For A Time, You Meant Everything

Violet was only fifteen when she first met Ruby’s brother, Jack, but she fell for him on that first evening. Of course, she didn’t tell Ruby that she was in love with him: although her best friend felt proud of her brother for enlisting in the RAF, just because he was now eighteen and about to go off to serve his king and country in the war against Hitler didn’t mean she’d forgiven him for any of their childhood squabbles. So Violet kept her feelings a secret; but from time to time, she casually asked how Jack was getting on, hoping that he wouldn’t lose his heart to some other girl while he was away training to be a pilot.

By the time she saw him again, she and Ruby had left school and were experiencing the strange limbo between School Certificate and further training. Violet had always thought of teaching; now, as hospitals overflowed with the wounded, she began to wonder whether nursing might not be a better option. At least then she could feel she was doing her bit to help the war effort. She said as much to Ruby, suggesting that they both trained as nurses together, but her friend had already set her heart on driving ambulances, seeing it as a more exciting occupation than emptying bedpans or stitching wounds.

When she heard that Jack was coming home on weekend leave, Violet knew that she had to make him see the woman she’d become and not the schoolgirl he’d met over two years ago. There was a local dance that Friday and she knew Jack would be going, but she had nothing suitable to wear and dress material was in scant supply. Somehow, she managed to wheedle her mother into parting with an old evening gown. The scarlet taffeta looked wonderful against her dark hair. She sat up until eleven o’clock for two nights running, cutting and snipping, refashioning the garment into something more eye-catching. If this dress didn’t attract Jack’s attention, then nothing would.

It seemed an age of waiting before he finally noticed her. Across the room, she became aware of someone staring at her. She looked up and smiled at him; and the expression on his face told her that he was interested.

They danced together, more than once – a lot more than once. After a while, she realised he was holding her closer than he needed to, but she didn’t mind. She had waited so long to be in his arms that she wanted to savour every moment. Closing her eyes, she let herself move with him in time to the music, feeling the beat of his heart against hers and knowing that, for the first time in her adult life, she was truly happy.

*

When they stepped outside for some fresh air a little later, Jack took her hand in his. Her pulse raced at the intimacy. 

“Violet...” His voice was soft and low in the cool evening breeze. “Can I kiss you?” When she hesitated, he continued in a rush, “I know I seem forward, but I’ve only got weekend leave. If you feel the same way I do, then it’s silly to waste time being all proper and polite with each other.”

By way of response, she lifted her face to his and closed her eyes. When his lips met hers, something passed between them and she knew that she was his forever. She could let him return to base now, secure in the knowledge that he would not kiss anyone else as he had just kissed her.

*

And so their wartime courtship began. They wrote to each other every evening, saving the pages for a fat envelope stuffed full of a week’s happenings; each pouring a lifetime of information for the other into the closely spaced lines. What they lacked in physical time with each other they made up for by sharing everything on paper. So far, he had not mentioned marriage, although they’d tentatively talked about the future, exploring her plans to train as a nurse and his to leave the RAF once the war was over. Just now, it seemed impossible that the fighting would ever stop and her heart sank every time she said goodbye to him.

It was on one of his weekend leaves, as they sat in her parents’ kitchen together, that they heard the air raid siren and turned to each other with worried faces. Instinctively, they both sprang to their feet and rushed to the door, heading for the Anderson shelter outside.

It was only as her fingers reached for the door handle that she thought of her parents. They had gone out to the Red Lion earlier, to give the young couple a bit of privacy. If anything happened to them, she would blame herself.

He squeezed her hand. “There’s a big shelter outside. They’ll be all right.”

She hoped he was right. Too many people had lost loved ones in air raids so far.

*

Had it not been for Jack, she would have felt frightened in the cold, damp darkness of the shelter. Jack’s arm stole around her shoulders, trying to keep her warm. “I daren’t light the lamp,” he said apologetically. “Not in the blackout.”

Moments later, the weight of a blanket slipped around her. She let the warmth seep back into her body, wondering if her parents had made it to the communal shelter in time.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asked after a while.

He gave a low chuckle. “Not when I can cuddle into you.” She could hear the smile in his voice as he moved closer.

 They sat in silence as the noise of the planes droned overhead. In the stillness of the shelter, she could hear the heavy thud of his heart beating in time with hers and when his lips found hers in the dark and he began to kiss her, she responded with a passion that surprised them both. His hands slid beneath her sweater, his breathing fast and shallow.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered, pulling him closer and sliding her own hand under his shirt.

