When the Lights Come on Again (33 page)

‘Miss MacMillan?’ Cordelia’s voice was very tentative.

‘Yes?’ Liz said shortly, pouring a jug of water into the big gas tea urn which sat in one corner of the small outpatients department kitchen. That would do for the first batch, but they would be as well filling the two big kettles which went on to the gas stove too. Was there some reason why that hadn’t occurred to the Honourable Miss Maclntyre?

‘You’ll have to show me how to do it.’

‘Show you how to do what?’ asked Liz, still engaged in filling the urn.

‘Make the tea.’

‘What?’ Wondering if she’d heard her right, Liz spun round. Cordelia was standing looking at her. Her normally elegant demeanour seemed to have deserted her. She looked like a diffident child who’d been caught doing something naughty.

‘Och, Liz, I don’t know how to! I’ve never done it in my entire life. I can’t even boil water, let alone an egg. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

Liz stared at her, incredulous. How in the name of the wee man could anyone not know how to make tea?

‘Absolutely pathetic,’ she agreed, but her voice had softened. The other girl was close to tears. Her reaction seemed a bit extreme, but Liz could see that it was real enough. She was genuinely distressed.

Liz pointed to the big kettle. ‘Take that to the sink and fill it.’

Cordelia perked up. Any minute now she’d start taking notes.

‘Hot or cold tap?’ she asked.

Ye gods. She really didn’t know the first thing about it.

‘The cold one,’ said Liz with exaggerated patience. ‘Then bring it over here and I’ll show you how to light the gas and we’ll take it from there. A master class in the art of tea-making. First lesson. Always take the pot to the kettle, never the other way round...’

Not all of the
Athenia
survivors wanted to talk. Some of them clearly felt they had to. There was a compulsion to go over the nightmare. As afternoon gave way to evening, Liz began to realize that many of them thought they owed it to those who hadn’t made it. Their stories had to be told too.

The
Athenia
should have been taking them away from the danger zone, and there was bitter anger at how an unarmed passenger ship had been attacked a matter of hours after the declaration of war. In some people the rage was white-hot in its intensity.

‘Surely they could see that we were harmless, Nurse! How could they do that to their fellow human beings - men, women and children? I don’t understand. Have these Germans no humanity?’

Many of the survivors had spent hours in the water before they’d been rescued. They’d been landed at Greenock early in the morning - cold, hungry and exhausted. The women of the town had rallied round magnificently, supplying them with clothes out of their own wardrobes.

The survivors were in huge distress over the loss of their fellow passengers. Some of them, alive when they went into the sea, had simply lost the unequal struggle with the cold waters of the North Atlantic.

An older man, shaking with emotion, told Liz of seeing children drowning all around him before he himself had been rescued by the
Southern Cross
, one of the ships which had gone full steam ahead to the rescue of the
Athenia
.

It was bloody awful, Nurse,’ he told Liz, his voice low and impassioned. ‘Bloody awful. Why should a useless old man like me have survived when those kids didn’t?’

She had no answer to give him, only a comforting hand on his shoulder. All she could do for him was listen to his story. That was hard. Not as hard as the telling.

‘They were at the start of their lives,’ he told Liz in an anguished whisper. ‘And there was nothing we could do to save them. Nothing. We tried to get them to hang on to anything that was floating, but some of them just didn’t make it.’ He stared ahead, his eyes seeing it all again, reliving the horror. He reminded Liz of her grandfather. He had the same piercing blue eyes.

‘God bless the crew of the
Southern Cross
,’ he said fiercely. ‘God bless them. But there was this woman,’ he went on, his voice sinking to a tortured whisper. ‘A young woman. She’d been rescued, taken out of the sea. It was so cold in the water, Nurse. So bitterly cold. She’d been saved, like me-’

He broke off, and let out a sob.

‘It’s all right. Take your time. You’re fine.’ Liz repeated the soothing words until he was able to go on.

‘She stood up,’ he said. ‘She stood up and screamed and then she threw herself over the side. Deliberately threw herself back into the sea. Do you know what she was screaming, Nurse?’

Liz shook her head. He was rigid with horror and pain, his voice cracking.

‘She was screaming,
My baby!
’

God forgive the Germans, thought Liz. Because I can’t.

‘Liz?’ Adam’s voice was very gentle. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, but she didn’t turn around to face him.

‘We were worried about you,’ came another voice. Cordelia Maclntyre. That was all she needed.

It was several hours later and the immediate panic was over. The casualties had been dealt with, the uninjured had been persuaded to board the bus which had been hired to take them to the hotel in Sauchiehall Street where the other survivors were staying, and Liz had found a quiet corner in which to gather her thoughts before she got the energy up to go home.

‘Go away,’ she told them both. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Och, aye,’ Adam said. He came further into the room and stood in front of her. Cordelia followed him and stood looking at Liz with worried eyes.

‘I can see you’re fine,’ Adam said with heavy irony. ‘That’s why you’ve got your arms wrapped about yourself and that’s why you’re shaking like a leaf, I suppose. You need some hot sweet tea - pronto! Doctor’s orders, my girl.’

