If You Were the Only Girl, page 25
Now she gave a shrug. ‘Why should he?’
Clive knew why, because he badgered the doctor about Lucy every time he saw him, but Dr Gilbert answered in only the vaguest terms. He didn’t understand Clive’s preoccupation with the girl, and he certainly wanted no part in fostering any sort of relationship between two people so widely apart in upbringing and class that nothing could ever come of it but heartbreak. The fact that Lucy never spoke of the family convinced him that any feelings Clive imagined he had for Lucy were not reciprocated and so he did nothing to encourage him.
‘Just thought he might have mentioned it, that’s all.’
‘Clive, Dr Gilbert doesn’t live in the same house as me,’ Lucy said. ‘He has a flat above the surgery and when he does come round it is to see his mother, not me, and the only time I see a great deal of him, apart from at the hospital, when we are usually busy with patients, is when he is tutoring me for my nurse’s exams, and the syllabus is what we discuss. Now, do you know the way to the Physiotherapy Department?’
‘Never mind that,’ Clive said impatiently. ‘Will you meet me when I have finished?’
‘What for?’ Lucy asked, suddenly aware that her mouth had suddenly gone very dry. ‘Anyway, I’m a working girl.’
‘You must have a lunch hour?’ Clive said as he put a hand on Lucy’s arm.
Immediately a tingling sensation ran all through her body. She raised her head and her alarmed eyes met those of his and she knew he had felt the same sensation.
‘Please,’ Clive pleaded.
Lucy knew further resistance was futile, but the day was cold and wet and she reasoned that Clive might not be able to walk any distance, so she said, ‘Meet me in the visitors’ room at the back of the hospital at half-past twelve. There should be no one in it at that time of day.’
Indeed, there was no one in it. They didn’t touch in any way but sat on the hard, uncomfortable chairs set aside for visitors and talked about Clive’s injured right leg.
‘I am really anxious for it to be fully functional once more because if I gain full movement of that and my foot, Rory will teach me to drive.’
‘Isn’t that rather short-sighted of him?’ Lucy said. ‘Isn’t he doing himself out of a job?’
‘Yes, but it’s a job he no longer wants.’
‘Oh?’
‘He says there’s going to be a war. Sure as eggs is eggs, was the way he put it. Before Father’s accident, he was going to be a professional soldier and he initially signed on for seven years when he was eighteen in 1928. Then just as his seven years were coming to an end and he could leave, my father had the accident. Rory had been his batman then for three years and instead of signing on for a further term, which was what he had intended to do, he elected to look after my father. He told me straight that it was a pleasure to do it because my father is a great man. But he feels bad to be acting as nursemaid to me and driving a fancy car around when he can see war clouds gathering and he feels he could be of more use in the army.’
‘And what if he’s wrong and there is no war?’
‘Well, he’ll still be in the army, won’t he, and that’s where he wants to be.’ Then Clive burst out, ‘God damn it, Lucy, I didn’t come here to talk about Rory Green but to try and understand what is happening to us, for I know you feel as I do.’
‘Hush,’ Lucy cautioned. ‘Don’t speak of such things.’
‘Of course I must.’
‘No,’ said Lucy determinedly. ‘It is ridiculous to feel this way. We barely know each other.’
‘These things happen.’
Lucy shook her head. ‘Not in real life they don’t. That’s only what you read in books and see in films. This is like a form of madness that will pass.’
‘No, it won’t.’
‘It must,’ Lucy said. ‘There is a deep chasm between us that can never be bridged.’
‘I don’t care about any bloody chasms,’ Clive said. ‘I told you how I felt about this bloody class system after the Spanish Civil War.’
‘You did tell me, Clive,’ Lucy said, ‘but usually society does not view things in the same way as you do.’
‘Lucy!’ Clive cried and tried to grab her hand, but she was up from the chair and out of his grasp in an instant.
