What the Heart Keeps (41 page)

“
It was the traffic,” she explained, still breathless from her running as they drew apart, his arms still about her.

“
I guessed that, but I was sure you’d get here somehow.” “How are you?” Her eyes searched his face solicitously.

He
grinned at her. “In the pink, as the soldiers say.”

“
Harry has sent you a picture he painted.” She took it from her purse and he slipped it into his pocket to look at later, unable to spare one of these last moments for anything but the sight of her lovely face.

“
Thank him for me,” he said fondly. “Tell him I’ll put it up on display wherever I am, be it tent or trench.”

“
He asks about you all the time.”

There
was the slightest pause. “Don’t let the boy forget me.”

She
understood the significance of those words and her heart contracted with fear for his safety in all the dangers that lay ahead. For a moment she almost answered with forced lightheartedness that the boy would have no chance since Alan would soon be home again for good, but this was a time for promises and not for any pretence, however well intentioned. “He’ll never forget you. I’ll see to that.”

He
nodded satisfied. All along the train, doors were slamming as those in charge went aboard to rejoin their comrades. One of Alan’s fellow officers was leaning out of a carriage close by, keeping the door open for him to make a last minute dash. Time was running out. As the guard blew his whistle sharply and waved his green flag, Alan gave her a passionate kiss of farewell.

Suddenly
she found she could not let him go without saying the words to him that she had never said and which she knew he had always longed to hear from her above all else. “I do love you, Alan.”

His
face became transfigured. She could never have believed that a man about to face the most horrific confrontation conceived by the human mind could have looked so happy. From the train his companions were shouting to him to come aboard, the wheels taking their first turn. He pressed his loving mouth to hers once more and then tore himself from her to leap into the carriage. The door slammed after him and he leaned from the open window as she ran alongside.

“
I’ll get leave soon,” he called exuberantly to her. “Those of us who surrendered our embarkation leave in view of the emergency are to be the first on the list for Blighty in a few weeks time!”

“
I’ll be waiting!”

The
gathering speed of the train outdistanced her, its smoke wreathing back over the platform. She came to a standstill and waved until she could see him no more. It had been the truth when she had said she loved him. It was a very different love from the consuming, everlasting passion she felt for Peter, but it was in no way demeaned by that comparison. She knew she would remember that joyous look on her husband’s face until the end of her days.

She
retraced her steps at a much slower pace amid others leaving the platform, feeling thoroughly inadequate at being unable to assist in some way the efforts of Alan and those with him in the struggle in which they would soon be engaged. As she was about to go from the platform, she noticed a band of busy women, some of them wearing Red Cross arm-bands, emptying tea-urns and stacking thick china cups on long trestle tables to be washed up in bowls of steaming water. They had supplied refreshments and cigarettes free of charge to the troops that had departed with the train. Swiftly she approached a dignified-looking woman in Red Cross uniform who appeared to be in charge.

“
Do you want any more helpers? I’m eager to be of some use in the war effort.”

“
What welcome words!” The woman smiled at her. “We need all the help we can get for every kind of duty. Are you a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross?”

“
No, I’m not. But I’d like to join.”

“
Splendid! I’ll give you an enrollment form now.”

Lisa
read it through in the taxi during her return to the cinema. She found she could not be a fully fledged V.A.D., as those of the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment were known, until she had attended first aid lectures and passed qualifying examinations. Upon arriving at The Fernley she went straight to Mr. Hardy to arrange that he be left entirely in charge for a couple of hours every evening while she attended a course. of lectures in a church hall not far away.

As
soon as her training was completed successfully, she went to a special outfitter in Golden Square to buy her Red Cross uniform. She felt honoured to wear it and had her photograph taken in it at head and shoulder level to send to Alan. He wrote back that he had never seen a more beautiful nurse, and he was keeping the photograph in its leather folder in his left-hand pocket over his heart.

All
his letters were love-letters. At times the tenderness of the phrases he used moved her intensely, particularly as she knew that these poignant outpourings were often written in the dank misery of a dug-out in the mud-filled trenches while shells whistled overhead and bombs burst open the earth. After the extraordinary and unofficial truce at Christmas when soldiers on both sides had come out of their trenches to meet in No Man’s Land and exchange festive greetings, the war continued with unabated ferocity.

She
saw the aftermath of those battles, some of which were won and some lost, when she was on reception duty at Waterloo Station where trains brought in the wounded from the hospital ships that docked at Southampton. On the first occasion, she stood numbed by the sight of the train disgorging countless stretcher cases and soldiers with bandaged heads and eyes and arms in slings. Some were missing a limb and were helped along by medical orderlies or hobbled gamely alone on their crutches. While she was standing as if transfixed, one of the soldiers on crutches slipped and fell heavily. She rushed to him while the busy orderlies, seeing she was in V.A.D. uniform with the Red Cross on her apron front, left him to her care for the time being. He was lying on his back, his crutches scattered, and was looking up at the grimy glass roof high above him.

“
Are you all right?” she cried anxiously, dropping to her knees to lean over him. The tears of compassion were spilling from her eyes. He was about forty years old and there was a pinned-up trouser-leg over the stump of his thigh. At the sound of her voice his gaze shifted to her face, his own ashen from the pain that had seared through his whole body from the fall, and he managed a lopsided grin.

“
Clumsy, ain’t I? Don’t cry, nurse. I could do with a smile from your pretty face. There ain’t been much smiling lately where I’ve come from.”

