It Won't Hurt a Bit
Page 5
‘I’d prefer you any day, Henry,’ I said and went to say goodbye to the patients.
9
NEW ARRIVALS
It was different coming to Aberdeen this time. Had I not been a Grantown sophisticate with a doctorate in cleaning I’d have jumped for joy. Instead, I was cool and soignée, assuring Beth that I’d easily find my own way to the Nurses’ Home.
‘We can catch up at the weekend then,’ she said. ‘We’re thinking of having a party.’
This time I didn’t need to be told I’d arrived. Up a small incline offering an easy view over the hospital, the Home had lost nothing of its barrack-like exterior but as I’d already learnt, outward appearances can be deceptive.
Some yards away was a tennis court disused except by seagulls for target practice. A keen wind whistled through the rusting mesh with a monotonous whine and so chilling to the backbone, I rang the bell fast.
To my surprise, the door immediately burst open and a girl carrying suitcases tumbled out.
‘My mind’s made up and I’m never coming back!’ she called to someone over her shoulder. She was tall but with the defeated slump of a hockey captain whose team had just lost.
‘Why won’t you give it one more go?’
‘No. And it’s no good you trying.’ The girl’s tone softened, and she paused for a moment, the wind tugging at her skirt as if trying to hold her back. ‘Sister Cameron, you’ve been a wonderful support and done your best, but if I did stay,’ she thought for a moment then grimaced, ‘I’d murder Sister Gorightly, and she’s ruined enough of my time already.’
She had startled the gulls into flight, their cries echoing her distress. They wheeled high above as she ran down the stone steps oblivious to the bulk of her luggage.
‘Wait!’
But she’d fled, going so fast I thought she might overtake my taxi. Her heels clattered down the road until the noise faded into the distance.
‘Yes – well, well – by Jove! Not quite the welcome you expected. I hope you don’t think this happens every day. A clash of personalities – that’s all.’ There was concern in the voice of the small trig woman presumably Sister Cameron though her badge only said Home Sister. She held up the oiling can in her hand. ‘Maybe I should have used this on the lassie instead of the door,’ she sounded rueful, ‘but och, don’t you be looking so worried. Yon nurse was always homesick and I’m thinking Sister Gorightly was a grand excuse.’ She twinkled a welcome and held open the door. ‘Come away, come away.’
I stepped in and the door slammed behind as if on a spring.
‘At least the oil’s worked there then. Now what would be your name?’
The big entrance hall was imposing, impersonal and empty with a bust of Florence Nightingale dead-eyeing proceedings. Sister Cameron’s shoes clicked on the marble floor as she went to her glass-fronted office, like a jailer’s headquarters with all its keys.
She picked one out and ticked a list.
‘Nurse Macpherson!’ She handed over a key marked 321. ‘That should be easy to remember,’ she chuckled as if numbers were hilarious. She picked up a suitcase. ‘Here give me one. I’ll take you up to your room and because you’ve luggage we’ll take the lift.’
There was a classroom and a cloakroom area aggressively bristling with coat pegs nearby. ‘You’ll be there for the first three months. It’s the P.T.S., short for Preliminary Training School. You see they wouldn’t be wanting you near the patients just yet – and you with heather still between your ears.’ She had the bright-eyed look of a Skye terrier.
A feeling of dutiful learning followed us to the lift, an ugly ironwork tucked in a dark corner. Sister Cameron marched towards it holding the suitcase as if it were feather light then, putting it down, gave the door a good shake. ‘It’s not for everyday use. You young girls are fine and fit and the stairs are grand exercise. Anyway, it’s just a touch temperamental.’
A well-aimed kick at the whole contraption seemed to do the trick, though it needed a small ankle nip to get me aboard.
‘Okey dokey!’ sang my minder, following with a carefree spring and clanging the door shut whilst posting herself a pandrop.
Slowly and with a lot of murderous creaks, we inched heavenward, eyeball to eyeball, whilst the suitcases jostled for position: reluctant travellers in a peppermint world.
