The Nurse's War. Merryn Allingham
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hardly dared say the word.
‘Precisely. They’re calling me a coward. The next step will be to denounce me to the authorities.’
‘But how do you know they were the ones who posted it? It could have been anyone in the neighbourhood.’
‘I can’t be entirely sure, but who else would it be? They’ve been watching me closely and they know my movements, know I don’t have a job. And that I’ve a connection with India. They speak to each other in Hindi and I accidentally let on I understood some of what they were saying. That must have made them even more suspicious.’
She shook her head. Gerald was imagining a persecution she was certain didn’t exist. He had built a ridiculous story around two innocent men, interpreting their looks and actions in the worst possible way. It was because he was strung tight by the fear of discovery, she could see, and if he didn’t get away soon, he was going to do something very stupid. She had no alternative. She would have to try to help, even if it meant searching out Grayson and braving a face-to-face meeting with him.
‘I’ll go to Baker Street. That’s where Mr Harte works. I’ll try to see him.’ There was only a slight quiver to her voice.
‘When?’ The question was urgent. Her promise had not been sufficient to calm him.
‘As soon as I have time off.’
‘Soon?’
‘Yes, soon.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I must go now. If I have any luck, I’ll send a message to the address you gave me.’
‘You’ve got to have luck.’ And his tone allowed for no other outcome.
The meeting had been unsatisfactory. He wasn’t sure he could depend on her to go to Grayson Harte. He’d said she had changed and he’d been right. Not to look at. She was still as pretty, prettier if anything. She’d filled out since he’d last seen her, become more womanly. The dark eyes, the darker hair, the skin that in an English climate had regained its smooth creaminess, not quite peach, not quite olive, but soft and clear, still drew him. Was it any wonder he’d lost his head all those months ago in London. It had been a thoroughly boring leave, he remembered, and then he’d gone to buy perfume for the woman he’d decided to love, and there she’d been. Beautiful Daisy. He’d meant only to enjoy a few days with her, but the days had stretched into several weeks and, when he’d left to go back to India, he’d felt real regret. Although not that much regret, he supposed. He’d been looking forward to rejoining his regiment, getting back to the pleasures of life as a cavalry officer. Looking forward, too, to seeing Jocelyn Forester. He’d set his sights on winning the colonel’s daughter and was sure in time that she would reciprocate. The perfume was the first step in his campaign.
But then those pleading letters from Daisy. A baby was coming, she had to marry. And what had that been all about? A miscarriage on-board ship, no baby and a marriage he didn’t want. He’d been angry and he hadn’t treated her well. He didn’t like to think of those days. He’d betrayed her, he knew, betrayed her for money, that’s what it came down to. He’d allowed Anish to talk him into a pit of evil. Just for money, just to pay the debts which terrified him. He’d had no idea that Daisy would prove so difficult, so obdurate, so intent on involving herself in what didn’t concern her. Until eventually she’d faced death. Even now he couldn’t believe that Anish had sanctioned such a thing. It was too awful to think about. He’d done his best to save her, but it had been Harte, the perfect district officer, who’d finally been her rescuer.
No, he didn’t like to think of those days. She’d been a gentle girl when he met her, vulnerable and soft. Now, though, she seemed to have grown a shell and he could only hope that he’d managed to pierce it today. He wasn’t entirely convinced she would do as she’d promised. Something had happened between her and Grayson Harte which made her reluctant to meet the man. She had better though, he thought belligerently. He’d hated having to confess the hole he was in, having to abase himself by begging for help, but he’d had no choice. No choice either about holding a threat over her head. He could congratulate himself on that at least. He’d hit on the right thing—her job—he’d seen that immediately. The threat of having to leave nursing would make her do what he asked, whether she wanted to or not. It would get him the papers, if anything would.
He trudged his way back through the West End and into the City, his feet aching and sore. There had been a big raid two nights ago and the roads were still badly damaged. He’d hardly seen a bus on his way to Hyde Park, but even if one had turned up, he couldn’t afford the fare. He could barely afford to eat and the small sum he’d saved from working in France was dwindling by the day. Look at his shoes—the soles almost falling off, the backs broken down. Dear God, what had he come to? A proud officer in a crack regiment of the Indian Army and now this, hiding away in a dingy, rat-infested room, and dependent on others for his deliverance.
But then he’d always been dependent, hadn’t he? His whole career had rested on a father who’d sacrificed everything for his only son. An ungrateful son. And that was something else he didn’t want to think about. When he’d returned to England, Spitalfields was the first place he’d gone to. He’d had some wild idea that somehow he could reconcile himself with the parents he’d abandoned, the prodigal son returned, that kind of thing. An unspoken thought, too, that maybe his father could get him out of his predicament as he had so many others in the past, though what a poverty-stricken old man could do, he didn’t know. But when he’d rounded the corner of the street—the address had been at the top of the letter his father had sent, begging for money his son couldn’t spare—he’d been appalled. There was nothing, literally nothing. A whole street had disappeared.
After two years of war, he thought, London smelt of death and destruction. Everywhere shattered windows, roofs caved in, water pipes, gas pipes, all fractured, telephone wires waving in the breeze. The people he passed were every bit as shabby as their city since new clothes were a rarity. Shabbier still in the East End where, for a pittance, he’d managed to rent a room. Street after street of mean little houses with open doors and broken windows; filthy alleys in which ragged children played, their pale, pinched faces speaking of years of deprivation before ever the German bombers arrived. And everywhere stank—of waste, of unwashed bodies, of stale beer.
He was walking through the City now, past one ruined church after another, their steeples scorched and dis-coloured by fire. There was something heroic in their tragic silhouettes, he thought, heroic yet futile. They belonged to a past that no longer had meaning. It was the New World that promised, the New World that offered a future. In front of the Royal Exchange, an enormous hole in the road had still not been completely filled after the Bank station had been hit in January. So huge was it that the Royal Engineers had had to build a bridge across for people to get from one side of the street to the other. The East End had fared even worse, of course. Whole terraces mown down and streets almost entirely rubble. Grotesquely, the building on the corner of Leman Street, he noticed, still had a side wall intact and a framed view of a Cornish landscape hanging from the picture hook. He crunched his way along the pavement, littered with shards of glass and cracked roofing tiles. The breeze had begun to blow strongly again and pillows of white dust swirled around him. For a moment he had to stand still, his eyes closed against it.
Turning into Ellen Street, he saw the lodging house ahead, black roof and sightless windows, hovering against the clear blue sky. It loomed discordantly over the dribble of smaller houses, as though it had risen from the pages of a Nordic fairy tale and found itself out of time and out of place. Several of the surrounding properties had been hit on successive nights and had crumbled at one blow. That didn’t surprise him, knowing how shoddily they were built, but at least the debris was light enough for more survivors to be pulled free. Alive but dispossessed. The house adjoining his had had its front cut away as though it were a doll’s house. Skyed high in the air was a dented bath and a lavatory, with a sad little roll of toilet paper still attached to the door. A staircase led to an upper floor that no longer existed. But the house where he lodged had survived all attacks—so far.
He trod up the stairs as delicately as he could. The ground floor of the house was occupied by an old woman, ninety if