I'm a phoenix in the water
A fish that's learned to fly
And I've always been a daughter
But feathers are meant for the sky
...
3 months after Patsy's departure.
...
Being summoned to Sister Julienne's office was always slightly nerve wracking- but for Delia, who sometimes still felt like a newcomer it proved doubly as disconcerting. But the elder woman was smiling and Delia let herself relax slightly as she shut the door behind her.
"Sit down Nurse Busby, I have some news that I think you will be happy to hear," the sister spoke as she took a seat behind her the desk. "I have just received a telephone call from Nurse Mount. She and her father this morning landed at The London Airport. She apologised for not letting us know sooner, but she explained that communication between here and Hong Kong was difficult..."
"She's... She's home?" Delia spluttered, the shock knocking her sideways
"She's home," Sister Julienne confirmed. "She has organised a bed for her father at The Royal London. They will take care of him for however long he may be with us. It seems he wished to return to the country of his birth, and to be around the family he has left."
Delia found she could not speak. The longing and the desperation of the past months without her girl by her side had been the most difficult thing she'd ever endured.
But now she was coming home. Back to her.
"As wonderful as this news is, I am afraid that district rounds can simply not wait. I should imagine she will be a while in sorting the hospital and her father. But I should think by the time you are finished, she will be back here with us..." Sister Julienne said, firmly but not unkindly.
"Thank you, sister" Delia laughed, as she stood up quickly.
She couldn't remember ever hearing better news.
...
District rounds had never seemed so long, and utterly trivial as they did to Delia that day. She had quite wanted to scream at old Mr Chase who it seemed had took an eternity to be quite satisfied with the dressings she had applied to his legs. But the time finally came, and she cycled home at a speed which was possibly foolhardy considering her proclivity for bicycle accidents- that would surely have earned a severe rebuke from Patsy.
Patsy. Her wonderful, brave Patsy.
Delia ran through the front door of Nonnatus, simultaneously colliding at speed with an emerging Nurse Crane.
"Phyllis!" She panted, "Sorry, I mean Nurse Crane... It's just.. I was rushing.. Is she..?"
The elder nurse simply smiled and nodded at her younger counterpart, before stepping aside. A knowing smile, a smile that signified that she understood exactly the situation. A smile that evoked acceptance.
Delia took the stairs two at a time, startling Sister Monica Joan who was passing by the hallway in search of sustenance. After bounding across the landing, she turned the handle of the bedroom door and then suddenly before her, there she was. Her lovely girl.
Patsy was fast asleep and curled up in a ball on top of her blanket and Delia felt the breath hitch in her throat. God, she had missed her so. She quietly removed her shoes and coat, before tiptoeing over to the bed and lay in the space left. She could see the exhaustion on her lovers face, and her heart hurt for all that Pats had had to endure. She gently brushed a piece of titian hair behind her ear and swallowed back the hot scratching ball that had suddenly appeared in her throat.
The gentle action startled Patsy from her slumber and she opened her eyes slowly, confused at her surroundings- the jet lag and sleepless nights causing a fog in her brain that she couldn't quite shake.
Until she saw her. Her Delia.
And then Patsy, who rarely showed vulnerability. Who prided herself on masks and facades. Who spent so many years too aware of prying eyes and keeping secrets, finally broke. She lifted her tired head onto Delia's chest, and desperately held her close. She held her as if she'd never let go, and she cried.
They were tears of grief, sadness- but also relief. She was home and her world that had been blown apart could be put back together as long as she was anchored to this girl.
"Cariad..." Delia whispered into her hair, her own tears making her voice catch in her throat. "I have missed you so..."
Patsy felt a gentle kiss being dropped onto her head, and she knew there was nowhere else in the world that she'd ever felt so protected. Wrapping her arms around Delia tighter, Patsy kissed her hand before clutching it to her face and responding quietly.
"I'm the same." she sniffed "Oh. sweetheart, you have no idea."
...
