Liverpool Angels (25 page)

Mae managed to smile, determined to push all her fears to the back of her mind for now. ‘What is spring like in Boston, Pip?’

‘Oh, you’ll just love it, Mae. The sunlight and the sail boats on the Charles River, the Swan Boats on the lake in the Boston Public Garden and then every May there is Lilac Sunday when all the lilac trees in the public parks and the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard are in full bloom and everyone picnics outdoors. The blossoms are gorgeous, every shade from white to purple, and their perfume just fills the air.’

‘I’d love to see that, Pip,’ she said wistfully.

He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Maybe next year we both will, Mae.’

Monsieur arrived bearing the food and as Mae cut into the freshly cooked omelette dusted with herbs she tried to think of Boston sunlight and lilacs, not the bombardment close to Arras or the fact that within days men would be dying and maybe within weeks she would have to watch Pip march away to fight.

T
o Mae’s profound relief it was June before the first American troops arrived in France. The attack on the German lines at Arras and at Ypres had commenced on Easter Monday in a freak snowstorm and casualties had been as heavy as they had been on the first day of the Somme, so Mae had little time to dwell on the fact that she would one day have to say goodbye to Pip. He was equally busy, as was Eddie, who was toiling through mud with a team of mules and a wagon, struggling to get supplies up to the front line. Eddie had soon realised that the cost to the animals was nearly as heavy as that to the troops as mules and horses plunged and strained to move heavy equipment through quagmires of mud and shell holes, often dropping dead from sheer exhaustion, or breaking legs which meant they had to be shot, or being hit by bullets, shrapnel and shell blasts. Their screams of agony haunted his dreams. But as the weather gradually improved and the offensive continued, the 1st Division of the American Expeditionary Force arrived under the command of General John ‘Black Jack’ Pershing and Mae knew that Pip had little time left with the Field Ambulance Service.

The day he came to the hospital to say goodbye was one she would never forget. Sister Harper had relented under the circumstances and had allowed her to go to the gate to meet him, and as she crossed the compound and saw him standing there waiting she couldn’t help but think how handsome he looked in his uniform, a uniform so different to those of the men she nursed. She hadn’t realised that he would be an officer, and as the summer sunlight glinted on the buttons and braid on his jacket she felt so very proud of him. He’d already contributed so much to the war effort, his skilful driving had probably saved many lives, but now he was going to fight beside his own countrymen and she was holding back her tears.

‘I hardly recognised you, you look so . . . splendid! Do I have to call you “sir” now?’ she greeted him jokingly, determined she wasn’t going to send him away with tears and words of despondency.

He laughed. ‘Officially it’s Lieutenant Middlehurst – thanks to my Harvard education – but I’m still “Pip” to my fiancée and friends.’

She wasn’t going to let her mood of forced joviality slip. ‘You know I’m not supposed to be seen “socially” in the company of an officer, but maybe that rule doesn’t apply to American officers.’

‘That’s one of the rules we “Yanks” don’t have, Mae. We don’t have your British class system,’ he reminded her gently.

‘I know. You will write to me, Pip?’

‘I’ve promised I will. No matter how hot things get I’ll find the time,’ he said seriously. Then he took her in his arms. ‘I love you, Mae, and I’ll come back for you.’

She clung to him, not caring if the whole hospital was watching. ‘I . . . know you will, Pip. I love you so much. Take care of yourself, please?’ Tears were threatening all her resolve. ‘I’ll be thinking of you every spare minute I have and I’ll write regularly.’

He bent and kissed her and she felt as though her heart were breaking. What if this was the last time she would ever feel his lips on hers, the last time she would ever hold him? She knew something inside her would shrivel up and die if anything happened to him.

‘Take care, Pip. Be safe, my love,’ she whispered.

‘I will, my darling Mae. I’ll come back and we’ll never be parted again and we’ll walk in the Arboretum every Lilac Sunday, I swear.’

She couldn’t hold back the tears as he walked away, nor did she try to, but she waved for the last time as he got into the staff car. She watched it pull away and then she stood there in the hot midday sun just staring down the empty dusty road until Alice came and put her arm around her and they walked back to the wards.

Alice knew how she felt. She’d had to say goodbye to Jimmy twice and the first time she had wondered if he would survive the journey home. ‘He’ll be back, Mae,’ she said firmly.

