Home Front Girls

to think of it, and when his hand settled gently on her thigh it felt like the most natural thing in the world and something deep inside her responded to him.
    ‘Oh Dotty, I can’t believe that you’re really my wife at last,’ he muttered as he covered her eager lips with short hot kisses. And it was then that the air-raid sirens sounded, and for a moment they were both so shocked that they lay motionless.
    ‘Oh no, I don’t believe it,’ Robert groaned. ‘On tonight of all nights too! Bloody Adolf wants shooting!’ But he got no further because Dotty had dissolved into giggles and they were so infectious that soon he saw the funny side too. ‘Come on,’ he ordered, dragging his wife from the bed and draping her dressing-gown about her. ‘It doesn’t look like we’ll forget our wedding night in a hurry.’
    ‘But there will be other nights,’ Dotty told him naughtily, as she took his hand and led him downstairs to the hotel’s air-raid shelter. ‘Lots and lots of them.’
     
    ‘Now is there anything else that you need?’ Annabelle asked as she tucked the blankets about Joel’s legs. He was no longer in traction, which was heaven for him, although his injured leg was still in splints. She was about to go off duty for the night and was so tired that she didn’t know where ached the most.
    ‘No, I’m fine,’ he said – just as the sirens began to wail.
    ‘Oh no!’ Annabelle glared towards the ceiling as if she could somehow magically see straight through it to the German planes that would soon be droning overhead. ‘It looks like we’re in for it again tonight. Come on – let’s get you into this wheelchair and down to the cellar.’
    ‘Go and see to some of the other chaps first, Belle,’ he instructed her, but she shook her head and with a determined glint in her eye, began to help him out of bed.
    ‘I’ll come back for them,’ she said firmly. ‘But not until I’ve got you down there first.’
    He sighed with resignation as she manhandled him into the wheelchair. They had grown close during the weeks that she had tended to him, and he sometimes wondered how he would have got through this without her. Sometimes he would wake from a terrible nightmare where he was once again on the battlefield crawling through stinking mud as he tried to get to his friend to help him. And then he would once more feel the impact as the landmine exploded and threw him into the air like a rag doll. But then he would wake and she would be there, holding his hand and mopping his sweating brow, and he was more grateful than he would ever be able to tell her. Now they joined the queues of nurses in the corridors wheeling patients to safety.
    ‘I reckon there’s more chance of a wheelchair crash in this mob than being bombed,’ he half joked. ‘I’d much sooner take my chances on the ward with the blokes that can’t be moved.’
    ‘Well, that’s just too bad, because you’re going whether you want to or not,’ Annabelle told him bossily. How could she tell him that a lot of the men who were left on the wards were too critically ill to be moved and were not likely to make it anyway? For some of them, death would be a blessing and a liberation.
    Joel grinned. She was a tough little bird when she wanted to be, there was no doubt about it. In fact, sometimes it was hard to believe that she was the same girl he had met back home in Coventry. Then all she had seemed to care about was what she wore and enjoying herself, and he wondered what had brought about this transformation? Perhaps it was the nursing that had changed her. Whatever it was, he thought the change was for the better – not that they could ever be more than friends, he thought regretfully. Once the war was over she would go back to her privileged lifestyle whilst he . . . What could he do now with this gammy leg? He would be very restricted in what jobs he could take on. Driving would be out of the question for a start-off. And then there was Lucy. She needed him, and after what they had been through together, he could never think of leaving her alone. He sat back in the chair and depression settled about him like a cloak.
     
    ‘Oh Lawdy, not again.’ Mrs P sighed as the sound of the siren sliced through her fragile sleep. Then digging poor Fred in the ribs she ordered, ‘Come on, luvvie. Looks like it’s the shelter again tonight fer us lot.’
    A mumbled groan sounded as Fred tried to pull the blankets over his head but his