Song of Songs

by Beverley Hughesdon

  I searched and counted and searched again until at last I was only missing one teaspoon. I stared round the kitchen helplessly – two of the probationers were making custards, chattering as they stirred, I kept murmuring, ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ as I peered again and again into the grill pan and under the oven and back again to the empty sink. At last Harris broke off her conversation and glanced up from her saucepan. ‘What are you short of?’

  ‘A teaspoon.’

  ‘Try the pig bucket.’ She gestured behind the door and turned back to her companion: ‘And do you know what Sister Corley said to her? – I would have died honestly – she said…’ But I had seen the faint gleam of silver; recklessly I plunged my hand in among the slimy potato peelings, thrust the spoon at the dishcloth and scuttled off to the coal-box lid.

  Staff Nurse counted carefully then gave a nod. ‘Put them away now and then go and tidy the linen cupboard.’ In the close little cubbyhole I fumbled with the coarse sheets; I tried to refold one but it flapped away from me and went crooked until in desperation I bundled it up any-old-how and leant crouching against the hard edges of the wooden shelves, waiting for release.

  It came with the padding footsteps of the night nurses. Sister dismissed us and I followed the other probationers to the dining room, gave my number and slumped into a seat. Juno arrived panting and angry after grace. ‘The cow kept us late, now we’ve all got black marks – God, what on earth are we doing in this place, Helena?’ A maid rammed two plates down on the table in front of us. On each was a square of tripe. My gorge rose as I looked at it. They had bullied and harassed us all day, and now they fed us with cow’s stomach – I closed my eyes. A shrill cockney voice opposite asked, ‘Dontcher wannit, then?’ I looked at the round red face and silently shook my head. ‘Give it ’ere, ducks – you’ll get in trouble with Sister else.’ A rapid glance to right and left, a piece of deft sleight of hand and my cow’s stomach had vanished from under my nose.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Pleasure’s mine, duck – pass us the vinegar again, would yer be so kind?’ I passed the vinegar.

  Over the bowl of porridge which followed Juno made plans for securing a bath. At the end of supper she used her large frame to jostle her way to the doorway, then as soon as we were out of sight of the Home Sisters she broke into a trot, calling over her shoulder, ‘I’ll book it for you after, Hellie.’

  In the thankfully piping-hot bath I scrubbed and scrubbed myself; I felt dirty all over. I wanted to wash my hair in the basin but there was a banging at the door. ‘Come on, there’s two of us waiting.’ I thrust my damp arms into the sleeves of my dressing gown and came out. As I walked down the corridor I heard the shout behind me, ‘And empty the bath next time, you slut!’ I threw myself into my bedroom.

  I was struggling into my nightdress when Juno thumped on the door, burst in and flung herself down on the bed. She kicked her slippers off and began to massage her toes. ‘My feet, Hellie, my feet! And that bloody Home Sister went through my drawers and pinched my cigarettes – she’s emptied the whole case – how dare they do things like that?’ She glared at me, then asked, ‘What was your evening like, Hellie? I swear mine was even worse than the morning. The ghastly staff nurse trapped me in that foul-smelling sink room all evening. I was only allowed out to the kitchen – and that was crawling with cockroaches. I never got near any patients after the washing up.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t.’ I shuddered. ‘I had to help Staff Nurse wash a little girl who’d just been admitted – she was so dirty, and she was covered in vile sores. And Juno, she was such a hideous-looking child - Staff Nurse said it was her father’s fault, she was born with a “specific disease”.’

  Juno’s eyes widened. ‘Good God, Hellie - we’ve not got to nurse patients with that, have we?’

  I repeated, ‘She didn’t say what it was, just a “specific disease”.’

  Juno said grimly, ‘I can guess what they mean by that all right.’ She shuddered, then, as I stared at her blankly she leant forward and hissed, ‘Syphilis!’

  ‘Syphilis?’ I echoed – I had dim memories of Miss Ling’s stories of the Greek myths. ‘You mean the man who had to push a rock up a hill, and every time he got it to the top it came rolling down again?’

  Juno gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Lord, Hellie, you are dumb sometimes – that was Sisyphus – no connection, though for all I now he may have had it too. No, syphilis is what men get off tarts.’

  ‘Off tarts?’

