Tuppence To Spend (55 page)

‘Not many. A place like this don’t change much. Pity we can’t say the same about the town.’ He glanced past her at the buildings of Gosport across the creek, and Portsmouth on the far side of the harbour. ‘Taken a fair battering round here – but you’d know about that, if you were here in forty-one.’

‘Yes,’ Thursday agreed, thinking again of the Blitz. ‘Yes, I do.’

She climbed on to the jetty and walked slowly along the marble-smooth paved way that had been trodden by so many thousands of feet over the past two centuries. Haslar Hospital, so difficult to reach by land from Portsmouth, had been ideally situated for bringing wounded sailors from ships in the harbour and the Solent. Standing on the very edge of a low cliff, now retained by a steeply sloping sea wall, it looked straight out across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, yet here on the other side it was sheltered by the neck of the harbour and its own twisting, narrow creek. The phrase ‘Up the creek without a paddle’, she’d been
told when she first came here, had actually originated in Haslar Lake, as it was called, and probably came from the days when sailors brought here had had only a small chance of surviving.

Treatment was better now, especially with the wonderful new drug, penicillin, which had just been brought in – but there had still been plenty of deaths. All the same, Thursday felt proud as she passed under the low, vaulted roof of the arcade and remembered how she and the other new VADs had stood here and cheered so loudly that Madam had come to see what all the noise was about, and reminded them that they were in a hospital. And even prouder when she recalled those dark days after Dunkirk when the wounded men had poured in, coming by boat and being trollied up the tramlines just as in the old days, and coming into this arcade to be sent to the wards …

So many memories, she thought, pausing at the other side of the arcade to gaze across the wide quadrangle at the avenue of trees leading to the little church, and at the gracious Georgian façades of the buildings that stood at each side. So many friends, so many patients. I wonder where they all are now. I wonder if there are any still here …

‘Tilford!’

Thursday jumped. The voice was unmistakable and, when she turned, the woman striding towards her seemed to have stepped straight out of her thoughts. The tall, elegant figure emphasised by the belt clipped round its narrow waist, the thin, aristocratic face, the bright brown eyes and, most of all, that crisp, clear voice.

‘Madam!’

‘So you haven’t quite forgotten us, then.’ Miss Make-peace, the Red Cross Commandant at Haslar, who had been in charge of all VADs there since the war began, surveyed her just as she had done on that cold, snowy afternoon when Thursday and Patsy Martin had first arrived. It was a
cool, assessing look, as if she were sizing you up and considering your fitness for the job, and once again Thursday found herself holding her breath and hoping she would not be found wanting. Then that familiar warm twinkle came into the bright eyes, the firm lips twitched into a smile, and the smooth brown head nodded as if some test had been passed. ‘It’s good to see you again, Tilford.’

‘It’s good to see you too, Madam.’ Thursday glanced around the big open space. ‘It’s good to be back.’

Miss Makepeace gave another sharp nod, as if that were only to be expected. Where else would one want to be, but at Haslar? But Thursday felt a small twinge of guilt as she spoke, for her words weren’t entirely true. It
was
good to be back, in a way, but the past two years had been filled with so many new sights and sounds and experiences, that coming back to where it had all begun seemed to be something of an anti-climax. There was nothing new to discover here in Haslar. She knew it all so well. And she was so much older now than when she had first arrived – so much more experienced, so much wiser, so much sadder …

Worst of all, Dr Connor Kirkpatrick wasn’t here – and Haslar without Connor was an empty place.

Madam was watching her, those bright brown eyes as keen as ever, missing nothing. ‘You won’t have much time for nostalgia, Tilford. There’s plenty of work on its way, as you may have guessed. You’ll find some of your old friends here, I dare say, so there’ll be lots of news to catch up on, but the first priority is to find out where you’ll be working. Sister Tutor will decide that, but you can have a meal first and get settled in. You’re in your old dormitory – I expect you can remember the way.’ She turned, as if Thursday were already dismissed from her mind, then turned back and gave her that warm, well-remembered smile. ‘I’ve had excellent reports of your work in Egypt. Of all my girls, in fact. Well done – I’m proud of you.’

