A Nurse's Duty

by Maggie Hope

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here, I am so.’

  ‘It was all right. Gran was the midwife and she managed splendidly. And, yes, I’m fine. What do you think of your son?’ For so far Patrick had not looked at the baby. Now he did, holding down the shawl which overshadowed the baby’s face with the tip of a finger.

  ‘He’s very red, isn’t he?’ he asked, looking anxiously at the tiny bundle. ‘Do you think I should be going for the doctor? Just to be making sure?’

  ‘No, no, there’s no need to fetch the doctor out all this way tonight,’ Gran said before Karen could answer, as she came back into the room with fresh water for the kettle. She stirred the fire and settled the kettle on it before continuing, ‘He can check tomorrow if you like, but they are both well, I promise you. There’s nothing a doctor can do, he’s an unnecessary expense. But please yourself. Now, what you have to do is bring the bed down into the front room and help Karen into it so she can be quiet for a while. Oh, and the cradle from the attic. By the time you’ve done that, supper will be ready.’

  Gran was beaming. She tried hard to be matter-of-fact in issuing her instructions to hide the delight and relief which had washed over her when Patrick walked in. As he rushed out of the room to do her bidding, her eyes met her granddaughter’s in mutual understanding. He was back. Gran had not been slow in picking up Karen’s feelings of vulnerability, her insecurity.

  Soon Karen was ensconced in the front room with the cradle beside the bed, deliriously happy. Patrick hovered around, unwilling to let them out of his sight even for supper, which he ate in the kitchen in record time so that he could go back to them.

  ‘I think it’s time you settled down, Karen, you’ve had enough for today,’ Gran said at last, beginning to feel concerned at the excitement on her granddaughter’s face. She looked meaningfully at Patrick who jumped up from his seat on the end of the bed.

  ‘Oh, yes, to be sure now, you must get some sleep, my love. We may be disturbed by the baby during the night. You must get some rest.’ He bent to kiss her and she settled down obediently. The letter was forgotten, she thought drowsily, Patrick was so delighted with his son all other thoughts were pushed out of his mind.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing surer than that you’re in for disturbed nights now for a while,’ said Gran. She smiled as Patrick went into the kitchen. Then she picked up the lamp, leaving only the soft light of a candle for illumination, and followed him.

  Karen snuggled down under the enormous patchwork quilt, the events of the day going round and round in her head. She had been so miserable at the breakfast table yet here she was at the end of the day feeling so happy and elated she thought she would burst. Then she fell asleep suddenly, as suddenly as the baby in the cradle beside her.

  *

  Patrick went outside, finishing up a few evening chores in the yard, bringing in extra water, checking on the hen house – he had seen signs of foxes about that morning. The night was turning frosty, a hazy ring surrounding the moon. It would be colder before morning.

  He walked over to the gate by the rowan tree and looked out over the fell. Nearby he could hear the sheep baa-ing softly as they settled down. He thought about the letter he had received in the morning post.

  It was from his father in Ireland. As he saw the handwriting on the envelope, he had been filled with a sense of guilt – not so much for leaving the Church, but for the way he had let down his mother and father. But there was a feeling of resentment too. They had brought up a large family, all married now with families of their own, but it was only Patrick who had been expected to enter the seminary. From childhood it had been taken for granted that he would work to become a priest.

  Patrick thought about the letter he had written to his parents, only to tear up. His reasons for leaving the priesthood were so confused in his own mind that the task of explaining them was impossible. He pondered on them now with a sad melancholy. The rage he had felt at the suffering he saw among the wounded, the suicide of the young, blind soldier at Greenfields. He thought about what it must have been like to realize you had to live in a sightless world, how the boy must have felt as he found his way down to the river, what his thoughts must have been. Sighing, Patrick closed the hen house door and secured it against foxes. If there was a God, why would he allow such things? And why would he allow such a thing as the powerful attraction Patrick had felt for Karen, his love for her growing stronger every day when he was forbidden such a feeling? That crisis in his faith his parents would never understand.

  He finished his work and walked to the gate. Leaning on the rowan tree, he looked out over the dark dale and listened to the silence broken only by the rustling of night creatures and the chirping of grasshoppers.

  The letter from Ireland had been bitter to say the least.