‘I d-don’t w-want any b-bloody t-tea.’ She lifted a hand to point at Cordelia. That was a mistake. Her whole arm was trembling. ‘She and I have served up enough of it tonight to launch a battleship.’ That was a mistake too. She could have chosen a better metaphor. She didn’t want to think about ships. Not tonight. Not for a long time to come.

‘Coffee, then,’ said Adam, his voice brisk. ‘Up the road. In fact, we were already planning that. Mario’s gone on ahead to warn his father that we’re all about to descend on him.’

Liz saw Cordelia touch his arm. ‘I’ll go on ahead, Adam. The others are probably there by now. I’ll let them know that the two of you are on your way.’

To Liz’s considerable surprise, on her way out of the room Cordelia reached out and patted her arm too.

‘You’ll be all right, Liz. Adam’ll take care of you. He’s good at that.’

The comforting words. The reassuring touch. The professional smile.

‘Isn’t this where we came in, Liz? Last time it was me who couldn’t face any more tea. We’ve had this conversation before. Remember?’

She looked up at him out of tear-filled eyes, hugging herself even more tightly.

‘Please leave me alone, Adam. I have to sort this out by myself.’

He snorted and uttered one short but eloquent word.

‘That’s better,’ he said, smiling at the surprise evident on her face. ‘Now come and sit down, you wee daftie.’

She allowed him to lead her to the deep tiled windowsill. It was curtainless, blackout screens fixed directly against the window itself.

‘You don’t have to sort things out by yourself when you’ve got friends to help you,’ he said as they sat down next to each other. ‘Don’t you know that, MacMillan?’ His voice was very gentle.

‘I know that I should be getting home.’

He shook his head. ‘You don’t have to. Matron says that any of the volunteers who live some distance away can sleep here tonight. They can fit you in at the nurses’ home. Or Cordelia says you can go home with her.’ He gave her one more alternative. ‘Or I could drive you home. Whenever you’re ready.’

‘My parents will be worrying about me.’

Adam shook his head again. ‘No they won’t. Your brother Eddie came past - oh, hours ago—‘ He yawned, and put a hasty hand over his mouth. ‘Excuse me. He thought you’d be here and that you might not get away at the usual time, so your folks know exactly where you are. Matron was there when he called, apparently, and she told him you might be staying over.’

Liz was looking very doubtful. Adam lifted her hand from her lap and on to the cool tiles of the windowsill, his own on top of it.

‘Want to talk about it? I’m a doctor, you know. Well – almost. If I ever manage to pass my finals.’

‘You’ll pass. You’ll make a great doctor.’

‘You’ll make a great nurse.’

‘I don’t think I’ll make any kind of a nurse.’ It came out in a rush of breath.

‘How do you work that one out?’

‘Just look at me,’ she wailed. ‘Look at the state I’m in!’

She began to cry, the painful lump in her throat dissolving into hot tears. Adam didn’t move any closer to her, but he kept a tight hold of her hand and he said all the right things: the things Liz had been saying to people all evening.

‘You’re all right now. Just take your time. You’re fine.’

She poured it all out to him. She’d wanted to be a nurse all her life. It had been the dream which had kept her going, the dream she’d refused to give up on, but when it came to the crunch she wasn’t up to it. Look at the way she was reacting now. Her first genuine emergency, and she’d gone completely to pieces.

He paid her the compliment of listening carefully and just as carefully considering what she had said.

‘Think about it, Liz!’ He gave her hand a shake. ‘You’re upset now, and that’s only natural, butyou didn’t behave like this with the survivors, did you? You coped. And I’m sure - no, I know - that you did them a lot of good. You’re being too hard on yourself. You’ve heard some heartbreaking stories tonight’ His mouth tightened. ‘We all have. But the important thing is that you listened to the people who needed to talk without letting them see how it was upsetting you. You kept it inside until it was safe to let it out.’

‘But look at me now!’

He gave her hand another encouraging squeeze. ‘But that’s what I mean. You’ve held it all in till now - so that you can let it out when you’re among friends. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all.’

She turned to him then, her eyes huge.

‘Isn’t there?’ She was like a little child seeking comfort and reassurance.

‘No, in fact, if you weren’t upset by everything you’ve heard today, you wouldn’t make a very good nurse. Don’t you know that all nurses and doctors feel like you do to begin with?’

‘They do?’

‘Definitely. I bet even Ming the Merciless has had her moments.’

‘Now you are telling fibs.’ Liz tried a smile.

Adam smiled back. ‘She does resort to a wee brandy now and again, you know.’

‘No!’ Liz was incredulous.

‘Well-known fact,’ he said briefly. ‘She keeps a bottle in her room. Fondly imagines the rest of us know nothing about it.’ He released her hand and stood up. ‘Come on, MacMillan, let’s get up the road. I don’t know about you, but I’m bloody starving.’

She shivered as they stepped out on to the pavement

‘Cold?’

‘No. It’s the blackout. I hate it already.’ How well did she know this street? Like the back of her hand. But in this total darkness it was like stepping out into the abyss. ‘I can’t see anything. It all feels different.’