Thursday blinked back the sudden tears. ‘Thank you, Madam.’ She hefted her kitbag on to her shoulder and began to climb the familiar stairs to the dormitory. Nothing had changed here either, she thought, treading the old brown linoleum between the brass strips on the edge of each step. She wondered who would be in the dorm with her. Old friends, Madam said, but the last she’d heard of Patsy, she was in Scotland. And Jeanie Brown had been posted abroad at the same time as Thursday, only two or three months after Patsy’s wedding to Roy Greenaway in June 1941, and someone had told Thursday that they thought she’d been killed. And what about Helen Stanway, who had shown them all around the hospital on their first day, tall, bony Ellen Bridges from Dorset, Anne Davis from Kent, and Susan Morrison from near Guildford? Where were they all now? Would she find any of them waiting for her in the dormitory?

And of course, there was Vera Hapgood, she thought with a wry smile. The least popular girl at Haslar, sallow-faced and brooding, with a sarcastic and bitter tongue. What had happened to
her
in the past two years? Would she be back at Haslar?

The only ones Thursday knew about were her great friend Elsie Jackson, from Portsmouth, and Louisa Wetherby – Louisa who was ‘posh’ and had been to boarding school in Great Malvern, not far from Thursday’s own home in Worcester. She, Elsie and Thursday had been together in Alexandria, working side by side in the same wards, and had become good friends despite the difference in their backgrounds. We’ve been through too much together not to be, Thursday thought. It doesn’t make any difference when you’re emptying bedpans together. And we’ve all learned a lot since we started here as VADs together, way back in 1940.

The sense of having stepped back into the past was even stronger as she came to the door of the dormitory. How
many times had she climbed those stairs, worn out after a day on the wards or a night on the town? How many times had she run out, still fastening her cap, terrified of being late for duty?
‘Navy time is five minutes early, nurse …’
She could hear Sister Burton’s voice now, reproving any girl who was even a few seconds late, and she remembered the jokes about the ship sailing without you if you weren’t on time. And Haslar
was
a ship, in Navy terms – a ship where every man, however badly wounded, was on active service, and every nurse’s task was to get the patients fit to return to sea. In order to maintain the atmosphere and discipline of a real ship, the terminology was the same: ‘deck’ for floor, ‘heads’ for lavatories, ‘quarterdeck’ for the long, tree-lined avenue leading to the little church of St Luke.

The familiarity of it all flooded back and, as she pushed open the door, Thursday almost expected to see exactly what she had seen on that first January day and so often afterwards – the rows of beds with their neat counterpanes, each with a blue anchor embroidered on its centre, and the girls either sitting or lying on them or clustered around the stove in the middle of the long room, drinking cocoa. Elsie Jackson, half asleep as usual. Patsy, darning her stockings. Jeanie knitting a navy-blue balaclava or socks. Ellen Bridges reading
Woman’s Own
, Louisa Wetherby writing a letter home, Vera Hapgood sitting apart from them all, as if she were better in some way. And Anne and Susan playing draughts or snakes and ladders, looking up to suggest a game of Ludo with some of the others … The picture was so clear in her mind that it came as a shock to see the beds replaced by two-tier iron bunks, and an even bigger shock to see the different faces turned towards her. The strange, unknown faces.

Thursday stopped abruptly, feeling almost as if she’d been thrown into a different world. The faces blurred before her, swam a little and then settled again into sharp focus. She was able to see their expressions – enquiring,
friendly, smiling. And then, with a sense of joyful relief, to recognise one or two.

‘Elsie, you bad penny! And
Patsy
– I didn’t think you’d be here! Oh, and Ellen and Susan too – oh, it’s lovely to see you all again.’ She found herself enveloped in hugs, returning them with tears running down her cheeks. ‘Look what you’re doing, you’re making me cry! Oh, it’s so
good
to be with you, you horrors.’

‘You’re making us cry too,’ Patsy said, grinning through her own tears. She’d hardly changed at all, Thursday thought, still as small and bright-faced, her dark curls as exuberant as ever. ‘Just shows how awful it is to think we’re all back here where we started.’ She turned and held Thursday’s hand high in the air, as if showing her off to the rest of the girls in the long room. ‘This is Thursday Tilford. She was here with us in 1940 and 1941, all through the Blitz. Not a bad nurse, all things considered, and she makes a smashing cup of cocoa.’

