by Jane Yeadon
I was still carrying my suitcase. It gave the feel of a commercial traveller but unsure where to put it, I had to ask.
‘Your bedroom’s above the female ward. Silly girl, I didn’t notice you still had it. Why didn’t you say?’ She clicked her teeth in exasperation, ‘You could have left it at the stairs beside the female ward. There’s a staircase leading up to staff quarters.’ Taking in my figure, she screwed her face, ‘I’ll have to go and see what I can do about a uniform. I wonder if we’ve one that’ll fit.’ She sounded doubtful, then, pointing in the direction we had come from added, ‘Off you go now. It’s easy enough to find, and remember you start at six-thirty tomorrow and you’d better not sleep in either.’
My bedroom was a surprise. It was a sweet little Anne of Green Gables affair with low eaves, white painted furniture, and a wallpaper pattern of autumn leaves so richly coloured you might feel transported to a New England Fall. Through the small-paned window the fir trees moved restlessly whilst their cones bobbed in a dance as if trying to free themselves from their green and branch webbed captivity. In the distance the Cairngorms rose in blue unencumbered splendour.
Somewhat nearer were Wilma and Irene who shared the double room next door, and hearing noises, had come to interview the latest recruit.
‘I’m the kitchen maid – I help Evelyn the cook,’ said Irene by way of introduction. She was young with brown curly hair and had a cheerful managing way with her. ‘But Wilma here’s a ward maid like you. She’s going out in a minute with her steady – been going with him for ages.’
Irene sounded envious but I was more impressed with Wilma’s mop-holding capacity than her boyfriend-keeping power. With her slight figure and pale face she must be responsible for that acreage of cleanliness downstairs. I only had time to glimpse her hands, red and swollen before they swung behind her back on hearing Sister Gordon. ‘I see you’ve met the girls.’
She hurried in with a large pink dress hanging over her arm. ‘This’ll have to do until the other frocks come back from the laundry – it’s probably a bit big, but it’s all we have at the moment.’ She slung it over a chair. In her hand she had something white, plastic and round, ‘You’ll need it for a collar.’ She placed it over the frock, gave it a pat of approval, ‘Now that’s you sorted.’
Sartorial matters achieved, she nodded at Wilma. ‘Now Wilma is a good worker and will keep an eye on you – show you what to do. Isn’t that so?’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Wilma in a non-committal way. She turned to a mirror as if seeking acknowledgement from the pallid reflection. ‘Is she starting tomorrow? I won’t have to waken her will I?’
‘No,’ I was keen to be part of the conversation, ‘it won’t be a problem.’
It was a foolish thing to say. I’d no difficulty waking early, but should have risen even earlier to deal with the problem of fastening the neck button of the frock to include the plastic collar, a four-hole conundrum. Listening hard for sounds of activity from next door I was eventually able to rouse Wilma to help.
Yawning and stretching, with love bites on her neck, she looked at my unmarked one with disfavour. ‘It’s a bit thick – no wonder you can’t get the collar fixed.’ She took such a firm grip of my collar I began to feel light-headed.
‘Don’t strangle her,’ said Irene, looking alarmed, meanwhile climbing into a comfortable striped frock, and making a stirring gesture in her head’s direction by way of hair care. ‘Thank God I don’t have to worry about dickeys. Evelyn wouldn’t put up with them. Come on, you’ll meet her in a minute and Wilma, count yourself lucky Gordie’s off duty – she’d kill you if she saw that neck of yours.’
Wilma gave a mournful sniff. ‘I know and I think you’re going to have a hard day in that uniform, Jane, it’s much too big – Gordie must’ve thought you were twice the size.’
There was a reveille-like sound of pans clattering coming from the wards as we passed.
‘Night staff on bedpan round,’ Wilma explained, ‘then as soon as they get a cup of tea it’ll be time for another round and it’ll be our turn to dish them out.’
Her gloomy tones didn’t exactly herald a bright new dawn but at least Evelyn, in a kitchen fiefdom full of steaming pans and running taps, was cheerful and welcoming. ‘Well hello, Jane. And it’s a fine morning for a first day too,’ she said. She was buxom and bonny with a large teapot in hand. High heels castanet-clicking on the stone floor, she went to a row of mugs and started to fill them. ‘You’ll get breakfast later on but this should give you a jump start,’ she said. ‘Biscuit?’
