Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [68]
What was taking Alan so long? As a boy Charlie had got it over and done with in seconds, and had looked disgustingly pleased with himself for having done so, as he showed her how far he could make the stream of fluid go.
She looked impatiently at Alan. His face was beaded with sweat and he had started to shake slightly. His ‘thing’ had gone soft.
Had he done it then? If so, she hadn’t felt anything, and if he hadn’t, well, that wasn’t her fault, was it? She rolled out from under him whilst he was preoccupied with ‘it’, frowning as he looked at its flaccid paleness, and pulled down her nightdress. Let him sleep on the cold side of the bed, she certainly wasn’t going to.
Jean couldn’t so much as swallow a crumb of toast, her throat felt so raw with pain.
The two men she loved best, her husband and her son, sat at opposite sides of the breakfast table, ignoring one another.
There’d been more angry words between them last night after they’d got home from the wedding, with Sam telling Luke that he’d regret joining up and Luke retaliating that he’d regret even more being a coward. Of course his words to Sam had been like a red rag to a bull, and in the end they had ended up glowering at each other, neither prepared to back down.
Jean had longed to be able to persuade Sam to explain his true feelings to Luke but she knew that he was too proud to do so, and she knew too that Sam would never forgive her if she broke the confidence he had given her. And at the back of her mind she worried that Luke, being young and not understanding how things had been during that other war, might not truly understand how his dad felt and why. But, as everyone knew, you couldn’t put an old head on young shoulders.
She’d been so proud of Luke at the wedding, but in some ways she had wished he had not been there so that the situation between father and son had not worsened.
‘I’ve got to go, Mum, otherwise I’ll miss the boat.’
‘Don’t forget this cake that I’ve made for you then, Luke,’ Jean told him, fussing around busily to hide her tears. ‘We’ll walk with you to the bus.’
‘No … no there’s no need, Mum. I’m meeting up with another lad that had leave; we’re travelling back together.’
She could at least go to the door with him, hoping as she did so that Sam would see sense and come with her to see him off.
At the front door she pulled Luke to her and hugged him tightly.
‘I’m sorry about your dad, Luke. He—’
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ Luke told her but they both knew that it wasn’t.
She watched him until he had disappeared out of sight. He had told her that he would be given leave once his training was over.
‘And then they’ll be sending us off to join the BEF, so that we can help them push Hitler back into Germany, so they reckon,’ he had added almost carelessly, whilst Jean’s maternal heart had felt as though it was being squeezed dry of blood.
The BEF, the British Expeditionary Force, had left for France and Belgium almost as soon as war had been announced, and the thought of Luke fighting with them filled her with fear.
TEN
December
It was over, the most exhausting and testing three months of their lives, they all agreed, followed by the longest and most fear-inducing three days when they had sat their exams, and now, after lunch, they would be summoned individually to see Matron to get their results.
A pass meant going on to the wards to continue training; a fail meant handing in the uniform and going home.
‘I had to do a many-tailed bandage for an abdomen wound,’ Hannah groaned. ‘I’m sure I got it wrong. Remember when Sister Tutor was showing us how she said my bandaging looked like a badly made birds’ nest and yours showed a sense of balance and order, Grace.’
‘I remember how I burned the consommé we had to make for sippy two diets,’ Grace shuddered. ‘I was dreading having to do one for my practical.’
‘What did you have to do, Grace?’
Grace grimaced