Agahta Christie: An autobiography

by Agatha Christie

  He was sure, as indeed all the Flying Corps was, that he would be killed, and that he would never see me again. He was calm and cheerful, as always, but all those early Flying Corps boys were of the opinion that a war would be the end, and quickly, of at least the first wave of them. The German Air Force was known to be powerful.

  I knew less, but to me also it came with the same certainty that I was saying goodbye to him, I should never see him again, though I, too, tried to match his cheerfulness and apparent confidence. I remember going to bed that night and crying and crying until I thought I would never stop, and then, quite suddenly, without warning, falling exhausted into such a deep sleep that I did not wake till late the following morning.

  We travelled back home, giving more names and addresses to ticket collectors. Three days later, the first war postcard arrived from France. It had printed sentences on it which anyone sending a card was only allowed to cross off or leave in: such things as AM WELL, AM IN HOSPITAL, and so on. I felt, when I got it, for all its meagre information, that it was a good omen.

  I hurried to my detachment in the V.A.D.s to see that was going on. We made a lot of bandages and rolled them, prepared baskets full of swabs for hospitals. Some of the things we did were useful, far more of them were no use at all, but they passed the time, and soon–grimly soon–the first casualties began to arrive. A move was made to serve refreshments to the men as they arrived at the station. This, I must say, was one of the silliest ideas that any Commandant could possibly have had. The men had been heavily fed all the way along the line from Southampton, and when they finally arrived at Torquay station the main thing was to get them out of the train on to the stretchers and ambulances, and then to the hospital.

  The competition to get into the hospital (converted from the Town Hall) and do some nursing had been great. For strictly nursing duties those chosen first had been mostly the middle-aged, and those considered to have had some experience of looking after men in illness. Young girls had not been felt suitable. Then there was a further consignment known as ward-maids, who did the house-work and cleaning of the Town Hall: brasses, floors, and such things; and finally there was the kitchen staff. Several people who did not want to nurse had applied for kitchen work; the ward-maids, on the other hand, were really a reserve force, waiting eagerly to step up into nursing as soon as a vacancy should occur. There was a staff of about eight trained hospital nurses; all the rest were V.A.D.s.

  Mrs Acton, a forceful lady, acted as Matron, since she was senior officer of the V.A.D.s. She was a good disciplinarian; she organised the whole thing remarkably well. The hospital was capable of taking over two hundred patients; and everyone was lined up to receive the first contingent of wounded men. The moment was not without its humour. Mrs Spragge, General Spragge’s wife, the Mayoress, who had a fine presence, stepped forward to receive them, fell symbolically on her knees before the first entrant, a walking case, motioned him to sit down on his bed, and ceremonially removed his boots for him. The man, I must say, looked extremely surprised, especially as we soon found out that he was an epileptic, and not suffering from war wounds of any kind. Why the haughty lady should suddenly remove his boots in the middle of the afternoon was more than he could understand.

  I got into the hospital, but only as a ward-maid, and set to zealously on the brass. However, after five days I was moved up to the ward. Many of the middle-aged ladies had done little real nursing at all, and though full of compassion and good works, had not appreciated the fact that nursing consists largely of things like bed-pans, urinals, scrubbing of mackintoshes, the clearing up of vomit, and the odour of suppurating wounds. Their idea of nursing had, I think, been a good deal of pillow-smoothing, and gently murmuring soothing words over our brave men. So the idealists gave up their tasks with alacrity: they had never thought they would have to do anything like this, they said. And hardy young girls were brought to the bedside in their places.

  It was bewildering at first. The poor hospital nurses were driven nearly frantic by the number of willing but completely untrained volunteers under their orders. They had not got even a few fairly well-trained probationer nurses to help them. With another girl, I had two rows of twelve beds; we had an energetic Sister–Sister Bond–who, although a first-class nurse, was far from having patience with her unfortunate staff. We were not really unintelligent, but we were ignorant. We had been taught hardly anything of what was necessary for hospital service; in fact all we knew was how to bandage, and the general theories of nursing. The only things that did help us were the few instructions we had picked up from the District Nurse.

  It was the mysteries of sterilisation that foxed us most–especially as Sister Bond was too harassed even to explain. Drums of dressings came up, ready to be used in treatment on the wounds, and were given into our charge. We did not even know at this stage that kidney dishes were supposed to receive dirty dressings, and the round bowls pure articles. Also, as all the dressings looked extremely dirty, although actually surgically clean (they had been baked in the steriliser downstairs) it made it very puzzling. Things sorted themselves out, more or less, after a week. We discovered what was wanted of us, and were able to produce it. But Sister Bond by then had given up and left. She said her nerves wouldn’t stand it.

