Wartime Brides Read Online Free PDF Page A

said in a commanding voice, ‘let me through. I’m a doctor.’
    A tall shadow leaned over her. Its owner bent down and began examining her leg. There were definitely bruises, definitely abrasions. She winced as the helping arms pulled her clear of the gap. A numb burning circled her ankle.
    Suddenly the crowds and those gathered round were just too much. ‘I’m all right,’ she said and looked back at the gap and her bare foot. She was still minus a shoe.
    ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said the man who claimed to be a doctor. ‘Can you move your ankle?’
    She nodded at the top of his head as his cold fingers carefully manipulated where a rip in her stocking gave way to grazed flesh. ‘Yes,’ she said.
    He straightened. She was surprised how tall he was. ‘Nothing broken, but I think it’s badly twisted.’
    Polly looked down to the gap between the platform and the wooden step beneath the open door.
    ‘My shoe!’
    ‘Don’t you worry, luv. I’ll get it for you once the train’s moved out,’ said a young navy rating whose frizz of ginger hair stuck out like a halo from under the round hat he wore.
    ‘There!’ said the doctor, who wore the uniform of an army officer with the ease of someone used to being well groomed. ‘That’s the Navy for you, always at the ready. No wonder they’ve got a girl in every port. Good for you, son.’
    The rating beamed. ‘Pleased to be of service to the young lady, sir,’ he added, perhaps a little tongue in cheek.
    The doctor shook his head. ‘Not sir, son. Doctor will do.’ He spread his arms to either side of him, shrugged and smiled. ‘I opted to hang onto the uniform by virtue of the fact that it fitted me far better than the suit I was offered.’
    ‘I know what yer going to say,’ said the rating, his cheeks as pink and round as polished apples. ‘It was for an average man of five-feet-four with a thirty-eight-inch waist. Been there myself, sir.’
    ‘Forty-two-inch I shouldn’t wonder, judging by the way it kept sliding to my ankles,’ laughed the doctor. ‘We’ll be over in the buffet. Can you deliver it there?’
    The rating saluted at the doctor and winked at Polly.
    ‘I don’t want no tea,’ Polly began. ‘I just want me shoe so I can do what I gotta do and go where I gotta go!’
    ‘I’ll thank you to listen to my good advice,’ said the doctor, his tone and the fact that he cupped her elbow in his hand and guided her towards the buffet leaving her in no doubt that he was used to giving orders and used to having them obeyed. ‘I also owe you free consultation at my surgery.’
    Polly hobbled as she looked up at him. ‘Why’s that then?’
    For a brief moment he looked sheepish. ‘My fault,’ he said brusquely. ‘I pushed open the door without looking.’
    Once his apology was out, his chin was up, his head high. He’s like a hawk, she thought, with that hair swept back severely from his forehead, that straight nose, but most of all, the alert eyes that searched ahead and to either side of him.
    Polly was just about to say that it was understandable. But she didn’t get another chance to say anything. The pressure from the mix of men and waiting relatives was too great to resist. It was like a river trying to filter into a drainpipe. Some of the men were in uniform and others already in demob suits, but all were thankful to have survived. They were eager to get home and get on with their lives and nothing was going to get in their way. She was pressed against the doctor, standing on one leg, her bare foot held slightly off the ground. One moment his arm was around her, the next it was gone. The press of bodies had eased.
    ‘Darling!’
    There was a sudden flash of fur coat, expensive earrings. The woman wore a matching pillbox hat perched at a jaunty angle. Good stuff, thought Polly. Pre-war and bought in somewhere like Castle Street before it got blasted to hell.
    A veil of stiff black net shaded the eyes that now closed in