Eddie shot her the oddest of looks across the table. There was something almost mischievous about it.
‘No, you haven’t been dreaming, Liz.’ He gestured again to the paper. ‘It says here that they flew down the Vistula yesterday, bombing all the bridges.’
‘It’s wicked,’ said Sadie, shaking her head. ‘Wicked. May God forgive that man Hitler.’
William MacMillan snarled at his wife. ‘What would you know about it, woman?’
Sadie drew herself up and spoke with simple dignity. ‘I know how I would feel if it was the Clyde.’
Liz gave her a silent cheer, and for a moment it was as if the Vistula was the river flowing past yards from the house.
Finding his wife - for once - refusing to be his victim, William MacMillan glared at his son. ‘Why in the name of God should we go to war for a bunch of bloody foreigners? Even the Prime Minister said that, didn’t he?
A faraway country of which we know little
. Why? Answer me that!’
There was a pause. Liz knew what the answer was. Because Britain and France had let Hitler get away with it for too long. Because the two great democracies had a moral duty to their weaker neighbours. Because they couldn’t simply stand by and watch as country after country fell under the jackboot of ruthless dictatorship. Because it was time to make a stand.
She knew that William MacMillan wouldn’t understand any of that. She left it to Eddie to give his father the only answer which he could accept.
‘Because if we don’t, it’ll be our turn next, that’s why.’
Later that morning Liz went up to Glasgow with her mother and Mrs Crawford to a special service at Glasgow Cathedral. On the journey up, Annie Crawford spoke briefly about her brother Alan, who had fallen at the Somme during the Great War.
‘He was only your age,’ she told Liz sadly. ‘Nineteen.’ And Liz thought about Eddie, Mario and Adam - and all the other boys she knew.
They passed from the midday sunshine of Castle Street into the cool dimness of the ancient building in the shadow of the Royal Infirmary.
Out of the darkness into the light
. But their entry into the cathedral had taken them in the opposite direction. It was the way the whole of Europe was going, teetering on the threshold of unimaginable disaster.
Liz listened attentively to the two clergymen who were conducting the service. They prayed for calm, that ‘we should hold fast to our principles and even in the cruelties and tragedies of war banish malice, bitterness and hatred’. And Liz, knowing now that it was completely hopeless, bowed her head and prayed for peace.
‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at Ten Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government an official note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’
The Prime Minister went on speaking, but Liz was having difficulty listening to his thin, reedy voice. The blood was thumping through her ears -
and that consequently this country is at war with Germany
.
War. They couldn’t really be going to war. Could they? She looked up, experiencing a moment of intense panic. From across the day room of one of the empty wards where those on duty this morning had gathered, Mario winked at her.
As if it understood that events had taken a dramatic turn, the weather had decided to play along. A thunderstorm was raging over the Clyde valley.
Neville Chamberlain was coming to the end of his speech, his voice growing more and more portentous.
‘Now, may God bless you all. May we defend the right. It is evil things that we shall be fighting against: brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution, and against them I am certain that the right will prevail!’
Someone turned off the wireless. There was absolute silence in the day room. Then Adam cleared his throat.
‘I love that bit about the evil thing
we
shall be fighting against,’ he murmured. ‘Nice of the Prime Minister to include us all. We wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out, would we now?’
There were a few nervous laughs and shifting of positions. A split second later there was a vivid flash of lightning and peal of thunder. Liz felt as if she’d jumped about two feet into the air. She wasn’t the only one.
‘What? Are the Germans here already?’ asked Mario. Everyone burst out laughing.
With Liz’s approval, Mario made the invitation to a meal a general one. Adam and Cordelia came. Jim and Naomi, too. Spotting the bust of Mussolini on the shelf next to the photograph of Mario’s mother as they went through the door which led to the upstairs flat, Adam turned to Aldo.
‘You’d better get rid of that, Mr Rossi.’
‘You think so?’ He looked surprised.
‘You can’t have anything connected with the enemy,’ said Cordelia. ‘It’s not done.’ She was very subdued.
‘But Italy’s not in the war,’ said Liz.
‘You forgot one word,’ said Mario. ‘Yet. Italy’s not in the war yet.’
‘Which side would you choose, Mario?’ asked Jim Barclay.
He lifted his shoulders in a gesture which suddenly struck Liz as being very Italian. She’d never thought of him as a foreigner before. Not really.
‘I hate fascism,’ he said passionately, ‘but how could I fight against my father’s country? Against my own relatives, perhaps? How could I?’
None of his friends were able to give him an answer.
Twenty-five
The passenger ship
Athenia
left the Clyde on Friday 1 September bound for Canada. After leaving Glasgow she doubled back to pick up more passengers at Belfast and Liverpool. There were almost fifteen hundred people on board as she steamed out into the Atlantic on the early evening of the following Sunday. They were two hundred miles west of the Hebrides when the German submarine spotted them.
The U-boat captain had received his orders to commence hostilities against Britain at lunchtime that day, one hour after the declaration of war. Eight hours after that had been made, he gave the order to fire four torpedoes at the blacked-out
Athenia
. Only one of them hit her. One was enough.