  A new Sister, Sister Anderson, came to replace her. Sister Bond had been a good nurse–quite first-class, I believe, as a surgical nurse. Sister Anderson was a first-class surgical nurse too, but she was also a woman of common sense and with a reasonable amount of patience. In her eyes we were not so much unintelligent as badly trained. She had four nurses under her on the two surgical rows, and she proceeded to get them into shape. It was Sister Anderson’s habit to size up her nurses after a day or two, and to divide those whom she would take trouble to train and those who were, as she put, ‘only fit to go and see if the crock is boiling’. The point of this latter remark was that at the end of the ward were about four enormous boiling urns. From these was taken boiling water for making fomentations. Practically all wounds were treated at that time with wrung-out fomentations, so seeing whether the crock was boiling was the first essential in the test. If the wretched girl who had been sent to ‘see if the crock was boiling’ reported that it was, and it was not, with enormous scorn Sister Anderson would demand: ‘Don’t you even know when water is boiling, Nurse?’

  ‘It’s got some steam puffing out of it,’ said the nurse.

  ‘That’s not steam,’ said Sister Anderson. ‘Can’t you hear the sound of it? The singing sound comes first, then it quietens down and doesn’t puff, and then the real steam comes out.’ She demonstrated, murmuring to herself as she moved away, ‘If they send me any more fools like that I don’t know what I shall do!’

  I was lucky to be under Sister Anderson. She was severe but just. On the next two rows there was Sister Stubbs, a small sister, gay and pleasant to the girls, who often called them ‘dear’ and, having lured them into false security, lost her temper with them vehemently if anything went wrong. It was like having a bad-tempered kitten in charge of you: it may play with you, or it may scratch you.

  From the beginning I enjoyed nursing. I took to it easily, and found it, and have always found it, one of the most rewarding professions that anyone can follow. I think, if I had not married, that after the war I should have trained as a real hospital nurse. Maybe there is something in heredity. My grandfather’s first wife, my American grandmother, was a hospital nurse.

  On entering the nursing world we had to revise our opinions of our status in life, and our present position in the hierarchy of the hospital world. Doctors had always been taken for granted. You sent for them when you were ill, and more or less did what they told you–except my mother: she always knew a great deal more than the doctor did, or so we used to tell her. The doctor was usually a friend of the family. Nothing had prepared me for the need to fall down and worship.

  ‘Nurse, towels for the doctor’s hands!’

  I soon learned
to spring to attention, to stand, a human towel-rail, waiting meekly while the doctor bathed his hands, wiped them with the towel, and, not bothering to return it to me, flung it scornfully on the floor. Even those doctors who were, by secret nursing opinion, despised as below standard, in the ward now came into their own and were accorded a veneration more appropriate to higher beings.

  Actually to speak to a doctor, to show him that you recognised him in any way, was horribly presumptuous. Even though he might be a close friend of yours, you were not supposed to show it. This strict etiquette was mastered in due course, but once or twice I fell from grace’ On one occasion a doctor, irritable as doctors always are in hospital life–not, I think because they feel irritable but because it is expected of them by the sisters–exclaimed impatiently, ‘No, no, Sister, I don’t want that kind of forceps. Give me…’ I’ve forgotten the name of it now, but, as it happened, I had one in my tray and I proffered it. I did not hear the last of that for twenty-four hours.

  ‘Really, Nurse, pushing yourself forward in that way. Actually handing the forceps to Doctor yourself!’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sister,’ I murmured submissively. ‘What ought Ito have done?’

  ‘Really, Nurse, I think you should know that by now. If Doctor requires anything which you happen to be able to provide, you naturally hand it to me, and I hand it to Doctor.’

  I assured her that I would not transgress again.

  The flight of the more elderly would-be nurses was accelerated by the fact that our early cases came in straight from the trenches with field dressings on, and their heads full of lice. Most of the ladies of Torquay had never seen a louse–I had never seen one myself–and the shock of finding these dreadful vermin was far too much for the older dears. The young and tough, however, took it in their stride. It was usual for one of us to say to the other in a gleeful tone when the next one came on duty, ‘I’ve done all my heads,’ waving one’s little tooth comb triumphantly.

  We had a case of tetanus in our first batch of patients. That was our first death. It was a shock to us all. But in about three weeks’ time I felt as though I had been nursing soldiers all my life, and in a month or so I was quite adept at looking out for their various tricks.

  ‘Johnson, what have you been writing on your board?’ Their boards, with the temperature charts pinned on them, hung on the bottom of the bed.

  ‘Writing on my board, Nurse?’ he said, with an air of injured innocence. ‘Why nothing. What should I?’

  ‘Somebody seems to have written down a very peculiar diet. I don’t think it was Sister or Doctor. Most unlikely they would order you port wine.’

  Then I would find a groaning man saying, ‘I think I’m very ill, Nurse. I’m sure I am–I feel feverish.’

  I looked at his healthy though rubicund face and then at his thermometer, which he held out to me, and which read between 104 and 105.

  ‘Those radiators are very useful, aren’t they?’ I said. ‘But be careful: if you put it on too hot a radiator the mercury will go completely.’

  ‘Ah, Nurse,’ he grinned, ‘you don’t fall for that, do you? You young ones are much more hard-hearted than the old ones were. They used to get in no end of a paddy when we had temperatures of 104; they used to rush off to Sister at once.’

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘Ah, Nurse, it’s all a bit of fun.’

