by Anne Bennett
The young Irish nurse shook her head, sadly. ‘Desperate,’ she said. ‘It breaks your heart, so it does, to see her.’
‘Is she sedated still?’
‘No,’ the young nurse said. ‘But sure, she might as well be. She lies as still as a statue, withdrawn into herself you know, and never speaks more than yes or no – that’s if you get her to talk at all.’
‘Can I see her?’
‘I’ll have to ask Matron,’ the nurse said. ‘But I’d say it can do no harm. You are the young lady who was rescued with her, aren’t you? I’ve seen your picture in the paper.’
Jenny nodded, blushing, unused to such fame, and she blushed still further when the nurse continued, ‘We all think you’re ever so brave – the whole hospital was talking about it.’ But then she noticed Jenny’s blushes and touching her on the arm, said, ‘I’ll just go and have a wee word with Matron.’
Matron agreed with the nurse that Jenny’s visit couldn’t harm Linda. ‘In fact, my dear,’ she said, her stern features relaxing for a second in the ghost of a smile, ‘you might be the one to make her take an interest in life again.’
Jenny doubted it as she looked at the child, as pale as the pillow she lay against. Her face was expressionless, her arms still by her sides. She seemed unaware of anything – the hospital side-room where she lay alone, the drip feeding into her arm, a cage protecting her legs at the bottom of the bed.
‘Linda,’ Jenny said gently.
The child turned her head and Jenny was shocked by the hopeless look in them. There was not a flicker of recognition; she was like the living dead. For a moment Jenny regretted rescuing the girl. Hadn’t she thought it might have been better if she’d died, along with her mother and brothers?
Yes, but she hadn’t died. She had her whole life before her, and it could be a good and fulfilling life. She took one little thin hand in hers and said, ‘How are you feeling?’
What a stupid, inane remark, she thought instantly, but Linda appeared not to have heard her. Jenny’s eyes flitted around the room and came to light on a worn-looking teddy bear propped on the bedside cabinet. She’d seen it once before, by the light of a torch, and knew it was Tolly, the bear Linda had come back to the house to fetch. It had been that bear that had saved her life. She remembered Linda saying that George would be so pleased she’d found him, and a lump rose in Jenny’s throat.
This would never do, she told herself fiercely. She put out her hand and gently stroked the bear with one finger and Linda’s head moved to watch.
‘Talk to me, pet,’ Jenny said softly.
Linda’s eyes met Jenny’s and she snapped out in hurt anger, ‘What about? The weather?’ Her voice was little more than a whisper and she closed her eyes with a sigh, as if the mere effort of speaking had exhausted her. Then Jenny saw tears seep from the corners of her closed lids, slide down her cheeks and soak the pillow. She wondered if these were the first tears Linda had shed. They said she went mad, screaming and shouting and had to be sedated, but had she cried at all, like Jenny had that terrible morning when she’d sobbed in Beattie’s arms at the loss of Anthony and the terrible things she’d witnessed the previous night?
Risking rejection, she held Linda’s hand tight and looking into the child’s eyes she said, ‘I’m so sorry about your mother and little brothers.’
Linda’s eyes opened wider. No one in the hospital had spoken of the tragedy since she’d come out of her drugged sleep. She’d lain in bed and the doctor’s words had vibrated in her head, but the nurses tried to jolly her along and talk to her as if she was two years old. And no one said anything about her family; in fact they carefully avoided the subject, as if it was better to pretend they’d never existed at all.
It mattered much more to her than her crushed legs, but that was all anyone would talk about. They told her of the operations on them and that she’d be as right as rain in time, not that she believed them and the nurses said she was a lucky girl. Linda thought wryly she’d hate to meet an unlucky one, and many many times she regretted returning to the house that evening.
Her Uncle Sid had sent a letter to her from Australia. He said how sorry he was, and how he regretted being so far away, and said once the war was over she should come and live with him and his family and be welcome. Linda supposed it was nice of him, but ‘when the war’s over’, was like saying ‘when the world ends’, or ‘when the clouds fall out of the sky’. Any road she didn’t want to go and live in Australia. She didn’t even want to live in Basingstoke with her Aunt Lily, though she liked the plump motherly woman who’d bought her a small basket of fruit.