I shook my head, retiring in the face of her oncoming bosom, ‘Tea’ll be lovely.’
In the wards, I’d an awful feeling I might see its return, for when Wilma and I got to them, I knew what our first task would be. Unsure if, this early, my stomach was up to the job, I followed her into the female ward sluice.
It was a small gloomy affair where bedpans were stacked on shelves as if on display whilst rubber mackintoshes were draped over rails to dry. The sinks were huge with one having a drainage hole apparently designed to cope with a flood, whilst nearby was a thing like a washing machine gaping its maw like a starving dragon.
‘That’s the bedpan steriliser,’ said Wilma banging the door shut with her foot, pressing a button and tutting. ‘There’s a bedpan in it – night staff must’ve forgotten to do it.’ The sound of rushing water playing on metal accompanied her as she took an armload of chrome from its shelf. ‘Watch what I do,’ instructed my minder, as she swished hot water over the pans, then with the expertise of a silver service waitress, placed a white cloth over them and returned to the ward. She’d a way of covering the ground at a tremendous speed in an effortless way. Whilst her top half looked immobile, her feet travelled with swift steps as precise as those of a windup toy. It was a struggle keeping up with her.
In the corner were wheeled screens covered in a nondescript and worrying colour of beige. With a deft flick of her ankle, Wilma manoeuvred them round each bed.
As she started to give out the bedpans, I thought she’d have as much trouble getting her patients up on their silver thrones as a lion tamer with his big cats at the circus. But within five minutes they were all enthroned and, now at the same level as Wilma, more aware of her neck than the job in hand.
‘Good gracious, Wilma, have you been trying to hang yourself?’ An old woman, her voice as creaky as her bones, struggled to point whilst squinting through spectacles greasy with finger marks.
‘Mrs Grant, you’re needing them cleaned,’ Wilma declared pointing back, ‘Jane here’ll do them for you. Her first cleaning job, ha!’
The ward’s attention changed direction subjecting me to the same scrutiny as Wilma’s neck.
‘New, eh?’ It sounded like a croon, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll keep you right. Just don’t be like Wilma. We thought she’d a brass neck, but just look at it!’
3
STUBBORN BOOLS
Wilma was in charge of the electric floor polisher. It was kept in a special place unlike the other cleaning material far more readily accessible in each sluice and there for my complete attention. After reminding me of my importance in the cleansing department, Wilma headed off to maintain that lustrous gleam on the corridor.
‘I won’t hear any bells with the machine going so you’ll have to answer them and as it’s usually for bedpans you know how to do them now,’ she’d said, apparently pleased with an unconventional training session where patients encouraged, Wilma disparaged and I’d got rather wet. ‘And one good thing about the male ward,’ she went on, ‘is you haven’t to do so many. Just be sure and clean their spit boxes, Gordie’s really fussy about that.’
But not, I figured, about the atmosphere. Here, and despite the high ceiling, it felt overly warm with an all-pervading smell of tobacco smoke.
Fresh air might help, I thought, and feeling bold threw open a window. ‘Good morning,’ I said, all hearty.
‘Shut that bloody window!’ shoute
d an old man, his hand placed firmly over his bonnet as if it might blow off. ‘It’s freezing in here.’
Oblivious to this exchange, another cried, ‘Nursie, nursie,’ and beckoned with a finger the colour of a keen tobacconist, ‘come ower here.’
I might have been a little crushed at so little appreciation for my toning up a ward’s ambience, but delighted with such an early promotion to nurse status, I rushed to his bedside.
‘How can I help?’
He furrowed his brow in real anxiety. ‘It’s ma bools. Ye see – they’re nay working.’ He patted his head as if to check it was still there.
‘Bools?’
‘Aye – hivna worked for a week. I’m thinking I should tell the doc.’
I gave an easy laugh. This was simple!
