Authors: Annie Groves
‘Well, that’s true enough. I’ve got two lads both in the navy and a daughter married into the Senior Service as well, and there’s never a day when I don’t wake up worrying about them. I’m Mrs Jessop, by the way.’
‘Sally. Sally Walker.’
‘Doctor not got a wife of his own then?’
‘He’s a widower,’ Sally felt bound to tell her.
‘Yes, I’d heard summat of the sort. House got bombed and killed her and their kiddies, so I’d heard.’
‘I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind,’ Sally told her politely. ‘Not with me working for the doctor, you understand.’
To her relief Mrs Jessop gave her an approving smile. ‘Quite right and proper. I shouldn’t pay any mind to what Daisy Cartwright has to say, if I were you. Anyone can see how well looked after them little lads of yours are. I knew the minute I set eyes on them that they had a good mother. Never did have an ounce of sense in her head, Daisy didn’t. If she had she’d have never married that lump of a husband of hers. She was at school
with my daughter, and she was allus causing a fuss about summat and nothing then. Tell you what, if you feel like you want a bit of company of an evening, feel free to come and give me a knock.’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ Sally thanked her, ‘but with the doctor having evening surgery some nights, and then the boys, I can’t really go out in the evening. Maybe you could come to me? I’d have to ask the doctor first, though, if it’s all right.’
She didn’t really want to encourage a woman whom she suspected was probably only cultivating an acquaintanceship with her so that she could have a good gossip, but neither did Sally want to offend a new neighbour.
‘Here’s your wages for this week, Sally …’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’
‘Everything’s all right, is it? You’re happy with the arrangements we’ve made?’
‘Yes, thank you, Doctor.’ What else could she say? People would think she’d lost her wits if she complained about having a job they’d give their eyeteeth for. But it was thanks to the doctor that Daisy had been able to have a go at her this morning about Tommy and Harry. He’d had no right saying to her what he had at the hospital.
‘Doctor! I hear that word so often I’m beginning to forget that I have a name. Doctor … even Tommy calls me “his doctor”. I don’t suppose I could persuade you to call me Alex occasionally, could I?’
Sally couldn’t conceal her shock. ‘I couldn’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It wouldn’t be right, not with me working for you.’
Her heart was thumping all over the place and she could hardly breathe. What a thing to say to her – her calling him ‘Alex’, just like they were close. A funny little pain speared into her heart.
‘So you could do it if you weren’t working for me then?’
‘No! No … you’re a doctor, and I’m … it wouldn’t be proper.’ She felt angry now as well as in a panic, afraid somehow, although she couldn’t explain to herself exactly what she was afraid of, only that it had something to do with the doctor and the way he made her feel.
She heard him give a small sigh. ‘Very well, Mrs Walker and Doctor we shall have to continue to be. However, I hope you won’t be too offended if I forget myself sometimes and call you Sally.’
Like he had done this morning, Sally wondered, remembering how he had called down the stairs to her, ‘Sally, I can’t find my collars and I’m due at the hospital in half an hour for a meeting.’
‘They’re in the tallboy, second drawer down,’ she had called back, half irritably, for all the world as though he had been Ronnie. ‘I put them there myself yesterday.’ She’d had one foot on the bottom stair ready to go up and get the collar for him like any harassed wife, thinking it would be easier to get it herself rather than risk having her husband make a mess of her neat tidy drawers, before she had remembered what her position in the household really was.
She hadn’t had time to question her reaction then, but later on it had made her feel really angry and uncomfortable with herself, just like she was now, to realise how easily she had slipped into a reaction that belonged to the intimacy of marriage and not the more formal behaviour expected between an employer and an employee. She’d told herself that she’d make sure she watched herself in future to see that it didn’t happen again.
‘It isn’t for me to be offended, Doctor. Not with you paying me wages.’
‘The fact that you work for me does not give me the right to abuse my position, nor would I want it to. However, I can’t help wishing …’ He stopped and looked out of the window. He looked tired, his shoulders slightly bowed.
Something she didn’t want to admit she was feeling stirred in Sally’s heart.
Still looking out of the window, he told her brusquely, ‘I noticed that you gave me an egg for breakfast again this morning. That’s the fourth this week, well over my ration.’
