Across the Mersey Page 21

  ‘Two family members only are allowed onto the platform,’ the tired WVS lady in charge of one of the desks informed them, adding, ‘That’s if you can get a platform ticket, otherwise family are allowed only as far as the barrier.’

  Jean was relieved when Luke took hold of her arm and told her, ‘This way, Mum.’

  She had been to Lime Street before but she had never ever seen it as packed as this, not even during summer holiday weeks. You couldn’t move for other people, but somehow Luke managed to carve a way between the packed crowd jostling for space, until they finally reached the barrier to the platform guarded by a large sergeant with a long list in his hand.

  ‘Private Campion, Number 813320,’ Luke told him, putting down his kitbag and handing over his papers.

  He had grown so much broader since he had been in the army, Jean recognised, with muscles now that rivalled his dad’s.

  ‘And this is your sister, come to see you off, is it?’ the sergeant joked, smiling at Jean, before letting them through without even asking her if she had a platform ticket.

  ‘Better not tell Dad about that,’ Luke warned her.

  Down on the platform where the train was waiting, its doors open, the air was thick with smoke and bitterly cold.

  ‘Hang on here a minute, Mum,’ Luke told her, ‘whilst I go and nab meself a seat, otherwise I reckon I could end up standing all the way to the coast.’

  His movements now were those of an army-trained man, careful and economical, and so very different from the boyishness he had had before he left.

  Jean watched as he secured himself a seat and then let down the window, and leaned out so that he could talk to her.

  The train was filling up fast, and already the carriage Luke was in was nearly full; mothers clustering by its windows, all, like Jean, anxious to spend as much time as they could with their sons, fathers shaking their sons’ hands, their faces set.

  Luke hadn’t said one single word against his dad, but he must be feeling, as she was, that Sam should have been here, Jean acknowledged.

  Three young men hurried down the platform and jumped into Luke’s carriage, one of them exclaiming, ‘Ruddy well thought we weren’t going to make it and that would have put the fat in the fire!’

  ‘Fat in the fire? Got you on a charge, more like,’ one of his companions told him, as he took out his cigarettes.

  The smell of khaki, cigarettes and young male virility was filling the air. Young women, – girls still, really – shiny new wedding rings very much in evidence, were clinging to equally young men. Older women with young families clung tightly to their children’s hands or the handles of perambulators whilst husbands bent to kiss each child in turn, and still older women, like Jean herself, watched, remembering when the sons they were saying goodbye to had been small enough to keep safe in such prams.

  The train was getting up steam. Jean could see the guard making his way down the platform, slamming the carriage doors as he did so. Jean’s stomach muscles tightened. She must not cry and disgrace Luke, upsetting him when he had to be strong, but she couldn’t stop the anxious maternal love flooding her, and with it her fear for him.

  The guard blew his whistle. Luke leaned down out of the window to kiss her cheek. The train was starting to move. Jean’s eyes blurred with tears, and she had to turn her head away so that Luke wouldn’t see them. And then unbelievably as she did so, she saw Sam, pushing his way through the crowd.

  ‘Sam! Over here.’ She jumped up and waved her hand, telling Luke, ‘Look, Luke, it’s your dad. Sam, quick, over here …’

  The train was moving now, families moving with it, desperate for every precious last second of time with those they loved. Jean had lost sight of Sam.

  The train was gathering speed.

  ‘Dad.’

  She could hear the joy in Luke’s voice as Sam broke through the crowd and reached up to take Luke’s hand in his own.

  ‘You see you take care of yourself, you ruddy young fool.’

  Sam’s voice might be gruff but it was filled with love, and Jean could see from Luke’s expression that he could hear it too.

  Sam released Luke’s hand and reached for hers. Together and in silence they watched the train until they couldn’t see it any more.

  Only then did Jean turn to Sam and say emotionally, ‘Oh, Sam.’

