by Annie Groves
‘No, of course not,’ she reassured him with more confidence than she felt. ‘You will get better, Paolo. But first the doctor will have to look at your leg.’
To her relief he seemed to accept what she was saying, although he looked in so much agony that Rosie didn’t know whether or not he had understood her properly.
‘If you happen to know any good marching songs in their lingo, miss, you might try singing one,’ the soldier, who had now introduced himself to her as Greg, suggested. ‘Only it might help these lads to give him a less bumpy ride if they had summat to march to and it could take the poor kid’s mind off what’s happening to him.’
It had been plain to Rosie from the expression on Greg’s face, and from what he had not said rather than what he had, just how serious Paolo’s condition was.
‘I don’t know any marching songs, but I do know this,’ Rosie offered uncertainly, starting to sing a cheerful song la Nonna had taught her and Bella as young girls, singing it to them whilst they sat on the floor beside her chair.
‘That’s the ticket,’ Greg approved when the men joined in what was obviously a familiar song. Like the Italians from the old neighbourhood, these men too had good voices and Rosie thought that anyone hearing them without knowing the real situation would think they were a happy bunch indeed.
The doctor’s house was at the far end of the village and they attracted a good deal of attention as they made their way down the narrow street to the large rambling house set back from the road.
The doctor’s housekeeper opened the door to their knock, standing guard over the hallway behind her whilst she told them that the doctor was resting and did not see patients in the afternoon. To Rosie’s relief Greg stepped forward and immediately persuaded the housekeeper of the urgency of the situation.
Within a minute of her disappearing down the hallway, the doctor himself appeared, pulling on his jacket and smoothing the thin wisps of his white hair as he hurried towards his visitors.
After Greg had explained the situation, the doctor said calmly, ‘Very well, in that case I had better see the young man. You, young lady, please stay with him as you can speak Italian and I can’t. Mrs Beddows, please show them into the surgery.’
‘I’ll take the men back to the field and then come for the lad with the lorry,’ Greg told Rosie. ‘It will be knocking-off time for the POWs soon enough anyway.’
When Dr Flint reappeared he smiled in a kind way at Paolo, who had been placed on the narrow hospital bed in the surgery by his friends.
‘Now, let’s have a look at that leg, young man.’
Swiftly Rosie translated what he had said for Paolo, who was looking very apprehensive.
She stood back whilst the doctor lifted back the leg of Paolo’s trousers and looked at his wound.
‘Mmm…perhaps you would be kind enough to come and stand beside our patient, my dear, and face me,’ the doctor told Rosie in a calm voice.
When Rosie had done so, he told her quietly, ‘This is a very serious wound indeed. He will be lucky if the leg does not become gangrenous. By rights he should be taken to hospital to have it attended to, but you see this red line?’ He indicated the line Rosie had already noted. ‘If that were to reach his groin I doubt that anything could save him, not even this new wonder drug, penicillin, I have been reading about that we are told will combat all manner of infections. It is my belief that we cannot risk the delay involved in transferring him to a hospital. The wound needs to be lanced and as much of the poison removed as possible. Have you done any nursing, by chance?’
Rosie shook her head, her stomach tensing.
‘Never mind. You are a stout-hearted, sensible girl, I am sure. Mrs Beddows,’ he called, raising his voice.
When the housekeeper appeared Dr Flint instructed her to bring boiling water and clean cloths.
‘I would like you to tell our patient that I must lance his wound. It will be painful for him but there is no help for that, I am afraid.’
By the time the housekeeper had returned, the doctor had put on a white coat and scrubbed his hands with carbolic. The smell of it stung Rosie’s nostrils. She tried not to betray what she was feeling when she saw the sharp little knife the doctor had removed from a locked case and cleaned with some liquid that also smelled very strong.
‘Now, first you must come over here and scrub your hands as I have done.’
When Rosie had obeyed his instructions to his satisfaction, the doctor told her, ‘Right, now I want you to hold the lad’s hand and keep him as calm and still as you can, please.’
Rosie did as she had been told, fixing her gaze on Paolo’s face rather than on what the doctor was doing, although she knew the moment that he lanced the wound, not just from the sharp cry of pain Paolo gave just before he passed out, but also from the stench.
‘Now quickly, Rosie, go and scrub your hands again and then come and help me here. Watch what Mrs Beddows is doing and copy her,’ the doctor instructed.
The housekeeper, her own hands scrubbed, was laying piping-hot cloths on Paolo’s leg whilst the doctor stroked firmly down it so that a thick yellow pus spurted from the wound.
Rosie felt light-headed with nausea but she fought it back, working as swiftly as she could to keep up the supply of fresh hot cloths.
Paolo had come round and was moaning and crying out for his mother.
‘I will give him a draught of something to ease the pain once I have done what I can to clean his wound. He will have to be hospitalised, of course.’
‘Will he be all right?’ Rose asked anxiously.
‘It is too soon to say. The infection is very bad and has been neglected for too long. Had the cut been properly cleaned at the time he received it, but even then…His leg was cut by a spade you said?’
‘Yes,’ Rosie confirmed.
