Yes Sister, No Sister

by Jennifer Craig

  Sister Thornton comes to the dining room, stands in the entrance, and beckons to Sheila. Do we stand up when we’re in the middle of a meal? She motions to us to sit down with an impatient wave of her hand. She talks to Sheila for a few minutes, then she leaves. I am bursting with curiosity.

  Sheila comes over. ‘Another one down. Moyra Asquith just left. A patient vomited all down her apron and she said she couldn’t stand it.’

  Would I leave if someone vomited over me? Or rather, when someone vomits over me? I have never really thought about the more sordid side of nursing. Emptying urinals was neither smelly nor repulsive and the only time a man had wanted a bedpan this afternoon, Watkins had seen to it. My baby brother puked a few times but it was curdled milk that smelled of baby. What about all the other things people discharge? What’s the word? Excreta.

  ‘Judith, what’s it like dealing with bowel movements and other, um excreta?’ I ask, drawing out the last word.

  ‘You have to get used to it. If you don’t, you may as well give up, because it’s there alright!’

  Will I get used to it? Perhaps my image of nursing is a bit too rosy.

  Chapter 4

  LIFE IN HYDE TERRACE is a continual fight against cold. Three terraced houses have been converted into one building which had been used as quarters for Canadian forces during the war and is now a temporary nurses’ home until Roundhay Hall is ready. Two of the original doors are boarded up, giving the building an abandoned look. The main door, that we use, opens into a tiny hall and then another door gives entry to the main hall. Despite the double doors, a draught whistles through the hall, up the stairs and straight into my room. At least it seems so to me.

  We had been allocated rooms in alphabetical order and my room is in what had been an attic. The lower floors have radiators but the attics are unheated on the principle that heat rises, but, of course, there has to be heat in the first place if the principle is to be demonstrated. When the terrace was built, servants lived in the attic rooms and heat for servants was considered an unnecessary luxury.

  I have a room of my own as there is barely room for one bed in it let alone two, as in most rooms. Next to me are Sandy and another girl, next to them, Jess Talbot, with two others in a three-bedded room. We huddle in our quilts in the biggest room to plan a survival strategy.

  ‘The first thing we need is hot-water bottles,’ Sandy says. ‘We can fill them in the kitchen downstairs. If we do it as soon as we come in, our beds will be warm when we go to bed.’

  ‘Can anyone bring some electric fires?’ someone asks.

  ‘We have an old paraffin stove at home that we used in the air-raid shelter,’ another girl says, ‘That will do for one room or even on the landing. It will be better than electric fires as I don’t think there are any plugs.’

  We look around. There is one double plug on the landing but none in anyone’s room.

  ‘I’ll see if my aunts have a paraffin stove too. If we can get one for each room, and the landing, that should help,’ I say.

  Jess Talbot starts to giggle. She is a tiny girl, not much more than four feet tall. She has such a dainty look about her that I am reminded of a pixie in the Flower Fairies books. Her upper lip is strangely formed in an attractive way and she talks with a cross between a lisp and a whistle.

  ‘My uncle wath in the commandoth. I’ll ask him how they thurvived in the cold.’

  After our first day off we return with blankets, wool hats, gloves, hot-water bottles and wonder of wonders, three paraffin stoves, so our rooms are frost-free when we go to bed. My bed is so heavy with blankets I can hardly turn over but I am warm in it.

  Because Blinks is in a main floor room with two radiators and two empty beds, we tend to congregate there, as it is warmer than the sitting room. We can draw the beds up to the radiators and lean against them. She started with two roommates but they have both left. She is remarkably good-natured about her room being always full of people and she carries on as though we are not there. Most of the time she joins in the chatter but if she is tired, she simply goes to bed, seemingly oblivious to the noise.

  There is not much time for gossip and fun as we have so much studying to do. Blinks’s room takes on the appearance of a refugee camp with figures swathed in quilts lining the walls, and books and papers strewn in the middle. Conversation is in the form of questions:

  ‘What’s the lining of the knee joint called?’

