The District Nurse

by Annie Groves

  Alice turned towards home, walking slowly, trying to work out what had just happened. Then she decided that she was just feeling churned up because of the stark reality of the war – all the changes, and the speed at which they were happening. Joe was just a friend. He would be away for far more time than he would be at home for the foreseeable future. ‘Which is quite all right,’ she said under her breath, ‘because I’m not interested in him as anything other than as a friend, really I’m not.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Gwen stopped Edith and Mary as they were about to go outside and fetch their bikes on Monday morning. ‘Nurse Gillespie, Nurse Perkins,’ she said formally, and the two young women exchanged looks, wondering what they might have done wrong.

  ‘Yes?’ Edith tried to be polite but she was itching to get going, as she had a full round ahead of her.

  ‘You both have patients referred by Dr Patcham, don’t you,’ Gwen said, although it clearly wasn’t a question. Dr Patcham had been practising in Dalston for over thirty years and just about every nurse had one of his patients on her round. He was very popular thanks to his kindly manner, and trusted by everybody who came to him.

  ‘He won’t be available for several weeks and so he has drafted in a locum,’ Gwen went on. ‘Therefore don’t be surprised if you come across a Dr McGillicuddy. Just carry on as normal, and address your reports to him for the time being and not Dr Patcham.’

  ‘Why, whatever’s happened to him?’ Mary asked. She had a soft spot for the doctor, who must have been nearing retirement age. ‘I hope he’s not been taken ill.’

  ‘That’s not for us to question,’ Gwen said severely. ‘Just do your work as you would usually do, but be prepared for a new doctor for a short while. Very well, off you go.’ She turned and marched smartly back down the corridor towards the district room.

  ‘Blimey, she’s full of the joys of spring this morning,’ grumbled Mary as she made her way to the bike rack. ‘Surely it’s only human to want to know what’s up with the doctor. He’s one of my favourites. He brought me ginger biscuits the last time he saw me, that’s typical of him. I do hope there’s nothing seriously wrong. If only it could have been Beastly Beasley instead.’

  Edith shrugged and arranged her cloak so that it wouldn’t catch in the bike chain as she got on. ‘Maybe we’ll find out more on our rounds,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll try to see if anyone knows something. But I’ve got to go, I have a poor teenage boy with a tubercular hip and he needs to be seen as early as possible. I was afraid Gwen was going to make me late. Catch you later.’ She hopped onto her bike and sped off before Mary could speculate any further.

  Edith had no time to think about the old doctor as she tended her patient, a fifteen-year-old who needed careful nursing twice a day. By the time she had prepared the room, sorted out her sterile water and dressings, along with two pairs of forceps in a basin, made sure clean pyjamas were to hand and that the window of the tiny bedroom was shut, all her attention was on her work. She noted his temperature, respiration and pulse, as she would for any patient, and then followed the detailed routine of cleaning and bathing and dressing that his condition needed, all the while reassuring him and keeping him calm. She checked he had no bedsores on his pressure points, as the poor lad was bedbound and prone to them. Finally she tucked him into a freshly made bed, opened the window, and expertly cleared everything away in a hygienic manner. ‘Right-o, Dennis, I’ll see you next time,’ she said breezily. ‘I’ll just go and have a chat to your mother. She’s downstairs, isn’t she?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dennis, as cheerfully as he could, though he was already beginning to perspire with the effort. ‘Thank you, Nurse.’

  Edith shut his bedroom door, full of admiration for his bravery. He never complained, even though he must have been in constant discomfort at the very least. She sought out his anxious mother, and discussed what he was likely to have to eat for the day, suggesting a few improvements so that he had the best nutrition her limited money could stretch to.

  ‘So he can have beef tea for his dinner.’

  Edith agreed, pleased that things were going as well as could be hoped for.

  ‘Yes, Doctor always says that’s good for him,’ Dennis’s mother went on. She was a small, nervous woman, trying to hide the worry her son caused her every waking minute. ‘Well, that’s to say the old doctor. Did you hear what happened to him, Nurse?’

  Edith paused in the fastening of her Gladstone bag. ‘I’m not sure, Mrs Thomas,’ she said cautiously. ‘We’ve been told there’s a locum for a little while, but that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, the poor doctor,’ Mrs Thomas exclaimed, wringing her hands. ‘It’s this blasted blackout, that’s what’s to blame. Coming home from visiting his daughter on Saturday night, he was, and drove into a lamppost.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Edith said, taken aback. ‘That sounds nasty.’

