A Wartime Nurse

by Maggie Hope

  Ken nodded and went off up the ramp, whistling ‘String of Pearls’. Theda walked on down without looking back and showed her pass to Tom at the gate and answered him as he said something or other, though what she said she hadn’t an idea.

  She bought a cup of coffee in the coffee shop and took it down to the far booth near the door at the back. She sat, stirring away at the muddy liquid, waiting for Ken to come, her nerves on edge. The feeling of euphoria which had enveloped her last night was fading; there was only the memory now overlaid with doubts.

  When he did come she would tell him that it was over. She wasn’t like that really; he had caught her at a bad time because her boyfriend had been killed at Arnhem and she was still too upset about it to think straight.

  She would tell him that she couldn’t meet him again. It was hopeless when they worked at the same hospital; she couldn’t afford for the hospital grapevine to get hold of any gossip about her which would harm her career. And besides, there was Mam and Da . . .

  ‘Hello.’

  She was jolted out of her thoughts as he slid into the seat opposite her. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll take you home when you’ve finished your coffee.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not going home. Thank you.’

  He raised his eyebrows over his coffee cup and smiled and the skin crinkled round his grey eyes. ‘Well, then, come for a drive.’

  The front door opened and Theda popped her head round the wooden partition of the booth. ‘It’s Nurse Cullen and Nurse Elliot,’ she whispered.

  ‘Does it matter?’ he asked, then as he saw her expression he realised that it did. ‘Come on then, we’ll go.’

  They slipped out of the back door as the nurses were ordering cups of Bovril at the counter. ‘Is there a cream cracker with it?’ Nurse Cullen was asking as the door closed behind them.

  The car was round the corner in Kingsway and in two minutes they were on their way. He cast her a sideways look as they sped down the road and his eyes were dancing with merriment.

  ‘Exciting, isn’t it?’

  ‘Are you making fun of me?’ Theda demanded.

  ‘No, but I’m not sure I see the need for ducking about in doorways.’ He took one hand from the wheel and put it over hers. ‘It’s no business of the hospital, you know – we’re both free. I mean, we’re not on hospital property now, are we?’

  ‘No.’

  She pulled her hand away and stared out of the window. She tried to remember all the arguments she had marshalled in her head but her thoughts were too confused. They were approaching Winton Village, turning up the lane that led to the manager’s house, she suddenly noticed.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Well, I thought we needed somewhere to talk. Uncle Tucker will be back, I want him to meet you.’

  ‘I’d rather not go in. Anyway, I know him, of course I do.’

  Ken slowed the car to a snail’s pace. ‘He’ll be pleased to meet you properly, though. And he’s not the sort to pry into my affairs. We’ll be able to talk privately after dinner, he’ll be working in his study.’

  ‘Still, I’d rather not.’

  Ken stopped the car and turned to her. ‘Where would you like to go then?’

  ‘I have to be back at the hospital soon.’

  ‘But you’re not on duty until the morning.’

  ‘No,’ Theda conceded. ‘But when I’m sleeping at the hospital I have to be in at a reasonable time. You know what Home Sisters are like: moral guardians of the nurses.’

  ‘You can stay at home tonight then.’ He started the car and accelerated down the lane. He turned the corner and sped up to Durham Road, and out into the country. He said no more until they were turning up a lane beside an inn about seven miles up the road. She should object to his high-handedness, she thought, but she did not.

  ‘Come on, we have to talk somewhere and I for one am not sitting out in the cold.’ He was holding the door of the car open for her. Biting her lip, Theda got out and allowed him to take her arm and lead her through a door labelled ‘Snug’. It was a small room with only a hatch from the main bar where drinks were served. Ken rang the bell at the side of the hatch and stood drumming his fingers on the counter. Theda sat down in the corner and watched as a man came to the opening.

  ‘Evening, sir.’ An elderly man, he barely glanced at her as Ken asked for whisky. ‘No whisky, sir. Beer only. Pint? Maybe a shandy for the lady?’

