When the Lights Come on Again

by Maggie Craig

  ‘He was only your age,’ she told Liz sadly. ‘Nineteen.’ And Liz thought about Eddie, Mario and Adam - and all the other boys she knew.

  They passed from the midday sunshine of Castle Street into the cool dimness of the ancient building in the shadow of the Royal Infirmary. Out of the darkness into the light. But their entry into the cathedral had taken them in the opposite direction. It was the way the whole of Europe was going, teetering on the threshold of unimaginable disaster.

  Liz listened attentively to the two clergymen who were conducting the service. They prayed for calm, that ‘we should hold fast to our principles and even in the cruelties and tragedies of war banish malice, bitterness and hatred’. And Liz, knowing now that it was completely hopeless, bowed her head and prayed for peace.

  ‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at Ten Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government an official note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’

  The Prime Minister went on speaking, but Liz was having difficulty listening to his thin, reedy voice. The blood was thumping through her ears - and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

  War. They couldn’t really be going to war. Could they? She looked up, experiencing a moment of intense panic. From across the day room of one of the empty wards where those on duty this morning had gathered, Mario winked at her.

  As if it understood that events had taken a dramatic turn, the weather had decided to play along. A thunderstorm was raging over the Clyde valley.

  Neville Chamberlain was coming to the end of his speech, his voice growing more and more portentous.

  ‘Now, may God bless you all. May we defend the right. It is evil things that we shall be fighting against: brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution, and against them I am certain that the right will prevail!’

  Someone turned off the wireless. There was absolute silence in the day room. Then Adam cleared his throat.

  ‘I love that bit about the evil thing we shall be fighting against,’ he murmured. ‘Nice of the Prime Minister to include us all. We wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out, would we now?’

  There were a few nervous laughs and shifting of positions. A split second later there was a vivid flash of lightning and peal of thunder. Liz felt as if she’d jumped about two feet into the air. She wasn’t the only one.

  ‘What? Are the Germans here already?’ asked Mario. Everyone burst out laughing.

  With Liz’s approval, Mario made the invitation to a meal a general one. Adam and Cordelia came. Jim and Naomi, too. Spotting the bust of Mussolini on the shelf next to the photograph of Mario’s mother as they went through the door which led to the upstairs flat, Adam turned to Aldo.

  ‘You’d better get rid of that, Mr Rossi.’

  ‘You think so?’ He looked surprised.

  ‘You can’t have anything connected with the enemy,’ said Cordelia. ‘It’s not done.’ She was very subdued.

  ‘But Italy’s not in the war,’ said Liz.

  ‘You forgot one word,’ said Mario. ‘Yet. Italy’s not in the war yet.’

  ‘Which side would you choose, Mario?’ asked Jim Barclay.

  He lifted his shoulders in a gesture which suddenly struck Liz as being very Italian. She’d never thought of him as a foreigner before. Not really.

  ‘I hate fascism,’ he said passionately, ‘but how could I fight against my father’s country? Against my own relatives, perhaps? How could I?’

  None of his friends were able to give him an answer.

  Twenty-five

  The passenger ship Athenia left the Clyde on Friday 1 September bound for Canada. After leaving Glasgow she doubled back to pick up more passengers at Belfast and Liverpool. There were almost fifteen hundred people on board as she steamed out into the Atlantic on the early evening of the following Sunday. They were two hundred miles west of the Hebrides when the German submarine spotted them.

  The U-boat captain had received his orders to commence hostilities against Britain at lunchtime that day, one hour after the declaration of war. Eight hours after that had been made, he gave the order to fire four torpedoes at the blacked-out Athenia. Only one of them hit her. One was enough.

  On Tuesday morning five hundred survivors were landed at Greenock. Many of them were sent straight up to Glasgow: the uninjured to a hotel in Sauchiehall Street and the casualties to the Western.

  Liz arrived at the hospital in the late afternoon, meeting Cordelia at the door to Outpatients and Casualty.

