‘Yes. Mrs Brown told me.’
‘Quite.’ He glanced at me rather mournfully. ‘We decided just now that even if we don’t have to bring Mrs Peterson back in, she’d probably need some attention while I’m dealing with her husband, and this could provide you with a wee measure of insight into the domestic backgrounds of so many of our patients living outwith the town.’
‘I see. Thank you.’
George said, ‘I don’t see old Mary wanting to leave young Rosie now her time’s not far.’
Moray sat forward. ‘Young Bert and Rosie still living with the parents? I thought all the laddies had moved out now they’re married.’
‘Bert and Rosie are still there. They reckon their house’ll be ready not long after she has the bairn. Bert’s the youngest boy, Nurse,’ he added helpfully. ‘And Rosie’s sister Sheena, is my daughter-in-law. Both lasses expecting their firsts next month. Not twins this time, Mr Moray!’ He smiled at an old joke. ‘Remember that Sunday night you did the Caesar on young Mary Peterson? Thick as a plank the fog was that night, so it was.’
‘Indeed. How’re the laddies now?’
‘Pair of wee tearaways, but don’t tell old Peter or old Mary I said so! Young Peter’s the eldest, Nurse. Sam’s in the middle and his lass is Catriona. No bairns yet, as the poor lass lost her first at six months last year.’
‘First cousins, aren’t they, George?’
‘They are that, Mr Moray. Too close some’d say. There it is. When there’s not all that many folk, it happens. Maybe now we’re getting so many incomers it’ll not happen so often.’ George had greying flaxen hair, a square, sensible, kindly face, and the same calm pale blue eyes as those elderly women. ‘Can’t be easy for you to sort it all out after just flying in, Nurse. Or did you ken us before?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘We’re a long way from England. Might I ken where you’re from?’
‘London. Do you?’
He smiled. ‘Aye. I was in London more than a few times in the last war, but I doubt it’ll be the London you ken now. The times I got lost in the blackouts! I tell you, Nurse, trying to find the pub for a dram was worse than driving over Thessa on a foggy night! But I’d some good times in London and met some good folk.’
I smiled. ‘Jolly good. Were you in the Army?’
He chuckled. ‘Not me, Nurse. Royal Navy.’
‘Shetlanders, Miss Anthony,’ explained Moray even more mournfully, ‘are more frequently found on ships than in military tanks and so forth. And how’s Mrs George keeping?’
‘Just fine, Mr Moray! No more trouble at all since her gastrectomy and she said to tell you she’s eating as she’s not in years.’
‘Splendid! Give her my regards and say I much hope to see her, unprofessionally, during my month.’
The sun slid into the sea, and from the moment it disappeared and for several minutes after, the hills darkened to brown velvet, and every loch, voe, every inch of sea and the entire sky, turned gold. A glorious, incredible, burning gold. Then as suddenly the gold vanished, the green-brown and the blue returned, but without the earlier depth of colour. The long northern twilight painted in delicate, and constantly varying, pastels. George noticed my mesmerized expression in the driving mirror. ‘Aye. Bonnie.’
‘Unbelievable! Does this often happen?’
He nodded placidly. ‘Mind you, it’s best to my thinking, around April and May. Wouldn’t you say, Mr Moray?’
‘I would, George.’
We turned off the main road, down a lane, and then on to a built-up farm-track running across a newly ploughed field to a squat, sturdy stone farmhouse and barns. The reddish-brown furrows were crammed with gulls picking over the earth with voracious neatness. Another field behind the house reached to the foot of a ridge of hills and there were no other buildings in sight. We were about fifty yards from the house before we were able to see, round a barn, the upturned tractor in the middle of the half-ploughed far field. Two young men were crouching over what appeared a heap of coats on the muddy ground.
‘They’ve not left him out all this time! The report said he was back in the house! The machine’s providing some shelter and it’s a warm evening, even so ‒ can you get up close to him, George?’
‘I get her off this track, Mr Moray, and I’ll not get her back on. She’s not got caterpillar treads like yon tractor. I can ease her round the back of that barn.’
‘Good!’ Moray and I jumped out directly we braked and ran round to the back for the medical bags carried there, as three up front left no spare room. Before he had time to pull out the stretcher, the two youths had raced up. ‘That your father?’
