Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [148]
‘It says here,’ the young sergeant read, having got out of bed against regulations and picked up Mr Whitehead’s paper: ‘“Among the most successful of the RAF pilots are the Poles, who have fought the Germans in their own skies, over France and now over Britain. They burn with hatred for the Nazis and roar into battle with reckless courage.”’
The other men in the ward all burst spontaneously into applause when the sergeant had finished reading.
As pleased as Grace was by the news, poor Teddy’s death was still very raw with her.
They had buried him yesterday, and for the first time she had met his family. Grace’s mother hadn’t really wanted her to attend the funeral, worrying that she might not be up to it, but Grace had insisted that she must pay her last respects, so Jean had gone with her.
Grace had been surprised to learn from Teddy’s mother just how much he had talked about her at home and even more surprised when it had turned out that her own mother and Teddy’s had gone to the same school.
There had been a good deal of talk from Teddy’s family about how he would never listen to reason about not overdoing things and Grace had thought of the rueful ‘I told you so’ smile he would have given her had he been there to hear them.
The other girls in her set had all been sympathetic, even Lillian, although Grace had suspected that her outward show of sympathy was just that – a show put on because it was what she thought she should do.
Grace still couldn’t quite believe that it had actually happened somehow, and, this morning, once she got into the sluice room she discovered to her dismay that she was crying.
This wouldn’t do, it would not do at all, and it was the last thing that Teddy would want, but still she leaned her head against the wall and gave way to her tears.
The sluice-room door opened and Grace tensed with shock when Seb walked in.
‘You can’t come in here,’ she told him. ‘Sister will have a fit.’
‘I heard about your friend. And I just wanted to say how sorry I was.’
Grace could feel fresh tears filling her eyes. ‘He knew it was going to happen. He’d told me. But I never thought … I’d warned him that he was doing too much. He must have known when he ran after that lad.’
Seb pushed a clean handkerchief into her hand.
‘He’d be that cross if he could see me now. He told me that he didn’t want me crying over him, and that was why we could only be friends and not anything else. He said he didn’t want me feeling guilty like I would do if we’d been a proper couple. But I do feel guilty,’ Grace said wretchedly. ‘Teddy wanted so much to live and I can’t stop meself from thinking that if I had been his girl, you know, properly, then he’d have known what that was like instead of dying without knowing.’
The words were tumbling out on top of one another, things she would never normally have dreamed of saying, but instinctively Grace sensed that Seb would understand what she was feeling and what she was trying to say.
He did. And he understood too that his own feelings for Grace had become far more personal than he had realised until now.
‘You’ve nothing to feel guilty about, Grace,’ he reassured her, ‘except that you’re upsetting yourself when Teddy didn’t want you to, and over something he wouldn’t have wanted you to be upset over.’
‘How do you know that? You didn’t even know him.’
‘No. But just from what you’ve said about him now I can tell that he was a man of honour and decency,’ Seb insisted truthfully. ‘Maybe he did want what you’ve just said, but I reckon that what he wanted more was what he’d already said he wanted for you. You should respect that and respect him for it, because I certainly do. He sounds a fine man and I wish I’d had the opportunity to meet him.’
‘He was a fine man,