It took an immense effort on her part to stand there and say words that wounded her very soul. ‘One day, Clive, you will thank me when I say that there is no future for us.’ And with that, before she broke down in heartbreaking tears, Lucy took to her heels and sped down the corridor.
She was glad she was kept so busy all afternoon, but the nurses she worked with were more worried than ever by her demeanour.
‘She was pleased enough when that young Clive Heatherington came in,’ remarked one nurse.
‘Who wouldn’t be?’ said another. ‘He’s very dishy, very dishy indeed.’
‘You are sex mad, you,’ said Nurse Patterson disparagingly. ‘And I’m not talking of anything like that, but when she saw him walk through the door it was as if someone had turned a light on in her head.’
‘Well, we always said her problems were probably man-related,’ the first nurse said. ‘Maybe he’s the man.’
‘Hope it isn’t him,’ Nurse Patterson said. ‘In my opinion, men like that are only after one thing with girls like us.’
‘Most men are like that,’ the first nurse put in. ‘It’s not confined to the gentry.’
There was a murmur of agreement and then the second nurse said, ‘Maybe they had a row or something.’
‘They hadn’t time.’
‘Ah, but they had, you see,’ said the second nurse. ‘I went down to the laundry with a pile of soiled linen and I had to pass the visitors’ room, as you know. I heard voices coming from inside. They weren’t raised or anything, so I hung about to see who it was and after a few minutes Lucy came out in tears and then Clive Heatherington. But he just stood at the door a moment or two before moving away as if he was thinking. To be honest I thought he looked sort of lost.’
‘Lucy looked more than just lost when I worked with her after lunch,’ said the first nurse.
‘Hope she isn’t in trouble of any sort.’
‘Not Lucy,’ said Nurse Patterson confidently. ‘She isn’t that kind of girl, and anyway she wouldn’t be that stupid.’
‘Don’t know that common sense has much to do with anything when you imagine you’re in love with someone,’ another nurse remarked.
Even Nurse Patterson then began to have her doubts because she knew that her colleague was only too right: common sense and love did not usually go hand in hand. She sincerely hoped that Lucy wasn’t in that kind of trouble, because it would ruin the high hopes the girl had for her future, and she knew that she would feel somewhat responsible as well.
Unaware she was the subject of such speculation, Lucy worked on at the hospital. Though she did everything as well as she always had, she did it in a mechanical sort of way, as if the essence of her had gone, and she seemed unable to concentrate on the work she was doing with Dr Gilbert. He didn’t understand her apparent disinterest, though he really thought she looked unwell, but when he asked her – or Gwen, who was even more concerned – she always maintained she was fine.
Lucy valiantly tried to lift her mood when she saw Clodagh. She didn’t want her talking about her misery back at the Hall, for it would worry Clara and she would hate Clive to get wind of how unhappy she was. She wasn’t entirely sucessful and often seemed to have two left feet at the dancing lessons, but Clodagh thought that was how a person was when they loved a person they couldn’t have. Anyway, Lucy was much better, she reflected, at the cinema, where she could lose herself for an hour or two.
Lucy often contemplated in bed how it was that making the right decision about something – and she knew it was the right decision – could make her feel so wretched. It sometimes seemed that everyone else was living their lives and she was standing outside looking in. This was even more apparent when her birthday came round and she realised she had been almost unaware of it. Numerous parcels arrived from America of lovely clothes and perfume, the nurses gave her gifts of toiletries, Clodagh bought her a big box of chocolates and Gwen gave her a beautiful fluffy dressing gown, but though she thanked everyone she couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for any of it.
November was a terrible month weather-wise. One day the rain was coming down in sheets as Lucy finished work. The nurse on the front desk advised her to stay for a while and see if it eased off a little as her coat was not waterproof and she had no hat. However, Lucy thought the torrential rain from the leaden grey skies suited her mood and she plunged out into the dusky evening.
She arrived home sodden, and Gwen fussed round her like a mother hen and wouldn’t let her eat until she had stripped off, put on dry things and taken a towel to her hair.