I soothed, ‘Now you really shouldn’t be worrying about them, though I suppose you must have a big farm with more than one bull. We’ve only got one on ours. Anyway, since you’re in hospital I expect your family’ll have got in touch with Mr Rafferty the vet.’
‘Jane! That man’s obsessed with his bowels,’ said Irene, coming into the ward with plates of steaming porridge. ‘Come on, it’s time for your breakfast.’ She twinkled, ‘I can’t wait till I tell Evelyn though. She’s going to have a right laugh.’
I didn’t think it was that funny and had a moment’s sympathy for my mother who used to hear this so regularly when she asked me to recall a school day where jokes with my pals in the back row were all that seemed worth remembering. I just knew the bools story would figure at the breakfast table where staff, coming on duty at eight o’clock, assembled.
Separated from the kitchen by a hatch, the dining room had the feel of a best room with some oil paintings depicting Highland cows looking glum, probably because they were up to their knees in water. A cheerier sight was the table set as for a banquet with junket and rhubarb taking centre stage and floured rolls, butter and jugs of cream laid out in generous quantity. Large bowls of porridge were handed through from the kitchen by the disembodied hand of Irene.
‘Have some porridge – good for the bools!’
‘Poor Jane! They’re only teasing,’ said Matron who had appeared looking so serene and unruffled she must have gone to sleep standing up, ‘but I bet you’ll not make that mistake again.’ As she took her place at the top of the table, a bell went off.
‘That’s for you,’ mouthed Wilma. ‘It’ll be Mrs Davidson. She’s in one of the side rooms. She always does that at meal times.’
It was from this room that the plaintive cries had come yesterday so I was curious to see the occupant. There was a red light outside her room, presumably to identify the caller, and it remained there until I was right beside her and had persuaded her to stop pressing the activating buzzer.
‘You’re new aren’t you? Let’s hope you get quicker.’ Red hair streaked with grey was scraped back from a wrinkled face and secured by a ribbon, its red a lot cheerier than her expression. ‘I hope you know why I’m ringing?’
I nodded.
‘Well don’t bring me a cold one or I won’t use it,’ she said, squirming down in bed, ‘and you’ll have to help me with it. I’m completely incapable of moving.’
A splendid ring glanced on her thin fingers. When I returned, it caught me as I tried to hoist her aboard.
‘You’re hurting me,’ she scolded, ‘and your hands are cold.’
‘All that glitters is not cold,’ I joked.
Mrs Davidson looked affronted. ‘What did you say?’
I made to speak but she waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, it’s no use arguing. I know cheek when I hear it so don’t bother making excuses. But when Matron comes round I’ll tell her the new girl with the red hair and long frock is too impudent to be on any staff, especially here where you’d expect everyone to have a professional manner and then,’ she gave a wriggle of pleasure, ‘you’ll have to go.’
Sick and worried, I returned to the dining room.
‘Everything alright?’ asked Matron.
‘Yes, Matron,’ I said, feeling like a prisoner at her last meal.
‘Good,’ she said, ‘take a good breakfast now – you’ll be needing to fortify yourself for your work. Sluice duties call for plenty energy.’
Meal over, I shot back to them. They hadn’t felt so welcoming before nor did scrubbing and scouring seem such safe pursuits. Every time I heard a footfall I thought it must be Matron coming to tell me my number was up, but gradually as the morning went on and nobody came, and despite catching my heel on the frock and the collar persistently coming unstuck, I grew confident enough to come out of hiding and move into the wards.
In the absence of Wilma, intent on motoring her machine on the freeway, and keeping her neck out of scrutiny, everybody in the female ward recognised I needed help. The ward buzzed with their comments. All experts on cleaning, they were keen to advise and, making me feel less foolish, recalled their young experiences when they too felt strange and hopeless.
‘But I’ve made too big a mistake and don’t think I’ll be here very long. I tried to make a joke with one of the other patients and she took umbrage,’ I told Mrs Grant, who with the keen interest of a professional was watching me brush the ward floor, ‘She says she’s going to get me the sack.’
