by Anne Baker
Amy opened it carefully and was disappointed to find it held just a sliver of cake. It looked pretty much like the fruit cake Auntie Bessie made except this had a tiny bit of icing on top. She cut it into three pieces so Bessie and Jack could taste it too. They both said it was an excellent wedding cake and Jack said, ‘A mouthful of wedding cake like this is said to bring you luck.’
Amy felt a little sorry for June; it was surely not the wedding her sister had expected and hoped for.
June couldn’t bear to think of Ralph going away to fight. But yesterday, as instructed, he’d reported to a local army call-up centre and after a lot of form-filling he had been given a medical examination. He’d been passed as A1 medically fit, been given a warrant to travel by train and told to report to the army barracks at Catterick for basic training in four days’ time. She was shocked; she’d not expected him to be spirited away so quickly.
‘Catterick isn’t far,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be able to come back and see you when I get leave. It’s probably safer there than it is here. They aren’t getting air raids like we are.’
Ralph had already decided he would have to give up renting his rooms. ‘I doubt I’ll be able to afford them and anyway, what is the point? You’ll have to live in the hospital and on your day off you’d be better going home than staying in those rooms by yourself. I’m glad I’ve got a few days to put my affairs in order.’
‘Five more nights and four more days,’ June mourned, but on only one would she be off duty and be able to spend it with him.
Ralph discovered he was obliged to give a month’s notice on his flat, so it gave him time to pack and give some thought about what he would do with his furniture and belongings. Leonie told him she’d be happy to keep his bedroom furniture at her shop until he needed it again as she had an empty bedroom and there would be room for anything else to be stored in the unused cellar rooms at Mersey Reach. Pa offered to dispose of anything he didn’t want to keep at auction and Elaine arranged for a van to move his things.
Ralph couldn’t make up his mind what to do with his car. ‘I’d like to take it up to Catterick to use there but petrol is almost impossible to get nowadays.’ In the end decided to use his travel warrant and go up by train.
June had her day off on his last precious day at home, but he needed to drive his car to Mersey Reach where Milo helped him to disconnect the battery and put it up on blocks in one of the sheds. June went with him and they spent a lot of time with Milo but June wanted to savour her last day with Ralph and this wasn’t how she’d have chosen to spend it. She couldn’t go to see him off on the train the next day as she had to work.
As student nurses were forbidden to marry during their training, she had told nobody at the hospital that she had. There she was still Nurse Dransfield. Ralph had already bought her a gold chain on which to thread her engagement ring, so she added her wedding ring to it and wore them together, hidden under her uniform.
She thought of him all the time and the days seemed endless. She was really missing him, she’d spent so much time in his company recently that she’d let everything else in her life drop. It seemed her world was coming to an end.
That evening, when she came off duty at eight o’clock, she went up to his rooms. She had intended to do some more packing, there was still plenty to do, but she was overcome with misery and didn’t achieve much. An hour later, she was surprised to hear a knock on the door. One of the other residents had come to tell her there was a phone call for her. She raced down the hall to the public pay phone and was delighted to find it was Ralph.
‘I rang the nurses’ home and was told you’d gone out, so I guessed where you’d be,’ he said. ‘I feel really down in the dumps at having to leave you. I’m here with a crowd of other men I don’t know, all of whom would rather be somewhere else.’
He was on a pay phone too, but he had his small change lined up and was able to talk for a long time. She heard his first impressions of army life and he didn’t like it. The army food was stodgy and they didn’t give him time to eat it. He was to sleep in a hard and narrow bed, jammed in a hut with thirty others, and he’d spent most of the afternoon out on the parade ground in heavy drizzle, learning to march wearing boots that weighed a ton. He didn’t know how he was going to cope with it.
June walked back across the park in the pitch dark of the blackout, had a hot bath and went to bed. She was in tears for a long time and was just settling down to sleep when the air-raid warning sounded and she had to go to the shelter.
