A Nurse's Courage

by Maggie Holt

  Lying there, she could almost have wished for a Gotha or a Giant to come over and end their lives now, at this moment while they lay entwined. Not to be parted again. Not to have to face the uncertainly of tomorrow.

  Over at the Midway Babies’ Home, Sister Norah stood at her window, looking up at the moon and the clear sky; then she closed the curtains and knelt down beside her narrow bed.

  There were so many things to pray about: Albert – Harry – Alex – and Mabel working so hard at Shadwell, and Maud going on stage every night, looking pale and puffy-eyed . . .

  And Mabel’s sister Daisy who had written her a woeful little letter. Now thirteen, she was finding life very dull in Belhampton. ‘We have to creep about and not make a noise at Pear Tree Cottage because Uncle Thomas is ill in bed and the docter says he must not be disturbed,’ she wrote.

  Aunt Nell will not let me go up to talk to him in case I tire him, so I go to Pinehurst to help Aunt Kate with the soldiers who are much worse than Uncle Thomas who has got both his arms and legs also his eyes. Georgina Savage has started to work at Pinehurst but she isnt much use and I think its only to get away from Houghton Hall which is very gloomy because her mother Lady Savage says there is no God because Sir Guy Savage was killed and he was her son you know.

  How are you dear Norah. I wish you wuold write to me as I do not get much from Mabel, only little notes about the poor children she looks after at Shadwell. I wish I cuold come and see you but Aunt Nell says I cant because of the air rades.

  I have a little baby nephew who is called Geoffrey. His mother is my sister Alice who does not come to visit much. She has to care for her husband Gerald who has half his face covered with bandages and wont go to church or see his freinds.

  Have you heard from my brother Albert. Oh Norah, when will this war be over and let us all be happy again like we were before. Even my best freind Lucy Drummond is sad because her brother Cedric is somewhere at sea and they have no news of him but read the casualty lists every day and hope his name will not be on them.

  Please write to me Norah. I do not think that Mabel cares about her family any more.

  Norah finished her prayers with a novena to the Sacred Heart, crossed herself and got into bed. Poor Daisy was too young to understand the pressures they were all under, but tomorrow Norah would write to her and explain why Mabel needed her love as much as ever.

  ‘Mabel! Mabel, wait a minute! Nurse Court!’

  She heard Stephen’s voice calling after her as she left the hospital by the front entrance and quickly descended the three wide stone steps to Glamis Road. She could pretend not to hear and hurry on down to the Highway and the bus to Tower Bridge. He couldn’t run after her, that much was certain.

  ‘Mabel!’

  She turned round. He was leaning on his stick and waved to her, then pressed forward with as much speed as he could muster. She stood still on the pavement before the imposing triple façade of the hospital, the late summer sun glinting on the tall, stained-glass windows.

  He reached her side, his eyes lighting up. ‘Where have you been these last weeks, Mabel? Every time I looked in on Heckford you were doing something vitally important, or you’d gone to dinner or supper, but could never be found in the dining-room. You’re as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel – except that you’re in blue, which suits you better.’

  He was smiling down at her, the harsh lines of recent years softened by a bright, almost boyish look. He put out his arm to touch her shoulder, as if to stop her disappearing again.

  ‘Hello, Dr Knowles.’ She lowered her eyes, aware that she was blushing. ‘I’m just on my way to Battersea to spend an evening with Harry.’

  ‘Oh, say you’ve got time to raise a glass in the Prospect of Whitby first! We haven’t talked since – that last time.’ His blue eyes pleaded, but Mabel shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry, my bus goes in five minutes. They’re expecting me at Falcon Terrace and I don’t want to be late.’ She began to move away. ‘Harry needs me, yer know that.’

  ‘But Mabel, I need – yes, of course, I understand, I’m sorry. But when will you next have an evening off? There’s something we touched on that I’d really like to talk about further.’ He smiled and assumed a mock-formal air. ‘May I make an appointment with you, Nurse Court?’

  She hesitated. ‘I might be able to get away on Friday at five, but it depends on whether Sister wants me to do a split shift.’

  ‘Good! Meet you here Friday, five sharp.’

  ‘Better make it six, down by Wapping Bridge. I really must go now.’ She began to walk away.

