Keep the Home Fires Burning (41 page)

‘Mrs Whittaker?’

‘Yes,’ Marion said, leaping to her feet.

‘My name is Dr Lancaster,’ the young woman said.

Despite the fact that so many women had taken over roles typically taken by men during the war years, Marion was more than surprised that this young woman was a fully-fledged doctor.

‘I examined your daughter when she was admitted,’

‘Her name is Sarah,’ Marion said. ‘How is she, please?’

‘She is badly injured,’ the doctor said. ‘We have had to shave a large area of her head to stitch the large cut there and she also has extensive cuts and burns to her face, broken ribs and a fractured pelvis. There is tenderness in the area of her liver so there could well be damage there too.’

Marion, almost reeling from the news, said in a whisper, ‘Can I see her?’

‘Certainly,’ the doctor said, ‘though there is little of her visible at the moment and she is of course heavily sedated.’

Marion followed the doctor tentatively. Heavily bandaged, with slits left for eyes, nose and mouth, Sarah lay as still as stone in the bed that had the sides raised on either side so that it looked like a cot. Even Jack was quite unnerved, seeing his cousin in that state.

‘I will be transferring her to the burns unit here in the morning,’ the doctor said, when they were back out in the corridor. ‘Because of the risk of infection, especially once we start the skin grafts, she will be in a private room.’

‘But she will recover?’

‘In time.’ We must be thankful that her eyes have escaped injury.’

‘What about her face?’ Marion persisted. ‘She’s only a young girl.’

The doctor nodded. ‘I know, and the lacerations will heal. As for the burns, all I can say is that we’ve learned a lot about dealing with burns from treating servicemen in this war. We will
endeavour to do our best for your daughter.’

They could do no more. Marion made for home and Jack took off for his own house to tell them what had happened. Peggy and Violet had prepared a meal for Marion, which she tried to eat, though it tasted like sawdust in her mouth. They were anxious for news of Sarah and plied Marion with questions, which she answered as honestly as she could, though what she said upset them a great deal.

They were all eventually calmer and had agreed to go to bed when Polly called round, terribly shaken by the news Jack had brought about Sarah’s injuries. Marion told her about the terrible scarring on Sarah’s face.

‘That’s awful!’ Polly said. ‘Poor girl, and yet if she had been in the canteen she might have been killed outright because they say the explosion came from the centre of the factory.’

‘Thank the Lord that she wasn’t then,’ Marion said. ‘So how come your girls got away so lightly?’

‘They were queuing at the hatch,’ Polly said, and gave a ghost of a smile. ‘Siobhan blames it all on the apple pie.’

‘How come?’

‘Because they had some on the menu for a change and the girls decided to go for a slice. You know how few and far between puddings are these days. Had they stayed at the table a minute longer they would have been killed.’ Then all signs of humour left her face. ‘Nineteen women and girls
lost their lives today and countless more were injured.’

‘Nineteen!’ Marion repeated in horror. Yet she remembered the crushed mess of the burning building and thought it surprising there had been so few killed.

Polly, seeing the lines of fatigue etched into Marion’s face, kissed her sister and got to her feet. ‘Well, I only came to know what’s what,’ she said. ‘And now I’d best be off home. We can go up the hospital together tomorrow, if you like?’

‘Yeah,’ Marion said, ‘I’d like that.’

‘See you tomorrow then, bab.’

Marion hardly slept that night, but tossed and turned restlessly on the bed. In the end she was glad to get up, though she felt like a bit of frayed string.

‘Are you writing to Bill today to tell him what’s happened?’ Peggy said the next morning.

‘Not yet,’ Marion said. ‘I’ll have to have a long, hard think about any letter I write to Bill because I know he’ll blame himself.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he could have claimed exemption and stayed here,’ Marion said. ‘If Bill had been here he might well have forbidden Sarah to even think about working with explosives. He couldn’t do that when it was him left us high and dry.’

‘Do you blame him?’

‘Not for Sarah’s injuries,’ Marion said. ‘I was resentful at first when he told me that he wanted to enlist. I thought he wasn’t thinking enough about us, but in his mind that’s exactly who he was thinking of. I had to see it his way in the end, as that was what he was going to do regardless.’

