A series of respectful taps came at the door. ‘You’re going to be late, dear.’
Nell crammed a fistful of pillow around each ear. ‘I’m sick.’ It was not pretence. This malaise felt as real as any bodily affliction.
But, ‘Lying there moping won’t take your mind off your bad news,’ persisted Thelma, peering in for a moment. Not one for hugs, she tried to comfort her daughter in the only way she could: with advice. ‘It might make you feel better if you throw yourself into your work – that’s what I always do when I’m a bit sad. Besides, it’s not very responsible to let the hospital down, is it?’
And ultimately, left alone, Nell was to see the truth in this, and to drag herself from the sparse comfort offered by the bed. After pondering one last time over Billy’s watch, through eyes that contained a ton of grit under each lid, she pressed it with a tender kiss, then hid it in the same place as his photograph and letters, in a hatbox, under the boater she had worn at school. And there they must remain from now on, came Nell’s miserable decision, as she donned her nurse’s uniform. For only in hard work could she hope to bury such enormous grief.
Preceding this, though, she must explain her stricken countenance to Beata – although the other had guessed the moment she saw those reddened eyes.
‘I do know a little bit of the way you’re feeling,’ Beata confided, wanting to heal the ugliness that defaced Nell’s gentle features. ‘I lost someone I was madly in love with – he wasn’t killed,’ she added swiftly, ‘but he might as well have been, the way it hit me. You feel as if your own life’s not worth living, don’t you?’ At a fresh gushing of tears from Nell, she went on softly, with a faraway look in her eye, ‘We’d been courting for ages, but the only obligation he felt towards me was to let me down lightly by letter. We lived too far apart, and he’d found a girl closer to home. We’d remain good friends, he said, and me thinking we were so much more, but there you are …’ Her glazed expression melted into one of kind concern, as she stroked Nell’s arm. ‘I know it can’t compare with your loss, not one bit, and you won’t forget about him. But believe me, it will pass.’
No it won’t, howled Nell’s heart. Still tearful at the mere thought, she begged her friend, ‘Could you tell Sister and the others? I couldn’t bear having to go through this time after time …’
Beata promised that of course she would.
But unnervingly, upon Sister being apprised, she insisted on having a word in person. Expecting a soulless lecture, dashing her gritty eyes for the umpteenth time, Nell approached her superior’s office with dismay. And, true to form, even if the words were ones of sympathy, the sermon began in the usual terse fashion.
‘First, let me say how sorry I was to hear of your bereavement, Nurse Spottiswood.’
Immediately revisited by the gargantuan lump in her throat, Nell tried to swallow it, but it refused to budge.
‘I do understand the fragile state you must be in,’ continued Sister. ‘It’s a ghastly thing that’s happened to you, and there’ll be times when you can’t prevent yourself from bursting into tears …’
But you must try not to display such an unprofessional attitude, prophesied Nell, anger and resentment fermenting in her breast. And try as she might, she could not allay the scalding mist that rushed to her eyes yet again, and she bent her head so that Sister might not take this as an indication that she was too feeble to carry out her work.
‘Whenever that occasion arises,’ finished Sister, ‘I would simply ask that you take yourself off to a cubby hole, and have your little weep in private, get completely rid of it, then clean yourself up and get on with your work. We shall all make allowances if you suddenly go absent.’ As Nell’s bloodshot eyes shot up to transmit surprised gratitude, Sister added, ‘I’m not a complete ogre, Nurse.’ And with a protracted and telling look, she ordered softly, ‘Off you go now.’
Such compassionate treatment brought the tears in full flow now. Mindful of the advice, Nell dashed straight to the lavatory and spent a good few minutes racked in sobs, hoping to dislodge that choking lump in her throat in order that she might breathe, trying to wring every last drop of unshed grief from her aching body, so that it might suffer no repeat of this handicap and allow her to operate like a professional human being. Finally, she splashed her face with water, took a series of deep, steadying breaths, and emerged red-eyed, but prepared to get on with her job.
Against all determination to the contrary, that shedding of tears was not to be Nell’s last. Far from it. But, with her colleagues equally sympathetic, and none of them seeking to interrogate, she was at least able to indulge in these bouts of sorrow as often as they afflicted her, everyone naturally assuming that her tears were all for Bill.
But what if they or Sister had known of her other anxiety? Would they have been so philanthropic then? The fear of being stigmatised prohibited any foray. There was no one in whom to confide, not even Beata, for Nell was well aware of her friend’s views on the matter of illegitimacy.
So, Nell continued to bear her burden alone, at times consumed by terror, at others elated that her lovely, heroic Bill had left a part of him growing inside her, and though the memories of him were to endure, eventually her tears were to recede.
Following the initial concern over her daughter, and having lent her a couple of weeks in which to get over the loss of her friend, Nell’s mother was finally to note one December eve, ‘I’m glad to see you enjoying your food again, dear, and looking so much better too.’
Nell regarded her with eyes dulled by fatalism. How could one’s body appear in such rude health, when one’s soul felt close to death?
‘I told you eating properly would do the trick,’ said Thelma, yet she was not quite so insensitive as to believe that all was fine. ‘I know you must still be feeling sad, but you’ve done exceptionally well in covering it up. I think you were right to go back to work straight away. There’s nothing like it for taking your mind off things, especially in a job such as yours where people are worse off. Let’s hope the Christmas festivities will help to put the vim back – such as they are with this blessed war on.’
Christmas. How Nell had been dreading all the manufactured gaiety that this would spell for her, having to pretend for those around her that she was enjoying it, whilst constantly arrested by this tiny being that fluttered inside.
Nevertheless, when Christmas morning arrived, for others’ sakes she was to adopt the obligatory beam of gratitude over the presents that had been bought for her, and to uphold this aching rictus throughout the morning whilst helping her mother cook the dinner, indeed through the eating of it, and to carry it forward even into the late afternoon, when she and her parents made a teatime visit to their kin.
But there the invented smile was to slip. With her expanding girth under tight control from the corset, until now no one had commented on Nell’s radiance, but Aunty Phyllis had not seen her niece for some time, and was quick to remark as her guests took off their coats.
‘Good Lord, someone’s been eating too much Christmas pudding!’
Nell flushed as everyone’s eyes turned to her, and, with her jaw agape, it was left to Thelma to retort, ‘Christmas pudding? Which of us has enjoyed Christmas pudding with no dried fruit to be had?’
Thankful to have the attention diverted, Nell struggled to regain her equilibrium, whilst Aunty Phyllis made a sound of disbelief. ‘Thelma Spottiswood with no dried fruit? I don’t think!’
Her sister-in-law laughed. ‘As a matter of fact, I have been holding on to some, but it was a choice between cake or pudding, and the cake’s so much more versatile and it keeps all year. So I tore a recipe out of the press for Christmas pudding using carrots – you wouldn’t think they’d be an especially good substitute, but I had to tell Wilfred and Eleanor after they’d eaten it, they