Chapter 15

The Beauty Shop

M ac cast a gaze at the nurse as she wheeled a trolley laden with piles of crisp, fresh linen out into the ward, its wheels squeaking, protesting beneath the burdening weight. She approached one of the beds, removed the clipboard that hung at the end, and wrote on the chart, then glanced at the mound beneath the covers.

‘Not getting up today, Pete? Sister Jamieson’s on duty, you know. She’ll have your guts for garters, so she will.’ Her Irish accent was soft and light. An auburn lock of hair escaped her cap, and she tucked it behind her ear.

‘I’m supposed to be on sick leave, Bea. Can’t a chap have a lie-in for once?’

‘Sick leave, you say? Ah, for a minute there you had me fooled. I could have sworn I saw you racing that wheelchair up and around this ward last night. Having a whale of a time, you were. And I’m sure it was a man just like you that almost knocked that poor woman off her feet. And I suppose you’ll be telling me next it wasn’t you who got drunk and fell into the bath while it was still full! Water all over a clean floor and you dripping right through the ward.’ Her mouth curved up into a smile.

As he opened his mouth to speak, she cut in again. ‘Mr. McIndoe has bent over backwards for all of you, but there are limits, you know, and last night you surpassed them.’

Pete’s face glowed scarlet. ‘Well, it was all just a bit of fun. You know how it is when boys get together.’

‘Oh, I do. And just so you know, Sister will be keeping her eyes fixed on all of you today.’ Bea raised her eyebrows before bustling away to the next bed. Just then a guy whizzed by, propelling his wheelchair while gripping a pint of beer between his thighs.

‘Top of the morning, Bea,’ he said, in a mock Irish accent.

Her jaw dropped, and she stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed. ‘Good morning, Mr. Evans. It’s early to be drinking, don’t you think?’

‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, the hair of the dog and all that.’ He laughed and propelled himself across to the breakfast table where a few of the men sat, helping themselves to tea and toast.

The morning sun bathed the ward in golden light. Fragrant roses, carnations, and tulips flowed from vases placed by every man’s bed. Mac wondered who brought the flowers. Blooms of pink, orange, and cream blended with fern and sure did brighten the place up. Nurses busied themselves making beds; crisp, starched white sheets with light green counterpanes on top, tucked in tight with traditional nursing corners and the sheet folded back over the counterpane to lie neatly at the foot of the pillows.

In rows, the beds reflected regimented military bunks, and it was the only order you would find here. Everything else other than medical care seemed to be haphazard, irregular, unruly, and weird. The United States Army had a saying for such things: SNAFU—situation normal, all fucked up. Mac smiled. And the guys here really knew how to shoot a line.

A bell rang out, and Mac could hardly believe his eyes when one of the guys sailed into the ward on a bicycle. He stopped, dismounted, and pulled a brown paper bag from the basket on the front and shouted out, ‘Eccles cakes. Get your Eccles cakes.’ He then dipped a hand into the bag and dragged out the cakes one by one and threw them onto the beds.

The doors to the ward swung open, and Mr. McIndoe strode in and surveyed the scene like a general scrutinising his troops, then he removed his spectacles and wiped the lenses with his handkerchief before heading to Sister’s office. Mac was desperate to know how long he was going to be stuck here. Mr. McIndoe had seemed like a great guy when he first met him and had made him feel at ease and in safe hands.

He glanced over at the guy in the next bed, who was having surgery later. He was from Idaho. After a skirmish with a German fighter, the fuel tank in his Spitfire had exploded. God knows how he bailed out. He was a mess. When Mac asked him what he did before the war, he said, ‘I was studying at art college. When this is all over, I’m hoping to go back.’

Just like Birdie. Mac looked down. Maybe he was all washed up. The war had in one sense been a blessing in that it had revealed his true passion. Flying. He was born to fly; he felt it, and if the US Army Air Force now took away his wings, it would be like restricting the air he breathed. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, aware of his heart hammering in his ears.

