Call Nurse Jenny (3 page)

‘What do you think of this Hitler lark then? Me, I think he’ll go into Poland, whatever Chamberlain says. If you ask me, we’re being cocked a snook at. I don’t relish giving up a brand-new job, but I’d be willing to go and fight him. The RAF for me. What about you, Matthew?’

‘Haven’t given it much thought.’ Matthew’s tone was airy.

‘You should, old man. Don’t want to sit by too long and get roped into any old thing when they start conscripting. Get in quick, I say. We’re all officer material, you know, with our education.’

Jean gave a little giggle, pique forgotten, and squeezed her partner’s arm. ‘You’d make a spiffing officer, darling.’

‘Will it be the RAF for you too?’ Dennis was looking at him, waiting for a reply. ‘It’s the only service to be in. Great uniforms.’

His quarry leaned back in his chair, squinting through the shafts of dust-laden sunlight at the yellowed windows. It was as though he hadn’t heard a word of anything that had been said.

‘Ye gods,’ he sighed, his favourite expression. ‘It’s bloody hot in here.’

‘It’s been a hot summer all round,’ Jenny offered quickly, all she could think to say with an uncomfortable sense of embarrassment at the way he seemed to have neatly evaded Dennis’s question.

But Dennis appeared to have forgotten his own question. ‘Where’s that flask then? You did bring it?’

‘Does it matter?’ Matthew grimaced as the band at last sprang into action with a ragged tempo that echoed tinnily around the hall. ‘Who wants to bother with this rubbish anyway?’

‘I do, Matthew,’ Jean protested. ‘Listen, darling, it’s a waltz.’

He was an excellent dancer, as he was excellent at most things, and Jean was aching to show off in his arms. But he continued to frown at the tempo that would fail to allow him full enjoyment of his skill.

‘I know.’ His face brightened on a flash of inspiration. ‘Why don’t we go swimming?’

‘Swimming?’ There was an echo of disbelief from everyone except the couple still locked in each other’s gaze.

‘Victoria Park Lido. This time of year it’s open till late. We could pop home, pick up our togs and be there inside fifteen minutes. Who’s game?’

‘Me.’ If there was a sport Jenny felt happy with, it was swimming. But Jean was pouting again. Water would spoil those tramline Marcel waves of hers, even under a swimming cap. But rather than lose him this evening as she might well do, she grudgingly agreed. Dennis too had little love of water, but he agreed, not wanting to appear soft.

Matthew regarded the two lovers. ‘A dash of cold water wouldn’t do you two any harm. Fancy going for a swim?’

‘What?’ They looked blank.

‘We’re going to the lido. You two want to come?’

For a moment they regarded each other, coming to a silent mutual agreement. ‘No … Not really.’

Matthew’s laugh dismissed them. ‘Right then, it’s us four.’

It was a dash to get swimming costumes and towels, then back to meet at the park gates. Matthew, with one arm around Jean’s shoulders, led the way, Jenny and Dennis following behind.

The evening belonged to Jenny, with Jean, eager to preserve her Marcel waves, sitting on the side of the pool, just her feet stirring the water as she posed hopefully for Matthew’s attention.

Dennis, after lowering himself tentatively to his well-fleshed waist in the shallow end, pulled himself out again, shivering with the shock of cold water after the heat outside, then went and sat beside Jean. Matthew was unsympathetic.

‘Come on, Cox, shut your eyes and jump. There’s enough flesh on you to keep you warm on an iceberg!’

He himself had taken a flying header into the deep end, surfacing among the other swimmers to flick water from his dark hair with a brisk toss of his head before making it the length of the baths with a fast crawl to confront the shivering Dennis, his taunting laugh echoing over the surrounding tree tops above the cries and shouts of the other bathers.

Dennis declined to join him so he swam off again, deftly avoiding those around him, Jenny close behind matching stroke for stroke, until he hoisted himself out at the far end and made for the diving boards. Treading water, she watched the lean figure appear on the top board, poised, waiting for a clear space below before launching itself off, piercing the surface like an arrow. The skill and grace took her breath away. At the same time she felt a small sense of foreboding take hold. He took his physical assets so much for granted, that slim tireless body fashioned to perfection, that abundance of health, that quick alert brain. War was coming, unavoidable. Young men like him would be taken to fight for their country. She had heard her own father’s account of the last war, the trenches, the mud, death from disease, bullets, shells, gas; men blinded, maimed, the rest of their lives ruined.

