Now the War Is Over

by Annie Murray

  ‘Did you? Goodness, she’d be seventeen by now, like Tommy!’ Melly said. ‘Did you speak to her?’

  ‘No. I’m sure it was her, though. Coming out of the Drover’s on some bloke’s arm.’ Gladys frowned. ‘She saw me but I don’t know if she’d’ve known me after all this time. I tell you summat though – she’s still pretty as a picture.’

  ‘Poor Evie,’ Melly said. ‘That awful mother of hers. I hope she’s all right. Look, I’ll see you soon, Auntie. Ta-ra for now.’

  ‘Ta-ra.’ Gladys got to her feet and to Melly’s surprise, said, ‘Thanks for coming to see me, bab.’

  Melly waited for the bus back into town, feeling sad, for Auntie and for Lil Gittins and the changes that life had brought them.

  On the bus, part of Melly’s mind was still on the ward, thinking about what they would all be doing now and wondering how Mr Alexander was this morning. The image of his face swam in her mind.

  Her mother came to the door in her apron, Alan, who was now four, trailing behind her.

  ‘Oh – hello – I wondered if you’d be coming,’ Rachel said distractedly. ‘No, Alan, stop that – go on, find something to do.’

  ‘Hello, Alan!’ Melly greeted him. The little boy looked overjoyed to see her and came to her for a cuddle. ‘You bring something for me to do with you,’ she said to him. ‘Your cars? I’ll play with you while we have a natter.’

  Rachel sank down by the table. ‘Oh – I’ll be glad when that one goes to school, that I will. He’s hard work on his own.’

  Melly laughed. ‘I s’pose you haven’t had one on its own since me,’ she said.

  ‘Not for long, no,’ Rachel said.

  They talked over the racket of Alan rolling his cars along the table.

  ‘Tommy all right?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘He’s all right,’ Rachel said. She didn’t look Melly in the eye. Melly saw she looked tired. ‘He’s a bit quiet, that’s all.’ She was holding her cup between her hands. She had to shield it from a crash with one of Alan’s Dinky cars. ‘All right – that’s enough,’ she snapped. ‘You get down and do that on the floor. Or do something else. You’re getting on my nerves.’

  Alan slid to the floor with a dark look at his mother and scooted the cars up and down the tiles.

  ‘Dad still taking him over there?’

  ‘Some days. When he’s not out early. He’s going to Somerset every week now – buying sheepskins and that. Tommy gets the bus. It takes it out of him, though.’ She looked across the room, still avoiding Melly’s eye. ‘It’s like blood out of a stone with him and Tommy at the moment.’

  Knowing Mom, Melly thought, she wouldn’t have tried very hard either. But she could have a go herself. Suddenly she felt like the oldest child in the family again, someone who had a place and could be useful.

  ‘Dad all right?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Mom said. ‘Your father’s all right. Always is.’

  She was not planning to stay overnight but she waited until the others were back from school and then Tommy from work.

  Ricky and Sandra got home first and were glad to see her. Kev walked in, tie all adrift, shirt unbuttoned. ‘All right, Melly?’ he said with manly disdain. But she could see he was pleased to see her.

  Tommy came in with Danny and disappeared upstairs.

  ‘All right, wench!’ her father said. ‘They given you a day off, have they?’

  She smiled. ‘Yeah – couple of days.’

  ‘I wouldn’t’ve worked you as hard as all that, you know. Eh –’ he came over to her, full of enthusiasm – ‘you should come with me. I’m starting to get cabbage from the furriers, and second-hand – beautiful stuff, some of it. Them shops are summat else, you want to see ’em. There’s one at Five Ways, got an elephant in the shop – huge thing it is!’ He nudged her. ‘You’ll have to come.’

  Melly laughed, enjoying hearing the old market names for things again – like ‘cabbage’ for seconds, or damaged goods. ‘All right, Dad – you take me one day.’ She told him she had been to see Gladys and all about Lil and Stanley.

  ‘Shame,’ Rachel said. ‘It shouldn’t have to come to that.’

