Love Me Tender

FOUR (#u8da00b38-980b-59b4-ae84-f21bfeb441be)

Long before Kathy reached her destination she was feeling hungry and exhausted. Her journey had been subject to unexplained delays and stoppages, and the carriages were full of troops. Posters demanded, Is Your Journey Really Necessary? and she thought wearily that if it wasn’t, the way her trek had gone so far, she wouldn’t have made the effort.

Kathy could never remember travelling on a train before. She knew she must have done when she left Ireland with her parents, but she’d been just a child then and she had little recollection of her life before that of the back-to-back houses of Birmingham’s inner ring.

Since then she’d never once ventured out of the city, and was totally unprepared for the clamour, noise and bustle of New Street station. The clatter of trains, slamming of doors and shrill whistles of the porters mixed with the shouts and cries of the people thronging the platform – many in khaki, Kathy noticed – made her nervous.

A train clattered to a stop behind her with a squeal of brakes and a hiss of steam that seeped along its wheels. Suddenly there was a terrifying loud shriek from a train opposite and Kathy saw billows of steam emerging from a brass funnel. She could smell soot and smoke in the air, and the place was so draughty, her teeth began to chatter.

She glanced at the large clock hung above the station platform, wondering where her train was. The clock said ten twenty, and yet the train should have left at five past. When it eventually arrived, with a deafening rumble, she was quite unnerved, but the mass of people surged forward and she was swept along in the flow.

Once inside, everyone but Kathy seemed to know what to do. She trailed up and down the corridor looking for an empty, or near-empty, compartment, but the train was cram-packed.

Eventually a young soldier, seeing her pass back along the corridor again, stepped out of a compartment and said, ‘There’s room for you in here, missus, we’ll all budge up a bit.’

Kathy knew it would have to do and sat down thankfully, but as the train hurtled south, she realised she didn’t know where she was going to get off, for all the station names had been blacked out. She found it very unnerving and worried that she wouldn’t know when they reached Plymouth.

In the event, the soldiers helped her. Despite having three brothers, she hadn’t been used to meeting strange men in such numbers, and at first she found them intimidating. However, most were kindness itself, especially when they knew the purpose of her visit. ‘I didn’t realise it was so far away or that it would take so long to get here,’ she confided to a soldier who’d told her Plymouth was the next station.

‘Every journey takes hours in this war, missus,’ the soldier said. ‘Half our lives we spend waiting.’

Kathy looked at her watch – four o’clock – and knew it was doubtful she’d get home that night. She remembered Lizzie’s anxious face pressed to the window pane, watching her walk away. She’d wanted to come and see her daddy, and any other time Kathy might have taken her, but she knew wartime was not the time to haul children about the country, so she’d explained that Lizzie had to be very adult and grown-up and not make a fuss about things. The child was disappointed, but she said not a word and instead sat with a set, worried face waiting for her mother to return and tell her how her daddy was. The stoicism of it tore at Kathy’s heart.

‘Have you any more children?’ the soldier asked. ‘I can see you’re expecting, like my own wife back home.’

‘I have two,’ Kathy said. ‘A boy and a girl. Lizzie is nearly nine and Danny is six, and this one,’ Kathy said, indicating her stomach, ‘is due in July.’

‘It’s our first, Brenda’s and mine,’ the soldier said. ‘Due any day – can’t help wondering and hoping that she’ll be all right, you know?’

‘I’m sure she will,’ Kathy assured him. ‘After all, women have been doing it for years.’

‘Yes, I know, it’s just not being there with her…I worry a bit.’

‘I bet she worries more about you,’ Kathy said with feeling. ‘Barry was hardly ever out of my thoughts for long, and when I heard he’d been injured, my heart stopped beating for a minute or two.’

‘You don’t know how bad it is?’

‘No, they didn’t say.’

‘Well, if they’ve transferred him, he can’t be that bad.’

‘You think so?’ Kathy grasped the lifeline hopefully.

‘It’s what they say.’

At that moment the train gave a sudden lurch and the soldier turned to Kathy and said, ‘We’re coming in to Plymouth now. Wait for the crush to pass and I’ll get you a taxi.’