He recalled his excitement when he’d enlisted. But reality had soon dawned, and the war, which he’d thought to be a just cause, had transcended into a monster that sucked the life right out of you. It stripped away any religious beliefs one layer at a time until all you felt was a hollow in your gut and an ache in your chest that grew heavier, deeper, until it crushed you inwardly and you could barely breathe, hope, or care whether you lived or died. That was where he’d been when he first spotted Stella across a crowded dance hall, and by the time she turned and met his gaze, his heart whispered she was for keeps. He screwed his eyes shut.

His thoughts turned to his crew. A well-oiled machine ripped apart, with Mac as the damaged cog. Service life had become his life and now, separated from the only other home he’d ever known, he was adrift in strange waters. Vera Lynn crooned over the radio. ‘We’ll Meet Again.’

He’d lain in bed for a week since arriving; not that he could recall much. The nurse told him earlier that he’d had a pretty bad infection, but today he felt stronger. In the early hours, he’d woken in sweat-drenched sheets to find the night nurse hovering over him, her hand on his shoulder asking if he was all right. Hell no, I’m goddamned burned, he’d wanted to yell.

‘You were shouting out in your sleep. That’s the second time tonight.’ She’d smiled at him, but it was a pity smile.

The dreams were growing more vivid, and last night he swore he saw Birdie for real. And when he clambered out of bed to check around the ward for signs of his dead gunner, the nurse had scolded him like a child. She insisted it was simply a dream, but he was darn sure he’d seen him standing there in flames. Jeez, he’d smelled the burning flesh like roasted pork, and it drifted all around now, thick, lining his throat. Maybe it was his own flesh. He couldn’t shake it off, so he closed his eyes as Vera sang of blue skies and dark clouds.

His injuries showed signs of healing, so he’d been told, and at least the pain wasn’t so bad now. It was a relief to ditch those stinking pyjamas and put on his service pinks and greens, and he felt a step closer to his former self, but he had to know how bad he looked. The nurse had brushed him off this morning when he’d requested a mirror. What was that all about? She’d applied a light dressing to his cheek and neck. ‘It’s healing beautifully,’ was all she’d said. Her opinion. Everything was a mess. He couldn’t fly, he was trapped here, missing the guys, missing Stella. And now he couldn’t do anything for himself. This wasn’t how he’d imagined it when he enlisted, only back then he hadn’t given much thought to dying either.

A friendly voice fractured his reverie. ‘G’day, mate. I’m Dickie, a pilot with the Australian Air Force. Welcome to the Beauty Shop.’ He took out a battered cigarette case and offered it to Mac.

‘Mac. I’m with the Eighth.’ He gestured with his bandaged hands, unable to hold a cigarette.

‘No worries, mate.’ Dickie lit it for him, reached over, and placed it in Mac’s mouth. ‘Not be long, and you’ll get those bandages off.’ He lit one for himself and removed Mac’s so he could flick the ash.

‘What did you call this place?’

‘Listen, boys, we got ourselves another Yank.’ Dickie grinned at him, his once sun-kissed skin from the Australian shores had faded, replaced by scar tissue, but his sparkling, almond eyes held an air of mischief. ‘The Beauty Shop, mate. It’s where you come to be made up, you know, after you’ve been fried. Mind you, some of the blokes call it a madhouse.’

He laughed, then drew on his cigarette. ‘It’s all right. We’re a mixed bunch. Pommies, Yanks, Poles, Aussies, Kiwis, Free French, all mashed, burned, or fried for King and country.’ He studied Mac for a moment, grinning. ‘Could have been worse, you know.’ He glanced at Mac’s bandaged hands. ‘Bloke down the end there, they’ve got him wrapped up like a mummy. He’s well and truly fried, poor old boy, and blind.’

