Tuppence To Spend (54 page)

Thursday laid her hand on her cousin’s arm and nodded. ‘I will, I promise. But you mustn’t worry, Dizzy. He’s just the same as he ever was, really. And he misses you and Leslie all the time.’

Denise nodded and sniffed, brushing her hand across her eyes. ‘I miss him too. I really do love him, Thurs, I always did. It wasn’t just a – what did they call it? – infatuation. We really did love each other. That’s why I lied to him about my age. I was so scared I’d lose him if he knew the truth.’

‘Well, that’s all over now.’ Thursday warmed the teapot
with a drop of hot water from the kettle. ‘You’re married and you’ve got your little boy, and one day soon Vic’ll come home and you’ll be able to get a place of your own and settle down properly.’ The kettle boiled and she made the tea. ‘Go and get the cups, Dizzy. I’ll come and see you tomorrow and tell you all about when I saw him in Egypt.’

She stood for a moment alone in the kitchen, listening to the chatter from next door. There would be a lot of talking to do in the next few days, a lot of stories to swap and a lot of reassurance to give. And then she would be going back to Haslar, the Naval hospital on the shore of Portsmouth Harbour where she had first become a VAD. Another kind of homecoming, in a way. I wonder how much will have changed there, she thought. And I wonder what’s going to happen next. Something big, Jenny said – perhaps even an invasion. Can this really be the beginning of the end of the war, after all this time?

Denise came back with the cups and Thursday began to fill them with tea. Just for now, she’d forget all about it. Just for now, it was enough to be at home in Worcester with her family.

During those few days’ leave, Thursday saw Denise only a couple of times. She was working long hours at the glove factory, making khaki gloves for soldiers, navy-blue ones for sailors, grey ones for airmen and leather ones for officers. ‘Once this is all over I’m never going to look at a glove again,’ she declared, coming in for a late supper after three hours’ overtime when Thursday was round at her aunt’s the next evening. ‘I’d rather have chilblains!’

She lay back in her mother’s armchair, her eyes closed. Thursday looked at her pale face and thought of Vic, lying in his hospital bed. They’re just kids, the pair of them, she thought, and they’re not the only ones either. This whole war’s being fought by kids.

‘I had a letter from Vic today,’ Denise said, opening her
eyes suddenly. ‘I told him you were coming home. He says you just about saved his life, Thurs.’

Thursday coloured. ‘I didn’t do much. I just sat beside him at night. I think it helped that I could talk about you and Leslie, that’s all.’

‘Well, whatever you did he thought a lot of it. And so do I.’ Denise closed her eyes again. ‘I’m glad you were there.’

Thursday bit her lip and nodded. ‘I’m glad I was there too. It was strange having someone from the family out there in Alex. We hardly knew each other before – when you got married – but we got to know each other quite well in the hospital. He’s a nice chap, Dizzy. You’re lucky – you’ve got a good husband.’

‘Well, I always knew that!’ Denise said, with a flash of her old spirit. ‘Knew that right from the start. But then you do, don’t you – when it’s the right one.’ She closed her eyes again. ‘That’s if he still thinks I
am
the right one.’

‘Oh, he does!’ Thursday hesitated, then took a breath. ‘Look, it’s a long time since I saw him and I expect it’s different now, but – well, he was wondering if you’d still fancy him. You see—’

‘But of course I’ll fancy him!’ Denise exclaimed. ‘I fancied him the minute I first saw him. Why on earth shouldn’t I?’

‘Because he doesn’t look quite the same.’ Thursday searched for the right words. She’d known for a long time that this moment must come, that she would have to prepare Denise for her first meeting with Vic. ‘Dizzy, he was badly burned. His face was blistered all over – and parts of his body too. It’s probably not so bad now as when I last saw him, but he’s bound to be scarred.’ She looked helplessly at her cousin. ‘I’m sorry, but you ought to know – so that it isn’t too much of a shock.’

There was a short silence. Then Denise said in a small voice, ‘Is it very bad?’

‘Quite bad,’ Thursday said honestly. ‘I’m really sorry, Diz.’

Denise bit her lip. She looked at Leslie, who was on the floor engrossed in a game with some old lead soldiers. Then she took in a deep breath and shrugged.

‘I don’t see that that’s so awful – so long as he’s not still hurting from it. He’ll still be the same old Vic underneath, won’t he?’

