Japanese had reluctantly released just prior to Christmas. It could have been any Matthew Ward, the name was not an uncommon one, but Lilian saw it as too much of a coincidence for it not to be her son. His wife had no such weight of faith, continuing to prefer her life with the abominable Geoffrey Crawley. Her and Matthew’s child was slowly becoming Lilian’s whole life, a straw to cling to, someone to take the place of her son in the unlikely event of his never coming home. But that thought she put from her.

  Chapter 23

  Sister Ross moved briskly across a quadrangle of the Shaftesbury military hospital.

  Hard to believe the war was over at last. Having only just returned to England, she’d missed the VE celebrations here, and could only hear about it from her mother and from the nurses here.

  From her mother she had gleaned all sorts of news, amazingly detailed for one supposed to be reserved, unless of course Jenny’s absence had brought her out at last. She heard how Matthew’s wife was living with the husband of her erstwhile landlady. Jenny wasn’t a bit surprised by that, only sad. Sad for Matthew who would learn of it when eventually he came home, soon, because the war in the Far East couldn’t last much longer for all the tenacity of the Japanese in refusing to surrender to superior forces, their allies in Germany allies no longer. He would discover that while he had been sweating it out in Japanese hands, his wife had been enjoying the comfort of another man’s arms.

  Jenny learned too that his parents had charge of his child, were bringing her up admirably; that his wife had had a baby by her lover, a boy; that she had nothing now to do with Matthew’s parents, considering herself wholly a widow. The war had passed her by.

  As she walked on, Jenny thought back over her own war, over all that had happened to her after landing in Normandy. Having crossed the Channel in a full gale that seemed at the time to have been waiting just for them, making the whole unit, herself included, seasick, they’d moved forward with the advancing Allies, tending the wounded as they were brought in. Some were injured so grievously it had taken all her resolve not to show revulsion or pity before the sights that greeted her lest she undermine the brave face the wounded had put on. She marvelled at the resolve of most of them not to be done down by their ghastly, disfiguring wounds before their comrades.

  She had seen foreign towns and cities, Bayeux, Caen completely in ruins from Allied bombardment, Rouen which had been let off relatively lightly as the troops went through. The gunfire always ahead of them, their trucks had rumbled along in the wake of the advance, bucking and pitching over the shell craters they’d left. And always the grey-faced wounded, the air filled with their moans, the hospital tents packed with hardly room enough for stretcher-bearers, medics, and nurses to go about their business, usually all under a continuous relentless barrage.

  She had learned swear words she had never before known existed. She’d also learned a smattering of German as, success following success, German prisoners began being brought in, wounded prisoners in as much need of attention as Allied wounded. The QAs tended them all.

  She’d seen Paris and had been entranced by its beauty, and finally, with the guns falling silent, she had been posted to a town called Rotenburg, not far from Bremen, to a small hospital to help nurse the pitiful victims of Sandbostel, a concentration camp in the north of the country. After all she had seen of the wounded and dying, that place had provided the sights she most wanted to erase from a heart still apt to sink with sickening regularity at the slightest recollection.

  Finally home, leave, and transfer here, caring for servicemen who had contracted tuberculosis, mostly ex-prisoners of war, victims of conditions they’d been compelled to live under. She had seen a little of the world. In time she’d return to civilian nursing. But she would never forget.

  Shovelling sawdust into sacks wasn’t pleasant at most times. Now, as with most things in Japanese hands, the extractors had long ago fallen apart and no longer sucked away the fine dust. Despite strips of sacking tied over nose and mouth, it got into the lungs to be hawked up later in thick yellow phlegm.

  The officers complained regularly. The gaol commandant, Major Tanaka, listened sympathetically and did nothing, just as he did nothing about the diabolical bullying by his men, especially one known as Valentino from his handsome narrow face and the dramatic way he swivelled his eyes.

  Having felt the weight of his bullying, Matthew trudged back through the gates of Rangoon gaol at sunset in a black mood. Loading sacks on to a barge, one had slipped, spilling sawdust everywhere. Valentino had pounced, wielding his bamboo stick like a samurai warrior, ending up by booting him headlong into the water, strutting off to leave his victim to be fished out by his workmates.

  Showering briefly under the Heath Robinson contraption built by the POWs which the Japs allowed to be turned on for just half an hour each evening, subsequently causing long disappointed queues, Matthew worked to take his mind off his treatment, thinking instead of Susan. She no longer floated in his mind as during the days of the railway. He’d come through it, just, though he still suffered malaria from time to time. Almost callously, he had fought to put behind him thoughts of comrades who had died on the way. He had survived. He was determined to continue to survive, and to this end, he put behind him too today’s thrashing, and thought only of Susan, of going home to take up their lives together, when all this would become a thing of the past.

  In the midst of thinking that as he soaped himself with the tiniest sliver he’d been handed by an officer – told not to overdo it as others had to use it too – the name Jenny flashed into his mind and for a second he saw her quite clearly through the thin curtain of dripping water: her flaming hair, her wide smile, her well-formed features.