Maggie folded her daughter’s letter and put it back in the envelope then gazed unseeingly out of the kitchen window. Poor Mae was taking Pip’s absence hard, Alice had written. She was very dispirited and worried even though she tried to put a brave face on it before the patients. Mae had had so much to contend with in her short life, Maggie thought: mother and father both dying tragically, then young Harry Mercer and many of her childhood companions; having to face daily the harrowing duties of nursing and all the attendant hardships; and now . . . She prayed that nothing would happen to Phillip Middlehurst, for even though she had never met him, Alice had told her that he adored Mae and she him. It would break the poor girl’s heart if she were to lose him too. ‘Oh, please God, keep him safe. Keep both him and Eddie safe,’ she prayed.

Slowly she got to her feet. The kitchen was stuffy with the residue of the day’s heat and as always was too quiet. She wondered would the girls get leave soon? It might do Mae good to come home for a visit, she thought as she filled the kettle.

She was interrupted by a knock on the front door and, tutting impatiently, she went to open it. Didn’t people know her hours of business by now? She was muttering irritably to herself when she opened the door to a middle-aged man in a shabby suit, the right sleeve of the jacket empty and pinned up. She stared at him. He wasn’t anyone she knew, not one of her regulars, and so she viewed him with some suspicion.

‘Hello, Maggie,’ he said quietly.

Her eyes widened and she gasped as she recognised the voice. ‘My God!
Billy McEvoy!
’

He nodded. ‘Aye, it’s me.’

She quickly regained her composure. ‘You’ve got a flaming nerve! What the hell do you want? All these years and not a word from you!’

He shifted awkwardly. ‘I know. Sure, I know, Maggie and I’m sorry about . . . that. I’m sorry about . . . everything.’

Her eyes narrowed as rage and hurt welled up inside her. ‘It’s easy to just turn up and say “sorry”, Billy. Clear off! Go to hell!’

‘Maggie, I deserve that, I do, but I just want to talk to you, to try to explain . . .’

‘There’s nothing to say, not after all these years, not after the way you ran off without a word, leaving me with two children, not a penny to my name and not knowing if you were alive or dead!’ She made to shut the door but he quickly put out his foot.

‘Will you not even listen?’ he asked. She was wrong; it wasn’t easy, it had taken him weeks to pluck up the courage to come here.

She hesitated, acutely aware that curtains in the nearby houses were twitching. She didn’t want to become the talk of the street. ‘I’ll give you five minutes, Billy McEvoy, no longer,’ she snapped as she ushered him inside and closed the door. She’d never expected to see him again and it was a shock. As she followed him into the kitchen she realised that she was shaking.

‘Well, what have you got to say?’ she demanded, not attempting to sit or indicate that he should. She could see now that he had changed a great deal from the young man he’d been when last she’d seen him. His hair was almost entirely grey now, his face lined and weather-beaten, he was thinner and he’d obviously suffered.

Billy had been rehearsing. ‘I was a young eejit then, Maggie. I didn’t know when I was well off. I . . . I wanted . . . adventure, more excitement in life—’

‘Not a wife and kids!’ she interrupted bitterly.

‘I was wrong. I got too fond of the drink. It made me think I could do better with my life, it gave me false expectations—’

‘And that you weren’t “fond” enough of me,’ she interrupted again.

‘Maggie, please?’ he said wearily.

‘So why have you come back now?’ she wanted to know, still very wary of him.

‘Because I’ve changed, because I’m not getting any younger, because I realised that I wanted to see my family and to see you again, Maggie. The world has changed . . .’

‘So, now you’ve had all the “adventure” and “excitement” you want to come back?’ Her tone was bitingly derisive.

‘I
have
changed. I’ve been through . . . a lot, Maggie. I’ve seen things that made me think and look at life . . . differently.’

‘We all have,’ she replied curtly but then she relented a little. ‘Sit down, Billy. What happened?’ She nodded, indicating the empty jacket sleeve, the missing limb.

‘I lost it at Jutland but I was one of the lucky ones, I survived,’ he said flatly as he sat down.

That surprised her. ‘You fought at Jutland? Surely you were too old?’

‘No, I was Regular Navy, Maggie. I didn’t just enlist when the war began, I was an NCO. A petty officer.’