  As Ken placed the glasses on the table and sat down beside her Theda heard a piano tinkling away out of tune in the bar next-door. But the barman must have closed a door between them for the sound was cut off suddenly and they were alone. She was very conscious of his nearness.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about last night,’ said Ken. ‘What about you, do you want to go on?’

  He was very direct. Theda gave him a startled glance then stared at her glass. The lemonade had put a thick white froth on the top of the beer. She lifted it to her lips for something to do and it put a white mark on her upper lip which she licked away quickly with the tip of her tongue.

  ‘Well . . .’ What was she going to say to him? Oh, yes. It was never going to happen again, she had been caught at a bad time last night, that was it. She was very aware of him beside her, and wished he would move away. He was clouding her senses. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Ken kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘Wait here,’ he said, and walked out of the snug. Going to the lavatory no doubt, she thought, she would have to go herself soon. She looked around the tiny room, the wallpaper so brown from tobacco smoke that it was practically indistinguishable from the dark-painted woodwork. There was just one light-bulb, hanging from the ceiling in a fly-blown glass shade. It gave out very little light. Still, she didn’t suppose they needed much light, the folk who came here.

  The door opened. ‘Come on,’ said Ken, and held out his hand. She rose to her feet and took it. He led her outside and round the back of the inn and through another door and up a flight of stairs. She thought of asking him where they were going but didn’t, simply followed him into a bedroom which was almost filled with a double bed and washstand with a blue and white jug and bowl set and a single chair by the bed.

  ‘I must use the lavatory,’ she said and could have bitten out her tongue.

  ‘Down the hall. Second door on the right.’

  ‘All right?’ asked Ken as she slipped back into the room. He smiled. ‘I told the landlord I was on leave and we only had one night together before I had to go back to France.’

  A remnant of her former self was sceptical. ‘I bet he believed you too.’ He laughed and took her in his arms and she melted, feeling the hardness of him against her. Her will was gone. It was like a drug, she thought as they undressed and fell into bed, sinking into the feather mattress. There was nothing else to consider, nothing else mattered.

  ‘Julie,’ he murmured, sometime later in the night, and turned to her and ran his tongue around her nipple. She clung to him for she was newly awakened and hadn’t heard what he said.

  ‘Six o’clock, sir!’

  Theda extricated an arm from under Ken and turned over on to her back to stretch luxuriously. He barely moved.

  ‘Six o’clock, sir!’ the landlord said again, opening the door slightly so that he could be heard.

  ‘What? Oh, right, thank you,’ said Ken.

  ‘Will you be wanting any breakfast, sir? Only we haven’t got a lot in, a bit of toast mebbe.’

  ‘No, it’s all right – we have to leave straight away,’ Ken called back, and the landlord closed the door. His footsteps could be heard retreating along the passage and down the stairs.

  ‘Good morning, pet,’ said Ken, and dropped a kiss on Theda’s nose. He jumped out of bed and poured cold water from the jug into the basin. ‘You’d think there would be a proper bathroom in the place,’ he muttered.

  She watched him, his body lean and brown, no doubt from the hot sun in North Africa and then Italy.
There was a vivid scar running down the length of his thigh, red for the most part with slight puckering at the end where there was a bluish cast. He picked up a thin towel from the rail on the end of the wash stand and dried himself.

  ‘Come on, get a move on. We’ll have to be away,’ he said. She felt shy, didn’t want to get out from under the protection of the bedclothes, which was silly she knew after the night they had spent in the bed. She could still feel his hands on her body . . .

  ‘Come on,’ he cried, and flung back the clothes so that she scrambled out of bed and began pulling on her underclothes, feeling herself blush all over. But he wasn’t looking, he was buckling on his belt and then combing his hair back from his forehead. ‘I’ll pop down and pay the man,’ he said, and she felt suddenly dirty.

  ‘Ken, do you love me?’ The words sounded loud in the room; she couldn’t believe she had actually asked him.

  ‘You’re adorable,’ he answered, and smiled at her as he opened the door. ‘Must get on, a lot to do today.’