  ‘This isn’t one of your usual days,’ observed Cordelia.

  ‘No, but Mr Murray let me off work when we heard the news about the Athenia survivors being brought here. He thought I might be needed.’

  ‘That’s Uncle Alasdair for you. He’s not a bad old stick.’

  ‘Are you and Adam cousins then?’ asked Liz as the two girls went into the building.

  ‘Very distant ones. I call Alasdair my uncle but we’re really second cousins - several times removed, I believe. The same as Adam and me. Oh!’

  At first sight, the hospital looked to be in chaos, the corridors and waiting areas full of men, women and children. It was hard to tell what sort of condition they were in. Some were huddled silently in blankets, staring straight ahead of them with unfocused eyes. Others were keeping up a frantic chatter, as though they barely knew what they were saying.

  Cordelia spotted Mario and Adam. They were accompanying a patient on a trolley towards one of the big lifts further along the corridor which gave access to the wards above.

  The patient was a middle-aged woman. Liz saw with relief that she didn’t look too badly injured. Not wanting to delay her treatment in any way, she and Cordelia walked along beside her while they spoke to Mario and Adam. Adam was doing most of the pushing while Mario, carrying a bag of clothes and a brand-new set of hospital case-notes, was steering them round the corners and towards the lift.

  Liz gave the woman a pat on the arm. Offering reassurance to anyone who seemed to need it was fast becoming second nature. The patient looked up at her. ‘I feel kinda dizzy.’

  ‘Och, that’s just the trolley,’ said Liz. ‘It takes.a lot of people that way. And you’re in good hands. This pair’ll look after you.’

  ‘From what I can see of them, they sure are a couple of handsome fellas.’

  ‘Don’t,’ pleaded Mario. ‘You’ll turn my head.’ He grinned at Liz and Cordelia. ‘What can we do for you, ladies?’

  ‘Tell us who to report to,’ said Cordelia. ‘We’re not going to be in the way, are we?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ said Adam. ‘It’s all hands to the pumps today. I was here already, and Mario came across the road to see what he could do, and we were immediately dragooned into helping with the portering. Matron’s about, and most of the senior sisters.’

  His hands occupied with pushing the trolley, he gestured with his head towards the outpatient area. ‘See if you can find one of them. They’re along there somewhere. I’m sure they’ll have something for you to do.’ His tone of voice altered slightly, became brighter and more consciously cheerful. ‘Right then, here we are. A ride up in the lift, and you’ll be there.’

  We’re all doing it, thought Liz, the reassuring voice and the professional smile. As long as it helped the patients - and it did seem to. The woman on the trolley was looking a lot happier.

  She and Cordelia wished her good luck, promising to pop up to the ward later and see how she was getting on. Then they went looking for some marching orders. It was Sister MacLean they found first. She actually looked pleased to see them. That made a nice change.

  ‘You can help us sort out the relatives,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’ Liz and Cordelia scurried obedientl
y behind her. Except in cases of direst emergency - and apparently even this didn’t qualify - running in the hospital corridors was a crime. Sister MacLean had drummed that into them.

  ‘It alarms the patients. A nurse must always convey an air of calmness and efficiency.’

  However, Sister MacLean could walk pretty damn fast when the occasion demanded it. Almost out of puff, the girls only just managed not to cannon into her when she stopped abruptly in front of one of the outpatient clinics, a large room off the main waiting area. Two or three nurses were there already. They had their work cut out. The area was packed with people, most of them wearing a motley selection of garments.

  ‘They’re the survivors,’ said Sister MacLean. ‘Uninjured, but suffering from varying degrees of shock. Bring us through any you feel you can’t deal with,’ she said briskly, ‘but try a cup of sweet tea and a biscuit first. That can often do a surprising amount of good. And listen to them. Let them tell you their stories.’

  ‘Have we got relatives here too?’ Liz asked. ‘People who weren’t on board the ship?’