  ‘He was ever so lucky. He didn’t break nothing but I heard he’s all shaken up. Hurt his head, all bruised he is, so they say.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ said Edith. ‘Well, I’m to make my report to his temporary replacement, Dr McGillicuddy.’

  ‘Strange name, ain’t it,’ Mrs Thomas remarked.

  ‘Irish, I believe,’ said Edith, wondering if the woman thought her own surname – Gillespie – was strange too.

  ‘He didn’t sound Irish,’ Mrs Thomas said.

  ‘Oh, have you met him?’

  ‘Yes, he was ever so nice. He dropped round last night to make our acquaintance, fancy that. Young man, he is. Very dark hair, lovely kind eyes. He’s good-looking too. You want to pay him a visit, nurse.’ Mrs Thomas shook off her gloom and sounded almost teasing.

  ‘Oh, that’s of no interest to me,’ Edith grinned back. ‘I’m married to my work, you know.’ She took her cloak off the back of the front door and wrapped it round her. ‘I must be off, Mrs Thomas, but I shall see you later. Thank you for telling me about Dr Patcham.’

  ‘Tell him get well soon from Dennis if you see him,’ the woman said, coming to the door to see her out.

  Alice was the first back to the nurses’ home at the end of the rounds and immediately went to the service room to make a hot drink. Gladys was there, cleaning the cupboard doors. ‘Hello, Miss … I mean, Alice.’

  Alice rubbed her cold hands together. ‘Gladys, how are you? If I don’t get a drop of cocoa soon I’m going to perish with the cold.’

  Gladys moved out of the way so Alice could reach her shelf. ‘You want to take your gloves with you. It’s not summer any more. You’re all out on those bikes – that wind will chill you to the bone, it will.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Alice. ‘Will you have time this evening to look at those exercises, Gladys? Have you managed to try them?’

  Gladys put down her rag. ‘Yes, I have. It was ever so hard to begin with but I reckon I’ve got the hang of some of it. It’s when you put letters together that I get confused. They don’t sound like what they ought.’

  Alice nodded as she spooned out cocoa. ‘I know what you mean. Letters don’t make the same sound every time. You just have to learn the common words. But you’ll find it easier as you go along.’

  Gladys nodded seriously. ‘I reckon you’re right, Alice. Thank you ever so much. I got to do upstairs now but I’ll see you later.’ She flashed a smile, picked up her cleaning things and left, as Alice took her warm drink through to the seating area of the canteen.

  The calm was broken as Mary whirled in, soon after followed by Edith.

  ‘Well, I say. Have you seen him yet?’ Mary pulled off her cap and her hair sprang free. ‘The new locum doctor? I tell you, if I wasn’t walking out with Charles, I’d make sure to make all my reports to him in person. He’s a far cry from Dr Patcham, dear old soul that he is.’

  ‘No, our paths didn’t cross, but some of the patients told me about him,’ said Edith. ‘They all seemed to like him.’

  ‘I should think so too. Seriously, how could you
not? You’ll have to find an excuse to meet him. He won’t be here for long but he is a sight for sore eyes.’ Mary raised her eyebrows. ‘Temperatures will be raised across the district, that’s my prediction.’

  ‘Steady on, Mary,’ laughed Alice. ‘You’ll make Charles jealous if he hears about it.’

  ‘On no, he’s no reason to be jealous, not really,’ said Mary. ‘In fact I’m seeing him later, just quickly, as he’s off in a few days’ time. He’ll be going to and fro for a while so we must make the most of days when he’s in town. I should go up and get changed. But I had to check to see if you’ve met the gorgeous Dr McGillicuddy.’

  ‘Dr … McGillicuddy?’ Alice echoed, setting down her cocoa.

  Mary was too carried away with enthusiasm to notice the change in her friend’s face. ‘Yes, odd name, isn’t it?’

  ‘Irish,’ said Edith automatically.

  ‘But he’s not Irish. He’s from Liverpool,’ said Mary. ‘Toodle-pip, girls, I have to make myself beautiful for Charles.’ She swirled out.

