she had been anticipating a warm meal and a comfortable bed as she made ready to go home. Instead, just as she was due to leave on that damp spring evening, an authoritative voice accosted her in the echoing corridor: ‘One moment, Nurse Spottiswood!’
Nell stopped dead, and quaked in her shoes, fearing that someone must have seen her take the baby’s napkin that she was hiding under her coat, requisitioned during her opportune bout in the nursery. Her heart beat rapidly as she turned to face her superior’s wrath.
But to her confusion, and not a little relief, others from the crew were being summoned as well, Matron Fosdyke announcing to all, ‘I’ve received word that the casualty evacuation trains are required – yes, you’re finally needed at last!’ she said at their looks of expectation. ‘So, if any of you have family who’ll be concerned at your absence, those without a telephone may go home and inform them of your whereabouts, then you must immediately present yourself to Matron Lennox at Leeman Road.’
Simultaneous to that wondrous flush of reprieve, Nell could also have wept from sheer exhaustion at the thought of being robbed of her bed. Though, adhering to duty, she was to act without question, as were her friends. Yet even in the rush to obey, she saw that Beata was eyeing her in a sympathetic manner, and it drew to Nell’s cheeks a crimson tinge, her instantaneous thought being that her pregnancy was finally to be unveiled.
Beata was not so candid as to mention it outright, though. ‘I’m sure they’ll understand if you can’t manage it,’ she simply murmured to her friend. ‘You really shouldn’t push yourself.’
Nell bristled, immediately wishing she had not, but it was too late now, as she yelped, ‘What are you talking about? I’m as fit as everybody else! We’re all in the same boat – why, if there’s anyone that should be resting it’s you!’
In the furious hiatus, she sensed that Beata was about to say more, but just then Sister Barber happened past, took one look at the other’s ankle, which was hugely inflated and spilling over its shoe, and declared in her usual brusque manner, ‘Spottiswood’s right! You needn’t bother coming back, Kilmaster, that leg will be exploded before we reach Doncaster. Get yourself home and put it up – come along, Spottiswood, get yourself weaving and tell your parents, then hurry back!’
Observing that Beata seemed about to plead lenience for her friend, Nell suppressed her with a thunderous glance. Then, issuing a hasty goodbye, and wrapping her coat around her abdomen, already afflicted by a stitch, she lumbered off to catch a bus.
Thankfully, its arrival at the stop coincided with hers, and within ten minutes she was almost home, though the latter part of her journey was delayed by the horde of human traffic that streamed from the carriage works, both on bicycle and on foot.
Home at last, she babbled the news to her mother. Then, still wearing her coat, and under pretext of visiting the lavatory, there was only enough time for Nell to hide the stolen napkin in her room alongside the rest of the layette she had accumulated, before rushing back out again, a hastily compiled sandwich in her hand.
Once she was on the train, though, and on the way down to London, there was at least an opportunity to take the weight off her feet, and, with many jarring hours ahead, the chance to succumb to the hypnotic rackety-rack of the wheels, Sister being charitable enough to allow her nurses a nap.
Nell was to fall into a deeper sleep than most, and this was to leave her disorientated when she woke from it with a start to find that they were emerging from a tunnel to a packed platform. Suddenly she remembered where she was heading. London – maybe she’d see Billy! Maybe he wasn’t – maybe it had all been a mistake – there were tales in the newspapers every day of men being presumed dead, then turning up alive, and not just isolated cases either, was it not possible that Billy could be one of them? That his mother could have been duped? It might not have been him, the witness might have been unreliable. Please, oh, please, let it be …
Forlorn as this hope might seem, with the train squeaking into its destination and the other nurses opening its doors, the still-hypnotised Nell found herself beset with an overwhelming mass of activity, much of it in khaki, and her immediate reaction was to scour every face on the platform. Almost at once she saw him! She called out, couldn’t help herself, took a few steps onto the platform and cried out his name. ‘Bill!’
A dozen men turned, then all shared a grin. ‘Last thing anyone needs is a lot o’ bills,’ quipped one, though he and his friends moved to gather around the attractive nurse, and ply her with cigarettes and chit-chat.
Poor bewildered Nell was in the midst of a flustered explanation, when an ever-vigilant Sister bellowed from the train, ‘We haven’t time for canoodling, Nurse Spottiswood! Here come our patients!’
Nell’s sense of outrage was immeasurable. How could anyone possibly accuse her of that after so recent a loss? Freshly bereaved, she broke through the masculine fence, wanting for all the world to shut herself away, and to heave with agony and tears.
But there was no time, for as Sister was so keen to point out, a fleet of ambulances was arriving with elderly infirm, and the logistics of getting all aboard and stacked one above the other was a nightmare in such cramped conditions – and in the middle of all this the air-raid sirens began to wail and the bombs began to fall, and people scattered. But there was no escape for Nell and her comrades, who had to don tin hats and remain courageously at their posts, and try to reassure their patients above the clanging of fire engines and the thunderous explosions, as one after another was stretchered into the pilchard tin and fitted onto the racks.
Only in the early hours did they manage to load the wagon to capacity. With their final patient handed over, the ambulance drivers slammed their doors and issued a chipper, ‘That’s your lot, dearies!’ And made their own escape.
Though almost prostrate themselves, Nell and her colleagues were full of admiration for the London crews. ‘How can you stand this night after night and stay so cheerful?’ Sister called after them.
‘This?’ Her female informant merely laughed at the tumbling bombs. ‘Why, it’s not half so bad as normal!’ And she jumped into her ambulance and drove away.
But it was terrifying enough to Nell, who, on top of her mauled senses, was physically bruised from the cramped conditions, and despite a swift impulsive urge to run and seek out Bill’s poor mother, she deemed it a mercy when the order came for their train to vacate the station at once.
Even after the throb of the Luftwaffe could no longer be heard, its pilots’ devilish games continued to trigger mayhem, the casualty evacuation train barely escaping the outer reaches of London when it ground to an abrupt halt. Everyone moaned at being forced to wait in pitch blackness. The squeaking of the wheels had completely stopped now. There was no sound at all.
‘Oy!’ Even through the darkness an ARP warden caught Nell’s head sticking out of the wagon as she tried to ascertain what was amiss. Unable to make out her face, the white veil identified her. ‘Get your tin hat on, Nurse! There’s an unexploded bomb on the line.’
Having only just taken the uncomfortable thing off, Nell looked abashed and quickly redonned her tin helmet, asking politely as the man travelled past, ‘How long are we likely to be?’ With the leadenness of her abdomen putting a great strain on her neck and shoulders, all she yearned to do was in get home.
‘I don’t know!’ His expression called her a bloody idiot. ‘When it goes off or gets fixed, one or the other!’ And he continued on his way down the track alongside their train, reminding everyone, ‘Tin hats on!’
‘Nurse, stop trifling!’ At Sister’s shout Nell jerked her head in, and hurried about tending her patients.
‘Nurse, Nurse!’ They all seemed to want a part of her, pulling her this way and that, and there was scarcely any room for a normal-sized person to squeeze a passage between the bunks, never mind someone of her girth. Fit to drop, Nell took a moment to flex the aching tendons of her neck and shoulders that were stretched beyond endurance by the tonnage of her belly.
‘It’s raining in, nurse!’