Noonday

EIGHTEEN

You weren’t supposed to talk to the patients. The one time they’d caught her at it, Sister Matthews had come down on her like a ton of bricks. “You are a ward maid.” Lips pursed like a cat’s arse. “The patients are nothing to do with you.”

Aye, right. But when there’d been a rush on, after Dunkirk, she’d done all sorts, changed beds, emptied bedpans, pushed trolleys full of filthy sheets down to the laundry in the basement — and none of that was her job. Oh, and in between times, yes, she’d talked to the lads, and nobody pulled her up over it. Poor sods, they’d nowt to do all day except watch shadows moving on the walls, check the time to see how long it still was till visiting, strain to hear familiar footsteps coming up the ward.

Once things had settled down a bit, they played cards, talking through lips that hardly moved about stuff that had happened, some of the things they’d seen. Guardsmen forced to shave in seawater before they’d been allowed to get on a boat. “Only in England,” one lad said. And then on the train coming back how people had thrown cigarettes in at the windows, treated them like conquering heroes, but they weren’t heroes, not in their own estimation. Bloody cock-up — that was the general verdict. She’d never seen so many men so angry.

This poor lad here. Babbling away, but not making a lot of sense, poor soul. God knows what was going on in his head — and his breathing. And she thought hers was bad. First time she clapped eyes on him, she thought: You’re not long for this world, son. But he had, he’d hung on. And he’d talked, my God he had, how they’d lain in the open under the hot sun, no water, not a British plane in sight. Chap next to him showed him a silk scarf he’d bought for his fancy bit—“bought, my eye, bloody nicked it”—and then he’d died, lying there in the sand. “And I took the scarf. Wasn’t stealing, was it?” “ ’Course it wasn’t, love. It was no good to him.”

And that’s when Sister Matthews had pounced. Things were back to normal now, apparently. She was just the maid.

So now, though he went on babbling, she turned her back on him, kept herself busy polishing the taps, only then he said the one word that would have made any woman turn round. “Mam.”

He was staring round him, wild-eyed, not a clue where he was, poor lad. “Mam?”

She put her hand over his. “It’s all right, son. You go off to sleep, now, it’s all right.”

He closed his eyes. A few minutes later the fluttering behind his lids stopped, and his mouth fell slightly open. Had he gone? Still touching his hand, she watched his chest, saw the almost-imperceptible rise. No, not yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

Mam. She knew it was stupid, but the word kept catching in her throat. He could be, she told herself — well, just about. Her son had been born bang in the middle of the last war, so that would make him, what — twenty-four, twenty-five? About right. Of course, it wasn’t him, she knew that, but…Well, no, actually, come to think of it, you couldn’t know, could you? Not for certain, you couldn’t. She needed to go back and see him again, look for resemblances, but she couldn’t. There was another ward to clean, and another. Far too many. Seemed to think you could work bloody miracles.

So she trudged from bed to bed, basin to basin, ward to ward. All the time, floating in front of her eyes, was the memory of the purple, howling dwarf they’d torn out of her all them years ago. She’d never seen a newborn baby before. Little babies, yes, a few days old, but not newborn. And my God it come as a shock, she’d no idea they looked like that.

She’d gone into the home the minute she started showing. For a long time you could cover it up with cardigans and jumpers, but not forever — and you weren’t allowed to work in the munitions factory if you were pregnant, something to do with the chemicals, so she more or less had to go in the home. Where was she going to find another job with a belly on her like that? No, it was the home, or starve.

They put her to work in the laundry — laughable, really — lifting buckets, twelve-hour shifts, wonder they didn’t all lose their babies — and probably better if they had. But at least the work tired you out. She was asleep the minute her head touched the pillow. And what a lumpy pillow it was. The pillowcase was always spotless — matron saw to that — but the pillow smelled of other people’s hair, all the girls who’d slept on it before her. But there it was, lumps or not, she’d drop off to sleep like falling over a cliff, only she didn’t stay asleep, not properly asleep. She was aware all the time of the ward: the iron bedsteads, humped bodies under pale green coverlets, gray light seeping through threadbare curtains — and then it all faded, and she was somewhere else.

A place she seemed to know. For some reason, in her dreams — well, she supposed she was dreaming, she didn’t know what else to call it — it was always winter. Men huddled under waterproof capes, sheltering from the sleety rain that fell ceaselessly from the evil, yellow sky. On cold nights their eyebrows were rimed with frost. After a while, she found she could hear them speak, taste the chlorine in their tea, feel the heat of the fire — even tell from the sound a shell made as it was coming over how close it was going to land. They weren’t aware of her, these men. Stared straight through her. She was the ghost.

