Weaver

III

At the hospital entrance ambulances pulled up and drove off, and there was a steady stream of stretcher parties. Nurses fussed around, and a doctor seemed to be on hand to greet every arrival. Green Army blankets were spread over the stretchers. The staff looked strained, the doctors' white coats ominously stained with old blood.

At a desk inside the entrance an ATS volunteer, a woman of about sixty with a helmet of steel-grey hair, was doing her best to block the way to all non-essential visitors. But George the copper, big and bluff and authoritative, easily talked his way past her. Further in they found an information desk manned by a Wren, who was able to give them the number of the ward they needed. The hospital was busy, and there were soldiers everywhere, in grimy uniforms and bandages. But even so there were a lot of staff and arm-banded volunteers standing around, looking fretful, with nothing to do.

There was a dreadful smell, a heavy iron stink. George saw Mary react, and he touched her arm, and Hilda's. 'That's dried blood. I remember it from the last lot, the first war. The men are turning up here with old wounds, days old some of them. You never forget the smell. But you just have to put it aside and get on with things. All right?'

They both nodded, and went on. To Mary, knowing that Gary was close, somewhere in this crowded, busy building, these last moments, this walk down the corridors with their shining floors, seemed endless, as if time was stretching.

At last they came to Ward Twenty-Three. There were two rows of beds before a big sash window that had been flung open to allow in the light and air of a garden. The beds were all full of broken-looking bodies, lying still. Mary couldn't bear to look at their faces. She marched forward, looking at the names on the medical notes fixed to the iron bed frames.

And here was his name, WOOLER, GARY P., with his British army serial number. He lay on his back covered by a thick white blanket, his eyes closed. A skinny young man with thick black hair and wearing a white coat sat on a hard upright chair beside the bed, eyeing them.

Gary looked asleep. His face was clean, though Mary could see some bruising, but his blond hair, scattered over the pillow, was matted and filthy. A drip stand stood beside him; a clear tube snaked into a vein in his arm, the needle covered by a bit of bandage. Mary was hugely relieved that at first glance he looked whole: two arms, two legs, no hideous medical apparatus strapped to his body.

But Hilda was crying, with great silent heaving sobs. Mary felt her own tears come, and she buried her face in the girl's neck, smelling the starch of her uniform.

When they broke, Mary turned to the young man on the chair. She whispered, 'Nurse? When will he wake up? Can we speak to him?'

He stood. 'Well, I'm not a nurse. Just a volunteer.' He grinned, and showed her an armband with a red cross. 'My name's Benjamin Kamen.'

Both Hilda and George stiffened at hearing his accent. 'You sound German,' Hilda said, wondering.

'I'm Austrian,' said Kamen. 'An Austrian Jew, in fact. I came to Britain to fight. They wouldn't let me join up. Flat feet! So I'm doing this instead.'

'And why are you here?' George asked, still sounding suspicious.

'Because I've got this accent,' Kamen said simply. 'Makes the English uncomfortable. So I try to help out with the international brigades. Half of them don't recognise my accent, or if they do they feel like outsiders anyhow. And when I got to know Gary, when he was brought in – he spoke about you, Mrs Wooler.' He faced Mary. 'I recognised your name. I used to read your pieces in the Traveller, and I know about your work before the war. I've been waiting here to meet you.'

Mary was bewildered. 'Thank you-'

'Mrs Wooler, there's something I need to talk to you about. You might be able to help me. It could be urgent.'

George snorted. 'More urgent than this? For God's sake, man.'

'I'm sorry.' Kamen backed off, hands raised.

'But is he all right?' Hilda asked.

Gary stirred. 'You could try asking him yourself.' His head turned, and his eyes flickered open.

Mary grabbed her son's hand and squeezed it, pressing it to her face. 'Oh, Gary, my God. What a day you've given me!'

'I'm sorry.' His voice was very dry, cracking. 'Mind you, I've not been at a picnic myself, I can tell you that.' He turned his head to Hilda, who was suffering that odd silent sobbing again, and he stroked her face. George, standing massively, rested a hand on his daughter's shoulder.

'He got off lightly,' Ben Kamen murmured. 'Believe it or not. The troops are turning up raw off the beaches of France. When they come in it's more like a battlefield dressing station here than a hospital.'

'And you,' Hilda said, stroking Gary's brow, 'look as if you need more sleep.'

'Yeah.' But he faced his mother, wanting to tell her. 'Listen, Mom. They tore across the country in those tanks of theirs. There was nothing to stop them. We did nothing but retreat – a fighting retreat, but a retreat. The Brits just weren't prepared for what hit them. I heard some of them bitching that it wasn't like this in India. And, Christ, the things we saw. Women and kids mown down from the air-'

'It's all right,' Mary said.

'Well, we got to the coast. The Germans had us pinned. And then we heard that Guderian was coming, with his First Panzers. We all knew what that bastard had done in Poland. They say he reached Gravelines, and secured bridgeheads over the river there. He waited one day. This was last Friday. I don't know why he paused. It let us start the evacuation. But then, on the Saturday, he came for us.

'Mom, we set up a perimeter. We fought back. But it was a slaughter. You had the Panzers ripping into our flanks, and the damn Luftwaffe coming at us from overhead, and we just couldn't get on those ships fast enough. I was in a line for three days, a typical goddamn English queue, waiting for a place on a destroyer. No food, no water, nothing.

'I got away. I was lucky. The scuttlebutt here is that ten per cent might make it home, out of four hundred thousand on those beaches. That's half the damn English army, Mom. I can't see how much of a fight they can put up after that.'

'Hush,' Mary said, for he was becoming agitated; she tried to calm him, smoothing his brow.

'He didn't sleep for five nights, I think,' Kamen murmured. 'He has a lot of healing to do.'

But Gary was still distressed. 'I think maybe the English have lost their war already, Mom. Lost it, on the beaches of France. Next thing you know they will be here. The Nazis.'

George shook his head. 'They won't come. Hitler wants an armistice. That's what they say.'

Gary actually laughed, though it hurt him. 'An armistice? After all this?'

A nurse came then, and a doctor; they administered a sedative. Mary sat with her son until he slept.

The strange medical volunteer, Ben Kamen, waited for his chance to speak to her.