Page 89 of Summer in Greece

I missed Perkins and wished I had his address so that I could write to him.

*

‘Good job, today,’ Josephine said in our room. We had five hours to wash, eat, and sleep, so there was no time to deliver post or discuss the operation. What praise: good job! Despite my tiredness, I was proud and ambitious, and content with the day. I saw myself on the bottom rung of a ladder that I didn’t know I could climb, or to what heights it would take me.

When back on duty, I tackled everything offered, and did my best. Despite the bone-aching tiredness, the thrill of my latest accomplishments spurred me on towards any new challenge.

*

After a month on Lemnos, my name had not come out in the draw. Josephine and I longed for a day off, a swim in the crystal-clear sea, time to chatter, laugh, sing and splash, most of all to bathe in the saltwater and sleep all day on the warm sand. The names of people who won didn’t go back into the draw, so I consoled myself; Josephine and I were bound to win a day off eventually, even if we were the last two left in the sack.

My work continued in the theatre, assisting the anaesthetist, sometimes doing the final stitching, and dressing wounds. There was no part of a man that I had not worked on. February came and we saw the casualties change with the weather. Added to the shrapnel and gunshot wounds came severe frostbite. Feet blackened and stinking with gangrene were amputated. After assisting with the removal of both feet, a young cherubic soldier lost his battle and died on the table. He reminded me so much of our Arthur that I was shaken to the core.

I said, ‘Excuse me,’ left my post at the surgeon’s side and rushed out into the evening air. The tears of helplessness raged for a few seconds, then I dried my face and returned to my post.

‘We’ve only lost ten per cent of patients this week, nurse. A new record, I think. Excellent!’ surgeon Rumley said without emotion and not looking my way.

By the end of February, I hoped to be able to deal with a drainage tube and stitch down a flap. I scrutinised every move of Rumley’s hands with the utmost interest.

‘Nurse!’ he bellowed one afternoon, making me jump. ‘Why is your head between me and my patient?’

‘Sorry, sir,’ I said, pulling back. ‘I got carried away, sir. It’s my target to learn the tube and flap procedure by the end of the month, sir.’

‘Get out of my way!’ he yelled furiously. ‘Who do you think you are?’

‘Gertie Smith, sir.’

I guess he hadn’t expected an answer because he guffawed. ‘Damned audacious girl, if you ask me.’

From that moment, Rumley took every opportunity to give me the most awful jobs and there were moments when I hated him, but as the challenges grew, so did my determination. It was mid-March before he took twenty minutes to talk me through the procedure. When the next leg amputation was completed that afternoon, he stood back and said, ‘Go on then, now’s your chance, nurse.’

I felt nothing but intense concentration as I forged on with a steady hand. Once I’d cut that final thread, I wanted to leap in the air! Both thrilled and obscurely terrified, I whispered, ‘I did it!’ as I met the surgeon’s smiling eyes.

*

At night, tiredness, pressure, and fear of failing as a nurse, dampened my anxiety and shame over what had happened on HMHS Britannic. Sometimes, I would forget that I had opened the portholes and caused the great ship to sink before it reached land. Yet those darkest memories often surfaced in the early hours, when sleep was too precious to waste on things that would not change. Those bodies tossed in the air, only to be dismembered by propeller blades on their inevitable return. The screaming, my drowning, the dolphin, Sissy’s precious watch, they all jostled against each other, pushing back sleep and claiming space in my mind.

During the daytime, my handsome Corporal Perkins often came to mind. I imagined the Corporal learning to dance on his prothesis. Never complaining, but always trying to do better.

Memories of Manno were a different story. They roared with tumbling, tantalising passion until my spine arched and my body tingled in the most delicious way. I wrote to him several times, but never received a reply. When he entered my thoughts, I longed for him, and wished so many things I could never say aloud or even put down on paper. I recalled the way he peered at me from under those long, dark, lashes – and the tender fullness of his mouth against mine when he kissed me. Oh! How I longed to kiss him again . . . longer, harder, deeper. There was no doubt in my mind, I was in love with Manno.

*

The following week, we were overloaded with work. Josephine and I often missed our evening meal and made do with dry bread and chicken soup, followed by strong cocoa provided by an understanding orderly who cared a lot for Josephine. However, we made sure we got to the dining room on the Monday, when Matron made the draw. That Monday, we were a little late for dinner and heard our names called as we entered the mess. A great thrill raced through me. At last, I believed, we had won a day away. We turned sharply and headed for the top table, both of us trying to reduce our grins to ladylike smiles.

‘Eat, pack your belongings, and report to HMHS Gabriel on the port at precisely nineteen hundred hours,’ Matron ordered. ‘You’re going home.’

CHAPTER 37

SHELLY

Dover, present day.

‘SO, DJ, YOU HAVE TO know something about Gran Gertie,’ Shelly said. ‘She was a rebel. Fought for the vote and women’s rights with the suffragettes. Lied about her age so she could go and do nursing work in troubled countries she’d never heard of. As we understand so far, she was involved with events that unfortunately led to the sinking of the greatest passenger liner in the world, HMHS Britannic, though we won’t have all the facts until we’ve listened to the rest of her memoirs. She’s got us on the edge of our seats at the moment though.

‘She recorded her own life story? That takes some courage, you know, she sounds like a real tough woman. Makes me feel proud.’

It was Shelly who felt proud, her heart melting to hear her son speak like that. ‘Well, not brutally tough in the way we imagine. It seems she was always afraid of one thing or another, and as she was only eighteen when she went to war, she was unbelievably naïve, especially when it came to young men.’