A Liverpool Lass (19 page)

It was harder work than nursing in England however, partly because there was no respite. No going home for an evening with your family, no chatting with the conductor on the ‘leckie’ as you went to and from the hospital, no stretching out your toes towards a real fire as you relaxed over hot soup and new-baked bread. There was rationing in England all right and Nellie’s sweeties had always been saved up for Lilac, but here it was the monotony as much as anything else which got you. And although the kitchen staff did their best it was a bit of luck if you got your hot meal when you came off shift, and the food was not inspiring, either. The choice, the nurses said sarcastically, was between stewed tea or stewed bully beef – provided you wanted one or the other you would not be disappointed.
Nellie had always been slim but she got slimmer, though it was a healthy sort of slenderness. Nurses were expected to move quickly and she became adept at the gliding walk which was as fast as a run without actually being one, adept, too, at always finishing her work, however arduous, on time so that the staff coming on duty could take over with the minimum of effort.

The patients made it all worthwhile, though, because they were so touchingly appreciative of the efforts of the girls who nursed them. The girls ordered them about, heaved them up and down in bed, teased them, gave them nicknames and perhaps they even loved them a little bit. Certainly the young men frequently imagined themselves in love with dark-haired Lucy, dimpled Sarah, sweet-faced Nellie. But, Sister said wisely, it would not last. They would go back home and in the comfortable ordinariness of their lives they would soon forget the ‘angels’ who had been so good to them when they desperately needed help.

One bright but chilly afternoon a month after their arrival, when both Lucy and Nellie had a few hours off, they decided to walk into the hills behind the hospital. They needed some time to themselves, a complete change, a breath of fresh air in every sense of the words. They borrowed scarves and extra stockings and put on their stout rubber boots and set off, with quite a sense of adventure, for after all, this was abroad, though one tended to forget it in the very English atmosphere which prevailed at the hospital.

‘I keep hoping that Officer Baby will have a visit from his Mama,’ Lucy said as they crunched up the snowy lane which led to the open countryside. ‘He’s crippled with rheumatism, he’s lost the toes on his right foot from frostbite, yet he never complains, he’s always got a joke
and a grin for us. And he’s only seventeen.’

‘Twenty according to his papers,’ Nellie reminded her. ‘Who spilt the beans about his age, anyway?’

‘The fellow in the next bed; they were at school together, apparently, only Jameson was two years ahead of Officer Baby, and of course when he came onto the ward he couldn’t resist telling Nurse Symonds and she spread the word. I’m not sure who it was tied the baby’s feeding bottle to the foot of his bed, where everyone coming up the ward could see it, nor who found that old teddy bear, but the chaps thought it awfully funny, and it’s good for them to laugh. Poor Officer Baby, though, it took him weeks to live it down!’

‘He hasn’t lived it down yet,’ Nellie said, chuckling. ‘What makes you think his Mama might visit him, anyway?’

‘She wrote to Sister and said she would come over as soon as she could, but the weather’s been so bad. And Sister won’t say a word, just in case ... but she hopes his Mama might take him home with her, see if she can do something about the rheumatism before it’s too late. Dear God, the men who keep youngsters like Officer Baby in freezing cold, flooded trenches for forty-eight hours at a stretch in this sort of weather ought to be shot! What on earth is the point of it all? The Germans won’t take the wretched trenches, they don’t want them! Oh Nell, I hate this war!’

‘It makes you realise that if women ran the world how very different things would be,’ Nellie agreed. ‘Only ... well, think of Sister Andrews!’

Sister Andrews was the sort of nurse that the younger girls all dreaded, a martinet intent on the appearance of her ward being perfect, which led to an almost unbelievable indifference to the comfort and
well-being of her patients. In the name of tidiness she would wake a weak man who had just fallen into his first sleep for a week in order to straighten his sheets or change his pillowslips. She would dismiss a nurse from the ward to ‘go and change at once!’ in the middle of a dressing-round should the nurse in question get a spot of blood on her apron. She would allow a member of staff to serve the men with cups of tea and would then find the girls work to do so that they were unable to assist patients who could not drink unaided until the tea was long cold.

‘She’s the exception that proves the rule,’ Lucy admitted. ‘If she ruled the world ... well, it wouldn’t be our sort of world at all. I say, look ... what’s that?’

