Greater Than All

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

A dramatic story of love and ambition, set against the turbulence of the second World War. Prue is young, beautiful and talented. Though she may love the charming and valiant soldier, Kit, whom she has nursed back to life after front-line combat, she cannot resist a long-coveted posing abroad. Once in France, temptations of a different kind ? the attentions of a consultant surgeon ? lure her even further away from her young admirer. It is only when Kit is seriously wounded that Prue is struck by the full force of her love for him, but by then fate is no longer in her hands?

Release date: December 5, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

‘Sister Layne, you’re wanted in Matron’s office!’

Prudence Layne looked up from the letter she was writing in the Nurses’ rest-room at the rosy-cheeked V.A.D. who had just put her head inside the door to make this announcement.

‘Thanks, dear, I’ll come at once,’ she said.

And her heartbeats quickened a little as she blotted the letter she had just been writing to her mother, put away her attaché-case and hastily pinned on her white cap.

Fully trained nurse though she was, Prudence had only just finished her training and this job, in the Wellington Military Hospital, on the outskirts of Brighton, was the first in which she had taken real responsibility. But she was still ‘new enough’ to feel that young awe of ‘Matron’; slight trepidation whenever she was sent for, in case she had made some mistake. However, she could not remember any ‘slip up’ in the work and so with an easy conscience she walked briskly down the long white corridor to answer the summons.

She looked cheerful and felt it. Prudence was a born nurse. She loved her work and was in return loved by her patients. It seemed to her that in spite of all the hard work and sacrifice entailed, it was a life so well worth while, because of the enormous dividend it paid. What better recompense could one have for one’s labours than in helping to ease the pain, mend the shattered limbs, and soothe the torn nerves of these boys who had fought for their country? Although trained in a civilian hospital, Prudence had been delighted when she was drafted to a military one. There was an Officers’ Wing here, but Prudence worked in the ward amongst the ‘Non-Coms’ and Tommies. And she was never done marvelling at their courage and endurance and the touching faith they had in people like herself who nursed them.

The main hall in the Wellington was a hum of activity. Two orderlies carried a stretcher past her. A hospital blanket enshrouded the figure, and only a white, grim young face, with stubble beard, was visible. A new arrival.

Prudence smiled at the newcomer. The boy, severely wounded and depressed, felt a sudden uplifting of his spirit as he received that smile. He grinned back. He thought, as many others in the Wellington, what a lovely face this young nurse had. For hers was a spiritual beauty as well as the perfection of feature. It was an unusual combination of dark eyes and charming tip-tilted nose and primrose fair hair, coiled in a neat silken roll with just a big crisp wave showing in front of the veil. Prue was a little taller than average and slender enough to be graceful. She walked with a quick springy step.

One of the R.A.M.C. doctors waylaid her just as she reached Matron’s office and spoke to her.

‘You going to the concert tonight, Prue?’

She smiled and shook her head. Major Norton was a good surgeon and a nice man, and ever since she had been here he had been trying to ‘make the grade’, but without success. They were good friends, but she avoided going out with him, not only because it was against the rules, but because her heart was elsewhere and she knew she could not give Alan Norton what he wanted.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I’m on duty tonight.’

He would have detained her, but she slipped through into the Matron’s office. The doctor passed on, a disappointed man.

Prudence faced the Matron, who was a human and kindly woman, not by any means the proverbial dragon. She smiled genially upon the young nursing sister for whom she had a high regard. Layne was one of the most conscientious girls on the staff. Of course, the men ran after her, but who wouldn’t, thought the older woman with a rueful picture of herself—stout, bespectacled, long past glamour and affairs of the heart. But nobody ever held things up against Layne. Her behaviour was above reproach.

‘It’s about your application for a posting overseas,’ she said to the girl.

Prue stood to attention. Her pulses jerked with excitement. (So it was about that. What a thrill! If there was one thing on earth Prue wanted, it was to go abroad … to be a nurse behind the lines … where there was real work, real hardship, too, perhaps. Nevertheless, a job with the very essence of patriotism and devotion to duty in it.)

But the Matron’s next words sent her high spirits somewhat on the downward grade.

‘There isn’t much hope at the moment, Layne. Let me see. You’re twenty-four, aren’t you? Very young yet. Plenty of time for you to learn a bit more at home first of all. Oh, yes, I know how keen you are to go, and I’ve got your name and Ford’s in front of me. I thought I’d just tell you that if there is an opportunity for you to be drafted abroad, I’ll let you go.’