  Edith looked at Alice. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Alice shook her head, avoiding meeting Edith’s eyes. She picked up her drink, put it down again, pushed it away. Suddenly the taste was less inviting. ‘I … I might be wrong,’ she began, her voice halting.

  Edith sat down opposite her. ‘It’s the Liverpool connection, isn’t it? Do you know him?’

  Alice shrugged. ‘I can’t say. It’s not such an unusual name up there – there are lots of Irish names, people who came from Irish families there.’

  ‘And nothing wrong with that,’ Edith said forcefully. She’d had a lifetime of teasing about her own name, and knew that her parents had sometimes found it hard to find a house to rent or proper employment.

  ‘Exactly.’ Alice sighed. ‘But when I first started training back there, I did know a Dr McGillicuddy. He wasn’t much older than me in fact – he’d just finished his own training. He was very good-looking; you couldn’t help but notice it. All the nurses used to make excuses to be on his ward. It was quite funny really.’

  Edith briefly shut her eyes. She had a horrible sense of where this conversation was leading – towards the one thing that Alice hardly ever spoke about.

  ‘But you didn’t, did you,’ she said softly. ‘You weren’t interested in Dr McGillicuddy.’

  ‘No.’ Alice gazed out of the window. ‘I knew him quite well though, if it’s the same person. You see …’ she paused and swallowed hard, as if to gather her strength to face the memory she’d tried so very hard to avoid. ‘You see … he was Mark’s best friend.’

  There it was. She’d said the word. She’d named the man who had broken her heart. The young trainee doctor she’d first met on a night shift. After that moment she’d never spared anyone else a second glance, including the almost impossibly handsome Dr Dermot McGillicuddy.

  ‘Oh, Alice.’ Edith reached over and took her friend’s hand. The hurt evidently still went deep. But now it looked as if she would have to suffer a daily reminder – or at least for as long as Dr Patcham remained out of commission.

  ‘I’d better make an excuse to go to see him, get it over with rather than meet during the course of the rounds on the district,’ Alice said, her voice whisper-thin. ‘If he’s going to talk to me about Mark then I’d rather it was at a time of my choosing. So I can be ready.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Edith. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘No,’ said Alice at once, and then, realising it had come out too harshly, ‘No, but thanks. I’d rather do it on my own. Get it over and done with.’ She got up distractedly, gathering her things. ‘I’ve got to see Gladys about her next lesson. I’ve got to go upstairs.’ She wiped her cheek swiftly, but not so fast that Edith didn’t see.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Edith was all concern.

  Alice shook her head but spoke resolutely. ‘Yes. Or I will be. Thanks, Edie – and you won’t mention it to anyone, will you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then I’ll try to see him first thing Monday. Get it over and done with.’ Alice walked away, biting her lip, but knowing she had no choice. The most painful episode in her whole life was about to be ripped open again and somehow she had to get through it.

  Never one to put off anything important, Alice presented herself at Dr Patcham’s house on Monday morning, where there was a side door which led to the room he had turned into a surgery. It must once have been a sitting room and it still retained a rather grand appearance, with heavy wood panelling and beautiful cornices. The wallpaper was dark flock and the whole place would have been gloomy were it not for the big bay window which let in the autumn sunlight. In one corner stood an old wooden desk, and behind it sat a figure Alice would have recognised anywhere. Dr McGillicuddy hadn’t changed a bit. He was bent over a pile of papers, which from where Alice was standing looked like nurses’ reports.

  ‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ he said, not looking up, and Alice caught her breath at the familiar voice. She’d heard hardly any Liverpool accents since she left, and this made her at once homesick and wary.

  He finished skimming the top report on the pile and placed it to one side, on another stack of papers. Then he sat back and his jaw dropped.

  ‘Alice.’

  She met his gaze. ‘Hello, Dermot,’ she said, pleased that her voice remained steady.

  He rose to greet her and came halfway across the rich old gold carpet before changing his mind and holding out his hand, rather than giving her the hug that he would once have done. ‘Fancy seeing you here,’ he said, once he had got over the surprise. ‘And you’re a Queen’s Nurse now.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Alice said, fingering the badge at her neck. ‘I came to London to train last year and then took up a post here in Dalston when I qualified.’