Worse? Yeah, he should be dead, like Birdie. Mac gritted his teeth, eyes wandering across the ward as Dickie’s voice drifted into the background. A man hung in traction, suspended mid-air, wrapped in so many bandages he resembled a mummy. His striped pyjamas only added to the eerie sight, and Mac couldn’t look away from the thick, unruly hair spilling from his head.

Dickie’s voice cut in. ‘That useless waster opposite is Lee.’

Mac glanced across at a guy in RAF blues wearing an eye patch, slouched on his bed, reading a copy of Rafters magazine.

‘And that’s Pete over there by the bathroom. He’s a laugh.’ Dickie drew on his cigarette. His eyelids were bright red and drooped like hoods, and his entire face was a patchwork quilt of scarlet and pale skin, like his hands.

Lee glanced up from his magazine and nodded his head, which he held at an awkward angle, and Mac froze. The guy had a roll of skin like a sausage attached to the bridge of the nose, which hung down across his face and reached inside his shirt. Mac wondered where it ended. It sure looked uncomfortable.

‘Watch out, lads, stand by your beds. Dragon approaching twelve o’clock high.’ Dickie stood up. ‘Take it easy, mate.’ He winked.

Sister Jamieson made a beeline for Mac, carrying a brown medical file, walking with a rigid, straight back, her thin lips curving into a faint smile. Her white headdress sat aloft her greying hair, which was scraped away from her sallow face and pinned at the back.

‘Good afternoon, Lieutenant. I’m glad to see you looking more comfortable. Mr. McIndoe will be along shortly to reassess you. In the meantime, the orderly will take you to the saline bath.’ She raised her pencil-thin eyebrows, her brow transcending into multiple furrows.

‘Thanks, Sister.’

She nodded and walked away with her head held high. She reminded him of his old high school teacher, Mrs. Stewart, a middle-aged woman with the roar of a lion if you crossed the line, except her bark was worse than her bite. He looked around. So, this was the top place for plastic surgery. The surgical ward was basic, a primitive wooden hut in the grounds of the hospital. It was drab, like the RAF bases the Eighth Air Force had requisitioned. Still, the Mighty Eighth had moved in and made everything shipshape, discarding shabby, moth-eaten furniture for new.

Of course, Mac’s outfit had been lucky. Bassingbourn had been in pretty good shape to begin with. Brick-built buildings and real rooms which beat sleeping in Nissen huts. They called it the Country Club, and it sure was a cut above the rest. He wished he was there right now, and he wondered what the guys were doing. The barracks had almost become a home from home and for some, it would be the last home they would ever know.

He squeezed his eyes shut, the sharp sting of realisation hitting him hard. Birdie was dead. Whether it had been the fire, or the flak didn’t matter. What mattered was that, as the pilot, he was responsible. His heart raced, skipping beats, and this breath snagged in his throat. He gritted his teeth and waited for the feeling to pass. It usually did.

‘Ready for the bath, mate?’ Jimmy, the bathroom orderly, stood at the foot of the bed with a wheelchair.

‘Sure, I got nowhere else to be.’ Mac eased himself into the wheelchair with a wince as the pain in his lower legs flared. They shook beneath him, nearly buckling. Jimmy’s round, friendly face, framed by thinning dark hair, smiled up at him. Mac guessed he was in his mid-forties. Weariness swept over him then like a heavy blanket, and he longed to be left alone. He longed to be with Stella. That had ended badly, though. If only he’d gone back that day, but it had seemed hopeless. He hadn’t fully understood everything, though he should have respected her loyalty to Alex. Still, what if he’d lost her for good? He guessed he probably had, and his heart clenched.

The saline bathroom lay at the end of the ward. Mac stared, bewildered at the many dials and pipes on the wall. ‘The first time you brought me in here, I thought this place was a lab.’

Jimmy laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. It’s an ordinary bath, though there’s a bit of technical stuff that goes with it.’ He helped Mac undress. ‘It’s quite clever, isn’t it? But then the Maestro is a genius. He realised quite early on that the pilots who came down in the sea healed quicker than anyone else. Something to do with the salty water.’

