A Hospital Summer Page 14

  ‘Yes.’ I had to be careful with my own breathing. ‘Yes. You have.’

  ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he raised his other hand slowly to the towel, ‘but I can feel it’s ‒ sort ‒ of ‒ puffing.’

  I caught his hand. ‘You mustn’t touch the dressing, John. You ‒ er ‒ might dirty it.’

  ‘I forgot that.’ He did not take his hand away from mine. ‘Of course, you have to be ‒ fearfully careful about ‒ sepsis ‒ and what have you ‒ don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’ I did not dare look at the towel now; I did not need to look at it to remember what lay beneath; I did not think I would ever be able to forget what I had just seen.

  For some time ‒ it might only have been a few minutes, it might have been an hour, I could not tell ‒ he was semi-comatose. Occasionally he asked about his friends. If many of them had been hurt? If I had nursed them? He asked about Father O’Brien. ‘Nice little chap. Good of him to come in to see me. He was fearfully quick. Did he happen to be in the hospital?’

  ‘Yes, he was here.’

  ‘Is it padres’ visiting afternoon or something?’ Now he seemed to have forgotten the raid.

  ‘Something like that. The chaplains are generally around when they’re wanted. You’re a Roman Catholic?’ I knew he was, but I wanted to know if he had had the Final Rites of his Church administered; I had had no chance to ask any of the Sisters, but I knew from things my father had told me how very important this would be for him. ‘Would you like to talk to Father O’Brien again?’

  ‘Don’t bother him. He may be busy with some other chap. He was fearfully kind. He ‒ er ‒ said he thought it would be as well if ‒ er ‒ he did ‒ all he could do for me. I was a bit scared then of ‒ er ‒ pegging out. Seems silly now. Wish I hadn’t bothered him. I feel ‒ fine.’

  ‘Good.’ His hands were growing colder, if that was possible. ‘Would you like another blanket?’

  ‘It is a bit chilly ‒ thanks.’

  I heaped three more blankets on him, and refilled his hot-water bottles. He grew no warmer, but a little drowsy. ‘I feel,’ he whispered weakly, ‘as if ‒ I could sleep for weeks.’ Then suddenly, in a much louder voice, he said, ‘Nurse ‒ I feel queer. Oh ‒ Nurse’ ‒ he threw his whole body forward ‒ ‘hold on to me ‒ hold on to me ‒ please!’

  He was sitting upright now, swaying dangerously. I sat on the side of his bed and caught his shoulders, then slipped one arm round his waist, and with my other hand rested his head against my shoulder. His head flopped into the nape of my neck, like a weary child’s. ‘I’ll hold you, John ‒ I’ll hold you. I won’t let you go ‒ I promise I won’t. You’ll be all right in a moment ‒ I’m sure you will.’ I spoke instinctively; I did not stop to worry what I should say or do, I knew exactly what to do. I stroked the uninjured back of his head gently, as my mother used to stroke our heads when we were children. ‘There, there. There’s nothing to be frightened about. I’ll hold you.’

  He did not answer. He gave a small, contented sigh as if that inexplicable moment of terror had passed, and to my infinite relief I felt his muscles relax as he leant against me.

  Miss Mason came over to his bed swiftly. She must have been keeping an eye on him to have arrived by me so soon. ‘Has the pain come on again, poor lad?’ she murmured, bending over my shoulder to look at the exposed part of his face. I could not see any of his face, as his injured left side was towards me. She touched his head, raising it from my neck slightly. Very quietly she said, ‘Lay him back again. Nurse.’ She helped me to do this, then covered his whole face with the top grey blanket. She looked over his body to me. ‘You did not tell him about his face?’

  ‘No, Sister.’ My mouth felt dry.

  ‘Good. I’m glad he was spared that. I am glad you were able to remain with him. The poor lad.’ She looked down. ‘One can only be grateful he did not linger.’ She straightened her back. ‘Go and wash your hands well, Nurse, then come back to me. And wash your face and neck, too. You have blood on both.’

  Blood. The air of the hospital was heavy with the sweet, sour smell; there was blood on my hands if not on my face, many times more that afternoon and evening. Later that night, and next day, when we carried the bloody-stained kit of the men who had died to the Pack Store, the sickly scent clung to our hands again, and remained to haunt the back of our throats for days.

  One afternoon during the next week Mary cycled up from the Stables and called into the Drawing-room to see if I was off duty. Kirsty and I were sitting on the step of one of the french windows, writing letters.