She felt completely alone in the world, and that was the hardest thing of all to cope with. If only she had a photo of her mother, of the boys and her father, but all the family snaps had been in the shoebox in the house, and were destroyed along with everything else. Beattie had searched the ruins for her, but there was nothing left. Her sense of desolation was total. ‘I expect I’ll forget what they look like eventually,’ Linda said to Jenny.
‘You won’t. You’ll carry them in your heart always.’
‘Huh,’ Linda said. ‘I ain’t got nothing to remember them by, not one thing ’cept our George’s teddy bear. Dr Sanders said he’ll take me to see their graves when I’m better and out of here for good. I’d like that. I’ll take some flowers and that and make it nice.’
Her voice ended on a slight sob and Jenny squeezed her hand tightly and said, ‘I’ll go with you if you want.’
Linda shrugged. ‘I don’t care. Do what you like.’ She brushed the trailing tears away from her eyes impatiently and said, ‘You knew they was dead all the time, dain’t yer?’
Jenny hesitated for a brief second. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice so low it was almost a whisper.
‘Why dain’t you tell me? All the time we was together and you never said a word,’ Linda demanded angrily.
‘What could I say?’ Jenny cried. ‘You’d lain for hours alone, cold, in pitch dark and in pain. How could I add to that?’
‘You mean, I might just have given up,’ Linda said, reading her mind. ‘And you’d have been bloody right, too. In fact, I wish you hadn’t bothered to get me out at all.’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ the younger girl said harshly. ‘You told me you wanted me to talk – well, this is what I want to talk about.’
Watching Linda, Jenny saw her face full of self-pity and though her heart ached in sympathy, she knew that Linda feeling sorry for herself would destroy her. Her own mother had done just that for years – and because of it, she’d taken no interest in anyone else besides herself. It had soured her life. And she wasn’t going to let it sour Linda’s. So she said quite sharply, ‘OK, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about the people who laboured for hours to release you. Let’s talk about the men, and some women, who worked all through the bitterly cold night with the rain lashing down, and then went straight on to work the next day.’
‘Well,’ said Linda mutinously. ‘They needn’t have bothered.’
‘They bothered because they thought you were brave and plucky,’ Jenny retorted. ‘They might not have been so keen to get you out if they’d thought you were just going to give up.’
‘What d’you know about it, any road?’ Linda cried. ‘What have I got to look forward to now, anyway?’
‘Oh Linda, I know how you feel,’ Jenny said. ‘At the moment it hurts like hell and you can’t really believe it, but it does get better with time. My gran says you never forget your loved ones, a piece of your heart goes with them, but you have to learn to live without them.’
‘How the hell do you bloody know?’
‘I know, because it happened to me too,’ Jenny said sharply. ‘The day of that massive raid we had a telegram saying the youngest and favourite of all my brothers had been shot down. He’d just turned eighteen in June.’
There was a short silence while Linda thought about what Jenny had said.
She knew she was being unfair taking it out on her. Eventually, she said in a very quiet voice, ‘I’m sorry, Jenny, I know I’m being an ungrateful sod, but I’m as scared as hell. Where am I going to live when I get out?’
Jenny forced herself to speak brightly, ‘You’ll be looked after, don’t you worry.’
‘Where? In a home?’
Jenny couldn’t deny that and didn’t try. Instead she said, ‘The children’s homes are lovely today, and there will be plenty of others for company.’
‘I want to stay here,’ Linda said obstinately. ‘I want to stay with my friends and at my old school.’
‘Maybe they’ll find you a city orphanage,’ Jenny said. ‘Tell them how you feel when the time comes,’ but even as she spoke, she wasn’t at all sure that children’s feelings were considered that much.
Linda was obviously of the same mind. ‘I’ll tell them,’ she said, ‘but d’you think they’ll listen, or care?’