  ‘I don’t want you putting me away,’ Danny called from the sink where he was washing his hands.

  ‘Don’t tempt me,’ Rachel retorted.

  Tommy came back down, walking with his stick. As he came through the door, the noise of the telly from the front came in a burst before he closed the door again. He gave Melly a wan smile and sank into his chair, seeming relieved. He looked paler, thinner and more worn than Melly could ever remember. His work trousers hung on him as if made for a bigger man.

  ‘All right, Melly?’ She was helping Mom cook tea – egg and chips. The potatoes were seething in the hot oil.

  ‘How’s it going, Tommy?’ She filled with pleasure at seeing his sweet, familiar face.

  ‘OK. What about – the – hospital?’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice. I like it.’

  ‘You’re – lucky.’ He looked away.

  She was, she knew. Mom cracked eggs into the pan and they sizzled and spat. Melly lifted the chips from the fat and let them rest a moment. Mom had a metal basket now specially for cooking chips and it made delicious ones.

  ‘They treating you all right?’

  ‘Umm.’ Tommy looked away. She lowered the chips back into the fat. The room smelt of it. Their clothes would too.

  ‘I’ll put some beans on,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Hey – look – what I – bought.’

  Tommy got up again. In the corner, on the sideboard, he showed her a record player in a little red case.

  ‘Oh, Tommy!’ she said, excited. ‘I didn’t notice that. Did you get that with your wages?’

  ‘It’s second-hand,’ Rachel said. ‘Nearly new, though.’

  Tommy was beaming now. ‘I’ve – only – got one – record.’ He put it on, a 45 of Bill Haley. They listened, jigging to ‘Rock Around the Clock’. Melly felt her spirits lighten.

  ‘Get something nice and romantic next time,’ Rachel commented. But she looked pleased.

  Once they had all eaten tea and cleared up, Melly thought, soon I’ll have to get the bus. The thought of Raimundo Alexander came to her for a moment, almost like a pain.

  ‘Tommy . . .’ The others had gone to the front room to watch the television. ‘You all right?’ she asked. ‘You’d say if you weren’t?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked away.

  Something in his face filled her with sorrow for him. He seemed so defeated and disappointed. But he would not say any more.

  Forty

  When she got back to the nurses’ home late that evening, she went straight to her room to find Berni, who had not long come off duty.

  Berni already had her shoes off and was lying, collapsed, on her bed.

  ‘You all right?’ Melly said, fearing the worst. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Berni sat up, yawning. Her hair hung in a loose coil behind her head, having just been released from being up all day. ‘Why should anything be up?’

  ‘I just wondered.’ Melly sat down beside her. ‘Anything new?’ She both wanted and did not want to bring up Raimundo Alexander’s name. She was very afraid that he might have been discharged.

  Berni thought, lying propped on her elbow. Then she said, ‘Not really. Mr Stafford’s still sipping away. The feller with pneumonia’s gone home now. Your Mr Gorgeous with the asthma’s still wheezing and coughing his head off—’

  ‘Coughing?’ Melly said. ‘What – worse than before?’

  Berni twinkled up at her. Melly had so often seen those naughty blue eyes looking at her across the room of the training school and had been reduced to giggles. The pair of them had often been in trouble for it. But now Melly thought she saw something knowing in them, teasing her. ‘Now – why would you be asking about him?’ she said. ‘Go on now – do I see pink cheeks?’

  ‘No!’ Melly laughed it off.

  ‘Hi
s cough’s got worse – or at least it’s not better. They were talking about him going out at the beginning of the shift and they’d changed their minds by the end.’

  She told Melly a few stories about the nursing staff which made her giggle and she went to bed happy. Even though it was her day off the next day, it sounded as if Mr Alexander would surely still be there when she went back to work.

  She was restless the next day. There were the usual chores to catch up on, washing underwear and her stockings which needed holes darning in them as well and polishing her shoes.

  In the afternoon she walked down the hill through Selly Oak. It was a damp, cold day and she had to put her umbrella up for half the walk. She bought apples and chocolate. On the way back, on impulse, she stopped at the library next to the railway bridge and went inside.

