My intense relief to hear him admit this made me feel faint. He didn’t know I’d opened the portholes. Did he remember it was me on duty that morning, though? Would he say as much under questioning at an inquiry? Should I tell him. And if I did, what would his reaction be?
‘I was saved by a dolphin,’ I said, the words shocking me as much as him. ‘It pushed me up to the surface and saved my life.’
‘You were hallucinating.’
‘No, really. They all saw it, the priest said it was a miracle. I was going down, almost giving up. When I asked the priest why I’d been saved, later, he said it was because God had a plan for me, and I wonder if that plan was to save you, dear Corporal. To give you my blood. The surgeon said you were going to die and there was nothing we could do. I had your head in my lap, and I could not stand the thought of you dying in my arms, so I insisted he took some of my blood and put it into you. You know the rest.’
‘You’re very brave. I will always be in your debt.’
Those few kind words made me want to cry. It was as if bravery and cowardice, truth and lies, all melted together and leaked out of me as tears. How would I ever be able to put everything right?
‘When the dolphin came towards me, I thought it was a torpedo, Corporal. You see, I’d never seen a dolphin before. It hit me with such force, the surgeon said if it hadn’t been for my corset, I’d have suffered a ruptured spleen.’ I was glad he could not see me blushing at the mention of my undergarments. Overcome by tiredness, I closed my eyes.
‘I don’t even know where my spleen is. Have I got one, or is it a woman thing?’ he asked.
‘It’s just under your ribs, around here . . .’ I reached over and touched his bottom rib then quickly withdrew my hand, but he caught hold of it, and pressed it against his chest.
‘Do you think you could ever come to love somebody like me, nurse?’ He was silent and as I looked, his eyes closed and his face finally relaxed.
‘Of course, soldier. There isn’t a girl in the world who wouldn’t be swept away by a kind, handsome man such as yourself. Now get some sleep. Goodnight, Corporal Perkins,’ I murmured, and in the back of my mind, I whispered, ‘Goodnight,’ to Sissy and Arthur too.
*
I woke in bright sunlight as the clatter of the anchor chain vibrated through the ship. The vessel had ceased bucking and rolling so I guessed we had moored in the port of Mudros. Although aching from my uncomfortable cot, my spirits soared to have arrived at my destination at last. I had a good feeling about the day.
‘I’m going to get you some food, Corporal. I’ll be back soon,’ I said. Shivering, I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and hurried to my cabin. Nurse Josephine was about to leave for breakfast. The two of us rushed to the dining room and just scraped in before it closed. The meal consisted of Huntley & Palmers hardtack biscuits with warm, diluted, condensed milk. I begged another two portions and took them to Perkins.
‘I need to wash and shave first,’ he said. ‘Can you help me, nurse?’
‘Me? I’m not sure I should. You must try and do things for yourself.’
I hooked him under the arm and over his shoulder and pulled. The gasp of his breath on my face, and a low groan as I heaved his body into an upright position, gave me a sense of power. ‘There, swing your leg to the ground and I’ll bring your crutches. Best if you manage independently as much as possible. I’ll fetch water and soap if I can find it, so you can wash.’
‘You’re an angel. You know that I’ve fallen in love with you?’ he said in a jokey, flirty way.
I smiled right into his eyes, pleased to see him free of the awful depression that could strike an amputee at any moment.
The door opened and the surgeon entered. ‘Excellent, nurse. I see you’ve used your initiative.’
I remembered the last time I used my initiative; the world’s largest liner sank and God knew how many people suffered the most horrible death because of it.
The surgeon turned to Perkins. ‘Corporal, I’ve received new orders to drop you at Malta. You’ll be picked up there by another ship and returned to Portsmouth.’
I trembled. Was this for the tribunal? Had the surgeon received orders that I was destined to go there too?
As if Perkins heard my fears, he asked, ‘Will the nurse accompany me, sir?’
‘No, you’ll be in my charge. No need for concern, young man, I’ll take good care of you, though I dare say I won’t be as pleasing on the eye. Nurse Smith has orders to report for duty at Mudros clearing station, which is where we are at this very moment.’
