Night duty was tiring because they had to work at lectures as and when they could during the day. As winter turned to spring, Annie took pulses, gave enemas, read temperature charts and spent two months in theatre. She took the severed legs to the chutes, mopped the surgeon’s brows, watched William watching the specialists.
Tom and Don came to Newcastle with the girls and they went to the Empire, to the pantomime. Julie and Trevor, another medical student, came too, and William. The lights were still the same shell-pink, the curtains the same rich red. The binoculars were released from their stand on the back of the seat for the same sixpence. The seat prickled and Annie sat back and tried to forget her da. Tom pressed his arm to hers.
‘All right, bonny lass?’ he whispered and she nodded and most of her was, but still there lurked that dark hate that would not leave her in peace.
Tom wrote to her that week, wrote and asked her if she was all right now, asked about Georgie, about William, and she smiled and replied that she loved Georgie, she liked William because he made her laugh. She said that she wanted Tom to behave himself, keep out of trouble and sent him love for Grace and Don and Maud; for Don was still with this pale small girl.
Every other day off, she went to Sarah’s but the others were for her and William. They walked in the parks, went to the cinema and sat on seats which flicked up the minute they were left. She screamed at King Kong and laughed at the silent movies that were still being shown.
In the summer, they went on holiday with Julie and Trevor to the Lake District and she shared a room with William. It was a small private hotel which lay on the banks of Windermere and had chalets which lay some distance from the hotel.
The hills across the lakes were not as high as the hills that Georgie wrote of and were seldom hidden by cloud. She was shy when William had locked the door, it was the afternoon of their arrival and the sun was hot. He turned to her, his hands stroking her face and she could feel the tremble in them.
He had blue eyes not brown like Georgie and soft hands, not hard like Georgie’s and then she stopped herself. This was William and Annie and was quite different, quite separate from Georgie. He kissed her then, his lips soft, his eyes shut, his eyelashes casting a shadow on his cheeks. He was a good boy, Annie thought, as her lips pressed into his, from the South and different, but a good boy.
He undid her blouse and stroked her breasts as her nipples hardened: his breath was quicker now and he picked her up and took her to the bed.
‘I’m a virgin,’ she said as he sat down on the bed. He looked at her, traced the line of her cheek then her throat and her breasts and promised to be gentle. And he was, and afterwards she lay on the bed, wet with his sweat and her legs overlaid with his, looking out through the window at the water. There was a boat which seemed to be barely moving, the curtains were flowered and puffed out in the breeze. She turned and stroked his face and he kissed her hand.
She needed him, needed a man and a love that was light and happy and did not dig too deep.
They walked the next day, Julie and Trevor behind them, Julie’s voice fading as they marched on higher and higher, avoiding the scree and laughing as Trevor slid down until he reached a rocky outcrop. Home Sister was a million miles away, Sarah was in Brighton with Val on holiday, and Wordsworth travelled with them as William shouted his verse and they hiked down to the lake and paddled in the cold clear water.
At the pubs where they stopped on their outings, the beer was heavy, the cheese flaky and it fell from their mouths as they threw back their heads and whooped with glee and Annie dug her hands deep into her pockets and let the wind whip her hair and swung into William’s arms as he wished it, or she wished it.
They boated or made love as bees flirted with the heather and ladybirds plopped on to springy turf and hustled in and out of the shadows in a rush to find their way home before their houses burned and their children were all gone. Annie lay on her back and listened as William spoke of his home with its tennis court and the girl he would one day marry, the girl he had grown up with, and she felt a freedom which made her want to sing and shout from the mountain top because he wanted nothing more from her.
He told her about his mother who rinsed her hair blue and his father who was a stockbroker and had survived the crash of ’29. She did not tell him of her father who had not survived, of the streets which were cruel and hard because these things were her memories, her problems and one day she would solve them.
She chewed the fleshy stalk of the long grasses and showed William how to suck clover and flood his mouth with nectar and then wished that she had not for that was Georgie and she would not make love when he pulled her to him, the clover discarded in the grass.