And Jenny couldn’t face her and say that they would. Instead she said, ‘It will only be for a couple of years. You’ll be at work then and have more choice in what you do and where you live.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Linda said. Again there was a small silence between them and then Linda said, ‘I thought shelters were bloody safe?’ and Jenny saw the tears beginning to trickle down the girl’s face.
‘Not for a direct hit,’ Jenny said gently. ‘Nothing could stand up to that.’
‘But they didn’t suffer?’
‘Not for a moment,’ Jenny assured her. ‘They wouldn’t have known a thing about it.’
‘I feel … I feel so bloody awful,’ Linda said with a sob. ‘It’s not fair that I survived and they didn’t.’
The tears came then – a wild torrent that spurted from her nose and eyes and threatened to choke her. Nurses came running, but when they saw the child gathered into Jenny’s arms as far as the drip and the leg cage would allow, and saw that she too was sobbing, they withdrew.
‘About time,’ the matron said to the doctor, recognising the tears as a good sign. ‘I honestly thought that lass was heading for some sort of breakdown.’
The doctor nodded in agreement. ‘Perhaps now she’ll begin to make some improvement,’ he said.
‘We can only hope so,’ the matron said grimly.
As the taxi pulled up outside Pype Hayes Road, the neighbours ran forward to welcome Jenny home. Others stood in the doorways and waved and cheered and Jenny, though embarrassed, was touched by their concern. A man from the end ran up with a jar of honey. ‘From my own bees Jenny,’ he said. ‘Enjoy it.’
Mrs Patterson, their next door neighbour, had baked a cake and everyone said they were glad to see her back safe and sound. Jenny was touched to see that Geraldine and Jan and their children had come down to the house to see her, and had been absolutely staggered when her grandmother arrived at the hospital in a taxi to bring her home.
The table was laid as for a party, full of things not seen since pre-war days. There were plates of chicken and ham sandwiches and a dish of tomatoes that Jenny found were from Mr Patterson’s greenhouse. But the bowl of hard-boiled eggs astonished her: her mother said they were from a man who kept hens. The cold sausages were a present from the butcher. ‘Sit down and eat up now,’ she told her, ‘before it’s all spoiled.’
It was all wonderful, and Jenny was only sorry her appetite was not able to do it justice, especially the jelly and blancmange the children demanded she try, and the cake baked by their next-door neighbour, which Geraldine pressed on her. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Being thin is one thing, but you’re just plain skinny, Jenny.’
‘You could do with more meat on your bones certainly,’ Jan, Seamus’s wife said. She herself was comfortably plump, and would have liked everyone else to be the same size, but she was a nice person and Jenny liked her. She wished Gran O’Leary had been invited because she could have done with her support that evening. She was going to make an announcement which she knew would spoil some of the joy of her home-coming for her family. But she knew she had to do it today: it had been growing in her ever since the previous day when Linda had cried in her arms.
Knowing it was best to get it over with, Jenny began as they sat drinking their second cup of tea. ‘I went to see Linda yesterday,’ she said.
‘Oh, how is she?’ Norah asked because it was the thing to say, but Jenny knew she hadn’t the slightest interest.
‘Very down,’ Jenny said. ‘She knows the full extent of the tragedy now.’
‘Has she any family to see to her?’ Jan asked.
Jenny shook her head, ‘No one.’
‘Ah, poor soul.’
Jenny blessed Jan for her sympathetic nature. ‘Yes it’s a shame isn’t it? She has got an aunt and an uncle, but he’s in Australia, and the aunt hasn’t got the room with a big family of her own.’
‘Be an orphanage for her then,’ Norah said.
‘Not necessarily,’ Jenny said. Everyone stopped and looked at her. Jenny paused for a moment or two, and then said, ‘She could come here.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘I’m not,’ Jenny protested. ‘She could sleep in my room in my bed; neither of us is very big.’
‘Jenny, my dear,’ Eileen said, in her most patronising voice. ‘It would not be at all suitable. We don’t know anything about the child’s background.’
‘Sod her background,’ Jenny said, so intensely angry she didn’t care what she said.
‘Jenny!’ the exclamation came simultaneously from Eileen and Norah.
