* * *
Elizabeth sat up in the parlour all night. She was conscious of one thing and one thing only. Of the depth to which her children had sunk. Haydn working night after night in the Town Hall rubbing shoulders and heaven only knew what else, with chorus girls drunken spivs, played out musicians – the dregs of the theatrical world. Eddie practically living in the gym at the back of the Rupera Hotel, fighting, smashing men’s faces in and having his own beaten in for a pittance, and even more sickening because he enjoyed the feel and smell of violence. Bethan spending her evenings in public halls where drink was sold. Going out with men, drinking – and no doubt allowing herself to be pawed like an animal.
She recalled the time when she’d been able to control almost all of their waking moments.
Almost all, because she’d never been able to prevent them from visiting Leyshon Street. They’d been such plump, pretty children. She’d taken pleasure in bathing them, dressing them in warm flannel nightgowns and tucking them up in cosy beds. Most of the time they’d paid heed to her and done what she’d wanted them to. Now … now she felt as though her world was breaking up, her values shattering, and the children she’d struggled to keep clean and fed had gone the way of all the worthless working-class children around them.
She finally had to accept that none of them would now aspire to climb out of the back streets of the Graig, let alone to greatness.
Neither Haydn nor Eddie would become a minister of God like her father and uncle. The girls wouldn’t teach as she had done. Instead, Bethan, the most intelligent of all of them, had become a nurse. She wrinkled her nose at the thought of what Bethan did every day of her life. Messing with people’s naked bodies. Women in childbirth … she shuddered in disgust, wishing she’d never borne any of them. All motherhood was pain. The pain of conception – of birth, and this – the ultimate – and worst pain of all – the pain of losing them.
At a quarter to six in the morning Bethan lifted down the cardboard suitcase she’d carried her clothes home in from Cardiff. Then she remembered the look on her father’s face when she’d threatened to move out. Swallowing her pride she put it back on top of the wardrobe and washed and dressed ready for work.
She had to walk through the kitchen to go out the back. Her mother was alone, engrossed in black leading the stove. If she heard her entering she made no sign of it, nor did she acknowledge her.
For the next few days a mixture of mortification and smouldering anger kept Bethan away from the house as much as possible. She went there only to sleep. She ate her breakfast, dinner and tea, such as they were, on the ward, and had supper at Megan’s, buying bloaters, meat pies, pasties and slices of brawn in the grocer’s opposite the hospital to offset the cost to her aunt.
Megan, used to the vagaries of her brother-in-law’s household, was quietly supportive. Bethan’s father and her brothers tried to smooth things over, and Maud complained that she hardly saw her, but she excused her absences with brief references to pressures of work.
She wasn’t exaggerating about that. Her shifts began at six thirty in the morning and finished at seven in the evening.
Afterwards she stayed behind in sister’s office, studying until ten or eleven o’clock. The midwifery certificate covered a vast amount of both text and practical knowledge, and following Matron’s suggestion she made full use of the small library kept locked in the cupboard of Squeers’ office.
She soon found out that Matron had told her the truth. It was difficult to do a full day’s work and study at the same time. When she’d been a probationer in Cardiff Infirmary concessions to studying time, scant though they’d often been, had at least been made. Squeers didn’t even pay lip service to the idea. And now she and Laura were qualified the sister took care to see that every minute of their ward time was spent on their feet and working.
But although the job was demanding she enjoyed it, and she was grateful that it left her very little time to think of what was happening at home – or of Andrew John.
She looked for him constantly and even saw him occasionally, but never alone. He was either on ward rounds with his father and Trevor, or they were both gowned and masked with a patient lying between them. It didn’t help when Laura returned from a day off in the middle of the week with bright shining eyes, a definite lilt to her voice and tales of an outing with Trevor, whose free time had miraculously coincided with hers. Flushed with, if not love, at least the beginnings of fondness, Laura renounced her claims to Andrew in favour of Bethan. Bethan scoffed at Laura’s teasing but it didn’t stop her from manoeuvring to get close to Andrew whenever he visited the ward.
