For all her joy that the war was over, she almost felt that a further battle was in front of her now. A battle to readjust to civilian life, normal life if you like. Because the last years had been far from normal. It had been wonderful over the last weeks to sleep on a real mattress, to have a proper bath with sweet-smelling soap and then dress in clean new clothes, to eat until she was full, to have no more humiliating bowing and roll calls, but it hadn’t seemed right somehow. Not with so many of her friends and colleagues having died. The appalling brutality and cruelty she’d lived under for so long was no more, and liberation had certainly freed her body to a large extent and put her on the road to physical recovery, but she didn’t feel liberation had freed her mind. It was a strange thing, and but for the fact that she knew Delia and Hilda and many others felt exactly the same, she would have felt she was going mad.
‘Look at all the Union Jacks,’ said Delia at her side, returning the waves of the crowds on the dock. ‘It looks like the whole world’s turned out to welcome us home.’
Abby smiled but said nothing. She hoped the ships returning some of the families who had been in the POW camps and who had young children, wouldn’t be met by such a fanfare. Some of the little ones had been fascinated and excited by seeing shops and parks and ornate buildings in their recuperation period in India, but others had been much more timid. Scared of every aircraft flying over, speaking politely but only in whispers, and utterly terrified of anything remotely approaching violence, even just among the children playing together. If a crust of bread had been left, or if crumbs had fallen from the table where they were eating, these were the children who would scrabble about to eat them or put them in their pockets to save for later, even though they were no longer hungry. It had broken Abby’s heart.
They had heard that the war had cost fifty-five million lives, lives that could never be recaptured, but there were others who still lived, men, women and children, whose painful and frightening memories would shape their lives in the years ahead. Abby prayed every night for the children, that their deep psychological damage would be healed, and every time she did so she thanked God she’d had no children who might have been caught up in the atrocities. But she did want children in the future, she thought now, and to date she had seen no sign of her monthlies returning, even though her weight had increased from a mere five and a half stone when she’d come out of the camp to just under seven. She hadn’t been able to tolerate food as well as some of the other POWs at first, probably because she was still weak, and ill from the beriberi, and even now there were days when her stomach complained after a meal, and she felt nauseous and unwell. What if she couldn’t have children because of the privations her body had gone through? Nicholas wanted a family as much as she did, and it would be a huge blow. Nicholas would stand by her – he was that type of person – but she didn’t want him cheated of becoming a father because of her.
‘I hope Hilda experiences this, Abby.’ Delia’s voice was soft and had lost some of its excitement. ‘She has to get better. I can’t bear the thought of her not making it.’ Hilda had still been too ill to make the journey home with them.
‘I know.’ The two women looked at each other and then hugged tightly. Their bond had been forged in fire and they understood each other perfectly. Abby knew she would never have another friend who would mean as much to her as Delia did.
‘Come on, let’s get ready to disembark.’ Delia giggled, her mood changing. ‘Hark at me, “disembark”. I sound positively nautical, don’t I.’
As Abby followed Delia to the cabin they shared with two other nurses, she gave herself a mental rap over the knuckles. She had to stop crossing her bridges before she came to them. She knew it was one of the worst things she could do and it never helped her state of mind. Of course the future was full of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’ – it was the same for everyone, and she couldn’t deal with all the potential problems now. The first thing, the most important thing, was seeing Nicholas again. After that, for better or for worse, everything else would fall into place.
He hadn’t expected there to be so many people at the dock in Southampton, which perhaps was naive in hindsight, especially because the first port of call by the hospital ships months ago had been Hong Kong. The trip had been recorded by cinema newsreels, when images of the emaciated human cargo had been broadcast to a horrified world.
Nicholas shook his head at the memory. He would never understand what had driven the Japanese. He’d been glad Gracie had been at his side that night, because he’d been beside himself with shock and rage, and shame, too, that he hadn’t protected Abby.
