A Liverpool Lass (18 page)

She looked at him. A tissue of lies? Half-truths? She would never know just exactly what had happened, what Davy had been told, but what did it matter, after all? She had wanted Davy’s rightful wife to have the child she longed for, had that changed just because Davy was alive? Of course it hadn’t, but it seemed...oh, cruelly unfair! Bethan had it all, Davy, the baby...

‘Nell? Say you understand! Say you don’t hate me for it! I loved you, in my way I love you still, but I had to choose, see? And if you could see our lad ... just like me he is, dark, laughing... oh, you’d love him, you’d forgive me! Bethan – that’s my wife’s name – she said you’d got in touch after the
Milligan
went down, and somehow when I returned it seemed kinder just to let things lie. She didn’t realise that you and I had...had anything between us, of course; and I’ve not told her. I would have, if it hadn’t been for the boy – and Bethan is very dear to me. I’m sorry, cariad, that you had to find out this way ... but surely you’ve a sweetheart yourself by now, Nellie? You’re far too pretty to be all alone, I bet every fellow in this hospital would give his eye-teeth just for a smile. What’s his name?’

‘His name?’ She pinned a coy smile on her lips, shaking her head at him. ‘None of your business, Davy Evans, and you a married man! Yes, I’ve a sweetheart, he’s...he’s in France. His name’s...Matthew.’

She said the words almost fiercely, making him a present of guiltlessness, cutting herself free of him in the doing, though she was only aware of it later, in her own bed. She finished giving him the tea, put the cup
back on the trolley, continued with her round. She worked hard all day, she dressed his chest wound and looked at his chart; one eye would never see again but the other was uninjured. He would be on the ward for a few weeks, then home to convalesce, then back to another ship.

It hurt her that Bethan had never told her the truth, though, had deliberately let her go on believing that Davy was dead, so she talked to him one afternoon, asking him just when he had got in touch with his wife and put her out of her misery.

He told her how it had happened. He had been picked up by an enemy ship and had ended up in a prisoner of war camp. He had written to his wife but she had never received the letter, and then his captors had decided, since he was a countryman, to let him work on the land. He had escaped and made his way home, arriving only six months before.

‘Of course Bethan was stunned; for weeks she cried every time she set eyes on me, but it was joy, see? She’s settled down now, though. She used to have her suspicions about me – and they were true, Nell, as you know – but no more. We’re a family now, the three of us, and Bethan’s goin’ to have another one, so soon we’ll be four. So pleased, she is! Oh, but I wish you could see Richie, Nell! He’s the image of me, but far prettier, my Mam says.’

So Bethan had not known, not whilst Nellie had been on the island. That was a comfort. And when Bethan had known, she had not told. But what would have been the point? Only more pain for all of them. Better let it lie, better pretend that there had been no baby, no friendship between her and Davy Evans’ wife. As for the new baby, she could never grudge Bethan the child of her own she had longed for, and she knew
the older girl well enough to know that Richie would never suffer, never know he was not Bethan’s own flesh and blood.

‘And does Bethan know you’re here, in hospital? You’d best let her know you’re alive, because the sinking of the
Laurentic
will be reported in all the newspapers, she’s bound to read it.’

He looked smug. She could see how he had changed, matured. Had the war done it, or fatherhood? Not that it mattered, he was a different man as she, she realised suddenly, was a different girl. Now she could turn away, now she could begin to write on that clean, white page!

‘That was the first thing I did; I got one of the night-nurses to telegraph. What’s more, she’ll come to me as soon as she knows, so with a bit of luck you’ll meet her ... she might even bring Richie!’

Nellie smiled, murmured something conventional, moved away from the bed, but inside she was in a turmoil. She did not want to see Bethan with Davy and she dared not see Richie at all. She finished her duties in a dither of apprehension – what should she do? Where could she go? And that evening, when she and Lucy were walking down to the tram-stop, the solution presented itself.

It was a cold, crisp evening, the pavements covered with a light fall of snow so that the two girls had to watch where they trod. Lucy lived in a smart part of the city but they caught the same tram though Lucy stayed aboard longer than Nellie. The tram rattled up, full to bursting already, and on an impulse Nellie told Lucy that she would not get aboard since she felt a walk would do her good. After a moment’s hesitation Lucy, too, stepped back.

