She looked at her watch, an old one she’d been left by her mother, but it had run down. What time was it now? She must have been dozing for a while before Charlie turned up with the pilot. Four o’clock? Five?
The sun was rising over the fells now, staining the sky pink. Still there was a black cloud where the plane had crashed though. Bobby shuddered when she thought of the four bodies abandoned up on the mountain. They’d have to be recovered, of course. Their loved ones would have to be told. Probably their families had felt they had been safe for the time being, away from the fighting, flying routine training missions. They wouldn’t be prepared for the telegram about to turn their worlds upside down.
And still the birds sang and the lambs bleated in the distance, like none of it mattered. The drizzle and fog that had wrought such terrible consequences the night before had disappeared, replaced with blushing skies and morning dew. This morning, the summer felt wrong. It felt like an affront.
Reg’s car soon appeared, driven once again by Charlie with Dr Minchin in the passenger seat, only this time it was the rear gunner stretched out in the back. Bobby showed the men inside with their patient and guided them to the empty ward. The man on the stretcher was conscious again, free from his previous delirium, and he had stopped trembling. His face was white and drawn where it wasn’t blackened with soot, but he managed a weak smile for Bobby as she walked by the side of his stretcher.
‘I have seen this face in a dream,’ he murmured to her while she helped the men get him on to one of the beds. He shook his head, as if to clear it of fog. ‘No.Not a dream. A nightmare. But you… you were not a part of the nightmare world. You were kind.’
‘Pay him no mind,’ Dr Minchin told her. ‘He’s full of morphine. I doubt he knows truly what he’s saying.’
‘You spoke to me on the mountain,’ Bobby told the man while the doctor started unpacking items from his bag. ‘I came to help you. You spoke to me in Polish.’
‘The mountain.’ The man pressed his eyes closed. ‘That was my dream. I dreamed they… that they were all dead. Is it true?’
Dr Minchin put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t excite him,’ he said in a low voice. ‘He needs to be kept calm. Best to break the news when we know the outcome of the pilot’s surgery.’ Bobby nodded.
‘But I pulled Tadeusz from the flames,’ the man murmured to himself. ‘I had only strength for one. And then… the rest is black.’ He blinked blearily at Bobby, his consciousness starting to drift as the morphine did its work. ‘Jolka?’
‘Jolka…’ Bobby looked at Charlie. ‘He said that on the mountain too. When he touched my arm. Stan thought it meant “spy”, but I could tell that wasn’t it.’
‘What is Jolka?’ Charlie asked the man.
‘Zona… wife. My wife. My Jolka.’ He fell back against the pillows, exhausted by conversation, and his eyes closed.
‘It’s for the best that he’s unconscious,’ Dr Minchin said. ‘Now we can attend to those broken legs. Charlie, you know how to mix plaster for a cast – it’s no different for two-legged patients than it is for those with four. Young lady, I’d like you to cut these bandages into strips approximately four inches wide and three feet long. We’ll soon have our friend here as comfortable as we can. This one, at least, ought to make a full recovery with a few months’ rest. He’ll be reunited with this wife of his in no time.’
Charlie gave Bobby’s hand a firm press before they got to work.
Two hours later, Topsy came in to join them. Bobby had once again been dozing, sitting in a chair beside the wounded gunner’s bed while Charlie and the doctor applied casts to the man’s broken limbs, but she woke instantly when she heard someone come in.
She could see at once that her friend had been through a life-changing ordeal of her own tonight. Topsy looked more grown up, somehow, as if what she’d seen in the operating room had aged her immeasurably in just a few hours. Her blue eyes were filled with pain and pity; her white coat covered in blood. But her jaw was firm, and there was a hard, determined expression on her pale face that Bobby had never seen there before.
Bobby was both surprised and impressed at how her friend had rallied tonight, at the end when she was really needed – she had expected Topsy to plead off nursing duties in the surgery within half an hour. But she’d been unfair to her. For all her sheltered upbringing and indulged, charmed life, Topsy Sumner-Walsh clearly had the makings of a fine nurse in her soul. She’d looked into the burned face of the pilot without a trace of either horror or disgust; only compassion.
However, there was no time to talk about such matters.
‘What news, Tops?’ Charlie demanded. ‘The pilot, is he—’
‘Alive.’ Topsy removed her bloodied coat and sank into a seat by the bed opposite. ‘Dr Lazenby is stitching him up now. Mary’s helping but he said I could go.’
‘And the surgery was successful?’ Bobby asked.
‘We probably won’t know for a little while, I’m afraid,’ Dr Minchin told her.
Topsy nodded. ‘That’s what Dr Lazenby said. The injuries are very bad and the next twenty-four hours are going to be critical, but he’s removed all the metal and he said there’s no sign of any infection. The man might never walk again though. Dr Lazenby says some of the metal damaged his spine.’ She closed her eyes and let her head sag back. ‘I wish I knew his name. The poor boy.’
‘His comrade mentioned it earlier when he was conscious, I think,’ Bobby said. ‘It was a Polish name – I can’t quite say it the way he did, but it sounded a little like Thaddeus.’
‘Thaddeus.’ Topsy smiled slightly. ‘I’m glad I’ve got something to call him other than Pilot. It creates a sort of bond, helping to save a man’s life.’ She pressed her fingers into her eyes and let out a sob. ‘Oh God, I hope it is saved. It can’t all have been for nothing.’
They were interrupted by a clattering outside the house, as of several vehicles arriving at once.
‘Ah,’ Dr Minchin said with a satisfied smile. ‘There’s our cavalry at last. The RAF must have sent some men out.’
The RAF had sent more than men. When the four of them went outside to greet the newcomers, they found three Austin Tillys containing various air force personnel, including two doctors and several WAAFs with medical experience. These, they were told by the young, pleasant and slightly pompous officer who seemed to be in charge, were going to take over nursing duties until a permanent hospital staff could be engaged.
‘You people have done an excellent job here, considering,’ the young man, Wing Commander Phelps, told them in a mildly patronising tone. ‘Stuff of the silver screen, that rescue mission from the village, from what I’ve heard. Anyhow, we’ll take over from here. Jolly handy, this hospital being ready to go.’
