Primmy's Daughter

by Primmy's Daughter (retail) (epub)

  It was almost laughable. Morwen Tremayne, who had once run barefoot across the moors as free as the wind, with her black hair streaming behind her, her cheeks glowing with health, and her blue eyes blazing… where had she gone?

  She felt a burning, innate sadness for the loss of that young, vivacious girl, and then she mentally chided herself, for allowing herself to forget, even for a moment, the happiness that two husbands had brought into her life. Her cherished Ben, and her darling Ran. She had had it all…

  ‘I daresay you’re right in all you say, Theo,’ she said at last with a heavy sigh. ‘You can see to it then, but it will have to be somebody that Birdie approves of as well as me, mind. I’ll not have some starched body in the house who thinks she can rule the roost.’

  ‘There’s no danger of that while you’re still in control, Gran,’ Theo said with a relieved grin.

  * * *

  It was like entering another era, thought Morwen a few weeks later. Here she was, relegated to matriarch of the family, as she had been for many years now, but never feeling it quite as much as when Nurse Mabel Jenkins from Bristol, armed with a fistful of recommendations, attended to her every whim, whether she wanted it or not.

  She meant well, but it put Morwen severely in her place, and the only way she could rid herself of uneasy thoughts of the impending end to her life, was to write long letters to Emma, and to Primmy in New Jersey, and to Skye in France, and to write as humorously as possible.

  Skye laughingly related one of these letters to Philip, imagining the indignity in Morwen’s musical voice as she read out her words.

  “She even wants to sit me on the blessed commode, if you please, but I told her I’m having none of that. When I can no longer manage to do my personals for myself, it’ll be time for me to bid farewell to New World, and not before.

  “Besides, I’ve still got to see this wonder-babe of Theo’s and Betsy’s. To listen to the pair of them, by all accounts he’s going to be nothing short of a genius of the first order. We’ll all have to mind our country manners when he arrives.”

  Philip laughed at her turn of phrase. ‘Are you sure this isn’t where you get your writing talent from, sweetheart?’

  ‘Maybe so, but I doubt that Granny Morwen ever saw it like that. She simply writes down the way she feels – which is the best way of all, of course.’

  It charmed her all the same, to think that she and Morwen had something else in common. And in between her duties, she wrote many letters of her own, to Morwen, and to Primmy.

  Letters were a vital and important link with home and family, as they were for so many of the wounded soldiers. And eventually Skye took on the voluntary task of writing for those who could no longer see to hold a pencil, or had no hands left to do so. It was heartbreaking, writing to wives and sweethearts in the words the men whispered to her, but she did it, knowing it would mean so much to them.

  ‘You’re killing yourself with kindness, Tremayne,’ her superior told her sharply. ‘You’ll be no use to us on the wards when the next wave of casualties comes in if you stay up half the night writing letters.’

  ‘I shan’t fail in my duties, Sister, but while the men want me to do this for them, I shall do it,’ she said, lifting her chin. ‘If anything ever happened to my – my fiancé,’ she remembered to say at the last instant, ‘I’d like to think there was someone who would write to me on his behalf.’

  She immediately felt chilled, wishing she hadn’t said it, as if it was inviting disaster.

  ‘Well, we’ll soon be having reinforcements, and not before time,’ Sister Bell said, clearing her throat at the defiant young woman who stared her out with those enormous blue eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve heard the news, haven’t you? Your President Woodrow Wilson has decided your people are going to enter the war at last, though God knows how long it will be before any of them get here. Still, better late than never, I daresay.’

  Skye felt her cheeks burn with patriotic pride. ‘You seem to forget that it wasn’t our war in the first place,’ she snapped. ‘But I’m glad we’re in it now, if it stops your snide remarks.’

  ‘I’ll stop yours, Miss, and send you packing, if I get any more insubordination like that!’

  ‘Oh, go stuff yourself,’ said the elegant Skye Tremayne Norwood, in as bawdy a comment as she dared to make.