  ‘Of course you left Liverpool, I remember that,’ Dermot said, recovering quickly. ‘I should have guessed it was you – I saw some reports from a Nurse Lake and the handwriting rang a bell but I didn’t suppose it could be you. It would have been too much of a coincidence. Do sit down, what am I thinking of, forgetting my manners.’ He gave her the broad smile that had sent all her colleagues’ hearts a-flutter.

  She took a seat on the beautifully carved oak chair opposite the desk, as he resumed his place.

  ‘Yes, who’d have thought it,’ said Alice quietly. She glanced down at her hands. ‘One of the other nurses said she met the new locum and I realised it had to be you.’

  ‘What are the odds, eh?’ he said, still smiling, his voice light.

  Alice couldn’t keep up the small talk. ‘I thought I should come. Better to see you now than to bump into you on the district, in front of a patient.’

  Dermot shifted in his chair. ‘I see.’ He restacked his pile of reports to gather his thoughts.

  ‘Why are you here? I mean, why have you left Liverpool?’ she asked.

  He frowned. ‘I’m only here briefly. It wasn’t planned, but when I heard what had happened to Ralph, I felt I had to help out,’ he said.

  ‘Ralph?’ she echoed.

  ‘Yes, Dr Patcham. He’s an old friend of my godfather,’ Dermot explained. ‘I was staying with him in town this weekend on my way to Southampton, and Ralph’s daughter rang him, in a bit of a state after the accident – you’ve heard about that? – and it seemed like fate. I don’t have to be in Southampton until next month and so I said I’d take over, just for a few weeks, to give the old boy a chance to recover.’

  ‘Why were you going to Southampton?’ Alice wondered.

  ‘I’m joining up. I’m going to be an army doctor.’

  Alice sighed. Yet another way in which the war would affect the normal, everyday running of general life – the younger doctors would think of leaving the hospitals. ‘Won’t you still be needed back home?’

  Dermot nodded sadly. ‘It’s a tough choice and I thought hard about it, but I reckon on balance the army will need me more. Doctors of Ralph’s
generation can keep things going here, but when things start to heat up on the battlefront, that’s where we younger ones will be vital. I felt I had to do it.’

  Alice nodded in understanding. ‘It’s going to be difficult whichever way you choose, I should think.’ She stood up and walked across to the bright window, with the shafts of sunlight full of dancing dust motes. She turned her back to Dermot as she asked, ‘How is he?’

  ‘Oh, Alice. You’re still thinking of him.’ Dermot’s voice was heavy.

  Alice nodded. ‘Of course. Hard not to. You’d better tell me and get it over with. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start crying or anything. It’s all water under the bridge, but I’d like to know, for my own peace of mind.’ She turned to face him and could see he was about to weigh up his words very carefully.

  She had always liked Dermot, and felt lucky that she’d had a chance to get to know him without being overwhelmed by his looks, which in some ways were as much of a barrier as a draw. She’d heard all his friends tease him about giving up medicine and becoming a film star instead, but knew he was fiercely dedicated to his profession. He was a compassionate and skilled doctor and, if circumstances had been different, she would have been looking forward to working closely with him again for a few weeks. But there would always be the spectre of Mark between them.

  ‘He’s leaving Liverpool. He’ll be in Southampton already,’ Dermot told her. ‘We talked it over for hours and he came to the same conclusion as me. He’s joined up too. He felt it was the right thing.’

  Alice turned away again as she said, ‘Well, he would. He always wants to do the right thing.’ This time she couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.

  ‘Alice.’ Dermot’s face suddenly looked weary. ‘I know it was hard, but Mark thought it was for the best, you know that. It wasn’t anything to do with you, how you were, it was circumstances beyond his control …’

  ‘You don’t have to make excuses for him,’ said Alice quickly. ‘He stuck to his principles and I always agreed with those, for all the use that turned out to be.’ Then she recovered her composure. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s joined up already. So many brave souls have done so.’ For a fleeting moment Joe’s image came into her mind but then it was superseded by a vision of Mark, and how he had looked when she had last seen him. That day when he’d told her how much he loved her but that they had no future together. He hadn’t thought it was fair on her to ask her to wait when he had no idea of how long he would be away and what fate awaited him in Spain. The cause of the International Brigade was more important than their love. He was prepared to sacrifice his personal happiness for the greater good, and that meant she had to sacrifice hers as well.