She moved through to the small kitchen and opened a food cupboard.
‘Yee-uch! You’ll need to throw most of this away. Shall I bring some stuff in with me tomorrow morning? What will you need? Coffee, definitely. Will you trust me to buy the right sort? All depends what I can get, of course. Mario?’
Liz went to the kitchen door. He was standing where she had left him, in the middle of the living room.
‘Come here,’ he said. ‘And stop talking about coffee.’
She hesitated, but when he held out his arms, she went to him. His arms locked around her and she looked shyly up at him. He was older. There was a greater maturity in his features. They were as attractive as they’d always been.
‘Do you remember,’ she whispered, ‘when we said goodbye at the police station?’
His eyes were very tender. ‘I remember, Elisabetta, I remember.’
And because she remembered too, and because she could hear the pain in his voice, she returned his kiss with all the passion she could muster. As the arms which held her tightened, she felt his body begin to respond to hers. Was this something else he wanted to take up where he’d left off?
His grip loosened, enough to allow them to look at each other. He didn’t say anything, but she could read the question in his face. They had both, after all, been here before: the time that wordless request had first been made - and answered.
‘Mario...’
He said nothing. He was waiting for her. She laid a hand flat on his chest.
‘Mario ...’ she said. ‘I’m sorry... Could we take this slowly?’
It was a terrible thing to ask a man who’d been deprived for so long ... but Mario’s arms further slackened their hold.
‘It’s been a long time,’ he said at last.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘It’s been a long time.’
There was a pause.
‘You must be tired, Liz,’ he said gently. ‘Too much emotion for one day.’ He dropped his arms completely and took a step back. ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk you back down the road to the nurses’ home.’
The next afternoon, Mario tactfully waited outside on the pavement while Liz went in to fetch Hope. Her mother, however, came out to say hello. Like her grandmother, Hope was shy at first, but within half an hour she was calling him Uncle Mario.
‘You haven’t lost your touch with the ladies, then,’ Liz said teasingly as they walked hand in hand round the gardens. It was a beautiful day, the autumn sun dappling through the trees as they strolled along the paths.
‘I certainly hope not,’ he said lightly. ‘Looks like Hope’s made a friend.’
Scampering on in front of them, the little girl was patting a golden Labrador puppy being taken for a walk by a middle-aged couple. Liz and Mario stood back and watched.
‘We’ll have to be getting on,’ said the woman eventually, smiling down at Hope. ‘We’ll maybe see you another day. Away back to your mummy and daddy, now.’
Mario held out a hand to Hope. ‘I suppose we do look like a family,’ he said. ‘We’re all the same colouring. Any children we might have will probably look a bit like Hope. Apart from the blue eyes, of course,’ he mused.
Startled, Liz stared at him. Watching Hope with the playful little dog, she’d been thinking about Conor and Finn.
Children we might have?
‘Right,’ she said briskly the next morning. ‘Coffee and tea, milk, sugar and one of my mother’s fruit loaves. I told her what we were planning to do today, and she thought we would probably need more sustenance than a packet of biscuits.’
She glanced at Mario, who was leaning against the cooker watching her empty her bag out on to the small kitchen table. ‘You made a hit there too,’ Liz said with a smile. ‘As well as with Hope.’
‘So the grandmother and the grandchild like me. I hope the aunt does too.’
Liz’s smile grew brighter. ‘Don’t lean back too far on that cooker,’ she instructed. ‘It’s filthy. I’ll tackle that this morning as well. Once I’ve soaked the curtains in the bath.’
‘Liz,’ he said. ‘Shut up. And come here.’
He held out his arms for her, but she shook her head. ‘We’ve got work to do. Where do you want to start?’
He dropped his arms, his expression grave. ‘By talking to you,’he said quietly.
‘I thought you just told me to shut up.’
‘About cookers and curtains and cleaning, yes. You and I have more important things to discuss.’
She pushed the milk bottle she’d brought in with her away from the edge of the table. It might fall if she left it there. She felt, rather than saw, that Mario had pushed himself up off the cooker.
‘Liz,’ he said quietly. ‘Look at me.’
She heard the implacable tone in his voice and knew that this couldn’t be delayed any longer. Lifting her head, she did as he had asked. He smiled faintly and crooked a finger at her.
‘Elisabetta,’ he said. ‘Come here. Right now.’
Forty-two
The war was over at last, at least in Europe. Liz was conscious of a deep thankfulness, but as the city around them exploded into one giant street party, neither she nor Mario felt very much like celebrating. He was anxiously waiting for news from Italy of his brother and his family. Liz’s mood was sombre and reflective, her thoughts full of Eddie and Helen.
For a few days the pain of their loss was as acute as it had ever been. It was so unfair that they hadn’t lived to see this day or enjoy their daughter growing up. Then Liz seemed to hear Helen’s voice in her head.
Get on with it, MacMillan! You’ve got exams to pass!
So she buckled down and got on with it, and she passed with flying colours. She was Elizabeth MacMillan, RGN. Mario gave her a beautiful silver fob watch to replace the more workaday one she wore on her apron, and they went out for a celebratory meal together. She and Cordelia and the other new registered general nurses had a night out too. Liz completed the marking of her achievement by spending a riotous afternoon with Hope at Queen Victoria Row.
