November grew colder still as the month progressed and the nurses took full advantage of the big fire blazing in the common room after they finished their rounds. Despite the big windows, the room was always warm. ‘I’m glad they mended those broken panes,’ said Ruby, giving a theatrical shiver. ‘You won’t have seen what it was like, Iris. Earlier in the year there was a big bomb strike just a street away and all this glass shattered. We had to have it boarded up for ages and it was gloomy as could be. Imagine what it’d be like with that now.’
‘Lots of people are making do with sacking or waxed cotton,’ Iris pointed out.
‘It’s even better now that Gladys has adapted the curtains with thicker linings,’ Belinda said. ‘Still less chance of draughts getting through.’
Ruby was rebuttoning her chunkiest cardigan. ‘You helped, didn’t you? That’s what she said.’
Belinda shrugged. ‘She did the bulk of it. Are you getting ready to go out, Ruby?’
The young nurse stood up. ‘That’s right. Me and Kenny are going to the pictures, down Mare Street. Several others are coming – do you fancy it, Belinda? You haven’t been out for ages.’
The tallest nurse raised her eyebrows. ‘What’s on?’
‘A Sherlock Holmes – The Pearl of Death. You like those, don’t you?’
Belinda hesitated and then stood as well. ‘You’re right, I’ve been sitting in and moping. Perhaps I will come after all. I’ll see you in the hallway, shall I?’ She made for the door as Ruby nodded.
‘How about a trip to the pictures, Iris? Would you like to come along too?’
Iris smiled at being invited, but had no desire to trek along like a last-minute addition. Ruby would be with her young man and they deserved time together; she knew from earlier comments that they hadn’t seen one another for a week. Belinda would no doubt know whoever else was going so she herself would be a spare cog, and that would be awkward.
‘Oh, that’s kind of you to ask, but I have to catch up on my mending,’ she said, hoping Ruby wouldn’t mind the white lie.
Ruby laughed. ‘Do it tomorrow,’ she suggested.
‘Oh, but you know how it piles up,’ Iris protested, now forced to continue the fiction.
Ruby gave way. ‘You’re right, it does. If you’re sure? You’d be welcome, really you would. Oh, all right, enjoy your evening, then – I’d better go and find Belinda.’
Iris was finally left on her own, watching the coals burning and remembering how she would gather firewood back in Devon, drying the wet logs in a little lean-to in her tiny yard, before making a neat pile in her scullery. It had been time-consuming but very satisfying, knowing she’d done the work to heat her own small house. On the other hand, it was nice to be somewhere where someone else took care of that side of things. Swings and roundabouts, she told herself. Think about the good things in this still-new place. Keep trying to do that.
There was something very comforting about a fire and she gazed into the flames, watching them flicker and then roar as the coals settled and shifted. Absent-mindedly she added a few more and watched as they changed colour in the heat. She had no idea of how much time might have gone by when she heard another voice behind her. It made her jump, as she hadn’t noticed the door opening or any footsteps approaching. She had let down her guard for once.
‘Iris! Just who I wanted to see.’
Gwen came and sat on the chair next to her, folding the narrow flares of her plain woollen skirt around her legs. ‘Beautiful fire, isn’t it? I do believe that we have Gladys to thank – she has magical powers of persuasion when it comes to obtaining fuel. I dare say she is on first-aid duty this evening, though.’
Iris gave a small smile but wondered what this was a prelude to. ‘I’m not sure.’ Perhaps Gladys and her young man – whatever was his name? – were part of the gang going to the cinema. It was none of her business.
‘Well, it seems that for the moment we are without other company,’ Gwen went on. ‘That being so, I wanted to discuss a case with you, if you don’t mind. The young man with the wound from the misfiring weapon.’ Even if there was nobody to hear, the assistant superintendent was scrupulous to avoid the word ‘suicide’.
Iris nodded. After the visit to Dr Patcham, she had fully intended to seek out Gwen or Fiona to talk about the patient, as he had suggested, but for the few days afterwards there had never seemed to be a convenient moment. Then she had decided it would be better to wait to see how the young man progressed, if he would indeed recover enough to be fit for travel. Word had come yesterday that he had been accepted into the convalescent home and she had made what might have been her final visit to prepare him for the journey. She’d done her best to calm tensions in the household, reassuring Connie his wife, listening to her concerns, as well as downplaying his mother’s accusations. She’d sat with the patient for a long while, telling him exactly what was planned for him. Yet in all that time, he had not said a word to her.
