by Annie Groves
It was the moment of truth. Of course everyone around here knew about Pete. Yet when she’d gone out dancing since his death, Peggy had never so much as mentioned him. That part of her life was closed to the servicemen she met at dances or in the pub, who thought she was looking for fun and a good time.
‘Sort of,’ she said, reaching a decision. ‘Tell you what. Let’s drink our tea and then go for a walk.’ She couldn’t talk about Pete in his own mother’s house. That felt like a betrayal. But for the first time since the news from Dunkirk had come, she felt she could confide in a stranger. ‘Then I’ll explain. Does that sound all right?’
His eyes brightened, clearly relieved that she hadn’t slung him out on his ear. ‘Sure, Peggy. Whatever you say.’
‘I’m so sorry to bother you,’ said the young woman in smart uniform. ‘I know you’ll probably have other plans for Easter Sunday afternoon, but we’re dreadfully short down at the ambulance station, so we thought we’d try the nurses’ home for backup. There’s been an accident; at least one child’s been badly hurt.’
Belinda stepped back from the large front door, which was shiny as ever in a fresh coat of navy paint to show that – no matter what the neighbourhood had been through – the nurses’ home was still in good shape. ‘It’s all right. You’d better come in and wait while I grab my bag – it’s Geraldine, isn’t it? We worked together before, with those people from the block of flats with smoke inhalation.’
The woman with the bright blue eyes nodded. ‘Clever of you to remember. And you’re … Belinda, aren’t you? I do apologise for ruining your Easter.’
Belinda shrugged. ‘I’m Jewish, actually, and I don’t celebrate it. So I’m free to come along.’ She ran up the stairs towards the upper-storey bedrooms and reappeared a minute later, now changed and with her Gladstone bag. ‘Let’s go. Where’s it happened? Do you know what we’re likely to find?’
Geraldine hurried out towards the ambulance parked at the end of Victory Walk. ‘It’s only the other side of the Downs; that’s why we got the call, as our station’s so close,’ she explained. ‘A wall collapsed, and apparently there were several kids playing on the pavement beneath. Perhaps they’d been trying to climb the wall, we don’t know, but it didn’t sound good.’
‘Oh, poor things.’ Belinda hopped into the passenger side as Geraldine swung herself into the driver’s seat and instantly started the engine, her muscular arms turning the wheel in a well-practised move. Belinda remembered that the woman had been extremely competent in the smoke inhalation incident, and was relieved that – if they were to be the only two on the scene – she would be partnered by somebody who knew what she was doing.
The far side of Hackney Downs, the big green open space a stone’s throw from the nurses’ home, was only a short distance away, and before the war it would have been an easy drive, but Geraldine had to navigate numerous potholes, keeping a fine balance between arriving at the accident as quickly as possible and yet not shaking her passenger and herself half to death on the bumps, cracks and craters in the road surface. Belinda had to grit her teeth as the vehicle shuddered along, thanking her lucky stars that the injured children weren’t further away.
It was obvious where the trouble was as they drew closer. An old brick wall had clearly given way, and the back of a shop was visible through the gap. A couple of small boys were sitting on the pavement, and leaning over the pile of bricks was an ARP warden. Belinda screwed up her eyes to try to see who it was; it wouldn’t be Stan or Billy, as they were going to be at Flo’s big dinner. It must be Brendan, their colleague, who was a stallholder at Ridley Road market. She knew he was good with children, and exhaled in a sigh of relief.
‘Ready?’ Geraldine swung the ambulance close to the kerb, her hand already on the door handle.
‘Ready,’ Belinda confirmed, picking up her leather bag and jumping out. She ran towards the bricks and then stopped. Brendan was moving them one by one but at high speed, and from this close Belinda could see why. A small pair of feet stuck out from the edge of the pile.
‘Brendan, what’s happened?’ she asked.
He turned. ‘Ah, Nurse Adams. I’m glad to see you.’ She could tell he was keeping his voice deliberately calm in order not to frighten the little boys, but his eyes were dark with urgency.