  Mary sat down beside us. ‘I hear you’re now permanently in the A.S. Block, Clare, Like it?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a terrific amount of work to do, but it’s sheer joy having masses of equipment. The Sisters are decent, too. Mason’s a bit of a battleaxe at times, but she’s a jolly good nurse, and teaches us a packet.’

  ‘Have you recovered from the raid in there? We heard that A.S. bore the brunt of that.’

  ‘More or less. Most of them died, so now we’re about back to normal.’

  She looked sober. ‘We heard the death-rate was high.’

  ‘It was.’ We told her how high.

  She winced. ‘How did you manage to lay them all out? That’s not a thing you can hurry. Last Offices take ages.’

  Kirsty had become very much less academic about life in the last week. She said, ‘We didn’t have time to lay anyone out. We only had time to roll them in blankets when they died, and then someone came and took them away. There wasn’t time to ask where. We needed the beds too badly.’

  Joe rang me up three evenings later. ‘Clare, I’m on my way round. I’m not going to make a date. I daren’t tempt Providence any more. I’m just going to drive your way, and if you’re outside the house I’ll slow down and pick you up. Try and be outside. I want to talk to you, and there mayn’t be an opportunity after to-night. I’m on the move.’

  ‘Oh, Joe, not you overseas, too!’ I rested my head on the wall above the telephone. ‘The whole world’s going overseas. Charles already. Luke as soon as his leg’s right for certain, he says. Thanet, Staff Williams, Mary’s husband ‒ now you. It’s too much.’

  I heard him laugh. ‘Poor Clare. And to think I never knew you cared! Why don’t you apply for foreign parts yourself?’

  ‘Can’t. I’m under age.’ I felt very depressed suddenly. I had got so used to having Joe around the hospital. If he went it would be as if the last of my great friends had gone. I had not realized until that moment that I counted Joe even as a friend. Apparently I did, and much good it was going to do me to count him as that now he was leaving. I said I would take a walk in the evening air. ‘I agree about no dates. Remember that dinner you asked me to?’

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten. Did you get any dinner that night?’

  ‘No. Did you?’

  ‘I did not. So what? It’s good for our figures, if not our morales. And, Clare ‒’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks for bracketing me with Charles, Luke, Staff Williams, Thanet, and Mary’s husband. That was big of you. I’m now off to look for my rotor-arm, and then maybe I can get my car started.’

  ‘Have you got enough petrol?’

  ‘Hell, yes. I’ll use what’s left in the tank. I’ll not be needing it after to-day. I can’t take it with me. I’m going to leave her in the Mess for anyone who wants her.’

  Ten minutes after that conversation I strolled out of the front door and down our drive. Joe drove up almost at once. ‘Surprise, surprise ‒ now who would have thought I’d run into you?’ He opened the door. ‘Hop in, Clare, and let’s get out of this damned camp.’

  ‘What about passes? You got one? I haven’t.’

  He said to hell with passes. ‘You got your Red Cross identity card? I’ve the usual. We’ll take a chance. We’ll probably be shot as parachutists, but what do we care?’

  We drove along the main road out of the camp. We discovered there were road
blocks roughly every thousand yards. We were stopped three times by Military Policemen, nine times by Local Defence Volunteers, but at none of the blocks were we delayed long. We were merely asked to show our identity cards, torches were flashed in our faces, and into the back of his small car, and then we were allowed to carry on.

  ‘If Jerry overlooks these young searchlights they’re all flashing around so happily,’ said Joe, as we left one barricade, ‘he’s a bigger mug than I think he is. Do you think we can get any peace at all on this road, Clare? I want to talk to you, and I can’t with these chaps playing soldiers all over the show.’ He looked round at the quiet countryside. ‘Do you suppose we could get out and walk round for a while?’

  ‘If we do we’ll almost certainly be shot at. They’re all out looking for parachutists disguised as nuns, and I’ve got a cloak on and a white cap. Some lunatic might mistake me for a nun ‒ particularly as I’m tall. We’d better stay in the car.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ He slowed to a stop. ‘Another block. Let’s have your card, Clare. And to think we came out to get away from it all!’

  When we were a few hundred yards past that block he slowed and stopped the car by the side of the road. ‘Let’s see if we can get away with it here. Those last chaps know who we are. And I must talk to you.’ He took out his cigarettes. ‘Have one.’