Milo was getting plenty of sleep and couldn’t remember when he’d last had so much leisure time in which to please himself. He felt well enough to go out and about and went to Ralph’s rooms to help his sister pack up. On June’s day off, he took her and Mum to the pictures. He went to see Duggie Jenkins’ family and they seemed pleased to see him.
He knew Duggie had a sister called Floris but he’d had little to do with her in the past. Now she was working as a secretary for a company in Birkenhead making life jackets and other air-sea rescue equipment. She made him welcome and produced a cup of tea.
‘Where is Duggie now?’ Milo asked. ‘I feel I owe my life to him. Once I was injured, if he hadn’t dragged me out to the boat and heaved me on, I’d have succumbed on that Dunkirk beach.’
‘Duggie would always do his best for his friends,’ Henry Jenkins told him. ‘They’ve sent him to the Far East. Singapore.’
‘He wasn’t given much time to recover from Dunkirk then?’
‘He had a month at home,’ Floris said, ‘and he likes Singapore. Duggie felt lucky to have come home unscathed.’
‘How is he?’
‘In fine fettle.’
Floris told him of two other friends who used to go to Milo’s shed to pore over yachting magazines and work on his old sailing dinghy. Milo had been quite envious of Derek Brierley and Phil Jones who had wanted careers at sea and had joined the merchant navy.
‘They haven’t had your luck,’ Floris said. ‘Both lost their lives in separate incidents. Their ships were sunk trying to bring essential supplies to English ports.’
Milo went home in a subdued frame of mind. It seemed he could have had less chance of survival if he’d joined the merchant navy. Seeing the Jenkins family had made him yearn to return to his old life. He wanted to shrug off being an invalid and get out on the river. The small dinghy, a pram really, that he’d used to get out to the Vera May, his fishing boat, was upturned in the back garden.
Mum came down the garden and he said, ‘Help me roll it over, I want to see if it’s all right.’
‘You aren’t strong enough to go out on the river yet,’ she said. ‘Leave it until you’re passed as fit.’
‘I’d like to take a look at the Vera May.’ He pushed his hair back. ‘Perhaps I’ll ask somebody to come with me the first time I take her out.’
He went inside to the sitting-room window and put the binoculars on Vera May. She was bobbing about in permanent deep water where he’d left her and had been all the time he’d been away.
‘Tomorrow I’ll ask Mr Jenkins to come with me to have a closer look,’ he told his mother. So far he’d been unable to make contact with any of his old friends; all his generation had been caught up in the war.
Henry Jenkins was balding and looking older, he said he was exhausted with his day job at Camell Laird’s and his work as a warden at night, and Floris said she knew nothing about boats. But they kept him talking for an hour or so and when he asked Floris if she’d come to the pictures with him, her father said, ‘I think I’d better mention right away that our Floris is spoken for. She writing almost daily to a merchant naval officer and she’s expecting him home within the next few weeks.’
‘Right,’ Milo said. ‘That’s understood, but it’s no reason not to come to the pictures with me, is it?’
‘No, she spends too much time at home on her own.’
‘I’d love to come.’ Floris was all smiles.
Bef
ore he left, Henry Jenkins said, ‘I can put you in touch with Oswald Hemmings if you like. You remember him? He taught you and Duggie to sail in that boat we did up. Dido, wasn’t it?’
‘Of course I remember him. He was Gerald’s father and taught a lot of our friends to sail. Where is Gerald these days, d’you know?’
‘He joined the Royal Navy and he’s serving on the aircraft carrier, Ark Royal. We built it in Cammell Laird’s and his father says it makes him feel he’s never far from home because of the connection. Oswald might like a trip out in the Vera May.’
‘Thank you. Tell him I’d be delighted if he’d come with me.’
That weekend, Mr Hemmings who still had his athletic build, brought a trailer to the garden and together they pushed the dinghy down to the beach. The tide was in and Mr Hemmings was happy to scull out to the Vera May. ‘She looks scruffy.’
