Commendable. It wasn’t one of her mother’s words. Liz suspected she was repeating something Mrs Crawford had said. The unexpected rebellion on his wife’s part had rather taken the wind out of William MacMillan’s sails. He’d actually said something about waiting to see what Mrs Buchanan had to say. Liz couldn’t quite believe that her father hadn’t come down on her like a ton of bricks, locking her in her room on a diet of bread and water, perhaps. Hence the hysteria, she supposed. She might possibly be able to allow herself to hope.
In the meantime, two members of the Gallagher family were growing impatient. Helen was looking curious and Dominic put it into words.
‘Come on, Liz. I want to hear the end of the story too.’ Despite having grown up in an overwhelmingly male household, the youngest member of the Gallagher family had none of the usual embarrassment of the adolescent male in female company. Over the months since Liz had met Helen, he had adopted her as an extra big sister.
‘You be quiet, Master Gallagher,’ she said, pursuing her lips. She picked up the bandage roll and went to work on him. ‘You’re supposed to be unconscious, or suffering from a poison gas attack or something. Any more cheek out of you and I’ll bandage you up like Boris Karloff in
The Mummy.
’
‘Do what you like,’ said Dominic cheerfully. ‘Only for Pete’s sake tell us the rest of the story. Helen’s going to explode of curiosity otherwise.’
Liz, feigning exasperation, let out a long and theatrical sigh. ‘Well, if you absolutely insist...’
‘We do, we do,’ chorused brother and sister in unison. Liz laughed. She loved all this banter.
‘Well ... his name’s Mario Rossi, his father owns the café near the Western and he’s a medical student and a friend of Adam Buchanan. What else do you want to know?’
Helen winked at her brother. ‘Well, was that fortune-teller we went to right? Is he tall, dark and handsome?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Liz reluctantly. ‘Although not as tall as Adam.’
‘Adam, is it? My, my, we are a fast worker.’
Liz gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Adam Buchanan is very nice - a really friendly chap. He’s being so helpful to me over this VAD thing.’
Her friend pounced on the implicit admission. ‘Ah-hah! So the other one was something more than nice. Tell us, does he have liquid brown eyes?’
‘He does, as a matter of fact.’ Extremely beautiful eyes, she thought, and a fantastic smile. It sort of flashed, dazzlingly white against his darker skin. And he had beautiful hands, too, his fingers slim but strong. Funny how she’d managed to notice all that although she’d spent only a few minutes in his company: not very long at all, actually.
Shortly after Mario Rossi’s arrival at the cafe, Adam Buchanan had murmured something apologetic about time getting on. If Liz was worried about being home late, perhaps they should think of making a move?
Dominic, helpfully angling his elbow so that Liz could bandage around it, fluttered his eyes and tried for the soulful look. ‘And did he look at you with longing in his beautiful brown eyes?’
‘No, he did not,’ said Liz crossly, pausing in her bandaging. ‘He was friendly and jolly like Adam and he hopes that if I do become a VAD we’ll meet up from time to time at the Infirmary. I’ll probably volunteer to work there at the weekends if I get into the Detachment. That’s all. I think we could be good friends. Just good friends.’
‘Ah-hah!’ said Helen. ‘But that’s what Mrs Simpson said about the Prince of Wales. And look what happened to them.’
‘I shall treat that remark with the contempt it deserves,’ said Liz grandly. ‘Now, let’s get on with bandaging this extremely obstreperous casualty. He seems to have sustained some nerve damage from a poison gas attack. Anyway,’ she went on, applying herself anew to the task, ‘nothing can come of it. His family’s Italian, so he’s bound to be a Cath—’
She had stopped herself just in time. No she hadn’t. Both Dominic and Helen were looking at her with pursed lips and pained expressions.
‘Stop hiding your horns and your tail, Dom,’ said Helen in her driest tones. ‘We’ll need to bandage them too.’
‘Och, Helen!’ Liz frowned at her friend, annoyed that she might have offended her, especially after the bad feeling there had been between her and Eddie at the Empire Exhibition over the religious question. ‘You know I don’t think like that. But you also know what my father’s like. That’s all I meant. He’d kill me if I took a Catholic boy home.’
Janet Brown sauntered across the hall to them, throwing a laughing comment back over her shoulder.
‘Lizzie MacMillan!’ she boomed. ‘That grandfather of yours is an old devil!’
‘Why, what’s he done?’ Liz peered over Janet’s shoulder. Her grandfather was on the opposite side of the hall, looking rather dashing with a bandage around his head. He waved to her and she waved back. Helen gave him a wave too. Peter MacMillan was fond of young people and shared none of his son’s sectarian beliefs, and the two friends sometimes met at his house - especially when they wanted to get away from the noisy Gallagher household to have a more intimate
tête-à-tête.
‘Asked me if I was winching,’ laughed Janet. ‘Said he could fill the gap if I was between boyfriends! I told him I was spoken for,’ she said smugly, stretching out her arm so that she could admire her engagement ring. Her fiancé was a boy who was nearing the end of his apprenticeship in the sewing-machine factory.
‘Mind you,’ she said, dragging her eyes away from the tiny stone. ‘At least he comes along and gives you his support, Liz. Unlike your brother. Off starting the revolution somewhere, is he?’
‘Aye,’ said Liz, ‘something like that’ She had tentatively asked Eddie if he would reconsider his refusal to come along to the exercise and he had told her with a toss of his dark head that he would have nothing to do with the march towards war. Honestly, she was getting tired of his attitude.
