Call Nurse Jenny by Maggie Ford

Author:Maggie Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473501041
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Chapter 16

‘We’ll get another letter from him very soon. You really must stop fretting, Susan. It isn’t good for the baby.’

Susan eyed her mother-in-law, just managing to hold back the tears that threatened and which always annoyed the woman. But every time she thought of Matthew’s last letter she couldn’t help them rising to the surface.

The one prior to that had said he had been over the moon about her news of the baby, and she’d been so happy that he was happy. It had said they were leaving Bombay though where for, as usual, hush-hush.

His last letter had come two days ago, a single page written in pencil in such an obvious hurry she could hardly read it, the soiled notepaper in an even more soiled envelope telling her not to worry, he was all right, that in itself worrying her more although she wasn’t sure why. It bore a military Rangoon postmark. Rangoon was in Burma, Mr Ward had told her, and she had heard fear echoing in his tone.

Her geography never good, she’d quickly consulted an atlas, alarmed how near the fighting Matthew had been sent. News from that part of the world had all been of disaster: the sinking of two large Royal Navy ships, the Prince of Wales, and the Repulse, the fall of Hong Kong on Christmas Day, then Singapore on the fifteenth of February four weeks ago. Now it was March. There was fighting in Burma and Matthew’s last letter, grubby and stained, made her shiver with imaginings she daren’t voice; none of them dared, though the look on their faces said they were thinking the same as she was.

Why was it, Jenny thought, that when she was with Ronald she could talk without a pause about all sorts of things, completely at ease in his company, yet the very anticipation of going to meet him never failed to fill her with strange reluctance, wishing she didn’t have to?

‘Have a quick drink in the pub tonight?’ he’d whisper as they passed in a corridor, if their off-duty hours coincided. ‘Wait for you outside.’

She would nod, smile, aware of a sinking feeling, a wish to be doing anything other than meeting him, even preferring to go home to spend a dull evening with Mumsy. There was none of that excited palpitation a girl in love was supposed to experience – the way she used to feel all those years ago when Matthew Ward came into sight or inadvertently touched her. The touch of Ronald’s hand on hers did nothing, though if he kissed her, her body would stir, responding of its own accord. Then her head would start to send messages that this wasn’t love, but a natural response to the touch of any man halfway handsome. Yet it made no sense to shy away from the knowledge that marriage to Ronald could be the best thing to happen to her; she would become the wife of a general practitioner.

‘It’s still early days,’ she’d hedged.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.