‘Tell you what,’ said Geraldine, pitching up her sleeves, ‘I’ll give you a hand there if you, nurse, wouldn’t mind checking on these two. No sense in us all crowding round that poor little blighter.’
Belinda could see the sense in that and turned her attention to the two boys, one of whom had a huge cut on his head and was bleeding all over his ripped shirt. The other was pale and sweating, his eyes almost black with horror. She recognised the symptoms of shock and got to work straight away. ‘Now you let me see what you’ve done to yourselves,’ she said, keeping her tone light and friendly. ‘My, that’s a cut and a half, isn’t it? Not to worry. They often look much worse than they are.’
‘He’s bleeding, miss,’ said the white-faced boy. ‘That there wall just came down and squashed us. We didn’t stand a chance, we couldn’t get away.’ He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his grubby hand.
Belinda regarded the wounded boy gravely as she reached inside her bag, the contents of which she could by now identify without even looking at them. ‘You’re going to have to be very brave while I clean you up,’ she said. ‘I want you to look over there,’ she pointed to beyond the ambulance, to distract him, ‘and keep your head very still while I—’
‘Ow, miss!’ the boy cried. ‘That bloody hurts, that does!’
Belinda smiled to herself. Perhaps he wasn’t hurt too badly after all. ‘Yes, it will,’ she said. ‘Not much I can do about that right now, but the main thing is to get you clean. So I’m just going to bathe your cut again …’
‘Miss!’ But he kept his head steady, and she could work quickly to staunch the blood, disinfect the open wound and cover it with a sterile pad, held in place with a bandage. ‘There, you’re being an excellent patient. Almost finished. Just let me get out my biggest safety pin and fasten the end of this …’ she bit her lip in concentration, ‘and there we are, all done. Right, now, as for your friend …’
She turned to the other boy who was even paler now and shivering. At once she took off her navy blue cloak and wrapped it around him. ‘Are you feeling cold?’ she asked gently. It was a warm day; this boy needed treatment, and fast. ‘You’ll feel better with that on, I know I always do.’
He nodded mutely, as behind them Brendan and Geraldine methodically cleared the bricks from the third child. Belinda knew she had to keep her charges from watching.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked the boy with the head wound.
‘George, miss.’ He gulped. ‘Will my head be all right? I didn’t see it but it didn’t half thump me, worse than me ma giving me the back of her hand.’
‘Yes, I can see you must have taken quite a blow,’ Belinda said, wondering how to get hold of his mother. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the other child.
‘Benny, miss.’ He sniffed again, but she could see he had grown no paler.
‘Miss, can I ask you something?’ George seemed to be recovering now. ‘You’re a nurse, aren’t you?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Belinda. ‘That’s how I knew what to do to help your head get better.’
‘And the warden called you nurse,’ George continued. ‘Do you come from that big house near the high road?’
‘That’s right.’ Belinda cast another surreptitious glance at his little friend.
‘We had a nurse from there come to our school,’ George went on. ‘She was nice to us. She showed us how to brush our teeth proper. Course it was a long time ago cos we all know that now we’re older. I’ll remember her name in a minute.’
Frowning, Belinda thought it rang a bell. Some of the others had mentioned it – there had been a local campaign of some kind, but before she had come to Victory Wal
k. It had come up in conversation but she couldn’t recall who had been involved.
The boy wrinkled his nose as he thought long and hard. ‘Something like water,’ he said eventually.
Belinda grinned at him. ‘Was it Nurse Lake?’
He grinned back. ‘That’s it, miss. Do you know her? She was ever so kind. Didn’t shout at us or nothing, or give us the cane.’
‘I should hope not,’ Belinda said at once, remembering now that this must be how Alice met her teacher friend, Janet. It all made sense. She also thought that Alice might be able to identify these boys if they couldn’t give their addresses.
‘Yes, Larry’s sister used to like her too.’
‘Who’s Larry?’
