by Katie King
At the hospital James was waiting outside for them, looking very weary as if he had been working through the night. He’d just finished an operation by the look of it and he was still in his scrubs, but he jumped up nimbly into the ambulance to assess Jessie, crouching close beside Peggy as he did so. He had a word with the medic who had been looking after Jessie in the ambulance, and then James shone a torch into Jessie’s eyes, after which he took his pulse and ran his hands swiftly over Jessie’s head and then his arms, legs and ribcage.
James sat back on his heels and Peggy could feel the warmth of his body, he was so near to her.
Jessie groaned again, and Peggy caught hold of his hand and said, ‘Jessie darling, it’s Aunt Peggy and I’m holding your hand. You’ve been in a fight, and we’re now at the hospital. James is looking after you. Jessie… Jessie?’
Jessie’s eyes fluttered open and closed, and his body looked unbelievably tense. But then his eyes stayed half-open once more and his body seemed to sink back down into the stretcher. Peggy could see that one of his hands – the one she wasn’t holding – was badly vibrating with an involuntary shudder, a horrible mirror image to her own trembling hands.
‘His pupils are the same size, which is good, and I can’t feel any obvious breaks in any bones or serious injuries although it might be some time before we can ascertain this for certain, but I don’t like much that he’s still unconscious. I want to X-ray him and he will need to be admitted for observation,’ James told her. His tone was gentle but professional, and Peggy found the calm timbre of his voice made her feel just a shade less anxious.
Peggy turned to look at the doctor, and saw James’s face close to hers, but he was observing Jessie with great concentration as he tried to work out the extent of his injuries, and he didn’t notice her. Certainly, there was none of the electric charge between her and James that Peggy had experienced by simply being close to him during their day out to Withernsea, which although only a few weeks previously, seemed a very long time ago now, and Peggy chastised herself for even thinking about their day out.
Peggy nodded and then asked James whether Jessie’s treatment would be expensive, and then he told her not to worry about the cost for now as they could think about everything like that later. She couldn’t prevent her eyes filling; James’s kindness following the shock of what had happened to Jessie was hard to bear.
And then it was time for she and James to clamber backwards out of the ambulance and stand uncomfortably side by side as Jessie’s stretcher was heaved out and he was carried into the hospital.
An hour or two hour later Peggy felt exhausted. Jessie had regained a patchy consciousness, and although he had a headache and felt very tired, and he had been sick several times, James didn’t seem to be excessively worried about him any longer which, of course, was excellent news. After a more thorough check-up James encouraged Jessie to go back to sleep, James saying then to Peggy that Jessie looked to have mild-to-medium concussion and that if she needed to head back to Tall Trees for a while to deal with the children and feed Holly, then now would be a good time, as Jessie would likely sleep for at least a couple of hours.
Obediently Peggy trotted home, where she found Connie very upset still, and Gracie looking quite fraught as besides four very anxious children in Connie, Angela, Aiden and Larry, she was trying to deal at the same time with two crying babies as both Jack and Holly had picked up on something being very wrong in the household, with the result that each of them was now egging the other on to greater and greater teary efforts.
Angela had gone very quiet, and although they tried to hide it when Peggy walked in, nevertheless Peggy noticed Aiden and Larry trying to conceal from her a piece of paper on which they were making elaborate plans of how the TT Muskets could teach the Hull contingent ‘a lesson’ for what they had done to Jessie.
As Larry tried to tell Peggy all about their musketeer pledge to one another and so it wasn’t acceptable that Jessie had been hurt and Tommy arrested, Peggy forced the boys to hand the piece of paper to her and then she felt too tired to be diplomatic.