‘Bound to,’ Milo said, ‘she’s been neglected. Nobody has been near her for ages. Let’s get on board and see if she’s still watertight.’
‘She is,’ said Mr Hemmings once he’d checked her over. ‘Dry as a drum inside. She needs cleaning up, perhaps a coat of paint, but that’s all.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AIR RAIDS WERE BECOMING more frequent and Elaine said, ‘You did the right thing by choosing to have Amy evacuated. It terrifies the twins to hear the air-raid warnings and they can’t sleep even when the raids are over.’
‘It worried me stiff at the time,’ Leonie said. ‘Amy could have ended up anywhere, but she was lucky. She has an excellent home. Couldn’t be better, the people are kind to her. She’s settled down and she’s enjoying country life.’
‘I didn’t have the courage to do that but now Olive, Tom’s unmarried sister, has offered to look after the twins so we took them to his family home last weekend. On Monday morning I entered them in the village school there.’
‘That’s Chester, isn’t it?’
‘Guilden Sutton, just outside Chester. It seems far enough away to ensure they have quiet nights. It was bliss going to bed knowing I could stay undisturbed until morning. I’d have loved to have stayed with the children but Tom has to be here to work and my little business is thriving so I decided my place was to stay here and look after it.’
‘I’m glad you aren’t deserting me,’ Leonie told her.
‘I’m not going to do that. Tom and I plan to go and see the children most weekends, that’ll give us a few peaceful nights to catch up with our sleep.’
‘Lucky you, I wish we had relatives living in a quiet spot not very far away.’
‘It’s ideal for that but Tom’s mother and sister moved to an old cottage when his father died and they have only two bedrooms so they don’t have enough room to put us up as well as the twins. The twins think it’s fun to sleep on two camp beds in Olive’s room but she has to look after her mother who is eighty-six and not very well. It’s marvellous that she’s willing to take the twins in but we don’t feel we can put on her to do any more. But as you know, Nick lives in Chester and has said we must feel free to stay at his house at weekends. We can collect the twins and all sleep at his place, and if we can’t get enough petrol we can go by public transport.’
Leonie tried not to think of Nick. ‘Without the children, you and Tom are going to have much more freedom during the week.’
‘We are. Leonie, why don’t we take it in turns to open up the shop in the mornings? I can deal with any of your customers that come in, and it won’t be on my conscience if I have Friday afternoons off to get ready to go to Chester.’
‘That sounds a great idea and then sometimes I could sleep in after a night of heavy raids.’
In the weeks running up to Christmas, the nights were often very noisy with exploding bombs, screaming fire engines and the thunder of ack-ack guns on a nearby emplacement as they tried to shoot the enemy planes down. When she heard the warning siren, Leonie would get up and wake Milo to go down to the cellar.
‘I’m not going down there,’ Steve said. ‘I’d catch my death of cold. Anyway, I’ll be all right in my bed.’
‘Unless we get a direct hit,’ Milo said.
‘In that case you wouldn’t survive in the cellar,’ he retorted.
The raids became so frequent that Leonie and Milo almost gave up using their bedrooms. It wasn’t pleasant to be woken up in the middle of the night to get out of a warm bed and go down those outside steps to the cellar. It was easier to go down at bedtime with a hot-water bottle and spend the whole night down there.
‘With proper beds, we’ve got a more comfortable shelter than most,’ Milo said. Leonie was glad to have his company. He slept near her in the room she’d intended to share with Steve.
Milo told everybody he was continuing to improve, though Leonie knew he was still having bouts of acute abdominal pain, but he was always cheerful and he helped her about the house. Every few weeks he returned to the hospital for a few days to have further check-ups and then he’d come back home for another month of convalescence.
June hated being parted from Ralph and dreaded taking the keys of his flat back to the landlord at the end of the month. It was somewhere to go when she was off duty, she could think about him there, and feel his presence all round her and be soothed. It helped to settle her and made her realise she’d she have to knuckle down and give more of her attention to nursing. She’d been to lectures and scribbled a few notes and never opened the book again until she was in the next lecture. She’d bought textbooks from the list she’d been given but had not opened them either.