  There was no need for any other words. And for the first time in the whole of their married lives, to Jean’s astonishment, Sam took hold of her in a public place in front of other people and held her so tightly she could hardly breathe. She could feel the betraying dampness of his tears against her own skin as they stood locked together, sharing their love and their fear for their son.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘I’m so tired, I nearly fell asleep when I was feeding a patient this morning. I would have done, I reckon, if she hadn’t given me a nudge in the ribs to warn me that Staff Nurse Rodgers was watching me,’ Jennifer moaned.

  Those members of Grace’s set who were on ‘days’ rather than ‘nights’ were sitting huddled over the fire in the junior nurses’ sitting room, snatching a much-needed few minutes of relaxation after their evening meal.

  ‘That’s nothing. Three patients on my ward were sick after breakfast this morning, and Sister had me scrubbing their sheets and nightgowns. I thought I was going to throw up myself, I did,’ said Doreen.

  ‘I’ve heard that at least four girls from other sets have left, saying that they thought they were supposed to be training as nurses, not working as skivvies,’ Iris told them.

  Grace was so exhausted that she would quite happily have let the complaints of the others wash over her unregarded if Hannah hadn’t nudged her and demanded, ‘What about you, Grace? How are you doing on Men’s Surgical?’

  Grace stifled a yawn and told them ruefully, ‘Staff Nurse had me and the other junior doing five bed baths this morning, and they all went and got you-know-whats.’

  The others all laughed.

  They might have been on the wards for just over a month but it seemed a lifetime ago since they had been in PTS, with its male torso minus any sexual organs. Grace might be able to laugh now at the shock it had given her on her first week on the ward the first time she had been instructed to give a patient a bed bath. Both her face and the poor patient’s had been bright red when the unfamiliar male arrangement of ‘bits’ had suddenly stiffened into an erection.

  Staff Nurse, who must have been watching, had called her over to the large desk in the middle of the ward afterwards and calmly explained the workings of the male anatomy to her, advising her that the male patients, much to their own embarrassment, tended to get erections when pretty nurses bed bathed them, and that it was a fact of nursing life that Grace would have to get used to. On the other hand, Staff Nurse had added firmly, if any male patient suggested that she do anything with that erection, she was to walk away and report him to a more senior nurse immediately.

  The routine of the hospital wards, with its temperature, pulse and breathing rate charts, its timed-to-the-second visits from stern-faced doctors and consultants, who never ever acknowledged the existence of the most junior nurses, plus the fearsomeness of staff nurses and sisters, might now be familiar to them, but they all agreed that the exhaustion caused by the amount of physically hard and often dirty work they were required to do had proved far harder to adjust to.

  ‘Me hands are red raw from cleaning floors and scrubbing sheets,’ Doreen complained. ‘And me feet feel like they’re on fire after walking up and down that ruddy ward. They were that swollen last night I thought I’d have to sleep in me stockings and shoes.’

  ‘On fire?’ Iris chivvied her. ‘You’re lucky. Mine are half frozen, and covered in chilblains.’

  It was the coldest winter that anyone could remember, although you wouldn’t have known it, since the Government had given orders that there was to be no weather reporting in the papers or by the BBC because, so rumour had it, it might be bad for morale. />
  All manner of things were ‘not being reported’, or so Teddy had told Grace when he had taken her to the pictures earlier in the week on her half-day off. And yet on the other hand there were constant ‘Chinese whispers’ about Hitler’s imminent invasion, and there had definitely been sightings of enemy reconnaissance planes over Liverpool, as well as an attempt to destroy the Forth Bridge, with bombs dropped in Scotland.

  But worst of all for a city like Liverpool to bear was the increasingly bad news about the number of British vessels being torpedoed and sunk. Everyone in the city knew how much the whole country relied on safe passage of the convoys crisscrossing the Atlantic and bringing home much-needed supplies for the war effort; and virtually everyone in the city also had or knew of someone who had a family member on board those ships.

