A Wartime Nurse (21 page)

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Authors: Maggie Hope

Tags: #Nurses, #World War; 1939-1945, #Sagas, #War & Military, #Fiction

BOOK: A Wartime Nurse
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‘Cold?’
‘No, it’s just—’
But Ken was reaching into the back seat of the car for a rug. There was a sudden commotion as a jeep swept up to the doors of the hall, headlights full on in contravention of the dim-out, and out spilled four airmen, laughing and talking, obviously Canadian and full to the brim with high spirits. They swept into the hall, the doors swinging to sifter them, and shortly afterwards the band began to play boogie-woogie harshly and loudly and insistently.
‘They have to let off steam,’ said Theda, as if she was making excuses for them. ‘It must be terrible for them to have to go out over Germany night after night, never knowing if they will make it back.’
‘I didn’t realise they came so far away from the base. Did you already know Pilot Officer Ridley before he was admitted to the hospital?’
‘No, of course not, I would have said.’
‘I just thought . . . you seemed so friendly, you and him?’
‘He’s a friendly sort of bloke.’
No doubt the Canadians had been invited by some of the girls from the munitions factory, thought Theda, but kept it to herself.
The noise became louder, they could hear the stamping of feet above the music. Ken turned to her and put his arm around her and she stiffened.
‘You’re cold,’ he said. ‘Do you want to go back in?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ she managed to answer, though she was amazed at her reaction to his nearness. A languor was creeping over her and she knew she should get out of the car now while there was still time, but somehow . . . Ken bent his head and kissed her on the lips, gently at first, then more insistently.
‘You don’t want to go back in there, do you?’
‘I do.’ Her voice was unconvincing.
‘I want to talk to you. I think about you a lot,’ he said into her hair. ‘It’s too noisy in there, and too cold here. You don’t really want to dance, do you?’
‘My family—’
‘They’re having a good time. Look, there’s no one in at Uncle Tucker’s, he’s away. Why don’t we go there? I can make you a cup of real coffee.’
‘If you like.’
Theda’s hesitation was practically non-existent. Of course she shouldn’t go, but not even with Alan had she felt like this, carried along with no will of her own. All the old rules that had been dinned into her were forgotten. She couldn’t believe she was agreeing to go with him into the empty house . . . what was she doing? She wondered what Laura Jenkins would say if she could see her now. ‘A randy lot, these doctors, Theda, never give them an inch,’ she heard her friend’s voice in her head, but the warning was meaningless.
The feelings – Alan had awakened in her which had lain dormant these last few months – were pulsing through her. Poor Alan. If only she had given way to them. How could she have let some stuffy old rules that belonged in the age of Victoria stop her from making him happy before he went to his death?
She closed her eyes and Ken saw the emotions chasing across her face in the pale moonlight. She looked lost for a minute and he felt the urge to comfort her, to kiss away whatever made her look so tragic. And it was so long since he had held a girl in his arms and made love to her. Not since Julie died.
Julie seemed very far away now. She was gone forever, and nothing was going to bring her back. And just now he didn’t know if he wanted to bring her back. This nurse, this girl, was taking over his senses. Life went on. It was trite but true. He kissed her lips and her eyes flew open, large and dark and searching.
He had been lying, even to himself, he thought. He did want to seduce her. He badly wanted to make love to her. And she lay in his arms, gazing up at him, and surely she wanted him too?
Ken started the car and manoeuvred it out from behind the jeep. In the background, Theda could hear the band playing ‘If I Could Hold You in My Arms’. A slow waltz, dreamy. She could get out now, she could tell him to stop the car and he would. But she did not. The sound of the music followed them along the lane, diminishing as they turned into the drive of the manager’s house.
Ken opened the door for her and she climbed out and stood in the porch, the frost making her shiver despite the rug around her shoulders. She had left her coat in the cloakroom, of course. And even now she thought what a complete fool she was being.
‘Come on, into the sitting-room. It will be warm in there.’ Ken put an arm around her and led her into the house and through a side door into a room where it was warm, beautifully warm.
‘Wait here,’ he said, leading her to a large leather armchair with worn arms, which smelled of pipe tobacco. ‘I’ll only be a minute or two with the coffee.’ She sat obediently, staring into the fire, until the chiming clock on the sideboard struck ten and she sat up, startled.
While he waited for the milk to boil on the range and spooned coffee into the pot, Ken was wondering at himself almost as much as she was. Not that he had brought her here – oh, no, he had wanted to do that, he was more attracted to her than he had been to anyone since Julie had died. But he had sworn he wouldn’t get involved again, never again, not while this rotten war was on. And Theda was a nurse – he had to work with her. But surely there was no harm, not in having a cup of coffee with a woman? He was lonely, that was it, so lonely. And there was no harm. She had been engaged, her sweetheart was dead, and she must have some experience of men. Look at how Major Koestler looked at her, and that American flier too. They had been laughing together that day on the ward, even though Ridley had not long returned from having his burns dressed and must have been feeling a certain amount of pain. Ken shook his head.
He carried the tray back into the sitting-room, balancing it on one hand as he opened the door. Theda looked round quickly at him. She had risen from the armchair and was standing by the sideboard, looking at the pictures Uncle Tucker had there: Grandma Meg, his Aunt Betty with a baby on her knee, then the baby grown and in his Air Force uniform, standing with his feet apart grinning hugely at the camera.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I was just looking—’ Theda said. ‘I hope you don’t think I was prying?’
‘I don’t think anything,’ said Ken. ‘Come and sit down and have your coffee.’ She looked so slender in that black skirt and her hair was almost as dark and curled down on to her shoulders, shining in the light from the overhead lamp. As she held out her hand to take the cup and saucer from him he noticed how delicate the bones of her hands were, the nails cut short and unadorned by polish as a nurse’s nails had to be.