She was growing a little stubble along her scar and had taken to wearing a beret when she wanted to go out and was not in uniform.
She’d found it time-consuming to put her long hair up into a bun before she had breakfast. She was more used to the French pleat but that didn’t fit well under her cap. So after much heart-searching because she thought her hair was her best feature, she decided to have her long hair cut really short and found it much easier to run a comb through that in the mornings.
She wrote and received long daily letters from Ralph and if he rang her at the nurses’ home it made her day. Her working hours were long and she had to attend lectures and study as well; she felt she was lucky to have plenty of new friends to provide companionship in what spare time she had. When she had a day off she went home and spent it with Milo and Mum.
It was several weeks before Ralph was given leave, but eventually he phoned to say he had a forty-eight-hour pass and would be staying with Elaine and could she join him there. Ralph had the weekend off, and hadn’t given June enough notice to ask for her day off to coincide. Also a day off on a Saturday was popular with the nurses, but the girl who had been given that agreed to swap so June might be off.
When June put it to the ward sister she pulled a face. ‘Nurse Halligan is a second-year nurse,’ she said severely, ‘and you are very much her junior and lack her experience. I have to balance the skills of the staff on duty at all times.’
June was afraid she wasn’t going to get it and wished she could say Ralph was her husband and not her fiancé, but in the end the sister capitulated, and as the new week started on Sunday, she gave her a half-day then as well. It was the most she could ever get and she was pleased and excited at the thought of seeing Ralph again.
He had two nights away from his barracks, but June could only spend one with him. Elaine and Tom put off going to Chester to see the twins until Saturday morning, so they could see something of Ralph. They were sociable and made her feel welcome. Elaine was a good hostess and took pleasure in providing meals for guests but with rationing, it was no longer easy. Also, her house was modern and her guest room next to her own. Not wanting to be overheard, they both felt inhibited. They spent the night in whispered conversation and neither felt they’d had much sleep but the next morning Elaine and Tom were away early and they had the house to themselves.
They didn’t want to go out and preferred to sit around all day until t
he evening. ‘We’ll have to go to a restaurant,’ Ralph said, ‘there’s hardly anything to eat in the house.’
He drove her back to the hospital by ten o’clock and promised to be outside waiting for her when she came off duty at lunchtime the next day.
On Sunday afternoon, they went for a long cold walk along the beach as far as Bromborough. That evening, she saw Ralph off on the train, caught the bus back to the hospital and was in bed by eight o’clock.
After that Ralph was given regular days off twice a month and June was then able to ask for her days off before the sister drew up the off-duty list. They were getting used to staying at Elaine’s house, and Ralph took her out to restaurants and theatres, though when they had the house to themselves they preferred stay in on their own. It seemed that they had given up almost everything that mattered to them to help the war effort.
A few days after she’d last seen Ralph, she’d come off duty at eight o’clock with the rest of the day staff, had a hot bath and got ready for bed. They all did that and then congregated in the sitting room in their dressing gowns, drinking tea, gossiping and listening to the war news on the wireless. June hoped Ralph would ring her for a chat and answered the pay phone when it rang in the hall. The second time she did that it was Ralph’s voice she heard.
‘How are you, love? I’ve got some news.’ She could hear the excitement in his voice and knew it was good news. ‘Guess what? I’ve been selected for officer training. It will be a short-service commission.’
‘Marvellous,’ June sang out. ‘Then I shall be an officer’s wife!’ She looked round guiltily hoping that no one had heard her say that, because she’d told nobody that she was married.
‘I’ve got a pass out for ninety-six hours next week.’
‘But I’ll only be able to have one day off,’ she mourned.
‘We’ll manage something. After that I’m to report to the college which is just outside Chester, so we won’t be so far apart and I won’t have to waste so much of my leave on the train.’