Prue’s dark eyes, agate-bright, sparkled and she blushed. She had one of those fair translucent skins which colour easily.

‘Oh, thank you, Matron!’ she breathed.

And hope revived again. If Matron was willing to let her go, to recommend her for overseas, that was half the battle. And it would be wonderful if she could get across the Channel with Maisie Ford, who was her best friend here—one of the nicest girls of the nursing staff.

After being dismissed by Matron, Prue hastened to the theatre on the upper floor, where she knew Sister Ford would be cleaning up at the moment after the last operation. Maisie was at the moment Theatre Sister. She was a year older than Prue and an excellent nurse.

She found the red-haired, freckled and ever-cheerful Maisie sorting some instruments. The two girls chatted vivaciously for a moment.

‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get overseas together!’ Prue exclaimed.

‘Especially wonderful if my Hank got a nice superficial wound and got carried to our hospital,’ agreed Maisie Ford.

Hank was the American corporal to whom Maisie was engaged and who was at the moment in the front line of the fighting. Nobody knew better than Prue what an anxious heart lay behind Maisie’s constant smiles and jokes. She adored her tall handsome Yankee from New York, and he was in the very thick of the fighting. Maisie’s next words then turned Prue’s thoughts to the affairs of her own heart.

‘Would you really like to leave here now that there’s Kit?’

One of Prue’s quick blushes stained her face. Then she gave a self-conscious laugh.

‘Oh, there’s nothing very serious between Kit and me.’

‘Tell that to the Marines, ducky,’ said Sister Ford. She put away the last instrument and rolled down her sleeves. ‘Nothing yet is what you mean,’ she added. ‘How is your pet lamb, anyhow?’

Prue laughed.

‘Kit’s no pet lamb, I assure you. He’s a very determined and a hundred per cent masculine young man.’

‘Well, he’s very nice,’ said Maisie. ‘If there hadn’t been Hank I tell you I’d have fought with you over our Sergeant Harland.’

Prue wrinkled her nose and sniffed.

‘Oh, would you! Well, he wouldn’t respond. He’s my patient!’

‘Patient?’ jeered Maisie. ‘Ardent boy-friend would be more to the point, beloved.’

Prue laughed and glanced at the small enamelled watch which was pinned to her apron. Her grandmother’s watch and a great treasure.

‘All nonsense and I’m on duty in five minutes, and I haven’t finished my letter to my mother. I must go. See you at supper, Maisie dear.’

She hurried down the stairs. The May afternoon was bright and shining. The big hospital which stood in spacious grounds just behind the Sussex Downs, always looked grand, she thought, on a day like this. It was a fine modern building, and well equipped. The newest part of it, only erected just before the war, held some of the finest X-ray apparatus in the country and that other smaller red brick building was the Nurses’ Home, comfortable modern quarters. Prue considered herself lucky to be on the staff in this place, and luckier still to have met Kit … Sergeant Christopher Harland, who a year older than herself, had fought through four years of this war, been twice wounded, once at Dunkirk, where he had received a decoration, and had just come back from Holland with another wound, this time in the left arm. A young man of tremendous courage and enthusiasm. Prue felt real admiration for him. He had had the chance many times to get a commission and refused it. He was a man with a public-school education and well-to-do parents, but he seemed to prefer the ranks. He coveted neither glory nor distinction of any kind. As he had said to her the other day, there was a job to be done in this war and he wanted to do it in the most unobtrusive manner. He entirely lacked conceit, which added to his attractions for Prue. There was something ‘different’ about Kit Harland, and although Prue had laughed just now with Maisie about him, it was really no laughing matter. The young sergeant had been her patient for the last two months and she fully realized that their mutual attraction towards each other had been growing daily. Of late, since he had recovered from his last operation and was almost convalescent, he had made no secret of the fact that he was in love with her. But Prue was not certain of herself. She was an idealist. Her nursing meant everything to her. She had seen for herself that, with a girl like Maisie, the man in her life came first and her nursing second. But Prue was not certain that she wanted to put this cherished career of hers second to anything, even to love.

This evening when she entered the ward in which Sergeant Harland occupied an end bed near the door, she was fully conscious, despite all her resolutions to ‘be sensible’, that her cheeks reddened and her lips trembled slightly as she met the gaze of the young man who sat up in bed with his arm in a sling and welcomed her with such eager eyes.