‘He’s in the house, Doctor. It’s our Rosie. She would try and right the tractor and she slipped. She says she’s not hurt ‒ just wants a wee bit time to get her breath ‒ we told her not to seeing her time’s near ‒ you know what the womenfolk are!’
Moray nodded looking across the field. The girl under the coats had sat herself up. She waved us towards the house. ‘Better make sure she’s all right, Nurse, then help her inside. Boys, give Mr Nicholson a hand with the stretchers while I see to your dad.’
I could have done with boots but was glad I had been told not to change as stepping over furrows was easier in trousers. The girl had been sitting watching me, when she suddenly rolled over on her side. I ran the last few yards and recognized her expression as well as her posture when I knelt by her. She gripped my hand and stared at me until the pain subsided. ‘That was a bad one, Rosie.’
She was about eighteen with long, very fair hair and a round, sensible face. ‘You’re new,’ she gasped.
‘Yes, Nurse Anthony.’ Her pulse was typical. I looked across at the ambulance. All the men had disappeared. She could not walk it and for the moment I could not leave her. I gave her my anorak as a pillow and pushed up my sleeves. ‘I don’t think that was your first pain, Rosie. Right?’
‘Yes. I’d one before ‒ not so bad.’ She blushed. ‘I had to get the boys away ‒ even my Bert. I wanted to fix myself. I’m ‒ I’m all wet ‒ is it my waters?’
The coats were not ideal blankets but they were warm and only the complaining gulls were around. ‘Yes, but don’t worry, as this is perfectly normal. I’ve pads here and once you’re in the ambulance ‒’ I stopped as from that second we both needed to save breath. I had just time to get on sterile gloves and have the sterile pads and towels in position before, literally, I caught her baby. Instantly the placenta followed, looked intact, and there was no more than normal bleeding. ‘A boy, Rosie, he looks fine and so do you. Just keep lying as you are and still as you can ‒ only, sorry I’ll have to use your pillow as a shawl.’
‘Nurse!’ A young man shouted from behind the sheltering tractor. ‘Doctor says do you want a hand and he’s nearly done with Dad, and he reckons Mum’ll be just fine but can do with a cup of tea ‒’ He passed the tractor and had to grab it. ‘Rosie, girl, you never ‒’
‘She has.’ I had wrapped the baby in sterile towels and my anorak immediately I tied the cord. I cut it as I spoke. ‘Please tell the Doctor both well, but Rosie must be moved into the ambulance and as I’m about to take this baby to the incubator, I suggest one of you men puts on the kettle.’ I jumped up, huddling the baby in both arms and kicked off my slip-ons. ‘He’ll be fine, Rosie, and so will you. Just don’t move.’ I ran my fastest for the ambulance and in consequence collected surprisingly little mud on my feet. The portable incubator took only seconds to warm up, and so did the baby. He bellowed and flayed the air with fury when I cleaned him up. ‘Someone in your family, my love, can’t count. You’re not a month prem. You’re as near term as makes no matter and I’ll bet, seven plus pounds.’
‘Even Homer sometimes nods, Miss Anthony.’ Moray joined me by the portable incubator and put my shoes on the floor. He was in shirtsleeves with a stethoscope round his neck. ‘Lively wee laddie. Looks and sounds in good a shape as his mother. Tear?’
‘None visible.’
/> He nodded and looked up from the baby. ‘Do you hold the All-England record for the mile?’
‘No.’
‘You surprise me.’ He backed to fix one flapping door for Rosie’s stretcher-bearers. ‘Right, George. Then just Mr Peterson, and we can all go home.’
Next morning in Olaf Ward Mr Peterson was in a corner bed in the male end with his injured leg extended in a pristine plaster. He waved in welcome directly Sister Olaf ushered me into his ward. I smiled back rather breathlessly as she ushered me round and out in ten seconds flat.
Sister Olaf was a tall, spare, Yorkshire-woman married to a Welshman who had worked on Thessa for the last ten years. She had returned to full-time nursing seven years ago when the younger of her two sons reached the teens. She had strong outsize kirby-grips and the habitual expression of one who had seen it all and didn’t much fancy it. ‘Another St Martha’s, are you? H’mm. Let’s hope they’ve taught you there’s more to nursing than handing out pills by the shovel, watching monitors and carrying banners. But seeing it’s op day, and you’ve a deal to learn before you’ll be any use to me, let’s get on with job!’
