Authors: Maggie Ford
Watching Matthew’s slow progress, Jenny knew it wasn’t glowing for him either. He had at last been told the whole truth about Susan by his well-meaning parents: how she’d walked out of the house while heavily pregnant, not a word of warning, not a word of thanks for all they’d done for her; how she had treated them when they’d found where she was living, was still living (they told him the address); the affair she’d had, still ongoing, with her landlady’s husband, Geoffrey Crawley; Mrs Crawley finally leaving him; how distant and rude Susan had been to them when they had called on her to persuade her to go back home with them; how they had found her and this Crawley fellow living together, but how without a qualm she had let them take her daughter – Matthew’s daughter – away from her, the child in a terrible neglected state, as though she had no care or love for Matilda at all; how not once from that day to this had Susan asked after her. (They brought photos of Matilda, now a bonny three-year-old, but they hadn’t brought her in person, for fear of infection.)
He had listened to it all without comment, but afterwards Jenny had found him abstracted and unresponsive, his expression frozen, his lips a tight white line in his narrow, set face. Jenny had wondered if now had been the best time to tell him everything. Of course he would have had to know at some time, would have known soon enough once he went home. The drug Streptomycin was now helping to save sufferers from the old resort to surgery. Matthew had escaped the trauma of the knife, and was declared fit to go home and attend checkups at a local hospital. But how would he face going home, knowing what he did? Not only from his parents but from Susan herself. She had not once visited him or written to him, but she did that Christmas.
It was just after Christmas when Jenny came upon him asleep on his bed one cold afternoon. The windows as ever stayed open to admit draughts of vital fresh air against which patients must huddle under blankets and wool cardigans.
For a moment Jenny allowed herself the luxury, or perhaps the imposition, of watching him asleep, an intrusion upon his privacy she knew, but he looked so peaceful that she needed to take more than a brief glance at him. It was then she noted that his sleep wasn’t as peaceful as it first appeared. Nothing specific, just something about the expression, even with his eyes closed, caught her attention and made her frown.
Her gaze travelled to the hand lying limp above the coverlet where she saw that his fingers, that had been curled about a sheet of notepaper, had loosened their hold. Without touching the letter she bent forward, conscious of the cruelty of her intrusion into an unsuspecting person’s privacy, to read what she could see of it, a few words only. But they were enough. In fact one word had been enough: divorce. The childish handwriting was that of Susan.
Compressing her lips to stem the seething anger that rose up in her, she could only hurry away, knowing there was nothing she could do to help him. She could not know, not until he told her, and he would not do that. He would keep his pain to himself as he’d learned to do all through his three hard years of suffering while Susan, the treacherous little bitch, had been having a good time with some other man.
*
All this time, Jenny felt instinctively that her presence had been a bolster for him; she sensed that he clung to her as a friend who would hold his hand should he need it. Now he was leaving. Who would he have to hold his hand against the onslaught of Susan’s infidelity? Not his mother, who meant well but who found it impossible to unbend. His father? Perhaps. What he needed was someone who loved him as she loved him. Yet what right had she to presume that her silent love, which would always be there for him although he wasn’t aware of it, was what he needed?
On the day of his leaving, he took her hand, grinned up into her face and said, in the same way as he had once told her she would be one of the nicer of his memories, ‘I’ll miss you, Jenny. Keep in touch.’
He had needed her throughout his time here, sometimes desperately. But love? There were all kinds of love. Maybe he did feel something towards her, something deeper than just friendship, and perhaps such a relationship could grow into something more meaningful given time, but it would never be what people called being in love. And for all Susan had done to him, Jenny knew he still loved her with a desperation that pulled him apart.
So she smiled at him as he got into his parents’ car, and said with cheery encouragement, ‘Of course I’ll keep in touch.’
Mrs Ward smiled her wintry smile at her and nodded her gratitude for all the nursing she had given Matthew, and Jenny, returning the acknowledgement, knew the woman was grateful, although her nature was unable to allow her to express how she really felt.
