‘Just go, Diana,’ Elizabeth said brutally. ‘You’re holding up the doctor.’
Diana finally did as Elizabeth asked, closing the door behind her. But she didn’t go downstairs. Instead she sat on the step outside Maud’s bedroom, shivering, cold and clammy from the fear that crawled insidiously over her skin and invaded her mouth. She heard Trevor’s footsteps echoing across the linoleum. There was a faint murmur of voices, but the thunder of her own heartbeat drowned out any intelligible sounds. One phrase kept repeating itself over and over again in her head. She mouthed the words, whispering them, not really knowing what she was saying: ‘Please God, don’t let her die. Please God, don’t let her die. Please God ...’
Trevor folded back the bedclothes; they were clean and fresh. He glanced around the room hoping to catch a glimpse of the soiled linen. He couldn’t see anything.
‘You changed the sheets?’ he asked Elizabeth.
‘I could hardly leave her lying in a pool of blood,’ she retorted defensively. ‘It was all over the sheets, the bedcover and the blankets,’ she explained.
‘Was it dark or bright blood?’ He picked up Maud’s wrist and checked her pulse. It was barely perceptible.
‘Bright, I think,’ Elizabeth faltered, suddenly unsure of her facts and wondering how much depended on the accuracy of her answer.
Trevor saw her uncertainty and didn’t press her. Most of the mothers he’d seen in similar circumstances had succumbed to hysteria when they’d faced what Elizabeth had faced that morning.
‘How long has she been like this?’ He replaced Maud’s wrist gently on the bed.
‘Since she stopped haemorrhaging,’ Elizabeth’s voice was brittle with emotion. He looked at her, wondering how much more she could take before she broke down. Removing his stethoscope from his bag, he unbuttoned the top of Maud’s nightdress. She didn’t even move when he examined her. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Powell,’ he said as he finished. ‘There’s nothing more I can do for her here. She’ll have to go into the hospital.’
‘The Graig?’
The mixture of fear and condemnation in her voice struck a chord, making him effusive, almost garrulous in his defence of the hospital cum workhouse.
‘The isolation ward is quite separate from the workhouse,’ he explained, with all the emphasis on the word ‘separate’. ‘It’s on the top floor, there’s a fine view over the Maritime pit ...’ he hesitated as he realised what he’d said. An abandoned pit was hardly the view to cheer a sick young girl. ‘You can see as far as the fields in Maesycoed,’ he added with a forced heartiness. The fields of the farm above Maesycoed were the closest thing to countryside that could be seen from the windows of the hospital. He looked at Elizabeth. She was staring at him. He sensed that she could see beyond his pathetic attempts at bluster, read the damning, tragic diagnosis that he was struggling so hard to soften, if not conceal.
‘How long has she got left, Doctor Lewis?’ Elizabeth asked. She might have been enquiring about a train timetable. Unused to such direct questioning from the relatives of his patients, Trevor remained silent.
‘How long?’ she repeated flatly.
‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m not lying,’ he protested in the face of her obvious scepticism. ‘I really don’t know,’ he insisted. ‘It depends on how much damage has been done by the haemorrhage. On whether or not both lungs are affected ... we might be able to collapse one if the other’s healthy ...’ His voice trailed off miserably. ‘The sooner we get into the Graig and do some tests, the sooner I’ll be able to give you a fuller diagnosis,’ he finished on a more decisive note.
‘I’ll pack her things.’
‘I’ll go downstairs and send one of the boys for an ambulance. You do pay your extra penny a week for the use of one?’
‘We do,’ Elizabeth affirmed as she lifted Maud’s suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe.
Diana was still sitting on the top step of the landing when Trevor emerged from Maud’s bedroom. She looked up at him.
‘How about you go downstairs and make a pot of tea for Mrs Powell,’ he said kindly, recognising the girl’s need to do something. ‘I think she could do with one.’
‘Maud?’ she asked.
Trevor turned away from her. ‘She’s going into hospital,’ he murmured. He could see Evan waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. He gritted his teeth, preparing to repeat the whole heartrending, unpleasant process he’d just gone through with Elizabeth.
