18. Behind the Lines

A little of the sparkle in Ada’s big blue eyes vanished the day that Jamie left for war. Though she smiled cheerily as she went about her work, it was clear to all of those who loved her that she was suffering. Dora, who had endured even greater pain, spoke to the staff behind closed doors.

‘The girl’s hurting right now – let her be. She’ll come around in her own good time, God willing.’

Diana found it hard to follow Dora’s advice and leave Ada alone; she instinctively knew what Ada was going through, and so she made a point of tracking her down after she had finished her morning rounds. Walking into the sluice-room, Diana said without any preamble, ‘If you ever need to talk to somebody who knows what it’s like, you know where to find me.’

Ada laid aside the bucket of sanitizing fluid she was in the process of preparing for the nursery and turned her sad eyes on Diana. ‘How do you bear the waiting?’ she simply asked.

Diana slumped against the side of the sink and leant against it to ease her heavy tummy. ‘There’s no choice,’ she answered bluntly. ‘At first, you’re under some crazy romantic illusion that it’s not happening, that your beloved will walk through the door and surprise you, or there’ll be a letter in the post for you; but then, as time drags slowly by, you realize that they really have gone. And in my case,’ she said, as she gazed down at her burgeoning tummy, ‘you begin to wonder if you haven’t just dreamt it all.’

Seeing Ada’s alarmed expression, Diana quickly modified her words, ‘Harry’s situation is quite unlike Jamie’s,’ she assured Ada. ‘Harry has disappeared in mysterious circumstances more than once. The base kept it all hush-hush, which nearly drove me out of my mind; nobody told me anything – least of all Harry.’

Ada’s pretty arched eyebrows shot up. ‘He must have a very important job.’

Diana gave a weary shrug. ‘How would I know?’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘I haven’t a damn clue what’s going on.’

Ada gently stoked Diana’s slender arm. ‘I’m so sorry, I had no idea,’ she murmured sympathetically.

‘To be honest,’ Diana confessed, ‘it’s a relief to be able to talk to somebody; trying to get any information out of Harry’s tight-lipped chums on the air base was like trying to get blood out of a stone. I shouldn’t complain: at least monosyllabic Gordon let me know that Harry was still alive when I’d all but given up.’ Continuing on a more optimistic note, Diana added, ‘Lines of communication will be much better for you, Ada. Your boyfriend is a doctor, and, though he’s fighting behind enemy lines, post will get in and out; you’re bound to hear from him soon.’

Tears welled up in Ada’s big blue eyes. ‘Oh, I hope so,’ she said with such yearning. ‘I really hope so.’

Within ten days of Jamie’s leaving, Ada received the letter she had been longing for. After Sister Mary Paul (with a concerned look on her face) delivered it, Ada held the envelope to her thudding heart; then she raised it to her nose and sniffed it to see if it smelt of Jamie, but there were no hints of his favourite soap or hospital disinfectant. Chiding herself for being a foolish romantic, Ada hurried to her office at the end of the hospital corridor. After closing the door, she leant against it before she opened the letter and read.

My dearest, sweetest, darling girl,

I’m looking at the photograph I took of you at Watendlath: though the picture is black and white I can imagine the beauty of your big blue eyes and the colour of your glorious long hair. God, how I love you! I hope you’re well, my sweet, and all at Mary Vale too – please send them my best wishes. When I think of the Home, so secluded on the edge of that vast marsh washed by the Irish Sea, I marvel at how different it is to the hurly-burly of the casualty clearing station I’ve been posted to. I’m not allowed to give any details of my location – if I did my letter might be destroyed, and it would certainly be censored – but I can tell you about my daily routine. I’m one of four general doctors who work alongside two surgical specialists and a dentist; there are also quite a number of nursing orderlies and theatre assistants. We’re a highly mobile clearing station, ready to move on at any time: our job is to accept the sick and the wounded, assess their injuries and carry out emergency treatment or evacuate them to general hospitals behind the Line. As I say, it’s pretty hectic – we snatch a few hours’ sleep whenever we can and usually eat standing up. How I yearn for Sister Mary Paul’s Eccles cakes and Lancashire cheese sandwiches! When I’m not working or sleeping, I think about you all of the time. I may be surrounded by female nursing orderlies, but I have eyes only for my beloved Sister Dale, who, as far as I’m concerned, outshines the stars. Write back to me, sweetheart, with all your news, even if it’s only to tell me how many marrows Zelda has harvested. I’m keen to hear if my post at Mary Vale has been filled by another doctor. I think not, with all the shortages, which makes me worry about how you’re all managing.

God bless you, my love, please, please write soon,

Jamie xxxxxx

Smiling dreamily, Ada kissed the letter. ‘Thank God, he’s well,’ she sighed.

Slipping the letter into the top drawer of her desk, Ada resumed her duties, but hours later, at the end of her long afternoon shift, she managed to find time to sit down in her quiet office and write back to Jamie.