Envy hadn’t been part of Bethan’s nature until she watched Trevor and Laura during the week that followed. She grew taciturn and silent, particularly in Laura’s presence. Totally preoccupied with thoughts of Andrew she regretted what she saw as her dark, Amazonian figure, contrasting it with Laura’s pert, petite appearance.
Would Andrew have asked her out again if she’d been prettier? More talkative, like Laura?
She grew paler, lost weight, and close to the end of her unbroken stint of duty, she felt both physically and emotionally drained. She had a two day break coming to her, but she was dreading it.
She’d toyed with the idea of spending most of it in the reading room in Pontypridd’s lending library, resolving to get up early and study in the morning after buying a few dainties in town. She would invite herself to Megan’s for tea and supper. But she took no pleasure in the prospect. In fact she took pleasure in very little except Haydn’s good fortune in getting work, and the rapid progression of her studies.
Two days before she was due to take her leave Squeers came down with influenza. The night sister was moved to day duty, and Matron sent for Bethan and asked her if she’d work two nights, to cover for the night sister’s absence. Pleased to be singled out for the responsibility, she agreed, leaving late in the afternoon to catch a few hours’ sleep before returning for the night.
She tossed restlessly on the bed from three o’clock until five, then finally rose to wash and dress. Downstairs she walked in on the entire family, who were sitting around the table in the kitchen eating tea.
Her father, Maud, Haydn and Eddie greeted her warmly, and for the first time in over a week she was persuaded to join them. Her mother had made an enormous bread pudding, heavy on the stale bread and light on the fruit, like all the others she’d baked since Evan had been put on short time, but it was topped by a thin layer of delicious sugary pastry.
Cooking, like the other domestic skills, had been studied by Elizabeth until she had passed from mere proficiency to mastery. The only factor that blighted her recipes was the quality of food she could afford to buy.
Evan, airing paternal pride, asked Bethan how she was progressing with her studies, but the rest of the family were even more silent than usual. Maud had caught a cold and coughed between mouthfuls of warm pudding and tea. Bethan laid her hand on her sister’s forehead and discovering that she had a temperature, suggested that her sister go to bed after the meal. Before Elizabeth could complain about walking up and down stairs with trays, Evan offered to make a batch of the home made, vinegar based remedy that Caterina used to brew whenever one of the family went down with a cold.
Eddie had been withdrawn and sullen since the night he’d been used as a punch bag in the gym and he ate quickly. Without a word he carried his plate to the washhouse and disappeared out of the back door and up the garden, ignoring Haydn’s shouts.
‘I was going to walk down the hill with him,’ Haydn complained, finishing his pudding.
‘I’ll walk down with you,’ Bethan offered, picking up his plate as well as her own.
‘I’ve got to go in five minutes.’
‘So have I.’
Bethan left the plates in the enamel bowl on the wooden board next to the sink in the washhouse and looked for the stone foot warmer that only came out when one of them was ill. She found it behind a sack of
carrots on the floor of the pantry.
‘Who’s that for?’ Elizabeth demanded when she saw her filling it with hot water from the boiler.
‘Maud, she has a fever,’ Bethan replied when she’d recovered from the shock of hearing her mother speak directly to her.
Elizabeth sniffed loudly, but said nothing more.
Bethan followed Maud upstairs and tucked her into bed with a scarf around her throat, a handkerchief under her pillow and the foot warmer at her feet.
‘Dad will be up in a minute with some of Mam Powell’s tonic. See you in the morning.’ She smoothed Maud’s hair back, away from her face.
‘Thank you,’ Maud croaked, snuggling under the bedclothes.
‘What are big sisters for?’
‘To pay for little sisters to go to the pictures?’ Maud suggested hopefully.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Bethan pronounced authoritatively, lifting the blankets up to Maud’s chin.
‘Not now, but I might be on Saturday.’
‘We’ll see.’ Sleep well, see you in the morning.’