My knees almost buckled with relief.
The surgeon turned to me. ‘Thank you, nurse. Your work’s done here. Disembark and report to your Chief Medical Officer on the quayside. They’re treating as many casualties as possible, changing dressings and so on, before bringing them aboard.’
‘Very good, sir.’ I longed to bid Perkins a proper farewell, perhaps even gather him up in a hug, and plant a farewell kiss on his handsome face, but the first rule of nursing was not to get involved with a patient. I turned to him, threw my shoulders back and lifted my chin. ‘Goodbye, Corporal. Safe journey and good luck with the new leg.’ I left the room in a few quick steps.
*
I hurried to collect my belongings and disembark. Looking out from the deck, I studied the layout of Mudros. Long promontories on either side of the port made the harbour seem more like a wide river. As far as I could see, there were at least six battleships moored up in the bay and twice as many barges, loading goods onto the ships. Further along the quayside, cranes lowered barrels and equipment onto more barges. The distant horizon of Lemnos was broken by an arid mountain range that, in the morning light, took on the shape of a man’s head.
The valley of Mudros was a town of white tents that filled the port and continued into the distant foothills. Barrels and bulging sacks lined the road towards the mountains as far as I could see. Stretchers bearing wounded soldiers covered the quayside below our ship.
I hurried down the ramp, past orderlies who supported limping, sagging men with grey faces. Nurse Josephine hefted her bag onto land, then attended injured men who were about to be stretchered aboard. The quayside rang with shouted orders, ambulance engines, and some plaintive cries from the badly wounded. The stench of cigarette smoke, engine fumes and body odour accompanied the general racket and bedlam. Stretcher-bearers could not shift the patients as quickly as they arrived at the dock by ambulance.
Consequently, everything backed up with rows of wounded, some unconscious, some dully bemoaning their missing limbs. One soldier extended half an arm towards me, ‘Please . . . please . . .’ he whimpered. I saw pale faces, pleading eyes. Dull, red-brown stains of old blood. That stale stink of death lay damp and heavy as morning mist, in the still air hanging over Mudros harbour.
I understood this was the start of my penance. An atonement that I feared would last my whole life long.
CHAPTER 33
SHELLY
Dover, present day.
AFTER SUNDAY BREAKFAST, GORDON LOOKED up from his racing magazine. ‘Are you packing already? I thought you weren’t going for another few weeks?’
‘You’re right, I’m not. I just wanted to get some things in the case, Dad.’
‘Shelly love, do yer really think you’ll need that old blanket in Greece. It is summer, you know?’
Shelly laughed. ‘I hope not, Dad. No, it’s for the museum in Kea. They’re looking for things to do with the Britannic. And this belonged to a soldier who was on the ship. They’ll love it!’
‘In that case, yer should look in me big chair in the loft. Lots of old stuff from Gertie in there. She said it was ’er mother’s sewing room before the war. The pigeon loft was outside in them days.’
‘You are kidding me!’ Shelly rushed upstairs, lighter, quicker, than she ever had before. Only weeks ago she had travelled to Greece, dull, depressed and desperate for a break. This time, she felt herself
on the verge of a real adventure.
The loft chair was once an ottoman but, using a couple of pallets, Gordon had fixed armrests and a back to it. She often found him having an afternoon nap there.
Shelly flicked the light on and had to praise her father, the place was spotless as always. The loft ran the length of the cottage and was divided into two by a grille with a mesh door in the centre. This kept the birds contained in one half of the attic, and left the other half to Gordon and his pigeon paraphernalia.
She heard her dad’s footsteps on the stairs.
‘I can’t remember if I screwed the lid down,’ he called. ‘There’s a tool box in the tallboy.’
A few minutes later she was unscrewing the lid of the ottoman and found it had been carefully lined with oilcloth and was crammed to the top with fabric. The top half was curtains, table linen, and bedding, including an enormous candlewick bedspread which she laid out on the floor and organised everything else in neat piles on top of it.