Darling Heart,

Thank you so much for your wonderful letter, which filled me with a mixture of both delight and relief. I can’t believe that you’ve been gone for nearly a fortnight – it feels more like a year. Every time I hear car wheels scrunching on the gravel drive, or pulling up at the entrance, I run to the front door thinking it’s you arriving to start your surgery. The residents miss you very much – all of them regularly ask how you are and send their best wishes. Sister Mary Paul longs to send you a hamper full of goodies, but I’ve explained it might not get delivered to the right person, or, worse still, might even end up in the hands of the Germans, which really infuriates her. You’re quite right, we haven’t got a replacement doctor, and it’s more than likely we won’t get one either. I’m not sure what we’ll do in emergencies, which, as you know, your ex-GP in Barrow is supposed to cover, but he must be working himself into the ground now that you’ve left his practice. We’ll manage somehow – we have done in the past and we will do so again. When I think of you barely sleeping and eating on the hoof, I want to fly over to your side and take care of you, my own sweet Jamie, you’re so very precious to me. Do you remember the rather elegant resident, Diana? She and I have become quite friendly since we now have something in common: our men are both posted somewhere overseas. She, poor girl, has not seen her fiancé in months, and she’s carrying his child. I feel guilty when I compare myself to Diana. You’ve been gone barely two weeks and I’ve already heard from you, while she, poor girl, has heard nothing in months. War is so cruel. I try to stay strong, but when I think of you so close to the enemy my resolve breaks and I have to stop myself from crying. Write as soon as you can, my darling, and take good care of yourself.

I love you so very much,

Ada xxxx

Diana couldn’t help but feel a stab of envy when Ada told her that she’d received a letter from Jamie.

‘You must be so relieved,’ she said, with a generous smile that immediately made Ada feel guilty.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ada quickly apologized. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ Diana retorted. ‘The machinery of war rolls on and we can’t do a thing about it.’

Feeling overwhelmingly sad for Diana, Ada reached out to take her hand. ‘If only you had an inkling of where Harry was,’ she said wistfully.

With a catch in her voice, Diana replied, ‘As long as he’s alive, I can just about bear anything.’

Two hundred miles away, flying his single-engine Lysander light aircraft over France, Harry’s thoughts were all about Diana. His present work, picking up SOE and SIS agents in Allied-controlled territories, was so top secret he couldn’t speak a word of it to anybody, which meant that every time he took off on a mission he worried about what might happen if he didn’t make it back – what if he ‘bought it’, as the chaps on the ground said? Now permanently posted outside of England, Harry had never had the opportunity to explain his treacherous war work to Diana, and he was sure the RAF wouldn’t explain or apologize to her if he were suddenly to disappear on a clandestine mission. Risks were part of the job, and, as there were only a few experienced pickup pilots available, Flight Lieutenant Harry Langham was in no position to say no to his senior commanding officers.

Patriotism aside, Harry’s heart ached for the hurt he knew he must have caused Diana. She had been so determined, so tough; even when it was obvious that she was terrified, she had still kept a brave face just for his sake. His RAF colleagues in the viewing gallery had regularly (and in complete privacy) applauded him on his choice of a girlfriend who could clearly keep her mouth shut and not blab all over the mapping table to the other WAAF officers. Even now the poor girl didn’t have a clue about his movements. Recently Harry had been so concerned about Diana he had bent the rules and got a message out to Gordon, who had been reluctant to do anything like passing on messages.

‘For God’s sake, man, you don’t have to tell her where I am or what I’m doing,’ Harry had pleaded over the phone to his stuffy friend. ‘Just tell her I’m alive.’

Even now Harry had no idea if Diana had ever got his message.

Forcing himself to concentrate on his perilous landing in a dark field, Harry scanned the sky for Morse signals, which would be flashed from both the ground and the air signalling mutual recognition before he began his descent. This last leg was always short, just two or three minutes before he recognized a village, a bridge or a railway junction, and then, at the end, a friend in a field flashing the Morse letter he was expecting. He would only be on the ground briefly, long enough to pick up the returning agent and perhaps exchange a handshake with the undercover operator, who sometimes gave him a bottle of brandy; once he was given French perfume.

‘For your wife,’ the Frenchman had said with a wink.

His well-meaning sentence had cut Harry to the quick. He had never married the woman he loved, the woman who was carrying his child alone and unprotected. What kind of a man was he? Doing his bit in the war, fighting Hitler, was without a doubt the right thing to do, but Diana was paying the price for it. Things had not been going well recently; the Resistance ring with whom they had been liaising had recently been rounded up and executed. Harry knew that if any of the men and women in the ring had broken under interrogation, the Germans would be on his tail soon. He needed to be sure that if he was taken out by a sniper, Diana would be informed of his death, and hopefully told exactly what he had died for.