The holiday was a release for them all, from the 67 hours she and Julie worked each week. The sun shone each day and they laughed on the train back to Newcastle.
Interim exams were just after the following Christmas in the January of 1934. Annie passed near the top though Julie only managed a scrape.
Annie spent some time in Male Surgical, nursing damaged miners, not just washing then. She checked for the redness of bedsores, eased dressings off burns and knew before she began each one that it would stick and cause the man to turn from her to hide his face. Once it was over there was no relaxation for they would go through the same process the next day. Then there was the shipyard worker who had fallen from twenty feet up and broken his back and the man with ingrowing toenails.
In Men’s Medical, she nursed miners with black spit but most were sent home to die because their condition was too advanced. She would look into the sputum mugs and want to scream that it wasn’t bloody fair.
Maternity was always busy with malnourished mothers at risk and underweight babies. The Children’s Ward was full of bairns with shaved deloused heads who missed their mams and cried for them because the doctors would not allow more than a rare visit in case the child became upset. They called her Nurse and she liked the sound of it and of her feet as she bustled from bed to bed, knowing now that she was capable of caring for these people.
Georgie wrote in the early spring and she received the letter on the first day of June, just as she was leaving for Windermere again and perhaps fields and slopes full of daffodils.
March 1934
My darling love,
I’ve done it my love, I’ve made sergeant! We had a real party, about as good as Christmas but then it was better because the sergeants waited on us and the officers on them.
It is still quite cool here, the rhododendrons are in full flower, purple not red like the ones at your old school. You would love to see them, have you any at the hospital?
The lakes you wrote about sound like the ones in Kashmir but much smaller. I managed to get there on my leave, darling, and it’s where we’ll spend our honeymoon. We’ll take a houseboat and spend two weeks just being together. Would you like that? Please say you would.
We’ve been very busy here, on exercises. It’s so hot and the dust gets everywhere and your feet get rubbed raw. I’m right surprised the vultures don’t come and have a go at us; they hover around though wherever we go, they’re buggers and I hate the bloody things.
The trees are so lovely now. The leaves are sprouting on the oak, chestnut and walnut. Do you remember that walnut hall table you told me about at Sarah’s? Well, it probably came from here.
My bearer is having a high old time because the snakes are always getting into the ghuslkhana, or privy to you, so when he sweeps out the excrement, and don’t pull that face, they usually come wriggling out too. I’m very careful before I use it, I can tell you, hinny.
Now, my darling, listen to me. I’m worried about Tom. He’s getting very het up about this Mosley and his blackshirts. Try and stop him taking it so seriously, won’t you. I know there’s trouble in Germany but I don’t want our Tom in any bother in England. He tells me he wants to go to one of their meetings in London to tell the other side of the story. They’ll be rough on him
, bonny lass, if that happens. A mate of mine who’s just come out from Blighty says that the blackshirts are buggers who like to put the boot in and his da says Mosley’s trying to be another Hitler. Stop him, hinny, tell him to stay clear. I hope he’ll listen to you and maybe Don. Get Sarah to ask Bob.
You work so hard at the hospital. I hope you’re not too tired. I lie awake when we’re on exercise looking up and thinking that somewhere you are under the same sky. I feel better now, pet, better because I can see an end to it all. It should be possible to become an officer, especially if I transfer to the Engineers. It’s easier to come up from the ranks in that set up, me old sergeant says. I’ll be applying and if I’m taken on I will be home to take my commission at Woolwich.
Don’t hold your breath though because it will still be some time yet. Please don’t write to me again telling me that you want me home. It is too hard to read that out here, when all I want is to be with you. I love you so much but you must see that I have to make it in my own way.
Please enjoy yourself and remember that I love you.
Georgie.
Sitting on the bed, Annie read it through again. Julie finished her packing and looked across.
‘Still loves you, does he?’