‘Him, miss, our friend.’ George went to look behind him and Belinda was too late to stop him. ‘Oh no, miss. He’s only little, he’s younger than us and we was meant to look after him …’
Turning around herself, she saw that most of the bricks had been cleared away and the small body could now be seen. It was lying completely still.
Geraldine caught her eye. ‘Swap places,’ she called. ‘We need you here. I’ll come to the other two.’
Belinda grabbed her bag and leapt across the jagged pile of rubble to where Larry lay.
Brendan crouched beside him. ‘I did it as fast as I could,’ he muttered. ‘I couldn’t pull the bricks off any-old-how, I didn’t want to hurt him even more. What do you reckon, nurse – are we too late?’
Belinda lowered herself down to their level, her long legs awkward on the sharp stone. ‘You’d better let me see.’ It would not be the first time she’d seen a dead child but it never got any easier. This one was so young, too – maybe four or five, although the children from the nearby streets were often malnourished and appeared younger than they really were. ‘Larry, can you hear me? I’m just going to reach for your wrist.’ She took hold of the cold little hand, careful not to move the arm in case it was broken, but she had to ascertain if there was a pulse. It was no good. She moved around so that she could try to feel his throat instead. She noticed that the other arm was bent out of shape and the small woollen sleeve of his jumper was covered in a dark red stain.
Maybe she could detect the faintest throb. Leaning forward, the sharp pain in her knees almost forgotten in her concentration, she brought her ear as close as she could to his face and listened for a breath, waiting to see if she could feel it on her own cheek.
It seemed as if she was frozen in that position for hours, every nerve stretched to recognise any sign of life. She was oblivious to Geraldine’s reassuring voice as she tried to command the boys’ attention away from what was happening directly behind them, or Brendan’s anxious shifting from foot to foot. She shut her eyes to block out everything but the slightest clue that little Larry might still have a chance.
Finally, just as she thought she would have to give up, she felt the tiniest puff of air. She blinked. Was it a stray breeze? No. There it was again. She felt once more for the pulse at his throat. Yes, faint and erratic, it was there, it was definitely there.
‘Stretcher!’ she called. ‘Get me a stretcher right now!’
‘Can’t we lift him?’ Brendan asked.
‘No. Absolutely not. Look at that arm. And we don’t know about his head or spine,’ Belinda said firmly. ‘Well get it as close to him as we can and ease him onto it, with as little disturbance as possible, supporting the injured arm as we do so.’
‘Right you are,’ Brendan said, sounding as if he was relieved not to have to make such a call. ‘What about the others?’
‘They need to come to hospital,’ said Belinda decisively. ‘At least one of them’s in shock and I suspect the other has a risk of concussion.’
‘Hope there’s a bed free,’ he muttered.
Belinda stood, her knees in tatters. ‘There will be. They’ll have to make room for these. We’re a whisker away from losing this small boy.’
In the back of the ambulance, keeping the stretcher with its precious load as steady as possible, she barely had time to notice the young couple walking along the Downs. It was only after they had arrived at breakneck speed at the nearest hospital and ensured that all three boys were safely admitted that it occurred to her who she had seen. Belinda had done her best to extract addresses from the boys, with George able to explain that Larry lived around the corner but not what street or house number, and promised the harassed admissions clerk that she would telephone her with the full details. ‘One of my colleagues has worked with the family,’ she explained. Then she had sunk onto a chair near the clerk’s desk as Geraldine offered to find a quick cup of tea to revive them before driving back.
Now that she had a moment to herself the image came back to her. It had been Peggy – well, no surprise there, as she lived nearby and would sometimes go for a walk on the Downs, as they all did, strolling along what was left of the grass and avoiding the trenches and the new allotments. It was the young man with her who was so unexpected. He had been in American army uniform. He had dark skin. It was the soldier from the dance hall, all those months ago. They had looked to be very close indeed. Now what was all that about?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Summer 1942
‘You’ve got another one of those letters,’ said Mrs Cannon as Peggy came downstairs in her light cotton dress and sandals. Now that summer was properly here, the temperature had risen, though the hallway of the small terraced house was still shady and cool. The older woman stood at the parlour door, half-hidden in the shadows, and held out an envelope to her daughter-in-law.