‘Ah yes,’ she said cautiously. ‘I’d be glad of the chance to talk about that.’ She felt slightly embarrassed, knowing how deeply her own feelings had become intertwined and uncertain how much of this to reveal to her superior. But before she could broach her complicated concerns, voices floated in from the corridor and she hastily clammed up while the conversation between Mary and Alice grew louder as the two nurses entered the common room.
‘Oh, what a marvellous fire!’ Mary hurried over, her hands spread before her. ‘Alice, just come and warm yourself on this. You don’t mind, do you?’ She turned a little belatedly to Iris.
‘Oh, not at all.’ Iris backed away a little, aware that she was hogging the heat.
Gwen made to rise. ‘Mary, Alice, excellent. I was just on the point of asking Nurse Hawke to check something in one of my files upstairs and it would be such a shame to waste this lovely blaze. You can have it all to yourselves.’
‘Super!’ exclaimed Mary in heedless delight, while Alice raised her eyebrows, catching a different meaning behind Gwen’s words.
‘Oh, yes. Certainly.’ Iris rose as well, relieved that she hadn’t been in the middle of saying something indiscreet. Truly, you had to have eyes in the back of your head in this place; there was no such thing as a confidential conversation unless you were very careful.
Gwen nodded in appreciation of the nurse cottoning on to what she meant. ‘My room, then. Shall we?’
Iris wondered what Gwen’s room would look like. She had an idea that it would be austere, with little in the way of personal items, and all the colours muted and restrained, to match the way the woman dressed when not in uniform. She could not have been more wrong.
Gwen’s room was on the first floor, at the opposite end of the corridor to Fiona’s office. The first thing Iris noticed was how large it was, and how pleasant, even though she could work out that if the blackout blind hadn’t been in place the view would have been only of the back yard. There was a bed, chest of drawers and wardrobe on one side, and a small desk, but the other side was a generous living area, with an easy chair, a table with two chairs, and a big standard lamp in the corner, edged with a rose-gold fringe. Its glow made the whole space feel homely. There were plenty of shelves, and framed photographs were ranged along some of them.
Gwen took one of the hardback chairs for herself, indicating that her guest should have the more comfortable easy chair, which had an embroidered cushion. Iris sat down, glancing around the room as she did so. There was even a little wash basin in the corner, with a mirror above it. That was an unexpected luxury.
‘Sherry?’ Gwen asked, reaching into a cupboard for a bottle and two glasses without waiting for a reply.
‘Thank you,’ she said politely, accepting the little glass with its delicate stem.
‘I keep this for special occasions,’ Gwen added. ‘It’s not often that I have a visitor, and so I thought this would count.’
Iris nodded, trying not to show her surprise. This was a whole new side of Gwen. It made what she had to say less daunting. Perhaps that had been the idea. The deputy had many years of experience in nursing and that must mean she was well versed in all the quirks of human nature.
‘So, tell me the latest news about that poor boy, Eddie Chalmers,’ the deputy said.
‘Well.’ Iris blinked hard, and then gave a clinical update: the physical improvement, the move to the convalescent home. ‘And therefore I won’t need to attend the family any longer,’ she finished.
‘Hmmm.’ Gwen rested her elbows on the table in front of her. ‘That is, in many ways, better than we could have hoped for or predicted. There was a very real chance that he would die. However, you don’t mention anything he’s said to you.’
Iris shifted her position as she suddenly felt very uncomfortable, cushion or no cushion. ‘That’s because he hasn’t – he never speaks. I don’t think I’m the only one. His wife and parents say the same. It’s as if he has completely withdrawn from the world. That was one big reason why the doctor wanted him moved away, so he’d be in a different atmosphere. The house is so full of tension that it can’t be good for him.’
Gwen nodded seriously. ‘Unspoken recriminations?’
‘Something like that. The mother blames the young wife, doesn’t believe the child she’s carrying is her son’s. The wife blames her mother-in-law for saying such a thing and making the young man distrust her. The boy’s father hardly says a word. Normally you’d think that the patient would best be able to recover in his own home – but in this case the further he is away from it the better.’
‘Indeed.’ Gwen twirled the glass by its stem. ‘And do you believe the young wife?’
