The registrar was a little concerned about the canine guest, but as Conor had said, the dog was dressed for a wedding. At his master’s side as always, the wolfhound had a pink carnation tucked into his collar. All four boys sported similar blooms in their buttonholes and the same flowers made up the posy they’d brought along for their sister to carry. Liz wondered if the owner of the garden they had come out of had missed them yet.
The registrar was prevailed upon to allow Finn to remain and the brief ceremony commenced. When it was finished, Conor kissed his sister, shook Eddie warmly by the hand, winked at Liz and disappeared with his dog.
‘You’re all coming home with us,’ announced Dominic Gallagher. His older brothers seemed happy to let him do the talking.
‘Oh, no, Dom, I don’t think so,’ said Helen, her face soft with regret. ‘Ma and Da wouldn’t have me.’
‘Wouldn’t they now?’ asked her younger brother. He seemed much older than his fifteen years. Although too young to join the forces, he was doing his bit for the war effort by acting as a bicycle messenger boy for the ARP.
‘And will you have me going back and telling our mother that you’re not coming when she’s been baking solid since first light? Ever since Mr MacMillan came round to give us the news about the wedding?’
‘But they didn’t get wed in church,’ said Brendan Gallagher dolefully.
‘Sure, we’ll just gloss over that part of the story,’ said his wife with female practicality, bustling around attending to her visitors. ‘She’s a respectable married woman. That’s what matters. ‘Will you have some shortbread, Mr Buchanan?’
Eddie and Helen spent their brief honeymoon in Milngavie. Adam’s mother offered them the use of her spare room, insisting she had planned to be away for the next four days anyway. Liz suspected she had cleared out on purpose, leaving the new Mr and Mrs MacMillan to start married life on their own. Apart, that was, from Mrs Hunter, the resident cook-housekeeper. She was a somewhat formidable lady, but unlikely to interfere much with the house guests.
‘I don’t know what it is about cooks,’ mused Adam. ‘I’ve known a few who were quite ferocious.’
Liz was reminded of his words when she turned up at Milngavie on the day before the end of Eddie’s leave. Amelia Buchanan was coming home that night and she wanted to give the young couple and their friends a special meal as a send-off to Eddie. He had asked Liz to come along a bit early. It was Mrs Hunter who opened the door to her. She had a large knife in her hand and she was scowling.
‘A celebration meal. That’s what Mrs B wants. Without any proper ingredients?’
Liz blinked, taken aback to be the recipient of the complaint before the woman had even said hello to her.
‘The gentleman who sometimes helps me out with a few bits and pieces hasn’t turned up yet,’ moaned the cook. ‘I thought you might be him, but you’re not. Pity.’
Gentleman.
No doubt she meant her black-market supplier. She could have done with the poaching services of Conor and Finn.
‘If I don’t get them on time it’ll all go to pigs and whistles. Come in, then,’ she said irritably, beckoning Liz off the doorstep. ‘You’re letting cold air into the house.’
It was the end of October and the weather was beginning to turn chilly. The cook went on complaining, gesturing alarmingly with her knife towards the upper regions of the house.
‘Not that Love’s Young Dream notices what’s put in front of it. Honeymooner’s salad, that’s all that pair want. Lettuce alone.’
Hearing a footfall on the stairs, Liz looked up and saw Eddie. He must have caught the last comment. He was smiling broadly. The cook went off, still grumbling.
‘Into the dragon’s lair,’ murmured Eddie, running nimbly down the last few stairs to greet his sister. ‘How are you, Liz?’
‘All the better for seeing you. How’s Helen?’
‘I’ve persuaded her to take a nap.’
Liz opened her eyes wide. ‘What did you use? Thumbscrews?’
Eddie grinned. ‘Why don’t you and I go out for a good walk?’
They went up on to the moors, turning when they reached a decent height to look back towards Milngavie, and further afield to Clydebank and Glasgow in the distance.
They walked and talked for well over an hour, discussing it all. How could they win their parents round to the marriage? They didn’t come up with many answers to that one. Their grandfather had also taken it upon himself to inform Sadie of the wedding. Liz knew that Eddie was bitterly disappointed that his mother hadn’t turned up to see him marry Helen.
‘It was a Saturday,’ she pointed out. ‘Father would have had to know about it.’
He sighed. ‘I know, but don’t you sometimes wish that she would just stand up to him?’
‘I used to think that, Eddie.’ Liz’s eyes were fixed on a beautiful rowan tree in front of them. It was heavy with red berries. That was supposed to mean a hard winter ahead. ‘But it must be difficult. He’s bullied and badgered her for so many years. I think she’s lost any courage she ever had. And now we’re away from home it must be even worse.’
He gave her a plaintive look. ‘You feel guilty about that too?’
She asked how he was coping with life as an officer, albeit a junior one.
‘It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, Liz,’ he said. ‘A lot of the chaps have quite left-wing views.’
She suppressed a smile at that
chaps
. His accent was still very Scottish, but it had undergone a subtle shift. Liz was sure he was quite unaware of it.
