‘I have to know everything, now,’ Bobby murmured. ‘It’ll be worse not to know. Please, Charlie.’
Charlie hesitated, then nodded to Topsy to go on.
‘They brought him in this morning,’ Topsy said. ‘I wouldn’t have known anything about it now I’m not nursing, but as luck would have it I’d gone over to talk to the matron about repairs to the house and I heard them say his name.’ She fixed her helpless eyes on Bobby’s. ‘They’ve brought him there to die, Birdy. He told them he wanted to die at Sumner House. There’s only just time to say goodbye.’
Charlie knelt down in front of his wife. ‘Are you all right, Bob?’ he asked gently. ‘What do you need?’
Bobby felt like the room was spinning. Ernie King! Of everyone she had prayed to come through this war, other than Charlie and her brothers, she had said the most prayers for him.
He couldn’t die, could he? Not Ernie. He was so strong and young and… and alive. He was going to be married when he finished his tour, and take his beautiful bride to Canada to run the family farm. Bobby had only seen him a few days ago in the village, teasing her and swelling with pride as he talked about being godfather to the baby. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair…
‘Is he really dying?’ she asked Topsy in a whisper.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Topsy said. ‘His plane caught fire on impact and he was trapped inside. They don’t think he’ll live two days, if that.’
‘And he asked for me?’
‘That’s what the doctor says.’
‘Then take me to him.’
Charlie seized her hands. ‘No, Bobby. I won’t let you go. You aren’t well.’
‘I am well. It was a shock, that’s all. I want to say goodbye to my friend.’
‘It’s dangerous, darling. You’re eight months pregnant. Be sensible.’
‘Please, Charlie.’ She squeezed his hands. ‘You know how much it meant to you to say goodbye to Hynes. You called it a privilege. If I don’t do the same for Ernie when he’s asked for me, it’ll haunt me until my dying day.’
Charlie hesitated.
‘All right, then I’m coming with you,’ he said finally.
‘You don’t need to. Topsy will look after me.’
‘Rubbish. I’m going with you and that’s all there is to it.’
The matron was silent and solemn as she showed the three of them to the hall outside Ernie’s private room. Bobby found herself wondering vaguely what the room had been before, when this had been Topsy’s house. A study? A closet? The closets of Sumner House were probably larger than her bedroom.
She felt like she needed to cry, but she couldn’t. Her reflection in the glass of the portraits that lined the walls made her look like the ghost that haunted this old place, with her pale face and huge grey maternity dress. She certainly felt like a ghost.
Teddy was already waiting, with Maimie Bancroft, formerly Hobbes, in charge of his wheelchair. They both summoned weak smiles.
‘Well, here’s my stepdaughter,’ Maimie said softly. ‘I’m sorry we had to meet like this, Bobby. You had better take a seat.’
‘We are to wait until called,’ Teddy told them. ‘Ernie is sleeping now, his doctor says. You ought to go in first, Bobby. It is you Ernie particularly wished to see.’
Teddy looked sober, yet not exactly sad: only resigned. It was different for him, Bobby supposed, just as it was different forCharlie. They had been airmen. They had lost friend after friend in this war. Teddy had witnessed the deaths of almost his entire crew the night he had lost the use of his legs. Grief was different, when you were one of the men who had flown.
Bobby sank into a seat. She felt like she didn’t want to be here. She felt like she would rather die than have to see that handsome, strong young man who had once loved her in pain, with his life draining away. But he had asked for her, and if he wanted her here when he was dying then she would never dream of letting him down.
‘It seems a strange place to offer congratulations, but I think I ought to,’ Charlie said to Teddy and Topsy, in a muted tone appropriate to their setting. ‘You’re to have a new baby soon, my wife tells me.’
Bobby was grateful to him for taking up the conversation. She felt some talk was preferable to silence, but she had no energy to make it herself.
‘This is right,’ Teddy said, with a proud smile for Topsy. ‘Those in authority have decided we will make suitable parents in spite of all this.’ He gestured to his paralysed legs. ‘Now we wait only for them to decide which baby they feel will suit us most.’
‘We told them we don’t mind what it is,’ Topsy said. ‘If it needs two loving parents, nothing else is important.’
