“No one is taking it seriously,” Alex assured her, “any more than they are about his meeting Hitler.”
“The poor kid. He was a sweet boy. He wasn’t right in his head the last time I saw him either. He was desperate for me to agree to getting engaged. Ed and I aren’t even engaged and I’m in love with him.” They both laughed at that.
“Do you think that’ll happen?” Alex asked her, and Lizzie shrugged in answer and looked vague.
“After what happened to Pru and Audrey, you can’t count on anything until the war is over. We’re not making any plans. We both want to go to medical school after the war and become doctors, but he lives in Dublin, I live in Boston.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Alex encouraged her. She was thinking that about her own life too, and Dan. Meeting him had been unexpected, but it had seemed so right, and still did, no matter how different their backgrounds were.
“Everything in wartime is strange,” Lizzie said, “and maybe afterwards too, good and bad. The only thing I do know is that you can’t count on anything while we’re here and the war is still on.” They both knew it was true. Alex nodded and left the room after delivering the message about Alfred.
Lizzie went to see him the next day and found him much more delusional than he’d been before. She had no experience with psychiatric nursing, nor training for it, unlike Alex, but his mind was all over the place. He recognized Lizzie immediately, but then he wandered off into dark corners of his mind. He told her in detail about his meeting with Hitler, and that a German officer had shot him in the foot. She saw the notes in his chart about the nightmares he had every night. He had to be sedated and restrained when he had them. When she mentioned that he would be going home soon, he said that no, he was being sent for duty in North Africa as an aide to General de Gaulle. He didn’t mention being engaged to her, although the head nurse on the psych ward said he spoke of it all the time, and that he was fixated on it. They were recommending electric shock treatment for him when he got back to the States. The military wasn’t going to release him until some semblance of sanity had returned. Lizzie wondered if it ever would or if his mind was blown forever by the rigors of war.
She went to see him another time, and he thought she was his mother, and then he said he was Jesus and she was the Virgin Mary. She wished him a good trip home when she left the ward and didn’t go back to see him again. There was no point. He didn’t recognize her some of the time, and he came in and out of lucidity. It tore at her heart to see it. The war had destroyed so many minds and bodies and lives. She hoped they could put him back together, but it didn’t seem likely. Nothing was sure anymore. They had all been through too much. And boys like Alfred couldn’t find their way back from the terrible things they’d seen and done in the war.
Chapter 16
Emma was on her way back to her barracks after flying missions one night in January, when she saw a familiar figure walk toward her. He was wearing an RAF uniform, but she wasn’t sure who it was at first. And then she saw that it was Max, Pru’s older brother. She was surprised to see him. He smiled as he got closer, and he was carrying something. It was a cold night, and she’d had a hard time keeping the men warm on her last flight back. Her bright red hair was sticking up, and he looked happy to see her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him, smiling.
“I was looking for you.” Being there made him feel guilty that he hadn’t visited Pru more often. Now he wished he had.
“Do you want to come in for a cup of tea, or go to the pub?” she suggested.
He looked pleased at the prospect. “A glass of wine might be nice. Have you got time?”
“I just finished. I’m free for the night.”
They walked swiftly toward the pub in the cold night air and were happy to find it warm and inviting, with a blazing fire in the hearth. They found a small table and he ordered a glass of red wine for each of them.
“What brings you here?” she asked him.
“My mother asked me to give you this.” He handed her his sister’s journal, and Emma looked surprised. “She said there’s so much of the two of you in here, she thought you should have it.” Emma’s eyes lit up at the kind gesture. She had sent Lady Pommery a note, thanking her for inviting her to stay on Christmas Eve.
“That’s so nice of her.” She tucked it into the bag she was carrying and couldn’t wait to read it again. She had missed it. The way Pru described things with her keen eye and dry wit brought her back to life. He had felt that way too when he read it.
“So, what have you been up to?” he asked after they each took a sip of the wine.
“Flying men back from the battlefield. I’m so tired of the damn Germans. We got Paris back and they still won’t give up.”
“They will soon, we’re pounding them to bits every night,” Max said reassuringly.
“They’re pounding us too. Will it ever stop?”
“It will one day. And then what will you do?” he asked her.
“Sleep for about a month, and then I suppose I’ll go back to delivering babies in Poplar.”
“That must be rough,” he said.
“Not after the war. And I’m used to being a midwife in Poplar. Until they figure out what’s causing it, I have plenty of work.” He laughed.
“Do you enjoy it?”
“There’s something beautiful about bringing babies into the world. It never gets old. It’s always exciting. Especially after all this.” They’d all seen too much death after the last five years. “Midwifery is easier than what we do here, even a complicated delivery is nothing compared to what we see every day. There are some sad ones, but the men we fly back are so damaged. It’s a race against time on every flight. A baby is a confirmation of life.”
“I don’t know how you do it with the evacuations.”
“You figure it out as you go, and pray you get it right. I don’t always. Pru was brilliant. I could never tell if she was scared. She made it look like she always knew what she was doing.”
“From what I read in her journal, she was impressed by you too.”
“We were a good team when we worked together, and she gave me good advice. What about you? What comes after the RAF?”
“I’m not sure. Run the farms on the estate? Go back to school? Study law? Give flying lessons?” They were all wondering what they’d do later.
“People keep saying that the world is going to be different now,” Emma said thoughtfully. “I wonder if that’s true, or if we’ll be back in another war twenty years from now. They say there will be women in the workforce now, but as soon as the boys return, they’ll want their jobs back, and the women will be at home, scrubbing floors and having babies.”