LITMIR.BIZ

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was convinced that Karl West was not an uncaring man, but why couldn’t he get a job and settle down and make a proper home with her? Last year she’d almost abandoned all hopes of seeing him again and asked to go home to England. The British authorities in Egypt had ordered compulsory repatriation of army wives and families. Grief and anger turned to rage when some of the wives of senior officers were exempted from the order. There were places on the ships for other British civilians. At first she’d been tempted, but now she was glad she’d never put her name down. Her prospects had changed when Solomon brought her the good news of Karl. It wasn’t the money; now Peggy had something to hope and plan for. Or so she told herself.

      She heard the street cleaners calling, and the back door of the kitchen slammed, as they dragged the sacks of rubbish outside. Traffic was moving. She didn’t open the curtains. She knew that by now the brawny woman across the street would be hanging washing on a clothesline on the roof. She was Italian. Egyptians always laid their washing flat to dry in the sun.

      She looked again at her reflection. Everything mother warned her about had come true, or almost everything. Had her mother still been alive, Peggy would have written her a letter to confirm those old fears of hers. Her mother had always got some grim satisfaction from having her apocalyptic predictions come true. Her mother had said that Egypt was no place to have a baby. As unreasonable and irrational as it so obviously was, Peggy had never been able to forgive her mother for that letter. Had the baby lived, everything might have gone differently. Karl loved children. He might have got another job that didn’t involve endless travelling.

      Peggy combed her hair more carefully and put clips into it. She wasn’t yet thirty and she was still very attractive. What was there to worry about?

      6

      Peggy’s fears, about taking Alice Stanhope to the Base Hospital, and getting her a job there, abated soon after they arrived the next morning. Alice Stanhope made every possible effort to fit in. The senior surgeon, Colonel Hochleitner, who had been landed with the administration problems, had been in Cairo since before the war. He greeted Alice warmly, and liked her, and that was all that really mattered. When Alice was taken into his private office she looked at the chaos of paperwork – and the piles of scribbled notes that had almost buried the typewriter – with that same placid look with which she greeted everything except Corporal Cutler, took off her cardigan, and sat down at the desk. She didn’t even complain about that ancient Adler typewriter, which clattered like a steam engine. She was not the fastest typist in the world, but she could spell long words – even some medical words and Latin – without consulting a dictionary, and the typed result was clean and legible.

      ‘Now perhaps the doctors in this bloody hospital can spend more time on the wards, and less time ploughing through War Office paperwork,’ said ‘the Hoch’ approvingly.

      Peggy was pleased, but her pleasure didn’t last long. It was soon inspection time. She hated to walk through ward after ward that had been emptied in expectation of new casualties. The empty beds, their sheets and pillows crisply starched and their blankets boxed expertly, were exactly like the lines of fresh graves and the white headstones under which so many of the casualties ultimately ended their journeys from the battlefront.

      She looked at her watch. There was not much time to get ready; then it would be like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. The floor of the operating theatres slippery with blood and the mortuary crammed. Tank crewmen burned, mine-clearing sappers with missing legs, and all those dreadful ‘multiple wounds’, soldiers maimed by shell fragments and mortar fire. Gunshot wounds were less common this far back; those men died before getting here.

      She nodded her approval and signed the book. She would check the operating theatres, make her usual rounds, and then sit down for a moment before the new arrivals. Lost in her thoughts, Peggy went striding along and did not notice the nurse until she almost blundered into her.

      ‘Nurse Borrows, what are you –?’

      ‘Sister West. Ogburn, the boy with the leg wound, died in the night.’

      Peggy looked at her. The tears were welling in her eyes. She had kept it bottled up. But now that Peggy had arrived she’d said it, and, having said the terrible words, she lost control. ‘Pull yourself together, nurse.’

      ‘He was fine yesterday at doctor’s rounds: pulse, heart, temperature normal. And he was laughing at something on the wireless –’

      ‘How many times have I told you not to write letters for them?’

      ‘Just the one letter for his mother.’ Her name was Borrows; her screen-struck parents had named her Theda after some exotic Hollywood star. But there was nothing exotic about Nurse Borrows right now. Her eyes were reddened, and so was her nose, which she kept wiping on a tiny handkerchief.

      ‘We have visitors to do that for them. Visitors talk to them, help them with jigsaw puzzles, and sort out their problems.’

      ‘I didn’t neglect my duties, sister. It was my own time. He wanted me to write it. He said he liked my handwriting.’ Nurse Borrows was a plain mousy little thing but, like so many of the other nurses in this town, where European women were as rare as gold, she had suddenly become Florence Nightingale.

      ‘How long have you worked here?’ Peggy didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Haven’t you seen men die before? My God, we’ve lost enough of them in the past week.’

      ‘He was just a boy.’

      ‘You’re a nurse,’ said Peggy more gently this time. ‘Don’t you know what a nurse is?’

      ‘I thought I did.’

      ‘You’re not a woman; you’re not a man. You’re not a soldier, and you’re not a civilian. You’re not a layman, and you’re not a doctor. You’re not a sweetheart, or a mother; you are a nurse. That’s something special. These men believe in us. They think we can make them well … Yes, I know that’s stupid, but that’s what patients like to believe, and we can’t prevent them.’

      ‘He was from Lancashire, not far from me.’

      ‘Listen to me, nurse. These patients are not from anywhere. As soon as you start thinking about them like that, this job will tear your heart out. They’re patients, just patients. They are just wounds and amputations and sickness; that’s all they are.’

      ‘He was shot trying to stop the German tanks. They put him in for a medal.’

      It was as if she wasn’t listening to anything she was told. Angrily Peggy said, ‘I don’t care if he was being treated for an advanced case of syphilis, he’s a patient. Just a patient. Now get that through your silly little head.’

      ‘I loved him.’

      ‘Then you are a stupid girl and an incompetent nurse.’

      The young woman’s head jerked up and her eyes blazed. ‘That’s right, sister. I’m a foolish nurse. I care for my patients. I finish each shift sobbing for them all. But you wouldn’t understand anything of that. You are an efficient nurse. You never sob. Men don’t interest you, we all know that, but some of us are weak. Some of us are women.’ Peggy had got her attention, all right, but only at the price of wounding her.

      ‘I am trying to help you,’ Peggy said.

      The nurse had used up all her emotions, and for a moment she was spent. She said, ‘Don’t you ever see them as men who have given everything for us? Don’t you ever want to kiss them, and hold them, and tell them that they are glorious?’

      ‘Sometimes I do,’ said Peggy. The admission came to her lips as if she were speaking to herself. She was surprised to hear herself say it, but it was the truth.

      Nurse Borrows sniffed loudly and made a superhuman attempt to pull herself together. She stood upright, like a soldier on parade. ‘I’m sorry, sister. I didn’t mean what I said.’

      ‘Why don’t you take an hour off? Doze for a moment or have a shower. There is

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