From the men’s ward she charged down the corridor opening and shutting doors. ‘All four cots empty. When we take in kids, one parent comes in. Mum or dad. We’re not fussy. Communal TV room. Communal sitting room. Up-patients dining-alcove. Female ward.’ Another ten second canter. ‘Fourteen beds, same as the men, and sluice and lavs off. Now, t’other side: bathrooms ‒ lift ‒ stairs ‒ my office.’ She stopped on one foot. ‘Never close that office door when you’re in there alone, if you know what’s good for you! Then ‒ pantry ‒ stock ‒ linen ‒ general dressing room.’ Back to the head of the stairs. ‘From here you can see into the lot on the sea side. I’ll never have the curtains drawn across the glass doors unless the wards are closed and one of the senior staff is inside. I’ve nowt against nurse-call bells and every bed has one, but if you’ve not found this out for yourself yet, when you’ve nursed as long as I’ve done you’ll learn it’s mostly the patient that most needs the nurse that hesitates to push that bell-button. And any road,’ she added laconically, ‘in the thirty-five years since I started, I’ve yet to see the coronary or pulmonary embolus with spare breath for pushing a button.’
‘Nor’ve I, Sister.’
‘Oh, aye? And did you find the trained female staff cloak-room on the ground floor?’
‘Yes, Sister.’
‘Keep your locker key safe, as you’ll not need it here. Folk don’t have to lock doors on Thessa, leastways, not yet awhile. Time’ll tell what the oil’ll bring. Got it straight?’
‘Yes, thank you, Sister.’
‘I don’t expect thanks for doing my job. Now then, no excuses for getting lost up here, or in Haralda one floor down. Both wards are identically set, and you’ll likely find yourself working below as we’ve overspilled into their medical beds more times than I’ve had Sunday dinners. We almost admit more surgical than medical patients as we take so many seafarers and they’re more apt to be injured than ill.’ She checked the time. ‘Our first man for theatre is due his pre-med. in ten minutes. You give it, I’ll witness, so I’ll finish what I’ve to say, fast.’ She did. ‘Today is one of our two weekly operating days. On all op days the list starts at nine and goes on till done, unless mucked about by emergencies when it’ll start earlier. Surgical emergencies on non-op days that can’t wait get done and we’ve more of those than t’other sort.’ She gave my face such an X-ray I thought I had forgotten to do both eyes. ‘Get any sleep last night, Staff?’
‘Plenty, Sister,’ I lied. It had been a very long time since I had lain listening to the sea murmuring against the rocks at night. But not long enough.
‘Oh, aye?’ She frowned at the sandy-haired houseman coming up the stairs. ‘Patient? Thought we’d have an admission when I heard the maroons on such a clear morning. ’Phones broken down, lad? Or’ve you forgotten you’ll he standing on those feet all day?’
He was a few inches taller than me, about the same age, and rattled out his words in such a strong Scottish accent that I had a translation problem. ‘I’d to be in Haralda, Sister, so I thought I’d nip up and deliver in person the wee word from Mr Moray, We’ve a query acute abdo lassie on her way in by lifeboat from ‒’ He named a neighbouring island, but I couldn’t catch the word. ‘Mr Moray thinks maybe before Mrs Torens?’
‘Come into my office and we’ll sort it, Alan.’ Sister glanced at my feet. ‘Glue on your shoes, Staff? Get washed-up! I’ll have that pre-med ready when you are!’
The patient in the bed on the left of our first man for the theatre, was a young, black-bearded Texan called Michael Collis. To the ward, he was ‘Tex’. When the theatre trolley had removed the patient with one of Olaf’s many part-time staff nurses as escort, and I remade the empty bed into a theatre pack alone, the Texan said he had heard a lot about me from Rod Harding. ‘I could add, I surely can appreciate why. Did he meet with you at the airport on schedule? He was real worried he would be late.’
‘He made it. He said he’d been in here first. How’s the foot now?’
‘Kind of sore, but it is kind of good to see it still there at the end of my left leg. That Doc Fraser did one great job for me before his vacation. Up in the chopper I thought he would take the one look, snick off the last strip of hide, and drop the lot in the trash can. That new long doc was in late last night and he said the circulation looks to be picking up real good and if it keeps on that way I should maybe fly home in the week to ten days all in the one piece.’ He smiled broadly. ‘Kind of glad.’
