For King and Country (16 page)

She’d have to do it. But how could she do it? It was hopeless; she couldn’t get rid of the thought of him. It swelled like a dam inside her, waiting to burst. She’d have to
talk to somebody, and there was only one person she’d dare to talk to about this: Ginny. She turned in the direction of the Cock.

Her mother had invited Emma and her children to have tea with them. All boys, their ages ranging from seven to twelve, they were bonny, bonny lads. Sally looked at Jem, the
eldest, with his dark mop of curls and his smooth, beautiful skin and his clear eyes, sitting cross-legged by the fire reading while the others chased around him, and the tears started to her eyes.
Another few years, and he might be running off to join up, might come back like some of those poor lads in the hospital, might come back with a face like Maxfield’s. Like Will’s. The
thought was more than she could bear.

‘Cat’s got your tongue tonight, Sally,’ her mother said, after the visitors were gone. ‘Emma must think it was hardly worth her while coming down, for all the
conversation you had.’

‘I’ve been to see Mrs Burdett. It’s upset me, that’s all. Really upset me.’

Her mother had a guilty look. ‘I’d go myself, but . . .’

‘But you’ve still got your lads, and it might be like rubbing it in. I know. Go anyway, will you, Mam? And take her some of that jugged hare. There’s a bit left, isn’t
there? Try and get her to eat. She’ll have to keep her strength up.’

Her mother wavered, and then met Sally’s eyes. ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘I will.’

‘Away, then, bonny lad,’ Sally urged. ‘Take your clothes off, and we’ll give you a nice hot bath.’

A pair of wide dark eyes stared out at her from an emaciated face with dirt ground into every pore, but the boy made no attempt to move. She gave him an encouraging smile. ‘Away, then,
Alfred, take ’em off and come to me.’

Behind him, Curran suddenly raised a hand to remove her cuffs. Quick as a flash, the boy flinched, and ducked.

‘Holy Mother of God!’ Curran exclaimed, ‘and what did the young divill think I was going to do, lynch him? Come here, you young . . . and let’s have those rags off you. I
don’t know why the police brought him here. Sure, and there’s nothing wrong with him.’

Sally caught Curran’s eye, and shook her head slightly. ‘Come on, Alfred,’ she appeased him, ‘the water’s lovely and warm. Just get undressed, and have a nice bath.
Then you can sit at the fireside in some nice clean pyjamas, and we’ll get you a nice cup of cocoa and a biscuit, won’t we, Nurse Curran?’

‘Sure, and that’s what we’ll do,’ said Curran, pointing at the boy’s sparse hair, ‘when we’ve been through this with the bug rake.’

At the mention of food, the boy’s enormous, wary eyes had become hopeful. Sally nodded, looking directly into them. ‘A biscuit as soon as you’ve had your bath, and a cup of
cocoa and another biscuit after you get your hair done,’ she emphasized.

He gave her a doubtful look, and then made up his mind. He moved slowly, but in the end the rags fell to the floor. The boy’s knees and elbows looked huge in his wasted limbs, every rib
and notch on his backbone was plain to see and his hip bones protruded sharply.

‘Will you look at that,’ Curran breathed, her face stricken. ‘It’s the Irish Famine, in front of me eyes! I’ll go and make the cocoa.’ She fled the
bathroom.

Sally lifted the boy into the bath, not too arduous a task. ‘All right, pet. ’

‘Where’s me mam?’

His teeth were black and rotten, and the lice were thick in his wispy hair. She wet it, and dipped her fingers into a jar of soft green soap. Gently working the soap into a scalp studded with
scabs, Sally said: ‘I’ll try to find out for you.’

After spending the best part of an hour cutting Alfie’s hair and going through what remained with a fine tooth comb Sally went to report to the office.

‘He’s asking where his mother is, Sister. I said she was probably in the workhouse.’

‘She’s not in the workhouse,’ Sister replied. ‘She’s in the asylum.’

‘There’s something else. He is covered in bruises, Sister. I thought it was dirt at first, and I only realized when no amount of soap and water would fetch it off.’

