by Annie Groves
‘Well, I’m not surprised you have moments when you feel like that,’ she said calmly. ‘I’d be exactly the same way myself, and I dare say that if they were honest most women would say the same.’
‘You don’t think I’m hateful then and…and not fit to be a mother?’
‘Of course not. The thing is, Grace, that no matter how much other people sympathise and want to help, when it comes to giving birth, it’s like death – no one can go through it for you or with you, and I don’t think there’s a woman on this earth who can say that that isn’t frightening. And you’ve got all the worry of this toxaemia hanging over you as well.’
‘Sometimes I lie here imagining the twins, giving them Seb’s nose and his lovely eyes, and I can see them so clearly that it’s as though I already know them, and then there are other times when I can’t picture them at all, and then I get frightened because I think it means that I won’t ever get to see them and hold them. I’m so afraid now, Emily. If things go wrong for me, it’s too late now for…for…’ she couldn’t bring herself to use the word ‘abortion’ so instead, she said, ‘for you-know-what, and it’s too soon for them to be delivered. Eight months is the earliest they would want to do a Caesarean, and that’s three weeks away.’
Emily continued to hold her. Three weeks might not sound very long, but when, as she had been warned by Nurse Williams, Grace’s blood pressure could rise so swiftly that three hours could produce an emergency, three weeks seemed a very long time indeed.
‘Your mum’s coming to see you this weekend,’ Emily reminded her.
‘Yes. But I don’t want Mum worrying about me, Emily.’
‘Then we’ll have to put on a good show and make sure that she doesn’t.’
Grace gave Emily a grateful look. ‘I really don’t know what I’d have done without you. I didn’t like it when Seb told me what he’d done, asking you to come, but now…You truly are the kindest person I know, Emily. Mum will think I’m such a softie, making all this fuss and work.’
‘No she won’t. She’ll be proud of you – any mother would be,’ Emily corrected her.
‘You are such a comfort, Emily. You remind me of Katie, in a way.’
‘Katie?’
‘Yes, the girl that Luke was engaged to. She was lovely. We all wanted them to get married, but well, things didn’t work out. Mum was ever so disappointed. She really took to Katie. She had that way about her that you have, sort of calm and kind and caring. I know that family is family, and that we all rally round to help one another, but I’m ever so grateful to you, Emily.’
‘Well, like you said, family is family.’
Family! Emily’s heart swelled with gratitude and pride. After all this time she had so much of what she’d always longed for: a son, and Wilhelm, and now this – a family. She was family, Grace had said so.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Kieran lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke he had just exhaled toward the skyline. Every day since D-Day his squadron had flown from their base into Normandy, joining the ‘cab rank’ of other planes there ready to be called upon to do whatever was needed to help the Allied forces push forward.
They had dropped guns and ammunition and radio parts for the French Resistance, leaflets over Paris to say that the invasion was under way, stores for infantry on the ground, medics and medical supplies, and that was in between making regular bombing runs into German-held territory to destroy strategic targets. He had seen comrades die, their planes plunging earthwards in burning pyres of flames and metal; he had seen them dragged from the wreckage of their planes so badly injured that they were unrecognisable; he had witnessed acts of heroism and self-sacrifice that had made him want to weep, and acts of greed and selfishness that had shown him the dark side of human nature, but none of that – nothing, no one – had burned into his thoughts and his heart in the way that Lou had done. She had pierced it as sharply as a piece of shrapnel that couldn’t be removed without him bleeding to death, so that he had to live with the pain of it in him or die with its removal. Looking back now he could see that deep down he had known way back, when they had first met, that there was something about her that had got under his skin. He had thought then that it was because she was so aggravating, an aggravating kid who was too naïve to look after herself. A man’s pride required, though, that certain rules to a relationship had to be abided by. Lou had broken the first and most important of those rules when she had shown him that her sister was more important to her than he was. A man, a real man, would never put up with something like that, not if he still wanted to call himself a man. Those were the rules.
