Page 87 of Summer in Greece

Laughter exploded from DJ. ‘You crack me up, Gramps!’ he cried between gasps.

‘You leave my crack out of this!’ Gordon said, which made Shelly laugh helplessly too. In a few silly words, all the strain between them was blown away. Shelly took a surreptitious glance at her father and wondered if he had somehow orchestrated the whole fiasco just to break the tension.

*

The pudding was a great success with everyone having seconds. They talked for a while, Gordon telling DJ about his pigeons, then explaining about the steam engine he’d kept for him for the past twenty years.

Shelly smiled to herself, delighted to hear the ease with which they made arrangements for the following week. DJ, her son, fitted into the family, and wasn’t that wonderful? More than she had hoped for.

‘Come up to the loft, lad, have a look at me birds while Shelly gets on with the dishes, then we’ll bring Gran Gertie’s bag down and see what’s in there, right?’

Shelly continued to clear up, smiling when she thought about her father apologising to DJ the way he did. Clearly, he’d been dreading the day he’d face his grandson. Half an hour passed and Shelly was finishing her coffee when the men returned from the attic with Gran Gertie’s pillow-bag.

‘Here, Gramps, shall we put it on the table?’

‘Sounds like a plan, lad.’

They hefted the bulging pillow-bag onto the empty dining table. ‘Right, here we go,’ DJ said. ‘Who’s going to do the honours? I think it should be you, Mum. What do you think, Gramps?’ He looked at them both, his head slightly to one side. ‘It feels a little odd saying Mum and Gramps, you know?’

‘Aye, course it does, but we’ll all get used to it, lad. I remember when our Shelly was born. At first, it seemed right weird to call that little baby Michelle . . . Must admit, I called her a few other names at night, when she was teething. They came quite natural, believe me, but honestly, you don’t want to hear them now.’

Shelly and DJ laughed.

Shelly’s chest tightened every time DJ called her Mum, and she could see her father was quite overwhelmed by his new role too. She went right up to DJ and said, ‘Look, we’re all family here, do you think you could just . . .’ She had to stop and gulp back tears. ‘Give me a hug? I’ve waited a lifetime.’

DJ, who was six inches taller than her, pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. ‘You can’t understand what this day means to me,’ he said quietly. ‘Thank you.’

*

‘That went all right, don’t you think?’ Shelly said, putting the last of the dishes away.

Gordon nodded at the window, towards the old oak tree where DJ was sitting on the bench reading some of Gertie’s letters that they’d found in an oilcloth envelope in the pillow-bag. ‘He seems like a nice boy; kind, good-looking, with a sense of humour. Of course, he’d get all that from his grandad. Runs in the family, don’t it?’

Shelly laughed and marvelled at how her father’s wit had returned. Her own joy was so great she felt an urge to pull on her ballet pumps and pirouette across the table, but she hadn’t worn them since she was six years old.

‘I’m just going to pack the contents of the pillow-bag into my suitcase to take with me next week. Is there anything you’d like to keep, Dad?’

‘Well, I don’t know, we didn’t really have a good look, did we? Too busy yakkin’. Let’s go through it together shall we?’

‘Might as well finish going through the trunk too,’ she said. ‘I put the Christmas presents in my bedroom. I thought . . . well, about having a proper Christmas this year . . .’

‘I know,’ he said, way ahead of her. ‘It’s time we celebrated Christmas. I’ll do it in honour of my wife, and you do it in honour of your son, OK?’

CHAPTER 36

GERTIE

Lemnos, Greece, 1917.

BY CHANCE, I CAME TO see some of Lemnos. The beauty of that island brought all of Greece into my heart forever. Neither the magnificent architecture of Syros nor the rural simplicity of Kea, Lemnos was Constable’s English pastures. Rolling hills dotted with sheep, groves of fruit trees, neat rows of beehives. Corn fields, wheat threshing circles and hay stacks. When I turned my back on those rural scenes and faced the coast, there were beaches of white sand and turquoise water like nothing I had seen before. The deep port of Mudros was another story. Frigates lined up, embarking coal and water unloaded by supply ships. A motley array of barges sidled up to the great frigates and destroyers, flogging their wares like gypsies in the market place.

One day, one of our orderlies came off his motorised bicycle and broke his leg outside our tent.

‘Take care of my bike, nurse,’ he muttered between gasps of pain. ‘If you learn to ride it, you’ll get a few tips when you deliver stuff, and you’ll keep my job open for me. Say you’ll do it?’

William carried messages from one end of the camp to the other. After a tentative start, I found the motorised cycle manageable and took the messenger’s place, hurrying through the camp three times a day. I loved that vehicle and fetched supplies from the stores whenever we ran out of something crucial. I wished Sissy could have seen me flying along the duckboards between the marquees.

Matron Merriberry approached Josephine and I as we came off duty one week before Christmas. ‘Nurse Jones,’ she said to Josephine. ‘I want you and Smith to start in theatre, tomorrow morning, seven o’clock, understood?’