  As he lit my cigarette a Redcap corporal on a motor-cycle drew up beside the car and flashed a torch in our faces. ‘Excuse me, sir, can I see your identity card, please?’

  ‘’Struth!’ muttered Joe, handing over both our cards.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ The corporal’s manner was polite, but he flashed his torch up and down Joe, then me and then looked searchingly through the car. ‘Were you and the lady planning to stop here long, sir? I wouldn’t advise it.’

  I heard Joe sigh. I decided it might be a man’s world and a man’s war, but this was one of the occasions when the womanly touch might be successful. I leant across Joe. ‘Corporal,’ I begged, ‘the Captain realizes we ought to keep moving, but I did so want to talk to him, and he is posted to-morrow. This’ ‒ I managed to make my voice crack ‒ ‘may be our last opportunity for a long time. Don’t you think we could just stop for a few minutes? We won’t get out.’ I felt Joe kick me encouragingly, and added, ‘Please, couldn’t we just this once?’

  The corporal returned our cards, tucked his torch under his arm, and drew on his gloves. ‘Sorry to have troubled you, miss. Beg pardon, sir. I’ll see as you don’t get troubled no more for the next half-hour. I’ll just get the number of your car, sir.’ He walked round to the front, flashed his torch again, then was back by us. ‘Good night, sir ‒ miss.’ He saluted, stepped back to his motor-cycle, and kicked it to life.

  We watched his microscopic rear-light vanish. Joe began to laugh. ‘Clare, you devil! You almost had the poor chap in tears. I’m close to a manly weep myself. Where did you learn to lie like that?’

  ‘I wasn’t lying! Except about saying I wanted to talk to you, and not vice versa. That’s just splitting hairs. Now,’ I sat sideways to look at him properly, ‘we’ve got half an hour by courtesy of the Military Police. What do you want to talk to me about?’

  He coughed, turning his head sharply away from me as he did so. He had coughed several times during this interrupted drive. ‘Forgive me ‒ smoking too much.’

  ‘You ought to give it up then,’ I replied absently, wondering just what he did want to talk to me about. With most young men of my acquaintance, I would have been quite certain that his desire to stop the car was merely to allow his hands to be free for a necking party. I knew perfectly well that that was the construction the M.P. corporal had put on our request to be allowed to remain in a parked car; but that M.P. corporal did not know Joe Slaney as well as I did ‒ and that was not well by any means. However, I was tolerably used to young men on the verge of making passes, and, despite what Mary and Agatha had said about a girl having to show willing, I was convinced that Joe was not about to make a pass. He had never shown the slightest desire to touch me, and he was not showing it now. He was sitting in his corner, sideways, after that slight coughing bout, as I was sitting in mine. He was also sitting in silence, looking at me. ‘Joe,’ I reminded him, ‘get on with it. We haven’t all that much time.’

  ‘We’ve enough,’ he said slowly. ‘ “Nothing is ours except time.” Even if it’s only half an hour. It’s ours.’

  ‘ “Nothing is ours” ‒ who said that, Joe? Churchill? It’s so dead right, it must have been him.’

  He gave a shout of laughter. ‘Darling, and I thought you were educated! The chap who said that was a little before the old man’s time. Just a little. A chap called Lucius Annasus Seneca wrote it in a letter to a pal of his. You’ll find it in his Epistidce ad Lucilium, if you ever read Latin.’

  ‘I don’t. But I have heard of Seneca ‒ even if I can’t quote him. My father may have ‒ I mean, he may have had it. He had a lot of Latin books. I’ll look when I’m next home.’

  ‘You do that. Tell me’ ‒ his voice was very gentle ‒ ‘about your father, Clare. How do you feel now? Damn bad, still, is it?’

  ‘Pretty bad.’ It was odd how easy it was to talk to him about my father. I had not been able to mention him to anyone ‒ not even to Charles. ‘Not so much in the day, as we’re so busy. But at night sometimes I dream he’s still alive, then I wake up. And he’s not.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s the devil when you wake up, isn’t it? How about your mother? And the practice? What’s happened?’

  ‘Uncle Michael’s carrying on alone ‒ and half killing himself with work. He managed to get a locum for a little while. Locums are hard to get now.’

  ‘What about the money angle? Has that hit your mother?’