  She had hardly ever been in a library before and she immediately felt apologetic, as if she was bound to do something wrong. There was a hushed, brown atmosphere inside and a smell of paper. An old man with yellow-white hair greased to his head was sitting at a table reading the paper with his face very close to the page. She could smell him across the room. He coughed and his chest rattled.

  The pale librarian at the front desk looked at her over half-moon spectacles.

  ‘Can I help you?’ He looked at her suspiciously, as if she might be about to commit a crime.

  ‘I . . .’ Whispering, she went on. ‘I wondered if you had any poetry?’

  The man, who had chopped brown hair and a pudgy face, made a superior sort of gesture with his neck as if to say, Well, what do you expect? This is a library! He led her across the room, with its long windows, to a shelf in the corner.

  ‘Poetry,’ he said, snootily. And walked off.

  Melly looked along the shelves of worn old spines, trying to find any of the names that she had seen on Mr Alexander’s books. She had memorized them: Keats, Yeats, Robert Lowell, Pablo Neruda . . . At first she thought the library did not have any of them until she came to the last shelf and found an old blue book. W. B. Yeats she could just read on the spine.

  The poems made her feel stupid. A lot of them were very long and she did not understand the language or what they were about. She felt sad and disappointed looking through the book. How could she have thought . . .? But what had she been thinking, really? That Raimundo Alexander was interested in her? That she could be his equal? But he read these books as if they were simple as ABC, or so it appeared to her. And she could barely understand this one at all.

  There were some shorter poems in the book. One that caught her eye was called ‘A Friend’s Illness’. The poem was only a few lines, saying how the friend’s illness had put a new thought in his mind:

  Why should I be dismayed

  Though flame had burned the whole

  World, as it were a coal,

  Now I have seen it weighed

  Against a soul?

  She read the poem over and over again, trying to make sense of it. Did he mean that one person, one soul, was more important than all the world if that person was someone you loved? Or did it mean something else completely? She put the book back and walked to the hospital. She still felt stupid because she did not really know what the poem meant.

  But it was about a sick friend and a sick friend was the thing always at the front of her mind.

  She was on duty again in the morning, glowing with happiness not only that Mr Alexander was still there, in the same place, but that he looked up in his quiet way when she came over to him and his eyes were full of warmth.

  ‘Ah, I see my favourite nurse is back.’

  Melly beamed at him. He did like her – even if only as his ‘favourite nurse’. ‘How are you, Mr Alexander?’

  ‘Doing all right. The cough won’t leave me be, though. They decided to keep me in a few more days.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you’ll be on the mend soon,’ she said, not wanting to add that she was glad he was still here. It would sound as if she wanted him to be ill.

  The morning was very busy. She was not assigned to make his bed, but she enjoyed her work, knowing that he was there. She felt efficient and energetic, as if someone had lit a fire under her and she was burning with energy.

  ‘Heavens,’ Nurse Jenkins said, half in complaint, when they were making a bed together. ‘Days off have certainly perked you up! It isn’t actually a race, you know!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Melly laughed. She knew she was feeling a bit frantic and she tried to move in a more measured way.

  She was waiting for an opportunity to speak to Mr Alexander again, wanted to tell him about the poem.

  There was no chance during the morning, because there was so much to get done. But when the dinner trolleys appeared and Sister was supervising, she handed Melly a plate of meat in gravy with vegetables.

  ‘Here – for Mr Alexander,’ she said.

  Melly’s pulse speeded up. She carried the plate over.

  ‘Dinner time. Looks like a nice stew,’ she told him, though she didn’t think it looked all that marvellous.

  ‘Ah – thank you,’ he said, and coughed.

  Setting the plate on his table she said, ‘I went to the library yesterday and had a look for . . .’ To her annoyance she hesitated. She still wanted to say ‘Yeets’. ‘For Yeats. I read a bit. He’s good, isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh – did you?’ He looked surprised and pleased. ‘Yes, he’s wonderful – some of them, anyway. I don’t necessarily read all the long ones.’

