Lily's War

by Shirley Mann

  Portsmouth was a shock, even to Danny, prone on a stretcher. All he could see was a mass of rubble and bombed-out buildings and for the first time, Danny caught a glimpse of how much England had gone through. He was so relieved his two sisters had been moved to the north coast and were away from the action. The hospital staff were efficient but rushed off their feet. They had little time for chit chat but Danny did glean information about what life had been like since he left England’s shores all those years ago and it frightened him.

  He was transferred to Haslar, a specialist military hospital unit, with new facilities in blood transfusion to help him fight infection and the next few weeks were a relentless round of treatments, injections and temperature checks. He managed to write from his upside-down position to his parents telling them he was safe and about the injuries he had suffered. He openly told them how foolish he had been and got a quick reply from his father who censured his naïveté but sounded relieved that he was back on British soil.

  Danny’s letter to Lily went unanswered and he knew that worrying was delaying his recovery. He tried writing to his parents again to see if they knew anything about Lily, but they had never met Mr and Mrs Mullins. He wanted to write to the last camp she had been at but knew they would ignore his letter as he was not a relative. Having time to think was a luxury Danny could have done without. He was tortured by the thought Lily would despise him for his foolishness and, staring at the ground beneath him for hours, he had never loved her more. There was nothing he could do but wait and he found he was learning a patience he had never had before. The days dragged on and he spent the time writing letters – to his family, to Eddie, to Frank’s parents and, finally, to Lily’s parents with a note enclosed for Lily he hoped they would pass on.

  Chapter 48

  Lily was starting to plan her escape route. If she hung onto the bed, then each of the beds down the ward, she worked out she could make it to the door, especially if she timed it to coincide with the nurses’ changeover. Then she knew the intensive care ward was to the left and she could just spot a rail along the corridor she could grab. It was all a matter of timing. She felt excitement bubbling in her stomach as the hour of the changeover came nearer. As soon as the door closed on the sister’s room, she edged her way gingerly out of bed. The girl next to her, Anne, from Bedford, who had also been injured at Paddington, looked up with interest. Lily put her fingers to her lips. She would explain later. Very carefully, she made her way along the ward, trying to suppress the gasps as the pain caught her side. She made it past the sister’s room, grateful that the nurses were all too busy making notes to notice her and headed out into the corridor. The sign on the door was unequivocal: ‘Intensive Care – DO NOT ENTER’. Lily did not intend to go in, she just wanted to peer through the little window in the door.

  If she craned her neck, she could just see the beds. She counted along, checking each one, then . . . she saw her! Lying down, bandages everywhere and her leg stuck up in stirrups, but it was unmistakably Alice. For the first time, Lily believed her friend really was alive and it overwhelmed her. She sank to the ground, weak with exhaustion.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ a nurse said, leaning down towards her collapsed frame. They looked at each other and both gasped. It was like looking in a mirror. Lily was paler and in the unattractive patients’ gown, whereas this woman was in a nurse’s uniform, but otherwise they were almost identical. The nurse became professional again.

  ‘Let’s get you back to bed. You shouldn’t be out here.’

  Lily muttered that she had wanted to see her friend, Alice, who was in intensive care. Then she looked into familiar hazel eyes and said, ‘Please, I need to know if she is going to be all right.’

  For once, the cool exterior of the nurse faltered. She had never seen anyone who looked so much like her and through that physical link, she could almost feel the anguish that this girl was experiencing.

  ‘I’ll see what I can find out, but we must get you back to bed.’

  Lily accepted the help and gratefully sank back onto her own bed. The nurse was about to walk away when Lily grabbed her hand.

  ‘What’s your name? I’m Lily. Can’t you see how alike we look?’

  The nurse nodded, aware that the whole ward was now staring at them. At that moment, the sister bustled in with a look of fury on her face. She frogmarched the nurse out of the ward, obviously with a great deal to say to her once she was out of the patients’ hearing, but as the nurse turned on her heels, she turned and mouthed to Lily, ‘Betty’ and smiled.