‘I intend to telephone the commander in charge of the POW camp and request that an ambulance is sent to take this young man to hospital. He is very fortunate that you had the gumption to act on his behalf,’ the doctor told her approvingly.
Rosie smiled with relief. She was glad she had taken action but should she have done something sooner, she worried. Should she have let on that she could understand Italian beforehand? She would never forgive herself if Paolo didn’t make it because of her reluctance to help an Italian. Paolo was just a sick boy, and helping him to get better was what mattered, not what nationality he was, Rosie decided, discounting any thought of disloyalty to her father.
It was late when Rosie eventually returned to the hostel, having waited with Paolo for the ambulance that took him to the nearest military hospital. Rosie had been relieved to see how carefully and competently the stretcher bearers had dealt with their patient and, having assured herself that she had done all she could, she had thanked the doctor and his housekeeper for the tea and toast she had been given and made her way through the village back to the hostel.
Of course, she had to relate to everyone everything that that happened, and then she had been summoned to see the warden, who wanted to hear the whole thing too.
‘I am afraid that the foreman at the farm was rather cross with me,’ Rosie told Mrs Johnson carefully. She did not want to be accused of snitching on George Duncan, but she wanted the warden on her side in case there was any further trouble.
‘There is no reason why he should be, my dear. You acted very properly and promptly. Just as I would expect my girls to do. That poor young man was very lucky.’
Rosie felt warmed by Mrs Johnson’s praise. It reminded her of how she had felt as a little girl when her father had praised her for what he had called ‘doing right by others’. Her father had held strong views about ‘doing unto others as you would be done by’. He had taught her always to recognise a kindness others had done to her and to ‘pass it on’ by doing a kindness to others herself. Rosie remembered how he would smile at her when, as a young girl, she had told him earnestly that she had run down to the shop for an elderly neighbour, or h
elped carry their washing down to the local wash house for them, and how he would tell her that he was proud of her for thinking of others.
As she grew older there had been no need for him to repeat the little homilies of her childhood because she was already acting on them and understanding them properly. It had lifted her heart so much and made her feel so proud to know that her father was such a kind and good man, and it still did. She wanted so much to prove herself worthy of being his daughter and to make sure that everything she did underlined and reinforced her pride in that. It was as though somewhere deep inside herself she had wanted to prove to him that whilst her mother had put her relationship with an Italian before her relationship with him, she would never ever do so.
But suddenly she was seeing her behaviour in a different and confusing light. Would her father really praise her for turning against all Italians? She knew how he had always shaken his head when anyone had started talking nastily about ‘foreigners’; saying peaceably that there were good and bad people in every country. What would he think of her behaviour if he could see into her heart now? Rosie asked herself uncertainly. Would he be proud of her for trying her best to ‘dislike’ and distance herself from everything and everyone Italian, or would he say quietly, ‘Do as you would be done by, Rosie lass, allus remember that’?
Rosie knew the answer. ‘But I’ve been doing it for you, Dad,’ she whispered sadly. ‘Because I want to be your daughter, not Aldo’s, and because I want you to know how proud I am of you being my dad.’ Her thoughts were so painful and confused that Rosie wished she could run away from them. She had been guilty of behaving in a way her father wouldn’t have liked, she could see that now. She felt that she had let her father down, not just once but twice over. She missed him so much. Just thinking about him made her heart ache. If only he was still here for her to turn to with her troubled thoughts. But the war had taken him from her just like it could have taken poor Paolo from his family. A family who loved him just as she loved her father. War was a dreadfully cruel thing, but that did not mean that she should let it make her cruel, Rosie recognised soberly.
TWENTY-THREE
‘Well, I don’t care who he is, one more word from him about “ruddy land girls” and I’m not doing no more work until he apologises.’
‘It’s all my fault,’ Rosie said uncomfortably, as she listened to Audrey’s determined statement. ‘If I hadn’t helped Paolo, then George Duncan would never have picked on us and made us do this.’
The girls were standing at the edge of one of the farm tracks where, for the fourth morning that week, they had been sent to repair its potholes using the store of cinders and stones kept for that purpose. It was heavy, dirty work, with the girls having to load and push heavy barrows of cinders and then clean out the potholes before repacking them with the cinders and making them flat. None of them was in any doubt that this was the foreman’s revenge for the manner in which they had defied him over Paolo.
‘He ought to be grateful to us, not acting like this,’ Peggy said fiercely. ‘Because if it hadn’t been for Rosie that poor lad would be dead and Mr Foreman Duncan would be having to explain to someone in authority how he came to have the injury wot killed him.’
‘He’d have lied about that to save his own neck, just like he lies about everything,’ Sheila joined in, stamping viciously on the cinders. ‘Pig!’
‘Well, he won’t be bossing us around for much longer,’ Mary announced smugly, ‘because last night I had a word with my chap and told him what was going on, and since he’s off duty today he’s going to come by later and have a word with Mr Bullyboy Duncan.’
Everyone turned to look at Mary.
She and Peggy had been seeing their RAF boyfriends just as often as they could, and Mary had already given everyone to understand that she and Ian were now courting seriously.
‘That’s all very well, Mary, but why should someone like George Duncan pay any attention to your Ian?’ Audrey demanded.