‘Yes,’ Thursday said with relief. ‘He’ll be the same old Vic. He was in Egypt, anyway. We got on really well.’

‘That’s all right then,’ Denise said. She lifted her chin a little and looked Thursday in the eye. ‘You know what Gran says – handsome is as handsome does, and I reckon my Vic will always be handsome to me, no matter what other people think. But thanks for telling me. I wouldn’t want to look as if I was upset by it, the first time we see each other again.’

Thursday nodded, relief washing through her. It had been one of the things that had haunted her about coming home – the necessity of telling Denise about Vic. Even now, she wasn’t sure that she’d really prepared her for the puckered, dead-looking skin that covered all one side of Vic’s face now and stretched down his body. Perhaps later on she’d tell her more, but she’d learned that such shocks took time to absorb. Denise would ask for more information when she was ready.

‘He really does love you, Dizzy,’ she said quietly. ‘He told me that. He just wants to get back to you and Leslie. Nothing else really seems to matter to him.’

‘It doesn’t matter to me either,’ Denise said. ‘Just to have us together again, a proper family – that’s all we want.’ She paused. ‘All anyone wants, I suppose. Funny that it takes a war to bring it home to people what’s really important about life.’

The brief leave over, Thursday set out on the familiar train
journey to Portsmouth. And as she walked down the pontoon from the railway station and stepped aboard the waiting pinnace, she felt herself jerked back four years, to the moment in 1940 when she had first stared out over Portsmouth Harbour.

Four years! Four – no,
five
– years of war, years that had torn her and millions of other young men and women from their homes and families and thrown them into lives they could never have dreamed of. Thrown many of them to their deaths, she thought sadly, remembering the long lists of names in newspapers, the reports on the wireless, the soldiers and sailors she had herself nursed, both here in England and during her years abroad. And here she was, home again, and still it wasn’t over.

‘Come on, love,’ urged the matelot waiting to cast off. ‘You’re not here on your holidays, you know. Mind you,’ he added, glancing at her, ‘you look as if you ’ave been. Look as if you’ve been in the South of France sunning yourself, you do. And what’s that ribbon you’re wearing? Been serving overseas?’

Thursday nodded a little self-consciously. She’d been proud to be presented with the medal that indicated her service abroad, but reluctant to display it until her father had told her, bluntly, that it was her patriotic duty to do so. ‘That’s an encouragement to others, that is,’ he’d said, knocking his pipe out on the fender. ‘It’s good for people to know what girls like you have been doing to serve your country. It gives ’em summat to hold up their heads about, summat to hope for. You wear it, and be proud to.’

‘So where you been, then?’ the matelot asked now, still eyeing the ribbon. ‘Africa?’

Thursday nodded. ‘Egypt. I’ve been there two years. But I was at Haslar before that, and now they’ve sent me back. It feels queer, coming home again after all this time and the war still on. Somehow I always thought we wouldn’t come back till it was over.’

‘Maybe it won’t be too long now,’ the sailor said cryptically, looking out over the busy scene. Thursday followed his glance. The harbour was thronged with ships – some tied up at the main jetties in the dockyard, others moored out in the harbour, with smaller boats, ferries and tugs bustling between them. And as the Naval pinnace made the short crossing to the Gosport side she could see through the entrance that the Solent itself was just as crowded. Something was obviously going on – something big.

‘What is it?’ she asked curiously, but the sailor glanced at her sideways and tapped his nose.

‘What we don’t know can’t hurt us. But you must’ve seen the roads, all jammed up with Army stuff. Been coming in for the past few weeks, so I’ve been told – lorries, tanks, DUKWs, you name it, it’s there. American, too, a lot of it. Second Front, innit? And they say it’s all being master-minded from just over Portsdown Hill.’ He seemed to remember his first words and shut his mouth firmly. ‘Shouldn’t have said that.’

Thursday looked at him. There was nobody else in the boat, but everyone knew that you had to be careful what you said, especially about anything military.
Careless Talk Costs Lives
– the notices had been everywhere at the beginning of the war, and there had been cases of people put into prison for making casual remarks that could have been helpful to the enemy. A girl only had to be overheard in a teashop, telling a friend that her sweetheart’s ship was sailing that night, and it could end in the ship’s being torpedoed and sunk. Spies and Fifth Columnists, it seemed, were everywhere.

