The Nurse's War

CHAPTER 4

She’d glimpsed Grayson one Saturday afternoon in Regent Street just before Christmas. Nurses had each been given a precious few hours to shop for presents, not that there was much to buy or money to pay for what there was. And there he’d been, strolling along the pavement outside Liberty, with a laughing girl on his arm. She could still feel the fierce jealousy that had taken a sudden grip on her. She’d darted down a side street to get out of their way. And to recover. It was a shock that she could feel so passionately when months ago she’d sent him away, knowing she could never give him the closeness he craved.

‘I’m sure he is,’ she managed to reply. ‘Happy, that is. Things move at such a speed these days, they’re probably already married.’ Joking was the best defence, and it was probably not even a joke. War was not the moment to hang about. People met, coupled, married and left each other, all within months, sometimes weeks, even days.

‘So meet him as an old friend, an old acquaintance. You’re asking him a favour, that’s all.’

‘It’s quite a favour, don’t you think? He’s an intelligence officer and I’m asking him to aid a deserter. It’s not something that makes me feel good.’

‘You’ll just have to get over it. After all, he’s in an ideal position to help you. Who better? And if he finds it impossible or he’s shocked to the core, he can say no. It’s as simple as that. And then you can tell that dratted husband of yours that’s it’s a no-go and he’ll leave you alone.’

If only it were that simple. But Connie didn’t know Gerald, didn’t know his persistence or his reaction when he didn’t get what he wanted.

She’d used the bombing as an excuse to stop seeing Grayson. It was true that meeting each other had become more difficult when day after day she was ferrying casualties out into the countryside and had virtually no time free. And with death all around, it was better perhaps to forget relationships, forget friendship for that matter, and concentrate on the work they both must do. But it was an excuse and a poor one at that. It wasn’t the war that was stopping her. Not the fragility of existence, the gossamer line between life and death that she saw every day in the hospital, but the sheer awfulness of what had happened to her. She couldn’t get over the betrayal. Her husband’s, and even worse, Anish’s, the man she had thought her dear friend. She could never again commit herself wholeheartedly to anyone. From her earliest years, she’d lived a solitary life—at the orphanage, as a servant to Miss Maddox, as a working class girl in Bridges’ perfumery. She’d always been lonely and expected nothing else. And then Gerald had come along and for a short while a warmer life had beckoned. Her love for him, her friendship with Anish, had changed her, made her newly vulnerable, opened her to pain.

She could never be that girl again, but neither could she expect Grayson to understand. His life had been smooth. He’d lost his father at a very young age, she knew, but he had a mother who adored him, uncles who’d educated him, a job he loved and colleagues who were friends. If he survived this war, he would climb the intelligence ladder until he reached its very pinnacle and he would have allies all the way. His was a golden life. He could never understand the raw wash of despair that, at times, could overwhelm her. The feelings of worthlessness, that in some twisted way she had deserved her fate. While she was working, she was happy. That first day of training on the ward, she’d felt a flow of confidence and that had stayed with her. She’d known she could do the job and do it well. But that was on the ward. Out of uniform, her self-belief could waver badly and in an instant render her defenceless. She had to protect herself from further hurt. And protect Grayson, or any man who came too close, from disappointment. That was the result of Jasirapur and the shattered dreams she had left there.

She stayed on duty into the evening. Several of the nursing staff had gone down with bad colds and been sent to the sickbay. The hospital was very strict about nurses going off duty as soon as they fell ill but it meant, of course, more work for those who remained standing. She stayed until past seven and when she left Barts, daylight was already fading. The long evenings were still for the future. Until they came, she sensed rather than saw her way home. In daytime, the city went busily about its affairs, but at night the unaccustomed darkness altered its rhythm. You went slowly, feeling your way forward, hoping not to bump into walls, lamp posts, stray wardens or huddled strangers. She turned the corner into Charterhouse Square and began to follow the path through the trees.

Tomorrow she must use her free afternoon to visit number sixty-four Baker Street. How was she to manage this unwanted encounter? Perhaps if she arrived near to the time that Grayson finished work, she might catch him at the entrance. That way she wouldn’t have to brave the building or its gatekeepers. She was halfway across the square when the moon swam from beneath its dark cover. It was a full moon, too, and for a moment it bathed the area in white light, tipping the grass with silver and casting long shadows wherever she looked. A moment only and it had disappeared once more behind the banking clouds. But it had been enough to bring discomfort, enough to make her aware of those shadows and feel again eyes that followed her. It seemed a night for ghosts.