‘Well, you can’t carry resentment around for ever.’

‘No,’ Marion agreed. ‘Anyroad, I wasn’t the only wife and mother left like that.’

‘We’ll be late for work if we don’t go soon,’ Violet warned.

Peggy glanced up at the clock. ‘Crikey, you’re right. We’ll have to get a spurt on.’

‘And I must get the twins up or they’ll be late for school,’ Marion said, but when they had gone, instead of rousing Magda and Missie, Marion sat at the table and poured herself another cup of tea. She dreaded writing to Bill for there was no kind way to tell a father that his daughter was possibly going to be scarred for life.

She got herself together in the end. The twins were still tearful when Marion roused them, and didn’t want to go to school. ‘You’ll do no good staying at home,’ Marion said firmly. ‘If Sarah is awake today I will ask when she will be allowed other visitors, and that’s all I can do for you at the moment.’

Sarah’s private room was very bare with just a bed with a chair beside it, and a small wash basin. Even the walls were a nondescript beige.

‘Has she not regained consciousness yet?’ she asked Dr Lancaster.

The doctor shook her head. ‘We are at any rate keeping her sedated for now.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, if she’s kept still and quiet her broken ribs will heal themselves,’ the doctor explained. ‘And even her liver might do the same, which might save her the trauma of more operations. I will have to operate on the pelvis and then, of course, there will be skin grafts, and all that will be shock enough for anyone.’

‘I see.’

‘There is something else.’

Marion turned her head towards the doctor but didn’t speak and she went on, ‘Sarah received quite a crack on the head and then she was unconscious for some time so there is a risk of brain damage.’

Marion felt herself recoil from the doctor.

‘It’s not a foregone conclusion, Mrs Whittaker. I’m just preparing you for that possibility.’

‘Yes, thank you, Doctor,’ Marion said.

She left the hospital in a daze and once outside the tears came. Polly found her there later, awash with sadness. Marion clung to her sister and they both wept when Marion told Polly why she was so upset.

‘I can’t tell the twins any of this,’ she said. ‘And
I can’t write to Bill yet either. The doctor said it wasn’t a foregone conclusion and so I must wait and see. Her disfigurement is enough for him to cope with now.’

As one day followed another the twins couldn’t understand why Marion hadn’t written to their father to tell him about Sarah, and had also forbidden them to write and tell him.

‘But why won’t you write?’ Magda asked for the umpteenth time.

‘I will,’ Marion said, ‘but Dad will be very upset when he hears about Sarah. Richard will be too, of course, but Dad will be especially sad and I wanted to have something good to tell him as well.’

‘What sort of good?’

‘Well, Sarah hasn’t really come round yet,’ Marion said. ‘At the moment the hospital are keeping her heavily sedated and I really want her to come round fully before I write to tell your father.’

The twins accepted this. Marion visited every day, but it was four days later before she entered Sarah’s room to find the sides of the bed down and Sarah lying there with her eyes open. They opened wider and a little light shone behind when they caught sight of Marion, though Marion saw with pity that they were glazed with pain.

‘Hello, Sarah,’ she said gently.

Sarah didn’t answer that, but what she did say was, ‘I hurt.’

‘I know,’ said Marion. ‘Maybe the nurses can give you something for the pain later, because you’re in hospital now. Can you remember what happened?’

‘No …’

But as her mother started telling her, it was as if everything slotted back in her mind. She remembered sitting talking with her uncle, and trying to read a letter from Sam and a terrific explosion.

‘The factory was an awful mess,’ Marion said, but she didn’t mention the girls who had died because she and Polly had already decided that Sarah didn’t need to knew that. She had enough to cope with.

Sarah touched her bandaged face tentatively.

‘Your face and head got a bit knocked about,’ Marion said, and she willed her voice not to tremble.

‘It’s stiff.’

‘I expect they had to bandage it up tightly to protect it. Everyone has been asking about you. The twins, of course, and Peggy and Violet, and Polly and her lot, but also neighbours. I have had people stop me in the street or even call at the door to ask after you, and Deidre Whitehead from next door has been ever so good seeing to the twins and all.’

Sarah’s eye were closing for all she tried to keep them open, but as Marion got to her feet she said drowsily, ‘Don’t go yet.’