Mr Ward, coming round the car to take Jenny’s hand, was more open and forthcoming. ‘He wrote, you know, to tell us all about you. You mean more to him than I think even he realises. You’ve been a tower of strength to him and I don’t think he’d have got this far, little as it is, but for you. I wish …’ He paused and his eyes studied hers. ‘I wish you and he …’
Jenny knew what he was trying to say but felt it right that he shouldn’t be urged to further it. She broke in quickly. ‘Matthew and I are very good friends, Mr Ward. Have always been that. He needs friends.’
‘Yes, of course.’ The relief that he hadn’t had to say what was on his mind was apparent, that and a depth of understanding between them in the significant way he added before going back round to the driver’s side of the car, ‘Don’t lose touch with us, Jenny.’
Watching them go, Matthew appearing wretched and somehow defeated, looking neither right nor left, not even waving to her, she thought about his father’s parting words. ‘Don’t lose touch.’ An ordinary saying, but expressed so earnestly that she knew it carried a totally different meaning to the normally light-hearted one. Yet her heart did not rise with hope. It was up to Matthew, not his father, how far their friendship progressed, and Matthew would never let go of Susan. His love for her would forever haunt him, fill his heart, and Jenny Ross would have no chance to squeeze into whatever minute portion of his heart might be left free.
Matthew’s going was a signal for her to leave the QAs. She had no more use for them, nor they for her. But it was impossible to see herself as leaving the profession. The mere idea of going back into office work after all she had experienced made her feel like a deflated balloon. She would stay a nurse to the end of her working life. She’d become a civilian nurse. Ignoring the vision of the years stretching on, while she, unmarried, dedicated herself to moving steadily up the ladder one day to become a matron, she applied for a post of nursing sister at the London Chest Hospital, and got it. That she was back near to Matthew’s home and would still see him from time to time, she chose to ignore. She had come back for her mother’s sake and nothing else. Except for her mother she might possibly have applied for a place elsewhere in any of the distant counties, pastures new, Matthew a closed book. This she told herself, almost convincing herself that he had nothing at all to do with her return home.
But it was good to be home again, with her mother cooking for her in the evenings, seeing the pleasure and contentment in her face. It was good to spend her days off with her, pick up where she’d left off. But that part of it wasn’t quite true. The threads of that old life before the war had been well and truly cut. The friends she had known had gone their own ways: Matthew’s sister Louise had married and gone to Canada; Jean Summerfield’s people were still living wherever they’d gone to (she could no longer recall where it was) and Jean no doubt was married by now; Freddy and Eileen Perry, with their two children, lived in Romford, Essex – she had their address but probably wouldn’t bother writing to them; Dennis Cox, poor Dennis, was dead … she felt sad for a young life lost, so many young lives lost. But for the war she might have ended up marrying Dennis, settled down to being the wife of a successful solicitor, perhaps with one or two children, attending social events. But there
had
been a war and it
had
altered all their lives, their once carefree, happy lives. Now this was her life and she must settle for that.
‘It’s nice knowing I don’t have to be sent anywhere and everywhere,’ she told her mother who, at last convinced that her daughter would be home almost as regularly as if she had gone back to office work, was happily setting the table for this, their first evening meal together for some considerable time. ‘Though all the friends I used to know around here are all gone now.’
‘There’s still the church, dear. You might find someone there.’
‘I think I’ve got a bit old for that, Mumsy.’
Her mother shrugged as they sat themselves down to the table. ‘Well, I expect you’ll soon make new ones, dear. Perhaps from the hospital. And there’s still young Matthew Ward across the road. Now he’s home again, I expect he’ll be attending there for check-ups. It’s the nearest place, easy for him to get to. You’ll probably see him now and again.’
Blithely she prattled on this new tack, how ill he was looking, as she began on the stew she’d prepared. ‘To think how he once was, poor dear.’
Jenny too remembered.
She had an old photo somewhere around the house of them all, her old friends, all of them happy and unsuspecting of what lay ahead, snapped in the act of fits of laughter. She remembered it being taken by Louise, then a girl of sixteen. Matthew had made a quip in his usual mocking manner: ‘Look at her, worst photographer this side of Lower Wallop and west of Katmandu!’ Coming unexpectedly, it had them all falling about so that the snap was slightly blurred. It still lay in her dressing-table drawer. He’d been so debonair then, and now looked so thin and ill and haunted.