Meantime and between pandrop crunches, Sister Cameron explained, ‘I’ve put you on the third floor beside another new girl. She’s here already and I’m thinking she’s a wee bit homesick. No medical cure for that you’ll know. I expect the others will be here shortly too but they’ll be on another floor. We like to mix older students with the new but don’t tell them I said that.’ She clapped her hands. ‘There’s actually not so many in your class so you’ll make chums all the sooner for that of it. Ah! Here we are.’
Grateful for survival, I followed as she went along a corridor, which, compared to downstairs, was livelier and brighter with towel-draped bathrooms, cluttered pantries and singing kettles. Behind some of the bedroom doors drifted sounds of transistors, chat and laughter.
‘321!’ With the air of a conjuror, Sister Cameron threw open a door. ‘And it’s all yours.’
Even if it didn’t have the same charm as my Ian Charles room, the yellow curtains, light furniture and red rug made a cheerful statement. Unlike patients, nurses weren’t expected to throw themselves out of windows, which were wide and looked over the city, its granite glitter so clinically clean it could, itself, have been a huge hospital. Beyond was the colourful edge of the North Sea: hard blue in the March light.
‘First and foremost, you’ll need to be reading these.’ An oily finger stabbed at a notice so big it practically obliterated the mirror. ‘We don’t want you burning to death so there’ll be no smoking either, and then you’ll need to unpack and mind you do it tidily, the maids don’t like cleaning up after other folk’s boorachs – it’s a fine Highland word for mess as you may well know. And then you could mebbe call on the lassie next door I was telling you about and don’t forget,’ she consulted her fob watch, ‘tea’s at five in the staff dining room in the hospital.’
With a kindly nod and in a menthol vapour, Sister Cameron headed back to the lift, ears pricked and presumably preparing for the next incarceration.
The suitcases had been dumped at the door and made the room feel temporary. I wasn’t in the mood for unpacking so I threw the rest of my stuff on the chair and sat on the bed savouring my title. Nurse Macpherson! I tried a bounce but the mattress was unyielding. I tried a few times more and was working up to a nice steady rhythm when there was a knock at the door.
‘Hello?’
A girl with hair even redder than mine stuck her head round the door. ‘Hi! Are you ok? You sound out of breath.’ She had mauve-rimmed spectacles which she adjusted by a combination of finger pushing and nose twitch. ‘I’m Maisie.’
‘I’m Jane and I was just celebrating being called Nurse. I’m trying to knock this bed into shape but it’s resisting. Come on in and have a seat.’ Cheered by the newcomer’s corkscrew curls and pink furry mules, I leapt to clear the chair.
‘Well that won’t fall any further.’ She stepped over the heap. ‘I’d done a fair bit of unpacking and was just starting to wonder if I was going to be the only one here when I heard you and Sister Cameron.’ She thought for a moment then added, ‘Actually the wall’s are so thin, I heard your conversation and then the crashing so I thought I’d better see you were alright. Anyway, I thought it might be your first time away from home too and you’d be bound to find it strange.’
Sister Cameron had hinted that Maisie might be homesick but there was something about her jaw which suggested certainty whilst she looked a little old for this to be her first time away.
‘I’m delighted you’re here. It is all new and a bit scary.’ I didn’t mention the runaway girl in case my new friend escaped as well. ‘It’s such a barn of a place I can’t imagine ever getting used to it.’
Her giggle was disconcerting but, grateful that I wasn’t expected to fall on my knees, I meekly followed and as we headed for the great unknown, asked Maisie what she used to do.
‘Worked in a corsetry department at home. I eventually got curious about what went on under the whalebones and left before the All In One got me.’ Like someone looking for change, Maisie felt about herself then twanged something elastic. ‘Peterhead’s alternative to the strait jacket.’
Her heels clopped gently as we tried the next landing, then stopped at big notices threatening dire reprisals should night staff be disturbed. The corridors were long, dark and so suffocatingly quiet, a snore could have started a riot. I found I was holding my breath.
‘I’ve got a terrible urge to scream,’ whispered Maisie clutching my shoulder. ‘Maybe we should try somewhere else. Let’s go downstairs and see if there’s more action there.’
