Pawcett kept up his loud recitation, well aware that none of the men in the ward would be sleeping yet and they’d enjoy the scene he was about to give them.
‘Problem is, Nurse, you lot insist we have an afternoon kip every day, but where’s the rest when we’ve to keep an eye out for Cuth? A caution he is for sleepwalking, honest. And Gawd knows where Sanders has got to. He was worried about Cuth heading over to the river, stone me if we’re not in for a flood the minute that storm hits, or worse, what if he’d got into one of those tunnels under here? The place is riddled with them. Be a love and help us out, will you?’
Sanders meanwhile, was offering Rosamund his best self-satisfied grin. Faced with his cheery good looks, his twinkling eyes and the dark curl that fell over his left eye, no matter how often he combed it back, not to mention the knowing smile that Rosamund had promised herself she would ignore, she felt her resolve melting away. The tough carapace of a girl who cared nought for his charms, a girl who was as easily distracted by other young men as Sanders was by Sukie Johnson, faded all too swiftly into that old yearning. It was a wanting made still more painful because Rosamund knew Maurice would have spent his stolen hour at the pub carrying on with Sukie over the bar, hoping that her old man was as daft as he looked. Still, she had rehearsed her lines and she knew her new yellow dress looked pretty darn good, so she gave it her best shot.
‘Oh, it’s you Maurice, I might have known you’d be out carousing with the boys.’
Sanders smiled his lop-sided grin, ‘You should have come along, Rosie, plenty of honest blokes in the saloon bar, a lovely girl like you’d have no trouble picking up a beau, ’specially not in a frock like that, showing it off for all you’re worth.’
His words stung, but Rosamund brazened it out, ‘And get into even hotter water than I am already, two hours late for my shift and Sister Comfort on the warpath? No fear. Besides, the Bridge Hotel’s lost some of its allure lately.’
‘Blimey! “Allure” is it now? There’s a phrase if ever I heard one. Picked that one up in London did you? Fair enough. I reckon a backwater boozer like the Bridge isn’t for the likes of you. Mind you, the beer’s a darn sight cheaper there than it is back in town, and some of us,’ he stepped closer, too close, but Rosamund stood her ground, ‘some of us aren’t quite as fit in the pocket as we ought to be, are we, love?’
Rosamund smiled and slowly lifted her handbag, she reached in, clicked open the clasp on her mother’s red leather purse and carefully peeled away a five pound note from the larger bundle. She planted a deep red kiss right on Captain Cook’s face on the outer note of the bundle before she put it safely back in her purse. She was glad to see the sight of the money wiped the smile off Maurice’s face, if only for a moment.
‘Didn’t you hear?’ she asked lightly.
‘Hear what?’
‘I’d have thought it’d be all round Mount Seager by now, can’t imagine the girls on the late transport would be talking about anything else, you know how they love a gossip.’
‘What would? Where’s all that money from, Roz? Who’ve you robbed blind?’
‘My horse only went and came in, Maurice. So here’s your fiver, and I’ll thank you for the loan, and that’s you and I quits, don’t you think?’
‘Ah, Roz love, come on girl, don’t give a bloke a hard time. I’ll be given my clean bill any day now and once we’re off back to camp I reckon they’ll ship us out again quick as you like. You can’t blame me for taking my chances, can you?’
Rosamund was about to answer him truthfully, to say that of course she didn’t blame him, she couldn’t imagine how horrid it must be to be lying out here in the hospital, hating being ill and then worrying even more about getting better, knowing that would mean heading back off to war and still no end in sight, things getting worse by the week if the news from England was anything to go by. The lads might bluster to each other, bluster to the nurses as well, but before Maurice had turned his lovely smile to Mrs Johnson across the bar of the Bridge Hotel, he’d confided some of the horrors to her. His worry that it had made him look soft had only made her warm to him more. She was about to give in, about to step forward, ready to turn off the torch, when a far brighter light shone on the two of them and Sister Comfort’s furious whisper saved her from herself.
‘Miss Farquharson! I shall see you in Matron’s office in five minutes. As for you, Private Sanders, you’ve had your final warning. I’m taking this to Sergeant Bix, I can promise you that.’
