Cold Peace

After standing stunned for several moments, he recognised that he needed help. He couldn’t cope with this alone. He turned and looked around the waiting room until he located a pay telephone at the back. Woodenly, he crossed to the telephone, found some coins in his trouser pocket, and inserted them. He dialled the vicarage in Foster Clough. It was nearly 1 am, so he let the phone ring until a gruff voice finally answered. Without preliminaries, Kit blurted it out. “The baby came early and Georgina’s bleeding to death.”

“Where are you?” His father-in-law asked back, sounding fully awake already.

“St James University Hospital.”

“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” the Vicar promised and then Kit heard only the dial tone.

The man who had arrived after him was summoned by smiling nurses and he rushed away in a flurry of goodwill.

Kit sank into his thoughts. They were all dark. Georgina had been what motivated him to go on living. She was what made him happy. He didn’t care what purpose God might have for him if he didn’t have Georgina to share it with — and he’d tell the Reverend Reddings that to his face when he got here!

In the darkness and the stillness, the dead started to gather around him. Forrester, the Australian pilot, leaned back in the seat next to him. He had insisted on being Kit’s rival from the day they met at an Operational Training Unit and had goaded him into competing. Now he stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles. He locked his fingers behind his head. He wore his crooked grin as he mocked: “Did you think you’d have all the luck all the time, mate?” Howard, the aristocratic veteran pilot who had helped Kit integrate into the close-knit mess at 617 Squadron, came to sit on his other side looking sombre. With a look of concern in his eyes, he commiserated, “I’m so sorry, Kit.” Sailor, the navigator on Don’s crew, when Kit had still been a flight engineer, sat down opposite, playing with his cap as he so often did, “I know what you’re going through, Kit. I would have felt the same if it had been Kathleen.”

And then Don arrived. Don had loved Georgina first and no less intensely. His death had paved the way for her to fall in love with Kit, for Kit to marry her. Now Don and Georgina would be together again, while Kit was left behind. How had his father-in-law worded it in that sermon? Like the rubbish left by an outgoing tide. Don stood in front of him, and Kit gazed up at him. Don made no effort to disguise he wasn’t entirely unhappy about this development — although he was gentlemanly enough to look sober as he replaced Forrester, who had disappeared again, in the chair beside him.

“It does take two to make a baby, Kit,” Don remarked at length. Kit looked at him resentfully and Don smiled faintly, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have done it, but you have no justification for feeling like a victim.”

Kit wanted to argue, to say that death in childbirth wasn’t supposed to happen anymore, not in England anyway. But fair or not, it appeared to be happening.

At some point, the dead faded away and Kit became aware that his mother-in-law had her arm over his shoulders. He looked over at her, numb inside. “When did you get here?”

“About half an hour ago.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s almost five in the morning.”

“Where’s Edwin?”

“He’s inside.” She nodded toward the swinging door. “Professional privileges,” Amanda explained with a faint smile.

“Is there any news?”

“No news is good news, Kit. If she’d died, they would have told us.”

They didn’t speak any more, just sat silently together side-by-side until Reverend Reddings emerged out of the doors. The dim hospital lights reflected off his glasses, making it hard to see his expression until he was beside Kit. He looked solemn, but not shattered. “Kit, they’ve stopped the bleeding, but Georgina hasn’t come out of the anaesthetic as she should have done. We think you should try to reach her, wake her.”

Kit jumped up. His remaining foot had fallen asleep, and he almost fell. His father-in-law caught him and would have given him an arm to lean on, but Kit shook him off in a fit of childish protest. He hated feeling like an invalid!

He limped forward a few steps until the feeling came back more fully. The doors parted in front of him, and Reddings guided him down a sterile corridor and into a narrow, white, over-lit hospital room.