Wave Me Goodbye. Ruby Jackson

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СКАЧАТЬ and Saturdays from now on, and the occasional extra day when I have to be in two places at once, then I can manage the other mornings. Reasonable?’

      ‘Absolutely, m’lady.’

      Lady Alice jumped down lightly from the driver’s seat and began to walk towards the door. Before she reached it, she turned. ‘No harm in teaching Grace either; just make sure she doesn’t crash.’

      Grace and Jack watched Lady Alice until the door closed behind her.

      ‘She didn’t mean that?’

      ‘Of course she did,’ said Jack. ‘If it makes you feel better, think of it as another task the upper classes can inflict on you. If you can drive, she won’t have to hire a driver.’ He looked into her face. ‘What a bundle of doubts you are, pretty little Grace. She’s a decent human being. Look at the way she treats Harry and me.’

      ‘This morning, you said she terrifies you,’ Grace said, and was pleased that he looked uncertain. ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘you’re almost a doctor and you can drive.’

      ‘Yes, and she wonders why I’m not driving ambulances at the front instead of digging ditches in Bedfordshire. Come on, we’d best get this back and the churns cleaned before we start the day’s work.’

      Without waiting for Grace to say anything else, Jack started the lorry and drove down the back driveway to the dairy. There, they unloaded the churns, not nearly so heavy now that they were empty, and carried them into the dairy, where Walter was waiting to help them scrub them clean.

      ‘Maybe you should teach Walter to drive, Jack,’ Grace teased.

      As she had expected, Walter looked horrified at the thought. ‘Not me, lad, I’m a horseman. Always was, always will be.’

      He told them how he had done the milk deliveries for years with a horse and cart. ‘And he gave us good manure into the bargain. Can your engine beat that, Jack, lad?’

      ‘Horses win hands down, Walter.’

      In better spirits, Jack and Grace left the dairy. Grace’s mind was still full of his description of her: ‘pretty little Grace’. I’m not little, she thought, and Mrs Petrie always said I was pretty if too thin, but what Jack said about my ‘bundle of doubts’ – I don’t like that much. Do I doubt people? Am I not too ready to think the best of them? Yes, I am, she answered herself, and then I find I’m wrong. Honesty then demanded that she add: but not all the time.

      ‘Jack, why does Lady Alice wonder why you aren’t driving ambulances at the front … if I can ask you, that is?’

      ‘Of course, you may ask anything you want, Grace. Asking questions is a really good way to learn. It’s like this: I just cannot bring myself to believe that it’s right to take another person’s life. I know that I could not possibly shoot another human being.’

      ‘Not even if he was a German.’

      ‘Not even. Grace, I think we would find that lots of the German people don’t want to be at war, don’t want to shoot at us, bomb our towns. There must be objectors among them, too. Maybe their government says, “Right, you don’t want to kill people, but we have to have someone driving ambulances.”’

      Grace was not sure that she completely understood, but she nodded as if she did. ‘And should our government have asked you if you’d like to drive an ambulance?’

      ‘They could have told me and I would have been perfectly happy. I don’t want to die and so, yes, you can say I’d be frightened but I’d do my duty.’

      Grace was surprised to see Jack blush as wildly as she had ever done. A strange feeling stole over her. Not even her adored Sam had ever made her feel quite like this. What on earth’s happening to me?

      Jack was talking and she had missed his first words.

      ‘… if you are honestly interested. I can explain my feelings and my actions. It’s quite simple. You see, it’s all in the Bible. God said, “Thou shalt not kill.” So, therefore, it is morally wrong to go to war. There has to be a better way to deal with difficulties. And besides, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a doctor. Don’t know why. Doctors maintain life; they save life. How could anyone expect me to do otherwise? It just doesn’t make sense. Warfare is morally indefensible.’

      Grace was painfully aware that she had had very little education or experiences that could be compared to Jack’s. Obviously, he knew more and bigger words than she did and could quote poets and politicians. But the argument that God had said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ worried her. If God had said that, did he mean that it was never right to kill or did he mean that it was wrong to go out and murder someone? She remembered reading a newspaper article about her friend Daisy, who had seen a German pilot deliberately strafe a woman and child on Dartford Heath. Could that be called an act of warfare or should it be called murder? Oh, she could not bear to go on with this train of thought, especially since she had seen the newspaper long after the ghastly event and even then had not written to Daisy.

      Jack was looking at her rather strangely. ‘Grace, does it make it easier for you if I say truthfully that I would be perfectly happy to go into any area of warfare, helping qualified doctors as much as I can with my fairly limited training? But to put on a silly little uniform and allow myself to be encouraged to shoot at my fellow man – I simply can’t do that.’

      Grace felt unbearably sad. He believed so much in what he was saying that he was prepared to tolerate being bullied, even cruelly treated. ‘Jack, how do you know – as an actual fact – that God spoke to some human being and used those exact words?’

      His look was both fond and pitying. ‘Poor dear Grace. Of course, it’s a fact. It’s in the Bible and the Holy Bible is the word of God.’

      She could not let that pass: ‘Who says? God didn’t sit down himself and write it, did he?’

      ‘No.’ The tone in which that one small word was uttered told him how annoyed, with her and the debate, he was. For her, somehow, these great moral questions were simple, but Grace had never been a regular churchgoer. Far from encouraging her to go, Megan had actively discouraged, even forbidden her attendance. It was only when Grace had left school and started working in a factory office that she had managed to attend the Christmas Eve service with her friends. It had always been a joyful occasion, but part of her wondered, sadly, if it was the music, the lights, the candles, even the vestments worn by the clergymen, that appealed to something in her, rather than the doctrine itself.

      Basically, Grace was practical. A teacher saying, ‘But the story of history is told by those who won the battles, not the defeated,’ had resonated with her. Perhaps the victors did not tell the whole truth, and perhaps the man or men, no matter how holy or how wise, who did transcribe God’s words, did not do it word for word.

      ‘Gosh, poor Walter is scrubbing the churns by himself. We’d better run,’ she said.

       FIVE

       Late May 1940

      Grace had never experienced anything as miraculous as spring on a farm. The beauty that met her eyes in the following weeks amazed her. Tiny curled leaves that opened overnight to show their different shades of СКАЧАТЬ