With the invasion underway the demand for replacement planes was high. That meant that Lou would be busy collecting new Spitfires from the factory at Castle Bromwich and then taking them to the maintenance units. He remembered her telling him how the ATA pilots always flew the same course to and from Castle Bromwich, flying low under the clouds. It was virtually a straight route and it would be easy enough for another pilot to find her. If he so wished. If?
It was his rest day and technically he wasn’t supposed to fly, but a Lancaster that had just been repaired was standing idle on the runway.
Kieran blew the smoke from his cigarette down his nostrils and then ground out the cigarette beneath the heel of his flying boot, before starting to walk toward the admin block.
Ten minutes later, as Kieran strolled toward the Lancaster, an engineer called out to him, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’
‘Test flight,’ Kieran replied, as he hauled himself up onto the wing. ‘Orders. Give the prop a swing, will you?’
The familiar cockpit enclosed him, the Lancaster oddly light on take-off without its crew. Kieran headed east, flying slowly and beneath the cloud.
The run to Castle Bromwich and back to the maintenance units had become so familiar to her now that Lou suspected she could almost have flown it in her sleep, which was why she decided later that she didn’t even see the Lancaster until it had drawn level with her, the sight of it coming out of nowhere giving her such a shock that without thinking she let the Spit surge to 250 miles per hour instead of keeping it below the regulation 200.
What was going on? The Lancaster had no business being down at this altitude – bombers flew above the cloud, not beneath them – and then she saw the pilot and her heart somersaulted with as much breathtaking speed as though it was a Spitfire rolling and banking and then looping the loop.
Kieran.
She was less than five miles from the maintenance unit. Very carefully refusing to look to see if the Lancaster was still there, Lou began to lose speed, dropping down slowly. The maintenance units were concealed often by trees, the tops of which were held down by ropes whilst the unit was being constructed, the ropes removed when the work was completed to spring back to full height, thus concealing the unit. Landing at one of them took care and skill. There was normally only a very small landing strip, sometimes little more than a flat field. Ferry pilots were trained to land one after the other, quickly and efficiently, but that didn’t help Lou to feel very happy about having a huge heavy bomber racing down the runway behind her. The minute she was down she taxied off the runway, and then sat rigidly in her seat, trying to find the courage to get out and face Kieran, the man who had rejected her and walked away from her. She must show him that she wasn’t the silly little girl she had been in Liverpool. She must be calm and professional, just treating him as she would any other pilot she happened to come across in the course of her own work. She must…
Her door was yanked open and Kieran was there confronting her.
‘Not planning to stay there all day, are you, only I’ve got to get the Lancaster back before anyone realises it’s missing.’
Beneath them on the ground an aggrieved engineer was demanding, ‘What the hell’s going on? We were expecting one Spitfire, not one Spitfire and a ruddy Lancaster.’
Lou heard the engineer but she wasn’t paying much attention to him
and that was because Kieran had reached for her left hand and was flicking open a small leather box, inside which a diamond solitaire ring sparkled in the sunlight.
‘Well? Shall I put it on?’ he was asking her. ‘And I warn you, if you say yes it’s never going to come off, Lou, at least not until I put a wedding ring in its place.’
Her mouth had gone dry and her heart was racing like a jet engine.
‘I thought you’d given up on me,’ was all she could manage to say.
‘So did I, but it seems that I was wrong. Mind you, I should have done,’ Kieran told her.
‘So why haven’t you?’
‘Do you want me to tell you or show you?’
Lou thought for a moment and then said firmly, ‘Both.’
Grace’s blood pressure had been up for the last two days, though only very slightly, which was why Emily hadn’t said anything to her, not wanting to upset her and make things worse. But yesterday her hands had been dreadfully swollen, more so than they had been, Emily was sure, and Grace had just not been herself. Emily knew how desperate Grace was to stay at home instead of having to go into hospital, and she understood why she felt like that, which was why instead of going to Grace’s Emily was now on her way to Nurse Williams’ house in the hope that she could catch her before she set off on her bicycle on her rounds for the day.
Her anxiety for Grace made Emily quicken her pace, which was just as well, she acknowledged as she arrived at the cottage, just as Nurse Williams was getting astride her bike.
Quickly Emily explained why she was there.