Annie nodded. ‘Oh yes.’ I will never ask you that again my bonny lad, she thought, because she understood exactly what he meant.
‘Does William know anything about Georgie?’
She shook her head. ‘He knows precious little about me at all, that’s the way I want it. I like him, I’m fond of him, but that’s all.’
Julie shrugged. ‘You could have him if you want him, you know. Marry a doctor, Annie, wouldn’t it be great?’
Annie stood up and put on her coat before locking Don’s watch in the wardrobe. She did not want it stolen while she was away. ‘No thanks.’
‘Why not though, Annie? You’d be comfortable for the rest of your life. I reckon Trevor’s going to ask me if he passes his finals. He’ll hear when we get back.’
Annie smiled at Julie, at her face which was still tired but fuller now; the sallowness gone and her cheeks pink. ‘So you’ll miss your finals will you? Just rush off and marry the boy?’
‘Without a backward glance,’ Julie said as they carried their cases down the stairs.
Annie wondered whether she would if Georgie came home, but knew she wouldn’t. Knew she wanted to finish, to have that buckle on her belt and the full salary to finish paying Sarah, and then it would be time to force Tom into a college. She would be able to afford it herself then.
On the train they talked about the blackshirts, about the Nazis and William said that his father thought it might be a good idea if Mosley did well. It might get the trains running on time and sort out some of the slackers.
The train was passing through fields rich with green corn and the banks leading to the railway lines were sprouting green again through blackened stubble where sparks had set the grass alight the previous year. There was a farmer driving a team of horses which were turning over the earth. Rain had been forecast for the end of the week.
She looked at William as he sat back, his head rolling in time to the train’s movements. ‘What do you mean, slackers?’ Her voice tightly controlled, she was aware that Julie had tensed and was looking at her. Trevor laughed.
‘These buggers on the dole. You can always find work if you want it.’
Annie looked at him, at his curly black hair and red lips then turned back to William. ‘You’ve seen them in the hospital, William. These people are hungry. They want work but there is none. It’s not easy to move out of your area to find it either, you know that, and if they do go who’s to say there’ll be a job at the end of it. It’s a big depression. These people are ill because they haven’t any work.’ Her voice was too loud, her words too slow.
William looked at her, his brow contracted with irritation. ‘Don’t shout at me, Annie. I know work is difficult to come by, but perhaps if someone like Mosley came in there’d be work. People would have to do as they were told. Look at Germany. There’s full employment there or as good as. This Hitler’s getting them all organised.’
Annie remembered last Sunday and Sarah sitting by the fire reading the paper, passing it to her and shaking her head over the brawling in the streets, the camps for the Communists and the Jews.
‘What about their camps, what about the Jews? That can’t be right. You can’t think that is right?’ protested Annie.
‘That’s only temporary,’ William laughed, reaching for her hand kissing each finger. ‘Once he’s got things organised, all that will die down and the movement will become respectable.’ She wanted to pull away from him, slap his face until it burned red but she caught Julie’s eye, the fear and the pleading, so she said nothing more but wrote to Tom from the hotel repeating what she had said to him before but doubtful that it would make any difference. Then she walked in boots up the hillsides and drank beer and made love to William without enjoyment. She thought too often of the patients that these men thought were shirkers, of the people her brothers were and their friends. It was not warm this summer and she felt the breeze through her cardigan, felt William’s hands cold on her flesh and no surge of wanting. She lay with him and beneath him noting when his passion spent itself inside her and that the lampshade and the cobwebs that hung from the ceiling and wafted in the breeze were not there last year. She saw the cracks which ran to the corners and the mirror that was not screwed on straight to the wardrobe door.
The weather broke on Thursday and storms lashed the hills and turned the lake into a stormy sea. They packed their rucksacks and took the train to Newcastle. William and Trevor found that they had passed their exams and Annie was glad for she wanted William gone from her. Trevor asked Julie to marry him and Annie was sad at the waste of a career.
