by Maggie Ford
He had needed her throughout his time here, sometimes desperately. But love? There were all kinds of love. Maybe he did feel something towards her, something deeper than just friendship, and perhaps such a relationship could grow into something more meaningful given time, but it would never be what people called being in love. And for all Susan had done to him, Jenny knew he still loved her with a desperation that pulled him apart.
So she smiled at him as he got into his parents’ car, and said with cheery encouragement, ‘Of course I’ll keep in touch.’
Mrs Ward smiled her wintry smile at her and nodded her gratitude for all the nursing she had given Matthew, and Jenny, returning the acknowledgement, knew the woman was grateful, although her nature was unable to allow her to express how she really felt.
Mr Ward, coming round the car to take Jenny’s hand, was more open and forthcoming. ‘He wrote, you know, to tell us all about you. You mean more to him than I think even he realises. You’ve been a tower of strength to him and I don’t think he’d have got this far, little as it is, but for you. I wish …’ He paused and his eyes studied hers. ‘I wish you and he …’
Jenny knew what he was trying to say but felt it right that he shouldn’t be urged to further it. She broke in quickly. ‘Matthew and I are very good friends, Mr Ward. Have always been that. He needs friends.’
‘Yes, of course.’ The relief that he hadn’t had to say what was on his mind was apparent, that and a depth of understanding between them in the significant way he added before going back round to the driver’s side of the car, ‘Don’t lose touch with us, Jenny.’
Watching them go, Matthew appearing wretched and somehow defeated, looking neither right nor left, not even waving to her, she thought about his father’s parting words. ‘Don’t lose touch.’ An ordinary saying, but expressed so earnestly that she knew it carried a totally different meaning to the normally light-hearted one. Yet her heart did not rise with hope. It was up to Matthew, not his father, how far their friendship progressed, and Matthew would never let go of Susan. His love for her would forever haunt him, fill his heart, and Jenny Ross would have no chance to squeeze into whatever minute portion of his heart might be left free.
Matthew’s going was a signal for her to leave the QAs. She had no more use for them, nor they for her. But it was impossible to see herself as leaving the profession. The mere idea of going back into office work after all she had experienced made her feel like a deflated balloon. She would stay a nurse to the end of her working life. She’d become a civilian nurse. Ignoring the vision of the years stretching on, while she, unmarried, dedicated herself to moving steadily up the ladder one day to become a matron, she applied for a post of nursing sister at the London Chest Hospital, and got it. That she was back near to Matthew’s home and would still see him from time to time, she chose to ignore. She had come back for her mother’s sake and nothing else. Except for her mother she might possibly have applied for a place elsewhere in any of the distant counties, pastures new, Matthew a closed book. This she told herself, almost convincing herself that he had nothing at all to do with her return home.
But it was good to be home again, with her mother cooking for her in the evenings, seeing the pleasure and contentment in her face. It was good to spend her days off with her, pick up where she’d left off. But that part of it wasn’t quite true. The threads of that old life before the war had been well and truly cut. The friends she had known had gone their own ways: Matthew’s sister Louise had married and gone to Canada; Jean Summerfield’s people were still living wherever they’d gone to (she could no longer recall where it was) and Jean no doubt was married by now; Freddy and Eileen Perry, with their two children, lived in Romford, Essex – she had their address but probably wouldn’t bother writing to them; Dennis Cox, poor Dennis, was dead … she felt sad for a young life lost, so many young lives lost. But for the war she might have ended up marrying Dennis, settled down to being the wife of a successful solicitor, perhaps with one or two children, attending social events. But there had been a war and it had altered all their lives, their once carefree, happy lives. Now this was her life and she must settle for that.
‘It’s nice knowing I don’t have to be sent anywhere and everywhere,’ she told her mother who, at last convinced that her daughter would be home almost as regularly as if she had gone back to office work, was happily setting the table for this, their first evening meal together for some considerable time. ‘Though all the friends I used to know around here are all gone now.’
