“Pru says that too, but I doubt that any other aristocrat would admit that or give me credit for it. Pru is a very special woman, and a very caring human being. Most of them aren’t.”
“Her parents sound like they are, with all those children and orphans they took in. Not many people would do that. My family certainly wouldn’t,” Alex said thoughtfully.
“Maybe you can teach them a new way,” Emma said gently. “You have to try when you go home. We all have to make things different. It’s the only reward for having been through this. It has to change all of us, and make this a better world, for everyone.” What Emma said was very moving, but idealistic too. In a perfect world she was right. But Alex knew that the world was far from perfect. It was broken now, and would take years to repair. And not everyone would want to come out of the war and make it a better place for others. Alex wished it, but she had trouble believing it would happen and imagining her family in that role. They would just complain about how hard it was to find servants, or how much things cost, or that the hotels that they liked in the South of France were still closed. They wouldn’t care about the reasons for it, or what they could do to change it. Emma had a profound visceral distrust of the British upper classes and aristocracy. But who knew, maybe the class system would alter slightly and the world would change after all. And in the meantime, Emma was grateful for people like Pru and Alex, who didn’t give a fig about it and accepted her as she was, East End accent and all.
They had dinner with the others that night, and Alex talked about how impressive their missions had been. All of the nurses felt that. The air evacuation program was accomplishing what it was meant to, and they were saving a significant number of lives. The War Office was very pleased with it.
* * *
—
Ed showed up at the pub that night and stopped by to talk to them. Lizzie was with her friends, and Emma and Alex were deep in conversation. Pru wasn’t at the pub with them. He sat next to Lizzie for a few minutes. He was enjoying working with her.
“Where’s Pru?” he asked.
“She had a headache and went to bed,” Lizzie said, and slid over on the banquette in a booth to make room for him. He perched next to her to chat for a few minutes. He liked talking to her in the times when they weren’t busy with patients during the flights. Sometimes it was insanely hectic, and then quieter at other times, between missions.
“I thought about what you said on the first transport we flew together, about losing your man at Pearl Harbor. It’s hard to get past something like that. It happened to me with Belinda. By now, most of us have lost someone we cared about, or loved, or wanted to marry, or were married to, or a sibling, or a friend. No one escapes it entirely, but you can’t let it stop you from living. Their destiny happened the way it was meant to, but we still have ours to live. We’re all young. One day the war will be over, and we’ll have our futures back, if we live through it. Don’t spend the rest of your life or too many years mourning, Liz. It’s not my place to say that to you, but I say it as a friend. I’ve been through it too. I finally realized that Belinda wouldn’t have wanted me to mourn her forever. She wasn’t that kind of person. She was full of life. Maybe your man was too.”
“He was,” she confirmed, thinking about Will.
“Then you have to go on and live fully. What happened to them wasn’t fair. But one day someone will come along who was meant to be with you, and you’ll start over again.” She still couldn’t imagine it, even more than two years later. But she knew Ed meant well. She smiled. She loved listening to his soft Irish brogue. He sounded so gentle when he comforted the patients, and now he was comforting her.
He left the pub a few minutes later, and the other girls questioned her about him.
“He’s got a crush on you,” Louise said to her, and Lizzie denied it.
“No he doesn’t. He’s just friendly.”
They hooted at her, and she blushed. “I swear to you, he’s not after me. Pru and her other corpsman say he has a million girlfriends.”
“Until he finds the right one,” Alex said, grinning at her. Emma laughed too.
“Where I come from, any girl with eyes in her head would grab a guy who looks like that and hold on to him,” Emma said. Pru had tried to get Emma interested in Ed, but she said she still wasn’t over the boyfriend she had lost in the first year of the war. She didn’t want to get hooked on another guy who might die, and Ed flew dangerous missions. They all did. There were no safe jobs in the war, even for civilians. The building you were in could be bombed at any time, or even the home where you slept at night. They were all at constant risk, and even more so in the RAF, doing what they did. They were all fully aware that they could die on any day, and they were willing to take that risk, for the good of the men they rescued.