Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [133]
‘He said that the captain, the same one that had threatened to shoot his own men, had to put a bullet through a poor lad who’d been that badly wounded he couldn’t have survived. Then, when they finally got their turn to get onto one of the boats taking the men out to the ships, it almost capsized and the three men last on had to get off again. Luke said he saw a ship bombed and set ablaze from stem to stern, men jumping off it in all directions.’
‘Oh, Sam, it just doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Maybe not, love, but it has to be thought about, because if we don’t think about it then we won’t fight ruddy Hitler and he won’t be stopped. We need to stop him, Jean. We need to stop him, and we ruddy well will.’
Grace had never seen the area inside the main entrance to the hospital as busy and crowded as it was today. Everywhere she looked there seemed to be men in uniform – mainly the walking wounded, who had been told to report to their nearest hospital once they reached home, and also, of course, the close relatives of those who had received far more serious injuries and who had been brought to the hospital by ambulance.
She just had time to dash outside and have a quick word with Teddy before she was due back on her ward, to reassure herself that he was not overdoing things, and she was squeezing past the crowd in the doorway when she heard Luke calling her name.
By the time she had turned round to look for him Luke had reached her and her relief at seeing him uninjured made her hug him tightly and blink back her tears.
‘Come and say hello to Teddy,’ she begged him. ‘He’ll want to hear everything. We’ve read such dreadful stories in the papers.’
A quick look at Luke’s face told her that the reality had been even more terrible than the stories.
‘I’ll catch up with Teddy another time,’ Luke told her. ‘I was hoping that Lillian might be on duty. I wanted to tell her myself that I’d made it back. She’s the loveliest girl and very special to me, Grace.’
Grace’s heart sank.
‘She is, and she’s on Women’s Surgical, but I doubt that you’ll be able to see her. The sister on that ward is a real dragon. Luke …’ She wanted to warn him not to expect too much. She had no idea what Lillian might have said privately to him, of course, in the letters they had been exchanging, but she did know that Lillian had been going out with other men, and that she did not in any way consider herself committed to him.
‘At least Charlie’s safe. He sent us a telegram to tell us.’
‘Did he say when he was coming home?’ Bella asked her mother. Every returning BEF man who did not require hospital treatment had been given an extended period of home leave.
‘He says that he isn’t. He feels it’s his duty to help one of his friends who had a bit of a bad time so he’s going to be staying with him in London.’
Bella yawned in the afternoon sunshine of her parents’ garden. Being pregnant was so dreadfully tiring. All she seemed to want to do was sleep.
Teddy had been as pleased about Luke’s safe return as Grace had known he would be, and Grace’s heart was light with relief as she made her way back to the ward. The four empty beds were now occupied, along with the small private side wards. An army officer, his own arm bandaged, was touring the beds, accompanied by Sister.
‘We’ve got six new patients down from surgery, Campion,’ Staff Nurse Reid informed Grace crisply, ‘two who are very poorly and in the side wards; two with amputations and two with shrapnel wounds. Go and collect the necessary bowls and start with these two in beds twelve and fourteen.’
The bowls were for the patients to be sick in after they recovered from the anaesthetic, and beds twelve and fourteen held the less seriously injured shrapnel-wounded patients who would come round properly first.
The young soldier in bed twelve retched gratefully into the bowl, looking embarrassed when he had finished, and Grace wiped his face and then allowed him a small sip of water.
‘Eee, Nurse, I feel that helpless, just like a baby,’ he told her.
‘Well, you aren’t