To their left a long slope ended in a leafless hedge and in its shelter crouched a small, white animal. Even as they watched it apparently decided they were harmless and came towards them, then stopped and sat up, long ears pricked, eyes bulging with curiosity.

‘A white rabbit, just like the one in
Alice
! No, it can’t be, white rabbits are tame and you wouldn’t get a tame rabbit right out here. Oh look at him, sitting up and staring at us – isn’t he sweet?’

‘He’d make a delicious pie,’ Lucy said wistfully. She did not care for bully-beef. ‘But of course it’s a rabbit, I remember reading somewhere that they change their coats when it snows, or they do in some countries, anyway. Look, there’s another!’

‘Oh, aren’t they nice? I wish our Lilac could see ’em,’ Nellie said wistfully. ‘Kids oughter live in the countryside, don’t you reckon, Lucy?’

Lucy was replying when a deep young voice behind Nellie said jubilantly, ‘If dat isn’t a scouse accent I’ll eat me ’at! Hello, gairls, meet a feller as comes all de way from Mairseyside, just like the pur of yez does!’

Nellie turned sharply, unable to stop her heart giving a jump of pleasure at the sound of the voice. She thought she had largely succeeded in losing her Liverpudlian accent but clearly to another scouser it stood out like a sore thumb and she found she was glad of it, glad to be so easily identified. Most of the VADs had quiet, unaccented voices and the officers by and large spoke standard English, but it was just lovely to hear someone talking scouse, and Nellie could not help her pleasure showing as she turned towards the young man who had spoken.

He was a thin young man with very dark eyes set in deeply shadowed hollows in his tanned face. He wore the uniform of the convalescent home up the road, and over it a faded Army greatcoat. His boots had once been shiny no doubt but now they were scuffed and cracked and his hat was on the back of his head, perched rather than worn on the soft, ebony hair. He had a lean, intelligent face, a jutting chin and, right now, a sweet, wicked smile.

Nellie, turning towards him, found that she was smiling naturally at him, as though she had known him all her life. He reminded her of someone – was it Davy? But that was nonsense of course, the only resemblance between them was that both were dark. Davy had been tough and self-assured, ardent, amusing company. This young man wore suffering in the deep-set, dark eyes, and the lines on his face were lines carved there by bitter experience. Yet she felt suddenly happy, as though this chance encounter, combined with the fresh air and the deep, untouched snowfields, had given her back a little of the youthful carefreeness which she felt she had lost.

‘Hello whack, and where do you come from?’ she said, deliberately using a thick Liverpool brogue. ‘I’m from the Scottie, me ... me pal hales from Seaforth –
ever so posh, aren’t you, queen?’

The young man laughed and held out a hand.

‘I’m Stuart Gallagher, born and bred in the ’Pool but working for the
London Evening Messenger
as War Correspondent ever since this lot started,’ he said. ‘Got myself a splintered kneecap, which is why I’ve fallen behind me pals.’ He gestured further up the hill and Nellie saw five young men standing in a small group pointing to the snow around them, shaking their heads, obviously arguing about something. ‘We’re going tobogganing; care to join us?’

His accent, now that he wasn’t fooling about, was if anything less pronounced even than Nellie’s and she hesitated, glancing uneasily at Lucy. After all, she had been the one to assure Sister they would not break the rules – but that did not mean she could not respond to an introduction!

‘Hello, Stuart. I’m Nellie McDowell and my friend is Lucy Bignold; we work at the hospital, on Ward Twelve,’ Nellie said. ‘Lucy, do you think we ought to go tobogganing?’

But if Lucy had misgivings as to the rights and wrongs of tobogganing, she showed no sign of it. She was wearing her grey uniform scarf wrapped round her dusky curls and the cold had brought the roses blooming in her cheeks, had made her dark eyes sparkle like stars. She nodded vigorously, giving Nellie a poke in the back.

‘Tobogganing, Nell! I’ve always loved it, but I know what you’re thinking and this isn’t walking with an officer in the town, now you can’t say it is, can you? And though we told Sister we wouldn’t do that, we said nothing about sliding down hillsides ...’ she turned and stared at Stuart Gallagher. ‘Only where’s your toboggan?’ she enquired, tilting her head and
looking suddenly so pretty that Nellie could have slapped her. Lucy didn’t have a Liverpool accent, people in Seaforth were too posh for that; it was Nellie whose voice had attracted the attention of the young officer, she just hoped that Lucy wasn’t going to think ...