  ‘Does the superior vena cava go into the right or the left auricle?’

  ‘Damn, who’s taken my rubber?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ Gazing at someone’s diagram.

  I am amazed to find Marie kneeling beside her bed one evening and I realise how important her religion is to her. She has joined the Nurse’s Christian Fellowship and spends hours in the crypt of the Anglican church next door to the Infirmary, tending to the feet of tramps who seek refuge there.

  ‘Why aren’t you a Catholic?’ I ask her.

  ‘Most of my family is but my father is not, and he wouldn’t hear of us being brought up Catholic, so we became High Anglican which is the next best thing. What religion are you?’

  ‘I was brought up Church of England. In fact, I spent the war years in a vicarage, but I’ve been reading Bertrand Russell’s essay, “Why I Am Not a Christian”, and I agree with his views.’

  Marie quickly changes the subject, as does everyone I have tried to discuss the essay with. Everyone but Judith, that is. One night we sit up debating whether there is a god or not and decide we agree with Russell who says that the only reason people think there is a god is that they have been taught that there is. We aren’t so sure that we agree with him that when we die we rot; we believe our flesh will rot, but we think there is some sort of spirit or energy that dissipates and is used again.

  Judith is somewhat aloof from the rest of us. She always has the top marks on our weekly tests and although she is always reading, it is not textbooks. She is the most well-read person of my age I have met and I enjoy our conversations about all sorts of topics. Her example encourages me to join the city library. One of the first books I take out is The Scourge of the Swastika by Lord Russell of Liverpool. He was one of the judges at the Nuremberg trials and has published his book at his own expense, as he does not think that the events in Nazi Germany should go unremembered by the general public. I read the book with a horror I am unable to express and I cannot look at the dreadful pictures of piles of skeleton-like bodies without crying.

  ‘How can anyone do anything like this?’ I say to Judith, showing her the pictures. ‘Can you imagine being herded into freight trains and being packed so tightly that you can’t sit down? Or go to the toilet? It was so cold that some people’s skin stuck to the side of the cars and was torn off when they left.’ Tears roll down my face as my imagination runs away with me.

  ‘That’s why we fought the war, Jen.’

  ‘The Germans must be monstrous people. And to think, we nursed them with our own men when they were wounded.’

  ‘The Germans are just like us. You surely don’t think the same thing can’t happen here?’

  ‘Of course not! The British wouldn’t do things like that.’

  Judith rolls off her bed to sit in a chair. ‘The same thing can happen anywhere if the wrong people get into power. Look at the number of thugs we have in this country – those who knock down old ladies for their purses – that sort of thing. If those types get control of government, then we’d be just the same.’

  ‘But why did the German people allow it to happen? Why didn’t they do something to stop this?’ I say pointing to the atrocious pictures.

  ‘A lot of them didn’t know such things were happening and if they did, what could they do about it? What would you do if you knew you’d be shot if you said anything? Not much. The important thing is to learn from this and make sure that the thugs don’t get control.’

  Such conversations with Judith provide a mental stimulation tha
t PTS does not. There is so much ritual, so much rote learning, so much unquestioned policy, that my mind feels numb. I would like more debate, more discussion, more critical analysis, but the general view of the institution, as of all adults in my life, is that such young people cannot possibly know anything worth listening to, nor hold a valid opinion. PTS is just like school. We have to sit and listen and make notes. To question anything was seen as impertinence.

  We are in Blinks’s room when the subject of sexual intercourse comes up. ‘Hey, look at this.’ Wee Jess points to a diagram of a disembodied penis in an equally disembodied vagina.

  ‘What book’s that? It’s not in my anatomy book.’

  ‘No, thith is one I bought in the medical book shop. I think it has better illuthrations,’ Jess says.

  ‘Let me see,’ I say. Jess passes the book over. I know that a man inserts his penis into a woman to do ‘It’, but I have never been sure how he gets such a floppy thing in. It must be like pushing toothpaste back into the tube. The diagram shows a very stiff penis, not floppy at all. I pass the book to Sandy hoping someone else will ask the questions that I dare not.

  ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘They don’t often show pictures of erections.’ She reads, ‘Under conditions of erotic excitement the arteries in the penis dilate and the veins constrict. The resulting high blood pressure causes the penis to become erect. Erection makes possible the transmission of semen into the body of the female.’

  Ah, so that’s how ‘It’s’ done.

  ‘My brother once had a hard-on at the swimming pool at school,’ someone says. ‘His trunks gave him away and everyone teased him like crazy.’

  ‘Mine did the same thing,’ Sandy says, ‘only it was during gym and he pushed out his shorts which were too small anyway. They don’t seem to have any control over it.’

  I have a brother. Why didn’t he tell me about this? I know I must not allow myself to be alone with a boy because ‘you never know what might happen.’ At school we were once unexpectedly assembled to be informed of a dreadful misdeed – a Leeds Girls High School girl had been seen talking to a Grammar School boy at the school gates! I was also taught that girls who did ‘It’ before marriage were in for a fate worse than death, though I am not sure what that fate is.

  ‘Has anyone here gone all the way?’ someone asks.

  Blinks turns red. Surely she hasn’t? She must be embarrassed by the question, as I am. ‘You don’t think we’d own up to it if we had,’ Sandy says. ‘Come on, let’s get on with studying the pancreas.’

  One evening begins much as usual. Sheila Dawson, the only one with a boyfriend, and a key, is out. Some girls are listening to Hancock’s Half-Hour on the wireless in the sitting room while the more solitary are in their rooms. The rest of us are gathered in Blinks’s room with the intention of studying the anatomy and physiology of the stomach and large intestine. I am pleased that Judith has joined us for a change.

  We start off amicably enough. ‘What are the enzymes in the stomach?’ Blinks asks.

  ‘Lazy Amy trips in and lies on a – I can’t think what a ‘pays’ is,’ I say. Blinks laughs. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Marie asks. She has no imagination.

  ‘Trypsin, amylase and lipase. I remember them by making up sentences about them.’

  ‘They’re not in the stomach; they’re in the duodenum,’ Judith says. ‘The enzymes of the stomach are pepsin and rennin.’

  ‘Right, so they are. What do rennin and pepsin do? Amylase breaks down starch, trypsin breaks down proteins and lipase breaks down fats.’

  ‘You’ll have to make up a sentence like Lennin, alias rennin, coagulates milk and then peeps into a short polypeptide chain hanging … where would it hang?’ Judith asks me.

  ‘It could be a bicycle chain,’ I say.

  ‘Did Lenin ride a bicycle?’

  ‘Not if he was rennin!’ I quip.

  Marie has had enough. ‘Would you two please stop being silly and let’s get on with studying for the test tomorrow.’ She has not been doing well on the weekly tests and is clearly worried.

  ‘OK,’ says Blinks, ‘What’s the anatomy of the stomach?’

  ‘Come on, Marie, you answer,’ Judith says. ‘You’re the one that wants to know.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know too?’

  ‘I already do,’ Judith says.

  ‘Oh, you’re such a clever clogs,’ Marie sneers. ‘Miss Know-it-all!’

  ‘Now, now, children,’ Wee Jess says. ‘Let’s juth thtick with the anatomy of the thtomach. The thtomach is a large, muscular thac connected at its opening to the oethophagus and at its end to the duodenum. Two thphincters act as valves. What is the one called at the oethophagus end?’

  ‘The pylorus,’ Marie says.

  Judith corrects her. ‘No, that’s at the duodenal end. It’s the cardiac sphincter at the oesophagus end.’

  Marie jumps up and stamps one foot. ‘Who do you think you are?’ she demands of Judith.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, Marie, Judith is only giving the right answer.’ I am beginning to feel uncomfortable. ‘Let’s pack it in if we can’t get on.’

  ‘If she knows so much, why is she here?’ Marie is beside herself.

  ‘Oh, you pompous, prissy prig, I’ll go.’ Judith gets to her feet and gathers up her books.