‘I get extra on my ration because of the boys, but Harry won’t always eat his so I thought you might as well have it.’
‘I don’t want you and the boys going without on my account. Children need their protein, that’s why the Government gives them the extra egg allowance. If Harry won’t eat his eggs as they are then we’ll have to come up with some other way of getting them into him. Protein is important for growing boys.’
There was no reason for her to feel offended and that funny feeling inside her chest certainly didn’t mean she was hurt because he was criticising her and rejecting her kindness in giving him the spare and precious egg, of course it wasn’t.
‘Yes, Doctor. Will that be all?’
‘Yes, yes … You can go, thank you … Mrs Walker.’
‘What’s up? You look like you’ve lost ten bob and found a sixpence,’ Johnny joked, as he joined Sam for a cup of tea in the Naafi.
Her heart lurched into her ribs. Her eyes still felt sore from all the tears she had cried last night and her head was aching. Johnny reached across the table to take hold of her hand. Immediately she tensed back from him so that he couldn’t.
‘Sam, what is it?’ he demanded, his smile giving way to a small frown. ‘What’s wrong? And don’t tell me “nothing” because I can see that there is.’
He was too quick for her, Sam acknowledged. She had planned to wait until they were alone before she talked to him about what Lynsey had said to her.
‘There is … but well, I’d prefer to wait until we’re on our own. It isn’t something I really want to talk about here.’
‘It sounds serious.’
‘Yes.’ Sam’s voice was muffled as she bent her head to avoid having to look at him. ‘It is.’ If she’d known that loving him was going to hurt so much would she have been able to stop herself from
falling for him? Sam wished desperately that her answer to that could be a firm ‘yes’. She wanted to be brave and strong, but it wasn’t easy. Not when more than anything else she wanted to be held tight in Johnny’s arms and to stay there, knowing that she was loved.
‘Serious, is it? Not changed your mind about loving me, have you?’ he was asking her whimsically.
His words pierced her heart. How could he be like this with her if it was true that he loved someone else?
‘No, I haven’t changed my mind about that,’ she told him, ‘only …’
‘Only what? Come on, Sam, out with it. I’m not getting up from this table until you tell me what’s going on.’
Sam could feel herself starting to tremble. She would have to tell him now. She took a deep breath and then fixed her gaze on Johnny’s as though it was her only lifeline to safety out of the darkness of some unimaginably frightening place.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were engaged to Molly Brookes before she married Frank?’
‘Who told you about that?’
One look at his face told her that her lifeline had just been cut, plunging her into despair and misery. She could see his expression changing, the warmth leaving his eyes as though a shutter had come down between them.
‘That’s why you didn’t want me to meet your sister, isn’t it?’ she plunged on doggedly. ‘Because
you knew she’d say something about Molly and how much you … about how you feel about her?’
Johnny looked at her in silence. His face had lost its colour, and his jaw was clenched. Because he was angry, or because he was shocked? Whatever he felt should not concern her now. It was Molly Brookes to whom he had given the keys to his heart and the right to care about what he felt, not her.
Sam pushed her chair back and got up, turning on her heel, almost running towards the door, half blinded by her own tears. She couldn’t bear any more of this and she certainly couldn’t bear to stay here and listen to Johnny telling her that he still loved Molly.
She could hear the sound of his boots on the concrete floor as Johnny came after her. He caught up with her just as she reached the door, leaning on it so that she couldn’t open it and escape.
‘All right, so I was engaged to Molly, but I don’t see how that affects us.’
‘How can you say that?’ gasped Sam. ‘Of course it affects us. You should have told me, and if you really loved me like you said you did then you
would
have told me. You’d have wanted to tell me because you’d have wanted to make sure that I heard it from you. You’d have wanted to protect me from being hurt by hearing it from someone else. But you don’t care about me being hurt, because you don’t love me. You still love her, Molly Brookes.’
This wasn’t how she had meant to do this. She
had planned to be calm and dignified, not betraying with every word how much she loved him and how badly he had hurt her.
‘Where the hell did you get hold of a crazy idea like that?’
‘It isn’t a crazy idea, it’s the truth. Everything you’ve said to me about loving me was a lie.’
