After the Storm

by Margaret Graham

  ‘I love you, bonny lass. I’ll always love you and one day you’ll be ready to come with me.’

  She waved him away on his train, half an hour later. He leaned out, his broad shoulders stretching his uniform.

  ‘I love you, Annie,’ he shouted again and again as the train gathered speed and she replied, ‘I love you, my darling.’ And her tears were those of anger and despair and were directed at herself.

  Pruscilla and she were assigned to the burns unit and there was still no way of removing a dressing painlessly or waving a magic wand and regrowing noses, faces and hands but there was plastic surgery, she told her patients, and when they were stronger they would go to a specialist hospital for treatment.

  In the meantime she arranged with the manager of the local cinema that they should all go to see a film once a week but, he insisted, they must come in after the lights went out and leave before they rose. He didn’t want to scare away his regular customers.

  Annie felt Prue’s hand on her arm as she made to protest.

  ‘So kind of you, dear man. We, of course, do not want our patients upset by other people’s ignorance,’ Prue had replied and swept out with Annie in tow.

  And so through the winter months they went to the cinema every Thursday evening, even when Annie was transferred to surgical and nursed soldiers without legs or checked the drains and drips on those internally injured. The black-out slits on cars were also reaping their reward and traffic accidents were high and many lives were lost that winter.

  In the spring she received a letter from Georgie.

  January 1940

  Central Provinces.

  My darling love,

  Well, I’m back here, bonny lass, back in the jungle and I can tell you this because I’m sending the letter back with a friend returning to England on sick-leave. Malaria is the curse out here.

  Things are different this time, my darling. More serious. We seem to be learning a new craft and travel miles with heavy packs, track through jungles, lay charges and that’s where I come in – I teach the others.

  It’s right noisy here, you know. There is always something moving above you or alongside and the monkey’s chatter must sound like Prue from what you say.

  We’re living off the land and roast monkey is very tasty and the blood right good for quenching your thirst.

  Burma looks as though it could be a ripe plum for the Japs with their oil refineries at Rangoon, and the CO (Mr Prue to you) says that if the Nips decide to take Burma, they’re likely to come on into India across the border expecting the Indians to turn on us from this side and who knows, maybe they will.

  Tom shouldn’t be in the pits, you know, he should be checking on the surface. I know he’s a good pitman and that’s what they need but it’s not right, I agree with you, not with his injuries. Good old Don getting a cushy number. That lad has the luck of the devil, clerk in a supply depot, well I’m buggered. Maud sounds well from what Tom says and Grace has taken to munitions work like a duck to water. There’s more money there too, he says.

  Sarah has written and says she liked the hospital when she visited you. She’s a game old bird, isn’t she, and loves you so much but it can’t be as much as I do.

  I must stop now, my darling. We will be together when this is over, won’t we, my darling lass, and then I’ll bring you to Kashmir. I must go, the plane is flying my mate out now. I love you. I always have and I always will, my own precious Annie. I miss you.

  Georgie.

  In May, Dunkirk fell and their days were long with a steady stream of shocked men with war wounds that gaped and maimed, and they worked until their eyes were black with tiredness but still Prue fluttered her eyelashes, but not at Annie any more because she had threatened to trim them while she was asleep if she continued to create that sort of draught around her. Prue called the British Expeditionary Force the Back Every Fridays and had her backside pinched by a major who could no longer walk.

  It was their way of dealing with the horror.

  In June, France fell and Prue was relieved that Paris had not been bombed, such a lovely city, darling, she had breathed as they sat in the mess. The art galleries are like no other. Annie had written this to Sarah who had replied that they must arrange for Tom to go after the war, which they would win of course.

  July was busy in the wards. The Battle of Britain had begun and they saw the dogfights above and then the burns unit was busier than ever. Annie was transferred back to comfort the raw red heads which had once been young faces and took too many gins in the evening with shaking hands. Day after day there were new patients and the hours they worked were long and she grew thin but Prue did not. ‘I never lose weight, darling. I never lose my appetite, that’s the problem.’ And they laughed together.

  And then there was the blitz and the bombing of the provinces and the ports and Annie heard from Tom that they were tired but still all right, though the bombers came every night and sometimes during the day.

  Prue and Annie took a train to London on their day off in the autumn when things were quieter and passed Peter Robinson’s which looked strange with such a large chunk missing. There were gaping holes wherever they looked but still people worked and talked and laughed and there were lunchtime concerts in church halls and they went down into a crypt and sat with Londoners and listened to Chopin and Annie wished that Sarah could have been here. She would have sat, her head moving slightly with each stanza.

  Georgie wrote from India. He could say little and there were great sections blacked out by the censor but she could tell where he was from his description of the cruiser butterfly and she thanked God that the Japanese were not involved in the war.

  She worked on through the winter, thinking of the times they had been together, the love she felt for him, the ache that was always with her now he was gone.

  Now there was extensive rationing but Pruscilla still did not lose weight and the Sisters’ mess had a bet on that, by the end of the war, she would still be the same plump blonde, and made Annie promise to write to them and tell them all, wherever they were if they had won.

