‘Pleased to meet you,’ George said as he shook Tommy’s hand.
He had just arrived on the ward with Polly.
‘You too, George. And thank yer for bringing Pol to see me. I hope you’ve not used up the rest of your petrol ration? I hear they’ve completely withdrawn fuel for private users.’
‘They have indeed,’ George said. ‘But fortunately my little MG has been granted a special permit on condition she’s available for “work deemed essential”.’
George chuckled.
‘And this is what I would deem “essential”.’
Tommy smiled. He knew George had been the one to bring Polly to the hospital on the night of the air raid – and that he was a veteran of the First World War, although it was something he never talked about.
‘Anyway, I won’t keep you from your lovely lady here.’ George winked at Polly.
Polly looked radiant. It didn’t matter that she had visited Tommy every day for the past eight days; the thrill of seeing him had clearly not waned in the slightest.
‘Now, am I right in thinking Arthur’s accompanying me back into town?’
‘He just went to use the facilities,’ Tommy said, looking towards the entrance to the ward. ‘Here he comes.’
They all looked as Arthur raised a hand and waved but stayed waiting by the matron’s desk.
‘Right, cheerio, then,’ George said, turning to leave.
As he did so, he scanned the rest of the ward, taking in the dozen or so injured soldiers, most of whom looked as though they’d had surgery on at least one of their limbs.
Nothing changes, he thought bitterly.
As soon as George had left, Tommy took Polly in his arms and gave her a kiss.
His actions were accompanied by two loud wolf whistles from Percival and Shorty.
These, in turn, were met by a thunderous look from the matron, who was monitoring the ward like a headmistress on playground duty.
‘Blimey, Pol,’ Tommy said, looking down at the bag he’d only just noticed she had brought with her. ‘No wonder you needed a lift here,’ he ribbed. ‘You’re not thinking of moving in, are you? Not that I’d be complaining, especially as you’d have to bunk down with me.’
Polly batted his arm playfully. ‘I think Mrs Rosendale might have something to say about that.’
She looked at him. He’d had to put his hand on the top of the bed to steady himself.
‘Sit down,’ she said, helping him to lower himself into the chair by the side. He was clearly still incredibly weak.
‘I’ve brought you something,’ Polly said. ‘Something I did after I got that wretched letter from your commander.’
It still pained Polly to think back to that godforsaken day – and the four long months that had followed.
‘Oh yes?’ Tommy’s face had gone serious.
Polly put her holdall onto the bed.
‘Well, one evening, a week or so after I’d learnt you’d been declared missing, I was lying in bed, thinking about the day I’d just had.’ She looked at Tommy and smiled. Sometimes she still had to pinch herself that he was back. That this was real.
‘Arthur and I had been down to the docks and we’d been chatting about our favourite subject.’ She laughed. ‘You! And Arthur had been telling me about how your nana Flo could never keep you in because you always wanted to be outdoors. And I was thinking how I’d have normally enjoyed writing to you and ribbing you about causing your grandda and your nana no end of worries, when I suddenly thought to myself, so what if I can’t send him any letters, there’s nothing stopping me writing them.’
Polly looked at Tommy.
‘So, I did. And I vowed that when you came back, I’d give you them and you’d know everything that happened while you were wherever it was you were.’
Tommy looked down as Polly pulled out a stack of letters from her bag.
‘I reckon you must have written one a day?’ He looked at the letters, which had been bound together by string and tied with a neat bow at the top.
‘Thereabouts,’ Polly said. She wondered if he’d notice that she’d stopped writing about six weeks ago, on the day his belongings had been sent back from Gibraltar.
‘You never gave up hope, did you?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, instead pushing himself out of his chair and putting the batch of letters in his bedside cabinet.
Polly was relieved. She’d hate for him to know that she had, in fact, given up hope.
‘Come on, time for our daily stroll.’ He put his arm out and escorted his fiancée out of the ward.
‘You must be very proud of that lad of yours,’ George said as he steered the MG out of the hospital grounds, turning left onto Stockton Road. ‘That’s a bloody dangerous job he’s been doing out there. Brave man. Very brave man.’
‘Aye,’ Arthur nodded.
They were quiet for a moment.
George drove slowly, enjoying the rarity of taking the ‘old gal’ out, and the fact that there was very little on the road.
‘I just hope he’s not got any madcap notion about going back out there,’ Arthur added.
George looked at the old man and saw concern on his face.
‘I presumed he’d been medically discharged,’ George said.
Arthur sighed.
‘I was asking him about it before you and Pol turned up and he said he’d asked them to hold off.’
George thought the old man might be worrying unnecessarily.
He doubted Tommy would ever be fit enough to go back to war.
‘So, let me make sure I’ve got this right,’ Tommy said, as he wrapped his arms around Polly and kissed her on the nose. They were outside, sitting on one of the benches dotted along the pathway that ran around the hospital grounds.