‘I can imagine ‒ oh ‒ sorry ‒ have to go.’ Sister’s eyebrows summoned me to the doorway. ‘Yes, Sister?’
‘The lass has arrived. Acute appendix, straight for theatre from Casualty, then she’ll come up to us. Bed 8. Get it ready, then get on with Mrs Leisk’s dressing, and as you’re not a St Martha’s ward sister yet you’ll not have to mind my coming to watch your technique.’
‘I won’t, Sister,’ I said truthfully, but I didn’t think she believed me, or that it would be politic to tell her in her place I’d have done the same. No matter how good any individual nursing training school, most sooner or later produced the nurse who had somehow managed to survive training, State and Hospital Finals, without in reality being safe to nurse the common cold.
The only women patients not knitting that morning were the three for operation. Mrs Leisk finished a tri-coloured, multi-patterned line at the double while I drew her curtains, then flicked her work into a neat roll and put it aside to arrange her top sheet and nightdress for me. She was a stout woman in the sixties, with short, curly, white hair framing a lined, contented, face. She had had a major abdominal operation a few days ago, and she knew what had been removed, but this did not show in her face or eyes. And yet again her eyes were pale blue and had that extraordinary calmness that I had already privately identified as Thessa eyes. Later I saw those eyes in face after face on the island, and irrespective of age, or sex, never in my life in any other place had I seen so many quietly contented faces.
Mrs Leisk watched with interest while I shortened her drain, and simultaneously told me the name and family history of the girl with appendicitis, the same of the elderly G.P. who would, she said, have come over with his patient in the lifeboat, and the Maternity Hospital’s early morning medical report on Rosie and her baby. She had a strong Thessa accent, but was easy to understand as for my benefit she spoke slowly and kept to mainly English words. ‘You’d be lost if I used our dialect, dear! Now, let me think ‒ young Rosie’s grandma on her mother’s side is my ‒ third? ‒ no, it’ll be my second cousin. My, but she’ll be pleased over your wee boy, Nurse! First great-grandchild! She’s beat me! And how’s my patchwork looking to you?’
‘Quite nice, Mrs Leisk. Is this about the usual amount coming away?’
‘Bit less than yesterday, I’d say.’
‘That’s good.’ Sister hadn’t arrived, and if sh
e delayed much longer she would be too late. ‘Am I hurting? Tell me, please.’
‘You’re not, dear. I can just feel it. That’s all. Hardly bothering me now, and I’m feeling much better in myself. I’m enjoying my knitting and not just doing it to keep my mind off things. Knitting’s good for that, so it is. You a knitter, dear?’
‘Yes, but not in your class, Mrs Leisk!’
‘But I’ve been at it since I was a wee girl, dear. Never stopped. You see, dear, in the old days it wasn’t like it is now. There was none of all this new outside work for the womenfolk on Thessa. When the bairns were abed and the menfolk at sea, there was plenty of time for knitting ‒ and thinking. The womenfolk of fishermen have to learn how to wait. Times, the waiting’s not so easy. Knitting helps.’
‘I can understand. Your husband retired now?’ I added unpardonably having seen and forgotten she was listed as a widow in the ward diagnosis list.
‘Bless you no, dear ‒’ her eyes were only troubled on my behalf, ‘and don’t take on. My eldest boy was eleven the morning his father’s trawler came into harbour without him, and the boy’s now turned forty and a father of three himself. I just had the three ‒ two boys and the girl in between. She’ll be in this afternoon. Comes in every day and so does my eldest.’ Her face suddenly glowed. ‘My wee boy’ll be home soon, and his wife and four bairns. I’ve not seen the bairns yet. Seven years since they emigrated to New Zealand as newly-weds. Can’t hold my daughter-in-law’s mother down these days. She’s her only one and lost her dad on a trawl. But for years and years there was no work but the sea for men here, and the sea didn’t bring in enough. Now there’s more work than men, many of our boys who had to leave to live are packing up all over the world and bringing their wives and families home. Mine’ll be here next month and the boy has work waiting and a house promised.’ She gazed out at the Sound as I flicked back the curtains. ‘The sea’s running gentle,’ she mused. ‘My, but I love to look at the sea.’
I felt very, and accountably, ashamed.
In Storm and In Calm Page 5
