Page 84 of Summer in Greece

‘Young man, if I catch you staring at this VAD’s chest once more, I’ll find the biggest ogre on the camp to give you a cold bed-bath, do you understand?’ Weak laughter came from neighbouring beds.

The soldier’s eyes flicked to my breasts and his face lit with a grin that dimmed the pallor of his pain.

Josephine winked, and I understood a part of nursing that would never be seen in the medical manuals. Pain relief was a state of mind, as well as opiates in a syringe.

Dear Mother and Father,

I hope this letter finds you well. Father will be pleased to hear I am learning so much.

I put on a brave face, but the truth is I have at times been overwhelmed by it all. However, every day is less shocking.

Today we were introduced to the doctors and surgeons and we visited the other military hospitals, to observe how they were run.

The first hospital, wards of tents, housed almost two thousand men with arms, legs, or faces blown off. The face wounds are the worst! Then, we had elevenses – bread, blackcurrant jam and strong tea. Next, the blinded soldiers. Five hundred of them learning to accept their future. The cripples will get new limbs, but the blinded?

The tents overflow, with hardly walking space between bodies. Wards are divided into ailments, dysentery being the largest with thirty thousand cases! Also, six thousand frostbites from who knows where. Add rheumatic fever, shrapnel injuries, and bullet wounds, and the figures become impossible.

Apart from this, I am fine and strive to excel in memory of our Arthur and Sissy.

Do not be alarmed if the letters are sparse once I start work in earnest.

Your loving daughter,

Gertie X

*

CHAPTER 35

SHELLY

Dover, present day.

SHELLY OPENED THE DOOR. DJ thrust a bunch of flowers at her. They both said ‘Hi,’ in the first breath, laughed awkwardly in the second breath, swallowed hard and gazed at each other.

‘Are you going to ask me in?’ he said gently.

‘Actually, shall we go to the pub? We’ve got half an hour before dinner.’

He let out a gust of air, his shoulders dropped. ‘Great plan, thanks.’

She nodded at the flowers. ‘I’ll just pop these in the sink, you can get in the car.’ She lifted the car keys off the coat hooks by the door and tossed them to him. Two minutes later, she was beside him, pulling off towards The Rose and Crown.

They found a quiet corner, and DJ bought them each a pint of shandy. She watched him at the bar, he could have been his father. She wanted to weep.

‘There must be so many things you want to know, and I promise I’ll answer all your questions. But this is very hard, for me too, because . . . well . . . first I lost my mother, then your father. Then, I lost you. In a way, I also lost my own father at that time too, you see?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I didn’t want to give you up. It was terrible. I was too young to stand up for myself with everyone pressuring me. And all these things happened in one tragic year that started when I was sixteen and my mother was killed in an accident. I never fully recovered. So please, I hope you’ll forgive me if I sound bitter, or selfish, I’m not . . . not really; it’s just that I am still hurting. There’s so much love and loss and pain involved, DJ, I’ll probably embarrass you on more than one occasion by bursting into tears.’ She gazed at him, her son. ‘But now, oh my God, I can’t believe this – I just can’t – I’m overwhelmed.’ She pulled in a ragged breath.

He lowered his eyes from her face to the table, digested her words and nodded. ‘You’ve had a hard time. I’ve often tried to imagine why you gave me up . . . why you didn’t want me . . .’

‘Please stop right there. There has never been one single moment when I didn’t want you. I let you go to a new family, parents who I understood loved you as much as I did. They did, didn’t they?’ Shelly peered at him with a worried frown.

He nodded and smiled gently, but she sensed his unease.

‘It was the right thing to do, for your sake. My father said, if I loved you, I would want you to have a better life than any seventeen-year-old single mother without an income could give you.’