  Melly was delighted to hear it. She had to go then.

  ‘Tell me, when you have time,’ he said in a friendly way. ‘What you read, I mean.’

  ‘I will.’ She smiled and went back to Sister, hoping that later in the afternoon, before the shift ended, she might have a chance to go and sit with him.

  While they were clearing the dinner plates away on to the trolley, she saw Mr Alexander get up and walk along the ward towards the bathrooms. He was quite able to move about now and did not need much assistance, which Melly was mainly relieved about though it would have been another chance to talk to him. He did not look in her direction as he went past and she thought it was because he was heading for the toilet.

  She went round the ward gathering plates. It was buzzing with noise. People tended to perk up a bit when they had had a bit to eat, before wanting to sleep, and some of the patients were chatting. Someone was coughing along the ward and someone else laughed. The rubber wheels of the trolley squeaked on the polished linoleum.

  ‘Right,’ Sister said when they had all the plates back on the trolley. ‘Take it out now, please, Nurse Booker.’

  She was wheeling the trolley towards the main door of the ward. She could hear the coughing, louder now, and she thought that must be Mr Alexander. They were right to keep him in – it did sound bad.

  There was a commotion then, by the door into the bathrooms. Cath, the first-year student, came flying along the ward in obvious panic. Melly saw, as if in a dream, that someone was lying on the floor in the doorway into the bathrooms, and Nurse Jenkins was there and Cath was saying, ‘Sister – quick, he’s collapsed!’

  Sister Anderson was along the ward in seconds. She dropped to her knees beside the prone figure. Nurse Jenkins hurried across to the ward telephone. Melly moved towards them, feeling as if her destination was never coming any closer. Somewhere about her, patients were making comments, craning to see what was happening.

  Mr Alexander was flat on his back. His eyes were closed and his body looked slack in a way which made Melly freeze. Sister Anderson was over him, breathing into his mouth, pressing on his chest. She looked more frantic than Melly had ever seen her.

  A doctor appeared, crashing through the doors to the ward, white coat flying behind him. He saw immediately what the situation was and joined Sister Anderson on his knees. He felt for a pulse, asked questions. What happened? How long . . . ? They deliberated for a moment. Then the doctor laid a hand on Sister’s arm. Her eyes met his and he gentl
y shook his head.

  ‘No!’ The sound came out of Melly’s mouth without her knowing it. They glanced round. She put her hands over her mouth to stifle the scream that wanted to tear out through it.

  ‘He was only thirty-six,’ she heard Sister Anderson say to the doctor. There was shock in her voice. And sorrow and bewilderment.

  She looked round at Melly, and almost in a confessional tone she said, ‘I’m afraid he’s gone.’

  Forty-One

  She lay in the dark, the blood thumping round her body. Every night now it was the same.

  Berni was asleep across the room, making little popping sounds with her mouth like a fish. They sounded like gunshots to Melly. Sleep was completely impossible. Every cell in her body was in a jarred, surging state that would give her no rest.

  The room was completely dark. She wondered what the time was, but if she switched on the light Berni would wake up and complain. If only she could read to try and quieten her mind. She considered creeping out to the common room, but she thought she might be in trouble if she got caught. And all she really wanted was to lie down and be able to sleep.

  It was like this every night now. Since Mr Alexander died, four days ago, she felt she had not slept at all. Desperation filled her. So far she had kept going during her ward duties, full of a crazed energy. But the body and mind needed sleep. What if she started to make terrible mistakes on the ward? It had been a close-run thing already.

  The first night, over and over again she had seen Raimundo Alexander’s body on the floor along the ward, then herself moving towards him, unable to turn away and not see . . . Sister moving up and down over him, trying and trying to pump the life back into his body, his crumpled look, the closed eyes.

  How could he be dead? He was only thirty-six.

  Asthma, Sister said afterwards, can affect the heart. The lack of oxygen, the extra strain on the body. His asthma was severe.

  Thank heavens Melly had not been one of the ones to lay him out. Instead, she could remember him alive and smiling at her.