  And of course she wouldn’t be sent packing! They needed all the female help they could get in the hospital, and she couldn’t have cared less about Sister Bell’s tightly-pursed lips and even tighter backside as she swished away, Skye thought irreverently.

  She hadn’t seen Philip in days, since he was out on manoeuvres, but the moment he returned and sought her out, he was full of news. By then it was the beginning of April.

  ‘Have you heard that America’s entered the war?’ he asked, once he had hugged her tightly for a few minutes.

  ‘Of course I’ve heard it. And have you heard the family news? Well, no, you haven’t, since I only got the letter a day or so ago. But it seems that the sainted Betsy has had her son, so all is right with cousin Theo’s world.’

  He held her away from him, seeing the darkened shadows beneath her lovely eyes, and hearing her cynicism.

  ‘That’s good news, isn’t it? A son and heir for Killigrew Clay, I mean?’ he said cautiously, not quite sure of her mood yet. They had hugged and kissed, and been joyful at their reunion, but he sensed that Skye’s feeling of well-being had quickly passed.

  ‘Of course it is. I just pray that I’ll be back in Cornwall soon to share the good news with Granny Morwen. She sounds really sick, Philip, and I fear for her. I had a letter from Birdie as well, and she confided her fears as well. Now, when Birdie takes it on herself to write a letter, it’s got to be serious, wouldn’t you say?’

  She tried to make light of it, but her voice broke. It was bad enough to think that Morwen might be seriously ill, but not to be there to care for her was one more thing to blame on this bloody, bloody war, Skye thought savagely.

  Apart from Theo, who did his dutiful best, there was no one of her own who visited Morwen regularly. Out of all that large family, Morwen must be lonely in that big house that held so many memories of times past, Skye thought.

  Primmy, her own mother, was three thousand miles away; Emma was too busy with her farming life to be able to spend time at New World; Charlotte had her Good Works to contend with; Albie… why didn’t Albie visit her more?

  But of course, Rose was ill. Bradley and Freddie were away in Ireland; Jack and his family were in Sussex or somewhere, and Luke had his wider flock to care for.

  Besides, Morwen wouldn’t give a thank you for Luke to be piously pandering over her, and as for the others… even as she thought it, Skye knew there was only one person Morwen would really want with her at this time. The one with whom she had had such an extraordinary empathy, from the moment they had met. Herself.

  ‘You should go home,’ Philip said quietly, reading her mind. ‘You’ve had enough, my love.’

  Angrily, she turned on him, perverse as ever.

  ‘Oh, really? Well, why don’t you go and say the same thing to those poor bloody boys who come in to the hospital more dead than alive, to get themselves patched up and sent back to the Front to get slaughtered all over again? Tell them when they’ve had enough, and then tell me.’

  ‘Good God, don’t take it out on me! I’m only thinking of your health. You’ll be no good to anyone if you collapse on the wards, will you?’

  She was contrite at once, seeing the hurt in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, love. But I’m all right, truly I am. I’ve just had a bad day, worrying about Granny Morwen, but I know she has this nurse at the house, and Birdie is full of praise for her, so we must just hope she doesn’t decline any more.’

  Not until Skye Tremayne was there to see her safely on her last journey… the insidious thought ran through her head, sending cold shivers down her spine, and she dismissed it
as best she could.

  ‘So what’s the perfect infant to be called?’ Philip asked her, ignoring the sight of her shaking hands as she made tea for them in her room. For a moment she couldn’t follow his thoughts, and then she gave a small smile.

  ‘Would you believe he’s to be called Sebastian Walter Jordan? Poor babe. Chances are he’ll be landed with a nickname anyway. But as long as he’s healthy, that’s all that really matters.’

  ‘That’s all any of us wants,’ Philip said, and she couldn’t find an answer to that.