‘There really isn’t anything else left for us to do except go to work.’ Charlie wrapped his arm round Diana’s shoulders as they watched the ambulance bump its way over the rough, unmade road, down the incline, past the vicarage, and around the corner into Llantrisant Road.
‘Come on, Di, cheer up,’ William ordered, putting on a brave face.
‘I’ll get my coat.’ Diana turned and walked back into the passage. She could hear Elizabeth already filling the wash boiler. Her aunt was obviously of the same opinion as Charlie. But then perhaps they were right, work might be the best antidote. Anything had to be better than moping around here thinking of Maud, and what she was going through right now.
‘It’s too late for me and Eddie to take out a cart now, Elizabeth,’ Evan called into the washhouse from the back kitchen. ‘I think I’ll go to town and get a bucket of whitewash to do out the ty bach. Can you think of anything else that wants doing while I’m at it?’
‘The front door could do with a coat of paint,’ Elizabeth said sharply.
‘Same green as before?’
‘Of course. There’s half a tin going to waste in the shed.’
‘In that case I’ll make a start and Eddie can get the whitewash.’
Eddie picked up his working and only coat from the row of pegs behind the door. Shiny with age and wear, it was a hand-me-down from Haydn, and as he was now outstripping Haydn in height, if not width, it was far too short for him. He stood next to Diana in the open doorway of the passage as he put it on.
‘Beats me how they can think of things like that at a time like this,’ he said sullenly.
‘What else are they going to think about?’ Charlie reprimanded gently. ‘No one can even visit Maud until Sunday.’
‘Well, they can still think of something other than the walls of the bloody ty bach!’ he exclaimed savagely.
‘Why don’t you come down the market with Will and me today?’ Charlie put on his own rough tweed jacket.
‘And I don’t want no bloody charity either,’ Eddie retorted moodily.
‘Not charity,’ Charlie said evenly, making Diana wonder if anything ever rattled him. ‘It’s gone nine o’clock. I’ll be way behind with cutting up the small joints that the old people are always after. You can help Will serve, while I see to the butchery side. All right?’ His ice-blue eyes focused confidently on Eddie.
‘All right,’ Eddie agreed, all belligerence and fight subsiding at the thought of spending what was left of the day on the market. His sister had been rushed to hospital. Was probably dying, if not already dead. And life was going on as though nothing had happened. Nothing at all.
The hands on St Catherine’s church clock were pointing to a little after nine-thirty when Diana walked into Ben Springer’s. She looked around, and her heart sank into her boots. She’d been so busy thinking of Maud that she’d forgotten about work, and Friday was the busiest day of the week next to Saturday. When the pits had been open, Thursday night was pay night, and the wives had got used to going into town to buy their dry goods and any bits and pieces they needed for the week, saving Saturday for fresh vegetable and Sunday joint shopping. There were no longer any pay packets given out in the closed and derelict pits on Thursday nights, neither was there enough money to stretch to buying all the necessities a family needed, but old habits died hard, and people still came into town in droves. And some of them even ended up in Ben Springer’s. Not many: most children in the town went barefoot, even in winter. A few of the lucky ones �
� whose parents had succumbed to the demands of the parish and sold off everything they had that was worth selling in order to claim parish relief – were wearing boots that had been provided by the ‘Miners’ Children’s Boot Fund’, a charity Ben had campaigned vigorously against, until he had been awarded the contract to supply them.
But that Friday morning Ben’s shop looked as though the depression had ended. The tiny area that served as both shop and fitting room was packed. Ben Springer was bending over the shapely, elegant foot of Anthea Llewellyn-Jones. He was crouched at just the right angle to look up her skirt, Diana noticed cynically as she surveyed the array of expensive gold leather spangled sandals laid out on the floor around them.
‘You’re late,’ he barked as soon as he caught sight of her.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Springer,’ she apologised quickly. ‘My cousin was rushed into hospital. She ...’
‘I’m sure no one here is the slightest bit interested in the comings and goings of your family,’ he sneered, still smiling up at Anthea Llewellyn-Jones. ‘Get your coat off and start work.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Diana ran out to the back and tore off her coat. Hanging it and her handbag on a hook in the storeroom, she tucked in her blouse, pulled down her skirt and tried her best to smile. After all, she had something to smile about. She still had a job, and that job meant she could stay in the same town as Maud and William. Anything had to be better than going into service. Even working for Ben Springer.