  And so winter turned to spring, and May to June 1941, and they played tennis on the old school courts and Dr Smith taught Annie the backhand and pinched her bottom at the net. Prue threatened to tell Georgie and Annie laughed and chased her until they fell in an exhausted heap under the budding oaks.

  The grounds were sweeping and bordered at the back of the house by magnolia trees which were tranquil in the winter and bore white waxed blossom in the spring and, lying beneath the largest in June, Annie could see patches of blue through the fresh green canopy of leaves which had taken the place of the flowers. She could hear the drone of planes and could never imagine a time when she would grow disenchanted by the sun. It drove the thoughts of the wards and injury to the back of her mind. It made Georgie seem nearer and Tom and Don safe and Sarah had written to say that, after seeing the blossoms of the trees when she was down last month, she would try to obtain one after the war.

  But Sarah died while she was lying there, while she was relaxing and thinking of nothing, one arm over her eyes and her hand picking at the grass. There was an air raid as Sarah shopped in Newcastle, but she was unmarked and beautiful, Val said in the letter the orderly brought over to her as she lay there. It was another blast death to the rescuers but to Annie it brought the world to a stop.

  The letter lay on the grass, discarded. She gripped a handul of grass, it was young and taut in her hands. Sarah couldn’t be dead. She would not allow her to be dead. She needed her, needed her voice rolling out words as though she was a book, needed her kindness, her sharpness. Needed her visits as she passed to or from her holidays, needed her letters which told of Gosforn and the hens, told of Val and the Miss Thoms, told of herself. She had been her mother, so how could she die too, like the others?

  The magnolia leaves were rustling above her, the sun played fleetingly over her hands which clutched the grass. No, she could not
be dead; they had sat here together and enjoyed the sun just a few weeks ago, she could still hear her voice, see her smile. No, she could not be dead, not be cold, Annie loved her too much for that to have happened and what the hell was she doing shopping in Newcastle when the bombs dropped? What the hell was she doing taking risks for a yard of cloth? What did she want a yard of cloth for? Annie looked at the grass she had torn up, grass which hung from fists which were lifted to the sky. Oh God, if only she didn’t know what a dead body looked like.

  Sarah, don’t leave now, not now, not ever.

  There was another letter too, from the solicitor, and the envelope was stiff vellum; its edge cut her thumb and it bled but she did not feel it, just brushed the drops to a smear as she focussed on the typewritten words which must be read, Val had said in her letter, but which were an irritation, an intrusion. She wanted to think, to remember, but not to either, because how could she bear this loss? Why die over a bloody piece of cloth? Oh Sarah, why? Grass lay discarded on her lap now dark against her uniform, against Val’s letter.

  The solicitor informed her in black detached perfect lettering that she now owned the house and also a large capital sum including an account which had been set aside to receive her repayments for the loans Don and Tom had received. This was also hers now. Sarah had assumed that she would continue to maintain a position for Val, who had been comfortably provided for. Annie would not have thought to do otherwise but money was not what she wanted to clutter her mind up with now; it was Sarah who must fill it, who must stay with her, tight inside her, safe, well, devoid of a yard of cloth, devoid of dust on her dear cold face.

  She went back on duty and changed the dressing which was overdue on the amputation and read aloud the letter that the blind pilot’s wife had written, made tea for Pruscilla and herself in the ward kitchen, drank it while Pruscilla remained silent and watchful. She could not taste it and her hand trembled only slightly as she replaced the cup in its saucer, right in the middle, so that it fitted perfectly or was it a bit too much to the right. There, that was perfect, or was it too much to the left?

  ‘Leave it, Annie,’ Prue said gently.

  Only that night when the moon was brilliant in the sky and had blazoned the stars into nothingness did she cry, standing at the window and gripping the frame, silently at first until Prue led her back to bed and then the sobs rasped deep in her chest and her fists beat the pillow which was wet from her mouth and eyes and the missing was deep and dark and she could now believe that she was never going to see her again.

  Georgie’s letters eased her pain a little over the next days and weeks and months, but only a very little. She filled in ward forms, ate at mealtimes, played tennis again but could not remember doing it. She never lay beneath the magnolia tree again because her comfort was gone and that is where she had last been. Sarah was gone and life would never be quite the same again.

  They knew that they were soon to be posted overseas because they had been instructed to buy tropical kit and Annie was glad. Glad to leave England, to be nearer Georgie because she needed him more than ever now that Sarah was gone.

  Annie took the train to Gosforn for her embarkation leave. The privet hedge still smelt of dusty yellow pollen and she took a leaf and bent it between her fingers and it snapped into segments; so autumn is with us, she thought.

  The key slid easily into the lock and the brass doorknob shone as it had always done and the hallway was empty as it often was but it was an emptiness now which rolled off into the sitting-room because Sarah was not in the winged chair with her glasses low on her nose as she looked towards the door and rattled her paper.

  Then the kitchen door opened and Val bustled through, her arms pink and plump and warm as they held her close.

  ‘I’ve put the tea on for you, my dear.’

