‘Lil, I said get off!’ Tony gave her a rough shove, using all his strength to free himself. Lilian lost her grip and fell to the ground, hitting her head against a rock on the gravel track.
‘Oh my God!’ Bobby dropped to her haunches. ‘Lil, sweetheart, are you all right?’
‘I’m… fine.’ Lil put her hand to the back of her head, then stared woozily at her red fingers. ‘Oh. I’m bleeding.’
Bobby shook her head darkly at Tony. ‘What the hell did you do?’
Tony was staring at his injured wife, a horrified look on his face.
‘It was an accident,’ he said helplessly, to no one in particular. He looked from Lilian lying on the ground to Captain Parry holding the bridge of his gushing nose. ‘It was an accident.’
He bent down to try and help his wife, but Bobby pushed him away.
‘You’ve done quite enough. Get away from her.’ She turned back to Lilian. ‘Can you walk, love? Are you dizzy at all?’
‘It could be a concussion,’ the captain muttered nasally. ‘Scott, if you want to help then go for the doctor.’
‘It was an accident,’ Tony repeated again.
‘Leave, Tony, can you?’ Bobby said. ‘Walk to the Bull and ring for Dr Minchin. And don’t even think about coming back until you’ve remembered how to behave like a civilised human being rather than whatever that caveman nonsense was.’
‘I never meant… never would’ve… Lil, I am so, so sorry.’
‘Please,’ Lilian whispered. ‘Just go, Tony. I can’t be near you at the moment.’
Looking utterly defeated, Tony turned to head up the track.
‘Can you both walk?’ Bobby asked the two casualties. ‘We ought to get back to the cow house. There’ll be bandages and things in Charlie’s cupboards. I think I still remember how to apply a nasal splint. Thank God for the WAAF.’
‘I can walk,’ Lilian said, wincing as she pushed herself into a sitting position. ‘I need to get back to my baby.’ She looked at the captain. ‘George, are you all right?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said, sounding as if he had a heavy cold. ‘A bloody nose is no more than I deserve for my part in this. Still, he’s certainly broken it. I don’t want the girls to see me gushing blood if I can help it, so anything you have in the way of bandages would be appreciated.’
Lilian shook her head, then grimaced from the pain of moving it. ‘I’m so sorry. You left them in my care and now they’ve been exposed to all this. How will we ever explain it to them?’
‘I’m the one who ought to say sorry. I’ve caused a lot of trouble for you, one way or another. I don’t know how you can bear to look at me, Lilian.’
‘Never mind all that,’ Bobby said firmly. ‘The more immediate concern is the fact you’re both bleeding all over the place. Let’s get inside.’
Chapter 33
At the cow house, Bobby pillaged some bandages from Charlie’s surgery, as well as cotton wool and a bottle of antiseptic. She was able to fashion a nasal splint for the captain from a couple of matchsticks.
She was relieved to find that Lilian’s head didn’t look too bad: just a small cut at the back, and the beginning of a rather fine lump. Still, Bobby hoped Dr Minchin would be able to come. She remembered from her first aid training that concussion could be a difficult thing to diagnose, and was dangerous if left untreated. There were various ways to test for it, asking about spots behind the eyes and so forth, but Bobby couldn’t remember what they were.
An hour later, however, the doctor still hadn’t arrived. There was no sign of Tony either, although Bobby had hardly expected him to come home after what had happened. She imagined he had either gone to his Home Guard parade or – and this seemed more likely – he was drinking away his woes in a pub somewhere. Wherever he was, she hoped he was having a long, hard think about what he’d done.
She might have understood him thumping Captain Parry, given the provocation. She had even felt rather sorry for him when he had looked so very broken at the thought George might have secured Lilian’s love when he had been striving for it all this time. But what he had done to his wife was harder to forgive.
Lilian had finally managed to soothe the baby, who was sleeping quietly. Lil’s head was bandaged from eyebrows to crown – the cut was small, but Bobby had been liberal in her use of Charlie’s dressings nonetheless. Meanwhile, the captain had two matchsticks either side of his nose secured by a strip ofplaster, with cotton wool in both nostrils. The bleeding finally seemed to be slowing.
‘Look at the pair of us,’ Lilian said when she had put down the baby. ‘We look like we’ve escaped the pyramids, George.’
The captain smiled. ‘Yes, we are rather Tutankhamun-like. How does your poor old head feel, darling?’ He winced. ‘I’m sorry. Lilian. I hadn’t meant to call you that.’
‘It aches, but it should be all right by tomorrow,’ Lilian said. ‘It’ll only be a little tender for a while, I think.’
‘I ought to get back to the girls. They must have been frightened before, and I owe them an explanation. If I stay any longer, they’ll wonder what’s become of me.’