Iris frowned. ‘It’s not my place to take sides. But yes, I do. She’s absolutely adamant, and desperate for Eddie to recover. And there’s absolutely no evidence to the contrary.’
‘And has she mentioned any arrangements for the birth of the child?’
‘No, and it’s not due until the spring; she wasn’t very clear exactly when.’
Gwen took a tiny sip of sherry. ‘If she trusts you, and feels that you believe her, then she might wish you to be her midwife,’ she suggested.
‘I’d be happy to,’ Iris said at once. ‘There’s an idea that she might follow her husband if lodgings can be found near the convalescent home, but I don’t know if that will be possible and, even if it is, how long that arrangement would last.’
Gwen nodded. ‘Well, keep it in mind.’ She looked steadily at the nurse. ‘Iris, I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but if you don’t mind me saying, you seem a little … upset.’
Iris looked down to avoid Gwen’s gaze. Here it comes, the moment she had avoided, had skirted around even in her own mind. ‘Perhaps a little,’ she admitted.
‘Would you like to tell me why?’
Iris also sipped her sherry. It was sweet and warming, and made her think that maybe speaking the words would not be so bad. She’d managed to do it once, in that café, safely away from the walls of this house, after all.
‘There was a similar thing that happened back in Devon,’ she said slowly. ‘Not in my village but down in Plymouth.’
‘Go on,’ Gwen said.
Iris took a deep breath to steady her nerves, and then came out with the whole sad tale: how Peter had stepped in, amidst all the horrors of the devastated docks, only to meet his end at the hands of a young man driven to distraction by fear. There was a moment’s silence as she finished her story, in which she stared at her hands, gripping the little glass.
Then Gwen sighed, from the depths of her heart. ‘So hard for you, my dear. I’m so sorry.’
Iris blinked furiously to ward off the tears that threatened to fall. ‘Thank you. Yes, it was. Of course so many young men were dying – and old ones, and women and children. And yet it doesn’t make it any easier.’ She turned away, unable to look at her colleague’s sympathetic expression. Her eyes fell on the photographs and for a few moments she stared at them vaguely, the unshed tears blurring their details. Then, as a few salty tears fell and she wiped them swiftly away, the focus grew sharper. Slowly she took in what she was seeing.
The photograph of the young man on his own had a slight impression of fingerprints on the glass, as if it was frequently picked up. He wore an old-fashioned captain’s uniform, and he had a proud, confident bearing, his eyes lively. Dreading the answer, Iris turned back to Gwen with an unspoken question on her face.
The deputy superintendent nodded. ‘That was Wilfred,’ she said softly. ‘He didn’t make it back in 1918. All those years ago, and yet I’ve never forgotten him. There could never be anyone to take his place.’
For a moment neither woman spoke. Distant noises from the far-off streets filtered through the thick blind, as muffled sounds came from downstairs, doors closing, voices from the nurses who had not gone to the cinema. Someone was playing a wireless upstairs on the attic floor. A faint tune by the Glenn Miller Orchestra was just about recognisable.
Iris felt utterly drained and yet curiously lighter too. It had been bad enough telling Alice, although on her better days she recognised it had been a good thing to do, to begin to share this sorrow. But now she saw that she was not alone. Someone here understood what she had gone through. The case of Eddie had brought it all flooding back, but ultimately death was death, the manner of it just a detail when set against the unmovable horror of the loss.
‘That’s important, isn’t it,’ Iris found herself saying. ‘Not to forget. It means they didn’t die in vain.’
‘I’m glad you understand,’ Gwen breathed. ‘I hesitate to tell people who have not experienced a similar loss.’
‘They all said he was a hero.’ Iris tried to keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘Well, maybe, yes, but he was doing his job, and he’d have done what he did anyway, for anybody. I hate that word. I don’t care if I never hear “hero” again for the rest of my life.’
Gwen took a final sip of her sherry. ‘Sometimes I know what you mean.’ She gave a small smile. ‘It doesn’t bring them back, does it? Nothing does. I do take comfort in the knowledge that he was doing his job, just as your young man was. He’d have had it no other way. The alternative, doing nothing, was unthinkable.’
Iris finished her sherry as well. She felt a little less shaky now.
‘That goes for all of us,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to die any more. But I don’t want to be a hero. I just want to do my job.’
Gwen rose. ‘And you do it very well, my dear,’ she said.