Come the Hour

by Peggy Savage

  The winter was bitter. Amy made her home visits, ploughing through the snow. The children, as always, were enjoying it. Life, Amy thought. Thank God for the children, for that innocent enjoyment of the moment, of living in the day, not worrying about the future. Her old ladies were extraordinarily cheerful, despite their chilblains. After the war, Amy thought, after the war we’ll have to look after them better than this. The pigeons seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her patient’s room. She smiled. They’ve got more sense than we have.

  Jenny, one of the final-year girls at the hospital, and a flatmate, met Tessa in the canteen. ‘What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing much,’ Tessa said. ‘Just spend it with my parents probably.’

  ‘One of the American doctors came and asked the girls and the nurses to a dance at one of the hotels.’ Jenny looked excited. ‘You’ve got to come, Tessa. It’ll be fantastic. They’re having a buffet supper. They’ll have food like you’ve never seen. They’re sending cars for us.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Tessa said.

  Jenny sat down beside her. ‘Don’t think about it, Tessa. Just come. You haven’t been anywhere this year. I do know why, but life goes on. Just come.’

  Tessa sat for a few moments over her coffee. I wish Tim was here, she thought. I wish he knew that we’re beginning to win. I wish he knew that he’d saved the world, him and Charlie and the rest. Sometimes she felt as if he were still near her, but those times were fading. All that she had now was a memory – a loving memory. Everyone was right. Life went on. She hadn’t been out for nearly a year. She’d go to the dance.

  She finished her coffee and got ready for her afternoon teaching round. She was on a surgical firm, sometimes helping in theatre, mostly with injured civilians, many of them blackout accidents. There were occasional raids and sometimes she still did firewatching. Up there that night on the roof, with the streetlights blacked out and a clear sky, the stars were overwhelming and magnificent in their brightness and number. They gave her a sense of timelessness and peace. With deep love and thankfulness for what they had had, she said goodbye to Tim.

  The dance floor was crowded, an American Army band playing swing and the popular songs: ‘We’ll meet again’, and ‘Coming in on a wing and a prayer’. The girls were greeted at once by a group of GIs who swept them on to the dance floor. Several couples were jiving madly, arms and legs flying. It reminded Tessa of the dance at the Hammersmith Palais. I haven’t danced for a year, she thought. She began to enjoy herself.

  The MC announced that the next dance would be a Paul Jones. There was a lot of giggling among the girls and the dancers formed two circles, the men on the outside, the girls on the inside, facing each other. Tessa joined the ring, ready to dance with whoever was facing her when the music stopped. He stood before her and smiled. He was, she thought, an officer, though she wasn’t familiar with the uniforms.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  She looked up at him. ‘Hello.’ The music started again and they danced. He looked nice, she thought – youngish, not exactly handsome, but a nice face, strong, but open and friendly.

  ‘Are you one of the girls from the hospital?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘One of the nurses?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m a final-year medical student.’

  ‘Oh really?’ He looked pleased. ‘I’m a doctor – a surgeon. My name’s Pete.’

  ‘Tessa,’ she said.

  ‘When’s your final exams?’

  ‘In the summer.’

  ‘Working hard?’

  ‘Flogging myself to death,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been out for a year.’

  ‘You’re working too hard,’ he said. ‘Look, let’s get out of this. Can I get you a drink or something to eat? There’s a buffet.’

  ‘That sounds good,’ she said.

  He took her to the next room, a dining room.

  ‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen such food. We haven’t had anything like this for years.’ Her eyes were wide, like a child at a party.

  He laughed. ‘Help yourself. I guess you guys have been having it rough over here.’

  They filled their plates and found a table. He put out his hand. ‘Pete Morgan. Hail from Boston, USA.’

  She shook his hand. ‘Tessa Fielding. Hail from London.’

  He’s nice, she thought, as they talked and danced. Ordinary and down to earth and nice. It turned midnight, in came the New Year–1944, but he didn’t attempt to kiss her. At the end of the dance he drove her back to the flat. He stopped outside. ‘Can I see you again, Tessa? And before you ask, no, I’m not married and don’t have a girl friend at home. Been too busy, I guess. What about you?’

