‘My excuse is being an outsider, but surely you must know everyone here?’ she probed.
‘Quite a few of them,’ he agreed. ‘Philip and I were friends at school.’ He held out a big hand. ‘Lieutenant Jamie Hamilton,’ he said formally.
Lily stared at him. She took his hand and felt the same shot of adrenaline she’d felt in the chapel when he’d stared straight at her.
‘Jamie, that and your accent tell me you’re not from around these parts,’ she said to hide how jolted she felt.
‘I’m Scottish, from Ayrshire,’ he said. ‘And you’re Nurse Lily Kennedy from Ireland.’
‘Yes,’ she smiled. It would be plain to anyone listening to her that she was Irish, but she wondered how he knew her name.
‘Difficult job,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, looking at him, ‘very difficult.’
‘Does it get to you?’ he asked. ‘Seeing the injuries, the death.’
Few people ever asked Lily questions like that. Perhaps it was because everyone in London saw the results of the war day-in-day-out. Plus the fact that most people would prefer to talk about anything else. Even when somebody died, the period of mourning seemed to be growing shorter and shorter, as if people were afraid to think about death. To acknowledge death, to linger over it, was too depressing; the only sensible survival option was to turn their faces bravely towards the next day and move on.
‘Yes,’ she said to Jamie Hamilton now, ‘it does get to me. Especially the children. Last week two little boys were brought in – brothers, they couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. They were still in their blue-and-white striped pyjamas, looking like they’d just been picked out of their beds, fast asleep. And they were dead, from a bomb. I keep thinking about them.
‘It’s four years since I started my training, and I think if I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have become a nurse. I had a misty idea that it was about helping people, giving comfort, being this kind being in the middle of someone’s pain. And it’s not like that: it’s about desperately trying to keep people alive, all at a frantic speed, watching them die terrible deaths, being powerless a lot of the time…I don’t know how to describe it,’ she said. ‘But there’s an adrenaline rush too, when you’re working in theatre or on the wards on a very busy day and you’ve got to keep going because, if you don’t, someone will suffer.’ She stopped, feeling out of breath from all she’d said.
‘Do parties help you unwind, or just make it worse?’ he asked.
Lily laughed. ‘A bit of both,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely to forget about it all for a while and dance, and then, I feel I shouldn’t be forgetting about it.’
She turned away from him to watch the dancers inside.
‘I feel the same way,’ he said. ‘When you’re in the middle of the war, you want to be away from it, and when you’re away from it, you want to be there again.’
‘Where do you serve?’ she asked him.
‘I’m first lieutenant, second-in-command, on a submarine. I was injured out a month ago.’
She noticed he didn’t tell her where in the world or how he’d been injured. Submariners, she’d heard, held their cards close to their chest.
‘You work with Diana, don’t you, in the Royal Free?’
She nodded. Two could play the game of keeping their cards close.
‘Where do you come from?’ he asked.
‘A little place called Tamarin, in the south of Ireland. You won’t have heard of it, it’s on the coast, very pretty, very quiet, very unlike London.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘Because I wanted to be a nurse and I couldn’t afford to pay for training at home. My father’s a blacksmith and my mother is a housekeeper in a house not unlike this one, only not as big,’ she said. I’m different, she was saying. This is who I am. If you like me, you’ll stay. But I won’t pretend. I’m not from your world.
From inside, they could hear the sounds of Maisie singing ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk…’ It was Maisie’s party piece. She had a beautiful voice and would have them all dancing soon. It was a gift, the gift of charm and making people like her. Lily knew she didn’t have that gift herself. She was too wary, too inclined to stand on the sidelines and watch.
Jamie was watching her now. She felt something inside her quiver at the way he looked at her, something shift.
‘I think we’re the only two people not laughing and joking,’ Lily said suddenly, as great peals of laughter came from inside. ‘I’m surprised Sybil hasn’t had us thrown out. She’s very keen on the whole wedding being done perfectly.’
Jamie moved closer so that he was standing right beside her. ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, ‘but I’m enjoying myself.’
‘Are you now?’ she asked, moving past him. ‘I do hope you keep enjoying yourself, Lieutenant. If you’ll excuse me.’
She went to the cloakroom, where she splashed water on her flushed face, then tried to repair the damage with a dusting of the English Rose powder that didn’t really suit her but was all she had left. Her precious Chinese Red lipstick was down to the very stub and she used a hairpin to eke a last bit out to smear on to her full lips.
Bright eyes shone back at her in the mirror and she felt an unaccustomed surge of pride in her appearance. Her skin was flawless cream without a single freckle and it contrasted with the rich chestnut hair swept back from a fine-boned oval face. The spark of intelligence in almond-shaped eyes shifted her looks from mere prettiness to an arresting, wild beauty.
After she’d told Cheryl off, the other nurses had taken to calling her the Wild Irish Girl. It had been a compliment, she supposed, showing that they saw her as self-composed, strong, and confident. She had something to be grateful to the Lochravens for. Watching Lady Irene had taught her the virtue of calm self-possession and Lily’s determination to be different from every other member of the servant class on the Rathnaree estate had given her a queenly bearing.
‘You’re not looking bad, Nurse Kennedy,’ she told herself.
The gramophone was playing Glenn Miller when she returned to the drawing room, and everyone was dancing, determined to squeeze the last bit of enjoyment out of the day. It was nearly eight and she knew that many of the guests would be leaving soon, hurrying back to barracks or their postings before nightfall. The party was winding down.
Diana had whispered to Lily that the groom’s leave had been cancelled: nobody knew why, but there was some talk about a big offensive. Sybil didn’t know yet.
‘He’s going to have to leave this evening. The honeymoon’s on hold. Wouldn’t like to be him, poor boy.’
Lily stood and watched the dancing, breathing in the melody and swaying on her feet. She tried to shut out the speculation about the big push that would be taking the menfolk away. Whatever it was, they’d soon find out the hard way, when the casualties were wheeled in and a twelve-hour shift turned into an entire night with both shifts working in tandem.
‘Do you care to dance?’
He was beside her, taller than she was, and suddenly Lily could think of nothing she’d like more.