Chapter 12: Visits To The Hospital

It was after the fourth visit in the same day by the four young officers who all blatantly ignored the regulations about visiting hours and numbers of visitors that Jane overheard a nurse say to one of her colleagues, “See? That proves she’s a jerrybag. She should have been kicked out on the street as soon as she could walk.”

The response was even more interesting, “Shh. Don’t let anyone hear you. Don’t you realise where all the extra food and medical supplies are coming from? And on whose orders? She’s worth her weight in gold to the pharmacy and the kitchen.”

“If you say so, but officially the allocation of rations to this hospital has just gone up anyway.”

“Officially, officially. That means somebody took a decision to increase them. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why, not when the squeeze of a very high ranking official is in here. I heard that the head German for the whole of southern England is visiting tomorrow.”

“Hmph. I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Unfortunately Jane did not actually see which nurse was the cynical one, so did not know whether the unbeliever was converted by seeing the Pfalzgraf’s visit.

It was on the tenth day after her confinement that she was allowed to go home. The doctor explained, when asked, that she should abstain from vaginal sex for at least the first month after the birth, but when she persisted he admitted that she could indulge her husband orally straight away.

It was Wolfgang as senior officer in the house who explained that they were quite prepared to have her stay on in the house with a renewal of the original arrangement. “I would have thought that in a few days you will have recovered from the birth and could resume vaginal sex,” he said, and he did so as though being the bed partner of four young men as soon as practicable was a great favour.

Jane, wisely kept her thoughts to herself, as she hoped to be able to contact the Count and re-establish a one to one relationship with him, albeit not in Germany. “I’ll check with the doctor when I next see him,” she temporised.

Jane certainly felt much recovered after a couple of weeks back at ‘home’ with the baby whom she had decided to call Joachim. They were settled into a routine and to her surprise she found herself wanting to feel a man inside her. However she could not contemplate another pregnancy so she had decided only to have safe sex while she was breast feeding. I must remember to buy some condoms, she thought, and insist that the boys use them. If they don’t like it I hope they will settle for oral only.

She was surprised when Bernhardt asked her not to sleep with any of the others as he still wanted to marry her. It was the nearest he had come to a real proposal, and she imagined him kneeling to offer her a ring, as Sir Henry had done. No chance of that, she thought. “But the German army won’t allow that, will they?” she asked.

His reply startled her, “I could get permission if I say the child is mine, and I could probably manage to do that without my uncle finding out until it was too late. At least I can try.”

Jane pointed out, “It would wreck your career to be married to an enemy national. At the very least you woud be banned from going to Germany, as I am.”

“That would not matter if I could have you and the child all to myself, and perhaps next year one of our own? Am I asking too much?”

Jane thought for a while and then conceeded, “I won’t let any of the others have me until this is sorted out. And if I marry you none of those three will ever have me again if I am allowed a choice. But, and it is a big but, the Pfalzgraf may well have other ideas, which may include him reasserting his control over me in and out bed.”