‘I’m running a series of lectures,’ he went on, ‘on politics and the causes of the Great War - stuff like that.’
Liz retied her woollen scarf. It was beautiful up here, crisp and clear, but it was cold.
‘Do you think you’ll go in for teaching after the war?’
‘I’d like to,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘What greater goal can there be than the education of young minds?’
‘Health,’ she suggested. ‘Making everybody healthier. Educating them about how to do that.’
‘That’s your department,’ he said with a smile.
‘How do the senior officers react to your politics?’
He shot her a sideways glance. ‘Oh, they think I’m a bit of a rebel.’
‘Who’d have thought it?’
Eddie pulled her to him in a great bear hug. ‘Och, Liz, I’ve missed you! I’m so sorry about Mario,’ he added. ‘You won’t have heard anything of him, I suppose?’
‘Only that message I told you about. Nothing since then.’
Damn, there was a lump in her throat.
‘I’ll see if I can find anything out,’ he promised, ‘but there’s an awful lot of secrecy about some things. You’re cold,’ he said, looking down at her. ‘Let’s go back to the house and see if we can persuade the dragon to make us a hot drink. Do you think there’s any chance the army might send me somewhere nice and warm for the winter?’
They descended the path arm in arm.
‘Adam’s very fond of you, you know,’ remarked Eddie as they approached the front gate of the house.
‘I’m very fond of him,’ said Liz.
In the days and weeks following Eddie’s departure, Liz thought back often to that walk on the moors. He had talked about his plans for the future, once the war was over. What were her own? She missed Mario dreadfully and longed for his return. She worried constantly about his and his father’s well-being, and her dreams were full of him. And he had spoken of marriage.
Liz wasn’t sure about that. Did she want to get married? Would he still want to when he came back?
If
he came back... but she mustn’t let herself think like that.
One thing she knew. She couldn’t make her main aim in life waiting for him to come home, however much she ached for that to happen. Liz thought long and hard about it, and eventually came up with a decision.
She would apply to do her nursing training, starting the following autumn. She’d be twenty-one by then, legally an adult. Her father wouldn’t be able to stop her. Perhaps he wouldn’t have stopped her this year either, but there was no way Liz was going back to Queen Victoria Row to ask for his permission. No way on earth.
Adam was delighted when she told him of her decision. So was Cordelia. She’d decided to apply to start her training the following year too.
‘That’s great, MacMillan. Sister MacLean will have to address us as
Nurse
then, won’t she?’
‘I wouldn’t put money on it,’ said Liz with a smile.
The weather outside was atrocious, but no one was bothered by that. They were giving their full attention to the concert party the doctors and nurses were putting on for them in honour of it being New Year’s Day of 1941.
That friendly young Dr Buchanan had got himself up like a charlady. He was wearing a dress with a pinny on top, something stuffed down the front to give him a huge bosom, and a red and white spotted scarf tied round his head, knotted at the front. You wouldn’t have taken him for anything other than a man, a tall and broad-shouldered one at that - but it was a good laugh all the same.
They finished one song and then, having agreed the programme in advance beforehand, launched into the next. It was
My Wee Gas Mas
’, one of music hall star Dave Willis’ great hits.
Wi’ ma wee gas mask,
I’m working oot a plan,
Though all the kids imagine,
That I’m just a bogeyman...
Adam was giving it laldy. Waving his arms about, he encouraged all the patients to join in with the chorus.
Whenever there’s an air raid,
Listen for my cry,
An airyplane, an airyplane,
A way way up a ‘ky!
Going round the beds afterwards to wish all the patients individually a happy new year, Liz found one man wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
‘You’re a wee gem, hen,’ he told her. ‘You all are. It’s real good of you to do this for us. We know how hard you all work.’
Adam, back in his white coat, peered over her shoulder. ‘This one especially,’ he told the man, resting a hand briefly on Liz’s shoulder. ‘She works like a wee Trojan.’
The patient smiled at him and nodded towards the exit from the ward. ‘There’s some mistletoe over there, Doctor. Hanging above the doors.’ Then he winked at Liz.
‘How about it, Nurse MacMillan?’ Adam asked lightly.
Liz blushed and moved away.
Liz’s face was wreathed in smiles. She looked as if she was about to burst with happiness. ‘I got another message,’ she told Cordelia, breathless with the joy and excitement of it. She was telling her because she was the only person she could find, and she had to tell someone. Coming off duty in the early afternoon, she had popped her head into the nurses’ common room to see who was there.
‘A message?’
The words came spilling out. ‘This man bumped into me not long after I came on duty this morning. He was on his way out of Casualty. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.’ That wasn’t quite true. She had felt the stranger’s hand graze her body, an unpleasant reminder of Eric Mitchell. Now she understood why he had touched her.
Her hand trembling with excitement, Liz held out a piece of paper. ‘He must have put this in my pocket, under my apron.’
Cordelia bent her head and read the few words written on the scrap of paper.