A fortnight later, saw Patsy pushing her father in his wheelchair into the unkempt gardens around the back of the hospital. What could be misconstrued as an escape attempt, was in Mr Mount's eyes an excursion away from the terrifying Matron. A bit of peace of quiet and some time away with his daughter.
"I'm not sure if this is a good idea Father," Patsy protested as she shivered in the unseasonably cold weather. "I'm quite sure that Dr Cook will have me struck of for this kidnap effort."
"Nonsense Patience," her father replied, bringing the cigarette to his lips. "I'm an old man who's dying, I'm allowed some simple pleasures. Surely you're going to join me for one old thing. You enjoy your vices just as much as me..."
"Yes, I do," Patsy smiled in spite of herself, reaching for her own smokes. "Delia's always on at me to quit but some things are not that easy to give up."
"It would seem that way..." her father agreed, a thoughtful look upon his face that his daughter did not catch.
A peaceful few minutes passed between them both as they sat, side by side- each lost in their own thoughts. Patsy eventually turned to her father to ask if wanted to return to the ward but was struck by the troubled look on his face. Mr Mount nodded, as if he had waited a lifetime for this moment and cleared his throat.
"Patience, there was a reason why I wished to talk with you in privacy today," he began and Patsy couldn't help to notice the slight hesitancy in his voice. "There are questions I need to ask you, questions that I have spent too long avoiding and unfortunately you are the only one who can answer them. Which will be difficult for you, and I'd never want to cause you pain. But I am a dying man with limited time and I need to know."
Patsy looked at the ground and swallowed, a million thoughts and possibilities running through her mind before nervously resuming eye contact the the man beside her.
"Patience... I need to know. I need to know how my wife and daughter died in the camp," he asked quietly, his voice catching slightly, showing the effort it had taken to speak that aloud.
Patsy was floored. She had not expected that. Not for one minute had she expected that. Her chest tightened and she was tempted for a moment to pretend she had not heard. She couldn't talk about the camp. She never did- even Delia only knew snippets of what she'd been through. Minutes passed by and Patsy was struck by the need to say something.
She looked again at her father, who stared back at her with equal parts desperation and hopefulness. She couldn't and wouldn't deny him the right to closure. He deserved that much. Though it would cost her fragile heart dearly. She stared ahead and fixed her eyes on a cluster of trees in the distance, knowing that she would only be able to get through it if she weren't looking into his eyes. And then she began.
"Annie was the first to die, when a typhoid epidemic swept though the camp. She was already so weak, though mother had saved all her food rations for us. She did that right up until the end- saved her grains of rice. Though it was mouldy and putrid, it was all she had to give...
Annie was always so skinny. Do you remember? Like a beanpole you used to say. But after a year or so in that camp, she was emaciated. Her face gaunt and her spirit broken. She had no chance then the typhus hit... I can still remember her wild eyes and her fingers desperately pulling at the sacking that we covered her in. We had a case a while ago, here in Poplar. A lady diagnosed with typhoid. It bought it all back to me, I could almost hear the shouting of the guards, the feel of flies feasting on the sores on my body. The smell of heat and dirt and fear. The lady survived, but Annie died after only three days. During a thunderstorm- I can remember the bright flashes lighting up the hut and her poor face. I don't even know the date, time had lost all meaning to us. But I knew she was dead.
We snuck out in the night when the rain stopped, Mother and I. We found a corner near the edge of the camp and we buried her. Mother was already ill, and so weak from the hunger but she insisted on helping me dig the grave. She'd heard rumours of what the Japanese guards did with bodies and she wasn't having that for her precious little girl. I'll never forget the grief on her face- the utter devastation. I wished, staring into that grave, that the British would just drop a huge bomb on the place and take us all with it. Both of us wanted to be with Annie..."