Sadie baked a cake and they sat and ate it in the front room. Hope kept asking why they were in there when it wasn’t someone’s birthday. Liz laughed, and tried to explain it to her. It was a party of a different sort.
In that case, Hope said, they ought to play some party games. An hour and a half later, Liz was convinced they’d done the hokey-cokey and ring-a-ring-of-roses a hundred times. At the very least. Peter MacMillan and Annie Crawford both pleaded their age and left them to it.
Sadie pleaded her age too, although she looked far too young to be a grandmother. She sank down laughing into an armchair opposite her husband and watched Liz and Hope sitting on the hearth rug playing row-your-boat. Hope loved it when her aunt allowed her body to go slack so that the little girl could pull her easily towards her. Then, despite the protests, it was bedtime.
‘I’ll come and read you a story,’ Liz promised. ‘Once Grandma’s tucked you in.’
Hope skipped over to her grandfather.
‘Kiss,’ she demanded.
‘Away with your nonsense,’ he said, but he leaned forward and submitted to the little arms coiling around his neck, Hope’s rosebud mouth pressing a kiss against his cheek.
‘Night, night, Grandad,’ she said cheerfully, apparently not at all put out by his gruffness. She never was. She and Sadie left the room. And an uneasy silence settled.
‘The place seems empty now, doesn’t it?’
Still sitting on the rug, Liz darted a quick glance up at him, then looked away. Did he have any idea how she felt?
‘You were like that, you know. Bright as a button.’
She scrambled to her feet and stood in front of the fire, pretending to check her hair in the mirror. ‘Was I?’
‘Aye, you were a right bonnie wee thing, too. D’you remember when you had the scarlet fever?’
Liz stopped pretending she was looking in the mirror and turned to face him.
‘That was one of the worst days of my life,’ he said quietly. She stared at him. One of the worst days of
his
life?
There were things she wanted to say to him then. Like:
how do you think I felt, Daddy? When I reached out for you and you turned away from me?
She said nothing.
‘Seeing you going into that ambulance...’ her father said. The words weren’t coming easily. He stopped and swallowed, and went on, not looking at Liz, ‘We’d just lost your brother...’
She had to strain to hear what he said next. ‘I was terrified we were going to lose you as well.’
There wasn’t a sound in the room except for the crackling of the fire. But you did lose me, she thought sadly, you did lose me. And it’s too late now for apologies. If that’s what this is.
He raised his eyes to his daughter, standing so rigidly in front of him. ‘I had two sisters died of the scarlet fever. Did you know that?’
His next words seemed to be a complete non sequitur.
‘You’ve done well,’ he said, ‘at the Infirmary. Your mother’s very proud of you.’
Liz waited, but it appeared that her father had nothing to add.
‘I-I’d better go up,’ she said. She tried not to let the bitterness swamp her. It was stupid of her to be expecting anything else from him. ‘Hope will be wondering what’s happened to me.’ She crossed to the door and curled her fingers around the knob.
‘Your mother’s very proud of you,’ he said again. Liz opened the door. ‘So am I,’ he added quietly.
Too late for apologies. She should go out of the door, close it behind her, turn away from him as he had once turned away from her. Was it ever too late? He was looking intently at her.
‘Thank you, Father,’ she said gravely. ‘Thank you.’
The patient in Male Surgical looked as if he was about to die of embarrassment. Liz didn’t blame him. Not only was she going to give him a blanket bath, she was also demonstrating the art to a group of probationers under the supervision of Sister MacLean. Poor man. She’d try to make it as easy as possible for him.
Gathering together the relevant bits and pieces, she glanced out of the long windows of the ward. It was almost Christmas again - the first Christmas of peace - but there was no seasonal snow. A persistent drizzle had been falling all day. Och, well, there was Cordelia’s party to look forward to this weekend.
Like herself and Mario, Cordelia hadn’t felt much like celebrating on VE day. She’d been too worried about Hans-Peter. Two weeks ago, however, she’d got a letter from him. It was going to be some time before the necessary formalities would permit their reunion but, absolutely ecstatic, she had decided to throw a party for her friends anyway.
Mario had also received some good news. His brother Carlo, now a father of three, would be coming over with his family in the new year. The expectation of seeing his grandchildren was giving Aldo Rossi a new lease of life. Mario was over the moon about it too. Both he and Liz were really looking forward to Cordelia’s party.
Her old friend Janet Brown, now married, was going to be there, as was Dominic Gallagher, due home on leave tomorrow night and staying with the family of his WAAF girlfriend in Paisley. He was quite the young man now, planning a career in commercial aviation. That was the future of travel, he’d told Liz enthusiastically during his previous leave. Everyone, it seemed was coming home. Well... apart from one person.
Adam was working at a military hospital in southern England. Liz had received a brief letter from him in September. The war might be over, he’d written, but there were still wounded to be cared for. He had said nothing about when he might be coming back to Glasgow. Or even if he was coming back to Glasgow at all. She had no idea what his plans were.