As a child she had shuddered from her own imaginings after listening to such talk. Now she shuddered again, seeing perfect bodies reduced to utter wrecks, bodies like Matthew’s. She swam slowly now, trying to push away such visions, but they persisted. Men with such bright promise to their lives, so many blessings to look forward to, plucked off the fair tree like ripe fruit. True, there were those who had, and those who had not. Matthew was one to whom everything had been given; it seemed almost unfair that so many blessings should be heaped on one person while another knew little but ill health and hard luck. Yet how much worse would it be for someone like Matthew, with everything, if his happy world should crumble than for another already equipped for adversity? With no experience of how cruel this world could be, couldn’t Matthew be more stricken than the already ill-fated should he come face to face with the worst aspects of this world?

Jenny pulled her thoughts up sharply. It was this threat of war. It might even yet be averted and there’d be no more need for morbid reflection. Matthew was climbing the diving board again. This time she turned away, again plunging into her own pool of dejection. War was no respecter of the beautiful and Matthew was indeed …

Her feet were suddenly tugged from below and she instinctively gulped air before going under, surfacing again to see him grinning into her face.

‘You … you …’ she spluttered at him.

Dejection swept away, she grabbed for his hair, a move he easily evaded. Together they wrestled, spluttered, yelled, laughed. His hands were cool on her body, his arms strong, hoisting her from the water as the whistle sounded for the lido to close. Jean was jealous, purposefully ignoring her. No doubt Matthew would kiss her into a better frame of mind when he took her to her door to caress her in a way Jenny could only dream of. But this evening had been hers. She was content, even to the point of allowing Dennis to drop a kiss on her cheek without shrugging him off, but no more than that.

They dawdled across the park, taking their time with the air still warm, lounging on a bench talking, giggling, Matthew bent on petting Jean into a forgiving mood. Then they went on in the last crimson glow of this midsummer evening which promised another fine day tomorrow. Matthew cocked a weather eye at the darkening red streaks, remarking, ‘Red sky at night, shepherds alight!’ His humour was whimsical as always, his mind on the rewards Jean would bestow on him for all the attention he intended to shower on her at her door.

When the friends parted company, Jenny glanced at the purpling sky promising its fine tomorrow. How many tomorrows before the sky darkened forever with Matthew far away? She firmed her lips and shrugged away the thought.

With the metallic voice of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain fading away, followed by a defiant rendering of ‘God Save the King,’ Jenny turned her gaze to her mother’s face. It was chalk-white.

‘What are we going to do?’ For some reason the futile question got under Jenny’s skin. She got up from the armchair where she had been sitting taking in what the sad, disillusioned, somewhat quavering voice had to say, hardly able to believe its message no matter that they’d seen it coming for weeks and especially these last few days, and switched off the radio.

‘Not much we can do, is there? Sit tight, I suppose.’

‘It won’t be like the last war.’ Mrs Ross, still huddled in her armchair, looked like a plump little elf amid the silence that seemed to have closed in around them now the wireless had been turned off. ‘That was the first time ordinary English civilians had ever been bombed. We can expect them to do it again. And this time they’ll use gas on us. Why were we issued with those horrible gas masks last year if they didn’t think it would be used against ordinary people? Evil-smelling rubber thing, it smells like gas itself.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Mumsy.’ She tried to be flippant. ‘How would you know how gas smells? Except what comes out of the stove. It’s all a storm in a teacup. Everyone says that once England has shown her teeth and stopped appeasing him, Hitler will back down. It’s a show of strength, that’s all. In a month this will all be behind us. Now I’m going to make a cup of tea. I think we both need it.’

Wishing she felt as certain as she hoped she sounded, Jenny went into the kitchen to put the kettle on, followed by her mother who had herself into gear at last. She was sure there’d be more alarmist sounds from her, but thankfully she said nothing, going about the task of setting out the teacups and saucers, the clink of china unreal in the odd sort of silence that lay over them. It was far too beautiful a sunny Sunday morning for such news.