Everything in the Home was on a big scale except for a small library which wore a learned air with rich blue carpet, red velvet curtains and by the look of their dull covers, improving tomes, stacked wall to wall. The sole occupant was a bluebottle frantically trying for freedom. Frustrated swears filled the room until Maisie threw a window open to free it and let silence back in.
We moved on to a huge sitting room complete with grand piano. The view over the hospital grounds was astonishingly boring unless you liked flat grass with uncomfortable-looking garden seats regimented round it. The indoor chairs were the same, planted and unloved upon a swirly patterned carpet.
‘It’s not very homely is it?’ Maisie tried out a chord on the yellow keys, but the sound was as bad as her accompanying warble whilst the long chintz curtains shivered as if in horror.
‘Next time we’re back, we’ll put on our tiaras. Come on, it’s time for tea.’ I closed the door with its Strictly Private sign. ‘I wouldn’t want to miss it. I’m hungry.’
‘I miss the slippers.’ Maisie’s impressively polished flat black shoes twinkled alongside as we reached the hospital. She looked earnest. ‘I’ve bought two pairs. I hope that’s enough. They say nursing’s really hard on your feet.’
But I was too busy to respond savouring the joy of walking along that green-floored corridor remembered from my interview. Sister Cameron had said we were to go to the staff dining room and now we were actually part of it.
We followed the smell of boiled cabbage, went upstairs and found the dining room, a drab hall with dark wood panelling meeting walls the colour of jaundice. A portrait of the Queen took pride of place above the food-serving area. She was dressed for a grander occasion and looking over rows of apparently colour-coded nurses sitting at tables.
‘They’re the staff nurses,’ Maisie whispered as we crept past a line of serious pink with white caps bent over their plates in single-minded concentration. ‘You know the students by the grey uniform and yon stupid hats that look like foolscap. Ha! Dead right! I wonder how they stay on.’
A maid in green noticed us and directed us to a table right at the back where there were others, conspicuous by their ordinary clothes.
‘Come and sit with us. We’re new too,’ a small plump girl beckoned. With blonde corkscrew curls exploding round a red-cheeked face, she was a cherub taking time off from a Christmas card.
‘Come and sit by us.’ With her dimples and little hands a blur of instruction and organisation, she was clearly one of God’s really useful little helpers. ‘Hello. I’m Rosie and,’ the hands whirled into action, ‘this is Isobel, Sheila, Jo and Hazel. See, I’ve remembered!’ She looked round the table in triumph.
‘You forgot me – everybody does,’ sighed a girl patting mousy hair as if to remind herself she was actually present.
‘I have not!’ Rosie was triumphant. ‘It’s Morag and it rhymes with toe rag. See!’
In a sensible grey suit with her self-effacing way it was hard to imagine anybody less like a tearaway, but Rosie’s attention had turned to the mince and cabbage lying in a terminal state at the side of Isobel’s plate. ‘You not hungry?’
Isobel pushed it aside. ‘No, not really. I’d my tea before I came.’
‘Are you from Aberdeen then?’ I asked, thinking with that elegance, height and cloud of black hair she should be on the front cover of a fashion magazine.
Isobel opened her mouth but Rosie was quicker: ‘She is. Hazel, Jo and me too. It’s a bit daft but living in’s the rules.’
‘Maybe the idea is for us to get to know each other. I’m really chuffed I’ve a room to myself. I’m looking forward to settling into it and the food’s fine if you’re hungry.’ Hazel spread a large dollop of butter onto a slice of white bread and bit into it with perfect teeth.
Whilst it was impossible to think of Isobel on frontline duties dealing with unmentionables in a sluice, Hazel, even if she was as elegant, was a bit more substantial and with a jolly manner – and her hair was straight.
‘Yer right, Hazel, an a droppie salt maks the difference.’ Sheila had a placid voice that wrapped around us like a comforting shawl. ‘An if, like me, ye hivna eaten since the 2:30 fae Inverurie, ye fairly tuck in.’ Food bunched her cheeks into downy peaches whilst she patted hair lacquered into a crash helmet. ‘So, eat up quines. It’s a lang time til breakfast.’ Her easy way was enviable.