‘’Ere, yer look like you should be on the market, Shelly,’ Gordon said with a chuckle.
‘Buy your bedding here! The best price, best quality!’ Shelly cried, playing up to his humour, sensing a little miracle had taken place with his recently uplifted mood.
‘Aye, wait a minute. I remember that thing,’ her father said, his face softening.
‘What, the candlewick?’
He nodded. ‘In them days – when me and your mum got married – you’d hand out a gift list to the guests a few weeks before the do and folk just got something off it. Yer mum put bedding and kitchen. Seems everyone got the same idea. We got no bedding except for five candlewick bedspreads, so we rolled one up for pillows, then used another one for a sheet, and had three atop of us. In the mornings we had candlewick fluff in our ears, noses, eyes, mouth and everywhere unmentionable. Then, we went downstairs and had breakfast: toast served up in one of our four stainless-steel toast racks.’ He was staring at nothing, face aglow with happiness, eyes sparkling. Shelly nearly wept for him.
‘When you were born, you had this fuzzy hair on yer head and I remember your mum said to the midwife, “It’s probably not hair at all, it is probably candlewick fluff. It gets everywhere!” And we all laughed so much . . . She had a crackin’ sense of humour, you know.’
Shelly struggled. She didn’t want to discourage him from talking about her mother by being emotional. In all these years, she’d never once heard him speak of her, his pain was too great.
‘That’s everything,’ she said, slightly disappointed after a final rummage in the bottom of the trunk. ‘The rest is just three lumpy old pillows. Might as well turf them while we’re here.’ She hauled one out. ‘Hang on a minute, they’re not pillows at all, Dad. There’s a drawstring at one end. I wonder if these are the pillow-bags Gran Gertie talked about on the tape?’ She tugged at the slip-knot that fastened one and gently tipped out the contents.
‘Oh my goodness,’ Shelly muttered, putting down the ottoman lid and taking a seat. Her father sat beside her. They both stared. ‘It’s Gertie’s bag, isn’t it? The one she packed when the . . . the one that made her miss the first lifeboat . . . the one that saved her life. Jees, this makes it all very real, doesn’t it, Dad?’
She picked up her phone and sent Harry a text.
I’ve found Gran Gertie’s bag from when she was on the Britannic. Will bring contents for the museum. XX.
Shelly turned and saw her father slumped forward with his elbows on his knees. He stared at the pile of stuff. ‘You know what, love, I think you should show this lot to . . .’ he gulped, ‘your son, next weekend.’
Shelly slipped her arm around his shoulders. ‘I do appreciate that all this is very hard for you, Dad. I want you to know that I understand. You never meant any harm, did you? I realised a long time ago; you were only thinking of my best interests when you insisted DJ went for adoption. I was too young, and perhaps I shouldn’t have kept my pregnancy a secret for so long. I said things . . . terrible things, well, I’m sorry.’ She could hear herself, crying, screaming.
I wish you were dead! I wish you were dead! I hate you!
His weathered old hands went up to cover his face for a moment. He drew in a long breath and said, ‘I’ve regretted insisting on his adoption every day since, Shelly love. It hurt so much, I couldn’t even speak about it. I tried a few times since, really I did, but it’s embarrassin’ to see a grown man cry. In the end I just gave up and tried to forget about the entire incident.’
‘It’s all in the past, Dad, but thanks. I really appreciate you telling me these things. I was pretty awful to you too. God, the things I said . . .’
‘The difference is, you were a kid. I should have pulled myself together and known how to behave. You really loved him, didn’t you, that David fella?’
‘I did, with all my heart. What a terrible tragedy.’