She was on the point of emptying the teapot of its dregs from the last brew made just before Chamberlain’s awaited announcement when there came a strange sound, a distant wailing, followed by another, much closer. For a second it was unidentifiable. Then Jenny realised.

‘Oh, God, Mumsy, it’s an air-raid siren.’

They stared at each other, her mother with fingertips bent against her lips as though to stop their sudden trembling, Jenny with the teapot hanging loose by its handle from her momentarily paralysed fingers.

Her flesh had gone cold, the rising goose pimples conveyed an actual sensation, the fear that clutched at Jenny’s heart was like cold fingers attempting to restrict its pumping, pumping so heavy that it felt as though it were in her throat.

It was her mother who first came to life, swinging away from her with a cry, making for the hallway and the front door. She had flung it open before Jenny could collect herself enough to chase after her, catching her halfway down the few stone steps to the street.

‘No, not that way. We must go down into the Anderson shelter.’

A man’s voice was calling to them from across the road. ‘Over here – into our shelter.’

It was Mr Ward standing at his gate beckoning to them. After a brief hesitation, Jenny took her mother’s arm, hurrying her diagonally across the road. It would be far more comforting and, even though erroneously, it felt safer to be with others than the two of them all alone in the darkness of the newly built shelter put in for them by a paid man, having to sit by candlelight with the dank shelter’s earthy smell all around them. Mr Ward would never know the relief with which she hurried towards him.

He was a tall man, in his early fifties she reckoned, who must have been an extremely handsome man in his youth – still was, she supposed. He looked very much like Matthew except that he was very thin and looked drawn. Matthew said his father had received a touch of mustard gas in the last war, leaving him with a slightly weak chest. He seemed a kindly man, and always nodded to her or her mother when passing them in the street, not like his wife who, though she would always nod too, left one with a feeling of inferiority. However, Jenny was sure she had no idea of the effect she had on others. She struck Jenny as somehow being older than her husband though she probably wasn’t: it was just her attitude that made her seem so. Thirty years ago one might have called her a handsome woman and she still carried herself like a duchess. Jenny was sure she had a kind heart for all that but she had never felt at ease meeting her in the street. And now she was being asked to enter her home – or at least her Anderson shelter.

‘We do have our own,’ she explained as she came up to Mr Ward. ‘We had it put in for us last week.’

He held an arm out as though shepherding them. ‘Even so, we can’t see two women alone down one of them. This is a time for us all to help each other. Come along.’

They followed him nervously through a narrow side gate into a small, neatly laid out town garden surrounded by trees and bushes whose dusty leaves screened it from neighbours’ eyes. Mrs Ward liked privacy.

‘Will Mrs Ward mind?’ Jenny queried behind him.

‘Why should she mind? We should all stick together in these times.’ He sounded so like Matthew. Jenny fell silent as she followed him to the mound at the end of the garden that now covered the raw corrugated iron structure half sunk into the ground, its straight sides and curved top precisely fitted together, the soil already made a little less unsightly by a transplantation of geraniums and Michaelmas daisies. Her own, so far covered only by bare earth, had more the appearance of a wallowing elephant as it awaited a few plants to disguise its grimly utilitarian purpose.

She watched as he handed her mother down the four wooden steps to below ground, then herself. There was a curtain across the square entrance covering a small door already fitted. Hers so far had just a curtain. The door stood open and as she entered Mr Ward let the curtain fall back to its proper position, to shut out any light that might be seen at night by enemy bombers looking for a target. She was amazed at the light there actually was. An electric bulb in the centre of the curved roof, shaded by a small but beautiful orange lampshade, cast a cosy glow. But then, Mr Ward knew all about electricity, didn’t he? The interior, measuring six foot by eight, was made to seem much narrower by double bunks lining either side to accommodate this family of four. At the far end a small table with a red chequered cloth held a decorative oil lamp; a square mirror propped against the back wall reflected everything back to give the illusion of a less cramped space. Above it a shelf bolted to the corrugated iron held provisions for a night’s stay. The cold iron was painted pink, and a pink brocade curtain partly shielded the back wall for an extra sense of snugness. Thus a cosy retreat had been fashioned from what could have been an uncomfortable hole in the ground. Even the pervading mustiness of damp earth was allayed somewhat by a large bowl of home-made pot-pourri beside the lamp.