Helen and Bel sat on the wooden bench to the left of the entrance to the asylum. The perfectly manicured lawns of the hospital grounds lay stretched out in front of them. A little earlier, the two women had literally bumped into each other in the corridors after they had ended up there following that night’s air raid.
Bel had gone to the asylum with her ma, Pearl Hardwick, to visit her ma’s friend and boss, Bill Lawson, licensee of the Tatham Arms. The town’s hospitals being full to bursting, he’d been taken there after being nearly buried alive when a bomb had landed on the pub he had gone to for a lock-in.
Helen, on the other hand, had gone to the asylum searching for Dr Parker, having felt compelled to tell him her true feelings. She knew she had missed her chance, though, by a matter of seconds, when she saw him kissing his colleague, Dr Eris.
While Pearl had gone off to visit Bill in one of the wards given over to those injured in the air raid, Bel had taken a distressed Helen outside to talk about why she was so upset – an unusual state for Helen, who was not known for any kind of display of emotion.
After chatting for a while, they had fallen into a comfortable silence, their faces turned heavenward, allowing themselves to bask momentarily in the solace of the afternoon sun. The beauty of their surroundings and balmy tranquillity of this most idyllic of spring days afforded a comfort of sorts.
Opening her eyes, Bel turned her head slightly. Helen still looked stunning, despite the smudged mascara and slight puffiness around her eyes. ‘Just because you saw him coming out of Dr Eris’s accommodation doesn’t mean he spent the night there, you know.’
Helen gave Bel a sideways glance. Within the space of a few days, Bel had gone from being simply one of her staff to a family member. A blood relative. Her aunty. Her mother’s sister. Her grandfather’s illegitimate daughter.
‘Oh, Bel, that’s nice of you to say, but if you’d seen the way they kissed …’ Helen’s voice trailed off.
‘It mightn’t have been what it looked like,’ Bel argued. ‘Dr Parker might have just popped in there for a cuppa. The kiss could have been innocent.’ She glanced down at her watch. ‘Anyway, it’s a bit late for two people to be getting up.’
‘This is exactly the time they would be getting up.’ Helen felt the hurt in her heart as she spoke. ‘Whenever there’s an air raid, John – and all the rest of the doctors and nurses – work through the night, making sure any casualties are tended to, treated, operated on …’ She stared back up at the sky and closed her eyes. ‘I feel such a fool.’ She shook her head, annoyed at herself. ‘To think that John would want me.’
Bel looked at Helen in surprise. ‘I don’t see why that would be such a foolish thing to think. I can’t see any man not wanting you.’
‘I don’t mean want as in simply to desire.’ Helen sighed heavily. ‘I mean want as in want me as his sweetheart. His fiancée.’ She turned her face away from the sun and looked at Bel. ‘As the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with.’
It was only then that Bel understood not just that Helen was in love with Dr Parker, but how strong and deep her love for him was. This wasn’t simply about some other woman snaring the man she wanted for herself, but Helen losing the man she was desperate to be with – for ever. And Bel knew better than most that love like that rarely came along twice. She had been one of the lucky ones.
‘Well, I don’t think you should give up until you know the whole story. All the facts. You don’t know for certain he stayed over at her place. It might have looked like a kiss between two lovers, but that could have just been your imagination.’
‘Mmm,’ Helen mused. ‘I’m not convinced.’ She gave Bel a sad smile. ‘But I think you’re right in that I do need to make sure I haven’t got the wrong end of the stick.’ She sighed again. Her thoughts fell back to the last traumatic twenty-four hours – the shocking bombshell about her grandfather, followed by the worst air raid thus far. The pervasiveness of all the death and destruction meted out to the town had driven her determination to tell John that she loved him. That she didn’t just want to be his friend, but his lover – his lifelong soulmate.
‘Oh, there you are!’
Helen and Bel turned round simultaneously.
An attractive, smartly dressed woman in a brown tailored skirt suit, her shiny, tawny-coloured hair twisted up into a French knot, was walking down the stone steps of the asylum. She had her eyes trained on Helen and a wide smile on her face.
‘Oh no,’ Helen whispered under her breath.
Bel stared at the tall, slim woman now striding purposefully towards them. She reminded her a little of Katharine Hepburn. Amazing cheekbones, flawless skin with just a dusting of freckles.
Helen stood up and Bel followed suit.
‘Helen, I’m so glad I caught you before you left.’ Dr Eris glanced at Bel and smiled before returning her attention to Helen. ‘That was you I saw in the West Wing, wasn’t it?’
Helen hesitated for a moment. She thought about denying it but realised there was no point.
‘Yes, your eyes weren’t playing tricks. That was indeed me,’ Helen said, trying her hardest to sound upbeat and hoping to God it wasn’t obvious that she’d been crying.
‘Ah, that’s good. Not going mad then.’ Claire grimaced a little. ‘I worry sometimes about making the crossover.’ She cocked her head towards the Gothic, red-brick frontage of the asylum. ‘They say it’s never a good idea to live and work in a hospital of this kind. One might get confused. Doctor or patient? Patient or doctor?’ She laughed lightly. ‘I didn’t see your friend with you, though?’ She looked at Bel.