She had been worried about her young lodger for some time and that night, as they sat before the fire with an after-dinner cup of tea, Gwen said, ‘Can’t you tell me what’s eating you, my dear? Something is obviously making you feel so unhappy.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Lucy began. ‘Well, almost nothing, and no one can help me. I just feel pretty miserable at the moment.’
That was patently obvious. Gwen said, ‘What we want is some jolly music to cheer ourselves up,’ and she turned the dial on the wireless until music from the big bands filled the air.
Unfortunately, after just a few minutes, the programme was interrupted with a news bulletin. The solemn voice of the newscaster told them that, that night, storm troopers had attacked Jews in towns and cities all over Germany. They were thrown out of their houses and businesses into the streets, their property looted and burnt. Any who protested were shot, and even those who ran to the synagogues to take refuge were not safe. The synagogues were set alight, and observers said the sky was blood red with buildings burning.
Gwen and Lucy just stared at one another for a moment, hardly able to credit what they had just heard. Lucy crossed to the window and watched the rain hammer down. She thought of the German Jews, helpless against such brutality, and she wanted to weep for them. She knew that never did any good, but she understood Dr Gilbert when he said that the world couldn’t stand by indefinitely and watch Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.
The following day on the news the scale of the tragedy unfolded further. The Germans were calling it Kristallnacht – Night of Broken Glass – because it was said that in the houses, shops and businesses owned by the Jews so much glass was broken there wasn’t enough in the whole of Germany to replace it. Countless Jews had been killed, many others seriously injured, and thirty thousand of them had disappeared. The broadcaster said many families had just committed suicide.
‘And who in God’s name could blame them?’ Gwen said. Lucy just shook her head in bewilderment.
That night in bed, with the atrocities that had happened in Germany running round and round in her head, she realised that she had been indulging in self-pity. Not to declare her love for Clive had cost her dear, but it had been her decision, and though it had hurt her and was still hurting her a great deal, if it could not be compared to the truly awful things happening in Germany.
So maybe it was better to live for today, to take opportunities when they were offered, for no one knew what the future held. However, that was a difficult concept for Lucy to get to grips with. Her nature had never been to throw caution to the winds, but she acknowledged that a nation who could commit such atrocities on their own people who had done them no harm would not spare the citizens of a country it had conquered.
The image of Clive flashed through her mind, and she sighed because she knew, despite what was happening in the world, the vast differences between their lives still remained. That alone would hold them apart.
Clive was just as unhappy and confused as Lucy. Until that first morning at the hospital, he had heard about her only at odd times. Usually, this was from Clara, who tended him in Rory’s absence, and she would maybe recount something Clodagh said Lucy had done or said, or something she wrote to her about. Clive had a great deal of time on his hands and he stored those snippets and wove them into his memories of Lucy, who, with every passing day, he was falling in love with.
Because he loved her with growing intensity, he thought she was bound to feel the same. Certainly, she had felt something between them when they touched, but then instead of going slowly, when he might have overcome her concern about their vastly different backgrounds, he had jumped in with two feet. What a fool he was!
Rory had been tidying Clive’s room while he waited for his return. For some time now he had thought Clive didn’t seem to appreciate what his parents had gone through when he was missing all that time and he decided to tell him.
So when Clive, already despondent, arrived home, he found Rory still in his room, and when Rory described how anxious and desperately worried his parents had been during his time in Spain, he listened in silence.
Rory went on to tell him of Lord Heatherington’s journey to Liverpool to see if anyone had news of him, and of finding the injured soldier who was able to assure him that Clive was alive, which gave him and Clive’s mother great ease. ‘But,’ Rory went on, ‘not long after that the Spanish town of Guernica was bombed and eventually we all thought you had perished. Master Clive, you have no idea the distress you caused them.’
Clive felt guilt steal over him. They would have known he was facing danger daily and yet he hadn’t been able to write and tell them how he was and he could see how unbearably hard that would have been for any parent. He had seen for himself how old his parents had become in his absence and he had thought it just part of the ageing process, even though he had been away only three years, and his parents seemed to have aged ten. The thought that his actions might have had some bearing on their health was a hard pill to swallow.