‘His mother looks worried lately,’ her mother was saying, chewing on a piece of the precious still-rationed scrag end of lamb. ‘For him I suppose, him and his so-called wife. I think I said something about it in one of my letters to you, that they were more or less separated? She really let him down while he was away, poor boy, a prisoner of the Japanese, and nothing he could do about her so far away. His mother looks after their little girl now, you know. That’s a comfort to him at least.’
Jenny nodded obligingly as she ate. She had never divulged her secret feelings to her mother, to anyone. She vowed to find an excuse to pop across the road at some time or other and see how he was.
It was with some surprise one bright Sunday afternoon to be welcomed in by his mother on her first tentative visit. Much of what she had always considered the woman’s frigid mien melted at the sight of her.
‘Of course, my dear, come in,’ she said readily. And then, her voice dropping to a whisper, ‘He certainly needs someone else’s company than just ours. It’s hard for him, going nowhere, doing so little. He sits in the garden doing nothing. It was suggested he go to Southend sanatorium for a while. Sea air. Good for his chest. But he won’t go. It’s a good job we have the park nearby, the air’s fresher here than most places in London. Mr Ward thought we should move to the country for his health, but Matthew got himself into such a state about it, we’ve dropped the idea. He’s in the garden.’
All this she relayed as she conducted Jenny along the bright, neat hallway and through the spotless kitchen to where Matthew was sitting in a deckchair on a narrow paved patio which the sun at its summer height could just about touch for a couple of hours.
His head was bent over a photograph but as he looked up at her emerging from the house with his mother he quickly slipped it out of sight between himself and the deckchair fabric, but not before Jenny glimpsed the glossy black and white image of a young woman. That and his reaction to her coming upon him could only mean it was of his wife.
Jenny pretended she hadn’t noticed. ‘Hope you don’t mind me popping in. I just wanted to see how you were.’
He was trying to smile. Watching the effort it was obvious he’d been tormented by the now-hidden photo. Now he must look at this visitor as though nothing had happened, and Jenny felt the weight of guilt at her intrusion, wishing she hadn’t so blithely taken it into her head to come over here. His mother having gone back into the house, leaving them to it, she could hardly depart the second she had arrived. Best to brazen it out and make an exit as soon as decently possible.
‘See you’re taking advantage of the sunshine,’ she said brightly. He nodded and she gazed about the long, narrow garden for some inspiration. ‘This garden’s bigger than ours, but then, your house is larger too. These are nice houses. I see your dad’s already taken out the old air-raid shelter. I think ours will stay there permanently if we’re not careful, though I suppose in time we’ll get a man to take it out for us and grass it over.’
She was talking rubbish, anything to fill the threatening silence.
He was saying nothing. She wondered if he was even listening. What was he thinking? It was hard to tell and she was beginning to feel a virtual idiot standing here talking nonsense about gardens and air-raid shelters.
She stopped, regarding him. What had she come here for? To cheer him up? To give him a pep talk? To pry? All she wanted to do now was say, ‘Nice to see you again, Matthew – goodbye,’ but she merely stood looking at him, desperately probing her mind for something to say. What else? Glad you are looking better? But he wasn’t looking better. He was looking … not ill; he had filled out a little from that first time she’d seen him brought into the hospital. No, not exactly ill, but drawn, pulled down, despondency oozing from him because he saw no hope of any future for himself. And didn’t she know why? Of course she did, and prayed to be able to put it right for him, without becoming an interfering nuisance. He wouldn’t welcome her interference. His pain was private and it was obvious he intended to keep it that way.
So it took her by storm when he said, as though to himself, ‘It’s her photo. I was looking at her photo.’
She could have said, ‘Were you?’ and nearly did, but that would have been crass, false innocence. She had seen him, and he knew she had. She could have said, ‘Whose photo?’ but she knew whose it was, and he knew that of her as well. So she stood silent.