  The bombing raids they had been warned to expect might not have materialised, the stored cardboard coffins may not have been needed as yet, but death had still come to the streets of Liverpool and mourners were still weeping for those they had lost.

  The cinema newsreels, of course, focused on those things that would boost the country’s morale rather than damage it; scenes of the routing of the Graf Spee; of British troops abroad enjoying ENSA-sponsored shows; cheery WVS workers manning tea urns, and happy evacuated children frolicking in a sunny countryside.

  Just seeing that sunshine had made Grace long for its warmth. Everyone was saying that they couldn’t remember there being such a bitterly cold winter. Even in the cinema it was so cold that Grace had half hoped that Teddy might put his arm around her once they were inside, but he hadn’t.

  They had several patients on the ward who had been injured in accidents caused by the icy roads, and when Grace had gone home on her full day off to visit her family her mother had told her that her father was complaining about the weather stopping him from working on his allotment.

  Although officially, as trainee nurses, they were supposed to have one half-day and one full day off a week, as Grace had discovered, with all the studying they still had to do, more often than not that time off was spent in their rooms poring over notes and books.

  She was reminded of what Teddy had told her about news being held back when she went on duty one the morning in early February.

  As soon as daily prayers were over, Staff Nurse Reid informed them that they had received eight new patients overnight, four of them in beds on the ward itself and four more in the much smaller side wards, normally reserved for paying patients or special cases needing individual nursing.

  The hospital had been built on the Florence Nightingale principle, the so-called Nightingale wards having high ceilings and tall windows to facilitate the flow of the fresh air, which Florence Nightingale had considered important in defeating the spread of infection and aiding patients’ recovery. The beds had to be a certain distance apart, with the wheels turned inwards to allow for proper cleaning and to prevent the spread of cross infection. Heavy screens were pulled around a bed should the patient need privacy. Ward Sister sat at a table in the middle of the ward, keeping a steely eye on her domain.

  The nurses’ home at the hospital was attached to the main hospital via an underground tunnel, the entrance to which was guarded by an extremely fierce porter.

  ‘It’s going to be like living in a convent,’ Lillian had complained when they had first arrived earlier in the month.

  ‘Ah ha, now we know why you’re so keen to date a doctor,’ Hannah had joked with a grin. ‘It’s because you think they’re the only men that will get anywhere near the place.’

  They might have finished their initial three-month training but in hospital hierarchy terms they were still the lowest of the low as had been made clear to them from the first moment they set foot on the wards.

  Grace’s first duty of the morning was to help serve the patients their breakfasts.

  ‘We had some Merchant Navy lads brought in last night off one of the convoy ships,’ the junior nurse going off duty managed to whisper confidentially to her as they changed shifts. ‘In a real bad way they are, an’all. Got torpedoed by the Germans.’

  There wasn’t time for her to say any more. Screens were drawn around four of the beds on the ward and the doors closed to the side wards, and Sister told Grace that she was not to take breakfast to those patients.

  After breakfast came the inevitable ‘bottle’ round, and then the collection and removal of the bottles to the sluice room ready for the urine to be tested for ‘sugar’, albumin or blood, depending on what was written on the patient’s chart.

  Then after that came the first of the many ‘locker’ rounds of the day, for which Grace had to set a trolley with a basin of carbolic, a cloth, a small pail for rubbish and a large jug of fresh water. Each locker top had to be wiped with carbolic. Any rubbish such as papers had to be removed, ashtrays had to be emptied and wiped, and finally the patient’s drinking glass had to be filled with water.

  All the patients’ lockers were supposed to be finished by the time of the first nurses’ coffee break. During her first week it had taken Grace nearly half as long again as it should have done to complete this task but now she could work quickly and smoothly and still find time to chat to the patients as she did so, taking the letters she was given for posting and exchanging banter with those men who were well enough to want to indulge in it.

  Several patients were recovering from serious operations and Grace always tried to spend a little more time with them. Today, though, even those patients who had seemed the most poorly were now making an effort to be more chipper and were asking anxiously after the new arrivals.