They’d filmed the ship entering Hong Kong harbour, a destroyer in front of it and minesweepers either side because the seas were mined, and then had cut to the ambulances bringing the POWs from the camps. He hadn’t been prepared for the sight that had met his eyes. Men, women and children who had seemed horribly deformed due to malnutrition and tropical diseases. He’d gazed in disbelief at their legs – the two little bones, the tibia and the fibula, hanging onto the huge patella with just a fragile coating of skin over them. It had been a scene of utter misery and he had wept openly, not knowing at that point if Abby was alive or dead. And later, when he’d received word that she was fighting for her life, he’d nearly gone mad with worry.
But now she had come home. Nicholas gazed up at the massive ship as it slowly manoeuvred into position at the quayside.
He knew Abby would still be suffering the effects of long-term malnutrition, and that she would be fragile and vulnerable to illness, but he felt that if he could just get her home under his care he could make her well. He would devote the rest of his life to making sure she was healed in mind and body, if she would allow him to.
He had written to her in India during her recuperation there, and the letter he had received back had been loving and had emphasized that he mustn’t worry about her. She was getting better, she’d written, and soon the doctors would let her home, but somehow it hadn’t sounded like Abby. It had been restrained, that was the only way he could describe it to himself, and of course after everything she had gone through that was natural enough.
He bit down on his lip, his eyes on the huge ship, as the doubts and fears that had tormented him since he’d read her letter came to the surface once more. Abby had told him that Delia had met someone in the camp, a Norwegian man, and that they had fallen in love. Had Abby met someone too? Was that the reason for the change in her? Someone who had supported her and been there for her through the last years, when he, himself, had been having it cushy at home? Did she resent that he had left her with no protection at a time when she had never needed it more? He knew now that John had been murdered, and he had grieved for his friend, but at least John had died an honourable death, whereas he had been shipped out of the mayhem like a lily-livered coward.
His hands had clenched into fists at his side and he forced himself to relax his fingers, one by one. He had never really had a faith as such, but he had prayed every night after her letter that she would forgive him.
It was beginning to rain, but he didn’t even think about the umbrella that Gracie had made sure was in the car before he had left to drive down the day before. He had booked into a little hotel overnight, and reserved a room there for Abby’s first night in England too. She was going to be exhausted after the journey and the excitement of being home, and they could make the drive to the north-east tomorrow.
He thought about the huge bunch of flowers in the hotel room and the champagne he’d arranged to be brought up directly they returned, and again his heart somersaulted. He would know when he looked into Abby’s eyes whether she still felt the same about him. Her eyes had always been a window to her soul. This night would either be one of talking and sharing and laughing and crying as they began their new life together, or . . .
He straightened his shoulders, resolve bringing his head up. No, he wouldn’t accept the ‘or’. He would make her love him again
.
‘It will be fine, you know.’ Delia had sensed something of what Abby was feeling and the reasons for it, and now she took her friend’s arm as they began to walk down the gangplank. ‘Nicholas loves you to distraction – everyone used to talk about it. He literally had eyes for no one else.’
Abby smiled and patted the arm in hers. She was so worked up now she couldn’t talk about it. She just wanted to see Nicholas and look into his face. Then she would know. For better or for worse, then she would know.
There were reporters on the dock and cameras flashing and such a babble of noise that Abby’s head was spinning. Delia’s parents appeared, Mrs Cook elbowing other folk out of her way as she made towards her daughter. Delia had confided in Abby that her mother – much as she loved her – was one of the reasons she had wanted to get away from England when she had joined the QAs, and just seeing her now Abby could understand why. She wondered how the weeks and months ahead would be for Delia because her friend had told her she didn’t intend to live in her parents’ home for long. ‘I couldn’t go back to that, I just couldn’t, Abby. Mother has to have everything done her way and runs the house on such a rigid timetable that you’d be in fear of your life if you were so much as a minute or two late down for breakfast or something. And that’s fine, it’s her house and she’s entitled to do what she wants in it, but I couldn’t put up with it now. Not like I used to.’
