Christmas for the District Nurses

by Annie Groves

  Gladys put down the heavy box and gave a deep sigh. ‘I been coming in, but not stopping around to chat. I been busy – my sister was in hospital for a bit.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that, Gladys. Is she better now?’

  Gladys wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Sort of.’

  It had been a difficult few weeks. Evelyn had slowly regained consciousness, as the young doctor had predicted, but that was just the start. Gladys had visited as often and for as long as she could, but Evelyn had been by turns tearful and rude. When she was told that her baby had died, she had simply said ‘good’. Gladys had apologised to the nurses who had overheard, telling them that her sister didn’t know what she was saying. However, she knew Evelyn had meant what she said.

  Over the next few days the doctor had checked her again and again, and then delivered his next piece of news. There was a strong likelihood that Evelyn would never be able to have a child, after the injuries Max had inflicted on her. Gladys had been horrified; her sister was only twenty. Evelyn had shrugged and said she didn’t care and actually it was a relief. ‘I don’t want no kiddies anyway,’ she’d said.

  ‘You don’t believe that really,’ Gladys had protested.

  ‘Oh yes, I do,’ Evelyn had maintained.

  Now Evelyn was back home, still bedridden but gradually getting stronger. The doctor had offered to arrange help from the district nursing team, but Evelyn had reacted as if he’d slapped her. ‘No thank you. I don’t bleeding think so.’ Once again Gladys had apologised for her, and assured the kindly but harassed doctor that she herself could oversee the nursing and that their next eldest sister could keep an eye on Evelyn in the hours when Gladys was at work or on evening shift.

  Gladys had intended to keep all of this to herself, but when questioned by Alice, with that understanding look on her face, it had all come tumbling out.

  ‘So you see,’ she finished, ‘I been at home more than usual recently. I won’t have her get any sicker for lack of nursing. Our sister Shirley can do some of it, but she don’t know how to change a dressing or spot signs of infection. I got to be in charge, and run the house, and see to the other little ones, and make sure Ma’s all right, cos she’s found out what happened and is all upset. I’m glad to come in here for a bit of a rest, that’s the truth.’

  Alice raised her eyebrows. ‘It can’t be much of a rest. You never stop when you’re here.’

  Gladys chuckled grimly. ‘Believe me, it’s a doddle compared to home at the moment.’

  ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do …’ Alice offered. ‘What about the victory garden? Can I see to that?’

  Gladys gave her first genuine smile of the day. ‘Yes. Oh yes, would you? I ain’t had a moment. There should still be some greens to pick. We could cover some of those beds to keep them going before the cold really sets in. That would be a weight off my mind, that would.’

  Alice nodded. ‘Then I’ll go over later. The others will pitch in as well.’ She looked at the harassed young woman. ‘So you said Ronald had helped you? That was good of him, but actually it’s just what you’d expect – he’s like that. Have you seen him since?’

  Gladys wiped a hand across her face. ‘I owe him,’ she admitted. ‘He was so kind and he had no need to put himself out like that. But no. I ain’t had a moment. Chance would be a fine thing.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Autumn 1943

  Mrs Cannon pushed open her front door, shivering as she did so. ‘Brrr, it’s cold in here,’ she said, hearing the sound of water boiling in the kettle and so realising Peggy had got in before her. Another afternoon spent at the children’s clothing exchange – it was pitiful to see the smallest ones with no warm coats for the coming winter. She had done what she could, matching them with whatever was available in the nearest size, but it never felt enough.

  ‘If you make the tea, I’ll light the fire,’ Peggy offered, coming through while wiping her hands on a tea towel. Mrs Cannon thought that she had recovered on the surface from her disappointment over her young man, but her eyes were sad, no matter how bright she made her voice.

  ‘That’s a good idea, dear. You can bend down so much easier than me.’ Mrs Cannon groaned a little as she set down her bulging bag. Every little movement hurt somewhere these days, and the colder it got, the worse her rheumatics became. Not that she would complain. ‘I stopped off at the market and got some bargains, as they were shutting up stalls. Plenty of potatoes! I shall make us a Woolton pie.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ said Peggy dutifully, as she hunted for the matches. If she never saw a Woolton pie again she would be delighted, but she couldn’t say that aloud. Carefully she coaxed the flames to spread through the kindling. She didn’t want to waste the limited supplies of newspaper.