  The following evening, Lily was told she had a visitor. She sat up more easily this time to see an off-duty Betty in a smart gabardine grinning at her and then pulling up a chair to sit next to her.

  ‘I think we need to talk about the fact that we look like two peas in a pod,’ the girl said.

  ‘Yes, I can’t believe it. I’ve never seen myself in the flesh before,’ Lily answered, ‘but first, please tell me about my friend, Alice Colville, is she going to be all right?’

  Betty checked over her shoulder and whispered: ‘I’m not supposed to tell you anything because you’re not a relation, but yes, she’ll be OK. It will just take time. She was badly injured.’

  Lily’s eyes filled with tears. If only they hadn’t been in London, if only they hadn’t fallen out over Kit, she would never have been at Paddington Station. But wars were full of ifs and buts, it was too late to think about that.

  Betty would not, or could not, tell her any more but they spent a very pleasant hour exchanging family histories, just to check they were not related. But Betty’s home was in Hackney and there was seemingly no possible connection. It was just an odd coincidence.

  It was a few days later, when Lily was beginning to feel much better, that she heard she was being transferred to Manchester Royal Infirmary. She was excited to be moving nearer to home and being able to see her family and maybe find out some news about Danny. Stuck in her hospital bed, she told herself he was alive and to prove it to herself conducted imaginary conversations with him where she told him she loved him and where he forgave her everything. The daydreams always faded when she got to the part where he was supposed to hold out his arms to her and, today, it left her feeling chilled. Her shivering was interrupted, however, by a sound of the click click of heels heading down the ward. She looked up and her heart sank as she recognised Sergeant Horrocks’s shrew-like features moving inexorably towards her bed.

  ‘So Mullins, still making a mess of things I see?’

  Lily decided she was not strong enough to take on Sergeant Horrocks and made a feeble attempt to sit up straight while keeping her lips firmly pressed together.

  The sergeant had a clipboard with her containing papers which she thrust under Lily’s nose.

  ‘I’ve been diverted from very important business to deliver these to you. Your orders. You are to be given six weeks’ sick leave and then you report back to camp.’

  Lily nodded, her delight at having six whole weeks to see her family tainted by the feeling that she needed to get back to work. She also desperately wanted to be able to see Alice before she left.

  The sergeant’s visit was mercifully brief and only consisted of the bare essentials that Lily needed to know before she was transferred.

  It was as Sergeant Horrocks was gathering her papers together to snap back into her clipboard that Betty sidled into the ward, checking to see if Sister was around before making a quick dash towards Lily’s bed. She obviously had some news for her and Lily looked up expectantly at the same time as Sergeant Horrocks.

  ‘You!’ said Horrocks through gritted teeth. ‘You . . .’

  Betty was completely lost for words and Lily looked in amazement at the two women who were staring aghast at each other.

  ‘I might have known you would be in cahoots,’ the sergeant spat out at them both.

  She fumbled to pull her uniform straight, grabbed her clipboard and headed unsteadil
y to the door while her legs seemed to crumble beneath her.

  Lily looked up at Betty for an explanation but she, too, was pale and was staring in anguish after the departing sergeant.

  At that moment, Sister Mulhaney came charging down the ward.

  ‘Nurse, if I have to tell you one more time, you will be disciplined. You are not assigned to my ward now get out and don’t come back unless you are off duty.’

  Betty scuttled out of the ward leaving Lily speechless, thoughts whirring around her head.

  How did the two women know each other? What had happened to make Sergeant Horrocks hate Betty so much and was this, finally, the clue as to why Horrocks seemed to have a vendetta against Lily?

  It was only after a few minutes that Lily remembered that Betty had come in to tell her something. She called out to another nurse, Sally Hughes, who was a small blonde with a cheerful smile.