  ‘Tarts, whores – women men pay to let them do things to them – come on, Hellie, you must know what men do with women, after all, you’ll be getting married soon.’ My face was burning hot. ‘You mean some women let men do that to them – just for money – not because they, they care about them?’

  ‘Oh Hellie – I forget you’re so much younger than me – they can’t care about them, they pick up strangers – Mama told me – it happens all the time.’

  My belly lurched. ‘How horrible!’

  Juno went on, ‘But sometimes the tarts have got this loathsome disease – they get it off sailors and such like – and then they pass it on to all the men they go with.’ And suddenly I remembered Munich and the pretty girl I had seen on Papa’s arm – she must have been one of those, he had paid her to do that… ‘But Juno, when Papa came to fetch me once from Munich – I saw him, with a girl like that…’

  Juno grunted. ‘The old so-and-so, I bet he kept that dark from Mama! But don’t worry, Hellie, men of our class can afford to buy women who are clean – but I suppose they don’t have much choice in the East End.’ I was still very shaken. ‘But – why do they do it?’ Juno looked at me and said patiently, ‘For the money, of course. It’s got to be easier than slaving away in a place like this, for instance. Though I don’t suppose any man with halfway decent eyesight would pay much for that beast of a Staff Nurse,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘No, I mean the men, why do they want to do something like that with a strange woman?’

  Juno stretched her arms until her shoulder joints cracked. ‘Oh, why do men do anything, Hellie? I suppose they just feel like it.’

  We were plunged into darkness; it was ten-thirty. ‘This bloody place!’ I heard Juno swearing in the gloom. ‘Wherever are my slippers?’ We both began to scrabble on the floor and bumped into each other. ‘Ouch, mind where you’re going, Hellie. I hope they haven’t switched off the lights in the water closet or I’ll be pissing all over their lino – ah, got them.’ She muttered and swore as she pulled them on. ‘I’m going to have to find some way of hiding my cigarettes – I’ll never stand this place otherwise. Goodnight, Hellie, see you in the morning, worse luck!’ The door banged behind her and I heard an indignant cry of ‘Nurse’ as Juno cantered down the corridor.

  As I lay in bed that night I recalled the child’s ugly face, and thought of what Juno had told me. Then I remembered Gerald’s clean-cut profile as he had stood on the terrace at Hatton and said: ‘There is not, and never has been, any woman but you.’ And I was comforted, and fell asleep clasping his ring.

  Chapter Five

  The next few weeks were an endless humiliation. In a world where every move had to be made at the double I could not keep up. I tried to scuttle like the other nurses, but I could not scuttle fast enough and if I broke into a run a passing voice would sharply pull me up. Often I hesitated through ignorance and uncertainty, only to bear the brunt of the anger of a harassed staff nurse or head probationer. For the first week Sister Allsop only spoke to me once; as I rushed past her with three stacked bed pans I stumbled, and the contents slopped dangerously through the hollow handles and splashed my apron. Spotless starched skirts drew to one side and I heard a carrying voice ask Staff, ‘Who is that filthy probationer?’

  ‘Girvan, Sister.’

  I threw myself and my stinking burdens into the foul sink room, tears of shame filling my eyes.

  All day I felt soiled as I sweated in the ill-ventilate
d sink room; on the ward I had to move so quickly that I was perpetually damp at neck and armpit and groin. And the sickly scent of disinfectant overlaying the all-prevailing smell of urine, faeces, vomit, and pus filled my nostrils.

  My mind was never free of my fears for Gerald and for Guy; I searched the post every day until at last a letter arrived from Gerald. I scanned the scribbled lines with a fast-beating heart; he had obviously written it in a great hurry and he said little, only that he was well and the enemy were on the run. I raised the flimsy paper to my lips then tucked it down inside my camisole where his ring hung from a fine gold chain.

  Every day, in the snatched minutes when we were sent back to clean our rooms, we bent tensely over the newspaper, and read yet more familiar names in the casualty lists – the names of men we had dined with, danced with, laughed with – and who would dine and dance and laugh no more. Paris had been saved, but the price had been a high one, and was daily growing higher. Even Juno’s hand trembled as she opened the paper each morning.