  Sister nodded. ‘Yes - and they’re all up to high doh. It’s understandable enough - but they’re getting in our way while we’re trying to deal with the casualties. One of the medical students is making a list of names and injuries, but he’s not a quarter of the way through it yet. Everyone keeps interrupting him to ask about their own people. If you can get everybody settled - explain that they’ll get the information as soon as we have it - that would be a big help.’

  ‘Of course, Sister,’ said Cordelia.

  Sister MacLean nodded and walked smartly away. Cordelia smiled nervously at Liz. Liz didn’t smile back. She was concentrating too hard on the way her heart was thumping. This was her first real test as a nurse. Would she be able to cope?

  Cordelia seemed to be feeling the same. ‘This is it then, Liz,’ she murmured.

  ‘Tea, Miss Maclntyre,’ said Liz, sharper than she might have been because she was so nervous herself. ‘Let’s go and make the tea. Several gallons of it, I should think.’

  ‘Miss MacMillan?’ Cordelia’s voice was very tentative.

  ‘Yes?’ Liz said shortly, pouring a jug of water into the big gas tea urn which sat in one corner of the small outpatients department kitchen. That would do for the first batch, but they would be as well filling the two big kettles which went on to the gas stove too. Was there some reason why that hadn’t occurred to the Honourable Miss Maclntyre?

  ‘You’ll have to show me how to do it.’

  ‘Show you how to do what?’ asked Liz, still engaged in filling the urn.

  ‘Make the tea.’

  ‘What?’ Wondering if she’d heard her right, Liz spun round. Cordelia was standing looking at her. Her normally elegant demeanour seemed to have deserted her. She looked like a diffident child who’d been caught doing something naughty.

  ‘Och, Liz, I don’t know how to! I’ve never done it in my entire life. I can’t even boil water, let alone an egg. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

  Liz stared at her, incredulous. How in the name of the wee man could anyone not know how to make tea?

  ‘Absolutely pathetic,’ she agreed, but her voice had softened. The other girl was close to tears. Her reaction seemed a bit extreme, but Liz could see that it was real enough. She was genuinely distressed.

  Liz pointed to the big kettle. ‘Take that to the sink and fill it.’

  Cordelia perked up. Any minute now she’d start taking notes.

  ‘Hot or cold tap?’ she asked.

  Ye gods. She really didn’t know the first thing about it.

  ‘The cold one,’ said Liz with exaggerated patience. ‘Then bring it over here and I’ll show you how to light the gas and we’ll take it from there. A master class in the art of tea-making. First lesson. Always take the pot to the kettle, never the other way round...’

  Not all of the Athenia survivors wanted to talk. Some of them clearly felt they had to. There was a compulsion to go over the nightmare. As afternoon gave way to evening, Liz began to realize that many of them thought they owed it to those who hadn’t made it. Their stories had to be told too.

  The Athenia should have been taking them away from the danger zone, and there was bitter anger at how an unarmed passenger ship had been attacked a matter of hours after the declaration of war. In some people the rage was white-hot in its intensity.

  ‘Surely they could see that we were harmless, Nurse! How could they do that to their fellow human beings - men, women and children? I don’t understand. Have these Germans no humanity?’

  Many of the survivors had spent hours in the water before they’d been rescued. They’d been landed at Greenock early in the morning - cold, hungry and exhausted. The women of the town had rallied round magnificently, supplying them with clothes out of their own wardrobes.

  The survivors were in huge distress over the loss of their fellow passengers. Some of them, alive when they went into the sea, had simply lost the unequal struggle with the cold waters of the North Atlantic.

  An older man, shaking with emotion, told Liz of seeing children drowning all around him before he himself had been rescued by the Southern Cross, one of the ships which had gone full steam ahead to the rescue of the Athenia.

  It was bloody awful, Nurse,’ he told Liz, his voice low and impassioned. ‘Bloody awful. Why should a useless old man like me have survived when those kids didn’t?’

  She had no answer to give him, only a comforting hand on his shoulder. All she could do for him was listen to his story. That was hard. Not as hard as the telling.