‘Right, all of this silly gang stuff, this pathetic musketeer stuff, stops right here and right now, do you hear me? Larry and Aiden? There will be NO reprisals in any shape or form, I want you to understand this. Each of us grown-ups has got far too much to think of with this beastly war and with Jessie being hurt without worrying what daft thing you are all up to as well. You were asked by Roger a couple of weeks back if there was anything going on, and like butter wouldn’t melt, you all said there wasn’t – and that was obviously a lie. Big error. Make no mistake about this, if any or all of you dare to make any such plans for reprisals, then Aiden can right away go back to live at home, and Angela and Larry will have to find new billets with other families in Harrogate, do you understand? And it could be that the rest of us have to go elsewhere, and new people come here. I mean this, so just don’t any of you test my patience on it, as I am absolutely serious and I’ve clean run out of patience. I am just about to break the news to Barbara and Ted that Jessie is in hospital and Tommy is at the police station – just think for a minute about this – and I want you all to understand how serious this situation is.’ Peggy voice was firm in the extreme, and the children exchanged serious glances.
She allowed her words to sink in for a heartbeat or two, before going on gravely, ‘It could be that Mabel and Roger will have had quite enough of all the trouble and disruption of having all of us evacuees here with them at Tall Trees, and that they will ask us all to move anyway, for which in that case all of you will have to shoulder some of the blame, as must I for not being stricter with you. I wouldn’t want us all here if Tall Trees were mine, we’ve been so much trouble, and especially so when Roger and Mabel have gone out of their way to make us all welcome.
‘So I want you all to think about this and what has gone on, and to very much hope that Jessie makes a full recovery. And if by some miracle Roger and Mabel don’t want us all to go elsewhere, I want this to be the very last time anything happens while we are all here when either the police or the medical services are involved. I repeat, there are to be absolutely no reprisals for what has happened to Jessie. Do you all understand?’
Peggy stared crossly at each of the children, and Connie, Aiden, Larry and Angela responded by looking down with sullen expressions at the kitchen table.
‘Have I made myself clear?’ Peggy asked again, and then when nobody replied to her once more, she brought her hand down on the kitchen table with such a racketing whack that everybody jumped, and both Jack and Holly winched their cries up to howl level.
But Peggy had gone beyond caring as she yelled at the children who were all looking at her with dumbfounded expressions as they had never ever seen Peggy anything other than mildly irked previously, and certainly never for her to let loose anything like this display of temper, ‘Children, have I made myself bloody clear?’
Ignoring Connie’s timid ‘yes, very clear, Aunty Peggy’, a clearly still fuming Peggy got up and marched to the study where she almost, but not quite, slammed the door behind her in fury. Then she made a long-distance call first to Mrs Truelove’s haberdashers in Bermondsey where Barbara worked, only to discover that there was a fault on the line and she couldn’t get through, after which she telephoned the Jolly public house, asking without going into specifics if somebody could track down Ted or Barbara in order that Peggy could telephone the Jolly at four o’clock to speak to one or both of them.
Finally she telephoned the police station, where a kindly desk sergeant allowed her and Roger to have a word. Tommy and the Hull lad were still being questioned but it looked unlikely that matters against Tommy were going to be taken further, Roger told her, although it was possible that the other boy from Hull and his friends might face some sort of charge.
‘I’m so very sorry, so sorry indeed, Roger, as us evacuees have been nothing but trouble for you since we arrived, and now poor Tommy is in trouble for stick
ing up for Jessie, as I think that’s what happened when Tommy saw the bigger boys pick on him, from what I can make out from Connie. I can only apologise for all the upset that we have inadvertently brought to your family,’ Peggy said. She sniffed then, and swallowed down the painful lump in her throat.
Roger was uncharacteristically quiet and not very forthcoming, saying merely that she’d better get back to the hospital to see how Jessie was, and that they would all talk about it later when everybody was allowed home.
Peggy felt a tiny bit better when Mabel took the telephone receiver from her husband to say to Peggy that if Ted and/or Barbara wanted a lodging if they needed to come to Harrogate then that would be all right, and that the policeman had told her he’d learnt from the boys that apparently there’d been some simmering trouble between the Hull evacuees and the children at Tall Trees for a while, although it didn’t sound, so far at least, as if Tommy or any of the others in their group had in any way been the instigators of what had gone on earlier in the day.