Abby found herself pushed aside by Mrs Cook when she reached them who, after kissing her daughter, moved Delia to arm’s length and said, in a voice similar to that of a sergeant major, ‘Good grief, girl. You’re as thin as a rake and wherever did you get this coat from? Green never did suit you.’
Just before Delia was enfolded in an embrace from her father who had stood meekly by – something Abby dared bet he was used to doing – her eyes met Abby’s, and the rueful grimace she made said, ‘I told you so. I can’t put up with this for long.’
The two girls had exchanged addresses and knew they would be keeping in touch, but now, as Mrs Cook went to drag her daughter off, Delia shrugged away her mother’s arm and said, ‘I’ll stay with you until you find Nicholas.’
‘No, it’s all right, you go.’ Abby meant it. Much as she loved Delia like a sister, she wanted to be on her own when she first saw Nicholas. The QAs had been told that the matron-in-chief and other staff from the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service would be at the quayside, but again, Abby didn’t want to talk to anyone until she had seen Nicholas.
The two women hugged goodbye and Delia was escorted off by her mother, for all the world as though she was a prisoner being led from the dock of the Old Bailey. Abby gazed after her friend, not knowing if she wanted to laugh or cry. Poor Delia. Oh, she did so hope that Hans came through for her.
And then she turned her head and there Nicholas was. As tall and handsome as she remembered but looking so much older. For a breathtaking moment the world stopped spinning and everything else, the noise, the clamour, the pushing and shoving, faded into insignificance. He was still fighting his way through the throng but his eyes didn’t leave hers as he pushed forward, and then he was right in front of her.
She dropped the little overnight bag that she was holding and practically leapt into his arms, and then they were kissing as they had never kissed before, not even in the midst of wild passion. ‘My darling, my darling, my darling . . .’ His words were punctured by more kisses until they were both breathless and gasping, but she had seen what was in his eyes when he had first caught sight of her and nothing else mattered . . .
Chapter Thirty-Two
Christmas Eve, 1948
Abby held tight to Nicholas’s hand, her body straining with the contractions that were endeavouring to bring their child into the world. Outside the house it was bitterly cold, the snow thick and more falling in a Christmas-card landscape, but inside the bedroom a coal fire in the small grate made it as warm as toast.
Abby had been in labour for fifteen hours and she was exhausted, but even before the midwife had told her she could begin to push, she’d sensed a change in her body. The knowledge that they’d soon see their baby had given her fresh strength, that and Nicholas’s encouragement. He had remained with her throughout the whole labour, whispering words of love, and not even grimacing when she’d crushed his fingers again and again.
The buxom midwife had been aghast that her patient’s husband intended to stay throughout the birth, even if he was a doctor. The fact that Abby had said she wanted Gracie to be with her was fair enough; Mrs Wood was a woman, after all, and the midwife had been led to understand that she was much more than a housekeeper to the doctor and his wife and quite one of the family. But Dr Jefferson-Price attending his own wife? It wasn’t decent. By rights, he should be pacing the floor downstairs and drinking whisky; that’s what fathers did, doctors or not.
Gracie, who had heard exactly what the midwife thought when that good lady had come down to the kitchen earlier in the day for a bite to eat, would normally have agreed with the sentiment. But not on this occasion. This was different, as she had tried to explain although the midwife was having none of it. Nicholas and Abby were as one, in a way she certainly had never seen before, and it would have been unthinkable to both of them for Nicholas to be shut out of the birth of this longed-for child.
The midwife had shook her head and pursed her lips but had said no more, and Gracie had given up trying to explain. The midwife was old school, added to which, how did you describe the sort of love her lad and his wife shared? Gracie had to admit she had been a bit concerned, when Abby had first come home, that everything would change and that Abby might – if not exactly resent her being around – want her kept at arm’s length. But she needn’t have worried, she thought fondly. As the old saying went, she hadn’t lost a son but gained a daughter. And she loved the pair of them to the depths of her soul. And now their little family would increase to four, and oh, she prayed everything would be all right with the babby. The lass had been so poorly in the first year after she was home, and even when she’d got more on an even keel, she hadn’t fallen for the child she’d wanted so much and had got herself into a right state about it.