  ‘Thanks, my dear,’ he called after her. ‘Friday at six, I’ll be there. Remember me to Harry!’ The smile faded from his eyes as he watched her retreating figure.

  Mabel was annoyed with herself for being so easily persuaded and, taking her seat on the bus, she concentrated her thoughts on the evening ahead. She might take Harry out for an hour in the wheelchair, and then no doubt they would spend an hour, perhaps longer, in his parlour bedroom after his parents had gone out. And she would give him that special, intimate comfort he so craved.

  ‘And you don’t mind, Mabel?’

  Of course she didn’t mind, and of course she still loved Harry. Real love didn’t change with changing times and it was the least she could do for him these days, for the sake of those other, better days they had known and shared.

  Maud Ling turned up on the front doorstep of Elmgrove on a Thursday afternoon at three, preceded by a carefully written note – Teddy had helped her with the spelling. She was dressed in a neat, dark jacket and skirt with a plain white blouse, and a pretty little blue hat trimmed with daisies; her gloves, shoes and handbag were navy-blue. She rang the bell and waited.

  The uniformed maid raised her eyebrows and asked Miss Ling to ‘Come this way, please’. Maud followed her through to a smallish room at the back of the house, where Mrs Redfern interviewed staff and conferred with her cook. Left to herself, Maud waited for what seemed like half an hour, but was probably not more than ten minutes. When Mrs Redfern appeared in a black and white house-gown, she looked pale and unsmiling.

  ‘Good aft’noon, Mrs Redfern. Thank yer for seein’ me.’ Maud managed a polite half-smile.

  ‘I haven’t much time to spare,’ said the lady without preamble. ‘Say what you’ve come to say and get the matter over.’ She glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf.

  Maud swallowed. ‘Well, o’ course it’s Alex I’ve come abaht, as I said in that note I sent yer.’

  Mrs Redfern’s eyes hardened. ‘As you said on that piece of paper pushed through our door, I gather that you want to make some kind of claim on our son, Wing Commander Redfern.’

  ‘I ain’t makin’ no kind o’ claim on ’im, Mrs Redfern. I’ve just come to say that I know ’ow worried yer must be all the time, wonderin’ if ye’ll ever see ’im again, ’cause I feel exactly the same. I love ’im too, an’ I go frough just as much ’ell as you do, wonderin’ where ’e is, an’ what ’e’s doin’.’

  Mrs Redfern stiffened, drawing herself up and giving Maud a contemptuous look. ‘Mr Redfern and I are quite aware of the danger and don’t need reminding by the likes of you.’

  ‘But that’s just it, we bofe worry abaht ’im, so we – we shouldn’t really be –’ In spite of her determination to stay calm, Maud’s voice shook and her eyes filled with tears.

  Mrs Redfern’s lip curled. ‘Let’s cut a long story short, shall we? Are you in some sort of trouble and do you intend to name Wing Commander Redfern? Because if you attempt to threaten or blackmail me or my husband, I shall send for the police and have you thrown out of our house. Is that quite clear?’

  For a moment Maud Ling’s mouth hung open in disbelief, but she quickly regained her self-possession and anger gave her a certain dignity. ‘No, I ain’t in any sort o’ trouble, as yer call it, and if I was, ye’d be the last person on earf I’d come to for ’elp. I just thought that we might at least pretend to – to ge
t on wiv each ovver, for Alex’s sake, seein’ as we bofe love ’im. For ‘is sake, not mine. I’d do anyfing for ’im.’

  There was a momentary flicker of response on the face of the older woman. Then she seemed to make up her mind to speak plainly.

  ‘Very well. You say that you care for my son and would do anything for him.’ Her eyes narrowed as she looked straight at Maud. ‘There is one thing that you could do to prove to my satisfaction that you really do care about his life and his future.’

  She paused, and Maud waited, steadfastly returning her look.

  ‘Stop dragging him down into the gutter. Give him up. Keep away from him. Get out of his life and I’ll believe you to be sincere.’

  For a moment Maud’s face was blank as the import of the woman’s words struck her like a blow. Then her colour returned and she gave her answer.