  On the 2nd of October I leant over her shoulder and saw the headline: ‘Heir to Peerage Among the Killed’ – and the words: ‘Grenadier Guards’ below. I began to gasp and cry until Juno shook me roughly. ‘Pull yourself together, Hellie – it’s not Guy, it’s not Guy.’ I sobbed helplessly but Juno slapped my hand, hard. ‘Show a bit of backbone, Helena, for goodness’ sake. Come on, we’re due back on the wards.’ I stumbled out of the room after her.

  All through October the Roll of Honour lengthened, but by the time the paper reported heavy casualties among the Grenadiers, Guy was already back in London – wounded, but not seriously. A bullet had gone through his arm but missed the bone, and he was well enough to be sitting up when I went hurrying round to see him at King Edward VII’s Hospital for Officers in Grosvenor Crescent. Guy looked at me in astonishment as I came rushing in. ‘Good God, Hellie, what a fright you are in that rig.’ I was suddenly conscious of the peculiarity of my bonnet and cloak but then my brother grinned. ‘Still, I suppose I’m not much to write home about at the moment, either.’ He held out his good arm and I clung to him, weeping, while he patted my shoulder.

  A week later, when I arrived for my visit I saw that his face was alight with joy. ‘Congratulate me, Hellie – Eileen’s agreed to have me!’

  I felt a sharp stab of pure jealousy, but I managed to smile and stumble through the correct words as the sleek, glossy creature uncoiled herself from the armchair and extended a beautifully manicured white hand. She arched her eyebrows as her fingers touched the rough skin of my disinfectant-scoured palm and drawled, ‘Goodness, Helena – you are taking the war seriously – ruining your hands and dressing up in that, er – quaint outfit. I do hope dear Muirkirk doesn’t expect me to sacrifice myself like that – I just couldn’t bear to look such a sight.’ Her mouth curved towards Guy, and for a moment my handsome brother looked just like a codfish on a slab.

  He muttered, ‘Good God no, Eileen – you’re far too beautiful for that.’ She drew in a deep breath of smoke, exhaled it very slowly, then removed the cigarette from between her scarlet lips, bent down, and brushed his cheek with her mouth. But as her head moved up Guy’s hand shot out and seized her wrist and pulled her down once more. He was breathing heavily, his eyes intent on hers.

  She stayed quite still for a moment, then drew back a little. ‘Really, Guy, whatever will your little sister think?’ Guy’s glance flicked in my direction, then to the door. I stood up as calmly as I could and muttered, ‘I – I must go, I’m due back on duty shortly.’

  Eileen smiled her cat-like taunting smile. ‘Leaving so soon? Don’t get too earnest my dear – it’s a terrible bore.’ She blew an exquisitely formed kiss in my direction and my cheek muscles tightened into a rictus as I smiled back, and left.

  At the end of six weeks on Allsop Ward I had learnt to use a thermometer, chart temperatures, make beds, wash helpless patients and, fighting my revulsion, give an enema. But I was slow and clumsy: I dropped bowls and chipped their enamel; I threw away urine specimens that should have been preserved; I broke things – like the two china sputum mugs which oozed their foul slime over the clean floor. I spilt milk on the sheets when I fed patients, my fomentations were soggy and painful and my linseed poultices coagulated into sticky, useless lumps. I was a failure, I knew I was a failure – but like a broken-winded cab horse I still staggered grimly on.

  One day Juno told me her sister was getting married. ‘Dick’s got five days’ leave before he goes to France, so it’s a special licence for him and Julia tomorrow.’ As she spoke I felt a wave of envy wash over me – if only Gerald had not had to go so quickly, I might have been his wife by now. Then I touched the small hard shape of the Prescott betrothal ring and reproached myself; Gerald was a soldier, a regular officer – naturally he had gone to war at once and as his betrothed I must accept this.

  Early in November we heard of the destruction of Lord Hugh Grosvenor’s C Squadron of Life Guards at Zandvoorde Ridge; the order to retire had not reached him, so he had fought on to the death with all his men. My heart turned to ice as I thought of my love. Every night, sick with fatigue, I knelt beside my narrow bed in my small room and prayed for Gerald’s safety. Often I dropped into a stupefied sleep in the middle of my prayers and woke later, stiff and dazed, still huddled against the hard edge of the bedstead.