  ‘No, don’t go,’ I say hastily. ‘I’m sure Marie didn’t mean it. She’s just worried about the test like we all are, aren’t you Marie?’

  ‘I don’t care if she does go. She can boil her head for all I care.’ Marie is almost crying.

  ‘If Judith goes, I go,’ I say.

  ‘Me too,’ from Wee Jess.

  Blinks is walking up and down polishing her glasses furiously. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I love having you all here but if you’re going to row, I want you to leave.’ Her face goes red as she speaks and I know it has been an effort for her to be so forthright.

  ‘I think we’d better pack it in for tonight anyway,’ I say, as I pick up my books. ‘We’re all obviously tired.’

  I wonder if things will ever be the same again. I had thought that as we are all going through a difficult training together, we’d automatically be friends. I had imagined us as comrades-in-arms with an esprit de corps and the sort of camaraderie we had learned as we grew up during the war: don’t let the side down; wait your turn or the Nazis will win; share and share alike; chin up; play up, play up, and play the game. I hadn’t reckoned with two such different characters as Marie and Judith who clash every time they speak to each other. Marie’s rigid outlook, her strict adherence to rules, and her blind acceptance of all that is taught is too much for Judith’s intelligence. I love Judith’s quick comprehension and her ability to see through nonsense. Yet I like Marie too, for dull though she is, she has a warm heart. I look hard for her good qualities, as I so badly want us to be one big happy family.

  Chapter 5

  Rules for Bandaging:

  • Select a bandage of the right width: 1–1½in are used for the fingers, 2–2½in for the head, 2½–3in for the limbs and 3½–4in for the hip, trunk or shoulders.

  • Bandage from within outwards and from below upwards on the trunk and limbs and from the uninjured part to the injured part.

  • Stand in front of the patient except for a capelline (head) bandage or one for the back of the neck.

  • Cover two-thirds of the preceding layer of bandage leaving one-third exposed.

  • Fasten the bandage firmly with a knot or safety pin, but not where the patient is likely to lie on it.

  • When removing a bandage, pass it from hand to hand, not pulling it off with one hand.

  MY GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE, a terraced house in Leeds, similar to Hyde Terrace, but warm, is my home for the Christmas holidays. As a child I had always loved visiting Amma’s house. I would sit in the kitchen as she made bread, my mouth watering in anticipation of the tiny loaf she made especially for me and each of the other children. She would give me a piece of do
ugh to knead and shape into any form I liked; sometimes I made dough men with raisins for eyes and I was always disappointed when the shape blurred and the eyes sank into the dough as it rose.

  The house was alive with people and activity. While the men were away at war, the daughters, except for my mother, with their children, moved in. How everyone squeezed in I never knew, but beds were shared and they managed somehow. The family considers itself fortunate as, despite the fact that all sons and sons-in-law were in the armed forces, no one was killed.

  It is a demonstrative family. Everyone present greets everyone who arrives with a hug and a kiss as if there has been a long absence. As each person leaves the same hugs and kisses are exchanged with as much enthusiasm as for the arrival. During the war, Canadian service men were billeted in the same street. There were always at least two having supper and joining in the evening singsong. All my aunts can sit down at the piano and hammer out ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, Noel Coward’s songs, and my favourite, ‘Alice Blue Gown’.

  For Christmas, each room of the house is festooned with homemade paper chains and paper bells that concertina to fold flat for storage. A live tree is dug up from the garden and re-planted after it has been decorated with carefully preserved pre-war baubles. A silver monkey wearing a fez is my favourite. It hangs there as it has done for many Christmases. Candles, in clip-on candleholders, are dotted around the tree waiting to be lit on Christmas day for a brief period of wonder.

  Amma greets me with pleasure. ‘Oh, Jennifer, I am so glad you can get Christmas off. We’ve got you a seat for the pantomime on Boxing Day and the Sunshine Girls are in it again. Come into the kitchen and tell me all about it,’ she says after a giant hug. ‘We are all so proud of you. Is it very hard?’