Rosamund shook herself and stepped back, almost glad of the trouble, and Maurice Sanders watched her walk away from him, lit by Sister Comfort’s torch. Taking in the line of the neatly-fitting yellow dress he pursed his lips to whistle and only just stopped himself.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ he thought, ‘you’ve given the poor girl enough of a run around as it is. Let her be.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Sarah Warne was at her desk in the Transport Office. She was trying to work out the shift rosters for the next fortnight and two of her fellow drivers had already called in sick over Christmas and Boxing Days. She didn’t blame them, she might have pulled the same trick herself if she hadn’t been in charge of the rota, or if she wasn’t well aware that Dr Luke Hughes was also working the full Christmas shift. She frowned, Luke had been distant lately, unusually so. There was something going on and Sarah was determined to get to the bottom of it.
Sarah and Luke met when she was in the West End and he in his second year of surgical studies across the river at St Thomas’s. She knew herself very fortunate to have made it into a West End cast. It wasn’t a major role and in truth, Sarah sometimes wondered if she was a major role sort of actress. She wasn’t sure she had the temperament to be a leading lady, and even though she was the right age, she certainly wasn’t an ingénue either. Hers was a steady, reliable character, useful for steady, reliable parts, those that held the story rather than the audience’s attention. She had been cast because she could do the job and do it well, she was calm and capable when others might fly up into the heights of passion or down to despair, depending on the notices on any given night. The reliable actress was not the most glamorous role in a company, but it was vital and Sarah understood theatre well enough to know she would stay in work a lot longer than some of the glossier girls from dramatic school and weekly rep.
She and Luke were introduced at a post-show drinks party that trekked from their rabbit warren of backstage rooms to the closest pub and on to the Café de Paris. Sarah recalled that she and her fellow actors had arrived, flushed with the success of that night’s show and the several drinks they’d had to celebrate. Luke was leaving when the dashing young leading man spotted him, clasped him to his breast and introduced him all around the bar as a dear old school chum. At first Sarah thought Luke Hughes was shy, not used to the noise and bustle of a group of actors, the back-slapping and kissing, at least two cocktails required to bring them down to the level of ordinary conversation. Left alone with him for a few minutes she tried to make conversation but his replies were so taciturn that she changed her mind and decided he was positively rude. She forgave him a little when he checked his watch, saw that it was gone two o’clock, announced himself exhausted from a day’s surgical assisting and, ignoring the imprecations of the theatricals, said he must leave them to their pleasures. She forgave him a little more when he leaned in to whisper an apology for his behaviour and invited her for supper to make up for his appalling manners that evening—‘Just as soon as these blasted final exams are out of the way’. She was grateful that her fellow cast members were too busy to overhear, fully engaged as they were in outdoing each other with tales of the worst digs they’d endured in provincial tours. Had they heard it, such a proposal would have provoked an inordinate amount of whistling and nudging among her peers and the rather good-looking Dr Hughes would have hightailed it out of the building as fast as his two feet could carry him, with no chance of a slipper on the stair to find him again.
A f
ortnight later Sarah met Luke for supper and, both keeping such odd hours, both understanding the strains of a team depending upon them—although Sarah well knew that she was not the pivot for matters of life and death that Luke was, regardless of how desperately important her fellow actors believed the theatre to be—a sincere friendship developed. The friendship was definitely edging towards romance when Sarah opened the door of her little flat to a telegram notifying her of her sister’s sudden illness and that her widowed mother needed her help. The long journey home took Sarah from soft London summer to a bitter New Zealand winter and her sister’s death, and all too soon afterwards came that awful, inevitable morning in early spring that brought the declaration of war. Mrs Warne was even happier to have Sarah home then, far from the horrors that London would surely face, even though Sarah herself would have liked nothing better than to do her bit for the city she adored.