Although the sky was heavy with the promise of rain, it was still dry when Haydn slammed the door behind them.
‘Long time no talk, Beth,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Sometimes I think all there is to life is work, work and then more work.’
‘I know what you mean,’ he sympathised. ‘It’s the same in the Town Hall. “Haydn get me this, Haydn get me that, Haydn clean this floor. Haydn sweep up between the seats. Haydn …”’
‘Last in always gets the dirty work to do. I thought you knew that.’
‘I do. I just didn’t realise there were so many bloody awful jobs that needed doing.’
‘Haydn!’
‘Sorry, Beth.’
‘You didn’t think it would be all glamorous did you? Delivering flowers to the chorus girls and wild parties backstage after the shows.’
‘No … oo …’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve hung around the Town Hall too long for that. But then again a man can live in hope.’
‘Hanging around isn’t the same as working in a place.’
‘I’ve found that out. Take no notice, Beth. You’ve caught me at a bad time. Other people get early morning willies with me it’s the evening. Besides, I know I’m damned lucky to have any kind of a job. And this one –’ he grinned slyly, ‘well it does have its compensations. Some of those chorus girls you mentioned aren’t half bad.’
‘I see.’ She gave him a telling look. ‘Does Jenny Griffiths’ know how you feel about them?’
‘That’s the other thing’ he said mournfully. ‘Working these hours, I only get to see her on Sundays.’
‘You could give her a ticket for the show and walk her home afterwards.’
‘Now that’s an idea.’
‘If you do, don’t forget to check with her father that it will be all right for her to be out so late.’
His mouth fell into a downward curve, ‘Harry’s all right, but her mother thinks Jenny could do a lot better than me.’
‘Then she’s a fool,’ Bethan protested indignantly.
‘Thanks, sis, I can always rely on you to stick up for me. By the way,’ he said casually, ‘while we’re on the subject, who’s this doctor?’
‘What doctor?’
‘Don’t give me that. The one who brought you home early Sunday morning.’
‘It wasn’t Sunday morning. It wasn’t even midnight.’
‘Whatever.’ Haydn refused to be side tracked. ‘Who is he?’
‘He works in the hospital, I hardly know him. He just happened to have a couple of spare tickets for the circus.’
‘In the Empire Theatre Cardiff?’
‘I haven’t noticed a circus in Pontypridd this week,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Beth, you don’t just happen to have a couple of spare tickets for something like that. Bill Twoomey’s been trying to get hold of some for his family for weeks, and working in the Town Hall, he’s in the know. They’re like gold.’
‘People always feel they owe their doctor a favour,’ she said carelessly. ‘Which reminds me, I’ve a bone to pick with you. Thank you for putting the money back in my box, but where’s the overcoat I asked you to get our Eddie?’ she asked, deliberately steering the conversation away from her personal life.
‘I wouldn’t have made a dog’s bed out of the ones in Wien’s.’
‘I was afraid of that when Laura told me the price. You’re still working for Wilf aren’t you?’
‘Yes, and I’m always on the lookout, you know that.’
‘Have you been paid yet?’ she asked shrewdly.
‘By Wilf? Every shift I do. On the nose.’
‘Not by Wilf, by the Town Hall?’
‘Got to work a week in hand,’ he grumbled.
‘I thought so.’ She unzipped her shopping bag and reached down for her purse. ‘Here.’ She tried to slip him half a crown.
‘No, Beth. We can’t keep relying on you to bail us out.’
‘Did Dad say that to you?’ she asked suspiciously, remembering her outburst.
‘No.’
‘Go on, take it,’ she insisted. ‘Pay me back next week. You’ll be moneybags then.’
‘I don’t need it.’
‘I know you don’t, but I don’t like the thought of you walking around without any money in your pocket. And if you see something that will suit our Eddie you can always put a bob down so they’ll hold it. Quick, take it, or I’ll be late.’
‘All right then,’ he agreed finally. ‘Thanks, Beth.’