‘There’s still the church, dear. You might find someone there.’
‘I think I’ve got a bit old for that, Mumsy.’
Her mother shrugged as they sat themselves down to the table. ‘Well, I expect you’ll soon make new ones, dear. Perhaps from the hospital. And there’s still young Matthew Ward across the road. Now he’s home again, I expect he’ll be attending there for check-ups. It’s the nearest place, easy for him to get to. You’ll probably see him now and again.’
Blithely she prattled on this new tack, how ill he was looking, as she began on the stew she’d prepared. ‘To think how he once was, poor dear.’
Jenny too remembered.
She had an old photo somewhere around the house of them all, her old friends, all of them happy and unsuspecting of what lay ahead, snapped in the act of fits of laughter. She remembered it being taken by Louise, then a girl of sixteen. Matthew had made a quip in his usual mocking manner: ‘Look at her, worst photographer this side of Lower Wallop and west of Katmandu!’ Coming unexpectedly, it had them all falling about so that the snap was slightly blurred. It still lay in her dressing-table drawer. He’d been so debonair then, and now looked so thin and ill and haunted.
‘His mother looks worried lately,’ her mother was saying, chewing on a piece of the precious still-rationed scrag end of lamb. ‘For him I suppose, him and his so-called wife. I think I said something about it in one of my letters to you, that they were more or less separated? She really let him down while he was away, poor boy, a prisoner of the Japanese, and nothing he could do about her so far away. His mother looks after their little girl now, you know. That’s a comfort to him at least.’
Jenny nodded obligingly as she ate. She had never divulged her secret feelings to her mother, to anyone. She vowed to find an excuse to pop across the road at some time or other and see how he was.
It was with some surprise one bright Sunday afternoon to be welcomed in by his mother on her first tentative visit. Much of what she had always considered the woman’s frigid mien melted at the sight of her.
‘Of course, my dear, come in,’ she said readily. And then, her voice dropping to a whisper, ‘He certainly needs someone else’s company than just ours. It’s hard for him, going nowhere, doing so little. He sits in the garden doing nothing. It was suggested he go to Southend sanatorium for a while. Sea air. Good for his chest. But he won’t go. It’s a good job we have the park nearby, the air’s fresher here than most places in London. Mr Ward thought we should move to the country for his health, but Matthew got himself into such a state about it, we’ve dropped the idea. He’s in the garden.’
All this she relayed as she conducted Jenny along the bright, neat hallway and through the spotless kitchen to where Matthew was sitting in a deckchair on a narrow paved patio which the sun at its summer height could just about touch for a couple of hours.
His head was bent over a photograph but as he looked up at her emerging from the house with his mother he quickly slipped it out of sight between himself and the deckchair fabric, but not before Jenny glimpsed the glossy black and white image of a young woman. That and his reaction to her coming upon him could only mean it was of his wife.
Jenny pretended she hadn’t noticed. ‘Hope you don’t mind me popping in. I just wanted to see how you were.’
He was trying to smile. Watching the effort it was obvious he’d been tormented by the now-hidden photo. Now he must look at this visitor as though no
thing had happened, and Jenny felt the weight of guilt at her intrusion, wishing she hadn’t so blithely taken it into her head to come over here. His mother having gone back into the house, leaving them to it, she could hardly depart the second she had arrived. Best to brazen it out and make an exit as soon as decently possible.
‘See you’re taking advantage of the sunshine,’ she said brightly. He nodded and she gazed about the long, narrow garden for some inspiration. ‘This garden’s bigger than ours, but then, your house is larger too. These are nice houses. I see your dad’s already taken out the old air-raid shelter. I think ours will stay there permanently if we’re not careful, though I suppose in time we’ll get a man to take it out for us and grass it over.’
She was talking rubbish, anything to fill the threatening silence.
He was saying nothing. She wondered if he was even listening. What was he thinking? It was hard to tell and she was beginning to feel a virtual idiot standing here talking nonsense about gardens and air-raid shelters.