  ‘Nurse, could you help me?’

  Sally came over, glancing back to check where Sister Mulhaney was.

  ‘I think that nurse from Intensive Care was coming to tell me something about my friend, Alice Colville. Do you think you could find out what it was? Pleeeaaase . . .’

  Her pleading got through to the little nurse, who had always tried to stop to chat with Lily.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do but don’t expect miracles. Sister’s watching us all like hawks.’

  Two hours later, Nurse Hughes sidled back to Lily’s bed pretending to straighten the covers. ‘Your friend is sitting up and looks to be on the mend,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll take her a note if you like.’

  Lily couldn’t wait to put pen to paper but when it came to it, her hand hesitated over the pad. What could she say? How could she tell Alice how sorry she was? In the end, she wrote a brief note saying she hoped she was feeling better and that she hoped she could forgive her. Then she paused. Could she tell her about Sergeant Horrocks? She decided not to. It was something that the two of them needed to chat about when they were back to being friends again. For a moment, she envisaged their heads bowed together while they speculated and giggled like they used to. She breathed a heavy sigh. There was a great deal of work to be done first.

  Chapter 49

  Lily’s transfer to Manchester was delayed by two more bouts of infection. Every time she seemed to be improving, her temperature went up again and the doctors would not let her move. She got regular bulletins from Nurse Hughes about Alice but no reply to her letter came, which distressed her. Betty had apparently been called home after her brother was injured in a bombing raid over Cherbourg, taking her secret with her. In addition, Lily was beginning to seriously panic about Danny. It seemed as if all her experiences with Doug, Ted and Kit were just distant memories and as she lay, tossing and turning with her head spinning, all she could think of was Danny lying dead in a ditch covered in blood. She had nightmares and would wake up yelling, disturbing the rest of the ward and resulting in nurses dashing to her side to calm her.

  The slow but successful progress into northern Europe following the D-Day landings vaguely registered with Lily but, in pain and still with no word from Alice or Danny, she only nodded distractedly at the excitement in the ward around her. Her war had become far too personal for her to take real delight in world events.

  She finally started to improve and once her temperature was low enough, she was ushered into a waiting ambulance and taken to a train heading north. She had no time to let Alice know and her attempts to track down where Betty lived so she could send her a letter had failed dismally, leaving her with nightmares presenting various scenarios that always failed to explain the sergeant’s enmity towards them both. With the help of painkillers and a rush of adrenalin, the train journey passed in a blur for Lily from her position on a stretcher in the guard’s van and it seemed no time at all until the train pulled into Piccadilly. Too tired to notice the journey to the hospital, Lily smelt the air, telling herself she knew she was home.

  *

  The first few days in Manchester were a mix of pure pleasure and pain. The journey had taken it out of Lily and her exhaustion could cope with little more than five-minute visits from her anxious mother and father but, gradually, Lily could manage some congealed porridge and soup, and with an improved diet, even of hospital war ration food, started to feel more like herself and was allowed home.

  To be in her own little bedroom with her mother fussing around her felt like being enclosed in a warm, safe blanket. Lily luxuriated in it and played endless games of Ludo with her brother, who would come in to see her every afternoon after school.

  She wrote to everyone she knew to see if they had had any news of Danny but even Mr Spencer at Liners had heard nothing. Lily started to imagine the life they might have had, the little house in the suburbs, the tidy kitchen and little garden and maybe children . . . She stopped her dreaming suddenly. Would Danny still want her? Was she still a virgin? She was still a bit vague on the mechanics of sex and longed to talk to Alice.

  She wrote regularly to Alice but received no reply. She had failed her friend and Danny and this was her punishment, she felt. She deserved to be abandoned, unloved. It was a good thing her parents still cared for her, she thought, and started planning a life as a spinster looking after them into their old age.

  On the day she was allowed downstairs for the first time, she heard her parents talking quietly in the kitchen. The post had just come and her father had picked up the letters off the mat on his way in from the night shift. They came into the morning room like two wary animals.