‘I must,’ Marion said. ‘I mustn’t tire you out and I’ll be back tomorrow.’

Once outside Sarah’s room, though, she set off to see the doctor and told her that she’d had a conversation of sorts with her daughter.

‘Yes,’ Dr Lancaster said. ‘Sarah opened her eyes for the first time earlier today after we stopped the sedation and the first indications are good. We will be running more extensive tests over the next few days and so then we will know for certain if there is any damage to the brain.’

It was early May when Marion eventually wrote to Bill and Richard. By then the news about Sarah was at least hopeful. There was no sign of brain damage, her ribs had started to heal and so had the cut on her head. The area around her liver was far less inflamed and tender. The letters took a week to reach Bill and Richard on the South Coast. Bill had been there a fortnight and he had often wished he could have described it to Marion, for he’d never seen so many men, or so many nationalities, gathered together one place. Each day more and more troops were being offloaded from trains and marched down from the station to set up camp.

There were more military equipment and vehicles than he had ever seen in his life, too. Bren gun carriers, lorries, trucks and Jeeps filled fields, and camouflaged tanks lined many of the roads. Most coastal paths were sealed off altogether, while boats, barges and landing craft of one kind and
another were holed up in harbours all along the coastline.

He had not met up with Richard since he’d enlisted, but once he realised just how many soldiers were being sent to the South Coast he’d had a good idea that Richard would involved too, and he’d tracked him down in no time. They’d been delighted to see each other.

That day, as Bill was once again on his way to see Richard, he passed the messenger delivering the post, who gave him a letter from Marion, which he stuck in his pocket to read later.

When he got to Richard’s tent it was to find him sitting on his bunk reading the letter he had just received from his mother. He looked up as his father entered.

‘Terrible news about Sarah, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Haven’t you had word from Mom? I had a letter this morning.’

‘So did I,’ Bill said, withdrawing it from his pocket. ‘I didn’t take time to read it.’

‘I think you’d better read it now,’ Richard said, and with a sinking heart Bill tore the letter open. He read of the explosion that had killed nineteen workers and injured many more, including his beautiful daughter Sarah. He read of her many injuries and burns, and that she would in all likelihood be scarred for life.

Tears trickled down his cheeks as he crushed the letter in his hands and his eyes met his son’s
sorrowful ones as he said huskily, ‘This is all my fault and I will never forgive myself until my dying day.’

‘How do you work that out?’ Richard said.

‘If I hadn’t joined up then Sarah needn’t have gone into munitions in the first place,’ Bill said. ‘Actually, I wouldn’t have allowed her to work in a place like that.’

Richards gave a short laugh. ‘You’re talking about Sarah, the child you left behind. Sarah will be nineteen in the autumn and has a mind of her own.’

‘She would defy me? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I’m saying that she would have to do what she saw as right,’ Richard said firmly. ‘Just as you did. Even if you hadn’t joined up, you would probably have been out in the teeth of the raids like I was, doing what you could to help. Would you have tried to stop me, though you knew the work we did was essential?’

‘Well, no, I suppose not,’ Bill admitted. ‘But, Sarah—‘

‘Dad, Sarah chose to go into the munitions,’ Richard said. ‘No one forced her. She knew the work she did was dangerous, but in a war some risks have to be taken. And whether you like it or not, Dad, someone has to make the munitions for us. That being said, I am sick to the soul for what has happened to her.’

‘And so am I,’ Bill said. ‘But at least she’s alive.’

‘Yeah, we’ve got to hold on to that,’ Richard
said. ‘Especially after Tony. God, but I missed him after he died. I thought I would just miss his nuisance but I didn’t. I missed everything about him. He was a great kid.’

‘He was,’ Bill agreed sorrowfully. ‘And Sarah is another one, though, as you reminded me, she’s a kid no longer. Now she’s a young lady, who might find a scarred face a great deal to cope with.’

Richard was silent because he knew his father was right and he remembered how pretty Sarah had been.

‘I’ll write her a letter when I get back and try and think of some way to cheer her up,’ Bill said.

‘Dunno what you’re going to say then,’ Richard said, going to the entrance of the tent and looking out at the sea of tents. ‘You can tell her nothing about all this. People say we’re for overseas.’