‘No, no, you didn’t.’ Helen didn’t elaborate, but instead turned to Bel. ‘Bel, this is Claire – or rather, Dr Eris.’ Helen pulled her mouth into a mock grimace. ‘That is, providing she doesn’t “make the crossover”.’
Dr Eris laughed and stretched out her arm. ‘Pleased to meet you, Bel.’
Bel returned the handshake and gave a polite smile. ‘I wonder,’ Dr Eris said, focusing her attention back on Helen, ‘if I could perhaps have a quick word with you?’
‘Of course, fire ahead,’ Helen said, showing that the ‘quick word’ would have to be said in front of Bel.
Dr Eris hesitated before carrying on. ‘I just wanted to say …’ her eyes flicked to Bel before she fixed her gaze on Helen ‘… that, obviously, as you will have guessed from seeing John and me just now –’
Helen felt her heart race.
‘– in a rather amorous embrace –’
No room for doubt now.
‘– that as we are clearly more than simply colleagues, and because I know John and you are close friends, that just because we are “together” as such, well, this doesn’t mean you two can’t continue to be friends.’ Another smile. ‘I’m not one of these women who demand their beaux don’t fraternise with any other person of the opposite sex.’
Helen continued to stand and listen. She had a feeling Dr Eris hadn’t quite finished what she had come here to say.
She was right.
‘But you’ll have to forgive him if he isn’t able to see you as much as he has been.’ Dr Eris gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘You know what it’s like at the start? You just want to be with each other every minute of every day, don’t you?’
Helen laughed a little too loudly. ‘I do indeed, Claire. I do indeed.’ She looked into Dr Eris’s hazel eyes. ‘I guess the real teller is when you still want to be with each other every minute of every day once the shine’s worn off.’
There was a moment’s awkward silence.
‘Anyway,’ Dr Eris said, ‘when I saw you back there, you seemed in rather a rush. Was there something you wanted? I’m guessing it was John you were looking for?’ She forced a smile.
Helen gave an equally false smile. ‘Yes, it was, but it’s not important. It can wait.’
Dr Eris glanced down at her watch. ‘Oh my goodness, where does the time go?’
She looked directly at Bel.
‘Well, lovely to meet you.’ Dr Eris smiled.
Bel thought she had the most perfect teeth she’d ever seen.
‘And,’ Dr Eris turned to Helen, ‘I’m glad we’ve managed to have this little chat … Anyway, best get a shimmy on. Minds to mend and all that.’
And with that Dr Eris turned and quickly walked back to the main entrance, hurried up the stone steps and disappeared through the wooden swing doors.
Helen looked at Bel. ‘Well, I guess that answers that question.’
Bel opened her mouth to offer words of reassurance, but none came out. If there had been any doubt that Helen might have misread the scene, it had been wiped clean away.
‘I think that is called staking your claim,’ Helen said.
Bel nodded but didn’t say anything. She didn’t know Helen well enough to offer her any words of comfort, not that she could think of any even if she had. Poor Helen. She looked bereft.
‘Are you going to be all right?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Helen said as convincingly as possible. ‘Best get back to work. Denewood took a battering last night.’ The dry cargo vessel was the yard’s most recent launch.
‘Really?’ Bel was shocked. She’d heard that J.L. Thompson & Sons had been hit during last night’s air raid, but not any details. ‘Badly?’ She knew everyone would be gutted. The whole yard had worked flat out to get Denewood down the ways on time.
‘She was taking in water this morning, but they’ve managed to keep her afloat.’ Helen straightened her shoulders. ‘Honestly, here’s me moaning on about some bloke and the whole town’s been bombed to smithereens.’
‘That might be,’ Bel said, ‘but Dr Parker isn’t just “some bloke”, is he?’
‘No,’ Helen acquiesced, ‘but he’s going to have to be from now on.’
They were quiet for a moment.
Helen looked at Bel and was again hit by the family resemblance: her mother and Bel had the same blonde hair and blue eyes, the same nose and lips.
‘Gosh, you must think I’m so incredibly shallow. I haven’t even mentioned the …’ Helen stopped. ‘The … God, I can’t even think of a word to describe the abominable thing my grandfather did.’ Helen’s shoulders suddenly drooped as she thought of how her grandfather, the revered Mr Charles Havelock, had raped Pearl, then a fifteen-year-old scullery maid – and how that heinous act of violence had led to Pearl becoming pregnant with Bel.
‘I’m so sorry, Bel. I still don’t know what to say. I don’t think it’s really sunk in, to be honest.’
‘Don’t worry about that now,’ Bel said. ‘A conversation for another time?’
‘Yes, definitely,’ Helen agreed. ‘Yesterday and today have been tumultuous, to say the least.’ She looked over at her grandfather’s black Jaguar. ‘Are you sure I can’t give you and your mother a lift home?’
‘No, honestly, we’ll be fine. Knowing my ma, she’ll want some hair of the dog.’ Bel rolled her eyes. ‘She had a few too many last night. She mentioned nipping into the village afterwards, which means an hour in the Railway Inn before we get on the train.’
Helen felt a sudden jolt of sadness. The Railway Inn had been her and John’s favourite meeting place.
‘Oh.’ Helen let out a bitter laugh. ‘Tell her to have one for me.’
Bel’s laughter was just as bitter.
‘I will. Not that she’ll need any encouragement.’