  ‘Heard as how one poor lad has lost both his legs,’ said old Mr Whitehead, in a wheezy whisper.

  Grace’s hand shook slightly as she filled his water glass.

  There had been several occasions since she had come on the ward, when the things she had seen – and smelled – had made her stomach heave, but the thought of some poor young man losing his limbs still shocked her.

  It was a relief in many ways to be told not to go near the small side wards, although Grace couldn’t help but notice the number of white-coated doctors and surgeons coming on to the ward to see the new patients.

  By dinnertime Grace was more than ready for a break. It was her half-day off, and she’d promised to meet Teddy after she’d had her dinner, but since she was starting ‘nights’ from seven o’clock, she had decided against doing anything other than snatching a bit of fresh air and some much-needed ‘extra’ sleep.

  Nurses weren’t allowed to leave the hospital grounds wearing their uniform, but since she would be seeing Teddy in the hospital grounds Grace had not bothered to get changed. Huddling into her cloak, she made her way carefully across the icy yard to where Teddy had parked his ambulance, her breath coming in white puffs on the frosty air.

  Teddy had obviously been on the look-out for her because he opened the door and climbed out of the cab, coming to meet her, rubbing his hands and then blowing on them to ward off the cold.

  ‘It’s soooo cold,’ Grace complained, her smile turning to a concerned frown when Teddy started to cough.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s just the cold air getting on me chest,’ he reassured her.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ Grace told him. ‘I start nights tonight.’

  ‘You’ll have them poor sods that came off that convoy on your ward. One of the lads was telling us about them this morning. In a bad way, they are, by all accounts. Makes my blood boil when daft folk complain about a bit of rationing. They’d sing a different song if it were their kin wot was sailing with the convoys.’

  ‘I don’t think people always understand – about the rationing, I mean.’

  Teddy smiled at her. ‘That’s typical of you, Grace; you never want to think badly of anyone. Well, one day you’re going to have to if ruddy Hitler gets his way.’ He gave a frustrated sigh. ‘It really narks me, not being allowed to join up and do me bit.’

  ‘But you
are doing your bit, Teddy,’ Grace protested. ‘My dad says that one of the biggest mistakes they made in the last war was making all the young men enlist and that’s why this time they’ve said that there’s got to be reserved occupations.’

  She could see that Teddy wasn’t looking convinced. Grace shivered. Although she tried not to worry, sometimes it was hard not to feel afraid when other people were talking about how things would be if Hitler invaded and took over the country.

  ‘Is your Luke still writing to that flighty piece from your set?’ Teddy asked her abruptly.

  Grace had been surprised when Luke had told her in one of his letters that he was writing regularly to Lillian, especially when Lillian herself hadn’t said anything to Grace about it.

  ‘Told you so,’ had been Hannah’s comment when Grace had confided in her. ‘It won’t last, mind, at least not on her part, not once she gets that doctor she’s wanting in her sights. She’ll drop your brother like a hot potato then, just you wait and see.’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Grace told Teddy. ‘Why?’

  ‘I saw her going into Lyons with a chap the other day when I was driving past, that’s all.’

  ‘He was probably just a friend,’ Grace felt bound to defend the other girl. ‘And anyway, she and Luke are only writing to one another, nothing more.’

  ‘Some chaps place a lot of store on that kind of thing.’

  What was Teddy trying to say? Grace looked at him uncertainly.

  ‘She can’t be serious about anyone, not with us all only just starting out on our training. None of us can,’ she reminded Teddy.

  ‘You’d better get back if you want a couple of hours’ sleep before you start on nights,’ he warned her, looking significantly at his watch.

  ‘Oh heavens, you’re right.’ Grace reached up to hug him. His chin and nose were turning blue with the cold and she supposed her own must be doing the same.

  The other girls teased her about her relationship with Teddy, wanting to know if they were going steady and then shaking their heads when she told them that it wasn’t something they had discussed.