‘Thanks.’ Peggy took it and tucked it into her patch pocket. She had given up hiding the arrival of the letters, as it only made things worse. Besides, she didn’t want to skulk about and pretend nothing had happened.
She had been seen, of course. Belinda had teased her, which she didn’t mind; after all, Belinda had met James, if briefly, and had seen how genuine he was. It was the reaction of the neighbours that had caught her unawares.
It had been downright vicious. Mrs Bellings across the road had lost no time in making her feelings known. ‘It’s a disgrace,’ she’d spat, catching Peggy as she came home from her shift not long after Easter. ‘You flaunting yourself like that, with that man. A GI, of all things. Don’t think I don’t know what they’re like. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
Peggy had found herself speechless for a moment and then had recovered. ‘I’ll thank you to mind your own business,’ she had retorted sharply, letting herself into the house and slamming the front door in her indignant neighbour’s face. She had leant against the coolness of the hallway wall, catching her breath. Spiteful old woman, she thought. She’s just jealous.
However it had not been a one-off incident. Plenty of people were beginning to object to the presence of the American servicemen. More and more were preparing to sail across the Atlantic, and the British were often at a loss as to what to make of them. ‘Overpaid, oversexed and over here’ was the general complaint. Women who associated with them ran the risk of being scorned, or being considered mercenary and just in it for the nylons, or worse. Peggy had compounded the problem because James was black.
To give her credit, Mrs Cannon had not been one of them. She had asked Peggy if it was true and Peggy had told her what had happened: she had met James and liked him but not really thought anything of it when she didn’t hear from him; he’d called for her out of the blue; they’d gone for a walk and got along like a house on fire. Now he had been posted to another army camp, she wasn’t sure where, but they had agreed to write. That was all there was to it.
What Peggy hadn’t admitted to her mother-in-law was that she had been able to talk to James about Pete, and how understanding he had been. There had been no awkwardness. ‘I won’t say I know how you feel because I don’t,’ he had said. ‘But I had a brother who died. It was an accident. Weren’t nobody’s fault – he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A truck came crashing ont
o the sidewalk and he was gone. We was close. For a while I didn’t care what happened to me, nothing felt real.’
‘That’s exactly what it’s like,’ she’d said, dizzy with relief that he hadn’t stepped away at the thought of her having being married, or been embarrassed at her sorrow, or thought she was an easy target because she was likely to be vulnerable. If anything he stepped even closer to her, and for a moment she sensed he would protect her and how much she had missed that feeling.
It had not been a long walk. He had had to get back to base and wasn’t sure what time it would take. He had promised to write and not lose her address again. They had not so much as kissed when they’d said their goodbyes.
Yet Peggy had been sure that something important had taken place that afternoon. She had kissed quite a few men in her time and not one had meant anything, apart from Pete. She felt something shift, and the way she looked at the world seemed different somehow.
She could not explain that to Mrs Cannon. She played it down, not wanting to be disloyal to Pete or to offend his mother who had shown her nothing but kindness. The last thing she wanted was to cause trouble. However, it looked as if trouble might come her way anyhow. She had overstepped the mark. She had overheard one of Mrs Bellings’s cronies comment that if she absolutely had to walk out with a man, what was wrong with a good British one?
Peggy had been out at the market with Mrs Cannon when she heard that. Mrs Cannon had taken her aside. ‘Don’t mind her, duck. Never had no sense, that one. You had the best young British man there was, and that did you a fat lot of good in the end, didn’t it? I don’t begrudge you a bit of fun, dear; it’s been nearly two years, after all.’ Despite her cheery words the older woman had bitten her lip, still nowhere close to accepting the death of her only child.
Now Peggy picked up her cardigan, much mended at the elbows, and turned for the door. ‘I’ll go to the market after work and see what bargains I can find,’ she promised, trying to brighten her mother-in-law’s expression. She sensed that every letter from James was a nail in the older woman’s heart, but Mrs Cannon would never rebuke her for receiving them.