  But first Annie climbed the stairs, took off her grey suit, looked under the bed and there was the potty. She moved to the window, slipped the latch and leaned out. One last cut would do the lawn, the roses could be pruned and the air was still heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and baked bread. The hens were still in their runs and she smiled as the cock strutted backwards and forwards. Nothing has changed, she marvelled. But everything has changed.

  There was boiled egg for tea, the warm brown shell of which peeled off to expose a fresh white and then a vivid yolk which welled orange and rich.

  Annie leaned back. ‘Are you able to give the Miss Thoms a few too, Val?’ She dug her toast soldier into the yolk and chewed at it.

  Val nodded. ‘And they give me honey because their gardener has a hive.’

  And there it was suddenly, vivid in her mind; the hive across from the beck, the black-eyed daisies in the meadow and the train that steamed away to God knows where. ‘I wrote to Tom and Don and they are going to come over, Val, if they can manage it. Don’s been called up and has landed up as a clerical private in the supply depot. Tom’s in the mines again. Did they tell you?’ She raised her eyes as Val nodded.

  ‘They pop in from time to time,’ she smiled. ‘Worried that I might be lonely, I think. They’re good boys. Did you know that the Miss Thoms have lent me their gardener as well, Annie? Kind of them but he drives me mad. Rake, rake, until I could scream. Why doesn’t he just bung in a few seeds, that’s what I’d like to know? I don’t let him feed your hens, don’t trust him to do too much. Bit old, bit dense, if you know what I mean.’

  She touched her finger to her head and pulled a face.

  ‘He says a girl like you should be tucked up in a little house with a few bairns hanging off your skirt but I say to him that, if I had to decide between that and being waited on hand, foot and finger, I know what I’d choose.’

  Annie laughed. ‘I do a bit of work too you know, Val.’

  ‘Oh, I know that but you’re an officer and officers don’t do much, do they?’

  Annie just shook her head and smiled. Her egg was finished now and she took a sip of tea. ‘Do you miss her very much, Val?’

  Val sat down, easing her legs round and under the table.

  ‘It feels as though she’s still alive. I think I hear her coming down in the morning.’ She reached over and cut some more bread. It was fresh and fell on to the board as the knife sawed through. Annie picked up some moist crumbs pressing them together and wondered if there would ever be a time when simple gestures did not take her rushing back to the past.

  ‘Aye, I miss her, every day I miss her,’ Val said in a calm voice. ‘But it’s not an aching. It happened and it was quick and everything is the same except she’s not here but there again, she is, if you know what I mean. Life goes on, lass. I think of her and it pleases me. It doesn’t pain.’

  Later in the darkness of the sitting-room Annie felt the sameness and was comforted. She lay her head back in her chair opposite Sarah’s and was grateful for the table at its side which held the same lamp, the same photograph of the skiers. The only difference to the room was the black-out and the empty chair, but otherwise so little was disturbed and Sarah’s essence was everywhere bringing good memories. Death did not mean the end of everything as it had done before. It did not have to be ugly and wounding but calm and part of natural life.

  Time passed and she rested her head on the back of the chair. Well, Sarah, she thought, tropical kit, iron kettle and a tent pole. What do you think it means? Where will I be going now? I’m a bit old for camping at 27, aren’t I?

  First though, the lawn had to be cut and as she rose the boys were there; Tom limping towards her and Don grinning as he came along behind.

  ‘Had to come now, bonny lass,’ Tom said as he hugged her. ‘Got an early shift tomorrow and Don’s on night duty. Grace sends her love and so does Maud but they’re both working at the munitions factory so can’t get away.’ He held her at arm’s length and smoothed back her hair. ‘You look tired, bonny lass.’ Then Don pushed him out of the way.

  ‘Let me have a kiss then. She doesn’t look so bad.’ He hugged her and she li
ked the feel of their familiar arms around her.

  She led them into the garden and watched as they took turns to push the lawn-mower. They talked and fell silent, laughed and were serious as the late afternoon sun stayed high in the sky. She knotted her cardigan round her waist by its arms and the secateurs felt warm in her hands as she pruned the roses right back. They began the bonfire as the sun started to go down and burnt the dead roses, the old wood from the lilac and the lavender clippings that Don had cut. They laid down the grass cuttings as a mulch and then after tea they were on their way again, sweating from their work, sleeves rolled up and hair in their eyes, eager to be back before the black-out but not wanting to leave.

  ‘It won’t be long now,’ they said as they put on their motor cycle helmets. Tom looked hard at her. ‘Get some ideas for design then, bonny lass. Sarah told me it would be a good idea. Then, when it’s over, we’ll get on.’ He kissed her again and pointed to Don. ‘That miserable old bugger doesn’t want to come in with us.’

  Don shook his fist at them both. ‘I’ve got me own business and it’ll do very well, thank you, now that I’ve got Albert doing the right things. He actually smiles at the customers, makes a right nice face an’ all he does.’

  She heard their laugh well into the night when she lay in bed and watched the stars and smelt the grass clippings and fastened her brothers in her mind as they had been this afternoon because she did not know when she would see them again.

  She arrived back at the hospital two days later in the evening, after Pruscilla. The wards were nearly empty and there were crates in the hall. She met Prue on the stairs and she was panting.