‘Don’t “Jenny” me, and treat me like an idiot,’ she said, rage boiling inside her. ‘The child I spent hours with is virtually alone in the world. She has no one. They were wiped out in the raid that left you unscathed!’
‘I understand you are upset over the child and a little overwrought yourself perhaps,’ said Eileen. Jenny had the desire to swipe the smug expression off her face. ‘So, despite the way you’ve spoken to us, and the language used, we shall make allowances. You’ll find she’ll soon settle down, dear. The orphanages today are marvellous places, I believe.’
‘How d’you know? You’ve never been inside one.’
‘Jenny, don’t be so rude and argumentative,’ Norah said, siding as usual with Eileen. ‘Mother’s only expressing an opinion. Now, we have no objection to your being friends with the girl and visiting her if you feel you must, but that’s as far as it is to go.’
The only way she could maybe change their minds was to appeal to their puffed-up pride. They’d enjoyed having their pictures in the paper and their account of Jenny, who they described as a ‘wonderful daughter and granddaughter’, had raised their esteem within the neighbour-hood. So Jenny said, ‘If you were to agree to take Linda on, it would look good for you.’
‘How, pray, do you work that one out?’
‘Well think of the headlines,’ Jenny said. ‘Selfless widow offers home to orphan. The newspaper would be interested. In these days of bad war news, human interest stories are sought after.’
She saw the two women were thinking about what she said, and so she went on, ‘I don’t care how it’s done. You two can take all the credit, as long as Linda is allowed to come here to live.’ She paused and then went on, bravely determined. ‘But if you don’t agree to this, I will go to the papers myself and tell them Linda’s story. I will tell them I wanted to offer her a home here with me, but you would not hear of it.’
‘Don’t you dare threaten me, miss,’ Norah snapped.
‘I’m not threatening you Mother. I’m just telling you what I intend to do,’ Jenny said, marvelling at how calm she felt. She knew she’d won the fight; she saw it on their faces as they glanced at each other. But before they were able to make a reply, the sirens sent up their unearthly wail. The adults looked at each other almost in disbelief. ‘Oh God,’ Geraldine breathed. ‘Today of all days. Oh God!’
‘It may go over,’ Jenny said, seeing her sister’s terror mirrored in th
e faces of her children.
But it didn’t go over. It was far too dangerous for Jan to walk home, and Jenny insisted Jan and Geraldine and their children use the shelter, as she knew neither her mother nor grandmother would go into it. It would be cramped with them all inside, and probably damp and cold too, and she was glad she had taken the loan of Mr Patterson’s oil heater, even though it smelt to high heaven.
Seeing how frightened the children were of the planes droning over their head, and the crashes of explosions, and remembering what Linda had done to calm her brothers, Jenny began to sing every song she could think of, in an effort to still their panic.
Jan realized what she was doing immediately and began a rendering of the silly songs Eddie and Rosemarie would know from school. Geraldine didn’t join in, but she did stop shivering quite so much and the children grew enthusiastic, especially when none of the bombs fell terribly close.
Eventually, the heavy air and late hour got to Jamie and Declan and they were put down in the bunks to sleep. Even Rosemarie and Eddie were drowsy and lying back on their mothers’ knees, Eddie with his thumb in his mouth for comfort.
Too tired to sing any more, the women fell to talking in low voices so as not to disturb the children. At first they didn’t discuss the subject Jenny had broached at tea, but skated around it. Eventually, Jan said, ‘Were you serious about having that wee girl to live with you?’
‘Yes,’ Jenny said. ‘Never more so.’
‘Do you dislike Mother so much?’ Geraldine asked.
‘I dislike her attitude,’ Jenny said. ‘What is so wrong with her and grandmother that they can’t extend the hand of human friendship to another person in need?’
‘Well,’ said Geraldine, ‘they do know nothing about her.’
‘She’s young and orphaned,’ Jenny snapped. ‘What else is there to know?’
She glanced at the children and saw they had their eyes closed. She lowered her voice to a whisper as she said, ‘Linda’s little brother George was about the same age as young Declan and Harry was a baby, younger even than Jamie. Think on that.’