The first thing Maud saw when she opened her eyes was a shaft of brilliant sunlight cutting diagonally across the room. It illuminated a fairy world of gently swirling dust particles. Baby fairies waiting to be born, her sister Bethan had once called them. Overhead was a high, high ceiling. Far higher than anything she had ever slept under before. Green-painted metal rods stretched across it, locked into place three or more feet below the cracked plaster. She moved her chin down and saw dark green painted walls, the iron headboards of the bed opposite. Then, she realised where she was.
Tears escaped from beneath her eyelids as she closed her eyes and stretched out her body. She moved cautiously, feeling stiff, strange and awkward. But for all of that she was warm and reasonably comfortable. Crisp cotton sheets brushed against her skin, so different from the warm fleecy flannelette sheets that her mother insisted on using until the end of May. She could almost hear her lecturing, hectoring voice ...
‘Don’t cast a clout until May’s out.’
A rough, hollow coughing shook her back into harsh reality. She opened her eyes again and looked at the bed next to her own, where a painfully thin, dark-haired girl was sitting up, spitting into a jar that she held cradled in her hands. Seeing Maud, she smiled weakly in embarrassment as she closed the lid on the jar and returned it to the top of her locker.
‘I hate doing it, but they make you,’ she explained as she plucked at her bedcover with a claw like hand and fell back on to her pillows.
‘No one can make you do anything,’ Maud retorted, unthinkingly voicing one of Eddie’s favourite opinions.
‘They can here. You’ll see.’
‘Our new arrival is awake, I see.’ A sister, resplendent in dark blue uniform, the long sleeves finished with a set of immaculate stiffly starched cuffs, walked over to Maud’s bed, a trainee nurse trailing in her wake. Maud categorised her as a trainee from the uniform. She knew it well: her sister Bethan had worn it, and not that long ago.
She had often wished for her sister’s presence since Bethan had gone to London, but never more so than at that moment. If only Bethan could walk into the ward right now. Down the central aisle, pause at the foot of her bed ...
‘Turn back the sheets, Jones,’ the sister demanded. The trainee speedily did as the sister asked. The sister retrieved Maud’s wrist and proceeded to take her pulse.
‘Am I in the Graig Hospital?’ Maud asked, already knowing the answer, although she’d never been inside the place before.
‘You are.’
‘How soon can I go home?’ Maud ventured timorously, remembering all the times she’d heard people say, ‘It’s easy enough to go into the Graig, plenty do it. But precious few ever come out other than feet first.’
‘You’ve only just been admitted, my girl,’ the sister said curtly. ‘We’ll have no talk of going home from you. Not yet.’ She dropped Maud’s hand abruptly, and went to the bottom of the bed where she picked up a clipboard that hung from the foot-rail. She scribbled something on it then peered at Maud over the top of her thick-lensed, metal-rimmed spectacles. ‘You ever been in hospital before?’ she demanded.
‘No,’ Maud faltered, debating whether to tell her that her sister Bethan had nursed on the maternity ward. Then she remembered all the gossip generated by Bethan’s elopement and pregnancy, and decided against it.
‘Well the rules here are simple and few,’ the sister lectured in a voice that boomed down the long ward and back. ‘If you need anything, anything vital like a bedpan that is, you call out loud and clear for a nurse. Understand?’
‘Yes sister,’ Maud squirmed in embarrassment.
‘And give yourself, and us, plenty of time. My nurses and ward maids have more than enough to do without clearing up unnecessary messes. Understand?’ she repeated.
‘Yes sister,’ Maud whispered, thoroughly humiliated.
‘Just as long as you realise that you’re only to call us when it’s really essential. If you do that we’ll come running when you shout. If you start calling us for any trivial reason we’ll soon slow our pace. It’s as simple as that. And you’ll be the loser, because you, young lady, on doctor’s orders are not allowed out of bed at all. Not to wash, not to toilet, not to anything. Your foot is not to touch the floor, under any circumstances. Am I making myself clear?’
‘For how long?’ Maud asked, horrified by the thought of doing absolutely everything – washing, eating, sleeping, even ‘toileting’ as the sister put it – within the confines of this one narrow bed.