‘And DJ, he’s my only grandson, and for my punishment, I missed every moment of him growing up. I used to imagine building model aeroplanes with him, teaching ’im stuff about me pigeons. I’ve sat up ’ere all these lonely years thinking about him while you was in college or at work, telling myself it was my own fault.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘I can’t believe he’s actually coming here to meet me.’ He hiccupped, then sniffed. After a moment with his thoughts, he said, ‘Yer mum would have loved him, too. It’s odd, but I’ve felt very close to her lately.’ He looked up. ‘Can’t remember what I did two minutes ago, these days, but my early days with your mum have come back with such clarity, like yesterday. Egh, Shelly love, we had some grand times I can tell you.’
Shelly couldn’t meet his eyes. She got onto her knees on the candlewick and had a look at what had come out of the pillow-bag.
‘For goodness’ sake, Dad, look, Gran Gertie’s uniform! How old must this stuff be . . . more than a hundred years?’
‘Open the other cupboard door on the tallboy, Shelly.’
She did, and there, taped inside was an old 1997 calendar from the pigeon club with all the race dates ringed. ‘See if you can get that calendar off without too much damage, will yer. It’s got me first big race win on it.’
She managed to peel the corner tapes off and remove the calendar. Behind it, taped to the tallboy, was an original VAD poster with three volunteers in their uniforms. ‘Look at that! Where did you get it, Dad?’
‘It was in with Gertie’s stuff. I wanted to hold on to it, for a keepsake. She was good to me, was our Gertie. Mothers-in-law can be tricky creatures, and though technically she wasn’t mine, I respected her like she was.’ He shrugged. ‘So I wanted a souvenir when she passed in ’98. Yer mum said I could have the poster.’
‘You old softy!’ She grinned at him affectionately.
*
As lunchtime neared the following weekend, Shelly showered and changed into a new pair of jeans and a white shirt. She applied a little make-up and sprayed her hair with something the hairdresser convinced her was essential for a healthy shine.
Her reflection in the mirror stared back anxiously. She would show DJ around the house . . . after all, one day it would be his. She glanced around the room and saw dust everywhere. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? Realising she had an hour, she lunged into the old wire supermarket basket at the bottom of the broom cupboard and grabbed one of the cotton rags. With the remnants of a can of Mr Sheen, which she shook obscenely, she raced around the house attacking every flat surface. The phone rang. She balanced the can and rag on the back of the sofa and picked up.
‘Hi, erm, it’s me, DJ . . .’ There was a pause. ‘I’ll be a little late, sorry, bad traffic. One thirty, will that be all right?’
‘Of course it will. I hope you’re hungry.’
‘Starving student, remember?’ They both laughed rather self-consciously. ‘See you later.’
She stood there, smiling, her heart full of joy. Her own child, oh, it seemed impossible after all this time. She placed her
hand on her stomach and recalled the weight of him in her belly. So much time had passed, it seemed impossible that this was the same little being.
‘All right? How you coping?’ Dad asked. ‘Do you want me to set the table?’
‘To be honest, I’m madly, stupidly, nervous right now. Look at those windows, I’ll just give them a bit of a spray and wipe.’
‘Calm down. Everything will be fine. He won’t care if the glass is clean or not. He just wants assuring that we love him. So put some beers in the fridge and try to imagine how nervous he is. At least you’re on home ground, Shelly love.’
‘You’re right . . . of course you’re right, you always are. How do you do it?’
Gordon frowned. ‘Truth is, I’m finding this hard too. Especially as it was me that made it clear he wasn’t wanted.’
‘Aw, come here, you old softy. What you did was hard, but it was in everyone’s interest. We all know that.’ She gave him a bear hug.
Ridiculous as it was, Shelly needed her father’s support. If he hadn’t been there, she would have gone to pieces and may not have responded to DJ’s letter in the first place. She’d have fretted and pined, but not had the guts to face him. How could a woman give her own baby away? Seventeen or not, the thought was awful. Something she never got over, and now of course, she suspected her child never got over it either.
The doorbell rang. Her heart banged. ‘I feel sick,’ she muttered.
‘Nonsense, off you go, you’re his mum, don’t forget,’ Gordon said. ‘Have a moment in private, perhaps show him the garden first. Don’t forget, he’s nervous too.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’ Shelly was already on the brink of tears.
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