Jo ate tidily and daintily. Her eyes were dark and watchful. ‘You must have arrived before me but how come you’re last here?’
We explained about our tour of the Home.
‘That solves that mystery,’ she said in her demure way. ‘I heard you when I was in the lift with Sister Cameron. She was going to stop it to investigate. I nearly died at the prospect of that old crate doing anything so efficient, though I did wonder who was making that bloody awful racket.’
‘That would have been the piano – it needs tuning.’ Maisie was quick.
Another table close-by had more recruits at it, their laughter and chat making a friendly noise and echoing ours, though Isobel was more impressed by my empty plate. ‘You must have been hungry.’
Aware she was twice my height and probably half my weight, I tried not to sound defensive. ‘I’d an early start.’
‘Me too,’ said Morag, sounding forlorn. ‘It’s a long, long way from Tain and by comparison, Aberdeen’s enormous. I feel a proper little country mouse.’ She nibbled her finger as if it was a corn ear.
Sighing but unable to compete, Rosie stacked the plates and marched us out of the emptying hall.
‘The maids need their time off.’ Her short legs pumped to keep up with Isobel’s easy lope. ‘Now let’s see if we can cheer you up, Morag. When we go back to the Home we’ll make a cup of tea and have it in your room – it’ll be a bit of company for you.’
Morag looked like my favourite auntie faced with a busload of relatives arriving unannounced and looking for refreshment. ‘No! Please don’t bother. It’s in a right old mess – there wouldn’t be room for you.’ In an agitated way, she squared her box jacket. ‘I’ve loads to do. Look, I’ll be fine.’ Still protesting, she hurried after Rosie.
‘We’ll go to mine then,’ Maisie called after her. ‘Come on, Hazel, Rosie’s about to give us a row. We’re falling behind.’
‘There’s plenty time. Three years in fact,’ said Hazel as we left the hospital. She nodded in the direction of the courts, ‘Anyone for tennis?’ Her laugh was like a drain being cleared.
We dawdled behind, taking in our surroundings. I hadn’t noticed the flowers bordering the side of the hospital. Their heads were turned to catch the last rays of a late sun. The wind still blew but came from a kinder direction. It stirred my hopes. I hadn’t expected the hosp
ital or new faces to feel so familiar so soon. I was sure we were going to be nurses – good nurses, all of us.
‘Come along,’ sang our leader and we lengthened our steps to please her and arrive at the Home together.
‘Well, well now, girls, have you had a nice tea?’ Sister Cameron bobbed out of her office. Her eyes missed nothing. A pandrop crunched.
‘Thank you, it was lovely,’ Isobel lied, not missing a beat.
‘Isn’t that grand, and I’m glad to see you’re making friends too. Now you be making sure you all have an early night now, so you’ll be fresh as fresh tomorrow. By Jove, yes.’ Highland valedictions followed us up the stairs.
Taking the steps two at a time, Maisie passed Rosie. ‘Wee leggies!’ she chuckled. ‘And it’s my room, Rosie, Morag’s not ready for a site visit.’
‘Well I’ll be your first visitor,’ said Rosie, sounding annoyed and running to catch up with her.
‘Isn’t this a lovely evening?’ Maisie sang as she threw open her door. For someone who didn’t appear that organised, her room had a military tidiness.
‘I’ve had plenty time to get sorted.’ She made an apologetic wave at the book shelves stacked with precision, the cosmetic bottles lined up on the dressing table like a firing squad. A bible lay on the bedside table. ‘I’ll have you know I keep immaculate drawers too.’
There was a bonding snigger then Jo suggested, ‘Maybe singing lessons could be more fun.’
As Morag sat primly on a hard chair, Hazel hunkered down to look at the mules peeping out from under the bed.
‘I bet Sister Cameron doesn’t know about the animals. What do you feed them on?’
‘Jane likes them too. Hey, folks, I’m sorry there’s not more room, but I’m sure the floor’s clean enough to sit on.’
‘Hmph!’ sniffed Rosie, plumping down and ruffling her celestial feathers. ‘We should have more chairs but the rooms are that pokey there wouldn’t be space.’