  ‘My fiancé was killed,’ she said, ‘in the RAF.’

  There was a silence. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess you won’t …’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see you again.’

  He smiled broadly. ‘Give me your number. I’ll call you.’ He drove away.

  Jenny was already home. ‘Where did you get to?’ she said. ‘I didn’t see you all evening.’

  ‘Oh, I was there,’ Tessa said. ‘I think I was eating most of the time.’

  The sirens went again, startling everyone, and the nightly raids started again, the bombing and the destruction. ‘They’re all sheltering down the tubes again,’ Amy said. ‘I don’t care any more. I’m not spending freezing nights in that shelter in the garden.’

  ‘We’ll get one of those Morrison things,’ Dan said, ‘and stay in the house.’

  The Morrison shelter arrived and was assembled in the dining room, a reinforced metal box. They put in a mattress and slept inside it. ‘It’s like being in a cage,’ Amy said. ‘Now I know how the animals feel at the zoo.’

  Once again they lay there, night after night in the shattering noise, sleepless and apprehensive. In April the raids died away again.

  The weeks went by and tension grew. ‘It’s got to happen this year,’ Dan said, ‘invading France. It can’t wait much longer.’ Then, one day, ‘It’s beginning,’ he said. ‘They’ve closed all the beaches and we’re clearing beds again. Soon, Amy. Soon.’ Can it really be true, Amy thought? Are we coming to the end? The thought of those empty, waiting hospital beds made her heart contract. All those boys.

  Tessa came home for the weekend.

  ‘You look better, darling,’ Amy said. ‘There’s some colour in your cheeks.’

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you, Mum,’ Tessa said. ‘I’ve met someone. He’s really nice. I’d like to bring him home to meet you.’

  Amy hugged her. ‘I’m so glad, darling. I’ve prayed that you would.’ She held Tessa away from her. ‘You’re still going to take your finals, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course. That’s not going to change. He’s a doctor. His name’s Pete. Charlie likes him – we all met in town.’

  ‘We’d love to meet him,’ Amy said. ‘Bring him home.’

  ‘There’s just one thing,’ Tessa said. ‘He’s American. He’s a surgeon in the US army.’

  For a moment Amy paused, surprised. Then she shrugged and smiled. ‘Good for him. I’m delighted.’

  Pete came to dinner. They love each other, Amy thought. You can see that. She’s happy again.

  Later, lying in bed she said, ‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’

  ‘I like him a lot,’ Dan said. ‘He seems steady and reliable. He’d make her a good husband.’

  ‘But, America, Dan.’

  ‘She must do what makes her happy;’ he said. ‘She’s had enough pain.’

  Charlie came home on a forty-eight hour. ‘I believe you’ve met Pete,’ Amy said.

  ‘I think he’s great,’ he said, ‘and she’s really happy, Mum.’

  ‘But – America. We’d never see her, Charlie.’

  Charlie laughed. ‘There’s a great big new world out there, Mum. He lives in Boston, on the e
ast coast. It won’t be a week on a ship any more, you’ll be able to fly there in a few hours. I might even be able to fly you there myself if I get the job I want after the war. You can go every month or two if you want. It’ll be no different from her living in, say, Scotland.’

  Amy laughed. ‘I suppose I’m getting a bit old-fashioned. I’ll look forward to it. I’d love to see America.’ A new world, she thought. Penicillin, air travel. What else?

  The whole of the coast from the Wash to Cornwall was out of bounds to civilians. The numbers of American soldiers increased visibly every day. Tessa came home, quiet and tense. She put her arms around her mother.

  ‘Pete’s gone,’ she said. ‘No one’s allowed out of the camps. I don’t even know where he is.’

  Amy held her close. Oh God, not again, she thought. Don’t let anything happen to Pete. Let her go to America. Don’t let her go through that again.