  ‘What is it, Dad, Mum? You’re scaring me. Please. Is it Danny? Alice?’

  Her mum sat down next to the armchair where Lily was cuddled up and took her hand.

  ‘No, it’s good news, love, we just don’t want you to get excited.’ She plucked at the blanket and tucked it unnecessarily around her daughter’s legs.

  Lily looked from one to the other. ‘Please tell me, I promise I’ll keep calm.’ She was glad they could not hear her thumping heart.

  ‘It’s Danny, he’s alive,’ her dad said.

  The rush of blood went straight from Lily’s stomach to her heart, then to her head and back to her heart again. She felt as if she was going to faint.

  ‘You see, I was right,’ her mum said to her dad accusingly. ‘She isn’t strong enough.’

  ‘No, I’m fine, please tell me,’ Lily said quickly.

  ‘He’s been injured, not a war injury but he was attacked in Rome. He’s in hospital near Portsmouth.’

  Lily’s mind raced through the streets of Rome, imagining some faceless assailants attacking a lone soldier. She then paused, puzzled as to why they had not sent him to the Military Hospital in Malta. He must be desperately ill, she concluded.

  ‘Is he all right?’ she whispered.

  ‘Apparently, yes, he sent us a note and enclosed this letter for you.’

  Lily grabbed it from her dad’s proffered hand and greedily read it. The fact that it was written by Danny made her heave a sigh of relief. If he was well enough to write then surely . . .? She carried on reading. It was all about her and whether she was all right. He said little about the injury but talked about having had specialist treatment on his back. Lily’s thoughts went to Dickie Ashcroft, down Slade Lane, who had returned from the war in a wheelchair. She gulped back a short, panicked breath and made herself concentrate on the fact that he was alive.

  She sat back in the chair and felt her life had just been restored to her. Lily could not wait to write back but, like in her letters to Alice, she was unsure what to say. Yes, he had been constant with his letters, all of them had hinted at a future together, but this was a very different man from the one who had gone off to war four years earlier. She did not know how he felt about her and certainly she was a very different girl from the one who had tossed her head uncaringly at him as he walked out of the office.

  28th June, 1944

  Dear Danny,

  I can’t tell you how
relieved I was to find out you were alive. I had been watching the post every day to see if there was any news of you but when my parents brought me your letter today, I could finally breathe a sigh of relief. I am all right but I was hurt in a raid on London and have come back home to recuperate. Mum, as you can imagine, is loving fussing over me and is, I know, giving me all the best titbits of food while she goes without but as she’s banned me from the kitchen, I can’t check. I am feeling much better and I think I’ll be heading back to camp soon. It’s been good to be in Manchester but you may not recognise it, it’s been pretty badly damaged. The Mancunian spirit is still alive and kicking though, you’ll be glad to know.

  She sat back and paused. Had she said too much? Not enough?

  Oh blow it, she thought, he could have been dead. She could have been dead. She took up the pen again.

  Danny, I don’t how you feel about me. I have been so offhand with you for so long but when I thought you were dead, I felt as if my heart was going to burst. It was as if my life no longer had any meaning. I know I was young when you left but I have grown up a lot and I do hope you still like me. I would love us to start again. Can we?

  With my love,

  Lily

  She slowly sealed the envelope and ran her fingers over it, stroking it. The longer this war went on, the more there was to say and the less she had been saying it, she thought. First Danny, then Alice. Everything moved too fast, there was no time for deep discussions, no time for developing emotions at a reasonable rate.

  She felt her forehead and hoped all these tumbled emotions were not because she was coming down with another infection.

  The following day there was another letter for her.

  29th June, 1944

  Dear Lily,

  You will have to forgive the terrible writing but this is the first time I have been able to hold a pen. My right hand was badly hurt and I haven’t felt like writing to anyone, even my ninny of a friend.