Patsy's father stared down at his knees, his broken legs that would never work again. He remembered Annie- aged three sat upon those same knees. Her toothy smile and endless questions about the clouds, and boats and Santa Claus. He looked up at his eldest daughter, the daughter who lived and he felt his heart burst with pride for the woman she had become, the survivor at all costs. The trembling of her hands showed him just how difficult this was to bear, and he reached out gently and wordlessly- imploring her to be brave a while longer and continue.
"Mother never came to terms with losing Annie. She'd stare at the corner of the camp- Annie's grave, constantly. Before and after work duty, during tenko and in the dead of night when everyone was sleeping. She was so ill, but she refused any offers or attempts to help. Her fight and will to survive had died that night with the thunderstorm, it had gone with Annie.
About a week later, we were stood at roll call. Everyday, three times a day we had to stand there and be counted. The Japs would shout out our numbers, and make sure nobody had escaped. Somebody did once, a few months into the first year. Nobody was given food rations for a week as punishment. They found the poor lady, hiding in woodland. They shot her in the head and then dragged her body back the camp to be paraded before us. Nobody ever tried to escape again...
Halfway through the roll call, mother collapsed. She was stood in front of me and her legs just gave way beneath her. I knew better than to move, better than to try and help but when he guard came over he started screaming at her- Okiru Okiru Okiru... She never moved, even when he kicked her. Then... then the guard took his whip out of his belt and bought it down onto her chest. I'll never forget the sound. The cracking sound and the noise of the whip splitting open skin. I couldn't bear it. I couldn't watch my mother being hurt like that. I threw myself forward and covered her with my own body. The first time the whip hit me I don't think the guard had even realised I was there... but I can remember his furious shouts as he tried to pull me off her... but... but I was too scared to let go. I wanted to hold onto my mummy... So he carried on, lashing my back again and again and again. I don't know how long it went on for, but when it eventually stopped and another guard pulled me off I could see if had all been for nothing... She was dead... I didn't do enough... I didn't help enough and I am so, so sorry for that."
At this point Pasty found she could not carry on, the guilt and the grief were overwhelming. Her body rocked in silent anguish and her breath came in gasps through choked tears. She risked a small glance at her father and crumbled as she saw the raw emotion and agony etched upon his face. He gripped her hand tighter and pulled her closer to him.
"It was a remarkable thing to do Patience" he spoke softly, "A remarkable and truly admirable thing to protect your mother in that way. To sacrifice yourself, is a true testament to the love you had for her. You have nothing to be sorry for. You are our wonderful, special girl- and I am so proud of you, and so sorry for all you have had to live through. If I'd ever met the man who hurt you in that way, I would have killed him. With my bare hands I would have torn him limb from limb. But I have no doubt he is burning in hell with the other Japanese bastards... Oh Patsy, you poor, brave thing. Did your wounds scar very badly?"
"Nothing really healed well in the camp, the filth and the humidity saw to that," Patsy explained through hot tears. "But I can't see them without looking in a mirror- which I avoid..."
"But Delia has seen them, yes? She understands what you have lived through?" her father asked.
"Yes," Patsy agreed, too tired and emotionally wrought to think too long or hard about that particular statement.
She wanted to sleep, to find Delia and have her wrap her arms around her and whisper nonsense in her ear. Thankfully, and appreciating his daughters state of mind, Mr Mount agreed to be pushed back to the ward. She assisted the nurses in helping him back into bed. Her usual brisk efficiency and strong facade was truly back in place but even she sensed that something had changed between them. There was understanding and there was honesty that had never been there before. A part of Patsy resented that it had took until his dying days to achieve the closeness she had been denied.
"Thank you, Patience. For telling me what I needed to know," her father said as she smoothed the covers back over him. "I have some idea how difficult that must have been, and I'm sorry to have caused you pain."
Patsy nodded, unable to say anything more.
"But tell me darling, what happened to you? I know you were rescued during a march following the liberation of the camp. A death march they called it. The Red Cross told me that. But how did you survive? How did you manage to endure all that they put you through when so many others died?"
Patsy considered this, and transported her mind back to 1945.