On Tuesday morning five hundred survivors were landed at Greenock. Many of them were sent straight up to Glasgow: the uninjured to a hotel in Sauchiehall Street and the casualties to the Western.
Liz arrived at the hospital in the late afternoon, meeting Cordelia at the door to Outpatients and Casualty.
‘This isn’t one of your usual days,’ observed Cordelia.
‘No, but Mr Murray let me off work when we heard the news about the
Athenia
survivors being brought here. He thought I might be needed.’
‘That’s Uncle Alasdair for you. He’s not a bad old stick.’
‘Are you and Adam cousins then?’ asked Liz as the two girls went into the building.
‘Very distant ones. I call Alasdair my uncle but we’re really second cousins - several times removed, I believe. The same as Adam and me. Oh!’
At first sight, the hospital looked to be in chaos, the corridors and waiting areas full of men, women and children. It was hard to tell what sort of condition they were in. Some were huddled silently in blankets, staring straight ahead of them with unfocused eyes. Others were keeping up a frantic chatter, as though they barely knew what they were saying.
Cordelia spotted Mario and Adam. They were accompanying a patient on a trolley towards one of the big lifts further along the corridor which gave access to the wards above.
The patient was a middle-aged woman. Liz saw with relief that she didn’t look too badly injured. Not wanting to delay her treatment in any way, she and Cordelia walked along beside her while they spoke to Mario and Adam. Adam was doing most of the pushing while Mario, carrying a bag of clothes and a brand-new set of hospital case-notes, was steering them round the corners and towards the lift.
Liz gave the woman a pat on the arm. Offering reassurance to anyone who seemed to need it was fast becoming second nature. The patient looked up at her. ‘I feel kinda dizzy.’
‘Och, that’s just the trolley,’ said Liz. ‘It takes.a lot of people that way. And you’re in good hands. This pair’ll look after you.’
‘From what I can see of them, they sure are a couple of handsome fellas.’
‘Don’t,’ pleaded Mario. ‘You’ll turn my head.’ He grinned at Liz and Cordelia. ‘What can we do for you, ladies?’
‘Tell us who to report to,’ said Cordelia. ‘We’re not going to be in the way, are we?’
‘Not a chance,’ said Adam. ‘It’s all hands to the pumps today. I was here already, and Mario came across the road to see what he could do, and we were immediately dragooned into helping with the portering. Matron’s about, and most of the senior sisters.’
His hands occupied with pushing the trolley, he gestured with his head towards the outpatient area. ‘See if you can find one of them. They’re along there somewhere. I’m sure they’ll have something for you to do.’ His tone of voice altered slightly, became brighter and more consciously cheerful. ‘Right then, here we are. A ride up in the lift, and you’ll be there.’
We’re all doing it, thought Liz, the reassuring voice and the professional smile. As long as it helped the patients - and it did seem to. The woman on the trolley was looking a lot happier.
She and Cordelia wished her good luck, promising to pop up to the ward later and see how she was getting on. Then they went looking for some marching orders. It was Sister MacLean they found first. She actually looked pleased to see them. That made a nice change.
‘You can help us sort out the relatives,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’ Liz and Cordelia scurried obediently behind her. Except in cases of direst emergency - and apparently even this didn’t qualify - running in the hospital corridors was a crime. Sister MacLean had drummed that into them.
‘It alarms the patients. A nurse must always convey an air of calmness and efficiency.’
However, Sister MacLean could walk pretty damn fast when the occasion demanded it. Almost out of puff, the girls only just managed not to cannon into her when she stopped abruptly in front of one of the outpatient clinics, a large room off the main waiting area. Two or three nurses were there already. They had their work cut out. The area was packed with people, most of them wearing a motley selection of garments.
‘They’re the survivors,’ said Sister MacLean. ‘Uninjured, but suffering from varying degrees of shock. Bring us through any you feel you can’t deal with,’ she said briskly, ‘but try a cup of sweet tea and a biscuit first. That can often do a surprising amount of good. And listen to them. Let them tell you their stories.’
‘Have we got relatives here too?’ Liz asked. ‘People who weren’t on board the ship?’
Sister nodded. ‘Yes - and they’re all up to high doh. It’s understandable enough - but they’re getting in our way while we’re trying to deal with the casualties. One of the medical students is making a list of names and injuries, but he’s not a quarter of the way through it yet. Everyone keeps interrupting him to ask about their own people. If you can get everybody settled - explain that they’ll get the information as soon as we have it - that would be a big help.’
‘Of course, Sister,’ said Cordelia.
Sister MacLean nodded and walked smartly away. Cordelia smiled nervously at Liz. Liz didn’t smile back. She was concentrating too hard on the way her heart was thumping. This was her first real test as a nurse. Would she be able to cope?
Cordelia seemed to be feeling the same. ‘This is it then, Liz,’ she murmured.
‘Tea, Miss Maclntyre,’ said Liz, sharper than she might have been because she was so nervous herself. ‘Let’s go and make the tea. Several gallons of it, I should think.’