  Occasionally they had to go to the X-ray department, at the other end of the town, or for physiotherapy there. Then one used to have a convoy of six to look after, and one had to watch out for a sudden request to cross the road ‘because I’ve got to buy a pair of bootlaces, Nurse’. You would look across the road and see that the bootshop was conveniently placed next to The George and Dragon. However, I always managed to bring back my six, without one of them giving me the slip and turning up later in a state of exhilaration. They were terribly nice, all of them.

  There was one Scotsman whose letters I used to have to write. It seemed astonishing that he should not be able to read or write, since he was practically the most intelligent man in the ward. However, there it was, and I duly wrote letters to his father. To begin with, he sat back and waited for me to begin. ‘We’ll write to my father now, Nurse,’ he commanded.

  ‘Yes. “Dear Father,’ I began. ‘What do I say next?’

  ‘Och, just say anything you think he’d like to hear.’

  ‘Well–I think you had better tell me exactly.’

  ‘I’m sure you know.’

  But I insisted that some indication should be given me. Various facts were then revealed: about the hospital he was in, the food he had, and so on. He paused. ‘I think that’s all-’

  “‘With love from your affectionate son,’?’ I suggested.

  He looked deeply shocked.

  ‘No, indeed, Nurse. You know better than that, I hope.’

  ‘What have I done wrong?’

  ‘You should say “From your respectful son.’ We won’t mention love or affection or words like that–not to my father.’

  I stood corrected.

  The first time I had to accompany an operation case into the theatre I disgraced myself. Suddenly the theatre walls reeled about me, and only another nurse’s firm arm closing round my shoulders and ejecting me rapidly saved me from disaster. It had never occurred to me that the sight of blood or wounds would make me faint. I hardly dared face Sister Anderson when she came out later. She was, however, unexpectedly kind. ‘You mustn’t mind, Nurse,’ she said. ‘It happened to many of us the first time or so. For one thing you are not prepared for the heat and the ether together; it makes you feel a bit squeamish–and that was a bad abdominal operation, and they are the most unpleasant to look at.’

  ‘Oh Sister, do you think I shall be all right next time?’

  ‘You’ll have to try and be all right next time. And if not you’ll have to go on until you are. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s right.’

  The next one she sent me into was quite a short one, and I survived. After that I never had any trouble, though I used sometimes to turn my eyes away from the original incision with the knife. That was the thing that upset me–once it was over I could look on quite calmly and be interested. The truth of it is one gets used to anything.

  II

  ‘I think it so wrong, dear Agatha,’ said one of my mother’s elderly friends, ‘that you should go and work in hospital on a Sunday. Sunday is the day of rest. You should have your Sundays off.’

  ‘How do you suppose the men would have their wounds dressed, get themselves washed, be given bed-pans, have their beds made and get their teas if nobody worked on a Sunday?’ I asked. ‘After all, they couldn’t do without all those things for twenty-four hours, could they?’

  ‘Oh dear, I never thought of that. But there ought to be some arrangement.’

  Three days before Christmas Archie suddenly got leave. I went up with my mother to London to meet him. It was in my mind, I think, that we might get married. A good many people were doing so now.

  ‘I don’t see,’ I said, ‘how we can go on being careful and thinking of the future with everyone getting killed like this.’

  My mother agreed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I should feel just as you do. One can’t think of risks and things like that.’

  We did not say so, but the probabilities of Archie’s being killed were: airly high. Already the casualties had startled and surprised people. A lot of my own friends had been soldiers, and had been called up at once. Every day, it seemed, one read in the paper that somebody one knew had been killed.

  It was only three months since Archie and I had seen each other, yet those three months had been, I suppose, acted out in what might have been called a different dimension of time. In that short period I had lived through an entirely new kind of experience: the death of my friends, uncertainty, the background of life being altered. Archie had had an equal amount of new experience, though in a different fi
eld. He had been in the middle of death, defeat, retreat, fear. Both of us had lived a large tract on our own. The result of it was that we met almost as strangers.

  It was like learning to know each other all over again. The difference between us showed up at once. His own determined casualness and flippancy–almost gaiety–upset me. I was too young then to appreciate that that was for him the best way of facing his new life. I, on the other hand, had become far more earnest, emotional, and had put aside my own light flippancy of happy girlhood. It was as though we were trying to reach each other, and finding, almost with dismay, that we had forgotten how to do so.

  Archie was determined on one thing–he made that clear from the first: there was no question of marriage. ‘Entirely the wrong thing to do,’ he said. ‘All my friends think so. Just rushing into things, and then what happens? You stop one, you’ve had it, and you’ve left behind a young widow, perhaps a child coming–it’s selfish and wrong.’

  I didn’t agree with him. I argued passionately on the other side. But one of Archie’s characteristics was certainty. He was always sure of what he ought to do and what he was going to do. I don’t mean that he never changed his mind–he could, and did, suddenly, and very quickly sometimes. In fact he could change right over, seeing black as white and white as black. But when he had done so he was just as sure about it. I accepted his decision and we set about enjoying those precious few days we would have together.