She stopped, regarding him. What had she come here for? To cheer him up? To give him a pep talk? To pry? All she wanted to do now was say, ‘Nice to see you again, Matthew – goodbye,’ but she merely stood looking at him, desperately probing her mind for something to say. What else? Glad you are looking better? But he wasn’t looking better. He was looking … not ill; he had filled out a little from that first time she’d seen him brought into the hospital. No, not exactly ill, but drawn, pulled down, despondency oozing from him because he saw no hope of any future for himself. And didn’t she know why? Of course she did, and prayed to be able to put it right for him, without becoming an interfering nuisance. He wouldn’t welcome her interference. His pain was private and it was obvious he intended to keep it that way.
So it took her by storm when he said, as though to himself, ‘It’s her photo. I was looking at her photo.’
She could have said, ‘Were you?’ and nearly did, but that would have been crass, false innocence. She had seen him, and he knew she had. She could have said, ‘Whose photo?’ but she knew whose it was, and he knew that of her as well. So she stood silent.
‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he said in the same flat tone.
Now was the time to say something. ‘What can I do?’ she said simply.
He turned his eyes to her, dark with the grief that was eating him. ‘I don’t know.’ He wasn’t telling her to mind her own business, that there was nothing she could do, just that he didn’t know.
‘If there is anything I can do, Matthew. If you need me. I’ll be here.’
She spoke few words now, not that earlier inane chatter. Words that had some meaning, she hoped. She saw relief flow into his eyes, saw him incline his head in a small gesture of acceptance and she knew they would talk again and little by little he would release into her keeping all the suppressed grief and rage and hopelessness that was within him and perhaps in this way she would lighten the burden that at this moment seemed unbearable.
Even now he was on the verge of saying something. She waited while he contemplated what he needed to say. He, who had once been unstoppable with ready quips and digs and careless laughter, must force himself to look at every word, each drowned in a mire of unspeakable memories, having to be wrung from him, and now with an added reluctance after what had been done to him by one who he had thought had stood by him.
‘Jenny …’ he said at last. ‘Jenny … I have to see her. I’ve got to talk to her. Somehow. If I could see her … There’s no one, no one who’ll help. They say I … I mustn’t …’
Now he halted altogether, but she knew what he was trying to say. His parents’ well-meaning efforts to defend him against the wife who’d caused him such hurt had resulted only in antagonising him more. They were too close in their shared grief to be of any good to him. But could she do any better?
Now wasn’t the time to broach it. The least said at this moment …
There was movement in the house, the sound of voices, one of them high, childish. Matthew brightened immediately as a small figure came out in a rush. Jenny turned to see a small girl of around three-and-a-half pull up sharp at the sight of her, a stranger, while Jenny, relief surging over her at this timely interruption, smiled down at her. ‘Hello.’
Mrs Ward stood behind her granddaughter. ‘Matilda, say hello to daddy and Miss Ross.’ Jenny caught the coupling of her and Matthew’s names, as though she’d have liked to see them as such.
Shyly, Matilda stood her ground, her head dropping as she surveyed Jenny from under a generous dark fringe of hair. She was a beautiful child, softly rounded, sweet-faced, her eyes cornflower-blue, the rest of her hair cascading down behind her small shoulders.
Jenny glanced at Matthew. He was regarding his daughter, his eyes suddenly tender, a faraway look in them. Was he thinking of Susan? Did his daughter look like her?
She turned back to the child. ‘And where have you been?’ she asked.
No reply was forthcoming and the little rose-red lips began to pout in childish self-consciousness. But her grandfather, who appeared in the doorway, went to her rescue.
‘We’ve been out, haven’t we?’ he said in an indulgent voice. ‘We’ve been to Epping Forest. I came by some extra petrol so I took her out for the day. Matthew’s mother stayed here for Matthew’s sake. He didn’t want to come along.’
‘Not much point, was there?’ Matthew’s remark was sharp, but his father chose to ignore it, turning his attention to the child, bending towards her encouragingly.
