Blitz

by Claire Rayner

  She managed to pick up a crowded bus outside the station and swung on to it gratefully to strap-hang all the way down the dark Whitechapel Road, until they were all turned out about seven stops from the hospital, because the siren went. She took a chance, though, and went on, half walking, half running, to get there. If she did all she could to get on duty with the least waste of time, she told herself breathlessly, they’d be sure to understand the problems that had delayed her and there’d be no fuss after all.

  Fortunately the raid that had been warned was happening well over towards the docks, so she got to the familiar bulk of the hospital, looming against the night sky, without any difficulty and belted for the nurses’ home to scramble out of her dirty clothes with much gratitude, splash water around wherever she could and climb into her uniform. What she would have loved was a bath, but she couldn’t indulge herself; it was now almost midnight. If she could get on duty in time to relieve the others for the midnight meal, surely all would be forgiven –

  Casualty was as hectic as ever when she got there, and she had mixed feelings about that. It might have been easier for Sister to forgive her if they’d had a quiet night, but busy like this – maybe Sister hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t there? With which highly optimistic thought Robin plunged into the hubbub and set to work. She took it on herself to head for the same corner cubicle to which she’d been assigned on her first night on Casualty to find it occupied by a small and very grimy child with a severely grazed knee, in which pieces of gravel were embedded, and waiting tearfully for someone to come and deal with him.

  So she did. She smiled at the little boy and talked to him as cheerfully as she could as she washed the knee with copious amounts of Eusol, and then began, very delicately, to forceps out the biggest bits of gravel she could find, as the child watched apprehensively and she murmured to him as soothingly as she could, telling him some sort of story to distract his attention.

  It wasn’t until she stood up, straightening her already weary back to turn to her trolley and get more Eusol that she realized she was being watched. Staff Nurse Meek was standing just outside the cubicle, staring in at her above folded arms. Her eyes glittered as she stared and there was an almost triumphant look on her face.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘So you’ve deigned to come on duty, have you? Good of you! What excuse have you got? It can hardly be oversleeping, not after three nights off.’

  ‘It was my train,’ Robin said and smiled at the little boy who had started to tug at her apron. ‘Maybe no one told you? Oh dear – sorry, Staff Nurse, but may I just finish this? Poor little chap’s a bit agitated. Not surprising. He’s got half a pound of assorted road in his knee –’ And she picked up the Eusol, and turned back to the demanding child.

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’ Nurse Meek snapped, and pushed in through the curtain and took the Eusol jug from her hands. ‘I’ll finish this. Sister’ll want a word with you, young woman. We’ll have none of your high-handedness here in this department, I can tell you! On your way, now – ’

  The child began to wail and Robin said quickly, ‘Oh, please let me finish doing him, Staff Nurse! He’s just getting used to me. I’m rather comfortable with boys of this age – my little brother – ’

  ‘I’m not remotely interested in your family affairs, Nurse,’ Meek said icily. ‘I told you to go to Sister. Go at once. And you, young man, stop that caterwauling immediately. I never heard such a fuss! Be a man, for heaven’s sake – ’

  And Robin had to go, burning with rage though she was. The child had settled so well with her, and to see Nurse Meek, efficiently and delicately though she performed the necessary treatment, making the child howl like that upset her a good deal. She was almost in tears herself, what with Meek’s behaviour and the fatigue from her journey, as she went marching across the crowded waiting hall towards Sister’s office.

  Sister was standing outside it, talking to one of the doctors as she came up, and she cast one glowering glance at her and said with great chilliness, ‘Nurse Bradman? I see! Wait here. I shall deal with you shortly,’ and returned her attention to Dr Landow, who looked at Robin with a friendly grin. But Robin couldn’t return it. All her apprehension had come back at the sight of Sister’s face, so set and angry under the confection of lacy frills that was her cap. Oh please, she prayed wordlessly, please let Ma’s message have been detailed enough, please let Sister understand it wasn’t my fault –

  Landow went away then, nodding affably at Robin and Sister Priestland, her eyes snapping, drew herself up to her very unimpressive height, tilted her head and stared up at Robin.

  ‘Well, Nurse! And what have you to say for yourself?’

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry, Sister. As you heard, the train I was on coming back from Norwich was dreadfully delayed. There should have been one overnight I could have got, but there was an incident on the line somewhere down near Colchester and – ’

  ‘As I heard?’ Sister Priestland’s eyes were almost popping out of her head with fury. ‘What do you think I do with my time, Nurse? I work here all the hours God sends, night after night – no off-duty for me, in case you didn’t know – and during the day I need to sleep. I have no time to listen to wireless bulletins about trains or incidents – ’

  Robin, amazed, did the unforgiveable and interrupted her. ‘Oh, no, Sister, I didn’t mean on the wireless! I mean when my mother contacted you!’

  Staff Nurse Meek had appeared on the other side of Sister, holding the notes from the little boy, who was still to be heard bawling lustily all through the department, and lifted her brows at Robin.