  * * *

  Events at the Front kept them apart for a while after that, until Skye began to wonder if they were even in the same war. There was no news of Philip, except that he was doing extra ambulance duties transporting the wounded back and forth across the Channel. The lack of communication did nothing to help Skye’s fragile temper, and more than once she snapped back at Sister Bell in a white rage after being reprimanded for some petty misdemeanour.

  Two months later, Sister Bell sent for Skye to come to her office, and she thought immediately that she was due for a real wigging. She stood stiffly, her hands clenched by her sides, wondering if there was any humanity in the woman at all. But, shamefacedly, she knew that there was. She had seen it in the many patient hours that Sister Bell had held a wounded soldier’s hands as his life slipped away.

  ‘Sit down, Tremayne,’ the woman said without expression. ‘I’m afraid I have bad news to tell you.’

  Skye immediately thought of her grandmother. But just as immediately she dismissed the thought, for why and how would any dire news from home have come to Sister Bell and not directly to her?

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you that your fiancé has been wounded,’ the woman went on. ‘I have no information of how serious his wounds are, except that they are head and chest injuries and therefore must be seen to be grave. The report has come to us, being his base hospital, and because it is known that you are his fiancée.’

  Skye registered vaguely that Sister Bell was talking rapidly as if to ward off any undignified emotion from the straight-backed young woman sitting on the edge of the hard seat in front of her. She needn’t have worried, thought Skye briefly. She had been too well indoctrinated in the behaviour of hospital personnel in all this time, not to fall apart now. Even when she felt so very much like it.

  ‘Where is he?’ she asked in a stifled voice.

  ‘He’s in the Sanctuary of Our Lady Hospital, fifteen miles north of here, Tremayne—’

  ‘I must go to him. You must see that. You will let me go, won’t you?’ she said jerkily. She had never really got on with this woman, and she couldn’t expect any favours from her now. She was needed here, but she knew that Philip would be needing her too.

  ‘It has already been arranged, after some consultation with the surgeons. You’ll be slacking in your duties if you’re constantly fretting over the young man.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you, if you had a fiancé?’ Skye snapped.

  She saw the woman flinch, and for the first time, her eyes flickered with something like pain.

  ‘I did, once,’ she said. ‘Feelings weren’t invented for your generation, Tremayne. And it’s been agreed that you should take no more than five days’ leave. That’s stretching the bounds, so I hope you won’t abuse the arguments in your favour. There are others here who need you.’

  And that was all Skye heard her say on the matter before she stalked stiffly away. But the implications were there, and she guessed who had persuaded the surgeons to let her have five days’ leave, and why. It cooled her anger and shamed her anew, to think she may have misjudged the woman all this time.

  You just never knew with people. Some opened up their hearts, and others kept everything bottled up inside like a time-bomb waiting to go off.

  She hitched a lift with another ambulance driver taking wounded to and from the Front, and managed to reach the hospital where Philip was detained. It was all alien to her, and the sound of distant gunfire they could hear from her own hospital was suddenly, frighteningly nearer to this one.

  And Philip looked so white and ill. She wept and prayed over him as he raved in delirium for several days, without ever knowing she was there, until at last he opened his eyes and spoke her name weakly.

  ‘Thank God you’ve come back to me,’ she whispered. She clutched his hand so tightly he winced, and she released him slightly. But only a little. She felt as if she never wanted to let him go, and she had already learned from the surgeons here that he was to be sent back to England as soon as he was well enough to travel.

  His injuries were too severe for him to continue at the Front, but as yet he hadn’t been told. She didn’t know how he would take it, knowing that she would be remaining here without him. It was her duty to do so…

  When he learned the truth, he was furious with her for not agreeing to take the easy option that was open to them. Telling them they were married, that he needed her to look after him, that she was exhausted, but somehow she couldn’t do it. Unless she was sent home forcibly, she had to stay.

  ‘Do I mean so little to you?’ he asked her, when he was finally allowed to sit out in a chair for no more than five minutes.

  ‘You shame me by even asking it,’ she said passionately. ‘You know you mean everything to me, but how would it be if every nurse who ever loved a man turned turtle and went home when he was wounded?’

