A Wartime Nurse Read Free Page A

share of the seat?
    ‘It’s OK.’
    She looked at him. He wore the badge of the Airborne Regiment on his red beret and beneath that had a cheerful smiling face with twinkling blue eyes.
    ‘I’m only going to Spennymoor. I won’t be a nuisance too long,’ he said. ‘Well, I’m going home to Shildon really. I’ll change to the Eden bus at Spennymoor.’
    ‘Really?’ said Theda. He was altogether too chatty; she wasn’t the sort of girl to be picked up like that, on a bus. She looked away and out of the window as they pulled out of the bus station. But when she happened to glance back, the soldier was looking at her openly.
    ‘You don’t mind me looking at you, do you? After where I’ve been it’s so nice to look at a pretty girl.’
    ‘Well—’
    ‘Oh, come on, I’m not trying to pick you up. We can be friendly just for the time we’re on the bus, can’t we? If you like I’ll introduce myself – my name’s Alan Price. I live at Shildon. Or I did before the whole world went crazy.’
    He was so friendly and easy to talk to that before she knew it, Theda was telling him she was a nurse and newly qualified, going to work at the hospital at Bishop Auckland. And suddenly they were in Spennymoor and he was getting off the bus and waving to her through the window, giving a mock salute. The bus set off again and she was smiling, lifted out of herself by his open admiration and friendliness.
    ‘Aw, come on, Theda. Come to the dance with me. You’re such a stick in the mud! I can just see you in ten years’ time – an old maid you’ll be if you don’t shift yourself and start taking an interest in lads.’
    ‘You think anybody must be on the shelf if they reach twenty without getting engaged at least! Besides, if your friend Violet Mitchell hadn’t been on night shift, you wouldn’t have cared whether I went or not.’
    Theda had a few days before she started at the hospital at Bishop Auckland and was enjoying just lounging about the house; doing nothing much was a novelty she appreciated.
    ‘Well, are you coming then?’ demanded Clara, and Theda sighed.
    ‘Oh, all right, I’ll come,’ she gave in. The dance was at the church hall in Eldon; it wasn’t as if it was a long way to go. And if she hated it, she could slip out and come back on her own. Clara was sure to find someone to walk home with.
    Of course, she thought as she stood on her own, feeling conspicuous, her sister had been claimed by an eager partner as soon as she walked in the door but Theda herself was relatively unknown to the local boys, having lived in Newcastle for the last few years.
    The band – well, really it was Mrs Phipps who played the church organ on Sundays banging away at the piano, and her white-haired husband twanging the double bass – was a bit of a comedown after the five-piece band at the Brighton or the full orchestra at the Oxford Galleries, she thought, smiling slightly.
    Mrs Phipps played the veleta and the palais glide, and when they began a rather slow and sedate foxtrot, someone tapped Theda’s shoulder and she jumped in surprise.
    ‘Now then, it’s the beautiful nurse, isn’t it?’ The soldier from the bus was standing there, handsome in his uniform, his red beret tucked into his shoulder epaulette. ‘You dancing?’
    Theda grinned. ‘You asking?’
    ‘I’m asking.’
    ‘I’m dancing.’
    She went along with the formula and followed him on to the dance floor, feeling lightheaded and relaxed. And when he took her in his arms and they began to dance, she liked the feel of it, the ease with which she could follow him in the slow foxtrot.
    ‘I’m Alan, remember?’ he said. ‘Do you live around here? And if you do, why haven’t I noticed you before?’
    ‘I was away training as a nurse, I told you,’ said Theda. ‘Now I’m going to work at Bishop Auckland.’
    ‘Lucky for me,’ said Alan, and when the music ended kept his arm around her waist and drew her to where the trestle table was set