  He wrote in November that the Composites had been disbanded and so he was now back with his own regiment. His letter was a letter from a man in the midst of a great adventure. It was clear that he was happy, and totally absorbed in the task on hand; never had he seemed so far away from me as he did now. He was fighting for his King and country while I – I struggled uselessly with squalor and grime in the slums of London. He had praised me for what I was doing, but it was obvious that he had no real idea of what hospital nursing involved. As I battled to cleanse an incontinent senile old woman I prayed fervently that he would never find out.

  The twins wrote cheerfully from their training camp: their only fear seemed to be that the war would be over before they could join in; and the occasional postcard which arrived from Conan showed that for him too war was the greatest of games. Only Guy was not happy; he had wanted Eileen to marry him as soon as he came out of hospital but she had made a string of excuses and finally announced that she was not ready to lose her figure yet – London was just too exciting at present. Guy looked hurt and miserable as he told me, then he repeated, ‘She’s the only girl for me, Hellie – the only girl in the world.’ I hated svelte, selfish Eileen – how gladly would I have married Gerald if he had been in London now.

  Towards the end of November I was moved to a men’s medical ward. At first I shrank from having to handle male bodies so intimately, but there was no time for such delicacy at the East London. And then there were the delirious cases; with their vacant staring eyes and senseless incoherent mutterings – I had to nerve myself to go near them.

  One of the beds had its warning bowl of disinfectant, and neat stack of marked crockery at its foot, but this case was not one of typhoid. Staff took me on one side and told me what Number Six was suffering from and my skin crawled, but his bed had to be made and his needs attended to, just like the others. ‘Remember, Girvan, even if you only just touch his bed, wash your hands in disinfectant at once.’ I remembered, and my hands became red and chapped with constant washing. How I loathed the East London.

  Chapter Six

  By the beginning of December we had saved the Channel ports. Brave little Belgium had not been completely overrun, as we had beaten off the German attack at Ypres, and the French had regained some of the land they had lost early in the war. Gerald was resting in billets well behind the line and he wrote me a long cheerful letter recounting his daily routine and that of his fellow officers: he said he found it strange to realize he was fighting as an infantryman now – but war was like that, you never knew what it had in store for you. As I folded up his letter to go back to the ward to do the washing u
p I smiled in wry agreement.

  I had a day off due, and I went up to Cadogan Place the night before. At breakfast next morning Mother announced that she was taking me to Mirette’s to order a new winter outfit. ‘Suppose Gerald comes home on leave? You can’t possibly meet him in last year’s costume.’

  As we came out of the dressmaker’s I suddenly saw Guy strolling towards us with a girl leaning on his arm. I called out, ‘Guy!’ and ran forward, but he looked up and his jaw dropped, and as he hustled the girl past I saw it was a strange pretty brunette with lips painted an improbable red. I turned and stood staring after him – he had not spoken a word to us, he had not even raised his hat!

  Mother bundled me into our cab. ‘Helena – how gauche of you, embarrassing your brother like that.’

  I exclaimed, ‘But who was that girl with Guy? It wasn’t Eileen, and he didn’t offer to introduce her.’ Mother leant forward and checked that the glass behind the driver was fully closed before she turned to me. ‘Guy is a young man come home from the war – of course he wants female company.’

  ‘But he’s got Eileen, he loves her.’

  Mother gave an impatient snort. ‘Helena – he can hardly use a girl of his own class.’ I still stared at her blankly. ‘Really, after three months as a hospital nurse!’ She explained very clearly, ‘Helena, that girl was a whore. Your brothers are normal, healthy young men – thank God – naturally they need to make use of women like that from time to time. It means absolutely nothing to them. Stop gaping like a fool.’ She sat back in her seat with lips compressed and it was clear the subject was closed.

  I tried to grapple with the idea that Guy was engaged to Eileen; he had said he loved her – he did love her, I knew he did – and yet he paid another woman to let him do that with her – and Mother said it meant nothing to him. Then I thought: Gerald is engaged to me, but – oh God – does he, does Gerald…? He had said no other woman, but if Mother’s right – this would seem of no account to him. I sat racked with jealousy while my mother talked of the Red Cross Hospital Mrs Benson had set up at The Pines.