‘Oh, I don’t think…’

‘You’ll never find it on your own.’ And Kathy knew he was right and just nodded.

‘Have you a bag?’ he asked, looking around the compartment.

‘Only my handbag,’ Kathy said.

‘But you’ll not get back tonight,’ the soldier said. ‘Have you a place to stay?’

‘No, no, I never thought.’

‘You’d be welcome at the barracks,’ the soldier said with a smile. ‘Well, at least the men would welcome you, but the sergeant might have something to say.’

Kathy smiled. ‘I think I’ll pass on that,’ she said.

‘Maybe the taxi driver knows of somewhere. I should check it out before you get to the hospital.’

Kathy thanked him, but once in the taxi she knew she had to see Barry right away. The problem of where she was to spend the night could wait. She’d passed through the countryside in the train without really taking it in, but in the taxi she was surprised by the sea, calm and sparkling in the mid-June afternoon. There were many couples strolling arm-in-arm as if they hadn’t a care in the world, and yet the men, almost without exception, were in uniform, and Kathy knew the reality was quite different.

She lost no time when the taxi stopped outside the hospital, but hurried inside to find someone who could tell her where Barry was and when she could see him. Shortly after she entered the building she was confronted by a nurse whose name tag identified her as Sister Hopkins. ‘Mrs O’Malley?’ she said, when Kathy had introduced herself.

‘Yes, I’m Barry’s wife,’ Kathy said, nervous before the stern-faced woman and almost frightened now she’d got this far. ‘Can, can I see him?’

‘Well, it’s most irregular.’

‘Oh, please,’ Kathy said. ‘I’ve come all the way from Birmingham. My family are desperate for news of him and I’ve left behind two very worried weans.’

Sister Hopkins stared at the woman in front of her. She was startling to look at, with her raven-black hair and deep-brown eyes, but her face was pasty white and there were black rings circling the eyes. She was far advanced in pregnancy and yet had come halfway across the country to see her man. ‘Maybe you can see him for a little while,’ she said.

‘Is…is he badly injured?’

‘No, not really,’ the nurse said. ‘He has shrapnel wounds to his head and abdomen and his left arm is badly lacerated – we thought at one point he might lose it, but the doctor has managed to save it, at least so far. We have to keep an eye on it in case of infection, and of course only time will tell if he’ll ever regain full use of it.’ She looked at Kathy’s startled face and said, ‘Believe me, Mrs O’Malley, your husband was one of the lucky ones.’

Kathy stared open-mouthed, amazed that someone could talk with so little emotion of removing a limb. Sister Hopkins caught her look and said, ‘You should see some of the poor beggars lifted from the beaches of Dunkirk.’

Not to mention those left behind. Neither woman said it, but both thought it.

Barry lay staring at the ceiling, a bandage swathed about his head and his face as white as the pillow he lay on. Kathy said nothing till she stood beside the bed and then she whispered, ‘Barry.’

He turned his head, and though Kathy could tell that he was pleased to see her, his enthusiasm was slightly forced. There was something lurking behind his eyes. ‘Kath!’ he cried. ‘God, when did you…how did you?’

‘We were informed you were here,’ Kathy said. ‘I had to come and see you, the weans were asking for you.’ She spread her empty hands and said, ‘I couldn’t stop to buy anything, not indeed that there’s much in the shops.’

‘No, no, it’s all right,’ Barry quickly reassured her. ‘To see you is enough.’ He passed his unbandaged hand across his eyes and said, ‘You’ve heard about Pat, I suppose?’

‘Just before I left, yes,’ Kathy said. ‘“Missing presumed dead”, the telegram said.’

‘Oh, he’s dead all right,’ Barry said, almost harshly, and then, catching sight of Kathy’s stricken face, went on, ‘I’m sorry, that was bloody clumsy.’ He took Kathy’s hand and said, ‘I know you loved him, and I did too, funny that coming from a bloke, but he was the best mate I ever had. I’d known him from the day we started school together and that was that really, it was always us together against the world. I met you through knowing your Pat, and even after our marriages we were mates. God!’ he cried. ‘What a bloody waste.’

‘What happened?’ Kathy said. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’