‘We’ll walk together,’ she said. ‘There’s something
I’ve been meaning to talk to you about all day, this will be my first real chance.’

‘We’ve been awful busy,’ Nellie owned, pushing her woolly mittened hand into the crook of Lucy’s elbow. ‘Go on, fire ahead.’

For answer, Lucy pulled a crumpled sheet of newsprint out of the pocket of her grey coat.

‘Read that,’ she commanded.

It was an advertisement for nurses and VAD’s, needed in France in the front-line hospitals so that they might be trained up in the hospital’s ways before the spring offensive started.

Nellie read it, then pulled Lucy to a standstill, staring at her friend with bright eyes. It looked like the perfect solution, the escape she so desperately needed.

‘Lu ... are you going? Can I go, too?’

‘Oh, Nell, if only you would! Sometimes I want to get away so badly ... from John’s parents, from my own, even from Liverpool, because that was where we were happy. Nell, it’s been two years, two and a half, and the time has come for me to forget. It’ll be easier away from here. But what about Lilac? And Bessie, and Aunt Ada? How would they manage if you came to France?’

‘They’d manage,’ Nell said. ‘Look, Lu, there’s something I’ve never told another living soul ...’

And walking through the frosty darkness, with the stars twinkling overhead and the salt breeze off the Mersey touching their chilly cheeks, Nellie told Lucy everything, about Davy, Moelfre, Bethan and the baby. And about her own inability to shake free of them, her inability to want to do so, until this moment.

‘Now that I’ve seen Davy again, seen him as a husband and a father, I know that the last link between us
is broken and I want to have space to discover what Nellie McDowell is really like,’ she said. ‘I’m awful sorry to leave our Lilac a second time, but she’s got a life of her own which she enjoys and one of these days she’ll leave me; it’s what happens. I’ll find a way to explain that she’ll understand ... and I shan’t have to face seeing Bethan with Davy, and meeting the child again. How soon can we go?’

‘We’re due a week’s leave, probably more, from the hospital here,’ Lucy said. ‘We can ship to France a week after that. Look, we’re both on earlies tomorrow, if you decide to go through with it ...’

‘I shall,’ Nellie said firmly. ‘I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.’

She said nothing to Davy; a small revenge, but a sweet one. He might wonder where she was, what she was doing, but it would be difficult for him to question the other nurses without giving the game away, and that he would be reluctant to do, particularly if Bethan and the boy came. He had known that Nellie believed him dead, after all, and had been happy enough to let her go on believing. Less trouble for everyone, he had said. Ha! For her it had been months – no, years – of heartache. But that was over, behind her, now she was looking forward, not backward.

She had expected telling Lilac to be hard, but the child had made it easy for her. She was eleven now, quite a little woman, she understood that nurses were needed at the Front and applauded Nellie’s decision to go to France.

‘Everyone in school has brothers fighting or sisters over there,’ she said, with a child’s eye view of war. ‘I shall miss you terribly, dearest Nell, but I’m ever so
proud of you. I’ll write twice a week and send you sweeties ... you’ve done things like that for me all my life, now I’ll do it for you.’

Nellie did not kid herself that Lilac’s self-sacrifice was all that deep. The child worked hard and played hard, she would miss Nellie, but not nearly as much as she had missed her when she was at the Culler. Aunt Ada adored Lilac, Bessie trusted her and treated her like an equal, which, intellectually at least, was no more than her due. Art alternately bossed and adored her, the littl’uns thought her wonderful. Nellie knew that despite the red-gold curls and blue eyes, Lilac Larkin was a tough little nut and competent beyond her years. The streak of selfishness which Nellie had once recognised with such dismay was still there, though it was manageable now, less headstrong. Lilac would go for what she wanted and she’d get it, but she wouldn’t trample others underfoot in the doing, Nellie told herself. Nevertheless, when she and Lucy got on board the ship that was to take them to France she waved to the small, rapidly diminishing figures of Aunt Ada, Bessie and Lilac, and wondered if she had done right. After all, there was no denying that she was leaving Lilac for the second time in the child’s eleven years. It did not seem fair, somehow, that Nellie’s new start should mean that Lilac suffered. But I simply have to get away, else I’ll never find myself, she thought, and there’s others beside our Lilac to be thought of; young fellers who need my help even more than she does. Besides, I’m not so swollen-headed as to believe that Lilac will be lost without me. She’ll do very well, she’ll probably be glad to have one less person to boss her around. In fact she might well feel she’s better off.

