A Place of Safety (22 page)

‘You can’t be stupid enough to think I’ll believe that, but it doesn’t matter either way. You can take a message to her whoever she is.’

‘She’ll probably have gone and I won’t find her again. She was on her own, too. No. No, she wasn’t.’ The boy shoved both hands into his pockets. His voice trembled, but he still wasn’t crying: ‘I mean she said her boyfriend would be waiting for her. He’s big and quite old. He’s a policeman called Inspector Lyalt, she said. He’s a policeman. She won’t be on her own.’

‘Never mind her bloody boyfriend. Concentrate. This is the message: tell her to stay out of my life. I know what she’s up to. And I know she works with Ben Smithlock. But I won’t have it. Make her understand that. OK?’

‘No,’ the boy said, looking stupid. ‘I don’t understand and I can’t give her any message because I don’t know who she is. And I won’t ever see her again.’

And then, before Toby realized what he was doing, the child flung himself on the floor, flattening his body like an animal, and crammed himself through the gap under the door. Toby could hear him panting and slipping as he ran across the travertine.

Toby unlocked the door, planning to follow, when he heard footsteps outside. He bent over one of the basins to wash his hands. The newcomer unzipped his trousers and relieved himself into the nearest urinal. He was a total stranger, who didn’t even look at Toby and obviously suspected nothing. Toby breathed more easily, dried his hands and left.

 

Trish almost walked into the tall figure on her left and put out a hand to regain her balance. The hardness against her palm
told her she was touching one of the exhibits. She squinted in the darkness to see more.

‘Look, he’s standing on what they called the firing step. It gave them a chance to shoot over the edge of the sandbags, but it meant they were at risk of getting a bullet in the brain,’ she whispered over her shoulder, not wanting to disturb anyone else as she shared her few facts with David. ‘They called wounds like that Blighties, or Blighty ones, because they were so serious you got sent home for treatment.’

‘Are you a guide then, miss?’ said a shrill voice from the level of her waist. ‘Where’s your badge? The others have all got badges on a chain round their necks.’

Trish peered at the child she’d thought was her brother and saw a quite different, brown-haired boy. She smiled at him, before squinting through the darkness beyond.

‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I thought you were someone else. D’you want to get past me?’

She pushed past him, and the three people behind him, but she still couldn’t see the black-eyed pointy face she wanted.

‘You’d do better going out the far end and coming back in again,’ said an irritable male voice. ‘There isn’t room for two-way traffic on these duckboards.’

That seemed so sensible that Trish nodded and fought her way out of the trench, checking every child she passed. None of them was the right one.

Outside, the light seemed very bright, and the foyer almost empty. She ran through it, calling his name.

No one answered. Trish told herself not to panic. He was nine, quite capable of surviving a few minutes without her and finding his way back. Even so, she went back through the trench four times, checking all the nooks and twists in case he was there. On one pass, she was momentarily distracted by a glass case to her left, which contained a life-sized model of a VAD in uniform beside all sorts of smaller exhibits.

Peering into the case, she saw a photograph of a train filled with wounded soldiers. Some men were climbing the high steps up into it, helped by nurses in uniform. Beside the train were rows of stretchers, each one containing a bandaged, semiconscious soldier.

‘And that,’ Trish said aloud, ‘is why the paintings had to be stuffed into narrow tubes. Of course!’

‘Trish! Trish!’ She heard David’s voice, whispering and urgent. She looked round and saw him at last, white faced and running towards her from the lavatories.

‘Can we go, Trish? I don’t like it.’

‘Of course. Are you feeling ill?’

‘No. But can we go
now?
Please.’ He was tugging at her hand. She could feel his palm slippery with sweat and castigated herself for being so insensitive. He’d been so excited by the idea of the exhibit that she hadn’t thought carefully enough how male voices shouting and guns and the aura of death might affect him.

‘Come on,’ she said, tugging in her turn. ‘Let’s not wait for the lifts. Race you up the stairs?’

He ran and she followed, hating herself. He seemed no less jittery once they’d got outside, so she hailed a taxi and hustled him in. Only then did he begin to calm down.

‘What happened in there?’