Sarah and Luke became proficient correspondents, sending long, honest letters full of friendship and a growing understanding, letters in which Luke proved himself far more open on paper than he had often been in person. Then came a year with just a postcard or two, Luke stationed at a military hospital close to battle lines and Sarah worried for his safety as the months dragged on and the news became darker every week. Finally there was a glimmer of hope and she was understandably delighted when military efficiency determined that a British doctor serving in North Africa was better suited to accompanying a contingent of wounded New Zealand servicemen than returning to England and, while there, he should take a six month stint at a hospital now dealing with military casualties. That hospital turned out to be Mount Seager of all places.
Luke found his first few weeks at Mount Seager extremely difficult. He was not daunted by the workload, the outdated equipment, the broken-down buildings, or the leaking roofs that haunted Matron’s nightmares, these were nothing compared to the hospital tents in which he had been working for the past months. His upset was a champing at the bit of duty. So many of his friends from school were out in the field, the majority of his medical colleagues were caring for wounded soldiers in the heat of battle or coping with the atrocious conditions in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, with wave after wave of casualties coming in from the nightly raids. Luke bitterly missed being in the centre of things and being useful. He spent his first month in New Zealand in a severe funk until Rosamund Farquharson took him to task.
‘Don’t be such a prig, Dr Hughes.’
Luke had been going through his files just before a ward round and hadn’t realized he was grumbling aloud about ‘this blasted backwater’. He certainly didn’t expect a reply from the office staff, no matter how much Miss Farquharson fancied herself quite the catch.
Never one to hold back when she had something to say, Rosamund gave him a piece of her mind, ‘We all want to do our bit, but not everyone can be the hero just because we fancy it, not even the likes of you with your clean white coat and London certificates on the Surgery Office wall. Yes, you probably could be getting your hands dirtier somewhere else, but come on, do you really believe your friends out there, giving their all, would begrudge you this? They’re no mates if they would. Looking after servicemen who’re doing their damnedest here or anywhere else, it’s all part of the work. And by the way,’ she added, her well-defined eyebrows raised, a smile on her rigorously carmined lips, ‘we New Zealanders might gripe about being stuck way over here when it’s going to blazes everywhere else, but you’ll find we’re not so keen on you Pommie chaps doing the same. Some of those lads in the military wards are going stir-crazy, they’re spoiling for a scrap. I’d watch it if I were you.’
Rosamund turned on heels that were definitely not regulation, and flounced off across the hospital yard in a way that several of the recovering servicemen at Mount Seager, taking a breather on the porch of Military 1, found enormously reviving. Even Dr Hughes allowed that being told off by Miss Farquharson was amusing, particularly in conjunction with the way the word ‘Pommie’ sounded in her accent. Rosamund’s New Zealand vowels had been determinedly and intentionally rounded by her years in London. Moreover, he had to admit she had a point. He took note, pulled himself together and, aware that he was now the most senior doctor available to Mount Seager, gave himself to the work with an alacrity that pleased Matron enormously and surprised Sister Comfort even more.
Even though she didn’t expect their friendship to feel the same in wartime New Zealand as it had been in London before the war, Sarah had expected that she and Luke might take up where the letters had left off. Looking back she found it hard to imagine how carefree they had been, even with the constant pressure of Luke’s studies. Now she sometimes wondered if they had been deliberately blind, willfully ignoring the growing tensions on the Continent. Her sister’s death, her mother’s gnawing grief, the awful news that came to them daily, the broken soldiers she met in her work, young men who very occasionally let slip the mask of bravado, all of it meant that Sarah was no longer capable of ignoring the obvious—Luke had changed. He was hiding something from her and it was driving a wedge between them.
Along the yard in the anteroom to the Surgery that he had been assigned for the night, Mr Glossop was also preoccupied, shuffling on his cot, too hot and far too irritated to sleep. Yes, he had seen the eminently sensible Matron pocket the key to the safe. He trusted her, she was a fine woman, without a doubt. The hospital safe, however, in a set of buildings as ramshackle as these were proving to be—corrugated iron roofs rattling in the rising wind, the buckets he’d seen strategically placed by nurses in preparation for the brewing storm—well, that was a hell of a lot of cash he’d handed over and he didn’t trust the hospital safe, not as far as he could throw it. Not that he’d be throwing anything, come morning, after a sleepless night on this flamin’ cot. He knew there were a few private rooms here at Mount Seager, his great aunt had demanded one years back. She’d come in with some women’s troubles and had kicked up a hell of a stink about being in a ward with an old Māori lady. Proper tartar his aunt was, giving the nurses what for, and the doctors. Quick as a flash, Matron had come on through, rattled out her orders, and what do you know, but wasn’t the kuia given the private room and not his aunt. That shut the old bism up good and proper. Still though, you’d think they’d have given him a room of his own for the night. It wasn’t as if he was one of the rowdy servicemen, it was a bit of a cow to leave him to a cot in a shoddy anteroom. And by heck, it was sweltering in here. Damn tin roofs, no good to man or beast.