  ‘Inevitably, quite a bit, but it’s not as bad as it might have been, as Mother has always had a little money of her own, and Father wouldn’t let her use it, so it accumulated, and means she’s got enough to live on. Just. The boys are helping. Of course, if it wasn’t for the War she could sell our house, but who wants to buy a house on the south-east coast with all the invasion talk that’s going on? It’s not worth a couple of hundred.’

  ‘So she’s hanging on to it? That’s a bit of worry as well for you and your brothers.’

  ‘Yes.’ I explained how we had tried to persuade my mother to go inland. ‘We’ve some cousins in Buckinghamshire. She won’t go. She says she doesn’t want to let the garden get out of hand, and there’s a lot of work she can do ‒ mobile canteening ‒ things like that. The place was stiff with troops when I was last home. Mother rushes up on the cliffs with her van and urns and serves them hot drinks on the gun-sites. She’s been wonderful ‒ and she says she’s not going to give herself time to think ‒ she must have work to do. Goodness knows, there’s enough for her to do,’ I went on, ‘and it is just about the only thing when you’re worried or upset. I think I would have gone up the wall about Father if I hadn’t had so much to keep my mind occupied here.’

  ‘That’s true.’ He lit another cigarette, and coughed violently. ‘Sorry, Clare ‒ maybe I should give it up.’

  ‘You ought to do something about that cough, certainly. Where did you pick it up? I don’t remember you having a smoker’s cough in the Ob. Block. Perhaps you’ve got a chill.’

  ‘Let it be.’ He sounded bored with the subject of his cough. ‘The African sun’ll clear it.’

  ‘That where you’re going?’

  ‘For my money ‒ yes. I’ve to buy myself tropical kit, so where else? Every one’s making tracks for Africa.’

  I said I could understand about that. ‘If we’re going to be invaded won’t we need an army here?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. No one tells me anything.’ He stubbed out his cigarette, and played with the steering-wheel. ‘But there’s something I want to tell you, Clare, and, as it looks as if I may not have the chance to tell you some other time, I’ll have to tell you now. I have to tell you’ ‒ he twisted
the wheel, and gazed ahead as if he was driving ‒ ‘that I love you very much. I always have, and I think I always will.’ He spoke quite casually, as if he were discussing the weather. He dropped his hands from the wheel, and put them in his pockets. ‘I realize that I’m talking clean out of turn; I realize that this is really the first occasion that we’ve been alone together on a friendly basis. I’m not counting that evening you heard your father was dead. You weren’t conscious what was going on that night. And before we’ve been fighting it out. Probably if I had any sense I’d have gone off leaving us fighting it out. I wouldn’t have opened my big mouth about loving you, when you and I are still at square one. But I don’t know when, or if, we’ll reach square two. And since I have to leave you, I feel I’d like you to know what I feel about leaving you. I feel’ ‒ his voice was suddenly urgent ‒ ‘like hell. I never knew anything could be such hell. And there you have it, Clare. For the record. Or to give you a good laugh. It’s all yours with my love. And so am I.’

  I was not merely surprised; I was dumbfounded. ‘Joe ‒ I don’t know what to say ‒ I never guessed.’

  ‘And why in hell would you? With me always beefing at you about playing hockey, and casting your eyes down? Anything for a bloody good crack ‒ that’s Slaney. Just call me Laughing Boy and have done.’

  ‘I won’t call you that. And I won’t have a good laugh. But for your record, thanks, Joe. Thank you ‒’

  ‘Don’t be such a prim little Victorian miss!’ He turned on me furiously. ‘You don’t have to thank the gentleman for proposing. I haven’t proposed. I’m not that conceited! You’ve nothing to thank me for!’

  ‘Oh, yes, I have!’ I was equally indignant. ‘You were awfully kind to me that night about Father. You were marvellous. And I was grateful ‒ and still am.’

  He grinned. ‘So there! Eh?’ and we were both laughing when he went on; ‘Skip it, Clare. I’m glad if I helped you; I wanted to help you; I think I’ll always want to do that, and if I ever can I hope I will. I didn’t expect to fall in love with someone like you. Damn it, girl, you’re as near as dark as I am! I’ve always gone in for blondes, not leggy brunettes ‒ and then I walked into the damn Ob. Block one morning and saw you ‒ and that was the end of the search for me. And what gets me is that I did not even know I was searching. I knew.’ His voice altered, his tone was deeper than I had ever heard it. ‘I knew. When I saw you. And as the odds are against our meeting again, I thought I’d tell you when I told you good-bye. Which is what I’m doing now.’