  ‘Fanks for nuffin’,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I came ’ere for Alex’s sake, not mine, I don’t give a damn whevver yer like me or not. But I’ll tell yer what, Alex loves me, an’ comes to me first when ’e gets leave, ’cause I understand ’im better ‘n you. An’ until ’e tells me to me face that ’e don’t want me any more, I’m ’is for the takin’. Is that quite clear? Nah, don’t show me aht, missus, I’ll use the trademen’s entrance like I ’ad to when I was yer ’ousemaid.’

  Mr Redfern appeared only just in time to see a girl with blazing eyes sweeping out of the back door with her head held high. His wife was flushed and disconcerted.

  ‘Damned impertinence!’ she hissed. ‘Common little hussy! How dare she talk to me about my own son as if she knew more about him than I do, his own mother!’

  ‘Sit down for a while and compose yourself, my dear,’ said her husband rather helplessly. He had a somewhat better understanding of his son’s needs, but could not explain this to Mrs Redfern, who burst out in a sudden torrent of tears.

  ‘Oh, why does Alex go on associating with her? What can he possibly see in her?’

  ‘Mabel! I thought you weren’t coming. What kept you?’

  ‘Busy afternoon,’ she said, indicating her uniform, the scarlet cloak around her shoulders. It was a quarter past six, and his relief at seeing her was obvious. He linked an arm with hers and, with his walking stick in his other hand, began to walk with her along the waterfront.

  ‘There are things I want to talk about with you, Mabel, questions I’d like to ask – if you don’t mind, of course,’ he said, glancing at her face to see how she reacted. ‘On that last occasion you mentioned my father and how he helped you when you had that – the double tragedy. May I ask you a little more about that, my dear?’ His hold on her arm tightened briefly and she hardly knew how to reply. How much did he already know from his father?

  ‘Dr Knowles was a good friend to our family,’ she said slowly, looking away from him, across the river. ‘He was especially good to me mother, an’ understood the difficulties of her life. Yer know we lost me little brother Walter, only two he was – an’ Daisy was born the followin’ spring, she was the last one. Me mother was never really well again after that – she was anaemic an’ didn’t go out much.’ She did not add that Annie Court had taken regular consolation from a secret jam jar hidden behind her bedroom curtain, containing gin.

  ‘Ah, and that’s when you took over the running of the house and the care of your brothers and sisters, Mabel,’ he said, nodding. ‘My father told me how he used to worry about you and the number of schooldays you lost, because he always thought you were the brains of the family and a born nurse. How right he was! What did you do when you left school? Didn’t you go to work at that Women’s Rescue place off Lavender Hill?’

  ‘Not straight away. I worked first at a nursery attached to Hallam Road school, and then I went as a ward maid at the Anti-Vivisection Hospital on the corner o’ Prince o’ Wales Road – an’ lost me place there when Albert got into trouble over the Tower Hill riots. You were the doctor who saw him the night he was arrested, remember?’

  ‘Could I ever forget! And good old Captain Drover of the Salvation Army came with you to take him home. It was the first time I met you – to speak to, that is.’

  ‘It was then I got the job at the Rescue, an’ Albert joined the navy – he was only sixteen.’

  ‘Albert gave you quite a few headaches, didn’t he?’

  ‘Not as many as Dad gave us. He was a bookmaker, not really a bad man, but a weak one. He was a fair drinker and went with women, ‘specially after Daisy was born.’

  She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. ‘What did yer father tell yer, Stephen?’

  ‘Well –’ He hesitated. ‘He was very upset over your mother’s death, Mabel. He’d visited her that very day and must have wondered if he’d said anything to – forgive me, Mabel, but why did she drown herself? Was it because she had cancer? So many women are terrified of it.’

  ‘No, it was syphilis. Yer father tried to keep it from her, but she wasn’t a fool, an’ she put two an’ two together. An’ she couldn’t live with it.’

  He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘Ah, yes. Yes, I see. The poor woman.’

  ‘Yer father arranged for us all to have blood tests, an’ I lost me job at the Rescue, though the test came up clear. Dad had disappeared – he was in the Lock Hospital, though we didn’t know it. His mother offered us a home with her at Tooting, but me mother’s sisters turned up from Belhampton an’ took Alice an’ Daisy.’