Peggy was somewhat reassured at what Mabel said, but she knew she’d be kidding herself if she thought everything was going to snap back to normal as far as their generous hosts were concerned as when they were speaking just now, Mabel had had none of her normal jolliness about her, just like her husband hadn’t either.
Without talking to the children again as she was still furious with them, Peggy gave Holly a quick feed and put her down for her afternoon nap, leaving her in Gracie’s charge, and she then stalked quietly out of Tall Trees as she still felt too cross with them all to have anything pleasant to say to anybody, and worked off a bit of her temper by striding out on her way back to the hospital with as much speed as possible.
Her feet felt hot and tired by the time she got there, and her brown leather sandals had rubbed quite a large blister on one of her heels.
She noticed the clock high on the wall in the corridor was saying it was almost two o’clock as a ward sister escorted Peggy into a small room where Jessie was now lying in bed. His soiled clothes had been removed and he had been cleaned up from the grime of the alley.
He looked virtually unrecognisable as his face and head were badly swollen where he had been kicked, and one of his eyelids was really puffy and a deep palette of blackberry-coloured hues. His lower legs looked to have a frame over them as there was a boxy shape under the bedclothes that was suspending the sheet and blanket, preventing them lying on his legs. The bruises on his body and arms were starting to come through now in a variety of blackberry and liver colours. He had a hand bandage, covering what looked like a small splint on two of his fingers. As her eyes travelled across Jessie’s battered body, carefully heeding each injury he had, both big and small, Peggy couldn’t stop herself wincing when she saw the punishment Jessie had taken.
She sat down in the chair that had thoughtfully been placed beside his bed and then she reached for Jessie’s unbandaged hand and stroked it gently. Peggy looked for something positive in the pitiful sight in front of her, and eventually the best she could do was to decide that Jessie looked now as if he were asleep, rather than unconscious, and she supposed that to be a good thing.
A nurse came in to check Jessie’s vital signs but she didn’t say anything to Peggy other than a nodded ‘good afternoon’. A long while after the nurse had gone, James came in and stood behind Peggy.
‘I can’t stay long, as I have to be back in theatre in a little while,’ he said. He sounded exhausted.
Peggy didn’t look up at him, but she nodded to show that she had been listening as she leant over and smoothed Jessie’s fringe to one side on his forehead.
James added, ‘Jessie has had quite a time of it, and he’s going to feel very sore. Not only was he kicked and punched but I think he was stamped on too, and he’s had some of his fingers dislocated. I think we’ll have to keep him in for a few days as, while there’s no sign that he’s going to be permanently disfigured, I think he’ll need us to give him some pain medication. And by then we’ll have a better idea if his head injury is serious or not, although I am banking on it being concussion rather than anything more worrisome. He was quite lucid when he came to, and could remember who the prime minister is and what day of the week it is, although he couldn’t remember anything beyond walking to the shops with you.’
‘The poor little tyke,’ Peggy said after a while as she watched the gentle rise and fall of Jessie’s chest as he slept. ‘What a time he’s had. And whatever am I going to say to his mother and father about this? I’m a terrible guardian for these children, any fool can see that, and Barbara and Ted are going to be beside themselves. Connie is beside herself too as she is worried for Jessie, while Aiden and Larry are on the warpath and want to get the gang of bigger boys back for what has happened to Jessie, although I’ve more or less given them an on-pain-of-death ultimatum that no such thing is to happen. Oh, I don’t know, I think sometimes we’d be better off back in Bermondsey, threat of bombs or no… And I’m in no doubt that Tommy won’t have enjoyed his visit to the police station, and neither would Roger and Mabel who, incidentally, could barely talk to me when I spoke to them earlier. I thought that after the damn apple incident last autumn that all the children were a bit more sensible now, but it doesn’t seem like it, does it? It’s all such a mess.’ She tried to bite back an aching sigh.
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Peggy,’ said James, as he laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘I think you’re all doing pretty well up here, taking everything into consideration.’