“Are you sure it’s what you want?”

Feeling his skin against hers was all she could think about. “I’m sure,” she murmured, already half lost in the intensity of the desire he was arousing within her. And then she surrendered herself to the longing that had been building within her ever since their first kiss.

*

When the ‘all clear’ sounded, she looked up at him. “I’m a fallen woman!”

“No,” he corrected her, kissing her smooth, pale shoulder, “you’re a woman who’s fallen in love.”

She knew then that they would always be together, despite the war. When he went back to the airbase, he would be carrying a part of her with him, just as she would have a part of him when she left for her nursing training in a few days’ time. 

“I suppose we’d better get dressed,” she said reluctantly. She would have liked to stay staring at his naked limbs a while longer, committing him to memory; but she was mindful of her parents coming back now that the raid was over.

“Violet–“

She stopped in the action of wriggling back into her liberty bodice and looked at him.

“Are you sorry we...”

She shook her head. “The memory of tonight is something I’ll think about until I see you again. Now, help me find my stockings before Mum and Dad come home and find me only half- dressed.”

*

A month later, it was only the thought of Jack that kept her going as she stumbled from one task to the next – learning how to give bed baths, do dressings, take temperatures and make poultices – all while trying to study the physiology, sociology and practical nursing needed for the weekly tests that would lead up to the National Nursing Exam. She felt physically exhausted, yet a part of her exulted in thinking that she would now be of some use in the war effort.

They still wrote to each other but only once a week. Jack had been posted to France almost immediately after their last weekend together. He was helping to train airmen working for the Resistance and she felt proud of him for having such an important job even if she did live in fear of him being shot down by an enemy plane. She wasn’t allowed on the wards yet – it would take three months in Preliminary Training School before she could take her exam – and he confessed that a part of him was glad she was spending most of her days with the other trainees instead of ministering to wounded soldiers in a starched uniform.

“I know I’m being selfish,” he wrote, “but I can’t bear the thought of you falling for one of your patients whilst I am stuck out here so far away from you.”

“My darling Jack,” she wrote back, “I will never love anyone else but you.”

He still hadn’t made a formal proposal of marriage, but ever since the night in the shelter, there had been an unspoken understanding between them: she knew that she was his and he was hers.

On the day of her exam, Violet felt sick. She told herself that it was just nerves – she always felt anxious before any sort of test – but as she sat scribbling away, trying to recall the individual bones that made up the spine, she had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach; and when she arrived back at the nurses’ home, a letter from Ruby was waiting for her, telling her that Jack was missing in action, presumed dead.

*

For the next few days, Violet was unable to eat or sleep. Even the thought of food made her nauseous and she found herself vomiting into the toilet bowl morning after morning. The girls she’d grown close to noticed her dark ringed eyes and pale complexion and surmised that her letter must have contained bad news. Tactfully, they did not ask any questions, leaving it up to her if she wanted to talk about it. She didn’t.

Somehow, she managed to get up every morning and drag herself into the hospital. It was only by channelling all her energy into nursing the wounded men on the wards that she could keep the pain at bay. Her mind kept returning to the words of the letter – “presumed killed”. Surely that meant there was a chance Jack was still alive – perhaps he was lying in a French hospital bed while some demoiselle washed his wounds and tended his injuries. Jealousy flared within her at the idea of it; and then she felt guilty for begrudging him the care she was bestowing on other men.

After a fortnight on the ward, she was still being sick. She thought nothing of it herself, convinced that her body was grieving for Jack, but the Ward Sister was not so naïve and called Violet into the Matron’s office for a talk.

“Your friends say you’re vomiting on a daily basis,” she began without preamble.

Violet nodded, wondering where this was going.

“How long is it since your last ‘visitor’?” Sister asked.

Violet blushed at the question. “I don’t know. Four, five weeks maybe.” She tried counting back and then her face fell. She hadn’t had the curse since before she came here – it had been a couple of weeks before she and Jack... And then the enormity of it all hit her. “I’m going to have a baby!” she said and promptly burst into tears.

*

Violet moved through the rest of the day as if in a dream. She was having a baby – Jack’s baby. If he had still been alive, the news would have filled her with elation. At least then they could have married quickly – she had a feeling he wouldn’t have wanted his child born out of wedlock. Tongues would have wagged when the baby was born ‘early’, but she could have weathered that with Jack by her side. Now, though...