  Theda stripped off her knickers and bra and poured fresh water in the bowl and washed herself all over, working fast, barely drying herself before pulling her clothes back on. She found her comb in her bag and pulled it through her hair and then stopped mid-stroke to stare at herself in the mirror. There were dark smudges under her eyes but otherwise she looked just the same, and marvelled that it should be so.

  ‘Theda?’

  His call came through the open window. He was standing beside the car, impatient to be off. Adorable, she thought. He hadn’t said he loved her but he would. Oh yes, he would. Picking up her coat, she went out and down the stairs, passing the landlord at the bottom.

  ‘Good morning, missus,’ he said, and smiled knowingly. She nodded and fled.

  In the car, Ken had the engine running and barely waited for her to climb in before setting off on the road back to Bishop Auckland. He glanced briefly at her.

  ‘Are you free this weekend?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she replied. ‘Sister has Saturday afternoon and Sunday off, I have to be on the ward.’ Was this all he wanted, stolen nights in out-of-the-way places to gratify his sexual urges?

  ‘Pity. I wanted to take you over to the coast. You’d like it on the farm where I was brought up. My family still live there.’

  Oh, why was she so suspicious of his motives? ‘I’m free the weekend after,’ she said.

  ‘Good, I may be able to change my leave.’

  The dawn was grey and mizzly, patches of mist obscured the bottom of Parkhead Bank. Ken had to concentrate on his driving until he swung the car round the bend into the market place.

  ‘Let me out here,’ said Theda.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘The walk will do me good and I’ve plenty of time. Clear my head.’

  He drove along beside the Barrington School and stopped. There were very few people about, just a paper boy coming out of Armstrong’s the stationers and an almost empty bus standing at the stop for Weardale. Ken looked quickly around and kissed her on the lips, lingering a moment. Theda looked up at him, perplexed. She didn’t know what he was thinking half the time, that was the trouble.

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ he said softly, and she got out of the car and watched as he drove to the corner and turned into Newgate Street. After a moment she began to walk after him, hugging her coat round her in the chill of the morning.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘I expected you’d be coming home last night,’ Bea remarked as Theda came in. It was eight-thirty in the evening and the warmth from the kitchen rushed to greet her as she closed the back door behind her and hurried over to the fire. She stood for a minute or two, letting the heat seep into her.

  ‘I was tired so I thought I wouldn’t bother.’

  It wasn’t exactly a lie though naturally her mother thought she had stayed at the hospital. I’m a grown woman, she thought. We’re almost through the first half of the twentieth century; what I do is my business.

  ‘By, you look tired all right,’ said Bea. ‘Likely you haven’t got over New Year. You’re going to have to take better care of yourself, pet. Sit down, I’ve got cheese and onion in the oven. I’ll just make you a couple of slices of toast and there’s a tasty bite for you.’ She opened the oven door and checked on the bubbling cheese, frowning. ‘Though, mind you, it’s that blooming American cheese your dad got in one of those iron rations parcels at the pit. How the soldiers manage to fight on that sort of stuff, I’ll never know.’

  ‘I don’t really want anything, Mam.’

  ‘Oh, aye? What’s the matter with you then? Sickening for something, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m just tired.’

  Theda took off her coat and hung it behind the door. Sitting down in Da’s chair, she slipped off her shoes and propped her feet on the steel fender, spreading her toes to the blaze.

  ‘Mind, you’ll get chilblains. How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?’ asked Bea, but she spoke mildly. She knelt before the fire with a slice of bread on a brass toasting fork.

  ‘I’ll make it anyway. You have to eat something, our Theda, you’re getting dead skinny.’ She was silent for a minute, watching the toast, turning it when she judged it brown enough. ‘What do you think of our Clara’s lad then?’ she asked, abruptly.

  ‘I don’t know, he seems all right – a nice lad,’ Theda replied.

  ‘They want to get married right away, he’s getting a special licence.’ Bea looked thoughtfully at her. ‘You don’t suppose there’s owt wrong, do you?’

  ‘Oh, Mam.’ Theda didn’t know what to say but thankfully her mother interrupted her.

  ‘No, no, of course not. Our Clara might be a scatterbrain but she’s not wild, not like that lass next-door.’

