With that understanding came the knowledge that I had been dragged to safety by this brave stranger, and just in time before the fuel in the tank of the Walrus had ignited. Moreover, I comprehended that a fire of that magnitude would make a thunderous roaring noise. But I could hear nothing. I had been rendered deaf as a result of the explosion.
Irrationally I felt proud of myself for reaching this conclusion. I pointed to my ears. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ I said. Or perhaps I shouted the words, I couldn’t tell. ‘The blast.’
He nodded and I gave in to another bout of violent coughing. When it passed, I sat up. It was then I caught sight of my left leg which was twisted at an unfeasible angle. In registering this, I succumbed to a wave of nausea and thoroughly let the side down by being hideously sick.
From somewhere about his person, my brave rescuer produced a handkerchief and began mopping me up.
‘You’re most kind,’ I said (or yelled), as though we were at a cocktail party and not in a field with the burning wreckage of an aeroplane behind us, and my leg pointing the wrong way.
He smiled and for the first time I saw that my knight in shining armour was an extraordinarily handsome man with straight white teeth and dark expressive eyes beneath a pair of thick eyebrows. He was about the same age as me and I’d wager he was not English. He reminded me of a wildly attractive French racing driver I had once known. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked, ‘seeing as we’ve been so intimately thrown together?’
His thick brows drawn together, he spoke his name, but I shook my head, unable to make it out. ‘Spell it,’ I said, indicating that he should draw the letters in the air.
‘M ... A ... T ... T ... E ... O.’ I said, when his hand came to a stop. ‘Italian?’
He nodded and smiled again.
‘Well Matteo, would you help me to stand, please?’
He looked at me doubtfully, but with great care, he did as I asked. It was when I was upright and leaning heavily against him, wondering where he might take me to get help, and how far that might be, that I noticed he was wearing a uniform that had seen better days. But what was significant about it was that there were large patches sewn on to the jacket and trousers, indicating that he was a prisoner of war. Rather gruesomely the patches were meant as targets should the prisoner attempt to escape.
Without warning, he turned abruptly and scooped me up in his arms. He had gone about a hundred yards, with me fearing he might collapse with the effort, when I saw a number of men running towards us. They had come fortuitously prepared with a couple of stretchers, no doubt in anticipation of more than one casualty from the aircraft that had come down.
I was laid carefully onto a stretcher and transported not so carefully, at speed, across a field where sheep were grazing.
With the woods behind us, I strained my neck to see where we were going, hoping a doctor might be quickly despatched to deal with my broken leg. Frankly I’d be happy with an equine vet if he could administer sufficient morphine into me to numb the pain I was in.
My luck seemed to be continuing. Firstly, I’d been rescued by the handsome Matteo and now I discovered that I had been taken to Tilbrook Hall, a grand old house some five miles from RAF West Raynham. I’d seen it on the maps. It had been requisitioned by the MOD, and not only was it partly used to accommodate prisoners of war, but it was also being used as a hospital for wounded servicemen.
What was more, by the time I was transferred from the stretcher and onto an examination couch, my hearing had begun to return, accompanied with a whistling as though I were under water with a kettle boiling inside my head. But I could hear enough to catch the contemptuous tone of the doctor who was examining me.
He was a stout,flush-faced gentleman of advancing years with monstrously bushy eyebrows, apince-nez perched on his supercilious nose, together with a disagreeable look of censure.
‘Well, well, well, this is quite the mess you’ve got yourself into, young lady,’ he said, addressing me as though I were a silly young schoolgirl. For good measure, he tutted. ‘This is what comes of you women imagining you can do the work of a man.’
I did a rare thing; I kept my mouth firmly shut. After all, I wanted this man to mend my leg. If I antagonised him, he might not feel so inclined to make a good job of fixing me. Instead I cupped my hands around my ears and shook my head, pretending I couldn’t hear him.
As it turned out he instructed a younger doctor to operate on my leg and some hours later, I came round from the general anaesthetic to find myself in a small room on my own. Presumably the wards were all full of servicemen. I was told by a pretty young nurse who, believing I was still deaf, spoke slowly and with exaggerated care in pronouncing each word, plainly hoping I might be able tolip-read.
‘The operation went like clockwork,’ she said, pointing to my leg which was now in plaster and suspended from the ceiling by a contraption of wires and pulleys. ‘You’ll soon be up on your feet and flying again,’ she added with a smile.
I told her that my hearing had partially returned, and she went on to say that I was to take no notice of Dr Dorcas, that he was anold-fashionedstick-in-the-mud. ‘If you feel well enough, there’s somebody waiting to see you.’
‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Who on earth could that be?’ I didn’t feel like seeing anybody, I was still feeling woozy from the anaesthetic, and was sure I could benefit from a dash of lipstick and a brush through my hair. But curiosity had the better of me.
The nurse grinned. ‘I’ll send him in. But don’t tell Dr Dorcas I let you have a visitor so soon or he’ll have my guts for garters.’
I promised it would be our secret and was surprised, and delighted, when minutes later she brought in my handsome rescuer, Matteo. He looked at me anxiously with his dark eyes, which I discerned now were clouded with what I recognised as sadness.
‘I thought you might like these’ he said with a shy smile, while holding out a small bunch of wildflowers.
‘How thoughtful of you,’ I replied.
‘I’ll fetch a vase,’ the nurse said brightly, leaving us alone, but not before winking at me. Her expression suggested that she considered me exceptionally lucky to have a ‘real looker’ like Matteo standing by the side of my bed.
I was inclined to agree with her, and whether or not it was the lingering effect of the anaesthetic, I had a strange feeling deep inside me – like an unfurling of something that had been locked tight for a long time – that this handsome Italian POW with his sad eyes was going to be somebody I would never forget. And not just because he had saved my life.
ChapterTwenty-Four
