Chapter Twenty-Four
Kate had to put her own emotions to one side and get on with doing what was expected of her.
Weeks went by. Her daily tasks went on and the routines took over.
She hardly had time to think. She eventually paid her visit to Archie’s mother and listened to her read through all the letters he’d sent.
While Mrs Mabbs commented on the dreadful food he was getting and worried about him getting a bad chest, in her mind’s eye, Kate constantly saw those men beneath the blankets on the ward and the true extent of their pain.
As Mrs Mabbs talked about Archie and what a good son he was, Kate tried to make sense of what his words really meant and how much they were a true picture of what he was going through.
She felt uncomfortable listening to this mother who was worried that her son might have a bad cough when he could be lying badly injured in a field somewhere, his blood soaking into the earth.
How little they all knew. When she felt she’d spent enough time to be polite, she thanked Archie’s mother for her tea and tried to let her down gently by explaining that she didn’t know when she would be able to come again.
Mrs Mabbs said that was quite all right.
‘I understand,’ she said, ‘you’re a very busy person.
You’re a good girl, Kate. I always knew that Archie would choose a good one. ’
She didn’t feel like a good person. She had only made things more difficult for everyone by coming here in the first place.
Continuing to write to Archie was giving him cause to hope when she was still thinking about Philip.
But how could she let him go back to fight with the emptiness of rejection?
She couldn’t do it. Perhaps that was cowardly of her but there was no knowing what the future would bring.
There was enough loss and pain in this war without her adding to it.
When she reported for duty at the hospital the following Sunday, she was pleased to be occupied with young men whose problems were far greater than hers.
‘Kate, could you spare a few moments to talk to the soldier in bed number thirteen, please?’ the sister asked her. ‘He’s just been admitted, transferred from Netley in Southampton and he’s in a bad way. I think he could do with someone holding his hand.’
As she approached the soldier’s bedside, she could see that he had a bandage around his head and an eye pad.
There must have been injuries to his legs too because there was a cage lifting the bedclothes away from them.
She didn’t want to wake him and began to turn away.
But something must have told him she was there because as she turned to go, he opened his eyes.
She leaned over to gently touch his forehead. He looked at her for a long time, frowns of pain and confusion distorting his face. After a while she removed her hand and he reached out to take it back.
‘Where am I?’ he asked.
‘You’re in Bethnal Green Hospital,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe now.’
She turned to get herself a chair so that she could sit with him.
‘No, no, don’t go,’ he called.
‘I’m not going anywhere, just to get a chair,’ she reassured him.
She brought the chair to his bedside. She didn’t know the full extent of his injuries and in all probability neither did he.
If she had learned anything from her time at the hospital, it had been that patience and kindness were as important to the men recovering as the stitches in their wounds and the drugs to kill their pain.
She smiled at him and sat with him while he drifted in and out of sleep.
She lost count of time and it wasn’t until one of the nurses said that it was getting dark and shouldn’t she be going that she realized she must leave him.
As she stood up, two orderlies walked past her carrying a stretcher.
The body, covered with a white sheet, was a reminder of the frailty of every human life.
Beneath the loose covering, she could see the shape of a head, chest, knees and feet.
Someone’s brother, lover, husband, father.
That soldier had made it back to England but his family still did not get to see him one last time.
It made no difference whether the death was in France or in England, the loss for the families was just the same.