Kit really was good-looking … a hundred per cent masculine, as she had said to Maisie, with his thick black hair, which grew so strongly up from his well-shaped head and refused to lie down no matter how much he brushed it, that strong column of throat, that hard, brown face of a man trained to soldering, used to a rigorous, disciplined life. There was a white scar on his left cheek (a legacy from Dunkirk) and another scar—a nasty jagged hole in the calf of one leg; and now this arm. A much-wounded man. Kit called himself an ‘old campaigner’. But the blue eyes smiling at her now were the very young gay eyes of a boy. Despite all that Kit Harland had been through (and Prue knew that he had seen much bloodshed, and horror, and frightfulness), he had not lost his gaiety.

He greeted her with a mock frown as she came to the foot of his bed.

‘Two minutes late, I think, Sister Layne.’

‘Nothing of the kind,’ said Prue indignantly. ‘I’m early if anything.’

He shook his head and glanced at his wrist-watch.

‘We differ.’

Prue tossed her head.

‘Agreed.’

Then his frown vanished and a look came into his eyes which made her heart plunge. A look of utter love.

‘Oh, Prue, you’re so beautiful,’ he said under his breath.

That burning colour which he loved to bring to the young nurse’s cheeks leaped under her skin. With a nervous gesture she adjusted her veil, then looked down the ward. One of the V.A.D.s was pushing a trolley in their direction. A man close by, with screens round his bed, groaned a little. Prue said:

‘Ssh. You mustn’t say things like that. I’ve got a lot to do. Poor Smithy’s bad again tonight. Can’t you hear him? I must go to him.’

Kit’s blue eyes beseeched her.

‘One moment, Prue.’

She bent over him in pretext of shaking up his pillow.

‘Later, perhaps.’

Their faces were so close now he could feel her breath on his cheek. He bit his lip with a sudden inrush of emotion. This girl disturbed him as no other in his life had ever done. He had made up his mind that he was going to marry Prudence Layne. There had been girls in his life—of course there had—he adored pretty women and they tried to spoil him. But he had always put them on a pedestal and, somehow, they had succeeded in falling off. Prue, however, incarnated his ideal. She was a goddess who he was sure would never produce feet of clay, disillusion him. He had watched her daily for weeks, compared her with others on the staff—all different—harsh, domineering women; stupid, flirtatious ones; nondescript, insignificant ones. Nice ones, too, like the red-haired Sister Ford. But Prue stood alone … lovely enough to stir any man in the physical sense, with her deep dark eyes under those shadowy lashes, and the startling fairness of her hair. From a Spanish grandmother she had got those eyes, she had told him, and from a typical Saxon father her blondeness. But it was not her beauty alone which had captured Kit’s imagination and heart. It was her never-failing sweetness and devotion to duty. He knew what a good nurse she was. He had no wish to change her from her purpose in life. But he did intend to marry her, and if that meant giving up nursing in the long run … well, that was just too bad, but it must be so.

For an instant he held her gaze.

His lips formed the words:

‘I love you.’

She drew back and her face now was quite pale.

‘Please … Kit!’

‘All right. I’ve got to be good. I’ve got to remember you’re the sister-in-charge of the ward, and all the rules and regulations about love affairs between nurses and patients. O.K. But I still love you. And tomorrow when my family arrive in Brighton and come to see me I’m going to tell them so.’

‘Kit … you can’t … you mustn’t …’

‘Here comes the trolley, Sister … Attention!’ he broke in, grinning.

Confused, she moved away from him. That look he had given her just now—the way he had dropped his gaze to her lips and made her heart turn over. It had been like a kiss … and he had never kissed her yet. Until tonight, he had never before dared to say those words: ‘I love you.’

She was completely unnerved for a few moments and felt her hands shake as she moved away from the young Sergeant’s bed. She barely answered the polite greeting of the V.A.D. with the trolley, but hastened to the bedside of the man who was groaning and who had had a bad operation yesterday. Once there, taking his pulse and with a cool hand on the hot forehead of the sufferer, she tried to put Kit Harland right out of her mind. And for the next hour or two she was so busy with dressings that she had, indeed, no time to think of her personal affairs. Yet in her subconscious mind she could feel Kit watching from his corner bed—waiting for her—she felt more disturbed than she had ever thought possible in her career.

Just before she went off duty she managed to exchange a few words with Kit again.

‘You mustn’t say anything about me to your family,’ she said.

He only laughed at her.

‘You can’t stop me, Beautiful. And being Sister-in-charge, you’ll have to take charge of them, too.’