In fact every night had been a night for ghosts, from the moment Gerald had risen from the dead to stand at her shoulder. Since then she had seen unreal figures aplenty, imagined eyes watching from every corner. She knew it was a nonsense, but it didn’t prevent her glancing over her shoulder as she turned the key in the lock. Nothing. You see, she told herself, there’s nothing and, if you’re not careful, you’ll send yourself mad. In India, Gerald had tried to persuade her that her mind was losing its grip. All those accidents that somehow had a perfectly logical explanation but only seemed to happen to her, each one more serious than the one before, each one a threat to her body as well as her sanity. Now he was playing with her mind again and she must not let him. Tomorrow, she would go to Baker Street and, if she had to, walk through the door of the SOE headquarters and ask to speak to Grayson Harte. For good or for ill, it would be over—or so she hoped.

It had to rain, of course. The fine weather of the last week broke with a vengeance and Daisy was left struggling to raise a battered umbrella as she turned out of the underground station. She had dressed as well as she could for the occasion in a woollen dress of olive green. It was the only dress she possessed that wasn’t darned or mended in some way. Over it she wore her nurse’s cape. It was forbidden to wear uniform off duty, but in the absence of a winter coat, she had little option but to break the rules. The rain was hammering down and she peered anxiously at her shoes, heeled and soled so many times that they were now perilously thin. They were bound to leak, she thought, and refused to imagine what she would look like by the time she made it to Grayson’s office. And once this pair was completely ruined, there would be no more fancy footwear. Since the start of the New Year, there had been shortages in just about everything. Food especially. Sometimes the nurses had gone hungry and several of them had complained, Lydia at the forefront, at the unfairness that gave labourers a larger food allowance. But Lydia had always been a troublemaker, and, for the most part, people had shrugged and got on with it. But clothing was rationed now and their wardrobes were looking more tattered by the day. Shoes, in particular, were expensive and scarce, and Connie had even taken to mending hers with Elastoplast.

Splinters of water bounced off the pavement and soaked Daisy’s feet and ankles. The wind had risen and the umbrella was beginning to look more dangerous than useful, but she battled on doggedly, taking what shelter it offered and counting down the street numbers. She had managed to keep her mind from dwelling on the meeting ahead but now she could ignore it no longer. She stopped, facing the glass doors of number sixty-four, and looked up at its façade. White slabs of stone rose towards the sky, a thrusting contrast to the red brick of Mr Baker’s first residential street. There was nothing to suggest the nature of the business conducted within its walls and ordinarily she would have passed the building without a second glance. But Grayson had mentioned all those months ago that the SIS had split into different sections and from now on he’d be working with the Special Operations Executive. They’d recently moved to a new headquarters—he’d be one of the Baker Street Irregulars, he’d said cheerfully. He had seemed to relish the thought of working with them, though she had only the haziest idea of what that might entail. It was sure to involve India since his experience there would be invaluable.

Fighting against an ever-rising wind, she yanked down the umbrella, and made a decision. There was no sign of Grayson and the storm had already taken its toll, her legs splashed with dirt and her face plastered in a frenzy of wet curls. She pushed through the revolving doors and into the dazzle of black and white tiles, outpolished by gleaming mahogany doors, which stood to attention on either side of the ground floor corridor. On her left, a stone staircase wound its way upwards. Overhead, she could hear the sound of feet, tapping up and down its steps, five or six storeys high, she estimated. Facing the stairs was a lift, its concertina door open, and inside its braided guardian perched on a stool. A reception desk barred her from going any further and a severe-looking young woman, her hair scrunched back into a stubby knot, looked up from the file she was reading and arched her brows in enquiry.

‘Can I help you?’

The woman’s voice was as scrunched as her hair and Daisy struggled to find her tongue.

‘I would like to see Grayson Harte, if it’s possible.’ She tried not to sound hesitant.

‘Yes?’ The eyebrows seemed to suggest that this was a privilege granted to only a few.

‘I wonder, is he in?’