‘Grace’s blood pressure isn’t up very much, but she isn’t herself at all, and knowing how upset she’s been I thought it best to have a word with you.’
‘Well, if it’s not up much…’ Nurse Williams frowned and pursed her lips. ‘I’ve got a new mother to see at Shaw Farm, and then there’s Mrs Haddon’s leg that needs dressing. I could come after that, I suppose, but that will be this afternoon.’
‘She’s been talking about dying, her and the twins,’ Emily put in determinedly, ‘and I’m not sure I’m doing the blood pressure properly.’ That wasn’t true, but Emily wasn’t at all happy about Grace.
‘Mmm, well, all right then. I’ll tell you what, I’ll cycle over there now and just say that I thought I’d call. I’ll check her blood pressure and have a bit of a chat with her.’
‘That’s ever so good of you, Nurse Williams,’ Emily thanked her dutifully, ‘especially when you’re so busy.’
‘I’ll probably have left by the time you’ve walked there. It won’t take me long to check her over.’
As she rode away Emily suspected that the nurse thought she was worrying unnecessarily.
Emily had almost reached the lane that led to Seb and Grace’s cottage when an ambulance came racing past her, its siren going. When it turned into the lane Emily’s heart leaped into her throat.
She wasn’t athletic, but she still ran down the lane as fast as she could, arriving at the open door of the cottage just in time to see Grace being carried out into the ambulance. Her eyes were closed and her face looked pallid.
Nurse Williams came bustling out after the ambulance men.
‘Just as well I called,’ she told Emily, making no mention of Emily’s part in that decision. ‘Found her next to unconscious, or as good as.’
‘What will happen now?’ Emily asked anxiously.
‘Well, it’s up to the doctor, but I reckon they’ll try for a Caesar.’
From the ambulance, Emily heard an agonised cry and a sobbed, ‘Mum…’
‘I’m going with her,’ she told the nurse, jumping into the ambulance before anyone could stop her and going to crouch at Grace’s side, taking hold of her hand.
‘Mum,’ Grace gasped.
‘She’ll be here soon, Grace. Don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be all right, and before you know it you’ll be holding your two little ones. Pity I didn’t spend a bit more time on them matinée jackets…’
The medic sitting taking Grace’s pulse gave Emily a nod of approval. ‘Keep talking to her,’ he told Emily. ‘We don’t want her going into a panic.’
And so Emily did, all the way to the hospital and all the way onto the ward, until Grace had been sedated and Emily was free to go and telephone Seb and Grace’s mother to tell them what had happened.
‘The doctor says that they’re going to do a Caesarean,’ Emily informed Jean, who had left the number of a neighbour’s phone with Grace, ‘just in case.’ ‘He thinks it’s for the best.’
There was no point in worrying Grace’s mother senseless by telling her that the doctor had told her that it was touch and go whether he could deliver the babies alive, and whether after that Grace herself would survive.
Back on the ward, Emily took hold of Grace’s hand, and even though Grace was now sedated, Emily still spoke to her as though she was conscious, telling her firmly, ‘Everything’s going to be all right, Grace. All you have to do is keep calm and think of how soon you’re going to be holding those babies. I can see you with them now, and ever so proud you look too, with roses blooming in your cheeks and you looking so pretty that it’s no wonder Seb is so proud of you. It won’t be long now, so you just hold on. The doctor says that he reckons the babies will be a good weight now so you don’t need to worry about that.’
The doctor had said no such thing, but Emily didn’t believe in giving a person something to worry about when worrying was going to make them feel worse.
By the time Seb arrived, Grace was just about to be taken down to the operating theatre. There was just time for Seb to slip into the chair at Grace’s bedside, which Emily had vacated for him, and for Emily to leave them alone together for a few precious minutes before Grace was wheeled away.
‘I still can’t believe that we’re together and that everything’s all right,’ Lou admitted to Kieran as they sat side by side in the window seat of the pub, her engagement ring on her finger. ‘It was never about me loving Sasha more than I do you, Kieran. It was more that I felt so guilty because of you and me when I thought she loved you as well.’
