Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [135]
‘You look half asleep on your feet,’ said Teddy. ‘You’d better go in and get some kip.’
‘Yes, I must,’ Grace agreed. ‘Sister warned us before we came off duty that we’re going to have to make up more beds in the morning because more troop trains are due. We may even need to put beds in the corridors.’ She stifled another yawn. Britain might be on daylight saving time and it was still light outside, but Sister was a stickler for routine and rules, so that on her ward, the blackout curtains were put in place at ten p.m. promptly, and her patients expected to go immediately to sleep.
Seb, though, could not sleep. He had refused the morphine he had been offered by the very efficient-looking senior nurse who had come round after Grace had gone off duty, and now his shoulder hurt like hell, far more so than it had done before he had had the shrapnel removed. Quite a coincidence, being nursed by Grace …
Lying here surrounded by injured men from Dunkirk reinforced the enormity of what had happened, and the battle that now lay ahead of them if they were to have any hope of winning this war. So many thought that they could not win it.
The man in the side ward who had lost his mind was reliving the hours he had spent on the beach, sobbing and screaming as he pleaded to be saved.
The solder in the next bed to his own muttered, ‘Poor sod. Every time I close me eyes all I can see is me mate lying there next to me with his legs blown off, and saying he was worried about getting in one of the boats because he couldn’t swim. We had to leave him there on the beach. Best not to think about it, though, otherwise you’d go as mad as him over there. Then ruddy Hitler would have won, wouldn’t he,’ cos he won’t be doing no more fighting. I will, though, and when I do, and when I aim that gun, it will be me mate I’ll be thinking about. I can’t bring him back but I can sure as hell make them pay for what they did to him.’
The screaming had stopped now but the sobbing continued. Seb thought of Marie. There didn’t seem much chance of the French and those British who had been left to fight alongside them holding back the Germans for very long.
The Germans would deal ruthlessly with anyone who opposed them, and Marie was so bloody patriotic and proud of it that she would stand up to them and put herself in danger. He had never known anyone like her. Being French had been more important to her than anything else, including being a woman. She put many men he knew to shame, including himself. He could quite easily have imagined her in a different age, storming the Bastille and demanding liberty for the people and death for those who oppressed them. But knowing that could not take away the guilt he felt at leaving and being safe, whilst she and her family were not.
‘They have their work and you have yours,’ his commanding officer had told him. ‘That is the nature of this work. You have done your bit with them in the field, now you are needed here to work on something else.’
‘Have you heard the latest?’ Hannah asked Grace as they walked to their rooms together. ‘Lillian’s found herself that medic she was wanting; one of the new housemen, that one who caught her when she fainted. Doreen says he’s besotted with her and she’s like a cat with a full bowl of cream. What’s wrong?’ she asked when she saw Grace’s expression.
‘Luke, my brother, came to see me this afternoon. He was at Dunkirk and lucky enough not get be injured. I did try to warn him not to get too keen on Lillian, but she’s obviously still been writing to him and he seems to think that they’re an item.’
‘Oh, what rotten luck for him,’ Hannah sympathised. ‘She’ll have to tell him, of course. Let’s just hope that she lets him down lightly.’
‘Yes,’ Grace agreed hollowly.
Seb watched as Grace approached his bed. He hadn’t slept very well and the wound in his shoulder was throbbing painfully.
The men who had been on the ward for the greatest length of time had been quick to fill in the new arrivals on the ward’s routine and its nurses. Grace, he had learned, was well liked by the patients,