The FitzOsbornes at War (51 page)

But then I get stuck, because I’m not sure he feels he
is
home. He isn’t the same. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t think
he
knows, either. Everything is such a mess – although that’s partly the result of our great expectations. We were so happy to hear that he was all right, so thrilled that he’d soon be back with us. It is just
too
cruel, to have this happen when we all believed our worries were over . . . But I ought to start at the very beginning. Write it all down, in the hope that it will make some sort of sense.

Well, Toby made it across the border into Spain. However, he and the four Americans with him were picked up almost at once by the Guardia Civil. The Basque guides managed to escape, thank Heavens, but the airmen were all marched to Irún, a little border town, and were locked up in the prison there. Fortunately, they arrived at the same time as a Red Cross official who was conducting his weekly prison visit. He sent word to the British Consulate, and within hours, Michael had turned up, interviewed Toby and driven him to San Sebastián, having already organised for the American consul to collect the other airmen. The next day, Toby was taken to Madrid, and from there, to Gibraltar, where he was questioned by British military intelligence to confirm his identity and make sure he wasn’t some Nazi double agent. After that, it was simply a matter of completing his paperwork and waiting for a ship to bring him to England. Apparently Allied servicemen are often transported back by plane, but there were a lot of Americans waiting in Gibraltar by that stage, and it seemed more efficient to move them all by sea. Michael had sent a message to Veronica from San Sebastián about all this, and then he telephoned her when Toby arrived in Gibraltar. Everything seemed to be going smoothly.

But in wartime, nothing ever goes to plan, and the Atlantic Ocean is as deadly a place as any in Europe, especially at night. Less than half an hour after setting sail, Toby’s ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. It was lucky, the authorities said afterwards, that the ship was so close to land. Lucky that many of the men were still on deck, close to the lifeboats. Lucky that they were hit just off the coast of Spain, rather than in the middle of the icy North Sea. Lucky the weather was calm; lucky the survivors were picked up so quickly.

Nothing about it seems lucky to me. And we still don’t know exactly what happened to Toby.

It seems
he was thrown straight into the water by an explosion. Was this when the torpedo hit, or later, as the ship’s fuel tanks went up in a ball of fire? How did he manage to swim, with his terrible injuries? How long was he in the water before he was dragged into a lifeboat? What sort of medical treatment did he receive in Gibraltar before he was flown to England with the worst of the wounded? No one seems to know.

We didn’t realise any of this until it was all over. We were waiting in London – not even
worrying
, just impatient to see him – when Veronica received a message at work, saying there’d been an ‘incident’ on board the ship and that Toby was in hospital in London. There followed a frantic few hours of telephone calls, of trying to find out where he was, how badly he’d been hurt, whether he was out of surgery, if he was permitted visitors. Thank Heavens for Julia and her comprehensive knowledge of London hospitals. She came round in a taxi and whisked me off to the correct hospital, where she waylaid a doctor who’d just finished his ward rounds, and then charmed a nurse into allowing me a brief, unofficial visit.

I think I was still in shock when I sat down at his bedside. It seemed incredible that Toby was
here
, in London. But then to have just been told – in a fairly offhand manner, by an overworked doctor who no doubt saw far worse injuries every day – that my brother had been badly burned, that they weren’t sure if he’d lose his sight, that part of his leg had had to be amputated . . . I sat there, staring at the unconscious figure lying on the bed, and felt nothing at all. I wasn’t even certain it
was
him. His head was shaved, his face was wrapped in bandages, the rest of him was covered in a sheet – it could have been anyone. It could have been a waxwork dummy, or some grotesque, life-sized doll.

When Veronica came home from work, she bombarded me with questions that I found impossible to answer. I just kept shaking my head, until Julia put her arm round me and said, very calmly, ‘Look, no one knows much at this stage. He’s in a stable condition, they said. He didn’t have any head injuries or internal bleeding, and that’s the most important thing. I expect he’ll need some skin grafts for the burns on his face and arm, but they have specialist hospitals for that now, and the staff in those places are very good. They’ve had so much practice at it these past few years, you see.’

Her level voice went on, oddly reassuring despite – or because of – its frankness.

‘As for his leg – well, I know it seems awful, but I think it’s actually much better this way. I know someone whose leg was horribly injured by shrapnel, and he’s had a dozen agonising operations to try and fix it. It took months and months, and at one stage, he got an infection and nearly died, and he still needs a stick to get around. An amputation below the knee really isn’t so bad. As soon as it’s healed, they’ll give him an artificial leg and most people learn to manage them fairly quickly. It’s just a matter of finding the right rehabilitation hospital. Daphne’s cousin’s a physiotherapist – I’ll ask her. Or my boss at the station might know about it.’

And then she made us eat some sandwiches, and rang Barnes to give her an update, and promised to track down Rupert the next morning to tell him, and was altogether an absolute angel.

A few days later, we received word that Toby was sitting up and talking, so I went to see him again. It was better and worse this time. Better, because I could recognise him as Toby; worse, for the same reason. His eyes were still bandaged, his throat was raw, and the medicine he’d been given for the pain had him drifting in and out of coherence. I held his hand and tried to converse in Julia’s calm, reassuring manner, but it didn’t work very well. Too much of my concentration was taken up with trying to hide from him how upset I was. I did tell him how pleased we all were that he was back, and how much we’d missed him, and (less truthfully) that we’d never given up hope that he’d return. But was that any comfort to him? Perhaps it only reminded him of the terrible time he’d had before he’d reached Spain – and who knows
what
had gone on during all those months?

