Summer at Gaglow by Esther Freud

Author:Esther Freud
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408831434
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Chapter 13

Bina had decided to become a nurse. Eva lay with her on the cool floor of the Gaglow nursery, leafing through her practical guide. There were illustrations of white-aproned women, serene and smiling, carrying basins of water over to the bedsides of lightly wounded men. The soldiers all had gleaming bandages wound around their heads, or arms slung in sashes to hold up splinted elbows, and they were all without exception startlingly handsome. Eva leant across her sister’s shoulder and examined their illustrated features, the unshaven chins and pencilled hollows of their cheeks, the strong shoulders, the bright, polite eyes. She found, as the pages turned, that she was holding her breath for Manu. ‘Bina, will you be sent off to the front line, to a field hospital?’ she asked.

Bina flicked through to the end with irritation. ‘There is all this to learn first. There are thousands of experienced nurses just waiting to get to the front. Anyway, I’m only an untrained volunteer, anyone could do it.’ And she smiled and shot a look at Eva, knowing that this was not entirely true.

‘Well, I expect the war will probably be over by the time you’ve learnt the first thing about it,’ Eva responded, and she picked up the discarded letter. They had to have a letter ready to send Schu-Schu, Bina insisted, for when they located her address. Eva read slowly through the words, aware that any criticism would not be welcome. It struck her how closely Bina had picked up their governess’s own tone, with lists of reasons and lightly veiled threats of what was due and owed. She shivered. Schu, she thought, Schu-Schu-Schu, and she closed her eyes, immersed in an instant by the huge enveloping of her arms, the memory of how it felt to arrive home to a house that existed completely and without rivalry for them.

‘As soon as we get back to Berlin,’ Bina lowered her voice, ‘we’ll start the search again. You and Martha might have to begin without me after school, but as soon as I’ve amputated a leg or two and siphoned off some poison, I’ll be home to join you.’ She made a gruesome face and they both laughed, shivering and gleeful, so that when Martha called to them from the next room they jumped in shock, then, catching at each other’s hands, rolled over on the floor with helpless shrieks of laughter.

Martha called again, a real, terrifying shout for help, and Bina and Eva, their blood falling away, scrambled to their feet.

‘It’s Omi Lise,’ Martha choked, and there, bent against her bed as if in prayer, was the stiff, hunched body of their nanny. The three girls approached her slowly. ‘Omi?’ Martha whispered, and when she didn’t answer they all bent down and Eva touched her hand. ‘She’s still warm.’

A tiny straining voice rose from the bedclothes. ‘Of course I’m still warm. You won’t get rid of me that easily.’ And Martha’s face flooded with colour, her tears falling onto the old woman’s bony head.

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