So Nellie went below and she and Lucy sorted out
their belongings and then got into their bunks, and Nellie told herself over again that Lilac would have a wonderful time whilst she herself was working to help the injured in France.

It helped to ease the niggle of guilt, if not to erase it.

1917

The hospital had started life as a sizeable chateau, then when the wounded began to come in and the accommodation was insufficient, bell-tents were erected for the nurses’ quarters. Huts were built to make more wards, more and larger tents arrived and by the time Nellie and Lucy reached the place it was as large if not larger than the hospital they had left.

‘We’re nursing more frostbite, pneumonia and trench-foot than wounds right now,’ Sister Angus told Nellie and Lucy when they arrived on their ward that first morning. ‘I don’t have to tell you that nursing illnesses caused by extreme cold, in a draughty tent, isn’t ideal, but all I can say is we do our best. They’ve promised us more huts as soon as they can be built, but until then we on Ward Twelve must do the best we can in the tent. You’ll be on days for a couple of months at least, so I’ll get Platt to take you round and introduce you to your patients. This is an officers’ ward, you’ll find the men intelligent and helpful, but you’ve both been nursing in Blighty so you’ll understand all that. If you need anything or don’t understand something, feel free to come to me at any time. My bunk is at the end of the ward, if I’m not visible I’ll be in there, catching up with the paperwork.’

‘I like her; I think we’re very lucky,’ Lucy said as she and Nellie got the steriliser going a couple of hours later and began to boil bedpans and bedbottles. ‘Imagine if she was some old battleaxe! It would be
hard on the patients as well as us, but you can see the men like her, and find her sympathetic.’

Sister Angus was a slender woman in her early thirties with dark red hair and a faint Scottish accent. She smiled a lot, revealing a deep dimple in her right cheek, and although she made it clear that both ‘new girls’ would be expected to pull their weight, she made it equally clear that she did not expect miracles of them.

‘You get a half-day off each week and a full day once a month,’ she said cheerfully. ‘When we’re rushed off our feet – which means when the spring offensive starts – I’m afraid time off rather goes by the board, but if possible you’ll get what’s due to you. As for leaves, it’s supposed to be a week in Blighty every six months, but that’s rarely possible. Most of my girls go home yearly, however – not that you’ll be interested in going back to Blighty yet, I daresay!’

‘Definitely not,’ Nellie said firmly. ‘We’ve only just arrived. Someone said you settle in to a strange place better if you don’t have leaves for a while.’

‘That’s true, I believe. And you know the rules, of course – no fraternising with the men outside the premises ... no fraternising with them
on
the premises either, but for some reason it really irritates the authorities to see nurses and officers walking round the town together.’

‘I shan’t want to walk with anyone,’ Nellie said at once. ‘We’ve come out here to work, haven’t we, Bignold?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Lucy said, shooting a startled glance at Nellie. ‘But I suppose there is some recreation, isn’t there, Sister? No one can work
all
the time.’

‘That’s true, and of course there are various things for you to do when you aren’t on duty. You’ll find out all about it when you get to know the other nurses;
there are twenty-eight of you sharing that big sleeping tent so I daresay it won’t be long before you’re fully in the picture. Now, back to your duties; we’re still doing a dressings-round, though as I said the majority of the men aren’t suffering from wounds, but the ones right at the end of the ward are all trench-foot victims. They have to have their feet massaged with warm olive oil every morning and evening, then they’re wrapped in cottonwool and oiled silk, with big fishermen’s socks over that. Have you nursed trench-foot?’

‘We’ve nursed frostbite and pneumonia and bronchitis, but not trench-foot,’ Lucy said. ‘But we’ll soon pick it up, Sister.’

And they did. Nellie particularly enjoyed nursing trench-foot because if the condition didn’t clear then the boys were Blighty-bound and if it did, if one day when you pinched or prodded the patient felt what you were doing, if you saw a tiny little pink flush begin to appear, then very likely his feet would be saved and he would be able to walk again.