The girls looked at her with varying expressions. Some of them must be quite new, Thursday decided, for they looked no older than twenty or twenty-one, the age at which VADs were taken on. Others were her own age or older, and clearly at least as experienced as she. Thursday wondered where they had been serving and what stories they could tell. She smiled around at them, and they grinned back and waved or lifted their cocoa mugs in salute. It’s all right, she thought with relief. We’ll be friends. And then, catching the dark, sardonic eye of Vera Hapgood – well, most of us will.

For the time being, however, it was her own old friends she was interested in. Patsy had saved her the bunk above her own – ‘you being so much taller than me’ – and Elsie’s was next to it. The three of them sat down together and gazed at each other. Two years – it wasn’t so very long, really. You wouldn’t expect many changes in that time. And yet, even though Patsy seemed much the same, there
were
changes – a splay of tiny lines at the corners of her eyes, and around her lips, lines that made her look as if more than two years had passed. And when you studied her more closely you could see a haunted expression in her eyes. Thursday, staring at her, felt a sudden stab of fear.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘Where’ve you been these past two years? I seem to have lost touch. Is everything all right, Pats? Is – is Roy all right?’

Patsy nodded. ‘He was, last time I heard. But there don’t seem to be any letters getting through now, and you’ve seen what’s happening – all the troops coming south, the ships crowding into the Channel. People say it’s the Second Front – the invasion. And Roy’s ship …’ To Thursday’s dismay, she saw tears gather in her friend’s eyes. ‘I don’t know if I can take much more of all this worry,’ she said defeatedly. ‘He’s been sunk twice – caught in an engine-room fire, nearly drowned. I mean, for God’s sake, he’s not a
cat
, with nine lives. He’s just an ordinary sailor. How lucky can anyone be?’

‘I don’t know,’ Thursday said. She thought of the day they’d met Roy Greenaway and the other two sick-berth attendants they’d gone around with – Doug Brighton and Tony West. Three breezy young sailors, looking forward to getting back to sea as soon as the VADs were sufficiently trained to replace them on the wards. Three cheeky, bantering young men who had cycled over Pneumonia Bridge into Gosport and taken them to tea at the Swiss Cafe´ or gone dancing at Lee and Grange. Three young men with their whole lives to look forward to – and now Tony was dead and the other two still facing peril. ‘I just don’t know, Pats. I can’t say he’ll be all right, because none of us knows what’s going to happen. But we can think about him – pray, if you like. They say it helps.’

‘Do they?’ Patsy said tonelessly. ‘It didn’t help Tony, or all those other young chaps who got killed, did it? They’re just as dead as if nobody’d given them a thought.’

They were silent for a moment, then Elsie spoke in her old, brisk, matter-of-fact tone. ‘Come on, Pats. No use looking on the black side. We’re here to do a job of work and we’re not going to be much use if we sit about grizzling.’

Patsy looked at her and then grinned. She reached out and took Thursday’s hand. ‘It’s all right, Thurs. I’m not the only one with a bloke out there. And at least we’ve had our share of happiness. And now we three are back here together, and there’s a lot of hard work coming. It’s the best thing, hard work – especially our sort.’ She straightened her shoulders and went on determinedly, ‘It’s going to be good, us being here together again. It’s going to be really good, Thursday.’

‘Yes.’ Thursday squeezed her hand and then got up and went to the window. She looked out over the hospital grounds, at the wall that ran alongside the top of the sloping sea wall. She could just see the green bulk of the Isle of Wight across the Solent. The sea was crowded with ships, some at anchor, some steaming for the harbour entrance. She gazed at them and thought of Patsy’s words and of the sailor who had brought her across in the pinnace.

Something big was about to happen. And when something big happened in wartime, it always meant casualties.

There would be plenty of hard work to do in the coming weeks and, as she thought of what lay ahead, Thursday braced her shoulders and lifted her chin. Whatever had happened to them since they had last been here, she and the other VADs would be ready for it.

And I’m looking forward to it too, she thought. Not to the wounded men, but to helping them get better. And to working here with Elsie and Patsy, and whoever else is here too.

Patsy was right. It was going to be good.