  ‘But not you or George?’

  ‘No, George didn’t want to go and I stayed at home with him. Yer dad found me work with two old ladies in Clapham.’

  Mabel was silent for a while, reliving that fatal summer. They passed the Prospect of Whitby and continued to walk further along beside the docks. He pressed her arm. ‘Go on, Mabel.’

  ‘And then – and then came that day I’ll never forget, another June the thirteenth it was, when Dad turned up again. He’d been drinkin’ and was talkin’ about our mother. George had come home from school and couldn’t stand listenin’ to Dad sayin’ how he never meant her any harm an’ all that stuff – George couldn’t stand it, an’ he picked up a glass vase o’ flowers off the table and brought it down on the back o’ Dad’s head. I came in just as he was fallin’ to the floor o’ the livin’-room an’ I saw he was dead. I told George to go upstairs an’ keep quiet, an’ I dragged Dad’s body out into the hall to the bottom o’ the stairs, to make it look as if he’d fallen down ’em. Then I sent a neighbour’s boy for yer father.’

  ‘Oh, yes, my dear Mabel, I remember that. And didn’t he rush him into the Bolingbroke Hospital immediately?’

  Mabel looked straight ahead of her as she replied in a dull, flat tone, ‘My father was dead when yours arrived at the house, Stephen. George killed him instantly. Yer father made out he could still hear a heartbeat, just so’s to get the body out o’ the house an’ keep the police out of it for as long as he could. Dad was supposed to have died on the way.’

  ‘My God, Mabel. What you must all have gone through – you and George –’

  ‘And Dr Knowles, Stephen. He risked everything for us. He could’ve been struck off the Register for givin’ false evidence at the inquest. He did it to save George who was only a child, and I was an accessory to it. An’ we got away with it, yer father an’ me.’

  ‘Oh, my dear girl.’ He tucked his stick under his arm and put a hand over hers as they stood on the quayside. ‘And so that was why Father got George away to Canada on that child emigration scheme? I know he was very troubled at the time – oh, Mabel, my dear girl.’

  ‘Yes, it was awful, Stephen – but it was nothin’ like what happened here when that bomb hit the school, five years later to the day – oh, Stephen!’

  She blinked back tears and he put his arm round her as they stood looking down at the water. ‘You’re right, Mabel – what happened in the past doesn’t matter now, not any more. But I’ll be able to tell Father that I know now, and understand. You’ve explained some thin
gs that I think I’ve half suspected. And after all, your father would have died anyway, wouldn’t he, of –’

  ‘Of syphilis, yes. Yer dad pointed that out to George an’ me, though he didn’t use that word, he just said a fatal disease. Oh, he was wonderful, the very best o’ doctors.’

  They walked along slowly, retracing their steps past the old inn which Mabel’s uniform barred her from entering. She shivered and drew her cloak around her; there was a touch of early autumn in the air, a change in the colour of the sky. Upriver the water gleamed with silvery reflections, while down towards Limehouse Reach it was flat grey, already fading into mist. The masts of small craft stood motionless, though the sound of boatmen’s voices still drifted up, the endless activity of the river in all seasons.

  ‘How’s Phyllis?’ she asked suddenly. ‘That is yer wife’s name, isn’t it? She must be nearly due now.’

  ‘Oh, yes, poor Phyllis. September twenty-fifth or thereabouts. I don’t hear much from them.’

  ‘So she’s still stayin’ with her parents?’

  ‘Heavens above, they’d never let her come to London with these air raids! And I spend most of my time here, of course – I don’t even see much of my own parents in Battersea.’

  ‘But ye’ll go an’ see her an’ the baby as soon as she’s delivered?’

  ‘Not very often, I suspect, not until this lot’s over, anyway.’

  Something about his tone discouraged her from asking further questions, not because he might resent it – after all, he’d asked her a great many – but because she was half afraid of what she might hear. For some reason she thought of her sister Alice whose marriage she suspected was less than satisfactory. A little warning bell began to ring in her head.

  He tightened his arm round her waist. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done for me, Mabel. I know now why my father’s so close to you. I might even be able to tell him – what I’ve shared with you about what happened – over there. Mabel, my dear –’