She stayed still and didn’t say or do anything. James kept his hand where it was, and Peggy had to tamp down an almost overwhelming urge to lean her head against his arm.
Peggy could hear the sounds of the hospital in the background, and Jessie’s occasionally uneven breathing. And still neither she nor James said anything to each other, or adjusted their positions.
And then, feeling like she was at last stepping off the edge of the terrifying abyss that she had been teetering on for months, Peggy reached up to her neck, not daring to look up at James, and after a final moment of indecision, she clasped the doctor’s strong and reassuring hand that was resting on her shoulder, and his fingers interlaced themselves with hers.
The clicking of the second hand of the clock hanging in the corridor just outside the door to Jessie’s room seemed very loud to Peggy as the tableau of herself, James and Jessie stayed as it was until a nurse came to collect James for scrubbing up, and by then the shadows had shifted in the room quite considerably as the sun slowly inched across the sky. And Peggy knew she had collect her scattered thoughts as it was high time she had to telephone the Jolly to explain to Barbara and Ted what had happened.
Chapter Twenty-seven
If Peggy had felt tired before, it was nothing to how shattered and at the end of her tether she felt by the time she got back to Tall Trees in the early evening. Her dress was creased, and damp with her perspiration and now and again she could detect a sharp whiff assaulting her from under her arms, while she was limping as the blister on her heel had ruptured painfully.
Holly was fractious about the unexpected change to her routine and she was demanding attention. Thus Peggy had to feed her before she did anything else, thinking glumly to herself that she must make more of an effort to get Holly fully onto solids, as a day like they had just had highlighted all too clearly how difficult it was with a baby who wasn’t weaned. But breast milk was free and in Peggy’s case, abundant, and Holly always seemed content to suckle and she rarely grizzled for something more substantial as Jack had done, meaning that he was more or less weaned already even though he was younger. Peggy couldn’t stop soul-searching – it had been a day for it – and as she watched Holly’s lips suckle, she wondered if she’d breastfed Holly just as much for herself as for what was best for her daughter. If she were honest with herself she thought it all too likely that in the wake of what had happened with Bill, Peggy had found tremendous, or even too much, comfort in feeding Ho
lly herself as it created such a life-enforcing feeling, and Peggy had appreciated feeling needed by her daughter when it was quite clear her husband didn’t feel similarly.
Peggy had a top-to-toe wash and changed her clothes. She went downstairs and plonked Holly down on a rug on the lawn in just her clean nappy in order that she could have a good wriggle and work off a bit of energy by kicking her legs in the air, with Jack beside her in his clean nappy too, and Angela and Connie keeping an eye on them.
This was because Roger, Mabel and Tommy came back about an hour after Gracie had given everyone something to eat and drink before leaving for her nightly shift repacking the guns, and Peggy wanted to give them some time with herself so that they could say to her whatever they needed to.
Tommy was passed a drink and a sandwich and then, unusually, was allowed to take both with him as he was sent to find the other children, after which Peggy insisted on making tea for Roger and Mabel.
They were all very polite with each other, which was fine as far as it went, but it did feel oddly clipped and formal, and Peggy missed the easy camaraderie of only yesterday between her and their evacuee hosts.
Peggy had sent the boys out to see to putting Milburn to bed for the night, and to pop Porky into his pigpen in the garden for twenty minutes so that he could start to get used to it as he was putting on weight with such alacrity that he wasn’t going to be able to sleep in his packing crate by the kitchen range for very much longer.
To avoid any awkward silences in the conversation now, Peggy busied herself with the teapot and moving things around in the pantry as everyone listened to Porky’s increasingly loud and indignant squeals from his pigpen, calling to let everyone know that a terrible mistake had been made and somehow he’d been left somewhere he shouldn’t have been, and this needed putting to rights pretty damn quick as he had lots to do back in his spot in the kitchen. Porky’s cries set the chickens off, which roused the cockerel that was being kept several houses away, which set next door’s dogs barking furiously, and then Milburn gave a ringing neigh as if to say ‘flipping heck, do be quiet all of you!’