  ‘They were at the start of their lives,’ he told Liz in an anguished whisper. ‘And there was nothing we could do to save them. Nothing. We tried to get them to hang on to anything that was floating, but some of them just didn’t make it.’ He stared ahead, his eyes seeing it all again, reliving the horror. He reminded Liz of her grandfather. He had the same piercing blue eyes.

  ‘God bless the crew of the Southern Cross,’ he said fiercely. ‘God bless them. But there was this woman,’ he went on, his voice sinking to a tortured whisper. ‘A young woman. She’d been rescued, taken out of the sea. It was so cold in the water, Nurse. So bitterly cold. She’d been saved, like me-’

  He broke off, and let out a sob.

  ‘It’s all right. Take your time. You’re fine.’ Liz repeated the soothing words until he was able to go on.

  ‘She stood up,’ he said. ‘She stood up and screamed and then she threw herself over the side. Deliberately threw herself back into the sea. Do you know what she was screaming, Nurse?’

  Liz shook her head. He was rigid with horror and pain, his voice cracking.

  ‘She was screaming, My baby!’

  God forgive the Germans, thought Liz. Because I can’t.

  ‘Liz?’ Adam’s voice was very gentle. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, but she didn’t turn around to face him.

  ‘We were worried about you,’ came another voice. Cordelia Maclntyre. That was all she needed.

  It was several hours later and the immediate panic was over. The casualties had been dealt with, the uninjured had been persuaded to board the bus which had been hired to take them to the hotel in Sauchiehall Street where the other survivors were staying, and Liz had found a quiet corner in which to gather her thoughts before she got the energy up to go home.

  ‘Go away,’ she told them both. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Och, aye,’ Adam said. He came further into the room and stood in front of her. Cordelia followed him and stood looking at Liz with worried eyes.

  ‘I can see you’re fine,’ Adam said with heavy irony. ‘That’s why you’ve got your arms wrapped about yourself and that’s why you’re shaking like a leaf, I suppose. You need some hot sweet tea - pronto! Doctor’s orders, my girl.’

  ‘I d-don’t w-want any b-bloody t-tea.’ She lifted a hand to point at Cordelia. That was a mistake. Her whole arm was trembling. ‘She and
I have served up enough of it tonight to launch a battleship.’ That was a mistake too. She could have chosen a better metaphor. She didn’t want to think about ships. Not tonight. Not for a long time to come.

  ‘Coffee, then,’ said Adam, his voice brisk. ‘Up the road. In fact, we were already planning that. Mario’s gone on ahead to warn his father that we’re all about to descend on him.’

  Liz saw Cordelia touch his arm. ‘I’ll go on ahead, Adam. The others are probably there by now. I’ll let them know that the two of you are on your way.’

  To Liz’s considerable surprise, on her way out of the room Cordelia reached out and patted her arm too.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Liz. Adam’ll take care of you. He’s good at that.’

  The comforting words. The reassuring touch. The professional smile.

  ‘Isn’t this where we came in, Liz? Last time it was me who couldn’t face any more tea. We’ve had this conversation before. Remember?’

  She looked up at him out of tear-filled eyes, hugging herself even more tightly.

  ‘Please leave me alone, Adam. I have to sort this out by myself.’

  He snorted and uttered one short but eloquent word.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, smiling at the surprise evident on her face. ‘Now come and sit down, you wee daftie.’

  She allowed him to lead her to the deep tiled windowsill. It was curtainless, blackout screens fixed directly against the window itself.

  ‘You don’t have to sort things out by yourself when you’ve got friends to help you,’ he said as they sat down next to each other. ‘Don’t you know that, MacMillan?’ His voice was very gentle.

  ‘I know that I should be getting home.’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t have to. Matron says that any of the volunteers who live some distance away can sleep here tonight. They can fit you in at the nurses’ home. Or Cordelia says you can go home with her.’ He gave her one more alternative. ‘Or I could drive you home. Whenever you’re ready.’