So it was with some relief that I heard Veronica’s raised voice in the corridor. I’d left a message at her work, but hadn’t been sure she’d be able to get away. Then we heard the Sister in charge say, very loudly, ‘Only
immediate
family are permitted to visit patients on this ward!’

‘Fine!’ came Veronica’s exasperated reply. ‘I’m his fiancée!’

Toby gave a little huff of amusement. ‘Julia tried that one,’ he rasped. ‘God knows what the nurses will think of me now.’

But Veronica was already marching in. She caught sight of us and I watched the emotions battle across her face as she took it all in – the bandages, the rubber drainage tubes, the frame holding the blankets up off his poor mutilated leg. It was over in less than a second – her step barely faltered – and then she was pulling up a chair and leaning over to kiss an unbandaged bit on the top of his head.

‘What a dictator that woman is!’ Veronica said. ‘
Immediate family
, indeed. I should have told her we were twins, that would have thrown her.’

And somehow the conversation went on much better after that. There was one dreadful moment, though, when Toby said, ‘Where’s Henry? Why isn’t she here?’

And Veronica and I stared at each other, stricken, unable to say a word. Toby couldn’t see our expressions, thank Heavens, but he picked up on the silence. ‘Expelled again, I suppose,’ he said, then started to cough. At that point, the horrible Sister bustled in and announced, with apparent satisfaction, that we’d exhausted the patient and would be held responsible for any subsequent problems with his recovery, whereupon she threw Veronica and me out of the ward.

We made it down the corridor and around the corner, before turning and clinging to each other. A minute later, a porter came whistling by, and told us we were in the way.

‘Sorry,’ said Veronica, brushing her eyes and leading me over to a bench along the wall. We sat down. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, but to me this time. ‘Now I understand why you couldn’t tell me anything about him before. It’s a shock, isn’t it? Seeing him like that.’

I nodded, frowning fiercely to stop myself bursting into tears.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell him about Henry.’

‘No, I will,’ I said. ‘Only . . . not right now.’

‘No,’ she sighed. ‘No, not now.’

Then she said she had to get back to work, and I returned to the flat to telephone Aunt Charlotte. I’d decided to try to dissuade her from coming up to London until at least the following week – I thought it might be easier for her once some of those tubes and bandages had been removed. But in fact,
she
was the one who came up with a lot of reasons she should stay in Milford. She was coming down with another cold, she said, and didn’t want to pass it on. Also, one of the stable girls had just run off with Mr Wilkin’s son-in-law, so things were very unsettled and busy. Besides, Aunt Charlotte really felt she ought to attend that district WVS meeting on Tuesday. She also asked me twice whether I was certain it
was
Toby. The whole story seemed so
unlikely
, she said. It simply didn’t
sound
like him.

And all of this was before he went berserk and attacked an officer.

Not that I blame Toby one bit for that – it was entirely the fault of the hospital and the military authorities. What on Earth were they
thinking
? Yes, I
know
it’s routine for British servicemen who’ve escaped the Nazis to attend a debriefing session when they arrive back in England. I can see it would be useful, especially now the Allied invasion of the Continent is imminent and they need all the information they can get about Nazi operations in France. But surely they could have waited a few weeks longer? At least until he’d recovered his voice completely, and wasn’t needing constant injections for the pain? But no, a hospital orderly simply wheeled Toby off to some deserted office and dumped him there without a word of explanation, and of course, he couldn’t see a thing with his eyes bandaged. Meanwhile, the man from military ‘intelligence’ got lost in the hospital corridors, and when he finally arrived, one of his first questions was why it had taken Toby so long to get back to England.

Not surprisingly, Toby had worked himself into a towering rage by then. He refused to answer a single question – wouldn’t even say his name – and demanded to be taken back to his bed. I’m not exactly sure what happened next, but it ended with Toby grabbing a telephone off the desk and hurling it at his interrogator. I suppose it’s a good thing it missed, because otherwise Toby would be up on a charge, but honestly! If
these
are the people running the war, how on Earth are we ever going to win it?

Anyway, they eventually got Toby back to his bed, but he was being so belligerent and uncooperative that the staff couldn’t even change his dressings. Fortunately, Julia heard the whole story a few hours later from a nurse she knows, and in a remarkably short time, it was arranged that he be transferred to the burns unit of a hospital in Sussex.

‘I hope I’m not being too interfering,’ Julia said when she telephoned. ‘But I can take him down there myself this evening, and I really think his burns ought to be assessed by the specialists there as soon as possible.’

‘Julia, of
course
I don’t mind!’ I said. ‘I’m so glad you found out what happened, and so grateful for everything you’ve done! But should he be moved, with his leg still –?’

‘Well, the stump’s actually healing very nicely, the doctor said. At the moment, it just needs the dressings changed regularly, and some massage and exercises, and they can do that in any hospital. I honestly think he’d be better off
anywhere
other than where he is now. That Sister’s taken against him so badly that – Oh, I have to go! I’m at the station, you see. I’ll ring you again later.’

And she was gone before I had a chance to ask whether he was in really terrible trouble with the military. I suppose that’s the least of our worries, but he
is
still an RAF officer and under military discipline –

Oh, bother, the Warning siren’s started up. Another reason Toby’s better off out of London, now that the Luftwaffe is trying to bomb the city to bits again.