A House for Sister Mary
Lucilla Andrews
Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2018
This edition first published 2018 by Wyndham Books
(Wyndham Media Ltd)
27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX
First published 1966
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover artwork images © Matt Gibson / Yuri Shevtsov (Shutterstock)
Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd
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Also by Lucilla Andrews
from Wyndham Books
The Print Petticoat
The Secret Armour
The Quiet Wards
The First Year
A Hospital Summer
My Friend the Professor
Nurse Errant
Flowers from the Doctor
The Young Doctors Downstairs
The New Sister Theatre
One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)
A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)
In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
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Chapter One
THE END OF AN ERA
The apple blossom was in full bloom that morning, and the breeze sent pink fragments floating on to my apron skirt as I swung. They reminded me of confetti, so I brushed them off. I was all for being strong-minded, but never could see any point in masochism.
The swing was hidden behind the great bank of rhododendrons that cut off the orchard from the formal part of the garden. In the pond beyond the rhododendrons the water-lilies had opened in the sunshine. Beside the pond was a small and very hideous sleeping stone gnome known as ‘Old Trypo’ to a whole generation of Barny’s pupil midwives and midwifery clerks. ‘Trypo’ was short for ‘Trypanosomiasis’.
When David first told me about ‘Old Trypo’ I had been too junior to know ‘trypanosomiasis’ was sleeping-sickness. David had explained that along with a good many other things, including why we must be intelligent and wait until after his preregistration year for our marriage. Then he decided it would be even more intelligent if he got Membership and I collected a midder qualification. A few weeks after I started midwifery he drove down to the Maternity Unit Annexe to give me an equally intelligent reason for ending our engagement. He now had a good job in Canada. His wife worked in the same hospital.
His wife had not been one of our girls. I was glad about that and that David had left Barny’s. He had been the last of his original student-set in the hospital, so I should not have to avoid his or her old pals around the place when I got back to the general side on Monday, and there would be no one to feel his name had to be avoided with me. Barny’s was so big that few people knew more than their own small circle of friends really well, and once anyone moved out, as I had done when I branched into midder a year after my own set of nurses, they quickly lost touch and became almost a stranger in their own hospital. Once that might have bothered me ‒ now it suited me well. Despite my personal problems I had enjoyed midder but was well pleased about returning to general nursing, which I much preferred. Of course, there was a chance one or two of David’s friends might turn up for Sister Mary’s party tonight, but with luck I would not have to talk to them, and even if I did we could always discuss the weather. In any case, a party only lasted one night. I hoped my new job in Observation Ward would last around two years.
In the little wood at the back of the orchard the chestnut candles were red and white, and the new oak-leaves were still more golden than green. Frank, our gardener, paused on his way from the wood to say summer would be real warm, as the oak was out before the ash. He looked towards the house. ‘All gone, eh Nurse?’
‘All.’ I stopped swinging. ‘It’s so odd.’
‘Aye.’ He removed then replaced his cap, as if saluting the end of an era. ‘Be real queer working here without the old Sister and all her ladies. Don’t seem right ‒ seeing you nurses taking it easy, like, of a mid-morning. The Sister calling on the old Guv’nor? I see her drive off with that Mrs. Evans.’
‘That’s right.’ I did not ask how he had seen as he had been in the wood most of the morning. Frank saw everything, knew what everyone in the Annexe was doing, and why. Our obstetric registrar had frequently remarked he often wondered why he bothered to ask Sister Labour Ward to let him know when his services would be required as Frank invariably gave him the necessary warning first. ‘Best get up there sharpish, Doctor!’ or ‘Reckon you can have your tea first, Doctor,’ he would announce gloomily. He never smiled, and only looked mildly cheerful when bearing bad news. He seldom talked much to nurses, and never at all to our patients, but there were few things he enjoyed more than a good funeral, and he had on his funeral expression at the moment.
Sister Mary was paying her final visit to old Mr. Norris, the former owner of Wylden House, who had given the house and grounds to the hospital when the old Mary Block in London had been wrecked by a flying bomb in the Second World War. The house stood two miles from Wylden village. Mr. Norris, now in his eighties, lived in a large Georgian house in Astead, our nearest market town. He was a very wealthy man, a childless widower, and owned a great deal of property in London as well as Astead. He had once been a patient in Barny’s for a few weeks as a young man. His gift had come as a total but very welcome surprise to the hospital.
I asked now, ‘Frank, you worked for Mr. Norris. What was he like? And is it true he’s never come near this place after handing it over?’
Frank hitched his cap up an inch.
‘He was a good guv’nor. And what’d he want to come back for? Seeing as he wasn’t living here no more?’
I shrugged. ‘To see what it looked like.’