Bristling with indignation, Sister burst out: ‘Well, whoever’s done that to him, it won’t be his father. He got his name and number in the
Police Gazette
for deserting
the army over a year ago and they’ve been calling round to the house looking for him ever since, but he’s never gone back there as far as they know. When they went yesterday the door
was locked, so they broke in and found the three-year-old dead and the mother out of her mind. They said there wasn’t as much as a crust of bread in the place, but they found a half empty
bottle of gin. She’d managed to find money for that, all right; we can guess where from. That child they brought here is eight, and he hasn’t been to school for a month. Have you
weighed him?’

Sally nodded. ‘He’s one stone twelve pounds; I’ve written it on his chart. But how do they know his father deserted? A lot of men are blown to bits, and there’s nothing
left to find, my brother says. They’re just missing presumed dead.’

Sister’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘They don’t get blown to bits when they’re home on leave. They go missing, but you don’t presume them dead when they were
last seen on a troop train in the middle of England, do you now? No, Nurse. He deserted, and judging by what the police said about the state of the house, his wife’s probably had nothing off
him for months, so it looks as if he’s left his family in the lurch as well. Despicable coward.’

‘What about the separation allow—’

Sister gave an impatient snort. ‘There’s no money from the Government paid to deserters’ families, and why should there be? The taxpayers have got enough to do looking after
people who do their duty. There’s nothing medically wrong with that child, either; he’s here under false pretences. The doctor should have sent him straight to the cottage homes at
Ponteland.’

Here was a nurse who didn’t mind diagnosing, Sally thought. She inhaled slowly. ‘I suppose they’ll stand his father in front of a firing squad, if they ever find
him.’

‘No worse than he deserves, is it? You’re late for your break, Nurse. You’d better go now.’

‘Yes, Sister.’ Halfway out of the office door she turned and said: ‘What shall I tell Alfred about his mother, Sister?’

‘Tell him she’s being looked after in another hospital. It’s the truth.’

Daylight was just beginning to fade when Sally returned. Only half the size of an adult ward, the children’s ward looked cosy with its Lilliputian beds and chairs and a
bright fire in the little stove surrounded by its nursery fireguard. Engulfed in a hospital dressing gown, Alfred was sitting in a miniature rocking chair beside it, toasting his toes and drinking
his cocoa with Curran dancing attendance on him.

‘I put a pillow under his behind, and one at his back,’ she said, ‘or the bones might rub through his skin entirely. He likes the pictures, don’t you, Alfie? The Lady
Mayoress did a good day’s work when she had them put up, so she did.’

‘Alfie, is it?’ said Sally, looking at the tiled pictures of nursery rhymes adorning the walls. ‘Why, I like the pictures an’ all. Which is your favourite,
Alfie?’

He looked towards a picture of Little Jack Horner with his pie, its glaze gleaming in the flickering firelight. ‘That one,’ he said.

‘It’s grand we’re on the same ward again, Wilde,’ said Curran, when they were seated at the table that evening waiting for the maid to bring supper.

‘Why, yes, it is,’ Sally agreed, suspecting this was just an opener.

‘Sure, and I had a surprise when I saw you this morning. And you were only on the officers’ ward a month!’

‘Aye, I was.’

‘And I thought you were there for three.’

‘So did I.’

‘You’ll miss the officers.’

‘One or two of them. But I’mjust as happy nursing the kids.’

‘You’ve changed your tune. Sure, you used to say we couldn’t do enough for the soldiers, after what they’d sacrificed for us.’

‘I did.’

‘You’ve changed your mind then?’

‘What about?’

Curran looked at her in exasperation, and leaned back in her chair. ‘You’re not going to tell me, are you – why they kicked you off the officers’ ward? Was it
Dunkley?’

Sally caught sight of Crump, sitting with her own set at a table at the other end of the room, and gave her a tiny wave. There had been no recriminations about the incident of the treatment room
from anybody; she hadn’t had to explain that she couldn’t help Will – no, Maxfield – following her about, everybody seemed to know it. She’d simply been told that she
was being transferred to the children’s ward. She’d been relieved, and now she was more relieved than ever. She could never have carried on the deception if she were on the same ward as
him, knowing it all. It was lucky for both their sakes she’d been moved, and if he had any sense, he’d keep away from her.

‘Was it Dunkley?’ Curran repeated.

‘The powers-that-be work in mysterious ways,’ Sally replied, ‘their wonders to perform. The soldiers aren’t the only ones damaged by the war, and I am still doing
something for them, anyway. I’m looking after their bairns.’

‘Deserters’ bairns, do you mean?’