Mr Glossop was quite right. There were private rooms at Mount Seager, one at the front of every ward, just inside the porch. Wishing to give the dying man the privacy he needed Matron had moved old Mr Brown to the private room of Civilian 3 two weeks earlier. Now she stood outside that room, speaking in hushed and urgent tones with Father O’Sullivan. Young Sydney Brown had been closeted inside with his grandfather for the past fifteen minutes. Matron was about to knock on the door when it opened and Sydney, ashen-faced, stepped out.
‘Are you all right, son?’ asked Father O’Sullivan.
The young man shook his head, fear and confusion in his face, ‘I don’t know, he’s talking daft, I think I need a—’
Matron took over, ‘Go on in to Mr Brown, Father O’Sullivan. I’ll sort Sydney out with a cup of tea and maybe a splash of whiskey in that tea, eh Sydney? Medicinal purposes. Come on now, I’ll take you to the kitchen and find someone to look after you.’
Matron put a firm arm on the young man’s shoulder and propelled him away.
At the porch, she turned back to Father O’Sullivan, ‘You’ll come to find me, Vicar, and let me know how Mr Brown is doing?’
The vicar and the Matron exchanged a look.
‘Yes, of course, Matron.’
When Matron returned to her office she found Rosamund Farquharson and Sister Comfort waiting for her, Farquharson barely shame-faced despite being well over two hours late for her shift and Sister Comfort even sharper than usual. Both women
spoke at once:
‘Matron, I must insist you speak to Miss Farquharson—’
‘Play fair, Sister, let me explain. I had a win, Matron, a real honest to goodness win, so it took much longer to get away, what with having to pick up my takings. I thought about going home to drop off the money, a hundred pounds is a hell of a lot to be carrying round all night, but I’d have been even later for my shift, and I didn’t want to let you down, so I just—’
‘Let us down? Now you worry about letting us down!’
‘Enough, both of you,’ Matron held up her hand. ‘Sister Comfort, I’d be grateful if you would go to young Mr Brown, I left him in the kitchen and promised to return to sit with him, he’s quite shaken up. Make him a cup of tea, will you? And here,’ she reached into the lowest drawer of her desk, ‘add a tot of this to it. He’s in shock.’
Rosamund’s eyes widened at the image of Matron keeping a bottle of whiskey in her desk and it was only Sister Comfort’s immediate complaint that she was not one of the kitchen staff to be sent off to make a cup of tea that meant Matron was angrier with the Sister than at Rosamund’s barely-suppressed glee.
Sister Comfort held her tongue and stalked off along the yard towards the kitchen block and Matron finally turned to Rosamund.
‘How much did you win, Miss Farquharson?’
Surprised by the unexpectedly bald question, Rosamund responded immediately, ‘Oh, a hundred, Matron. A whole hundred quid. I have to give some of it over to a few people that I … I need to help out, but all the same, it’s put me in a grand mood. I am awfully sorry about being so late and getting Comfort’s nose out of joint, I don’t mean to be such a bother, really I don’t. I guess I’m just not used to such, well, boring work.’
Matron sighed, ‘Yes, I can imagine for a young woman such as yourself, saving lives and keeping a hospital going in wartime is terribly tedious. I suggest you leave your winnings here. I’ll put them in the safe and you can collect the money when your shift finishes. Minus, of course, the hours I’ll dock from your pay for your late start tonight and the several days you’ve been late over the past weeks. Is ten pounds a fair price, do you think, to keep your job?’