‘Well, it sure is soothing.’ Mac lay back in the water as Jimmy unravelled the bandages on his hands and those on his lower legs. Within minutes, the dressings lifted off painlessly and floated to the surface. Now when he saw his burns, he no longer had to suppress the rush of nausea that lurched in his gut, although as he gazed at his hands, he gritted his teeth. They were the worst and remained swollen and chubby, fingers like plump scarlet sausages, a little contracted. He tried to straighten them out, but it was hopeless. Small, pale pieces of dead skin floated all around him, translucent in the water, and as he stared, mesmerised, an image of men tumbling from their aircraft sailed into his head and he turned his gaze away. He sucked in a breath as he visualised Stella’s hand in his. She wouldn’t want these hands holding her, he thought. She wouldn’t want him. Like a crisp, fallen bloom, he was caught on the breeze, hurtling this way and that to someplace bleak.

Wilson had said he was lucky. He looked down at his hands again. Jeez, would they ever be normal? He held his right hand up in front of him. The red, fleshy appendage was flecked with charred, black patches extending down to his fingertips, and he hoped to God he wouldn’t lose his fingers. A searing pain pierced his palm, and he submerged it once more beneath the warm saline.

‘Don’t worry, the Maestro will fix you up, you’ll see. You’re in the best place.’

‘Why does everyone call the doc that?’

‘Well, he’s in charge for a start. Some of the lads call him the Boss, some of them call him Archie.’ Jimmy raised his eyebrows at that, and Mac guessed he would never do it. ‘Some have even called him God.’ Jimmy strode over to the door and peered out. ‘Fancy a fag?’ He produced a pack of John Player’s.

‘Sure.’

Jimmy lit one and placed it between Mac’s lips. ‘There you go, chum.’ He took one for himself. ‘If you hear Sister’s footsteps, you let me know. God help me if she catches me smoking.’ He winked and turned to check on the water temperature.

‘Say, there’s a guy out there with a weird nose. What’s that all about?’

‘Oh, that’s a tubed pedicle flap. It’s amazing how it’s done. If someone needs a new nose, the Maestro takes a piece of skin, a flap, say from the stomach, stitches it into a tube, leaving one end still attached to the stomach for the blood supply, and he stitches the other end to the arm. After two or three weeks, when the blood supply is healthy and strong, he removes the end from the stomach and attaches it higher up on the chest. Then the arm’s connected to the chest, see?’ Jimmy held his arm to his chest, just so, and Mac nodded. ‘After another few weeks, it can be removed from the chest and attached to the bridge of the nose, so then the arm is connected to the nose. Then the last stage is modelling it into a new nose. Bloomin’ marvellous what he can do. New eyelids, lips, ears, entire faces. Modern medicine, eh?’

Mac closed his eyes. It dawned on him that he truly was one of the lucky few. He could only imagine what it felt like to lose your entire face. He wondered what he looked like. Why were there no mirrors here? He sighed. Was he really that bad?

‘By the way, you’re allowed to smoke as long as you can flick the ash, but once your bandages are back on, you’ll have to ask one of the lads. They don’t mind helping each other out. Everybody mucks in. We’re like one big family in here.’

Family. One dead, the rest ripped apart. He’d received a letter that morning from Wilson, letting him know that Danny was okay, and they were all back on duty, filling in as spares with other crews. Mac’s eyelids suddenly grew heavy and flickered closed, and his entire body relaxed for the first time in a week as he drifted off to sleep.

Later that evening, as Mac sat in bed, all he could think about was Stella. Did she even know where he was? Some of the guys were playing cards at a table in the middle of the ward, and they burst out laughing. They seemed buoyant enough, despite their gruesome injuries. Earlier, when the young VAD had fed him, he’d felt like a baby, and he hated it, but it was something he would have to get used to. His hands were useless. He couldn’t bathe, feed, dress, or write letters home. What a way to lose your independence. It was kind of hard to take. Afterwards, she’d helped him to the bathroom, where she undressed him and pulled on his pyjamas. God, his face had burned. Being unable to undo your own pants was maddening. The nurse looked younger than him, for pity’s sake, and her calm, quiet manner only made it harder to bear. She’d barely uttered a word the entire time, except to tell him her name as she tucked a chestnut curl behind her ear. Lily.