‘Reckon he reckoned as that weren’t his business.’ His tone showed it wasn’t mine either. ‘So the old Sister’s moving in along of that Mr. Ma
rtin’s cottage up the village?’
‘Just as soon as Mr. Martin marries and moves out.’
Frank sighed. ‘I can see as I’ll have to keep an eye on that garden for her. Them weeds! Higher than me lupins they are! Need to take a scythe to the lot and then dig it over two spits deep. You seen that garden, Nurse? In a cruel state, it is!’
‘And not only the garden, Frank. The whole cottage needs redecorating.’
‘Reckon that’ll please the old lady. She’ll not want to sit by and fold her hands, even if they have given her her cards. Shame.’ He sighed again. ‘Don’t like to think of her gone, but we all got to go.’ He ambled on, leaving me plunged in gloom for Sister Mary.
Sister Mary was Miss Maud Bush. She had been in her forties when she opened the St. Barnabas’ Hospital Maternity Unit Annexe in Wylden House two days after that flying bomb landed. She had then expected to be back in London inside a year as the war with Germany was ending, but before it ended two more flying bombs and one rocket hit Barny’s. The massive rebuilding needed years of planning. In the interval the Mat Unit Annexe had become a great success, and its closing date was shelved.
Years ago ward extensions had been added to the house; an obstetric theatre had been built into the Labour Ward floor; a large flat had been made over the stables for the obstetric registrar and two housemen; and the stables converted into dormitories for the male midder clerks (medical students doing their midwifery training). The huge attic floor of the house had been converted into a miniature nurses’ home, and the girl students shared rooms along our corridor. Our Professor of Obstetrics had bought a house in the village and commuted between the Annexe and Barny’s proper. Our London mothers had enjoyed having their babies in the country, and the families and friends had equally enjoyed the regular coach service laid on for them between Barny’s and Wylden. An ambulance convoy had gone to and fro thrice weekly; a hospital van came down daily; and an emergency ambulance had been kept ready at Barny’s to make the trip at any hour of the day or night. Surprisingly few babies had been born in that ambulance. The last ambulance convoy had left us yesterday afternoon. This morning the Annexe had closed for ever after twenty years. This week-end Sister Mary, the oldest and most senior sister in the hospital, was leaving her profession after forty-five years’ nursing.
When Matron spent a week-end with us last month to announce our closing date in person, she had asked for three volunteer nurses to stay behind for the last week-end to clear up, clean, and then close with Sister Mary. The whole nursing staff volunteered. Matron had chosen the only three of us not returning to midder in London. Jill Collins, the first staff midwife, was becoming Sister Elizabeth Ward; Harriet Jones and I were returning to Barny’s as senior staff nurses, Harriet to Casualty and myself to the Observation Ward.
The Annexe was shortly reopening as a holiday home for invalid children. By then Sister Mary should have moved into the cottage in Wylden she was buying from one Mr. Martin, a retired art-master, who had shocked and enchanted the village by getting engaged to an Australian lady he had known only a few weeks, about a week after his sixty-sixth birthday. His future wife was a widow with a grown-up family in Australia. She had persuaded Mr. Martin to sell up and move back to Perth with her. They were due to marry and sail in the next few weeks.
Their belated romance had been a godsend to Sister Mary. Until Mr. Martin offered her his cottage there had been nothing in the neighbourhood she could afford. Wylden was sixty miles from London, but the hourly train service from Astead was so good that all the local villages round Astead were now much-prized commuter territory. Anything for sale sold instantly, at prices way above Sister’s savings. We were getting desperate when Mr. Martin made his offer because he liked Sister Mary, asked a moderate price for a quick sale, and wanted to deal with someone he could trust to be kind to the tits that nested each spring in the letter-box on his front gate.
From the morning Mr. Martin had arrived in the middle of one of the Professor’s teaching rounds demanding a word with old Miss Whatsit the Matron-lady, Sister Mary had looked years younger. The bed-sitting-room in the seaside guest-house for retired nurses had been cancelled. That room had upset us all, though we had all praised it when Sister Mary was around.
‘Just imagine the poor old bags sitting round swapping horror stories,’ said Harriet, ‘and shaking their heads when one of them has a cough or a twinge of rheumatism. They’ll all have seen a fatal case that started just like that ‒ and they’ll give the details! Then think how clean it’ll be! No one’ll dare squash a cushion!’
‘Apart from all that,’ I said, ‘what will Sister Mary have to do? When she’s used to being hectically busy.’