  Strange though, he thought a lot of Jenny Ross; she came into his mind at the oddest of moments, like now. Mostly it was to recall that ardent kiss she’d given him in the street, right out in the open, all that time ago. Typical of her to do a thing like that. Never seemed to get it right.

  Matthew lifted his face up to the drips falling from the makeshift shower head, a perforated canvas bag being spasmodically filled by a pipe from a tank someone in turn kept refilling as long as the water would last.

  Her kiss had been a fleeting thing, leaving him to smile reflectively at the lingering sensation it had brought, one that had stirred him enough to make him want to write to her, perhaps further the relationship she had begun. But then his unit had been transferred to Birmingham and he’d met Susan. From then on she had taken up all his thoughts.

  Strange he should think of Jenny Ross now, and with a small pang of sadness to go with it that he’d let her down. Where was she now? Was she still a nurse or had she married someone, was she raising a family? Without warning an empty place took up residence inside him, a sudden longing for things to be again as they had once been, carefree, safe, full of fun. He could see them all now. And Jenny, she had been a stunner, hadn’t she? Just that she hadn’t been his type. But a stunner just the same. He should have told her so. He regretted that now. Pity she hadn’t had as much confidence in her looks as some men had in them – that Dennis Cox – he’d
been smitten by her but hadn’t the nerve to tell her. Someone had said Cox had been killed. Well, lots of blokes had been killed. Women too. Serving abroad, nurses being sent overseas, their ships sunk. Perhaps Jenny had been one of them. He wouldn’t know, would he? Not here. A stab of panic gripped him then sank away, leaving a sort of empty grief that had no substance because it was unfounded, all in his mind. He had begun to fall in love with Jenny at one time, he was sure, but then he’d met Susan …

  ‘F’Chrissake, y’ doughy Pom – get a bloody move on, bloody mooning about. Y’r thirty seconds was up bloody ages ago.’

  Shot back to the present, Matthew slipped hastily out from the dribbling shower to receive a basinful of ripe epithets from the Aussie waiting to take his place.

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ Matthew growled irritably as the man named Phil shouldered roughly past him. Phil glared at him but Matthew’s mind was now taken up with more immediate interests, even above thoughts of Susan and Jenny, as he walked away still dripping wet. So were his ragged shorts, with his time under the shower too brief for them to be taken off. They would dry as he dried. His thoughts now were on what news there might be, if any, over the grapevine.

  Hidden beneath the dirt floor of a low wooden lean-to, once a tool shed belonging to the saw mill, then a makeshift latrine but now just a haven for flies and maggots, was a radio, constructed by some boffin or other. With a look-out squatting idly against the sagging rotting walls, certain chosen men – not himself, thank God, for it was an execution if the Japs ever discovered it – would take it in turns, a couple at a time, to squeeze under the floor of the lean-to, lying flat, and follow the crackling news of Allied invasion in Europe, American successes in the Pacific or how many tons of bombs B-29s had dropped on Japanese-held territory, very little of it accurate, being mainly from Japanese sources rather than Allied.

  But the news they most sought was lacking – the Fourteenth Army’s penetration into Assam and northern Burma five months ago had gone silent, and along with it any speculation of an early release from captivity.

  He turned as an angry snort was heard directly behind him, Phil having caught him up after his own thirty seconds had been apparently cut short by two seconds owing to Matthew’s delay in getting out as promptly as was required. Phil, a dismal-faced individual who shared the next cell to his with a dozen other Australians, was in a bad mood and obviously wanted to make it plain to the miscreant. Giving him little time to finish his complaint, Matthew turned on him. His own temper was none too good, his shoulders smarting still from Valentino’s cane.

  ‘Why don’t you put a fucking sock in it?’

  The Australian looked hurt. He wasn’t a brave man, at least not rash in the face of the other’s baleful glare that threatened a punch on the nose.

  ‘Don’t bloody take it out on me because yu’ve had a bloody blue with some lousy bloody Nip.’

  Crisis over, Matthew continued walking in the direction of the three steaming oil drums from which wafted a bland aroma of saltless boiled rice.

  ‘I’m not taking it out on you.’ A fit of sawdust-laden coughing prevented him saying any more and gave Phil possession of the argument.

  ‘We’ve all got bludgers t’put up with. Ain’t no sense antagonising ’em, is there?’

  Harry Hope, who shared Matthew’s cell, once a short, naturally chubby man, but now from whose skeletal back, ribs and hips protruded, unhealthy skin hung fleshless like thin grey rows of pelmets, caught the two up, his brief shower over as well. The last of it dripped off his ridged skin like raindrops off a gutter. His voice was soft, with a West Country accent. ‘Stay off our Matt’s back, old son. He’s been a mite touchy all day.’

  ‘Too right, he’s touchy.’ But Harry ignored the man as he surveyed Matthew’s shoulders.

  ‘It do look bloody zore.’

  ‘It is bloody sore.’

  ‘You need to keep that covered. Got a shirt?’

  ‘Flogged it last week for a bag of bran.’

  Rice bran, discarded during milling as fit only for animal feed, was a precious commodity, rich in vitamin B, and coveted because it helped avert beri-beri and other deficiency diseases. It was consequently hard to come by. Matthew’s haul had amounted to under a quarter of a pound, for which he considered himself fortunate all the same.