Someone was pushing on the door from the outside, wanting to get in. As Johnny stepped back from it Sam seized her chance and slipped through it ignoring his, ‘Sam wait …’ as she cravenly ran to take refuge in the one place where she knew he would not try to follow her – the ladies’ lavatory.
Hazel was right to have warned her not to give her heart to Johnny, Sam could see that now. She had been such a fool. But she wasn’t going to be a fool any more. She was going to be strong and she was going to show everyone, including Johnny, that broken heart or not she was still going to do her bit for the country and the war effort.
‘Will you just look at that,’ Doris Brookes laughed, drawing Sally’s attention to the game of football going on in the garden between the doctor and Tommy. ‘The doctor’s a good man, and him and your Tommy get on together like a house on fire. Stands to reason when you think about it, what with him having lost his own kiddies and Tommy having lost his dad.’
Doris swung round in surprise when Sally banged down the pan she had been scrubbing clean.
‘What’s that look for?’ Doris asked.
‘Me and the boys are only living here on account of me working for the doctor and I don’t want anyone getting any other ideas. I’ve already had Daisy Cartwright saying that she reckons that the doctor wants me under his eye because he doesn’t think I’m a fit mother.’
‘Give over, Sally. That’s nonsense and you know it,’ Doris told her bracingly.
Sally’s hands shook slightly as she scrubbed
even harder at the now clean pan. ‘There’s nothing more important to me than my two lads, Doris. I know I should have been there when Tommy took sick…’ Her voice broke and she stopped scrubbing at the pan. ‘I’ll never forgive meself for not being there that night, Doris. Never.’
‘Well, you should because it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if you had been there, and anyone who tries to say any different will have me to answer to, so don’t you go getting yourself upset over Daisy’s spite. And spite is just what it is. Everyone know what a good mother you are.’
Sally gave Doris a grateful look before determinedly changing the subject.
‘How’s Molly and the new baby?’
‘Oh, he’s coming on a treat, Sally. Ever such a good baby, he is,’ Doris told her, more than happy to talk about her new grandson. ‘Oh, and Molly said to tell you that she’s having a few in on Boxing Day and that you and the boys are welcome to come along. She knows you’ll be having your Christmas dinners here, of course, because you’ve got that goose ordered from her auntie at the farm.’
‘The doctor asked me if I wouldn’t mind working over Christmas, seeing as he’s on duty with that emergency team up at the hospital he’s joined up with as a volunteer. Seeing as it’s voluntary work he’s doing, I didn’t feel I could say no.’
‘He’ll pay you a bit extra for working over, I expect,’ Doris offered comfortably, ‘and with
Tommy and Harry to bring up on your own you’ll need it.’
‘He did offer but I said no, he pays me enough as it is,’ Sally told her. ‘I’m not having anyone accusing me of taking advantage, especially when he’s doing volunteering.’
‘You’re a good lass, Sally, I’ve always said so, but don’t you go being so good that you lose out on summat that would bring you something good yourself,’ Doris warned her cryptically.
‘Hazel’s been looking for you, Sam,’ May called through the open sitting-room door. ‘She said it was important.’
Sam nodded. She had thought she had already endured the worst day of her life with Mouse’s suicide, but she had been wrong. Driving the major out to the bomb site where Johnny was working, knowing that it was over between them, had torn at her heart with all the devastating agony of a shrapnel blast tearing into vulnerable flesh to leave wounds that would never heal. Only her pride and her training had kept her from breaking down.
‘Are you all right, Sam?’
‘Yes, I’m just a bit tired, that’s all,’ she fibbed, miserably aware that May was bound to know the real reason she looked and felt so low. ‘I’d better go and find Hazel.’
‘She’s with the captain at the moment.’
‘I’ll cut along to the hall and wait for her there then.’
Hazel probably wanted to see her to make sure that she was all right, Sam decided miserably as she made her way back down the corridor to the hallway.
The door to the captain’s office was closed so she had no idea whether or not Hazel was still with the captain.
The girl on the reception desk was giving her a sympathetic look. ‘Sorry to hear your bad news, Grey.’
Sam looked away. Did everyone know what a fool she had been over Johnny?