Turning back to Dominic, her mouth open to ask Helen to hand her the scissors, she observed something very interesting. Helen Gallagher was blushing. That was the second time a mention of Eddie’s name had provoked that particular reaction.
What had she just said? That her father would kill her if she took a Catholic boy home? Reverse the genders and the same would hold true for Eddie and Helen. Liz wondered if that was something else she needed to worry about. She also wondered if Helen’s apparent feelings towards Eddie were reciprocated.
Somebody was tapping a tumbler with a piece of cutlery.
‘If I could have your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen?’ It was Mrs Galbraith, up on the stage at the end of the hall. As the hubbub subsided, she began explaining how the next part of the morning’s programme was to be arranged.
‘So that we can all get the maximum benefit from the exercise, I’d like the helpers to complete what they’re doing and then form themselves into groups of six and we’ll go round the casualties.’
She paused and smiled. ‘To whom we all say a big thank you. After I’ve given you the say-so, please make your way to the canteen - through the door at the other end of the hall - where the ladies of the new Women’s Voluntary Service have kindly agreed to serve soup, tea, coffee and home baking.’
An appreciative murmur ran through the assembled company. For most of them it was their first contact with the WVS. Newly formed, it was another response to the growing crisis in Europe and the imminent possibility of war.
The first-aiders toured the room. Bandages and splints were examined, mistakes pointed out and sometimes rectified by demonstration.
‘Bear in mind, of course,’ said Mrs Galbraith, who was leading Helen and Liz’s group, ‘that in the real thing the injured would very likely be confused, perhaps suffering temporary memory loss because of the shock. That also would be part of our job - to coax them out of it.’
‘You can coax me any time,’ said the next patient, a shameless twinkle in his piercing blue eyes.
‘Behave yourself, Grandad,’ murmured Liz.
Mrs Galbraith was ready for him. ‘Please also bear in mind that real casualties wouldn’t be half so cheeky as this lot.’
‘Don’t put money on it, lass,’ said Peter MacMillan. She moved on to the next patient, once more doing her best to look stern, but clearly delighted that Peter MacMillan had addressed her as
lass.
The next casualties were a man and a woman lying next to each other on camp beds. Her leg had been put in a splint and he, like Peter MacMillan, had a bandage around his forehead. The bandage looked startlingly white against his thick dark hair. The two of them were chatting quietly to each other, oblivious to the approach of the stretcher party.
Many of the volunteer casualties were talking among themselves. What was different about this couple was the concentration they were giving each other.
As Liz watched, the man lifted one hand and stroked a strand of the woman’s chestnut-coloured hair behind her ear. The smile she gave him in response was very tender. They’re in love, thought Liz. It was like something you saw at the pictures. And they had to be nearly thirty years old...
Mrs Galbraith coughed. The pair on the camp beds turned their faces up to the group, expressions of intelligent interest and readiness to be helpful on their faces.
Mrs Galbraith went through the imagined injuries and the way they had been dealt with, then smiled at the couple.
‘Right then, once you’ve had the bandages removed, please do have something to eat. And thank you once again very much for coming, Mr and Mrs... ?’
‘Baxter,’ said the woman, smiling in response. ‘And you’re very welcome.’ She looked at her husband. ‘Aren’t they, Robbie?’
‘Oh, good grief,’ said Liz. ‘Whose brilliant idea was it to spread this over a whole day? We’re going to be dead on our feet by the end of it and it’s not even dinner-time yet.’
It had been decided that the volunteers should take their lunch breaks in two batches before returning for an afternoon session. Liz and Helen weren’t due to be off duty until one o’clock, and it was only twelve now.
‘What?’
Liz turned to Helen. She had made the oddest noise - something like a mouse’s squeak. She was staring across the hall, watching the young man who had just appeared.
‘Look what the cat dragged in.’
It was Eddie. He was making straight for them, a ferocious scowl on his pale and handsome face.
‘Well?’ he demanded as he reached the two girls. ‘Where do you want me then?’
The question seemed to be addressed to Helen, so Liz let her answer it.
‘Want you?’ she asked, looking Eddie up and down. ‘What would I want you for?’ She was giving him back look for look, her arms, apparently casually, behind her back. It was a pity for her that Liz could see that she was clenching her fists.
‘A volunteer casualty, of course,’ growled Eddie. ‘I thought you needed all the practice you could get.’ He shrugged out of his jacket and looked around for somewhere to put it. Helen hadn’t moved. Eddie looked at her from under his dark brows and sighed heavily.
‘I can’t stay long, I’ve got studying to do this afternoon. You can have me till one o’clock.’
Helen shifted position at last, lifting her eyebrows, a roll of bandages and a pair of scissors. ‘We
are
honoured.’
Before he had time to retaliate she gave him his orders. ‘Put your jacket over the back of that chair over there and sit down on this one.’
Eddie glowered at her. ‘I never knew that Hitler had Irish blood in him. You and he are obviously related. Adolf one of the traditional family names, is it?’
‘Maybe I should bandage your mouth,’ Helen said levelly as she approached him. ‘It could do with a rest.’
Liz stifled a laugh. Not very successfully. As one, they both turned and glared at her. She went off to find Janet Brown. Somehow she felt it would be a good idea to leave Helen and Eddie to it.