There was also a letter from Bob to say that Tom was leaving on 6 June for London to attend a blackshirt rally at Olympia. She was on duty and could not intercept him at the station and she knew that it would have done no good if she had.
CHAPTER 20
Tom arrived too early for the train from Wassingham on Thursday and Bob waited with him. Frank had told Tom about the rally in London the week before. He’d said it would be a big one and they had arranged to go with two more from Frank’s street.
Tom had told Grace while he sketched her by the beck where the wild honeysuckle was out and the shadows were sharp in the sun and the air was thick with scent. She had said he was a trouble-maker and all mouth, like Annie, only she had the sense to get out and stay out. She’ll not come back, Tom, so don’t go on expecting her too. She’d meant to hurt, wanted to hurt but he’d drawn her to him, kissed her, pulled up her blouse, stroking and kissing her breasts until she’d pulled away saying that she wouldn’t love him any longer if he went down to London, but he knew that this was something she would never do.
‘It’s a matter of principle,’ he explained to Bob as they waited for the train. Frank was over on the seats, playing cards with his marrers. ‘No one objects to this man Mosley, they think he will bring good roads and trains that run on time.’ Bob looked at his watch then and Tom punched him on the arm. ‘Aye, Bob, we can put up with a bit of lateness, you know.’ And they laughed. ‘He’s a bloody fascist. He’s drilling his men and marching them through the East End. He’s Hitler in England and look at what’s happening over there in Germany. We could go that way, you know. Anyone who disagrees with the bugger would be squashed.’
Bob sighed. ‘For God’s sake, man, he’s a nutter. No one will take him seriously, and besides, it’s not your fight.’
Tom looked down the line but there was still no sign of the train. He moved from foot to foot. ‘Look, Bob. This bugger dresses up his goons in black uniforms, then sets ’em on anyone who gets in his way and what happens? Sweet nothing. The cops just hold back the hecklers while he marches past or finishes his speech. He’s got the support of the establishment, or some of them. It’s b
loody disgraceful, man.’
‘So what are you four going to do then? Take the Fascist Union on single-handed?’ Bob had a pink tinge to his cheeks, his voice was rising. There were very few people on the platform at five in the morning. The slag trolleys were tipping their loads behind them.
‘I’m going to speak out, Bob, that’s all, bonny lad, just speak out along with a lot of others.’ He turned and whistled to Frank and jerked his head and then Bob also saw the train as it came round the bend, its smoke thrusting up into the fresh early morning air. He felt very old.
‘So they’re going to listen to a lad of 18 are they?’ Bob called into Tom’s face as the train steamed and screeched passed them to a halt.
Tom looked at him and laughed. ‘I’m the one with the good lungs, aren’t I, too young for the damage to have been done yet, no black lung for me, but ask Annie about the others.’ He slapped Bob’s arm. ‘Thanks for coming, Bob, and for trying. It’s just something I have to do. You understand eh, man? Annie does.’
Bob nodded as the door slammed shut and the train jerked out of the station. ‘No one will hear, Tom,’ he said quietly and waved as they passed round the bend.
Tom kept his eye on Frank as they left the train in London and headed for the underground; he was afraid of getting lost. The loudspeaker boomed across the concourse but he could not distinguish the words. At the top of each stairway there were men in blackshirts waving copies of their paper and calling ‘Action! Action’ and Frank grabbed Tom as he moved towards them, his cap low over his eyes.
‘Nay lad, it’s the meeting we’re here for, leave it a while.’
They rushed down the steps past posters and toward the noise of trains. Litter blew round their ankles and up into the air when a train roared from the tunnel and it felt as though he was being sucked into its path.
There were over 15,000 people there, the papers said the next day, it was hot in the auditorium and they stuffed their caps into their pockets and shouldered through the crowds until they were halfway down the hall where they separated. Frank and he to one side, the other two, Jack and Sam, pushing their way through to the opposite wall.
After the Storm Page 33