  The ‘lass next-door’, Renee Coulson, was a cockney, married to the soldier son of the house and not a bad girl at all once you got to know her. But Bea couldn’t get over the fact that she often went to dances in the town with Clara and Violet and their mates, and her with a husband away fighting and a bairn to look after!

  The toast was ready and Bea put it on a plate and poured the milky cheese and onion mixture over it. ‘Howay and eat it while it’s hot,’ she advised. ‘Then we can sit round the fire and have a nice listen to the play on the wireless.’

  Surprisingly, Theda found herself enjoying the food once she started it. And it was nice to sit about the warm kitchen with no one to disturb them, for Matt and Clara were both on night shift and Chuck was out at his first-aid class down in the Working Mens’ Club, something he had to do for his deputy overman’s tickets.

  The play was Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit and the two women were chuckling together over it when there was a thunderous banging on the back door.

  ‘Mrs Wearmouth, Mrs Wearmouth – are you in?’

  ‘Who the heck’s that?’ Bea asked Theda, getting up to switch off the wireless. ‘They might have waited another ten minutes anyroad, just till we heard the end.’

  Theda opened the door to find Mrs Patterson standing there, wringing her hands. ‘Whatever is it?’ she asked.

  ‘By, lass, I’m glad to find you in,’ said the little woman, stepping into the kitchen. ‘It’s my lad, Peter, that’s what it is. He’s come out of the bedroom window on to the roof of the pantry and fell to the yard. What he thought he was going, I cannot fathom. I tell you, his dad’ll kill him when he gets in from the pit. Anyroad, he’s all shook up and his arm looks funny an’ all. And he’s bleeding all over the place. Can you come, lass? You were the only one I could think of to ask.’

  ‘Have you sent for the doctor?’ Theda was pulling on her coat as she spoke.

  ‘Aye, but he’s out somewhere, the maid said. I don’t know what to do!’

  ‘Have you got a first-aid kit?’

  ‘No, just a bottle of iodine and a bandage. I thought I’d better not—’

  ‘Here, lass, take ours.’

  Bea opened the door of the press
and handed her the cardboard box with the kit Matt had bought cheap from the St John’s Ambulance Brigade.

  ‘Don’t worry, our Theda will see to the lad,’ she assured Mrs Patterson, a note of pride in her voice.

  ‘Eeh, thanks, love. Thanks for coming.’ The woman was practically running down the yard and along the end of the rows to her own house and Theda found herself running after her, her own tiredness forgotten.

  Her former patient Peter was sitting in his pyjamas, his arm held out in front of him with blood welling from a deep cut in the wrist. His pyjamas were covered with blood and he had a towel on his lap saturated with it. At least it didn’t seem to be arterial blood, thought Theda, though she was shocked at the amount the child had lost.

  ‘What have you been doing now, Peter?’ she asked as she took a dressing from her box and put it over the wound, applying as much pressure as she dared considering the strange angle of the arm.

  ‘I was playing at getting out of the house in case there was an air raid,’ Peter said, his voice small and squeaky and very young. ‘Billy Potts said he could do it in three minutes flat and I wanted to beat him.’

  Theda sighed. She’d have to have a word with Billy Potts or perhaps his mother. The main thing was to get him to a doctor as soon as possible, she thought. Seeing a copy of Picture Post lying on the table, she took it and bandaged it round the arm. It was thick enough to use as a temporary splint.

  ‘Have you somebody can go down to the club?’ she asked.

  ‘I can go,’ said Mrs Patterson, but the boy, who had been sitting pale-faced but dry-eyed, suddenly burst into tears.

  ‘No, Mam, don’t go off again – I want you to stay here,’ he wailed, clutching his arm to his chest even as Theda tried to fit a sling round it.

  ‘Sit with him,’ she said. ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘If you’re sure?’ the older woman replied. She put an arm round her boy and wiped his nose with a rag she took out of her apron pocket. ‘Whisht now, pet,’ she said. ‘You’ll need all your tears for when your dad comes in, mind.’

  ‘I’m not going back to that hospital,’ he sobbed.