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No, but—’

‘You must have an appointment. I’m afraid you can’t see him without one, Miss … You do realise this is a government building.’

‘Yes, I do. But Mr Harte … It’s important I see him.’

‘I’m sure it is.’ The woman smiled pityingly at her. ‘Just make an appointment. I can give you his secretary’s number if you wish.’

‘I don’t have the time for that.’ Daisy decided she didn’t like the woman, decided she would be happy to lie to her. ‘If he’s in, I need to see him now. It’s urgent. A matter of national importance, you see.’

The woman’s face changed, her expression chilled by Daisy’s announcement. ‘I’ll see if he’s available.’

She turned her back and muttered something into the telephone. There was a pause of several minutes at the other end of the line as though someone had gone away to check. What if they were checking up on her? she thought. She’d just told a very big lie and, in the current situation, they might not take kindly to such talk. What would Grayson think when he saw her standing there instead of the matter of national importance? Her stomach tensed. She couldn’t do it. She had to do it. The woman replaced the receiver with a clang but said nothing further. Instead, she returned to her papers as though her unwelcome visitor had ceased to exist. Daisy caught the ring of shoes on the stone stairs. The footsteps were some way off, but coming nearer. They must belong to Grayson. He was walking towards her at this very moment. No, she couldn’t do it after all. She snatched up the dripping umbrella and plunged through the revolving door and out on to the rain-soaked street.

Her heart was jumping, but at least she was out of the building. She’d escaped. Soon she could lose herself among the crowds. She’d given no name; she was anonymous and untraceable. But she had gone barely three yards along the road when the sirens began their interminable wailing. High above she heard the roar of Spitfires as they began their chase of enemy planes. Today the Luftwaffe had not waited for night to fall and, when she looked back, a shroud of grey was already rising into the sky from the east of the city. An ambulance tore along Baker Street, its bell ringing furiously, closely followed by several fire engines. Black coils of stinking smoke chased through the sky and billowed overhead, while fragments of what seemed to be charred paper showered groundwards. Her ears were zinging from the noise of blasts coming ever closer. She looked up and saw in the distance English planes darting from side to side in the sky, like little silver fish in a great, grey pond. And, amid the mayhem, a German fleet of bombers flying in majestic order, laying waste to the city below them.

The underground station had to be the nearest shelter. It was considered bad form to run, but she walked very quickly towards it. The authorities had been reluctant to allow stations to be used, but the public had taken the matter into its own hands and they were now London’s largest air raid shelters, with miles of platforms and tunnels put to use. People felt safer under the ground, though in reality that wasn’t always so. Marble Arch had suffered a direct hit earlier this year and at the Bank, the bomb had fallen right into the station and carried with it tarmac from the road, burning dreadfully hundreds of people. There was risk everywhere.

Even if the underground was marginally safer, it was not a place she wanted to be. The platforms would be overcrowded, she knew, fetid with the smell of unventilated bodies packed as close as sardines. But she had no choice, and could only hope that her patients were right when they’d said that stations had become more civilised over the last year, with sanitary closets and washing facilities installed. There was even talk that at some mobile canteens had been set up to offer hot food and drink. At the entrance, a queue had already formed and, as she waited, a small scuffle broke out at the front—a few men already merry from an hour spent in a nearby public house—but otherwise an orderly trail of people were making their way down into the depths of the oldest underground station in the world. It looked it too, she thought. The Victorian tiling was dull and dirty, left uncleaned since the war began, and the grind of ancient escalators was no more comforting, jammed as they were from top to tail with people scurrying towards what they hoped was safety.

When she finally reached the platform, there were already hundreds crammed into the small space and more streaming in with every minute. A mix of people, caught together in this flash of time, sharing the irritation, the defiance, the camaraderie, the fear. By the look of them, there were a large number of locals, people who spent every night here and who Daisy could see were trying to organise the shelter into some kind of order. They had an almost impossible job. Some families had brought what appeared to be their entire household and were already setting up makeshift bunks, surrounded by their most valuable possessions. There were large numbers of women with small children; a few suburban housewives caught out by the sirens before they could get home; and several men in dinner jackets, the ladies on their arms flashing jewels, detained on their way to an evening on the town. Old people, their faces lined and weary, young shop girls and typists, a smattering of men in uniform. All wartime life, in fact.