Sally nodded. ‘Them an’ all. They can’t help what their fathers have done, but they take the brunt of it. They’re the worst off of the lot, when you come to
think.’

Armstrong appeared, and gave them a nod as she sat down.

‘Funny, though,’ Curran mused. ‘You only lasted a month on 7b as well.’

‘I hope to do better on the children’s ward. Maybe they’ll shift you to one of the men’s wards, Curran, but not until I’ve got my bearings, I hope. What’s
Sister Harding like?’

‘Sister Harding?’ said Armstrong. ‘An out and out snob. “He’s a very intelligent child, Nurse, a very intelligent child,”’ she mimicked.
‘Intelligent means middle class with Harding, and the further up the pecking order the parents are, the better she rates the kids. Raggy-arsed starvelings with lice and impetigo are never
intelligent as far as she’s concerned, even if they’re as bright as buttons.’

Sally believed it. She pictured Edith, the child in the single room near Sister Harding’s office, a beautiful, dark-haired ten-year-old girl with blue lips and bruises everywhere, and such
anxious eyes. Her father was a solicitor, and her mother the daughter of some prominent local family, and the pair of them were in despair because their darling had been given a death sentence, a
diagnosis of leukaemia. Sister Harding had praised Edith’s intelligence and let it be known that she thought it a scandal that a C3 child like Alfie was likely to survive while this worthier
child of more worthy parents would not.

They ate and chattered on, and Curran seemed to forget Sally’s quick despatch from the officers’ ward. Then as they stood up to leave, Crump signalled them to wait, and came bounding
over.

‘Lieutenant Maxfield’s been like a cat on hot bricks since you left, Nurse Wilde!’ she announced. ‘He asked me which ward you’re on. Shall I tell him?’

‘No.’ Sally offered no explanation with her flat refusal, despite Crump’s downcast expression. Why should she want to see him, an unworthy man who’d deserted his country?
A traitor who had made her love him, and then deserted
her?

F
ive minutes peace, that was all she wanted. She hadn’t had a minute to herself all day, and now she wanted the noise to stop. She had to
escape from these chattering, laughing, good-hearted girls, and have five minutes of blessed stillness, to herself. She excused herself from tea in the sitting room and slipped away, along the main
corridor towards her little raft of peace in an ocean of storms, the hospital chapel. It was always empty at this time.

She opened the door, and quickly closed it again, her heart pounding.
He
was there. Alone, and like a spider waiting to trap her in his web of deceit, there sat the deserter in the
stillness of her sanctuary, his maimed side towards her covered by its dressing, shielding her from his sight. Appalled, she fled down the long corridor, hardly seeing its warm teak parquet tiles
flashing beneath her flying feet. Through the winter garden and into the nurses’ home and up the staircase two steps at a time, until she reached her own room, where she threw herself on the
bed with a breathless, strangled sob of fear.

Why should she risk her neck because of his cowardice? He’d dropped her like a hot brick as soon he’d joined up, had never even told her he was going. She’d never had as much
as a postcard from him since, and now he was trying to make her his accomplice. She, Sally Wilde, who’d never put a foot wrong in her whole life, who’d never even ridden the tram
without a ticket, never done anything remotely against the law, why should she let him drag her into something like this? She had her good name, and a responsible job and a mother to think about.
How could he expect her to risk all that and maybe even end up in prison because of
him
? She remembered a woman her brother used to bring home, a suffragette who’d spent months in
gaol for breaking a car window, and sat up with a shock. The sight of her after her discharge wasn’t something she would easily forget, so dark had been the circles under her sunken eyes, so
thin and pinched she’d looked – hardly strong enough to walk. Sally shuddered at the memory.

She ought to have stayed in the chapel. She should have had it out with him, told him once and for all that his shameful game was up and he needn’t write her any more blasted notes. She
wanted nothing more to do with him. That’s what she’d do, and she’d do it now, or she’d be as much of a coward as he was, and he’d be after her till kingdom come,
wanting her to be his go-between. She sprang to her feet and ransacked the shelves until she found the book he’d lent her, the book she hadn’t left at his mother’s, after all. If
she hurried, he might still be there, and she could give it back to him and have it all over with.

He showed no surprise at the sight of her, and his hand went to his pocket for that blasted notebook, but she held up the book he’d lent her, right up to his face. He
froze, and the heavy chapel door swung to behind them. They were alone.