The prospect of owning a cottage plus the first stages of closing the Annexe had left Sister Mary without one spare moment since Mr. Martin’s visit. The usual slow official negotiations had been started, and Sister had begun adding to the few possessions she already had in store. Never having owned so much as a two-roomed flat before, she found the idea of choosing her own furniture, curtains, and colour schemes as exciting as any young bride. The cottage could not stop her regretting the end of her career, but by giving her such an interest it was making this week-end more bearable for her.
I remember now how she had looked when that last ambulance disappeared yesterday, how she had gone on watching the empty drive, and then turned slowly to look back at the empty Annexe. A lifetime’s habit of self-control had produced a firm little smile. ‘Well, my dears! That’s that! Now, back to work! We have a great deal to do to make this place fit for our guests tomorrow evening!’ Harriet and I had thought up this party when Matron said we could stay on. We had put it to Jill Collins. Jill consulted with Mrs. Evans, our cook, then asked Matron. Matron had approved: ‘If Sister Mary agrees.’
We had approached Sister Mary in a bunch.
‘A party? For me? My dears, we will then be empty. Who would want to come so far?’
‘You send out those open invitations to all ex-Annexe and ex-old Mary Block staff, Sister, and you’ll be surprised!’
It had taken us some time to persuade her that it would not be too much work for Mrs. Evans and ourselves, and that her guests really would come thick and fast. Eventually she gave in and the invitations went off to Barny’s. The grapevine did the rest. The news of Sister Mary’s farewell party spread far beyond the hospital via the visiting G.P.s who called in to see old colleagues or discuss a case when in London. They had spread the word to other old Barny’s men in their areas, and Sister Mary had been swamped with letters from all over the country. Our local postman had grumbled, ‘Every day’s Christmas, seem’ly.’
This morning’s post had taken our guest list over the hundred mark, and as no one could guess how many last-minute guests would drive down from Barny’s proper, Mrs. Evans had driven Sister Mary into Astead to stack up more party food while Sister Mary spent her fifteen minutes with Mr. Norris. As Sister had insisted we all take an hour off while she was out, Jill Collins was washing her hair, Harriet had gone into Wylden on her scooter to fetch some shoes from the cobbler, and I was having a swing.
‘Frank said you were here, Rowe.’ Collins, her head in a towel, came through the bushes. She stepped carefully to avoid squashing the primroses.
I jumped off. ‘Time to work again?’
‘Not yet. Jones isn’t back, and I must set my hair. I came out to ask your views on the hall decorations. We need more flowers, but I daren’t ask Frank again. He nearly wept when he brought in the last lot. So I’ve been thinking ‒ what about ferns and cow parsley?’
‘Brilliant, Nurse! There’s masses of both growing wild, and Frank’ll love you! He calls them something weeds.’ I said ‘something’ instead of Frank’s favourite expression intentionally. I liked old Jill Collins, but she was a very senior staff midwife, and, though a nice person, she was not one of those seniors who enjoy being all girls together with their juniors. ‘Shall I get them, Nurse?’
&nb
sp; ‘Would you, my child? Then I can get back to my rollers.’ She turned, then spun round on one foot. ‘How lucky you are to have red hair that isn’t ginger or sandy and never looks like damp string, or frizzes, even after wearing a theatre turban. No matter what I do, my hair always looks as if it’s been cut with the garden shears and combed with a rake! Ah, me! Life is very unfair.’
Her nickname was ‘Hurricane Jill’. She knew it, of course, though no one ever made the mistake of calling her that to her face. When I began midder I had found her high-powered efficiency and passion for platitudes very off-putting, but had since grown too fond of her to object to either. She was thirty-one, eight years older than Harriet and myself, and as first staff midwife she ranked as a junior sister. She was a very professional nurse, and the sight of her in a uniform dress with the sleeves rolled up and that damp towel round her head in the Annexe grounds in mid-morning showed, more than anything else could have shown me, that we were briefly between two worlds. Jill Collins was the type of nurse who felt undressed without her cap, and would never, even in a midwifery department ‒ and midder standards of etiquette were far less stringent that those in Barny’s general wards ‒ consider addressing Sister Mary or any doctor from registrar upwards without her cuffs on.
The winter had been long and wet. Spring and summer had arrived together a couple of weeks ago. There were bluebells, cowslips, milkmaids, and primroses growing on the bank leading to the little wood, and the delicate white lace veil of the cow parsley was omnipresent. I left as much as I thought we could use in the shade under an apple-tree and went into the wood for the ferns.
It had been getting hot in the orchard, but the wood was cool and green. Stepping out of the sun into the dimmer light was rather like swimming underwater. The occasional shaft of sunlight filtered through the thick young leaves overhead, illuminating the patches of primroses, making the ferns more blue than green, and transforming the decaying stump of a dead tree into grey velvet.
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