It
taught her a lesson. She never again gave way to her emotions. The wounded wanted encouragement and not pity. They received it from her with every train she met. She also arranged that men in hospital blue be admitted free to the Fernley movie shows.

Sometimes
recruiting sergeants came to the cinema and addressed the audience from the stage, while in the foyer a table was set up for men to enlist on the spot. There was always a queue of those wanting to sign their names, stirred equally by the patriotic newsreels and the sergeants’ accounts of enemy atrocities against Belgian women and children.

It
was after one of these recruiting visits that Lisa found Mr. Hardy sitting in the deserted foyer with his elbows propped on his knees and his head in his hands. “What is the matter?” she exclaimed anxiously. “Are you ill?”

“
No, Mrs. Fernley.” He dropped his hands and straightened up at once, his reassuring smile not matching the disquiet in his eyes. “It’s been a long day. A spot of tiredness, that’s all.”

“
Would you like some time off?” She sat down beside him. She had come to know him quite well during the months they had worked together. Contrary to her original uncertainty about him, he had never once tried to usurp her position, but had given her loyal and energetic support which had enabled her to carry out her V.A.D. duties and spend extra time with Harry when he needed her, such as when the boy had succumbed to measles and been quite ill for a while.

“
You are most considerate, but I really don’t need a holiday,” he replied. “In fact, I’m bored when I’m not working. A break would do me no good at all.”

She
thought loneliness was half his trouble. He lived in lodgings and what relatives he had were somewhere in the North of Scotland. It was becoming more difficult every day for a man in civilian life to find a girl-friend, for many women no longer liked to be seen with a male partner not in uniform.

“
Well, think about it, anyway,” she advised. “It can always be arranged.”

Not
only had Alan’s hopes of an early leave come to nothing, but the first months of the year went by with no sign of his coming home. Sometimes she wondered if he was engaged in special work that made it difficult to release him, but naturally there was no hint in his letters that this might be the case. From information gathered from officers she met and from what she read in the newspapers, the Royal Engineers were spread thinly throughout the British Expeditionary Forces, but in concentrated and highly efficient groups that bridged rivers and carried out other such tasks. The Royal Engineers figured strongly in the casualty lists and there was no telling what courageous risks they had taken to bring their names into those tragic columns.

Minnie,
following events closely from the newspapers in the States, wrote with concern about the Zeppelin raids on the English east coast, fearful of Lisa’s and Harry’s safety if they should reach London. But those huge airborne monsters were subject to the whims of the wind and weather and nobody took the threat very seriously. Then on the last night of May, a Zeppelin, escaping anti-aircraft fire, dropped bombs on London, resulting in casualties. The recruiting sergeant gained still more volunteers as a result.

At
the end of June, Lisa received word that Alan was coming home on leave. She was at once filled with happiness at the prospect of seeing him safe and sound while, at the same time, she experienced trepidation as to how it would be between them after this long span of separation. After everything he had been through in the fighting, he might have expectations of her after her declaration of love that would be impossible for her to meet, however willing. She truly cared for him, but what she felt was not new and in the past it had not overcome the barriers that were part of their lives. Why should things be any different now?

With
a week before his home-coming in which to make plans, she sent Harry and Maudie to friends at a seaside resort on the south coast, well out of range of any raids. Alan should have some time with Harry, but not before he and she had had a few days together on their own. Then she set other arrangements into motion very speedily and everything was ready when she drove their automobile to Victoria Station to meet him. There were other women waiting for their menfolk, and it was easy to see that they had put on their best outfits, as she had done, for the occasion. She doubted if any one of them was assailed by the nervousness that she was experiencing. It was like being a bride again.

The
train came into sight, grey smoke puffing from the locomotive. The women surged forward along the platform in their excitement, but she stayed near the ticket-gate, her heart palpitating madly. Carriage doors were opening, passengers alighting, and reunions taking place. And there he was. The army captain with the thin, haggard face and war-wearied eyes.

In
her hours of duty as a V.A.D. she had seen many returning men with the look about them of having gazed into hell, and she had prepared herself for a change in his appearance. Nevertheless, it came as a great shock to her that he should bear the marks of ordeal to such a degree. She held out her arms, his image spangled through the tears she would not release, and he caught her to him with a deep moan of love. The clean, sweet bouquet of her made him dizzy. It was as if all his lonely dreams of her had taken on a reality beyond his immediate comprehension.

“
Now I’m going to drive you home,” she said to him as they left the station.

He
threw his belongings into the back of the automobile and took the seat beside her. The sight of London was disturbing to him. Reminders of the death and destruction he had left recently were all around him. He saw it in the posters of Kitchener’s face and pointing finger demanding voluntary service. It was there in the uniforms passing by on the pavements and crossing the streets. He heard it in the pipes of a Highland regiment on its way to a boat-train. He had hoped to unwind and forget for two whole weeks that elsewhere men had gone mad and nothing would ever be the same again. Although he shared everyone’s opinion of the Kaiser and the German generals, he felt no hatred towards the enemy in the fighting lines and he was not alone in that. There was a curious and terrible comradeship in knowing that beyond the barbed wire of No Man’s Land the Germans were sharing the same appalling conditions of trench mud and rats and lice and, until the onset of better weather, sometimes icy water up to the waist. He had known rage against them and fury fit to split his brain, such as when they used poison gas at Ypres, but hate was not there. Maybe everything would have been easier to bear if it had been.