Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [131]
No, he shouldn’t have recruited her. He should have turned her away, left her safe to grow up and get married and have children of her own, instead of risking her life. And she would risk that. He had read that in her face. She was fiercely and proudly partisan about her country and her desire for its freedom, for its liberty, and equality.
He had left her knowing that the German Army was advancing, knowing that it was his duty to obey his own orders, and knowing too that he despised and hated himself for leaving her behind to face what she would have to.
‘I would not have it any other way,’ she had told him when he had said this to her, and begged her to let him take her to safety. ‘My choice is to fight for my country. My safety counts as nothing compared with that.’
Jean had been working down at Lime Street as a volunteer, her heart shredded with shocked anguish by what she saw in the expressions of the returning men. Some were still wearing their battledress, sea-stained and in some cases bloodstained as well, the smell of damp khaki sharp on the nostrils, especially when allied to unwashed flesh.
Some of the men were so exhausted that she’d had to hold the cup for them so that they could drink the tea she was handing out. Great big tall, broad-shouldered men, trembling and crying like babies in their disbelieving relief at being spared the fate they had thought would be theirs, and shame for their public defeat.
And all the time she was offering kind words and a drink of tea, Jean was scanning the sea of male faces, looking for Luke’s.
Some families had already had word via one of the postcards provide by the WVS, which the men had filled in as they passed through the English ports; others had received telephone calls. But the Campions had heard nothing. And now, six days after the final evacuation had taken place, Jean could hardly bear to think of where Luke might be.
Over forty thousand men had been left behind to be taken prisoner by the Germans – if they were lucky. Others had been killed by the Luftwaffe in those ships that had been sunk. The needs of the living must, of course, always come before those of the dead and, as Sam kept saying, they shouldn’t give up hope.
‘I’ll take over here now, Mrs Campion,’ one of the other members of the WVS group offered.
Tiredly, Jean nodded. She had been at Lime Street since early this morning and she needed to get home. Sam would be wanting his tea.
* * *
‘I thought they said we’d be taking a few of the overspill that they couldn’t find beds for,’ Hannah complained wearily to Grace as they each grabbed a quick bite of supper. ‘We’ve been operating nonstop since nine o’clock this morning.’
‘Our ward’s full,’ Grace agreed between mouthfuls of shepherd’s pie, ‘and as I came down for supper Sister was saying that we’d have to fit in another four beds. Some of those poor men, though, Hannah. What they must have been through.’
‘I know,’ she agreed quietly. ‘We’ve had some really nasty injuries in, arms and legs gone – and worse – caused by shrapnel.’
They looked at one another.
‘Mr Leonard operated on two men who he reckons won’t last the night. And then there was a lad, only seventeen, half his face gone.’
Grace put down her fork, her food suddenly tasting like sawdust.
The first thing Jean saw when she walked into her kitchen through the back door was the army greatcoat thrown over the back of a chair, salt-stained and encrusted in places with dark splodges that her brain hoped were mud, but which the sickening twisting pain in her heart told her were blood.
Then she looked up from the coat and saw Luke standing in the doorway to the hall, his gruff, ‘Mum,’ having her running to him, tears spilling from her eyes, a choke of something she couldn’t truthfully articulate clogging