‘Because my Ian’s squadron leader is the duke, that’s why, and our foreman is employed by him. Ian’s going to have a strong word with him about mistreating POWs and bullying poor sweet land girls, not to mention giving his own wife a black eye.’
‘Well, if that’s the case, I just wish that your Ian had come and had a word wi’ him on Monday instead of waiting until Thursday,’ Jean grumbled. ‘One of the girls that’s bin here a while was telling me that this is the worst job on the farm and that everyone hates it. Mind you, she says that when it comes to haymaking we’ll know all about it. She reckons we’ll be working sun up until sun down to get the hay in.’
‘If I could have me choice I’d prefer to work with the chickens,’ another girl piped up. ‘Easy they are. All you have to do is just chuck a bit of mash down in the troughs and give them a bit of grain and then collect the eggs.’
‘Oh, yes? What about when you have to wring their necks and pluck their feathers? And cleaning out the boxes is disgusting.’
‘Pooh, you think that’s bad? The last place I was, I ended up having to help to ring one of the young bulls,’ a girl from one of the other gangs told them, grinning when she saw the look on their faces. ‘Yes, and check to see when the bull had been with the cows as well. Of course, it was lovely when the calves were born. Suck on your fingers that strong, they do…I’d have bin there on that farm yet but for my mate,’ she added regretfully.
‘Why, what happened?’ Sheila asked.
‘After we’d done the milking we had to load the milk churns onto these floats pulled by a carthorse, and take them to where the Milk Marketing Board would collect them. One day two of the other girls bet my pal to a race to see who could get to the drop-off point first. Word got round and someone set up a book, running bets, you know, and we were the favourites on account of my pal knowing a thing or two. Anyway, when the day came we set off and we were out in front and would have won if this ruddy dog hadn’t come from out of nowhere and run barking at old Billy, the carthorse. Didn’t like dogs, Billy didn’t, not one little bit. So he set off down the hill like he was running the Grand National, me and my pal pulling on the reins and yelling at him to slow down. Then he saw the fence at the bottom of the hill and turned off so as not to run into it, that sharp, like, that me and my pal and the milk churns were thrown off the float. Fined over a month’s wages apiece, we were, and put on other duties,’ she concluded with a heavy sigh just audible over the noise of everyone’s laughter.
At dinner time, just as Mary had predicted, George Duncan arrived, glowering at them as they sat on the bank in front of the hedge eating their beetroot and cheese sandwiches.
‘You should be doing better than this,’ he snarled at them. ‘Lazy buggers, especially you,’ he told Rosie, kicking out with his heavy studded boot at her legs.
She had just managed to move them out of the way when they all heard the sound of a lorry chugging up the road. It stopped and Ian, Mary’s chap, got out and came strolling over, looking very handsome and stern in his RAF uniform. Rosie could see the suspicion darkening the foreman’s face.
‘Is this the chap, Mary?’ Ian asked.
Mary nodded.
‘Here, what’s all this?’ George Duncan demanded. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s going on, mate,’ Ian spoke up briskly. ‘My girl here has been telling me that you’ve been picking on her and her friends, and it’s got to stop, do you hear? And another thing. We do not treat POWs badly in this country, and anyone that does is going to get himself into serious trouble.’
It was plain to Rosie that the foreman wasn’t used to being told what to do. His face was burning dark red with temper; his anger glittered dangerously in his eyes. Although he hadn’t raised them, his hands were bunched menacingly into fists.
‘Says you, mate,’ he challenged Ian. ‘What do you think you’re going to do about it?’ he demanded threateningly.
It was plain, though, that Ian was ready for him, and Ros
ie could only admire the way he said firmly, ‘I’ve heard that you’re pretty handy with your fists – when you’re using them on women. There are a couple of chaps in the squadron who box and they would be very happy to show you just how good they are with theirs. Besides,’ Ian warned him, ‘I dare say that His Grace won’t be too happy to hear that one of his employees has been mistreating POWs and nearly killing them.’
The foreman’s face suddenly lost all its colour. ‘You won’t be going saying nothing to His Grace,’ he blustered. ‘You’re all talk. The duke will be going back overseas any day, so I’ve heard.’
‘He’ll be home on leave at the end of the month and, being the decent sort he is, he’ll be making it his business to come into the mess and have a word with the chaps. So remember, you leave these girls alone and pick on someone your own size in future.’
Ian stayed with the girls until the foreman had lumbered away, laughing when they all crowded round him to thank him for what he had done.
‘Bossy Boots Duncan won’t dare try it on with us now,’ Mary boasted, unable to keep her pride in ‘her’ Ian out of her voice.
‘I hope not,’ Rosie agreed, but she wasn’t convinced.
‘There, that’s them done,’ Rosie said feelingly as she finished darning the lisle stockings that were part of the girls’ uniform.
‘Thank heavens that it’s warm enough now to go bare-legged,’ Mitzi Fellowes, one of the girls from another gang, said happily. ‘I hate them lisles; they itch me to death.’
‘Well, you’ll get scratched to death if you go bare-legged once we start harvesting,’ another girl told her warningly.