He lay back and closed his eyes. No, Stella wouldn’t bother with him after this. At the previous hospital, he’d dreamt about her, and he swore her gentle voice had sung in his ears, but he’d woken to loneliness. He clenched his jaw, and a searing pain shot through his right cheek, a timely reminder that everything had changed. He didn’t need anyone taking care of him, and he didn’t want any pity.

His gaze followed Lily as she attended to the guy opposite. His entire head was bandaged, with slits for a nose, mouth, and eyes, and Mac imagined what lay beneath, conjuring up a legion of ghoulish images. There were a few like him here, and as Dickie had said earlier, they were well and truly mashed, boiled, and fried.

The poor guy in the next bed kept on hollering, ‘It’s a blooming madhouse in here.’ He seemed real distressed.

Sister Jamieson appeared, her face growing more thunderous by the second. She bellowed at a few of the guys, who laughed and yelled at one another while racing around the ward in wheelchairs, gripping their beer glasses snugly between their knees. Beer swilled and slopped, soaking their legs and the clean floor. And poor Lily, ordered to tend to the mess, meekly grabbed a mop and bucket like a scolded child and risked life and limb as she tried to clean up the spillage, dodging wheelchairs and slaps on the bottom as they whizzed past. Her face flushed scarlet to match the cross on her white VAD apron. A group of guys sauntered over to Mac’s bed and gathered around him in a cluster, with cries of support as if cheering on champion jockeys.

‘Three to one that Jerry wins,’ Pete said, taking a swig of beer.

Mac noticed that he too had a tubed pedicle and was growing a new nose. Pete grinned back at him from his heavily scarred face, completely unfazed by the trunk-like attachment. They’re all crazy, Mac thought. The cheering continued, and finally Jerry, now breathing hard with rosy cheeks, was hailed the winner. Pete insisted that all three line up for the awards ceremony as he presented the winner’s prize—a scarf with a packet of cigarettes attached to it, which he draped around Jerry’s neck like a lei garland while Lee handed out more beer.

‘Bottoms up.’ Pete flicked the radio on, and ‘Kiss the Boys Goodbye’ drifted out into the ward. He turned up the volume, then passed Mac a half-pint glass of beer with a straw.

‘Thanks.’ Mac took a slurp. ‘Man, that’s watered down.’

‘Course it is, mate, but it’s still beer.’ Dickie slapped him on the back.

It sure felt good having a real drink, even if it was warm and he couldn’t hold it himself. Afterwards, when the excitement fizzled out and the guys retreated, Mac lay back, tired. Maybe it was the beer or the banter, but his heart lifted, and he decided to write to Stella. He sighed, realising he had to see her, even if it was for one last time. Stella, a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.

His mother always said that things happened for a reason. Life’s mapped out for you, John . He could hear her voice now as if it floated in on the sweet, mountain breeze all the way from Montana, and a familiar ache squeezed his chest.

He was exhausted, and he tried to fight the fatigue as he dreaded the dream that drifted in the night shadows. He didn’t want to face Birdie tonight. Why hadn’t he been able to save him? But he had no control over flak or fighters in the sky. A lump lodged in his throat and as the guys crooned along to the radio, he longed to yell at them to pipe down, but his strength ebbed away as his eyelids finally lowered.

Bliss, tomorrow, Stella . Fatigue draped over him like a blanket, and he pictured Stella at home with him in Montana. The vast plains, the hills, and all that green beneath an endless crystal-clear sky. And the only sound for miles was the lulling cattle that roamed the prairies or the screech of the golden eagle, scything through the silence like a fingertip touching water, casting ripples on the surface.