Gracie was sitting on the other side of the bed from Nicholas and now she smoothed the hair from Abby’s hot forehead and wiped it with a cool flannel.
Month after month Abby had cried on her shoulder when she had known yet again there was no babby, saying she was failing Nicholas, and although she’d tried to tell the lass that was nonsense, she knew it hadn’t got through. Something had been needed to break the cycle of anxiety and stress, she’d seen that, and so she had gone out of her own accord and brought home a puppy for the lass shortly after the New Year, a dear little thing that Abby had instantly fallen in love with. And what do you know, within a month or two Abby was in the family way.
Gracie smiled to herself. She might be getting on in years but she still knew a thing or two, and Bailey had certainly proved himself to be a blessing. Daft as a brush half the time, mind you, and the garden would never be the same again after the holes he’d dug, but a sweeter-natured animal you couldn’t wish for and with a zest for life that was infectious. And by concentrating on the new ‘babby’ the lass had relaxed, and hey presto, here they were.
Abby let out a long deep groan, and as the midwife who was perched at the foot of the bed said, ‘Aye, that’s it, m’dear, go on, that’s it, the head’s coming,’ Gracie leaned over Abby and murmured, ‘That’s me bairn, that’s me bairn,’ which was exactly how she thought of Nicholas’s wife.
Abby was scarcely aware of her surroundings any more, but tired and spent as she was, Nicholas and Gracie’s love was like a warm, reassuring balm. She could do this. Hadn’t she been waiting and longing for this moment for the last three years, if not all her life? She gave everything with the final push, and as she felt the baby slide out of her body, the next moment was filled with the joyous sound of new life wailing its displeasure at be
ing expelled from the nice comfortable place where it had been so happy for the last nine months.
Weakly, Abby gasped, ‘Is it all right? Is everything all right?’
The midwife, not one for sentiment, pretended not to notice that the new father was crying unashamedly as she cut the cord and wrapped the baby in a blanket. ‘All right? By, I should say so, lass. You’ve got a bonny daughter and she’s got a good pair of lungs on her.’
‘A daughter,’ Abby murmured contentedly. Nicholas had so wanted a daughter, insisting that a miniature Abby whom he could love and protect and indulge would be the icing on the cake.
‘Aye, and she’s a beauty, lass. You can be right proud of her.’ The midwife placed the small cocoon in Abby’s arms. ‘What are you going to call her?’
Abby looked into the tiny face in wonder. She was beautiful, with a shock of black hair just like Nicholas’s. And her daughter looked back at her, showing small pink gums as she yawned widely and then shutting her eyes as though satisfied now she was in her mother’s arms.
Abby looked at Nicholas who was bent over them, the tears still running down his face. And it was he who said throatily, ‘Molly. It was always going to be Molly for a girl. Molly Grace, if that’s all right with you, Gracie?’
They had dropped the ‘Mrs Wood’ and ‘Doctor’ shortly after Abby had come home. Abby had insisted it was far too formal and rather ridiculous with Gracie being one of the family.
Gracie nodded – it was all she could do as she was crying too now – but she hugged Abby and kissed her before gently stroking the baby’s downy head.
‘Well, she got here at last,’ the midwife said cheerfully as she began to gather the dirty towels together. ‘And she’s a nice size, m’dear. She knew what she was doing in hanging about for a bit. She might have been a bit small if she’d come when we thought.’
The baby had been due well over two weeks ago by Abby’s calculations, but as the time had come and gone without a sign of the impending birth, Abby had begun to wonder if she was going to be pregnant for ever. For the last little while she had been hugely uncomfortable, and her worry that something was wrong, that her years as a POW had somehow affected the baby, had been strong. But here she was. Abby smiled down at her daughter. And she was so worth waiting for.
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