Page 48 of Never Tear Us Apart
Chapter Thirty-Two
There’s a small group I recognise waiting for the bus: the doctor who stitched up my head, her little boy, her baby fussing in the pram, and Vittoria, sheltering under the branches of a meagre-looking tree a little way apart from the other travellers, who are pressed into the embrace of a large, dense yew.
Vittoria is holding a large, battered doctor’s bag that looks like it might weigh at least as much as she does, if not more.
‘Maia!’ Vittoria sees me and waves me over, shuffling up to make space for me in their patch of shade.
‘Maia!’ The little boy beams when he sees me. Racing to my side, he takes my hand. ‘I saved you.’
‘You did, kid.’ I smile at him, then remember the name his mother called him. ‘How’s it going, Qalbi?’
He beams at me, delighted. ‘You are funny,’ he says. That’s good enough for me.
‘Ah, it’s you. Let me see.’ The doctor takes my face firmly in her large hand, turns it this way and that as she scrutinises my cut. She seems pleased.
‘A few more days and the stitches can come out,’ she says, admiring her handiwork. ‘Healing nicely, no infection. The scar will be quite discreet. You will come to Floriana in three days, and I will remove the stitches.’ She releases my jaw and goes back to waiting.
The kid swings my arm back and forth. The baby starts to whimper and fuss in the deep pram and Vittoria sings to her,leaning over the hood. Her voice is high and thin, as sweet as a child’s. She is hardly more than one herself, after all.
‘Doctor?’ A young woman nervously approaches. ‘Will you take a look at my boy? He eats all we have but still grows thin.’
The doctor barely glances at the child. ‘Does he complain of an itching anus at night?’ she asks bluntly.
The young woman lowers her eyes and nods.
‘Threadworms – there are many cases in the children at present, especially the boys. They do not wash their hands. Castor oil – you have some?’
The young woman nods. ‘Yes, Doctor.’
‘Good. It is scarce. Castor oil, twice daily, and plenty of fluid to keep him hydrated. Repeat each day for a week at least, even if you stop seeing worms in his faeces. But you must give him water and milk and keep feeding him. Don’t allow him to dehydrate.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’ The young woman looks at her oblivious son as she takes his hand perhaps a little more gingerly than usual.
‘And you, boy.’ The doctor points at the child. ‘Wash your hands every time you defecate.’
His mother pulls him to the back of the crowd.
‘Not so hot on the bedside manner, is she?’ I murmur to Vittoria, who jiggles the pram with the heavy bag slung over one bent arm. We walk a little way from the doctor.‘Here, let me take that bag for a while.’
‘Oh no, Maia – the bag is my responsibility. You could rock baby Eugenie, though. See how she is red like a tomato with a face like Churchill? I know this face. Soon she will be screaming, and no ear will be safe.’
Eugenie’s name suits her, for though she is little, she is mighty. Somewhat reluctantly, I take the pram and try to wheel it back and forth. It’s heavy and stiff.
‘You must be much stronger than you look, Vittoria,’ I tell her.
‘I work all day and all night,’ she tells me. ‘But the doctor teaches me, and so, when the war is over, I will be a nurse somehow.’
‘And are things going well with your friend?’
Vittoria’s face falls, and I realise at once my mistake. No one at the bus stop has greeted, smiled or even glanced at her. Clearly, when she took up with lonely young servicemen with money in their pockets and a will to live all the life they had, she let go of the only thing she had left: her reputation.
‘Sorry.’ I bend closer to her. ‘I didn’t think.’
‘I am nothing to them.’ She lowers her eyes. ‘An outcast. And as for him, he . . .’ She turns her face away from me. ‘His plane went down yesterday. He is dead. No matter. My friends in the Gut have taken me in. I can work there a while, and I will be a nurse after the war. Life is not easy, but my friends . . . they know how to help me.’
She means her friends in the brothels of the Gut, I presume. They probably do know how to navigate life’s difficulties better than most.
I look down the road in the hope of seeing the dust cloud of the bus lumbering towards us, but the road is empty except for a heat haze that twists and distorts the landscape like a dream.