‘The call came through whilst I was on duty. Corp’s in with the captain now. She’s putting a brave face on it but it’s easy to see how she feels. Chin up, though, is what I say. Where there’s life there’s hope, and if your brother did manage to bale out…’
Her
brother?
The girl on the desk was offering her sympathy because something had happened to Russell, not because of Johnny?
Before she could ask her anything the door to the captain’s office opened and Hazel came out. It was immediately obvious that she had been crying, and the moment she saw Sam her eyes filled with fresh tears.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Sam asked her anxiously, pushing her misery over Johnny to one side.
‘Your father telephoned. I’d just come back in – and so I was able to speak to him. Russell’s squadron were sent on a mission to bomb Turin
– you know he’s flying one of the Lancasters now and they’ve been using them for this mission. He was full of it in his last letter, boasting about how good the planes were.’ Her voice shook, and she had to stop speaking for a few seconds to collect herself. ‘Something went wrong, so it seems – they don’t know what happened yet, only that Russell’s plane is missing and there hasn’t been any word. He didn’t send out a Mayday or anything, but according to your dad they’d run into heavy fog coming back, and the last time anyone saw his plane was as they left Turin.’
‘Oh, no.’ Tears filled Sam’s eyes as she and Hazel hugged one another tightly.
‘We mustn’t write him off yet,’ Sam told Hazel chokily. ‘It may not be as bad as it sounds. Russell isn’t the sort to give up without a fight and, like they say, no news is good news. Chances are he’s put the plane down somewhere …’
Hazel gave her a wan smile and Sam knew that neither of them believed there was really any hope of that happening. Hazel released her and stepped back from her. ‘I spoke to your mum as well as your dad. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that your parents were kind enough to let me know. I felt as though they already think of me as part of the family even though Russell and I aren’t—’ She had to break off as her emotions overwhelmed her but Sam knew exactly what she was trying to say.
Her own thoughts and emotions were in
complete turmoil. She had just discovered that the man she loved did not love her back as she had believed, and in the most misery-inducing and wretched of ways, and now she had to come to terms with not only that but the fact that her brother’s plane was missing. All she could do now was pray that somehow, by some miracle, Russell might have survived, even if that meant that he had been captured by the enemy, but she knew how unlikely that was. And she knew that Hazel knew that too. How cruel life could be, letting you think you had found love and happiness, and then snatching it away, leaving you to live on with your broken dreams and might-have-beens.
‘Your dad said he’d telephone just as soon as he got any news.’
Sam nodded, too miserable to trust herself to speak.
Sally wasn’t sure just what had woken her. In the darkness of her bedroom some maternal sixth sense warned her that, despite the silence, something had disturbed her sleep. Harry still sometimes needed his nappy changing during the night, and as she pushed back the bedclothes she shivered, trying to make sure that she got her feet into her slippers, as she reached for her dressing gown. Even with her slippers on she could feel the cold coming off the linoleum floor as she picked up her torch and switched it on.
The first thing she saw when she opened her bedroom door was the light shining beneath the
door to the boys’ bedroom. Her heart thumped. Tommy couldn’t reach any light switches yet, although she had caught him pushing a chair over the floor and then climbing up on it in an attempt to do so.
Quickly she opened the bedroom door, her eyes widening at what she saw. The doctor was seated in the too-small-for-him rocking chair from which she had nursed both her sons as babies, Tommy fast asleep on his knee. When he saw her the doctor raised his free arm, placing one warning finger against his lips to signify that Tommy was sleeping. Somewhere underneath the maternal anxiety rushing through her Sally was aware of another emotion, a mixture of anger, resentment and an aching sense of sadness and loss for both her own husband, who would never hold his sons like this, and the doctor himself for the pain his own loss must cause him.
‘What’s going on?’ Sally whispered. Dr Ross shook his head again and stood up carefully, placing Tommy back in his own bed before coming to join her on the landing.
‘Tommy came downstairs to tell me that he couldn’t get to sleep because of a monster underneath his bed.’
‘You should have woken me. I’m his mother.’ What she really meant was, why had her son gone to him instead of coming to her? But she was too upset and angry to feel comfortable asking such a question.
‘Tommy seemed to think that it was the kind of monster that would have frightened you as well
and he didn’t want that. He thinks that now his father’s gone it’s up to him to be the man of the family.’