  ‘I’ve got a shirt you can borrow until you’ve healed a bit.’

  Giving Matthew no time to thank him, shirts too being precious commodities, Harry made off towards the queue forming behind drums of steaming rice, their supper, leaving Matthew to stare after him until the small dry cough caught him again and he followed after Harry.

  Leaning down from his rickety bunk Harry surveyed him lying directly below. He’d been disturbed by his cough. All those in the cell were disturbed by it. ‘’Bout time you saw the quack on that, Matt, old son. Don’t like the zound of that. Zounds loik a touch o’ TB ter me. Don’t loik your colour either.’

  Matthew raised his eyes to the head hanging upside-down. ‘You really know how to cheer up a bloke, don’t you?’

  ‘Only an opinion, Matt, only an opinion. But if it be TB I don’ wanna catch it.’

  From the next cell, divided only by open bars, came Phil’s monotone drawl. ‘Not as it makes any difference. All gotta go sometime, so what’s it matter, hundred years from now, if yuh died at nineteen or ninety? Tryin’ to live a long life – you’re just a bloody gnat on an elephant’s arse. Fifty years after they shove yuh under, forgotten, what’s it matter if you lived at all?’

  Angered, fighting another cough, Matthew turned away from the would-be philosopher. ‘You’re just a miserable bugger. You might not have anyone to go home to, but I’ve a wife and a baby waiting for me.’

  On that score, senses heightened to the possibility of tuberculosis, next evening after work found him outside the TB outbuilding transfixed by the sight of those within its open door, chests sunken, eyes unnaturally bright, cheeks with that peculiar transparent flush, as his were.

  An orderly, just finishing ministering to a frail stick of what three years ago had been a strong young man, now having to be fed sips of watery rice gruel from a tin cup, looked up at Matthew.

  ‘Looking for someone, chum?’

  Feeling suddenly fraudulent, Matthew shook his head; he watched the man gently ease his patient down on the platform that served for a bed and with a piece of khaki rag wipe the residue of gruel from the man’s lips. The tenderness of the action touched Matthew more than anything had done in a long time. This man with his gentle hands, these men quietly heroic in their suffering, they humbled him. This endless stream of sufferers, crippled by tropical ulcers, blinded by vitamin deficiency, swollen with beri-beri and withered by dysentery, so many struck down by all the diseases the tropics could throw at them; many died without fuss lest they undermine the will of others to struggle on. None had distinguished themselves in battle but they were heroes just the same in their silent acceptance of death. And here he was shivering in fear of his own miserable life as though he were someone special, as if he were the only man who yearned to make it home to wife and child.

  The orderly had stood up and was coming towards him. ‘Can ah help ye, laddie?’ The soft Scots accent emphasised the hush of this place. He gnawed at his lip. He had no right to waste this man’s time.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he blurted.

  The man was looking at him with the eye of the experienced. ‘Ye think ye’re tubercular then. Hold on a minute.’ Drawing Matthew into the outbuilding with him, he began fishing into a box nearby, drawing out a stethoscope, home-made from rubber tubing and the handles of a metal filing cabinet he’d probably come across at some time. ‘Let’s have a listen.’

  Submitting himself to the examination Matthew breathed, coughed, uttered thirty-three when told to. The stethoscope was put slowly away. When the man looked back at him, his smile was fixed, too reassuring by far.

  ‘Ye was reet to come here. But it’s no’
too bad. In a cool dry climate, why, it cud be cured in three months, Ah’d say.’

  But the look on the man’s face told its story. In a cool dry climate with good food and rest, of course recovery would be certain. Here, in this humid heat, watery rice for fare, working without respite, it was a death sentence as surely as if he stood before a firing squad.

  These three years he had stared at death. Now it had arrived. He nodded casually at the advice to take it easy. ‘At least I know where I stand,’ he murmured and received a short nod. As he left, an insane notion went through his head. Why wait for death? Why not go out in a blaze of glory, a heroic act of sabotage, take a few of those sons of Nippon with him? But he knew he would do no such thing. Like those who had gone before him, like Bob Howlett, he would await his time, quietly, patiently, reluctant to make a fuss, and carrying Susan’s image in his head, would silently say goodbye to her and hope to find courage and a small semblance of dignity when his time came.

  ‘Ain’t no good, the bloody thing’s had it.’

  He and another man named Derek gazed down at the now silent wireless that had crackled itself to its death. From now on they could receive no news of the outside world, no heartening snippets about Germany herself being overrun by the Allies.

  ‘No chance getting hold of another valve?’ It was a valve that had gone. It might as well have been the whole set for all that could be done.

  Derek shook his head viciously. ‘Just when something good came over. Something about the Fourteenth Army fighting around Mandalay. Mandalay’s only just up country. Didn’t you hear it?’

  The sound had been so faint, Matthew hadn’t heard. Within days, however, rumours were going around. And the Japs were looking decidedly jumpy. Perhaps Derek had heard right. But everyone had grown concerned by their captors’ attitude. If rumours were correct and their liberators not far away, what would the Japs do?