Nellie’s thoughts stopped short, appalled. Whatever was the matter with her? She could not possibly be jealous of her dear Lucy and this pleasant but ordinary young man whose main attraction was that he came from her home city and had recognised her accent.

For a moment she stood rooted to the spot, thoroughly ashamed of her unworthy thoughts, but then she looked at him again, and decided that it was about time she looked at a man and saw a man and not a patient. Finding Stuart attractive, in fact, was a sign of how she was improving, pulling back to being a normal young woman again.

‘My toboggan is here,’ Stuart said, having clearly not noticed Nellie’s sudden stillness. He produced a battered tin tray from under his greatcoat. ‘See? A nice dinner tray, but Sister won’t notice and we’ll put them back before they serve supper. So are you with me, girls?’

‘Might as well,’ Nellie said with an assumption of indifference which would not have fooled a child of three. ‘But how will it work ... are we all going to share that little tin tray?’

Stuart laughed and took an arm of each girl. Nellie told herself that she should have drawn back, but there was nothing in the least amorous in his grip and it was clear that their support was a help to him as he limped up the lane to the gateway where his friends had congregated. And not only that, it felt good to have her
elbow held by a strong hand once more, wonderful to feel that frisson of excitement which the attentions of an attractive man, no matter how casual those attentions might be, brought in its wake.

‘We’ve got a tray each,’ Stuart told her. ‘You stick with me, Nurse Nellie, and I’ll put Nurse Lucy in the charge of Sid Fuller. That way, you’ll both arrive at the bottom safely. These others, they’re just foolish lads, they’ll probably overturn you in a snowdrift so deep that you won’t be dug out for weeks!’

Stuart was as good as his word. They found a long hill with a smooth, virgin snow-slope and toiled up it, keeping well to one side. At the top, Stuart adjusted his tray, sat Nellie on it with her knees hugged up to her chin, and knelt behind her, with one leg stuck out at an angle because of the bandaging, he said.

‘You won’t mind, Nell, if I put both arms round you? Only I don’t trust you to steer and I don’t fancy falling off the back of this tray once we get under way. Are you comfy? Right then, off we go!’

Halfway down the hill Nellie was screaming and laughing all at once, clutching Stuart and begging him to hold on tight, and having the most marvellous time. At the bottom they tipped up, arms and legs entangled, and Stuart helped her up and brushed the worst of the snow off her grey cloak and took her hand to pull her up the hill once more.

‘Did you like it?’ he asked rather unnecessarily, since Nellie’s snowy face was pink with bliss. ‘Have you never sledged before?’

‘No, never – and it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever done,’ Nellie said. ‘Can we have another go?’

‘We certainly can, and if you feel you know me well enough, I’ll sit on the tray this time and you can sit between my legs. Kneeling plays hell with my kneecap,
or what’s left of it.’

It was better, snuggled against Stuart’s thin chest, with his arms straining round her just as though they were lovers and not merely acquaintances, yet Nellie somehow knew that this was a game, that Stuart did not have the slightest intention of taking advantage of their proximity. So for the whole of that sunny, snowy afternoon the six officers and the two nurses forgot there was a war, forgot wounds and dressings and pain and the terrible things which man did to his fellow man, and became children again. Indeed, Nellie played like a child for the first time, since childishness had not been encouraged at the Culler, where Mrs Ransom was determined that her girls should learn early that life was a serious business.

When the sun began to go down and they knew their time was nearly up they staged a snowball fight, making the snowballs big and soft so they didn’t hurt and falling over with laughter when a particularly telling shot was scored. Nellie’s hair came out of its bun and hung all round her flushed and laughing face in damp little tendrils, Lucy’s curls were white with thrown snow, Stuart’s hat was battered and worn peak behind. Nellie saw, with almost frightened tenderness, that the tension had quite left his face and that the lines were smoothed out by laughter. For the first time it occurred to her that there were worse things than being wounded or killed in battle. Perhaps going constantly into danger, reporting what you saw but not able to take an active part in the fighting, could be, in its way, worse.