‘Some folk are hard to please,’ commiserated Mrs Grant. She crawled out her hand and patted mine. ‘But Matron knows what everybody’s like so I wouldn’t worry if I was you. You don’t look like a lassie who’d harm a fly and the way you’re handling that brush tells me you’re going to be fine but I think you’ve forgotten the dust pan.’
She was doing her best to console. It was humbling to think she could consider such an optimistic future when she herself, a thin body, riddled with arthritis, was stuck in bed and dependent on others for the most basic of needs. I’d never heard bones creak before but hers made a sound like a door needing oiled.
I said, ‘One day when I’ve got the hang of this job, I’ll take you on a tour of the sluice. The chromes will be so shiny, we’ll throw away the mirror, and the U bend so spick and span, you’ll want to take your porridge out of it.’
Mrs Grant laughed, ‘Maybe I’ll be pleased to be so stuck in bed.’ She sighed and looked down on her misshapen fingers fumbling at her sheets. ‘This is what you get from too much scrubbing though, so don’t be a ward maid too long. Go for your training like you say you’re going to, make it as soon as you can and get plenty letters after your name. Then you can come back here as Matron.’ Her eyes crinkled in amusement.
‘There’s a lot of hilarity going on here and who’s taking my name in vain?’ Matron stood in the doorway. ‘This ward’s usually so quiet I thought I’d better see what’s going on and here I find you all trying to get rid of me.’
A spot of pink rosying her cheeks, Mrs Grant retorted, ‘You might go to Canada and never come back, so we’re training wee Janey here – just in case.’
She’d difficulty nodding her head but with a slow movement, she managed it. ‘And she could do with a better fitting dress and one with a collar. Look! One half of her’s being strangled whilst the other’s about to be drowned.’
Matron laughed. ‘Well, it’s obvious you’re on form this morning but I’ll see what I can do – even if I’m a bit pushed for time. I know Sister Gordon had a job finding one.’
‘I bet that crabbed old spinster didn’t try very hard,’ muttered Mrs Grant’s neighbour, but Matron continued as if she hadn’t heard, ‘I’m going away this evening so I thought I’d better come and say cheerio and I’ll be back before you can say you’ve missed me.’
Whilst a universal sigh of resignation engulfed the ward, mine was of relief. At least I hadn’t been given the sack. But after today, with Sister Gordon in charge, I thought we might all be in for a hard time.
4
STEPS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
A few weeks on, and following Wilma, I increased my stride. Approval ratings from both Sister Gordon and Mrs Da
vidson were still low but the other patients kept my spirits high, and even if Grantown’s night scene was disappointingly confined to a café, the odd dance and a picture house made me truly happy.
Still it was frustrating that the best I could do was give out glittering, nicely warmed bedpans and wish all patients free from beds with rigid rubber mackintoshes and rubber smells no regular washing or talcum powder dredging could disguise. Since the soft ease of polythene sheeting in the nursing world was still a distant prospect, fresh air might make those sheets less ghastly.
Watching me pass the kitchen, laden, smelling like a tyre factory and heading for outside, Evelyn and Irene called out in cheerful banter, ‘Is that you pretending to wash your dirty linen in public? We know it’s just an excuse to meet Henry.’
Even if I was on my way to sluice down soiled stuff, I quite liked these forays to the grey stone building at the back of the hospital with its big sinks, Henry’s garden implements and a washing line overlooking fields of well fed cattle. Henry had a craggy face, a kindly way and offered an affable diversion discussing his vegetable beds whilst I laboured over a sink sufficiently deep to drown in but blessedly removed from bell toll.
‘How are you doing?’
‘I was thinking I’d take my least favourite patient out here and see if she could swim.’
Henry laughed, ‘No prizes for guessing who you’re meaning. She drives everybody daft. Just don’t mind her.’ He picked up a rake and went off whistling with a blackbird striking up as if in competition.
Other than interspersing the moans with ringing her bell and complaining, I couldn’t see any reason why Mrs Davidson was in hospital, but Wilma had said it wasn’t a ward maid’s business, whilst mastering the vagaries of the floor polisher, scrubbing and high dusting was. Sister Gordon would have said the same but less politely so I asked Evelyn. At least she wouldn’t bite my nose off.