‘Nothing happened. I just didn’t like it. And I had to have a pee.’ He was silent, until they reached the end of their street, when he added: ‘I’m sorry, Trish. It was really kind of you to take me.’

‘That’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Maybe it was all too much after a heavy day at school. Don’t give it another thought.’

‘No. OK.’ He twisted round so that he could peer out of the window, but there was nothing to see except the dark street and the miserable one-legged pigeons who eked out their depressing existence round the parked cars.

‘Look, there are lights on in the flat,’ he said a moment later. ‘Nicky must be in.’

‘Yes,’ Trish said, hearing the pleasure in his voice and fighting an emotion that wasn’t exactly jealousy, but seemed disturbingly like it.

 

Helen was leaning against the edge of the carriage as the train rattled and swayed. Poor Lieutenant Walters was groaning again. He had two of Jean-Pierre’s tubes in his stretcher, on either side of his legs. She’d been afraid they were hurting her patient, but the last time she’d wiped his forehead and given him a sip of water, he’d told her it was his chest and his head that hurt. The last doctor to see him had assured her that nothing they were doing to his legs could trouble him now because of the damage to his spine. He had no feeling below the waist.

‘Nurse! Nurse!’ It was Captain Coot’s rasping voice. She turned, trying to wear the comfortable, confident smile that was the only thing she had to offer most of them.

‘We’ll soon be there,’ she said, looking down at him. She could see from the saliva on his moustache that he’d been biting his lips, trying not to groan. There was sweat all over his greyish skin. Both his arms were broken and had had to be splinted across his chest. ‘I’m sorry about the rattling. I’ve tried to wedge you in tight, but I know it must hurt.’

‘Not too bad,’ he said. ‘There was a letter in my pocket. Could you see if it’s still there?’

It didn’t seem very likely. His breeches had had to be ripped up the seams so that the wounds in his legs could be dressed. As carefully as possible, she moved Jean-Pierre’s tube and felt her way down the side of his body, feeling the stiffening edges of his bloody, ripped breeches. There was the pocket. He flinched and she knew she’d hurt him. But there was a piece of paper in there. She slid her fingers deeper into the torn pocket and pulled it out, carefully replacing the tube.

‘Would you like me to read it for you?’

‘Yes, please.’

She unfolded it, hoping it wasn’t going to be one of the brutal announcements of infidelity or impending marriage to someone else. She couldn’t believe how some women were behaving to these men, and tried to hope it was ignorance of what they suffered at the front rather than the conscienceless cruelty it seemed.

‘My dear Jim,’ she read, tilting the thin sheet to catch the little light there was. ‘I wish you were here. I married—’

Helen broke off to check that he wanted her to go on reading. To her amazement he was smiling and nodding slightly.

‘I married Rupert yesterday. It was a beautiful day, but I missed you. We both did. And mother wept.’

‘I think she’d have wept even if I’d been there,’ the captain said, still smiling even though he winced each time the train clacked over a gap in the rails. ‘She’s an emotional woman, my mother.’

‘So this is your sister, is it?’

‘Yes. My little sister. Just imagine her getting married. And to such a good chap. He was out with us until he got a Blighty one. But he’s well enough to take care of her now. Does she say when they’re due back from their honeymoon?’

Helen looked back at the letter. ‘Yes. They will have been back four days by now. She should be able to come and see you as soon as the doctors have decided where to send you.’ She saw the wound stripes on his hanging sleeve. ‘This must be your third time on one of these convoys.’

‘Yes.’

She smoothed the thin khaki sheet over him. ‘I should think they’ll give you an instructor’s job now. You won’t have to go back again. Not for a fourth time, Captain.’

His eyes filled with tears and he took another big chunk of
his moustache between his teeth. ‘Do you think so, Nurse?’ he said when he’d got back enough control to let his jaw unclench.

‘Yes. You’ve done your share already, Captain Coot. More than your share. They won’t ask you to go out again now.’

‘No one can say that until it’s over. It could go on for ever so that we all have to go on going back.’

‘It will end,’ she said, remembering all Jean-Pierre’s reassurance.

The tempo of the rattle changed.

‘We’re slowing down.’