‘You wanted to talk to me?’ she said, breaking the silence.
Had he said that? Well, he must have done. What on earth was it he had meant to say? He could hardly say he wanted to make love to her, could he?
‘Yes.’ He drew a chair up close to hers and took a sip of coffee. It was piping hot and strong, almost the last of the coffee he had brought back from the Middle East and given to his uncle because he knew he was fond of it.
‘I just wanted to say – well, I thought we’d got off on the wrong foot when we first met at the hospital,’ he said.
‘Did we? How do you mean?’ She thought of their first meeting, how he had looked at her when she had shown how she disliked working with the Germans and Italians. Her own resentment. Funny how she had got used to it, quite liked some of them, though not all. ‘Oh, I know what you mean, you didn’t like my attitude – oh!’
She stopped talking abruptly as the lights went out with an audible click, momentarily confused.
‘Oh, hell!’
Ken got to his feet, shoving his coffee on to the side table and slopping it into the saucer as he did so. For a moment he was just a dark shadow in the faint light from the fire, then he picked up the poker and stirred the coals until they burst into flame.
‘I’d better see if it’s just a fuse blown or a power cut,’ he said. But he stood there, not moving.
‘Take my flashlight,’ she suggested. Carefully she put down her cup and stood up to get it from the pocket of her coat before she remembered that she didn’t have her coat.
‘I’ll have to go if it’s a cut,’ she said. ‘The dance will be stopped and everyone will be going home.’ She was very close to him; the buttons on his uniform twinkled and gleamed in the firelight and so did his eyes. He didn’t answer, but put his arms around her and kissed her and she was lost. They forgot all about the lights.
After a moment they sank down on to the thick fur rug before the fire. The short hairs on the back of his neck were crisp under her fingers, his mouth on hers warm and demanding. And it was sweet and compelling and she was going to stop him, but not yet, not yet. Even when he took off his uniform jacket and unbuttoned his shirt and began to unbutton her blouse, she was still going to stop him. In a minute.
‘Come to bed. We’re alone in the house, no one will be in. Not tonight, not tomorrow,’ he whispered, between nibbling her earlobe and kissing the nape of her neck.
Go to bed? Her eyes flew open. Of course she wasn’t going to go to
bed
with him. She hadn’t gone to bed with Alan and would be eternally sorry she hadn’t, on the last leave before he went to Holland. And she wasn’t engaged to Ken, she hardly knew him!
‘I can’t do that—’
He was stopping her mouth with his own; she could taste his tongue between her lips. His fingers were on her spine, moving, making her feel faint. When his hand touched her breast, she gasped. She hardly knew what she was doing except that it was urgent, compelling, there was no will left in her. He was taking off the rest of her clothes and she was helping him and suddenly they were both naked on the rug and she opened her eyes and saw the firelight playing on the bare skin of his chest and shoulders and she was gasping for fulfilment.
The pain came as a shock and she cried out but he was holding her against him and murmuring: ‘It’s all right, my love, all right, relax.’ It was the climax which took her completely by surprise. Never had she expected it to be like this. She was exultant, filled with delight as he suddenly relaxed on top of her before rolling to one side, taking her with him and holding her close so that she could hear his heart pounding against her bare chest.
They lay like that, touching closely the whole length of their bodies, and the clock chimed again. Incredibly it was only a quarter after the hour. Her whole life had changed in a quarter of an hour. And then she felt him hardening against her thigh and he cupped her breast and brushed his thumb against the nipple and it took on a life of its own, hardening instantly.
‘It will be easier this time,’ he said. And it was.
Chapter Seventeen
The pit hooter did not blow to bring in the new year of 1945. If it had, perhaps it would have woken Theda up, but as it didn’t, she slept on in Ken’s arms on the rug before the fire in the manager’s house. She did not stir until the telephone rang, shrilling out, loud and shocking, in the quiet room.
‘Hell!’ said Ken. He turned over on to his back and yawned hugely. It was very dark, only a dim light from the dying embers of the fire showing as he stumbled to his feet and felt his way to the door to the hall. Luckily there was a candle on the hall table with matches beside it for use in the now frequent power cuts and he groped around and found them and lit the candle before answering the telephone.
‘Yes?’
Theda turned her head to watch him. She felt groggy and hardly knew where she was. She could see only the outline of him as he listened to whoever was speaking. He was naked and she looked curiously at him, the broad planes where the candlelight fell on him and the dark shadows. Of course she had seen naked men before, through necessity she had dressed their wounds and prepared them for theatre, given them bed baths. But this was different, Ken was different, she thought dreamily. A feeling of complete contentment lay like a blanket over everything else.
‘I’ll come right away, be there in half an hour. See theatre is prepared, will you?’
With a start Theda came out of her dream. Dear Lord, what was she doing here? She was supposed to be at home and bringing in the New Year by now. Da would be looking all over for her! Where were her clothes?
Ken came in carrying the candle. ‘I have to go, there’s an acute abdomen. Strangulated hernia, I think.’ He began swiftly drawing on his clothes but found time to look at her as she struggled with her knickers, catching her foot in the waist elastic and almost falling over before she got them on straight. He grinned.
‘I would stay and give you a hand, my love, but duty calls. Another time, maybe?’
Theda ignored him. She was fastening the buttons of her blouse, in her haste getting them all wrong and having to do them again. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say. I promised I would be back for the new year, what time is it?’
‘The clock says two o’clock,’ Ken said. He was into his uniform and now sat down to fasten the laces of his shoes. He paused and gazed at her. ‘Will you be in trouble?’
Theda thought of her mother, waiting at home for them all to come in for the New Year celebrations. She thought of her father and how angry he was going to be when she did turn up. ‘That’s the understatement of the year,’ she admitted.

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