She’d explained to him now about the bomb shaft and Sasha’s fears, and they had both agreed that they should put the whole episode behind them.
‘No more fights, no more misunderstandings, and no more delays,’ Kieran told her tenderly. ‘The first chance I get I’m going to see your dad and ask him to let us get married a.s.a.p.’
‘What if he says we’ve got to wait until the war’s over?’
‘He won’t say that,’ Kieran told her, ‘because I don’t intend to take no for an answer.’
‘Sasha’s going to want it to be a double wedding with her and Bobby, but if you don’t want to, then she’ll just have to be disappointed. You come first, Kieran.’
Kieran’s smile told Lou that he understood and appreciated what she was saying.
‘Oh, I don’t mind a double wedding. Just as long as you don’t expect me to agree to a double honeymoon. Then I’m definitely going to want you all to myself.’
‘Katie! At last. It seems ages since we’ve seen one another, properly, I mean.’
Katie returned Gerry’s happy smile as she walked into the kitchen of their shared billet and found the other girl there.
‘We do seem to keep missing one another,’ Katie agreed, adding, ‘Phew, it’s hot outside. I did a bit of a detour coming home this evening and walked through Hyde Park, just to try and get some fresh air.’
‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ Gerry offered.
Katie nodded her head in grateful, if somewhat surprised, acceptance. It was almost unheard of for Gerry to offer to undertake any of their shared domestic tasks.
‘My feet are killing me,’ Katie complained, easing them out of her pre-war sandals, and wiggling her happy-to-be-free toes.
‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ Gerry had filled the kettle and put it on the cooker lighting the gas jet underneath it, but now as she turned rou
nd Katie could see that her face was alight with happiness. It was almost spilling out of her, illuminating and flushing her cheeks a soft pink. ‘I wanted you to be the first to know because – well, because really it’s because of you and what you said to me that it’s happened and that me and Ian are getting engaged.’ Gerry shook her head. ‘I never thought that I’d end up engaged to a boy who went to school with my brothers and who I’ve known all my life.’
The kettle was boiling, and tactfully Katie got up and went to it, warming the pot and then emptying it before spooning in some of their precious allowance of tea, whilst Gerry stood watching her, looking so blissfully happy that it was hard for Katie not to feel a small pang of envy.
‘If it hadn’t been for you saying that I should go home for Christmas, it wouldn’t have happened. Ian came round to see my parents ‘cos he’d heard about my brothers.’ Gerry’s happiness was momentarily dimmed. ‘He’s in the Merchant Navy, and he’d been away when it happened. He always was mad on going to sea. I can remember him talking about it when he used to come round to play with my brothers. Of course, none of us knew then that there’d be the war. Anyway, he asked me out, and I said yes, and then he took me to a dance on New Year’s Eve, and then on New Year’s Day when he came round to say goodbye before rejoining his ship, we had a good long talk, and I told him…’
Gerry broke off from what she was saying to take the mug of tea that Katie was handing to her, only to put it down on the table and continue emotionally, ‘I told him everything Katie, like he was one of my brothers or…or my best friend, and then afterwards he just looked at me and said that he’d done a bit of running wild himself when he was on the New York convoy run. Then he hugged me, Katie, and I think I knew then. He didn’t say anything and neither did I because, well, we’d been such good pals over the Christmas holiday that I didn’t want to spoil that.
‘When I came back to London I told myself that was that, but then he wrote to me, sent the letter via my parents, and I wrote back, and well, to cut a long story short we’ve been seeing one another whenever we could – when he was at home and I could get leave, but I’ve kept quiet about it because…well, I wasn’t really sure until a few weeks ago how he felt, and then when he did tell me, I wanted to keep it just between the two of us for a while.’ Gerry gave Katie a bashful look. ‘Especially after the way I’d been carrying on before him and me got together. But then last weekend, Ian told my mum and dad that he wants us to be married. He’s brought me ever such a beautiful ring back from New York, Katie, but I’m not wearing it just yet. It would have been my brother Chris’s birthday in two weeks’ time so we’re going to get engaged officially then. Somehow that sort of makes Chris and Danny part of…of everything.’