  ‘If I may say so, Sister, I heard of no call from anyone about Nurse Bradman’s absence. And the office hadn’t either, when I reported the fact to them – ’

  ‘I’m well aware of that, Staff Nurse,’ Sister snapped, not taking her eyes from Robin’s mortified face. ‘Go and stop that child’s noise, for heaven’s sake. He needs a little affection, since he was found wandering alone. Go and deal with him and get him up to Sister Marshall as soon as you can.’

  Meek reddened and casting a malevolent look at Robin, went, and Sister Priestland stared hard at Robin for another long moment.

  ‘You say a message was sent to explain your absence?’

  ‘Yes, Sister, only it wasn’t meant to be an absence. I mean, it was a delay. I had to take my little brother back to his foster home in Norwich, you see, because he ran away again. He hates being an evacuee and no one else in the family could take him. And then the trains – ’

  ‘You asked your mother to call?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call us directly? We aren’t unreasonable, you know, but we can’t cope with people who tell lies and just don’t show a sense of responsibility – ’

  Robin tightened with anger. ‘I do not tell lies! And I was worried sick when I realized I was going to be late. I tried and tried to phone the hospital but I couldn’t get through, and the operator told me there were lines down because of the raids, so I tried to get my mother at her canteen as it’s not too far from here, and at last I managed it. It took hours to get to her, and the line was dreadful! I’m sure she’d have sent my message. She wouldn’t have let me down – she knows how important it is to be where you’re wanted when you’re wanted.’ Robin was well launched now, and her voice rose with her passion. ‘She was an ambulance driver and nurse in the last war! She’s taught me what’s right and what – she got the message here, I’m sure she did – ’

  She became aware that behind her the buzz of talk and clatter that was so much a part of the Casualty department had dropped to a low murmur as more and more people became aware of the fact that Sister, the Great God of the department, was having a stand-up argument with a junior probationer. The combination of shock and scandalized disbelief and sheer delight in the sideshow had patients and nurses alike agog.

  ‘So I didn’t tell you a lie,’ she ended lamely in a lower tone. ‘
It’s just some awful sort of mix-up. I wouldn’t be late on purpose.’

  Sister Priestland was looking at her sharply but there seemed less frost in her now. ‘Then why is it, pray, that I have received no such message? Staff Nurse Meek tells me she has not. Must we ask the other nurses?’

  ‘Please do,’ Robin said and looked round. She could see Dollis and Jenner on the other side together with the laboratory technician, Peter, and for a moment wondered where Chick was and then remembered that she had nights off, and bit her lip. Which of them would get a rocket now for not passing on an important message? She felt herself between the most towering of cliffs and the deepest of oceans. If someone did confess to forgetting to pass on any message, Sister Priestland’s rage would be monumental. And that would ensure that Robin became very unpopular with her fellows; and if no one did then Robin was branded a selfish and indeed rather stupid dodger who played liberties with the truth. It was a mortifying situation to be in.

  Sister beckoned imperiously and Nurse Jenner scuttled over, her thick glasses glinting importantly, and with a certain avidity at being included in the little drama outside Sister’s office, whatever it was.

  ‘Did you take a message of any kind from Nurse Bradman’s mother, Nurse?’ Sister demanded. ‘I know there have been problems with outside calls on our telephones, or so Nurse Bradman assures me, but I imagine she might have sent a message by hand.’

  A little regretfully Jenner denied any knowledge of any message; clearly she wanted to know more about what was going on; and Nurse Dollis took her place for catechism. She was a good deal more wily and denied accepting any message so promptly and with such a sanctimonious air that Robin at once became suspicious. But Sister said nothing, just dismissing her, and looked over the girl’s shoulder at the rest of the department. Peter, the lab assistant, had disappeared, and there was only Hamish Todd, standing beside a bucket and mop in the cubicle next to the one in which Robin had been working and staring across with a frown on his face. After a moment he set his mop carefully against the bucket so that it couldn’t tumble, and came across the waiting hall.

  ‘Can I help in any way, Sister?’ he asked.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Sister said grimly. ‘I would hardly expect you to take messages of any importance. You’re our orderly and as such your duties are entirely domestic and portering. It is the more senior people I need to talk to. You can go and find Peter Rye and ask him to come here, if you please – ’

  ‘A message about Nurse Bradman?’ Hamish said.

  ‘My mother sent it – I asked her to let Sister and the office know I was held up because of the train from Norwich.’

  ‘Ah,’ Hamish said after a moment. ‘That message.’

  There was a long silence as Sister Priestland stared at him, her eyes so dilated with anger they looked as though they were all pupils.

  ‘You took a message from Mrs Bradman?’

  ‘Mrs Deveen,’ Robin murmured. She really didn’t know why it mattered, but it was something she was so used to doing when people assumed she had the same surname as her mother. Sister Priestland clearly didn’t hear her and remained staring at Hamish, who stood there, stolid and quiet, and showing no hint of any discomfiture.