‘Kit, really. You and I are friends, but—’

‘O.K. O.K.,’ broke in Kit. ‘Don’t say any more. Send me to sleep a miserable man. I shan’t sleep now. I shall lie awake all night in agony.’

At once her professional instincts were stirred.

‘Your arm’s not hurting you tonight, is it?’

‘“I am dying, Egypt,”’ he quoted, and fell back on the pillow in a mock faint.

There was a grey-haired Cockney Sergeant with a bandage over one eye in the bed next to Kit. He winked the good eye at the pretty, fair Sister, who looked so pink and embarrassed.

‘Gorn right orf, ’e ’as. One of ’is bad turns, Nurse. I used to get them when my missus turned me down.’

‘Be quiet at once, Sergeant Hawkes,’ said Prue severely, ‘and get on with your supper.’

She put a hand on Kit’s shoulder and shook him.

‘Sergeant Harland, behave yourself and sit up, or I shall have to call in Sister Brooker.’

At once Kit sat up blinking.

Sister Brooker was a tall, bony female, with an acid tongue and rough hands, very different from Prue’s slender, gentle fingers. The ward in general dreaded her administrations.

‘That’s cured me,’ said Kit. ‘Go away, Sister Layne. ‘You’ve disappointed me. Under that angelic exterior you’ve got a heart of stone.’

Her lips trembled into a smile.

‘Good night, Kit,’ she said softly.

His handsome eyes held hers again, sending that wild, unaccustomed thrill through her.

‘Good night,’ he said, and added, under his breath: ‘My love!’

Prue walked out of the ward, her thoughts stinging. Was she ‘his love’? She did not really know. She did not want to know. It was so against her principles to let anything in the way of personal feelings interfere with her life as a nurse in this war. And yet if Kit Harland really loved her, how could she withstand him? For an instant she allowed her imagination to carry her into the realms of possibility—a possible life in which Kit was the focal point. He was brave and charming … he had an artistic side as well as being a born soldier. Indeed, he had told her that after he left Shrewsbury he had meant to go to Oxford and read history. He loved the Classics and poetry and music … but he had thrown all those inclinations into the melting-pot of the war and joined up. He had put the war in front of everything, and that was what she so much wanted to do.

Tranquil and cheerful though she was by disposition, Prue had known very little real happiness as a young girl in her teens. The best years of her life had been those years of hospital training when she had become independent of home and worked with a definite purpose in life. She had been through blitzes in London; nursed under the most trying conditions. But she had loved it. Her career had filled a great void in her life. A void caused by the death of her father and her mother’s remarriage.

A marriage that had changed Prue’s world and not for the better. She had cared deeply for her father, manager of a bank in Surbiton, and resented the man who had stepped into his shoes. Her mother—still good-looking and attractive at the age of forty—had always been a selfish, self-centred woman. Prue had given her a childish adoration carelessly received and longed for a warmer return—but it was never given. Mrs. Layne was the type of woman to make a better wife than mother. Within nine months of Mr. Layne’s death she had married a man younger than herself; a motor-car salesman who called himself ‘Captain Dizzy Porter’. (The Captain was a legacy from the last world war.) A dashing personable fellow more often than not in debt, and having swept pretty Mercia Layne off her feet, neglected her and turned his attention to other women and dog-racing—his two passions. Prue, at twenty, had grown to loathe her stepfather. Her mother, whom she wanted to love, even to protect (young though she was) remained stubbornly enamoured of her handsome young reprobate of a husband, and resented Prue being in the house. (Prue, who was so young and growing much too lovely.) So Prue left home and went into hospital and all the unhappiness she had endured was put aside in the new thrilling life she made for herself.

She still saw her mother. Captain Porter was now once more in the army, a Captain in the Ordnance, and Mrs. Porter followed him dutifully around from one posting to another. So far as Prue could see, her mother had become old and haggard, and was most unhappy. But she kept up a pitiful pretence that all was well with her ‘Dizzy’ and herself, and there was still no room in her home or her life for her daughter.

The letter Prue had started this afternoon had been to apologize for not going to Woolwich to see her mother lately. But she could scarcely bring herself to enter her step-father’s house these days. She hated Dizzy Porter, and hated to see the wreck he had made of her mother.

Now there was … someone else … on whom she could concentrate and upon whom she could pour out all the repressed affections of her young life, if she so wished. Kit Harland. Yes, to him she might give everything that was in her, if she let herself go. And yet … the hospital and her nursing career came first. Of that she . . .