Helen braced herself. This was the moment she most dreaded for herself rather than for any of her patients. What if Jean-Pierre’s friend were not at the station to collect the tubes of paintings? What if one of the orderlies asked too many questions? Or one of the doctors insisted on having a tube opened? What if she were arrested?

She thought of Edith Cavell. At least she had been working for her country. Helen felt her child kick in her womb and put her hand over the bump. Someone would notice soon. This had to be the last time, even if she disappointed Jean-Pierre. She couldn’t take any more of it.

Captain Coot groaned, cutting off the sound almost as soon as it escaped his lips. This was the important thing. Even more important than Jean-Pierre and his paintings.

‘I’m just going to take these bracing tubes away now,’ she said carefully, pulling them away. ‘I don’t want them getting in the way when they move you on to the ambulance.’

 

As soon as she had a free moment that evening, Trish phoned Buxford. A woman answered and said that her husband was out and could she take a message?

‘That’s very kind. My name is Trish Maguire.’

‘Ah. Yes, Henry has told me all about you. Is this about Toby? Henry said you’d very sensibly backed out of all that.’

‘It’s only peripherally to do with Toby. Could you say to Henry that I’ve just realized Helen was a mule.’

‘That sounds like code,’ Lady Buxford said with a light laugh. ‘I’d better write it down. Hold on a moment. Yes, here’s a pencil. Did you say: “Helen was a mule”?’

‘I did. Thank you.’

Trish put down the phone and went to turn off David’s light.

‘Will you hear my lines again?’ he asked. ‘I kept getting them wrong when Nicky tested me this evening.’

He was lying in bed, looking very tired, his white face marked with deep bruises under his black eyes. Even though this anxiety over his part in the play could only be a displacement for whatever had upset him at the museum, Trish thought she knew exactly how he felt.

‘Wouldn’t you rather have your light out and get some rest so that you’re fresh enough to run through the lines tomorrow? We could easily rehearse over breakfast.’

‘No. I must try again now.’ There was a new shrillness in his voice, and his bottom lip was swollen, as though he’d been chewing it. ‘I tell you I kept getting them wrong with Nicky. And in the last rehearsal. It’s only days till the play. If I don’t get them right before you put out my light, I won’t get to sleep.
Please.’

‘Of course, I’ll hear your lines,’ she said, smiling down at him. ‘But you mustn’t worry too much if you don’t get them right tonight. You were word-perfect last week. I think you’ve been doing too much worrying and rehearsing. That can make even the best speakers forget what they know perfectly well. You need to be relaxed to do yourself justice. Now, where’s your copy of the play?’

He fished it out from under his pillow. Trish, who knew it backwards now, rather approved of the way the English master had updated the familiar story of the homeless stranger calling
for help on Christmas Eve. In this version, the first house he tried was a rich banker’s and he was turned away with contempt because he was ragged and dirty. David was to be the spokesman for the second house, which in this production was to be a council flat inhabited by the family of a police officer.

‘It’s cold outside,’ Trish said, prompting his first line. ‘Have you got a blanket to spare?’

‘Come on inside, my friend. There’s food here. Hot food. And we’ve plenty to share.’

David was staring forwards, and his hands were clenched on the edge of his duvet. He gave no expression to the words. Trish remembered Mrs More’s saying to her once that he had turned out to be a surprisingly good actor. He didn’t look like any kind of actor now. She tried to help him by thinking herself into the part of the tramp:

‘I’m too dirty to come into your house.’ She thought of poor Mer, whose part she was reading, who ate rust, was terrified of his father and – or – the giant who had broken his arm, and was loathed by everyone in his class. It didn’t seem the most suitable part for him. Or had Hester More pinned her hopes on the fact that the despised tramp turned out to be a messianic figure in disguise? Probably. Trish hoped it would work for Mer.

‘Dirt is only—No. Sorry, Trish. Only dirt is—No. You see, I can’t do it. I can’t. I always get the dirt bit wrong. I don’t know what to say.’

‘You mustn’t worry about it. The real line is: “Dirt is only on the outside. What matters is what’s inside. I’ll take you to the bathroom before we eat, so that you can wash.”’