  ‘I – er, I saw a woman standing at the door looking around and she saw me, and not knowing I was just here for the portering and domestic work, you understand, she asked me to take a message from a Mrs Deveen – ’

  ‘I see! And you took this message? Have you no sense of any – any proper sense of the way things are dealt with in this department? All messages should be given to me at once, or to my deputy Staff Nurse Meek or to whoever is the most senior of the available nursing staff – ’

  ‘I asked the woman to tell you herself,’ Hamish said, quite unperturbed by the snapping anger that was being directed at him from the diminutive Sister Priestland. ‘But she wouldn’t wait. Said she’d been up all the night in the raids and had to be away home.’

  ‘That must have been one of the women from the canteen,’ Robin cut in eagerly. ‘If Ma couldn’t get through on the phone that’s what she’d have done, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hamish peaceably. ‘Aye, that’s who it was, all right. A lady from the canteen.’

  ‘Well, Todd,’ Sister Priestland said. ‘What can I say? Why couldn’t you tell me or Nurse Meek?’

  ‘I thought she’d made a mistake, to tell you the truth of it, Sister,’ Hamish said, and caught Robin’s eye and then let his gaze slide away, almost embarrassed. ‘I knew of no Nurse Deveen, do you see, and she said to say that Mrs Deveen’s daughter would be late because of the trains and since there’s no such person here that I kent, I didna’ bother to tell you. Thought she was just another disturbed soul, confused after the raids, you know?’

  ‘Well,’ Sister said and seemed almost speechless for a moment. ‘Well, I never heard of such impudence! I thought you were a decent sort of man, Todd, in spite of your cowardice and refusal to serve in your country’s armed services when you’re needed. I certainly didn’t think you’d be as stupid as this!’

  ‘Well, there it is, Sister,’ Hamish said and suddenly smiled, and it lit his face up so that he looked like a wicked child, for all his bulk. ‘It seems you were wrong.’

  ‘Get on with the floor,’ she said furiously. ‘Go on! And take no more messages and make no more decisions about which you will and which you won’t deliver, you understand me? Nurse Bradman, I’m sorry I misjudged you. We’ll say no more about it. Away with you to your meal, now, and when you get back take the two cubicles over on the corner, until the others get back and can relieve you on one of them. On your way now.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister,’ Robin said breathlessly and escaped, heading for the door, but when she got there, she stopped and looked back. Sister and Nurse Meek had disappeared, and Hamish was swabbing the floor of the cubicle not too far away; and she risked it, and went hurrying across to him.

  ‘How could you do that to me, Hamish?’ she said. ‘I mean, how could you not tell Sister? Even if you didn’t recognize the name, if you’d passed the message on someone would have sorted it out in the office. You really dropped me in it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did I?’ he said and leaned on his mop for a moment, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘Well, that was in no way my intention. Not after you stood up for me the way you did the other night.’

  ‘Stood up for you?’ Robin said and then remembered. ‘Oh, the business of the meal break. Well, for heaven’s sake, I was just – it seemed all wrong, that was the thing. There was no more to it than that.’

  ‘Well, mebbe not. But I was grateful all the same.’

  ‘Not grateful enough to deliver a message that could have saved me from a rucking,’ she snapped and then made a face. ‘Oh, drat, I suppose that’s not fair. If you didn’t know it was about me. Anyway, thanks for owning up in the end. They’ll be horrid to you over it, I dare say.’

  ‘It won’t be much worse than it’s been all along,’ he said equably, and started mopping again. ‘I can deal with whatever it is.’

  ‘Well, I just – well, all right,’ Robin said. ‘And I’m sorry it was you that got the – well, you know what I mean.’ And she turned to go.

  Across the other side of the waiting hall, Staff Nurse Meek was watching with her eyes sharp and glinting a little in the brightness of the overhead lamps, and for some reason that Robin was never to understand she blushed hotly before hurrying off to get her midnight meal. Even though, somehow, she had quite lost her appetite.

  13

  ‘Dear me,’ Mildred said. ‘This is a rare surprise these days,’ and she looked up at her daughter over her glasses and then returned with some care to her knitting. Her fingers were more gnarled then they had been, and it clearly caused her pain to move the stiff joints, Poppy thought as she bent and kissed her mother’s papery old cheek. She put herself through a lot to make those damned socks – and we don’t even know if anyone wears them. They l
ooked dreadfully uncomfortable.

  ‘I know, Mama. Don’t be annoyed with me – you know perfectly well that I come when I can. But what with the business and the canteen it’s not always possible.’

  ‘You could telephone,’ Mildred said and Poppy laughed.

  ‘You sound like me having a go at Robin. I suppose it’s always the same with mothers.’

  ‘If you find yourself distressed because Robin doesn’t phone you, then you should understand how I feel when you fail to do so for me,’ Mildred said and then frowned slightly. ‘Robin hasn’t called me either, for some days now. It isn’t like her. I suppose all is well? I imagine I would have heard if it were not.’

  ‘Robin’s fine,’ Poppy said and sat down gratefully, sinking onto the comfortable sofa that was always there by the fire, but which Mildred scorned, feeling more comfortable in a high-backed straight chair on which she sat looking like a Punch cartoon, she was so erect. ‘And the reason she hasn’t phoned is the same reason I haven’t, and why I’m here now.’