Merryn Allingham - The Nurse's War

She walked into the tiled entrance hall and stood still, aware of her pulse having gone into overdrive. She was becoming stupidly panicked and she must stop herself from seeing things that were probably not there. Given the heightened state in which she’d been living these last two days, it was unsurprising her mind was all over the place. It wasn’t fear of bombing raids that disturbed her—that was a fear everyone shared. It wasn’t even the unremitting labour. There were nurses who worked harder. It was alarm at finding her husband alive, and not just alive, but close by and demanding her aid.

She passed the staff pigeonholes with hardly a glance. There were never letters for her. Tonight, though, something white glared balefully from the scratched wooden box. An envelope addressed to her. She recognised the writing straight away. So it had been Gerald lurking in the trees, watching for her, waiting to accost her. But why hadn’t he done so? Instead, he’d pushed the missive through the letter box and someone had picked it up and put it in her pigeonhole. She took the envelope and held it up to the dim light which dangled from the ceiling. Now that she looked closely, she saw the letter had not been hand delivered at all but had come through the mail. It was postmarked ten a.m. It had come in the morning post and been waiting for her all day. So the shadow she’d seen … it couldn’t have been Gerald. But if it wasn’t, who was it?

Her heart again began to beat far too rapidly, sounding heavy in her ears. She tried to calm herself by visualising what she’d seen. It must have been imagination. But the more she thought of it, the more certain she became that there had been a figure there. It wasn’t just panic talking. She recalled the blurred image and fixed her mind doggedly on it. It reminded her of another shadow she’d glimpsed recently, one that had passed like a ripple through those self-same trees the night before last, when Gerald had stopped her on the front steps. Had someone been watching them then? Was someone watching her now? Or was that someone looking for Gerald, looking perhaps to find and hand over a deserter? She shook her head. It was better to think it merely the wind in the trees.

Gerald’s note was brief and to the point. She hadn’t named a meeting place, he accused, so he would: Hyde Park, the eastern edge of the Serpentine. Tomorrow at two o’clock. Didn’t he realise that she was a working woman, a nurse who had barely a day to herself every month? She felt exasperation riding tandem with misgiving. Meeting him was the last thing she wanted, but she would have to go or she’d have him knocking on the door. Whether or not she could take her free time would depend on what was happening on the ward. She would have to petition Sister Elton first thing in the morning and hope for permission. She calculated that she could just about make it to the park and be back on the ward within two hours, which was the most she could count on. But what she was to say to Gerald, she had no idea.

She still had no idea the following afternoon when she walked into Hyde Park. Speakers’ Corner was unusually crowded for a weekday, despite the lack of any orator and soapbox. A rare burst of spring sunshine must have tempted the mill of people. Daisy wound her way through the crowd as quickly as she could, negotiating a host of children and their nannies and a small group of women on their lunch break, enjoying a cigarette. The military post on her left was quiet and soldiers stood chatting to members of the Home Guard. A heavy anti-aircraft battery had been set up nearby along with a number of rocket projectors. She’d been told they fired six foot shells packed with metal debris—broken bike chains, old razor blades—just about anything that could be loosed skywards and disrupt the flight of bombers swooping up river from the docks to the West End.

Today, though, there was so little activity you could almost forget the guns’ incongruous presence in this beautiful, green space. The false sense of tranquillity was increased by dozens of barrage balloons which floated serenely five thousand feet above her head. They were supposed to force enemy aircraft to a height where aiming their bombs would be difficult, but the ‘blimps’, as they’d been nicknamed, had so far proved ineffective. Their silvery presence, though, added a dreamlike quality to the scene.

She reached the path leading to the Serpentine and felt inside her cape for the watch pinned to her bib. She wasn’t at all sure that she would make Gerald’s deadline, though so far luck had favoured her. She hadn’t had to ask for time off. Sister Elton had noticed how pale her nurse was looking and insisted, during the rushed morning tea break, that Daisy take several hours away from the ward once lunch had been served and the medicine trolley had done its rounds. Then, as she’d left the hospital, one of the few doctors who ran a car had offered her a lift as far as Oxford Street. Connie was on a short break, too, and off to sit in the cathedral gardens at St Paul’s. She saw Daisy getting into the car and pulled her mouth down as if to say, I told you so. It was her friend’s running joke that Dr Lawson had a particular fondness for Daisy.

If he had, she certainly wasn’t going to play on it. Work filled her entire life and that was fine. She was simply grateful for the lift. Even so, she was having to walk fast, winding her way on and off the path and around the trenches that had changed the face of all the London parks. By the time she reached the lake, she was breathless. Once more she flicked her watch face upwards. A minute to two. She’d made it, but not before Gerald. He was marching up and down beside the still water, his shoulders hunched and a frown darkening his face.

‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ was his greeting. ‘You didn’t contact me—you said you would.’

‘I couldn’t.’ She forced herself to remain calm despite his blustering. ‘I’ve been out of London for several days and it was last night before I collected your note.’

‘Now you are here, we shouldn’t waste time.’

She was taken aback by his abrasiveness, but why should she be? It was something she had grown used to in the few months they’d spent together. Now, though, she wasn’t the same girl who had travelled to India to marry him, a naïve innocent who’d foolishly believed herself loved. Her emotions had been put through fire, and she’d emerged with a new, tempered edge. If they were going to talk, she wanted some answers.

‘Shall we sit down?’

She gestured to one of the deckchairs lined up around the lake. In the first few months of the war, the chairs had been whisked from sight, but popular protest had succeeded in getting them reinstated. He didn’t immediately sit, but instead scanned the park for some minutes, turning his head in a complete circle. Then, seemingly reassured, he slumped heavily into the nearest seat and swivelled to face her.

‘Well? What’s the plan?’

‘I have some questions.’

He screwed up his face in an expression of deep frustration. ‘While you’re asking questions, I’m falling into ever greater danger. You don’t seem to appreciate that.’

‘If I’m to help, I need to know what’s happened since the last time I saw you.’

That was mendacious. No matter how much he told her, she was unlikely to be able to help. But she deserved to know how this ghost husband had come back to her from the dead, and she was willing to wait while he found the words. He was staring straight ahead, his face fixed and giving no sign that he was willing to talk. From the corner of her eye, she noticed a small boy arrive on the other side of the lake. He was cradling a boat in his arms and bouncing excitedly up and down beside his mother. He was about to sail a new toy, she thought, and that was a big event in this time of austerity.