He vowed that he would make it up to them, and so he was patient with his mother when she talked of Jessica being a perfect match for him, and he even took tea with them and smiled tolerantly at the mothers’ matchmaking plans. He would exchange knowing looks and conspiratorial winks with Jessica, certain she wasn’t involved in these plans. They had been friends from childhood and he still thought of her as a friend. There had never been any romantic entanglement because Clive didn’t feel that way about her. He knew where his heart lay, though he doubted that he would ever be able to convince Lucy of that.
The news of the pogroms against the Jews throughout Germany had made him feel very low. It brought back into his mind the Jew who had been beaten to death in Berlin at the time of the Olympic Games for talking to them, the one who had shaped his life for the next three years. And all that fighting and all those deaths had achieved nothing, and the Germans were continuing in their savage and merciless ways.
Lucy had been wrestling with feelings alien to her since she had listened to the details of the Night of Broken Glass on the wireless, and that was an impatience to live life to the full while she was still able to do it. She had deliberately not seen Clive since she had run from him, having found out the times of his physio and arranged to be elsewhere in the hospital. But just a week after the pogroms, his appointment was changed and she ran into him as he walked down the corridor.
‘Lucy!’ he said almost tentatively. ‘I’m glad I have seen you. I want to apologise.’
‘Apologise?’
‘Yes, for the way I behaved the first time I came for physio. No wonder you ran away.’
Lucy swallowed deeply and said, ‘I’m sorry too.’
‘What for?’
Live life to the full, said a little voice inside her head. But while Lucy wanted to do that, there was nothing to be gained by running after an impossible dream, to think of any sort of future with Clive Heatherington, but she didn’t have to deny him totally.
‘Lucy,’ he urged gently, and Lucy swung to face him. The look in his eyes caused her stomach to give a quite unsettling lurch as she said, ‘Well, I told you that we have no future together and I stand by that, but since I heard about the pogroms in Germany, the Night of Broken Glass, I have felt a little differently. I realised then that war really is almost inevitable now and that changes everything.’
‘Does it?’
‘Well, yes,’ Lucy said. ‘If war comes, none of us might have much of a future. I mean, if we fight Germany and they win, what chance will we have?’
‘None,’ Clive said. ‘So, what do you want to do, Lucy?’
‘Take every opportunity while it is still ours to take, I suppose,’ Lucy said. ‘And that means I suppose we could be friends, if that’s what you want.’
That wasn’t what Clive wanted at all, but he knew better than to tell Lucy what he did want because he sensed that friendship was as far as she was willing to go, and that was a lot better than nothing at all.
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘If that is how you want it. As a friend, would you like to go to the cinema with me tomorrow evening?’
Lucy thought for a minute and then said, ‘Yes, I would like that, but what about Jessica Ponsomby?’
‘What about her?’
‘You can’t just dismiss her like that, Clive. Clodagh said—’
‘I don’t care what Clodagh said, or my mother or hers,’ Clive said. ‘She is a friend, nothing more and nothing less.’
‘They intend for you to marry her,’ Lucy said.
‘Oh, I think Jessica knows the score,’ Clive said. ‘As for our mothers, they can scheme all they like, but I will marry only for love.’
The words spoken with such conviction and the look shining in Clive’s eyes seemed to melt a large chunk of Lucy’s heart. Clive badly wanted to crush Lucy to him and cover her with kisses, but he restrained himself with extreme difficulty.
‘Till tomorrow then,’ he said, and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek, as one friend to another.
EIGHTEEN
Clive was incredibly nervous the following night. Growing up in a boys’ school, he had known few girls apart from Jessica, and he had never ever thought of asking her out. There had been plenty of girls in Spain, of course, raven-haired beauties, many of them with flashing black eyes, but no one could get anywhere near them for they were too closely chaperoned.