  Mrs Cannon came through with the teapot and cups on a tray, which she set down on a small table near the fire. ‘Oh well done, dear. I can never get it to catch as quickly as you can.’

  Peggy smiled politely but it did not reach her eyes. She took her cup and sat on the less comfortable of the fireside chairs. It was good to take the weight off her feet; she had stood all through her shift today.

  ‘I saw Mrs Bellings as I was on my way home,’ the older woman began. Peggy pulled a face; she was her least-favourite neighbour. ‘Yes, she was in a bit of a state. You know that nephew of hers, he came to stay with her a few times?’

  ‘Can’t say as I met him properly, but I know who you mean,’ said Peggy vaguely. ‘Didn’t we see him across the road with her once or twice?’

  ‘He was in the army, remember. He had leave in the summer and she took him to a show up the West End; she said they had ever such a nice time. Then he had to join his unit in Italy. Well, it’s very sad, he’s been killed.’

  ‘Oh.’ Peggy didn’t know what to say. There was no point in pretending she liked Mrs Bellings or had anything to do with the nephew. All the same, it was yet another untimely death in among all the others. She wouldn’t wish the sorrow of bereavement on anybody. ‘That’s a shame. She must be upset.’

  ‘She is, dear. He was her only nephew and they were very close.’ Mrs Cannon took a small sip of tea. ‘It’s hard when the younger generation dies before you. It’s not right. I told her, I knew how she felt.’

  Peggy nodded dumbly. The loss of Pete was never far from their thoughts and moments like this brought it all back. All the same, she doubted that any relative of Mrs Bellings could hold a candle to Pete.

  ‘Yes, you’d know that all right,’ she murmured.

  ‘I told her, time does help. She’ll realise that eventually.’ Mrs Cannon turned her face away and surreptitiously wiped her eye with her lace handkerchief. ‘It will take a while, of course. Perhaps I’ll make her a carrot cake to cheer her up. She might not feel like baking, but starving yourself doesn’t get you anywhere.’

  Peggy gave a tired grin. ‘That’s very kind of you. She’ll like that.’ Privately she thought the spiteful old woman didn’t deserve it. But then, Mrs Cannon was probably of a more generous disposition than she herself was, Peggy decided. Bereaved or not, it was hard to forgive the nosy old bag her thoughtless cruelty over James.

  ‘I’m going to sneeze, I’m going to sneeze …’ Edith frantically rummaged in her bag for a hanky and turned away just in time. ‘It’s so unfair. I’m going down to see Harry again at the weekend and now I’m developing a cold. I’ll be all bunged up and my nose will go red and my eyes will water. He won’t want to see me.’

  ‘He will, of course he will.’ Alice was bracing as they unloaded their trugs from the victory garden in the big kitchen at the nurses’ home. ‘Plenty of sage and ginger tea for you. Or anything with vitamin C.’

  ‘If we can get it,’ Edith said gloomily, resigning herself to not feeling 100 per cent for her long-awaited break. She had not seen Harry since their weekend away at the country inn.

  Belinda joined them, with another trug full of vegetables. ‘Look at these,’ she said, lifting up a bu
nch of beetroot. ‘Gladys will be delighted – you can cook the roots and use the leaves like greens. Two for the price of one.’

  Edith reached across and admired them. ‘For no price at all, come to think of it. I got the seeds from Mattie, as she had too many for hers. She has to do them in pots, not in the ground.’

  ‘Bet they work just as well though.’ Belinda finished unloading them. ‘I hear they have another use too – if you’ve run out of lipstick, you can make red dye from them.’

  ‘There you go, Edie. You can make yourself beautiful with beetroot when you see Harry.’ Alice laughed as she sorted them into baskets before storing them in a dark cupboard.

  ‘Marvellous,’ moaned Edith. ‘My lips will match my nose.’