And then, one night, it all changed. She was with them, watching them, as usual, but now a dark man with heavy eyelids was looking back at her. Watching her. She was so used to being the watcher, it came as quite a shock. At first she didn’t believe it, but then, when deliberately she moved a few yards to the right, he turned his head to follow her. She was so new to this, so ignorant, it took her a long time to cotton on that he’d passed.

Next morning, she washed her face as usual, brushed her hair, clumped across the yard to the laundry, where the steamy heat made her nose run. Exactly the same as every other morning, except this time she didn’t go alone.

She didn’t know Howard then, otherwise she might have sorted it out a bit sooner. Though Howard got things wrong too. He always said Albert was an officer, that he’d been killed on the first day of the Somme. But it was always winter when she saw him, and he wasn’t an officer: he crawled out of a funk hole in the side of the trench every morning along with all the other men. Anyway, whoever he was, whenever he died, from that night on he was part of her. Not that he was there all the time, she could go days without a squeak out of him, but he generally took over when things were bad. Gave her a bit of a break — and my God she needed it, because the last few weeks in the home things were very bad.

Mind you, bugger didn’t show up when she was in labor. He kept well out of the way then.

Lifting buckets of water all day long, her back ached that much she didn’t even realize she’d started till her waters broke. The supervisor told her to walk—walk? Was she joking? — across the yard to the infirmary, where she got undressed and hauled herself onto the bed. Sister Mortimer stood at the end, watching her. “Not as much fun getting it out as it was putting it in, is it?” Wasn’t that much bloody fun putting it in, she wanted to say. Didn’t, of course. Oh, and you didn’t dare groan. “Shut that noise up. You’ll be worse before you’re better.” Not a shred of sympathy, not a grain. Oh, she could’ve told them a thing or two, might’ve done, only another pain was building, and she needed every bit of breath…And then, amazingly, all in a great rush, there he was.

Purple. Was he supposed to be that color? Oh, but what a pair of lungs, couldn’t be that much wrong with him. She wanted to hold him, but they wouldn’t let her. She watched as he was wrapped, expertly, in a white cotton blanket and taken away. She caught one more glimpse of him, just the top of his head, as Sister Mortimer turned to push the door open with her hip, and she whispered, but only to herself: Good luck, son.

Back on the streets, with leaking breasts and a craving for sweetness no amount of cake could satisfy, she palled up with a lass called Millie and they went to Glasgow together. Back in munitions, earning good money, she thought Albert might disappear, just fade away, but he didn’t. If she got upset — oh, and she did, she couldn’t stop thinking about the baby — Albert was there. Some days he was in and out that often she lost track of things. There were holes in her memory, so many holes it was like lace, or a cabbage leaf when the caterpillars have been at it.

But then she met Howard. The best thing that ever happened to her. And the worst. In the twinkling of an eye — Howard’s eye, needless to say — she was pregnant, only this time she knew what to do. Howard was more or less disabled—gas, he said, though forty fags a day didn’t help much, either the budget or his lungs — so she had to work. So there she was, walking round the back streets looking for an address. Mucky old woman come to the door, you could’ve planted a row of tatties in her neck — now there was a warning — but really there was no choice. Up on the bed, spread your legs. Sometimes, looking back on her life, she thought she’d never done anything else. Well, yes, she had — she’d opened her mouth and let the dead speak through her.

Five days after, she collapsed in the street. Temperature sky-high. “You silly, silly, silly girl,” the ward sister said. Bit more sympathetic than most.

No more babies after that. Not that Howard minded — he was a baby himself.

Last bed now, last basin. She was free to go, get her hat and coat from the cupboard. Nice hat, she was very fond of it, it always made her feel good — and it hadn’t cost a lot, she’d picked it up for a penny in a jumble sale. Still, with a bit of green ribbon and some artificial roses it didn’t look too bad. Cheered her up, anyway — she could see the roses bobbing as she walked. She was passing the door of his ward now. Perhaps she better leave it? Just walk past? But no, she couldn’t do that.

The bed was empty, stripped, the screens folded and pushed back against the wall. Of course, she’d known he was going — but still, it was a shock. For a minute, she just stood and stared, then rested one hand lightly on the mattress. Mam. Probably the last thing he’d ever said. Ah, well. Never any hope, not with a head wound like that, the only mystery was why he’d lasted as long as he had. She patted the bed and turned away.

She was just leaving the ward when Sister Wilkinson caught up with her. “Would you mind taking this down to the laundry?”

“This” was a trolley loaded with soiled sheets. His sheets, probably. She could’ve said: ’Course I bloody well mind, I’m off duty. Still, it paid to stay on the right side of the sisters — and Wilkie was nicer than most.