‘George is engaged to Lily. And the two are old friends of Rosie’s. And Bel’s long-lost sister, Maisie, lodges with them in their house in Ashbrooke – along with Kate, Rosie’s old school friend, and another woman called Vivian?’
‘That’s right,’ Polly said, purposely not going into any more detail. There was so much Tommy didn’t know. So many things these past two years that she hadn’t been able to tell him in her letters. Rosie and the bordello being one of them.
‘And thanks to the Admiralty, they’re now getting married on Christmas Day?’ Tommy continued.
‘That’s right,’ Polly said again, this time following her words with a kiss.
After a few moments, Tommy touched Polly’s face. He never tired of looking at her, being with her, talking with her – kissing her.
‘So,’ he said, ‘isn’t it time we decided on a date for our wedding?’
Polly didn’t answer, instead closing her eyes and kissing him again.
Tommy kissed her back, then held her at arm’s length and laughed.
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you were avoiding the question, Mrs soon-to-be Watts.’
‘I’m most certainly not avoiding your question,’ Polly defended herself. ‘I was thinking that perhaps we could get married in the New Year.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘Or better still, how about February the fourteenth – Valentine’s Day?’
Tommy pulled her close.
‘But I thought we agreed, when you woke me with a kiss …’ he kissed her neck ‘… that we’d waited long enough. That we’d get married soon.’
‘January?’ Polly suggested.
‘Soon,’ Tommy repeated.
Polly laughed loudly. Perhaps a little too loudly.
‘Let’s get you out of this place first, eh?’ she said.
Hurrying into the canteen, Polly thought it seemed an age since she had been there last, when, in fact, it had only been a week.
The great constant time sometimes seemed terribly fickle.
‘Dr Parker,’ Polly called out, overjoyed at seeing the doctor sitting on his own enjoying a cup of tea and an iced bun.
During visiting times, if he wasn’t in theatre, Dr Parker endeavoured to be in the cafeteria, available to the relatives of what he called his ‘recruits’.
‘Ah, Polly, come and sit down. How are you?’
‘I’m good. More than good, thank you.’
Polly pulled up a seat.
‘I just wanted a quick word about Tommy, if that’s all right?’
‘Of course, fire ahead!’ Dr Parker looked at Polly. Seeing her for the first time without a dirty face and dressed in greasy overalls, he realised just how pretty she was.
‘Can you tell me how Tommy’s really doing? He’s very good at making out he’s absolutely hunky-dory, but you just need to look at him to see he’s far from fit and healthy. There seems to be no doubt in his mind that he’s going to completely recover. Back to how he was before he left. Do you think he’s expecting too much?’
Polly paused.
‘I’m asking, not because it matters to me, although it does.’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘I mean, I’ll love him regardless, but I worry how he’ll be in himself if he’s not able to go back to work. It goes without saying he won’t be going back to his unit in Gibraltar, but I know it would be the end of the world if he couldn’t work again.’
Dr Parker took a moment to decide how best to answer the question. Polly wasn’t just a pretty face; she was astute enough to realise that Tommy needed to recover enough to at least do some kind of work. If not, it would undoubtedly affect his mindset.
‘That’s a difficult question.’
He loosened his tie and took a deep breath.
‘With Tommy there’s a lot we don’t know. The shock his body had. Underwater explosions have the potential to damage a person’s internal organs. He’s already had a ruptured spleen, but there may well be other issues that we don’t know about. Add to the mix the fact that his body was given a secondary trauma when he nearly drowned in the Atlantic, and he spent a good part of his epic journey back here semi-conscious and fighting pneumonia.’
He thought for a moment.
‘Only time will tell. It really is a case of a day at a time.’
Polly nodded, digesting what had been said.
‘Thank you, Dr Parker. It’s good that I know all this.’
‘I have to say, though,’ Dr Parker added, ‘that Tommy is a very resilient man. He came off his pain medication earlier than I would have liked, and he’s up and about, going for walks in the grounds when most men would still be bed-bound.’
‘That’s his stubborn streak,’ Polly said. ‘And his obsessive need to be outdoors.’
Dr Parker murmured his agreement. He’d seen both in Tommy this past week.
‘He’s on about setting a date for the wedding,’ Polly added, a little shyly, ‘but I wasn’t sure how long it would be before Tommy was up to it?’
Dr Parker barked with laughter.
‘I think Tommy would drag you down that aisle tomorrow if you’d let him!’
It wasn’t quite the answer Polly had been expecting.
Seeing an elderly couple waiting a few yards away, Polly thanked Dr Parker once again and left.
Dr Parker stood up as Polly took her leave. It had been on the tip of his tongue to mention the night terrors that Tommy was having, but something stopped him.
They weren’t uncommon in soldiers coming back from war.
Hopefully, they’d die down the more he adapted to being back home.