  Belinda gave a snort. ‘That’s a nice picture to bear in mind. That’s made my day.’

  Edith made a face. ‘You must have had a pretty dull day, then.’ She blew her nose again.

  Belinda leant back against the larder door. ‘Not really. I had two new cases this morning – an old man with suspected pneumonia, and a child who’s not developing fast enough. I was pretty sure the poor little fellow has rickets. He’ll have to be taken to the Infant Welfare Clinic, I can’t give him the specialist care he’ll need, but I can check that his mother has brought him there. Not sure she believed me, but I did what I could.’ She scratched her nose. ‘Edie, you’ve got me worried I’ve caught your cold now. I must be imagining it. Anyway, I don’t have time to be ill. I said I’d help Miriam with her new arrivals. Several refugee families have got out of Belgium – they’ve started rounding up the Jews there too. It never ends.’ Her face darkened.

  Alice nodded in sympathy. ‘Miriam does a lot behind the scenes, doesn’t she?’

  Belinda sighed. ‘She has to. There are so many in need of help. At first she housed them all herself but now she’s on the lookout for any spare accommodation. So if you hear of any …’

  They all fell silent, knowing that this was unlikely. So many houses had been rendered uninhabitable by the bombing during the Blitz, and there had been little chance to rebuild the damage.

  ‘Of course,’ said Alice after a moment. ‘I could ask Janet to ask around – the school sometimes gets word. It’s only going to get worse, isn’t it?’

  Belinda shrugged. ‘It looks that way. I’m going to muck in if I have any spare time. So don’t go giving me your cold, Edie.’ She smiled to take the edge off her remark. ‘I might try that beetroot dye thing myself. That’s if I ever go out dancing again. Meanwhile, I had better read up on the treatment of rickets in case that child doesn’t make it as far as the clinic.’ She picked up her mud-stained cardigan and left.

  Edith prodded a beetroot. ‘Do you think it works, Al? The dye thing, I mean?’

  ‘Bound to,’ Alice said. ‘Look at the state of your fingers from where you’ve touched the juice. Bright red. Very fetching.’

  ‘Maybe I will try it after all,’ Edith mused, rubbing her stained fingers. ‘I want to look my best for Harry, cold or no cold.’

  Alice gave her an affectionate, exasperated look. ‘Edith Banham, will you listen to yourself. You know very well that he wouldn’t care if you turned up dressed in a cardboard box. As long as he sees you, he’ll be happy.’

  It had been almost a month since Peggy had sent her letter to James, fired by Clarrie’s theory of what might have happened. It had seemed completely plausible at the time: James with a broken arm, thinking one of his fellow GIs had informed her, but a victim of a mean trick. Yet there had been no reply and Peggy was forced back to her original conclusion: he really had had second thoughts and ditched her, without even telling her.

  The nights were drawing in, and it had been another grey day in a series of grey days. Peggy glared at the sky as she came home from her factory shift, thinking that its colour matched her mood exactly. She hoped that Pete’s mother was not back yet as she knew she would be snappy and the woman didn’t deserve that. She had just about held on to her temper during the shift but it had been a supreme effort. Everyone apart from Clarrie was an idiot.

  Pushing open the door she almost tripped on an envelope that was sticking out from the edge of the doormat. She swore under her breath. Whatever it was, it could not possibly be of any interest. She almost left it where it was.

  Then she picked it up and let out a muffled shriek.

  It was his handwriting. She would know it anywhere. She had teased him that they must learn everything differently in the States as it looked unlike any script she had seen before. She rushed into the kitchen and took it to the window for better light. Her heart was beating hard in her chest, in a mixture of excitement and dread. Perhaps this was it: confirmation that he wanted nothing more to do with her. At least she would know, though. It was the uncertainty that was so draining. Cautiously she slipped her finger along the edge and tore it open.

  Half of her wanted to read it and half of her didn’t. The seconds stretched into a minute and then she took a deep breath before unfolding the sheets of writing paper.