  They waited, and then Dan came home from the hospital. ‘Any day, Amy,’ he said, ‘any day now. We’ve been collecting group O blood all day. I gave a pint. It’ll be within the week.’

  Then on 6 June, at 9.32 a.m., the announcement was broadcast: ‘D-Day has come. Early this morning the Allies began an assault on the north-western face of Hitler’s Europe.’ And then the thrilling messages to occupied Europe: ‘We are coming. Be patient. We are coming.’

  The joy and relief were short-lived. One week after D-Day a strange black object appeared in the sky over London. It fell on a railway bridge at Bow and killed six people. The first of the flying bombs had arrived. In July Lewisham market was hit with scenes of carnage that Amy had not imagined since the first war, and on the same afternoon twenty bombs fell on Kensington, wrecking and killing.

  For the first time Amy began to feel despair. There was something so horrific, so chilling and mindless about these pilotless bombs. There was no mental defence against them. You couldn’t even use the defence of hatred. You couldn’t hate a machine.

  Charlie flew over the battlefields of France. There weren’t too many enemy aircraft about now; the Allies seemed to have control of the skies. They flew patrols, searching for enemy bombers, harassing the enemy forces when they could.

  The explosion behind him was an unbelievable shock. He hadn’t even seen the 109 that caught him. In what felt like a fleeting second he realized firstly, that he was physically unharmed, secondly, that the Spit had lost its controls, and thirdly that he was going to have to jump. His main feeling was one of complete astonishment. The war was in its last stages and he had come through it all. What a time to be shot down! The thought took a second, and he was pulling at his canopy. He wrenched it open and shot out.

  It happened so quickly. The parachute blossomed above him before he realized that he had pulled the cord. He looked down at the approaching French countryside. He wasn’t at all sure where he was – which side of the line. The Germans weren’t likely to be too friendly under the circumstances. They didn’t like losing. God, he thought, what an end. After all that.

  He hit the ground and rolled over. He balled up his parachute and pushed it into a bush. It was very quiet, there was no one about. He came to a lane at the edge of the field. Which way to go? He walked warily down the lane, hoping to find a farmhouse, French people who would help him.

  He saw something in the hedgerow and picked it up. It was an empty cigarette packet. He turned it over. It was an empty packet of Lucky Strike. He gave a great belly-laugh of sheer relief. It’s the Yanks, he thought. Thank God for the Yanks. I’m going home again.

  Amy took the call a few days later. The messages that he had been shot down and that he was all right and on the way home came together. She put the phone down in the hall and leant against the wall, and wept.

  ‘It won’t be over by Christmas,’ Dan said. ‘The Germans have apparently been told to fight to the death or they’ll be shot by their own side. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. In fact thousands of them are doing the sensible thing and surrendering. But a lot of them are fanatical. Young kids, some of them.’

  New Year, 1945, and the nation held its breath. Would it be soon, would it be soon? Amy watched Tessa’s tense little face, desperate for it to be over and for Pete to come home.

  They opened their papers one morning to see the horrifying pictures of the death camps, the piles of corpses, the half-human skeletal figures crawling on their knees, too weak to stand. There were pictures of dead and dying children, and a young British soldier, sobbing, his head in his hands.

  ‘There,’ Dan said, his face white. ‘That’s what it was for. That’s what this rotten war was all about.’

  They knew when it was over, but they turned on the wireless to listen to Mr Churchill actually say the words. They danced around the room, Amy and Dan and Amy’s father hugging and crying. There were crowds in the streets, street parties, lights everywhere, Victory parties and dances. And the boys began to come home.

  ‘Are you going to the dance, Charlie?’ Amy asked. ‘Tessa wants you to go with her and Pete. It is a celebration, after all.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I haven’t anyone to go with.’

  Dan laughed. ‘I find that hard to believe. There are girls everywhere.’

  ‘I’m sort of out of girls at the moment,’ Charlie said. ‘Everyone I know is spoken for.’

  ‘Why don’t you take Sara?’ Amy said. ‘Nora’s daughter.’

  Charlie raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘She’s a kid.’