  And, having seen it so many times before, she knew he was allowing himself to slide into the selfishness of the sick, when all the world needed to revolve around them. But this was war, and he wasn’t the only one who needed her.

  ‘And what if I was to let your Sister Bell know that we’re married?’ he said, confirming her thoughts.

  She stared at him. ‘I know you won’t do that. You couldn’t be so self-centred, Philip. You’ve spent your working life guiding students and helping them. Can’t you see that this is my one chance to be as useful? Sister Bell saw me as some flighty thing when I first arrived, and it’s taken me a long while to prove myself, so don’t tempt me into being a coward and throwing it all away.’

  It took a lot of persuasion and coercion to make him see how determined she was, but finally he gave in. The arguments exhausted her still further, and almost guiltily, she was thankful to leave him in good hands after her five days’ leave, promising to come back if she could. Providing he continued to improve, he was due to leave the field hospital in two weeks’ time, as his bed would be needed, but, for Philip, the war was over.

  And in the end, Skye believed he understood. With a wry smile, he told her he would have done exactly the same thing.

  * * *

  After Philip had left for England on the hospital ship, Skye felt desperately alone, terrified in a foreign country, with a war raging all around her, and her husband sent back to an English hospital to recover and recuperate. She had never felt so bereft. While he had been here, she had had his strength to draw on. Now she had nothing.

  Despite her resolution, she felt spineless and lonely. To try and combat it, she threw herself into doing the things she had been doing for so long, caring for the sick and wounded, clearing up after the surgeons, and trying to ignore the appalling sights and sounds and smells that made her retch constantly.

  She wrote her articles for The Informer, knowing they would reach her family’s eyes, and playing down the loneliness of one scared American girl with Cornish roots, and a longing for England that was almost painful. She longed for Philip, and the love they shared. And she wrote to him every day.

  Sister Bell sought her out one evening when she had fallen asleep over some letters she was writing for the soldiers on the ward.

  ‘You know, this just won’t do, Tremayne,’ the woman said. ‘The other girls take their time off and go into the town to the cafes. You should do the same. Your fiancé wouldn’t begrudge you a little time chatting and laughing. In wartime we all have to keep up our morale as best we can.’

  ‘He’s n
ot my fiancé. He’s my husband,’ Skye mumbled, still half-asleep, and hardly knowing what she was saying.

  ‘What did you say?’

  For the first time since coming to France, Skye’s demeanour crumbled. The tears rolled down her cheeks unchecked, and she simply gazed mutely at the older woman. Sister Bell reached into the pocket of her starched apron, and handed her a clean handkerchief.

  ‘Are you telling me you’re married to this man? When did it happen?’ she said sharply. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

  Skye felt a wild desire to laugh. To say that yes, yes, yes, she was pregnant, so now could she please go home and lead an ordinary life, bringing up her children in the clean, green English countryside, away from the horrors of war…?

  But just as she had refused one easy way out, she was too honest to take this one.

  ‘I’m not pregnant,’ she said tonelessly. ‘And we were married before we enlisted.’

  ‘Then you’re a fool, Tremayne.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Skye shot at her. ‘Perhaps it wouldn’t have seemed so foolish if Philip had been killed in action. At least we would have something to remember.’

  She bit her lip, knowing instinctively that Sister Bell had no such memories.

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’ she muttered now. ‘Am I going to be reported and dismissed?’

  ‘I shall do nothing,’ the other woman said after a moment. ‘It’s up to you whether you go or stay. But if you stay, then you’ll get enough sleep and you’ll take your time off and not be a danger to my soldiers. Believe me, my dear, I know what I’m talking about.’

  The small endearment was enough to start Skye off again, but by then, Sister Bell was turning away and leaving her to mop up her own tears. And of course she would stay. She owed it to all the poor devils in the wards. Philip had been one of them, and now he was safe. Not all of these would be so lucky.