So she took the trolley and began trundling it along the main corridor. Like a lot of the trolleys, it had a mind of its own and would keep veering to the left. Like a bloody wrestling match, sometimes. So she lurched and swayed along, the roses in her hat bobbing, thinking how nice it would be to put her feet up when she got home, have half an hour on the bed…At least, though, she could take the lift — you were allowed to, if you had a trolley.

She hated the basement: so dark, gloomy and deserted, though not, of course, the laundry: that was the same hellhole of hissing steam and clanking buckets she remembered from the home. As she pushed the swing doors open and pulled the trolley through, she was breathing in smells of soap and disinfectant, her eyes were watering — horrible stuff, that disinfectant — and she was remembering the girl whose waters had broken all over the damp floor. And they’d made her mop it up. Had they? Now she come to think of it, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t always remember things right, on account of Albert.

“Can I help you?”

The supervisor, drying her red, wet hands on a towel. Friendly words, but not a friendly tone, no, not at all. Bertha pushed the trolley in her direction and turned, wordlessly, away. Outside, in the corridor, she stopped to consider. No conveniently empty trolley to take back to the ward, so she was going to have to face the stairs. And she was feeling a bit peculiar, the way she sometimes did when Albert was on his way. Perhaps she could chance the lift? No, better not. She started to walk the length of the corridor towards the staircase at the far end. No windows, no natural light, the strip light overhead kept flickering, keeping time with the pulsing in her head. She had a headache starting — always one-sided, her headaches. The throbbing turned to muttering, low, at first, but getting louder. She must be passing the morgue. Normally, she’d have said: Sorry, love, not working. But not today. After a second’s hesitation, standing outside the door, she pushed it open and walked in.

A barred window set high in the opposite wall let in a grudging light, but enough to see three figures, draped in white sheets, and lying stretched out on slabs like huge dead fish. A fan churned up the heavy, lifeless air. The muttering had stopped, probably because he’d heard the door open, but then it started again. It was coming from the nearest slab.

As she walked towards him, she saw the sheet wasn’t quite long enough to cover him. He’d grown tall, her boy. Reaching out, she touched the thick yellow soles of his feet. Her fingertips, rasping over hard skin, found no lingering warmth, but farther up, in the folds of his groin, he was warm still. At last, standing by his head, but with no recollection of getting there, she pulled back the sheet and looked into his face. Smiling a little, she waited for his eyes to open, for the moment when he’d know her again, and say it, say that word: Mam.

“And what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

A man in a white coat, Adam’s apple jerking in his throat. Dumbly, she stared, then forced herself to say something, anything. Laundry, she managed to get out at last. She’d been sent to fetch clean laundry.

“Well, you won’t find any in here. The laundry’s back there.”

She could tell he didn’t believe her. Dropping the sheet, she said, “I thought he moved.”

“Moved? Good God, woman, are you mad?” Then, when she didn’t answer: “Where do you work?”

“I’m a ward maid.”

Shouldn’t’ve said that. Now he’d report her to matron and she’d get the sack. There’d been several complaints about her work, already — she was on borrowed time here. She started to edge past him, hardly breathing till she reached the door. He didn’t try to follow her or ask any more questions, just stood and watched her go. As the door closed behind her, she looked back, seeing his accusing face narrow to a crack and finally disappear.

She stood for a minute, gasping for breath. The lift? No, she’d be seen, she was in enough trouble already. Instead, she walked in the other direction, turned right along a side corridor and out through the double doors at the end. There was a ramp leading up to a yard in which the mortuary vans turned, but it was a steep climb. She had to keep stopping to get her breath.

“You all right, love?” one of the drivers asked.

She nodded and, not wanting to attract any more attention, took shelter behind a parked van. Well, that’s me job down the drain, she thought. But perhaps not; he hadn’t asked for her name. Nah, but they’d know who she was. She wasn’t exactly easy to miss. What the hell was she supposed to do now? If she lost the job, she’d be depending on the seances, and it wasn’t enough. Would’ve been if she got her fair share of the house, but she didn’t. Blood-sucking bastards. No, the only way she was going to make money was to go back to the ports, and give them what they wanted: spirits they could see and touch. More cheesecloth up her fanny. Whatever they’d done to her insides that time, it had left a bloody big hole. Which was…convenient. She mightn’t have been much use giving birth to the living, but my God she was a dab hand giving birth to the dead.

All this time, while she was worrying about money and paying the rent, she’d been feeling the soles of his feet, how hard and cold they were, and, at the same time, seeing that purple, howling, convulsed dwarf, whose long, delicate fingers had clawed the air. That’s it. When you come right down to it, what else matters? Oh, my boy. My poor, poor boy.