  ‘She’s nearly nineteen,’ Amy said. ‘If she passes all her exams, and she will, she’ll be starting medical school in September. She’s been offered a place at UCH. You haven’t seen her for a while. She isn’t a kid any more.’

  Charlie laughed. ‘Another doctor? Is there an ordinary person in the house?’

  ‘Well, she’s very clever,’ Amy said. ‘And she’s very pretty.’

  ‘Oh,’ Charlie said. ‘All right. If she’d come.’

  ‘I’ll ask her if you like,’ Amy said.

  She thought she’d ask Nora first. Nora grinned. ‘I’m sure she would. She used to have a bit of a crush on Charlie.’

  ‘Charlie thinks she’s still a schoolgirl,’ Amy said. ‘He’ll be surprised. She’s really quite pretty, Nora.’

  ‘She would be,’ Nora said, ‘if she took any interest in it. She’s only just out of school uniform. She’s only been to a couple of school socials with the boys from their grammar school. She says they’re all silly infants.’

  They looked at each other and smiled. ‘First dance,’ Amy said. ‘We’ll have to get her a dress.’

  ‘I’ve got enough coupons for some material,’ Nora said, ‘and there are some lovely Vogue patterns.’

  Sara flushed when Nora told her. ‘What does he want to take me for?’

  ‘He hasn’t got anyone else, apparently.’

  Sara laughed. ‘That’s flattering.’

  ‘It’s time you went to a do like this,’ Nora said, ’before you start your training. You’re going out into the big world and you’ll meet a lot of men. Time you went out with a nice boy. You might just as well have been in a convent.’

  ‘He’s not a boy,’ Sara said. ‘He’s older than me.’

  ‘Not much. Only a few years. And what does that matter. You’re only going to a dance.’

  ‘All right,’ Sara said. ‘What am I going to wear?’

  Nora took Sara to get ready at Amy’s house. Tessa had offered to help her with her hair and some simple make-up. She coiled Sara’s hair up into a French pleat, showed her how to put on a pink lipstick and lent her a pair of earrings. Sara hardly recognized herself. The dress Nora made was a pale turquoise-blue and fitted her perfectly. She felt a bit nervous. She’d had quite a schoolgirl crush on Charlie and wondered if he’d ever known about it. That would be embarrassing. He probably didn’t want to take her at all.

  Charlie and Pete arrived and waited in the sitting room. Amy gave them a glass of sherry.

&n
bsp; ‘I expect you’ll be going back to the States soon.’ Charlie said to Pete. ‘You’ll be glad to be home again.’

  Pete gave a little shrug and smiled. ‘That all depends, Charlie,’ he said.

  Nora came into the room, smiling. Tessa came in, smiling at Pete, and then Sara came in behind her.

  Amy found that she was watching Charlie – she didn’t quite know why. She saw him get slowly to his feet. She saw his eyes widen and his mouth open a little in surprise, almost shock. He looked at Sara, up and down, and a slow delighted smile spread over his face. ‘Wow, Sara,’ he said. ‘You’ve changed a bit since I last saw you.’

  Amy and Nora exchanged glances. I wonder, Amy thought. I wonder.

  Amy sat once more at the kitchen table, sipping her tea, looking out on to the garden. We can grow flowers again, she thought. We can dig up the shelter, that cold cramped little place that had done its job and protected them through so many terrifying nights. Nearly six years, six appalling years, but we’ve come through. She smiled to herself. Charlie was a man now, the kind of man anyone would look up to and respect. Tessa too, a doctor, soon to be married and to go to America, and Sara, exams behind her, fulfilling her dream, the dream she had cherished through everything that the war had thrown at her. And Nora, tough Nora, who might one day be her in-law, the way things were going. And Dan, strong, unchanging.

  A new world, airliners, new surgical techniques, penicillin, a new social order for the whole population. Had it been worth it, the battle?

  Yes. She thought of the camps where thousands had died, of Europe bitterly oppressed by an evil regime, of millions murdered for their faith, of freedom, England, her home. Yes.