‘Until the doctor says otherwise. Are you comfortable now or do you want a bedpan?’ the sister asked insensitively.
‘I’m fine,’ Maud lied wretchedly, fighting back the tears that were pricking at the backs of her eyes.
‘When you cough, spit out whatever you bring up into the sputum jar on your locker. And mind you do just that. Don’t try to swallow it. It will only contaminate your stomach. And then you’ll have a sick stomach as well as sick lungs.’
‘My father and mother?’ Maud ventured.
‘Your family know where you are.’ The sister tucked in the sheet the trainee had wrenched out in order for her to take Maud’s pulse, effectively sealing Maud back into her bed again. ‘Visiting is for one hour every Sunday afternoon from two to three, and on Wednesdays from six to seven at doctor’s discretion. If you get over-excited, you risk what little health you have, and that could result in doctor being forced to cancel your visiting.’
When Maud didn’t reply to this standard conclusion to her pep talk, the sister actually wondered if she’d been too hard on the poor girl. She brushed aside the thought almost as soon as it entered her head. With only two qualified nurses, three trainees and two ward maids to see to the needs of thirty-five female patients in the various, but invariably messy, terminal stages of tuberculosis, it was probably just as well that the girl knew the full facts of her position from the outset.
Chapter Fifteen
Jenny Griffiths knew that Maud had been taken into the Graig Hospital less than ten minutes after the ambulance had left the street. Glan’s mother had waited only as long as it took her to check with Haydn (the politest and therefore the least likely of the Powell clan to tell her to mind her own business) that it was the Graig that Maud was being taken to, before walking into her back kitchen to take off her apron and put on her coat. As an afterthought she tied a scarf over her metal wavers, and picked up the worn and string-mended wicker basket that had held her shopping for the entire thirty-two years of her married life. Th
en she hurried down the Avenue (she hadn’t used the short cut through Rhiannon Pugh’s house since Rhiannon’s lodger, Phyllis Harry, had given birth to an illegitimate child a few months before) and headed for Griffiths’ shop, confident in the knowledge that she’d be the first one to impart the news to whoever was gathered there.
Jenny was serving old Mrs Evans who lived above the fish and chip shop opposite, with her daily ration of four Woodbines, two ounces of cheese and half a loaf of bread when Mrs Richards bustled in. Without pausing for breath, Mrs Richards interrupted the story that Mrs Evans was telling Jenny, about the boys that had taken to knocking her door after tying jam jars of unmentionable substances to her doorknob.
‘You can just imagine,’ Mrs Evans wailed dolefully, wringing her hands. ‘It flew all over me. Soaking and sticking to my skirt and jumper, and the stink ... you wouldn’t believe the stink!’
‘I would,’ Jenny enthused, before she realised what she’d said. Hopefully Mrs Evans had changed her clothes and washed, but the odour of the ty bach still clung to her frail and aged frame.
‘Maud Powell’s in hospital!’ Arms folded across her inadequate bosom, Mrs Richards stood back, waiting smugly for the impact of her news to hit her audience, but Mrs Evans continued to witter on about ‘filthy boys’ and ‘foul stinks’, oblivious to Mrs Richards’ presence, let alone her gossip. ‘Maud Powell’s been rushed into hospital. The Graig,’ Mrs Richards embellished her first revelation, but still failed to gain Jenny or Mrs Evans’ attention. ‘Maud Powell’s in hospital,’ she shouted at the top of her voice, yet she had to repeat herself twice before Jenny, odd cigarettes and triangular sweet bag in hand, turned to face her.
‘She haemorrhaged,’ she said proudly, airing her knowledge of the word. ‘Haydn told me all about it,’ she announced, heavily embroidering the truth. At the mention of Haydn, Jenny turned pale.
‘Mind you,’ Mrs Richards slammed a red, work-roughened hand down on the counter, ‘I said when that one came home from Cardiff – I said to my Viv and my Glan – she’s done for. They’ve worked her to death, that’s what they’ve done. You could see it in her eyes. And her mouth. It always goes to the eyes and mouth first,’ she asserted knowledgeably. ‘The eyes go sort of dead looking, and the teeth – well they suddenly seem too big for the mouth, if you know what I mean.’
Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon Page 19