To her horror, she found her eyes were full of tears. Nurses couldn’t cry – it was an unwritten rule. She rummaged hastily for her handkerchief.

The patient in the bed in front of her eyed her curiously. She’d grown fond of Harold over the past few weeks. Although nearly her father’s age, he was still a good-looking man – at least, the top half of him was. He’d lost both his legs to a landmine some months previously and now only stumps remained in their place.

“Violet? Are you all right, dear?”

She knew Harold was in constant discomfort with bed sores and with itching in the phantom limbs that no longer existed, but he was putting his own pain aside to enquire after her. She felt ashamed of her own selfishness.

“I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes furiously, trying to regain her professional demeanour. “I’ve just had some bad news. I’ll be okay.”

He watched her anxiously, his concern evident, and somehow, she found herself spilling out everything that had happened: Jack’s death; the baby; her fear of being disowned by her parents.

“What if you had a husband?” Harold spoke the words slowly. “Would that make things easier?” Noticing her incomprehension, he continued, matter-of-factly, “I’m going to need someone to look after me when I get out of here. I can’t be a proper husband to you, but I can give you respectability. We can tell people that we married months ago and that you conceived the baby before I lost my legs.”

“You’d do that?” Violet felt stunned by the proposal.

Harold nodded. “We’d have to live with my mother, but she’d be able to help you out a bit when the child comes.”

She looked at the kind-hearted man in front of her and knew he was offering her a way out. She would never love him – not in the way she had loved Jack – but he would look after her and she would look after him, and perhaps that was all she needed.

*

Violet and Harold were married by the hospital chaplain a few weeks later. Violet was only just starting to bloom and her bump was small enough not to be noticeable. It was four months after this when the baby arrived: a healthy boy with Violet’s eyes and Jack’s colouring. Violet lay in her bed after the midwife had gone, utterly exhausted and wishing that Jack had lived to see his son. A part of her wanted to name him after his father, but she knew she would be reminded of him every time she looked at that tiny face; and so she settled on Thomas, the disciple who’d doubted, knowing that she would always be sure of her love for this helpless little creature.

Harold proved to be a doting father, dandling Tom on his knee while Violet got the tea ready or tidied up. “He’s a bonny lad,” he said approvingly as the child continued to thrive. “You should take him to see your parents.”

“And who’d look after you while I was gone?” she demanded.

“My mother could manage for a night or two,” he replied. “And the district nurse might pop in too if we ask nicely.”

It seemed he had thought of everything. She agreed reluctantly, a part of her wondering if it was a mistake to return to the place where she and Jack had been so happy.

*

It was on her second day back home in her parents’ house that she thought of Ruby. The two of them had lost touch when Violet moved to Lincolnshire with Harold and she didn’t know if her former best friend even knew she had a baby. Tom was sleeping, so she left him with her mother and went out for a walk, heading in the direction of Ruby’s house. She was almost there when she caught sight of a familiar figure, walking towards her and smiling as if he couldn’t believe it.

Her heart stilled momentarily. Jack. The love of her life. But how could it be Jack when he’d been killed all those months ago?

“Violet?” It was Jack’s voice – sounding a little uncertain, but definitely him.

“I thought you were dead.” The words dragged from her unwillingly. Why had no one let her know?

He was eying her warily, wondering why she wasn’t flinging her arms around him.

“I told you I’d come back for you,” he said mildly. “I thought you knew that.”

“Ruby wrote and told me you were missing, presumed killed.” There was a pause. “I broke my heart crying over you.”

“Well, I’m here now.”

She stood rooted to the spot, unable to bridge the gap between them. She was Harold’s wife now and she could not betray that trust.

“I’m married,” she whispered. “He’s a good man.”

“Your broken heart mended quickly then.”

She did not blame him for the bitterness in his tone.

And she wanted to explain everything, to tell him that she’d never stopped loving him and that his baby – their baby – was asleep in a house only five minutes’ walk away, but the words died on her lips as he looked at her with contempt.

“Did I ever mean anything to you?” he asked now.

What good would it do to tell him the truth? She was legally bound to another man and the name on her son’s birth certificate was the only one the law would recognise.

Pain ripped a hole in her heart as she watched him walk away from her, this second loss even more devastating than the first.

“Yes, Jack,” she whispered, knowing he would not hear, “for a time, you meant everything.”

She turned and began the painful walk back to her parents’ house and the child who now needed all her love.