‘You all right, dearie?’ she asked sympathetically.
Vivi nodded, turning her face away to look out the window.
The woman tapped her hand. ‘It’s a hard war. Did you lose somebody?’
Vivi nodded.
‘Were you close?’
She nodded again, thinking of the family in France, and all the people in her underground cell. The weight of the pain was too much.
The woman squeezed her hand. ‘Chin up, dear, make them proud.’
Vivi thought about those words. Would she ever get the chance to do that again?
On arriving back at the manor, another ambulance of soldiers was being brought in. There was already a patient in her bedroom so Vivi had had to move into a box room that had not been slept in for a while.
On arriving at the entrance, the matron who was taking care of all the admissions nodded at Vivi. ‘Oh good, another pair of willing hands, I hope. We are desperate to train more nurses. Please tell me that is why you are here?’
Vivi drew in a breath and explained who she was, but that she would indeed be happy to help. She was issued with a nurse’s uniform and taken through some basic first-aid skills.
‘Your job will be to help make them comfortable while they’re here,’ the matron informed her. ‘We’re very understaffed. And you can also feed them, do minor duties, bed baths and such. No actual medical duties unless you want to be trained. Though that can also be arranged as well.’
Vivi nodded. ‘Whatever you need. I am happy to be trained.’
Matron nodded her approval.
Making her way into the main hospital ward, she was surprised. She hadn’t ventured too far into the manor since she’d got back from France, being in such a dazed and emotional state. Instead, she’d chosen to hide herself away in her room or her father’s study, or walking the garden, for the past week.
The large room that used to be the ballroom was now full of hospital beds. White, metal-framed beds jammed together on both sides of the space. In the middle was a nurses’ station, cabinets of drugs, and all manner of medical equipment. She introduced herself to the ward sister, who smiled at her and started right away to give her simple jobs.
Vivi was working with another nurse called Marion. She had dark-brown curly hair and lively eyes. She was petite and wiry, but strong, with a great sense of humour.
‘Come on, I’ll put you through your paces,’ she encouraged.
Vivi found she was automatically attracted to her bubbly personality as they changed beds together, and she listened to Marion, who seemed to know exactly the right thing to say to soldiers in so much pain.
‘A lot of it’s their minds,’ she confessed to Vivi. ‘They’ve been through a lot of trauma. You need to read to them, or talk to them, or just listen to them. Write a letter to their sweethearts for them. Try and offer them some hope. That’s the best you can do. Some of them like me to read to them from the Bible. It makes them feel calm. But on the whole, you just do whatever you need to do.’
Day by day, month by month, Vivi got better at what she was doing, and increasingly more equipped for the basic medical procedures that were needed on a daily basis. Soon she had been nursing for almost a year and could take out stitches, administer injections, and perform a number of other medical procedures. As the staff became fewer and the patients greater, her duties increased. The interaction helped her, stopped her thinking about what she’d done. But when she had time to consider it, in her heart she felt as if she’d failed. All she really wanted to do was the undercover work. It had been so rewarding. Vivi had felt skilled for that work, from the languages she could speak, to her stealth and determination. Even though she’d had moments of being terrified, there was just something inside her that had told her it was what she was really meant to do. There was no need for her armed-combat training in the hospital wards.
The hardest times were the nights. Vivi found it difficult to sleep. The estate backed onto the beach, and even though they were under the blackout, sometimes she would slip out of the manor. And even though a lot of the sand had barbed-wired fences and was planted with mines, she would walk along the seashore, looking out at the water over the fence, and it calmed her. Her thoughts always returned to France and the family she had left behind.
It was one night like this when she saw it. She’d been on one of her late-night walks, out after midnight. It had been a full, bright moon as she’d crept along the beach, when, all at once, above her in the air, there was a sharp flash of light and then the sound of a plane coming down, its engines obviously in trouble. She could see it silhouetted against the moon, but once it hit the water, it seemed to disappear from her view. It was out about a mile. She knew she should let someone know straight away. She couldn’t tell if the plane was German or English.
She rushed home to the manor and called the local police station and coastguard to report her sighting.
‘Vivienne Hamilton, how did you see that from the manor window? I hope you weren’t out on the beach, that would be dangerous,’ reminded the local constable, who she’d known all of her life.
‘It was a very clear night,’ she lied.
He didn’t sound convinced by her excuse, but nevertheless, the police arrived promptly. Grabbing her binoculars, she crept out to watch the recovery mission.
Boats bobbed out on the water, the frantic glare of torchlight searching as the men called out to one another. Occasionally they would find debris that they hauled up onto their boats. All at once, one shouted urgently to another, and she saw a light that was trained out onto a particular spot on the water, where there seemed to be something floating in it. Focusing her field binoculars where they had centred their attention, there indeed was something in the water, limp and dark. The rescue crew leaned over and heaved the dripping mass up the side of the tiny fishing boat. Vivi drew in breath, because even though she couldn’t tell for sure, it looked as if it might be a body.
19
Vivi had barely returned from the beach and was in the kitchen making herself a hot drink before returning to bed when the door was flung open and there stood Marion, who’d been assigned to night duties.
‘Thank goodness,’ she gasped. ‘Vivi, we need your help. The local authorities have brought in someone who was in the water!’
Vivi was surprised. If it was the same person she had just seen pulled out, she had thought he was dead. Following her friend, Vivi quickly grabbed her nurse’s apron from the uniform closet. She pulled her hair back into a bun and adjusted her nurse’s cap as she walked to the observation room.
She was amazed to find it bustling. Whenever patients came in, they were assessed in an area that in a former time had been the butler’s pantry, before being taken to the ward. Normally at this time of night there would just be a doctor and a nurse or two, but Vivi was surprised to see the tiny room was filled with people. Three policemen, two members of the Home Guard, two doctors who had started working on the patient, and another nurse.
‘Oh good, they’ve found you, Vivi,’ commented one of the doctors. ‘We know you speak good French, is that correct? We have reason to believe by the papers in this man’s pockets that he may be from France.’ The doctor pointed to soaked documents drying on a table next to him.