‘No,’ Sally denied immediately, ‘he can’t think that. He’s only three.’
‘Children grow up fast in wartime, no matter how hard we try to protect them from its realities, and he’s a very bright lad, very sharp and quick.’
‘I’m sorry he disturbed you. I’ll have a talk with him and make sure it doesn’t happen again … He must have gone all the way down those stairs in the dark.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘He could have fallen.’
‘He’s got more sense than you give him credit for: he counted the stairs, so he told me.’
‘He
counted
them? But I’ve only just started teaching him his numbers. He should have come in to me and he would have done if…’
‘If what?’
‘I know it must be hard to bear what … what you’ve lost, but
my
sons can’t … I don’t want you thinking that just because you’ve given me a job that means you can take over my boys … like … like they was a couple of stray mongrel pups. They aren’t, and they aren’t neglected either, no matter what you might be planning to try to prove. You might think you’re doing them a favour, acting all charitable towards them like that vicar and his wife did with you, but you’re not and I won’t have it. They’re my sons and that’s the way they’re going to stay. I’m really sorry about what happened to
your own boys. I can see that you must have been a good father to them. But my two have got a dad of their own, even if he is dead, and they don’t need you or anyone else trying to take his place.’
There it was out! The fear that had been growing inside her ever since Daisy had had her say and destroyed her peace of mind with her hint that the doctor might be planning to take the boys from her.
‘You can sack me if you want…’
‘If I
want?
You don’t know the first thing about what I
want
, Sally, because if you did …’ He started to walk past her and then stopped and turned round. ‘And for your information, no child, not even my own, if I should have any more, and certainly not yours, could ever take the place of the sons I’ve lost. And if you were the mother you keep on telling me you are, you’d know that for yourself. There isn’t a day or a moment of a day when I don’t mourn them and blame myself for what they and I have lost, but neither my guilt nor my grief can bring them back. All I can do is try to make sure that I do everything I can to protect those children who are alive, and whose lives for one reason or another are in my hands.’
He stepped through the door he had wrenched open whilst he was talking to her and closed it so firmly after him that Sally felt the draught blowing coldly against her skin, making her shiver.
His words had brought her up sharply, shocking her, and now that he had gone she was discovering that they were stuck into her conscience like
so many painful little darts, to prick at her heart. Try as she might she couldn’t dislodge them. She looked at the closed door. She had hurt him, she knew, but couldn’t he see that she had to keep a safe distance between them and that it wouldn’t be right if she did not?
Sally was still thinking about the doctor’s outburst half an hour later, lying in her bed, unable to sleep.
He was wrong when he said she didn’t have any idea of what he wanted. She had a very good idea indeed, because it was what she wanted as well. She closed her eyes and tried to steady her thudding heartbeat. However had it come to this, that she, a newly widowed woman, a mother, with more than enough problems in her life already, was lying awake at night sick with longing for a man she had no right to want? It made her go cold with dread to think of the scandal there would be if anyone ever got to know how she felt.
Even if she wasn’t newly widowed, even if there were no other barriers between them, there was the gulf in their social stations in life. She had known it was the wrong thing to do when she had agreed to come and work for him, but foolishly she had not been able to help herself. What she was thinking … feeling … wanting was wrong – worse than wrong, it was a betrayal of Ronnie and their marriage. Poor Ronnie, who had had his life taken from him in the most cruel of ways through fighting for his country. How would he
feel if he knew that she, his wife, the mother of his children, was lying awake in her bed at night longing to be in the arms of another man? She had tried so hard to fight it, and then, when that that failed, to deny what was happening to her. She had tried to turn her unwanted feelings from desire to angry resentment and dislike, and she had congratulated herself when she had thought she had succeeded. But then just when she had begun to think she was safe, something would happen, a look, a smile, her awareness of the scent of male skin, a dozen tiny different things, insignificant in themselves but with such an intense effect on her senses that they ripped through the foolish belief that she had conquered what she felt like tracer bullets tearing into a night sky. She should never have come here … never. If she had any sense … But she didn’t, did she? And even if she did go, where would she go to now, so close to Christmas? What kind of mother would she be if she took the boys from the comfort of this house, just because she was afraid of her feelings?