"I wanted to see you again, Father... I wanted a family. And despite our distance over the years since, I have always had that. With you, and with a family I've made of my own. But all I could think about in the days after mother died, when the gashes on my back made it impossible to sleep, a year later when we were marching for days on end- all I focused on was you. I just wanted to see my daddy again."
And with that she kissed him goodbye, and walked away. Towards Poplar, and Nonnatus House. The Sisters and the nurses and her friends and her girl. In search of a family once again.
...
As expected her father's condition had quickly deteriorated and he was now in a private room and confined to bed. Patsy spent as much time with him as she could, and everyone at Nonnatus had picked up extra duties so Patsy was never first, or even second on call. But one busy Thursday afternoon, she had no choice but to attend Mrs Noble's twin birth and Delia had kindly offered to sit with Mr Mount until such time that Patsy could be there. The hospital had arranged for a small wireless to be taken into the room, and Delia found herself humming along absentmindedly while reading through a textbook next to the sleeping man.
"So it's not just Welsh folk songs that you're a fan of..." Mr Mount spoke suddenly, his eyes quickly focused on the brunette in the chair beside him.
"I'm so sorry sir, I didn't mean to wake you," Delia apologised, leaning over to turn off the wireless. "I could leave if you prefer, Patsy should be here soon anyway."
"Not at all. Please stay," the old man replied. "I can sleep when I'm dead.." he added with a small laugh.
Delia smiled, noticing the similarities between this man and his daughter. The stubbornness, the wry smiles- the no nonsense attitude towards the world.
"Besides," he continued. "There are things I wish to talk to you about. With you. Things that I don't feel I could say in front of Patience. Lest I should make her uncomfortable or embarrassed. But you, you strike me as a person unafraid. A person who can be honest with me."
Delia was startled and confused, but nodded slowly.
"So tell me young lady, for just how long have you are my daughter been in love?"
Delia was not shocked by the forthright manner of the question- she had come to expect that from the short time in which she had known Patsy's father. But what he was asking was a question which she had been dreading and expecting for so long. Her mam had skirted round the issue, but never actually said the words. Her breath caught in her throat and she looked back at the man before her.
His face held no malice and no judgement. He looked impassive, but it was clear he wanted an answer. And not for the first time Delia wanted to tell it- to tell the story of them. To have it spoken aloud and made real. Validated.
"I met her five years ago when we were training to be Nurses. It was a gradual thing, but in time it grew to be the most wonderful, miraculous relationship I could ever have hoped to have. It's difficult, having to hide. We hope that things will change, that society will adjust and adapt. But for however long that takes, or even if it never happens- I will always be at her side. She is everything to me. So to answer your question, I think a part of me has always been in love with her. Maybe even before I knew her, as ridiculous as that may sound. But it is without question and with all certainty that I will always love her, that will never change."
Mr Mount nodded and turned his gaze towards the ceiling.
"It's true to say that I've never always understood my daughter Miss Busby. But that is entirely my own fault, I have left her much too alone. The guilt I feel for that is immeasurable, and it is the single biggest regret I have in this life. The war, the camps, the occupation- that was all beyond my control. Out of my hands. But I made a huge mistake when I left Patsy over in England by herself, when I left her to venture into the world alone. I was a coward. But venture she did, she made her mark on a world that had been cruel to her. She sought happiness and she found it. I am grateful to you for that, for helping her find a place. You know what she's been through, and you know that even a person as resilient as my daughter will need your help and support...
I cannot say that I totally understand her choices, but I certainly will not condemn them. I can say nothing more than to give you my blessing, however much or little that can possibly be worth. She is a precious being, and it is a terrible thing that it took me until this- my death, to be able to see it. You are her family after I have gone, the only family she will have left. Please don't hurt her as I have done."
Delia swallowed back the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her and made a promise to the man who had finally given them acceptance.
"I will never leave her. She's the one for me. The only one."
In the end that was all that needed to be said.