She turned her eyes again towards the crowded harbour. There was clearly a big ‘flap’ on, and from the look of the ships and the determined air of the smaller boats hurrying between them, it was obvious that the matelot was right – it
was the long-awaited Second Front. Everyone was expecting it, had been for months – it was why she and the other VADs had been brought home. The theatre of war was moving back to Europe.

Jenny had been right too. It was the invasion. The invasion of Europe by Britain, and by her allies – America, Canada, Australia and the rest. This was what the country had been waiting for.

‘I came by train,’ she said, ‘and it was packed with Navy types. But you’re right, we did see a lot of Army vehicles on the roads, and all along the country lanes. You mean they’re planning to take them all on ships? But how?’

He shook his head. ‘We don’t talk about it, not more’n we can help. There ain’t no need. Everyone can see what’s going on, and we all know the beaches have been closed for months. Gawd knows what they’ve been doing there, building bloody great concrete towers it looks like – not that you can see much past all the barbed wire. We might have our own ideas what they’re for but we don’t ask. And if you take my advice, you won’t neither.’

Nothing’s changed, Thursday thought, remembering how she and Patsy Martin – Patsy Greenaway now – had come to Portsmouth by train on that bitterly cold, snowy day in 1940, not daring to talk about where they were going or why, in case there was a spy in the carriage with them. It all seemed a very long time ago: the train getting stuck in huge snowdrifts so that the passengers – mostly soldiers – had climbed out to help dig a way through; their surprise at the harbour station with its wooden platform and glimpse of the sea surging beneath them; the massive icicles that had formed beneath the structure; the sloping pontoon to the Gosport ferry crowded by the workmen swarming out through the dockyard gates.

And the ships! It was like a different world, different from anything either she or Patsy had ever seen, except in pictures or at the cinema. The frigates, the destroyers, the
enormous, towering bulk of the aircraft-carrier
Ark Royal
looming over them in their tiny pinnace. One of the greatest ships of the Royal Navy, she thought sadly, remembering the flight of aircraft it had taken to the besieged island of Malta, the battles it had fought, the pride everyone had felt in its name. And now it was gone, sunk by a U-boat off Gibraltar.

The sailor brought the pinnace alongside the Haslar jetty, and Thursday turned her head and looked up at the hospital where she had begun her days as a VAD. How ignorant we were, she thought. We knew nothing about the Navy, nothing about nursing. We had no idea of Haslar’s history: nearly two hundred years old and one of the first real Naval hospitals. And we certainly had no idea of what we were going to face. The ships coming back from Dunkirk. The wounded sailors, some of them no more than boys. The men who would die before our eyes.

She thought of Tony West, who had kissed her before he went to sea and then come back with his face so badly damaged he would never kiss again. And Susie, the little girl whose leg had been amputated on the night of the big Blitz. And all the others who had passed through Haslar’s wards – Stoker Davis, with his amazing tattoos, who had been a hero at sea yet made a fuss like a baby when he was given an enema; the young German, Heinz Schmidt; the sailor who had told her about the great queues of men standing in the water at Dunkirk, being shelled and machine-gunned as they waited for rescue, watching their comrades die around them. And that brought her back again to Tony, one of the first to arrive with his terrible injuries, his torn and broken face …

We didn’t have a clue what war could be like when we first arrived, she thought, gazing along the paved way that led from the jetty straight through the entrance and under the arcade. We had no idea that these tramlines would be used for trolleys to bring men from the boats to the wards,
just like they’d been used for the past two hundred years. We didn’t know anything about the Navy or the way it worked, or the words it used; we didn’t know what the matelot meant when he told us to ‘turn starboard’ – we didn’t even know what a
matelot
was. Her lips twitched again, and she gave the sailor who had brought her over – a matelot himself, in his square rig uniform – a sudden grin.

‘Well, thank Gawd for that,’ he said, raising his eyebrows. ‘Thought you’d been turned into stone. I was just about to pinch you to see.’

‘You’d have found out pretty soon I wasn’t,’ she said, laughing. ‘I can pack quite a punch when I’m pinched! Sorry, I was just taking it all in – thinking about the first time I came here. It seems so long ago.’ She bent to hoist her kitbag on to her shoulder. ‘Thanks for bringing me over. I’d better go and find out where I’m supposed to be. I wonder what changes there’ll have been.’