She frowned, trying to take this in. ‘But . . . but when you left . . . ?’

‘I know. I was on the way to being a drunken bum and believe me, I
do
regret that.’

She stared at him hard, and then she got up. ‘I was just going to make a pot of tea. I . . . I think you’d better begin at the beginning, Billy.’

‘I didn’t come to embarrass or upset you, Maggie. I didn’t come looking for your pity, just your . . . understanding and maybe forgiveness.’ He looked around the tidy, comfortable kitchen. ‘I don’t want to inconvenience you either. Does John still live here? Are you expecting him home?’

‘No. John . . . John . . . went down with the
Lusitania
,’ she informed him as she busied herself with the teapot. She was filled with conflicting emotions: all the old hurt, humiliation and anger but also curiosity, although she was determined not to show it. Nor did she have any intention of giving him any idea that he could just walk back into her life.

‘I’m truly sorry about that, Maggie. I saw a lot of good men drown. Unlike the soldiers, we had two enemies to contend with at Jutland. The Boche Navy and the sea and there’s not much to choose between the two when it comes to cruelty.’

‘So, what happened?’ she asked.

Billy told her with as little emotion as he could of his experiences at Jutland, of ships destroyed and sunk, men with horrific injuries drowning in that bitterly cold sea. She listened in silence until he’d finished. ‘When you left all those years ago, what did you do?’

‘I signed on an old tramp steamer looking for “excitement”,’ he said bitterly. ‘There was precious little of that and I’d soon had enough of it, but at least it got me off the drink – months at sea with bad food, hard work, barely any money and no booze. But I grew to really love the sea, so when we finally got back that’s when I joined the Navy.’

‘You didn’t . . . want to . . . come . . . back?’ she stated. Oh, it was painful now to recall those years and of how she had suffered, feeling abandoned and worthless.

‘I was still looking for an adventurous life, eejit that I was. Well, I certainly saw some of the world and I found that the life suited me, and as I got older it got harder to think about leaving it and then I was promoted and I had something I’d never had – respect – and I felt I’d actually achieved something worthwhile.’

Maggie said nothing. He
had
changed, she thought, but for all these years he’d ignored his family and his responsibilities, he’d just suited himself. ‘And did you never think of . . . us?’

‘Sometimes. I wondered . . . how you were managing, but I didn’t feel as though I belonged, that I was still part of a family,’ he admitted. ‘I’m not proud of deserting you, Maggie.’

‘I “managed”, Billy. Thanks to Isaac Ziegler and our John we didn’t end up on the streets. I brought Eddie and Alice and Mae up on my own.’

‘So John stayed at sea? Well, I can understand that, it becomes a way of life.’ He frowned, puzzled. ‘But Isaac?’

‘He lent me the money to start my own business. I’m a moneylender, Billy, and I’m not ashamed of it. I provide a service which many find essential and I don’t charge exorbitant rates. It’s kept a roof over our heads and food on the table.’

He nodded slowly. She’d always been good with figures and she was fair. And he’d left her almost destitute and unable to go out to work. ‘Eddie will be . . .’

‘Twenty-one and serving in the Army in France,’ she answered curtly. ‘He’s been shipped home twice.’

Billy felt a surge of pride at his son’s undoubted courage, and he hadn’t failed to notice that the room was very tidy and devoid of the usual paraphernalia associated with two young girls. ‘Mae and . . . Alice, did you say?’

‘Yes. Your daughter and your niece are both nursing in a field hospital near Boulogne.’

That surprised him. ‘My . . . Alice?’

‘Is only eighteen, but she’s a strong-willed, determined little madam if ever there was one. She browbeat us all to let her go but she’s a good nurse and a brave girl, even if I say it myself. Both she and Mae gave up good jobs to go, office jobs, they were typists. John and I saw they got the proper training: we paid for it,’ she said proudly. Then, feeling she’d given him enough of her time, she got to her feet. ‘I think your five minutes are more than up, Billy.’

Reluctantly he rose. ‘Thanks for not turning me away, Maggie, and for the tea. Can I . . . can I come to see you again?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t want you to think that you can just walk back into my life, Billy.’

‘I know, but I’d like to come, Maggie, occasionally.’

‘Where are you staying?’ she asked.