‘See you in the morning.’
‘It’s funny to have a sister working nights.’
‘It’s funny to have a brother working,’ she smiled.
‘It’ll be funnier still to have two working.’
‘Is there any chance of our Eddie finding anything?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Not that I’ve heard.’
‘Then he’s still going down the gym?’
‘Did you really think he’d stop because of what we said?’
‘No. Just wishful thinking.’
‘He’s got to make his own life, Beth. We all have.’
‘Said with the wisdom of old age?’ she laughed.
‘You don’t do anywhere near enough of that, sis.’
‘What?’
‘Laugh,’ he said seriously as he walked away down High Street.
She had little time to think about what Haydn had said as the tail end of the evening dragged on into night. The maternity ward was never peaceful. As soon as one babies’ feeding time was over, there was the next to supervise. In between there were restless mothers to soothe and an admission who’d gone into labour three weeks before time. With only one second-year trainee and two ward maids to help her, she did the best she could, detailing the maids to the routine tasks of feeding and changing the babies, and entrusting the care of the patient to the trainee when she had to leave the labour ward. At a quarter-past midnight the baby was born with a minimum of fuss, but before the trainee could take him to the nursery the mother began to haemorrhage.
Bethan’s first instinct was to shout for help, then with a sinking heart she realised she was it. The senior nurse on duty wasn’t even a qualified midwife.
Taking a deep breath; she subdued the tide of panic.
‘Take the baby to the nursery, then bring a sterile pack and the drugs trolley straight here. Then telephone for the duty doctor. Hurry!’ she shouted as the trainee stared, mesmerised by the rapidly deepening puddle of blood on the rubber lined bed sheet.
The girl looked from the bed to Bethan, wrapped a towel tightly around the baby, and ran.
At that moment the responsibility she had so proudly assumed crushed Bethan with the devastating effect of a collapsing pit shaft.
The woman on the bed was slipping away, already in the semi-comatose state that precedes death from massive blood loss.
Bethan lifted the thin calloused hand,
took the barely perceptible pulse and studied the patient. Her face was prematurely aged, lined by years of worry, childbearing and trying to make ends meet.
The admission card had detailed this as her eleventh pregnancy, but Bethan had no way of knowing how many of her other children had survived, or how many orphans there’d be if she died.
The trainee returned with the trolley and Bethan set to work, praying that her fumbling efforts would be enough; she spent the following hour and a half pounding and kneading the patient’s uterus, desperately trying to recall everything that had been done in similar cases when she’d stood by as an interested pupil.
Long before the hour and a half was up she had good cause to regret her lack of foresight in not realising just how swift and sudden the transition from onlooker to nurse in charge would be.
‘Trouble, Nurse Powell?’
She turned her head. Andrew was standing in the doorway of the delivery room, cool, unflustered and incredibly handsome in a black evening suit, boiled shirt, black tie and white collar.
‘The patient’s haemorrhaging,’ she said harshly, turning back to the bed. ‘I’m doing what I can, but it’s not enough.’
He stepped closer, taking off his coat. ‘What do you think?’ he asked briefly. ‘Operate?’
‘You’re the doctor.’
‘And you’re the nurse,’ he said evenly. ‘You must have seen a dozen cases like this.’
‘Operate,’ Bethan agreed.
* * *
He used the small theatre in the outside corridor, and as Bethan couldn’t leave the ward in charge of a trainee, he asked the sister from the men’s ward who had a qualified staff nurse in attendance to help him. As soon as the duty porters wheeled the patient out, Bethan checked the ward.
The maids had just finished the two o’clock feed and, for once, all the mothers were either sleeping or resting peacefully. She told the trainee to clean the labour room and change the bed and asked one of the maids to make tea and bring her a cup in the sister’s office. Emergency or not, she still had to update the patients’ record cards, and she felt as though someone, or something, had pulled her energy plug. It would be difficult to keep her eyes open until her shift finished at seven.
Pontypridd 01 - Hearts of Gold Page 13