  My dearest Peggy,

  You will rightly be wondering what on God’s earth has happened to me. To tell you the truth I am not sure. It has been one strange time, but I was mighty glad to get your letter. You got it in one about my arm. I couldn’t write for a long time because it got broken – among other things.

  Peggy, you have to believe me that I tried to meet you that day. I set off extra early and had almost got to your door. I was one street away, I guess, when this young British soldier came up to me. He said he knew who I was. I couldn’t say the same for him but I didn’t want to be rude in case he was a friend of yours. I stopped to listen – big mistake.

  I won’t tell you what he said exactly, but he was no gentleman. Said he knew you better than I did, that you were stringing me along for a joke and that you were secretly engaged to him. I laughed in his face and then he said he had something that would prove it. Like a fool I followed him, down the side of one of those houses – I forget what you call those little alleys.

  He had an accomplice there and I have to say they’d planned it all good. They beat me black and blue till I was out cold. I kind of remember they poured something down my throat but there was nothing I could do about it.

  Next thing I know I’m waking up in the hospital on our base here. Somehow I’d been sent back to the right place, I guess my papers were still on me. They thought I was drunk to start with. My right arm was in plaster, my ribs were broken, so was my nose, two of my teeth were gone and for a while my head was so swelled up I could hardly see. I couldn’t think straight neither. The doctor told me I was talking nonsense most of the time. I knew I had to get a-hold of you but there was no way of doing it.

  Lying there for week after week, not being able to do a damn thing, my mind took to wondering whether the man was right. Peggy, I am so sorry for doubting you. It was just that I hated being there and it made me think badly of everyone, so I was ready to believe the worst. Then I got your letter and saw that he had told me a pack of lies. Whether he was jealous of me or was one of those that think the likes of you and me shouldn’t be together, I don’t know. He was a short little guy, sandy hair, eyes a bit close together, front teeth like a rabbit’s. If he’d been on his own he would never have beaten me in a fight, but the scrawny little coward knew that and got a friend to help him.

  I could have asked the doctor to send you word, I guess, but by then I wanted to write to you myself. It’s taken all this time to be able to hold a pen straight again. I’m going to be AOK, they tell me, now that I’m on the mend. I want to beg your forgiveness in person as soon as I can get leave. In the meantime, my darling Peggy, know that you are in my thoughts every minute of the day and I meant everything I said to you the last time we met. You are the most beautiful girl in the world and I am the luckiest man because I met you. We can’t let these ugly people stand in our way. We are meant to be together.

  All my love,

 
James

  Peggy reached for the tall wooden stool and sank down on it, her head spinning. He’d been lying there in pain all that time. Some bastard had tricked him with vile lies about her and then they had done that to him, deliberately, and tried to make out he was drunk to discredit him on top of everything else. Her poor, poor James. She had the urge to leave everything and run to his side. But he was on a military base; they wouldn’t allow her to visit him. It wasn’t as if she was family. A sob rose in her throat.

  The description rang a bell, though. A scrawny little coward with buck teeth, but who knew her well enough to work out when she was doing what. She’d made it easy that day – staring out of the window, going to the door, for all the world to see she was eagerly waiting for someone. She might as well have put out a flag.

  Mrs Bellings’s nephew would have seen it all. Disgusting man. She just knew it was him. All that family had the same prejudiced views, and he had a nasty streak to boot. He’d stared at Edith when she came round, and she didn’t spook easily. Perhaps it had even been him who had waylaid her that time. It sounded like his method. He was big and brave when it came to attacking a woman smaller than him, but had to get help for a man his own size. She was glad he was dead.

  That was a terrible thing to admit. She’d thought the same, years ago, when she’d heard about the heroic death of the man who had raped her when she thought they were having a fun date. Everyone said he was a saviour of the country – but she’d known his other side. Here was another man who had died in the cause of freedom but had done despicable deeds. She couldn’t regret his death.

  However, she would not say that to James. She would write to him at once and reassure him, now that she knew he still loved her. Her heart sang even as she wept for the pain he had gone through on her account. He still loved her. She was back in the land of the living, with everything to hope for. She just had to wait a little longer.