"Now Delia, on my locker there is a brown envelope. Take it now and make sure you give it to Patience, but only after I am gone. It is time it was returned to her, and I know I can trust you to see that my wishes are conveyed. I am going to sleep now, so I shall urge you to go about your day off and enjoy it. Spend some time with that daughter of mine, tell her that her old dad doesn't need her here tonight. Go and have some fun. She deserves that."
Delia took the envelope and placed it in her bag, and got up to leave.
"See you soon Mr Mount. I'll send Patsy your love," she said as she lay a hand on his arm.
"You do that Miss Busby," he smiled with a small nod "And... when I'm gone, tell her that I knew. About you two, that is. Tell her that I was happy and content and that I wished her a lifetime of happiness. Tell her I was proud. Will you do that for me?"
"I will," Delia agreed.
She would. Of that he had no doubt.
...
Patsy's father died the following evening. With his daughter and her girlfriend fast asleep beside him. He had sensed the end was coming, he felt his wife and daughter closer. As though they were simply waiting in the next room. Which of course they were.
He's opened his eyes one final time, and saw his lovely Patience in the chair beside him. He saw how she resembled his mother, something he'd never noticed before. How could he have not seen that before?
It mattered not. He had seen it now, and he had seen her. Seen the person she truly was, the person she'd had to fight so hard to become. Which is more than he had ever hoped after all the time that had passed. Almost certainly more than he deserved. He'd been a lucky man, despite the horrors of the 1940s. He had helped bring life into a world back in 1933 and it was a good life, an honourable life and a life that helped others. He gazed one last time at his eldest daughter, her head leaning against Delia's shoulder.
Oh how he loved her.
His eyes closed for the final time. He had a smile upon his face.
...
The funeral was quiet, as her father would have wanted. She briefly wondered if it was quite right to have him buried in Poplar. That perhaps it was a step down in the world for a man who had been one of the most respected and world travelled shipbrokers of his time.
But, she figured- even the most nomadic of wanderers have to have their final resting place somewhere. It was right that he was here. Near family.
A week later she was sat down quietly in front of the simple headstone, Delia beside her- her constant and her strength.
"He knew," said Delia suddenly.
Patsy turned to look at her, her forehead wrinkled in confusion "Knew what. Deels?"
"He knew about us. He asked me. He was happy for us Pats, and he loved you so very much. He gave us his blessing. He wanted me to tell you that."
Patsy shook her head in shock, and blinked back tears,
"Really Deels? Please don't tell me that if it's not true. I don't think I could bear it..."
"It's absolutely true, Pats," Delia smiled and took her hand, before kissing her softly. "I would never lie to you. He asked me to give you something too, I haven't looked at it. It's something he told me ought to be returned to you."
Reaching into her pocket, Delia pulled out the brown envelope she'd been entrusted with and placed it into Patsy's trembling hands.
Opening it slowly, she pulled out a piece of card with her fathers handwriting on, and haltingly she read the words before her.
.
Patience,
As you're reading this, know that your Mother, Annie and I are together again.
We could not have been more proud of you, or have loved you any more.
Don't be ashamed of your choices, embrace them.
Be happy with Delia. We'll all see you again one day, be sure of that.
Goodbye for now,
Your ever loving Father.
.
Turning it over, Patsy realised it was a photograph. A photograph she had not seen for over twenty years. A family photo, taken in Singapore was back in 1939. Her family. A slightly crumpled photograph, but precious all the same- carried and handled over many years.
She had not seen their faces for so long, and she wondered how her father had manged to keep it in his possession during all the time of his own imprisonment.
She would never know.
But sitting there in front of her fathers headstone, with the photograph in her right hand and Delia clutching her left hand Patsy could finally say she felt like a part of a something. She belonged. She was part of a family.
Her father was right, afterall.
They would be waiting.
But until then she would embrace the family she had here on earth.
Delia. Her very best girl. She would keep her close always.
Heaven would wait for them both.
...
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Corinthians 13:4-7