‘And what did we see in the woods? We saw squirrels, didn’t we?’
‘Squiddles,’ repeated Matilda, picking up the spirit of it.
‘And what else? What else did we see?’
‘Squiddles.’
‘And? Tell daddy what you saw. And … what flies in the air?’
At last she was in full command, embarrassment forgotten. ‘We seed some birds and squiddles and …’ She broke off to twist round to consult her grandfather who mouthed something at her, she in turn working at it. ‘Pheasints!’ she cried in triumph. ‘And lots of sheeps.’
‘That’s really nice,’ Jenny offered, bending down to be rewarded by the girl coming forward to put a small soft hand in hers. ‘She’s lovely.’ Jenny turned to Matthew but his eyes had grown hard, not looking at any of them, so she turned hastily back to his parents, who nodded their wholehearted concurrence.
‘She is,’ Mrs Ward said, a little sadly. ‘And very well behaved.’
‘Yes.’ More a sound from Matthew than a word, it was weighted with bitter incrimination leaving Jenny wondering if it had been directed at his mother, who would have insisted on good behaviour even from a three-year-old, or at his wife, whom this child obviously took after. Not a bit of Matthew could be seen in her.
‘At least in that,’ his mother turned on him, ‘she takes after you, thank the Lord. And she has your colour hair, and …’
‘So Susan’s hair isn’t dark?’ he shot back at her, almost viciously. ‘She takes after her in everything. Her eyes, her stature. And who does she take after for tantrums? There’s only one. Well-behaved, yes, sometimes, but there are times when even you can’t control her. If that’s not Susan I don’t know what is. Why don’t you bloody well admit to it?’
‘Oh, Matthew,’ his mother’s exasperated voice rang out. ‘Why can’t you put that woman out of your mind? Why must you always bring her up?’
‘Because I still love her. You can’t see that. All you can see is your own damned righteousness. She was alone. She had no one. I wasn’t there. I should have been. Instead I was … I was … Christ, if you’d only see how it must’ve been for her. So she’s done the dirty on me, found someone else. But you’re not helping make it any bloody easier for me.’
Jenny got to her feet awkwardly, an outsider witnessing family dissension. This was a side to Matthew she had never seen. Even all that time ago when he had spoken against his mother’s efforts to encourage him to go for
a commission at the beginning of the war, it had not been this acrimonious, his hatred of people trying to help, the world itself. It wasn’t what he was saying but the way the words were being spat out with such vehemence that was so frightening.
Matilda was looking from one to the other, her pretty face animated with anguish, nearing tears. On impulse, Jenny gathered her to her with one arm around her and the child came readily, huddling against her.
Matthew had got out of his deckchair to stand glaring at his mother, and without thinking Jenny found her voice, directing it at him.
‘You’re frightening your daughter, Matthew.’ It amazed her how calm her voice sounded and he shot an enraged glance at her, instantly modifying it as their eyes met. He took a deep breath, a shuddering sigh, and his posture sagged a little.
‘I’m sorry, Jenny, that you should hear all this.’ His whole mien seemed to diminish and, appalled, Jenny let go her hold on Matilda and went towards him. He must not be diminished.
‘Oh, my dear. Don’t. It’s not your fault. I started it.’
Of course she hadn’t, but it felt like it. He was breathing hard. He began coughing, small, sharp little coughs. He looked all in, had worn down what energy he had; the disease still lurked in him. She put an arm about him, supporting him while she looked at his parents.
‘I think he ought to rest,’ she ordered, she the nurse in charge, and they, like admonished children, moved back before her as she went with their son into the house.
Once Matthew was installed in bed in his room, she apologised as a formality to his parents for her being here, for being a disruption to their private life. She waved away their insistence that she hadn’t been, but she was still in her role of nurse, advising as she saw fit.
‘I think he ought to be got to a sanatorium for a while, you know. His mind must rest as well as his body, and it’s not being rested here. He’s too near his wife. I think he needs a few months away, in spite of what he says.’