  Your mother will never be able to hold her head up in Killinaboy or Corofin again. And you didn’t even tell us yourself, you dirty rotten coward. To run off after an English hussy, a Protestant …

  Patrick could hear his mother speaking through his father’s words. She was the strong one of the two, the more forceful. But he suspected that the last line came from his father alone: ‘Let us know how you are, son. Don’t just disappear.’

  Patrick sighed and turned back to the house. He had spent the day on the fell going over everything in his mind. He was committed to Karen and the boy, his life was here now, on the Durham moors.

  But he had to face up to the grief he had brought to his family back home in Ireland, had to write to his father and mother.

  When he came into the front room, tip-toeing in case he woke his wife and child, and lay down beside Karen, she turned to him and snuggled up to him but did not waken until the first cry of the child in the early hours brought both of them instantly awake and reaching for him. And Patrick, who had lain awake until then, fell asleep along with his family when the child had been attended to and placed back in his cradle.

  They decided to name the boy Brian Patrick. Karen herself went to register the birth when the baby was three weeks old for the travelling registrar was visiting Stanhope.

  There was a chill in the air as she halted the trap in the marketplace in Stanhope and already she could see that leaves were turning colour and falling from the beech trees. Summer was almost over, she mused, winter lay ahead. But it would be a cosy winter for them at Low Rigg Farm, for Patrick had brought coal from the station at Stanhope and cut peat on the moor and brought it in, under the guidance of Fred Bainbridge. They would be happy and safe away from the world in their house on the fell. Soon they would be snowed in, perhaps.

  ‘The name of the baby?’

  Karen hesitated as the registrar asked the question. She would have liked to call him Patrick Joseph in honour of her brother, but she had gone along with Patrick’s wishes in the end, though Brian sounded strange to her at first. In the warmth of her happiness and in the reassurance of Patrick’s love for both her and Brian, which she saw in his every action now, she had quickly recovered her strength.

  ‘Brian Patrick,’ she said firmly.

  Patrick had not mentioned ‘The Letter’, as she privately thought of it, and Karen was content to let it lie. He went about the work of the farm with renewed energy, his silent periods, when she had felt shut away from him, becoming fewer and fewer until they had all but disappeared. His face was sunny, he was becoming hardened to the work, and his absorption in his little family dominated his life.

  There was still bunting in the streets as Karen came out of the office for it was not long after Armistice Day. There had been great celebrations in their corner of the dale and thanksgiving services in the little Chapel. Yet the war seemed all unreal to Karen, something from another life. This valley in Weardale was remote from the happenings of the outer world.

  Walking along to the post office, she posted her letters to Morton Main, one for her parents and one for Kezia.

  ‘I ought to go and see them,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Make my
peace.’ But she was reluctant to leave the farm or do anything which might alter the mood of the old place, break the spell as it were. She would wait a while, she decided, and crossed over to the trap with Polly waiting patiently between the shafts.

  Anyway, she excused herself, Gran wasn’t too good lately, she always seemed to be tired. Karen often walked into the kitchen to find her dozing in the rocking chair, even in the middle of the day. Gran would jump up and begin doing something busily but Karen was not fooled. It wouldn’t be a good idea to leave her alone at present.

  Within only a few weeks, the snow which was already covering the tops began to blanket the moor and high valleys, making travelling foolhardy in any case. They were tucked into their own little world and Karen was content to remain there. Then the first serious argument, appearing insoluble at the time, loomed large in their lives.

  Karen began to talk about having Brian baptized in the Chapel.

  ‘I don’t want him baptized,’ Patrick said, softly enough.

  This had never occurred to her. That a child should go unbaptized was a scandal and she opposed it with all the strength of her Non-Conformist background. It certainly wasn’t going to happen to her beloved Brian. He would be baptized, he would.

  ‘He will be baptized in the Chapel and by our own Minister.’

  ‘He will not.’ Patrick was equally adamant and uncompromising. Karen gazed at him. Most of the time he was easy-going, falling in with her wishes about everyday things. Now she was finding his will to be as strong as her own. A thought occurred to her.

  ‘Do you want him baptized in your own church then? Take him down to Wolsingham? But you don’t even go there yourself.’

  The words ‘And you a priest’ hung on the tip of her tongue but remained unspoken.

  ‘No, I don’t want him baptized.’ Patrick’s tone was final. As far as he was concerned the discussion was at an end.

  Karen went over to the cradle where Brian had begun to cry loudly at the unexpected sound of voices raised in anger. She picked him up and hugged him, staring at Patrick who was showing a steely will she hadn’t seen before in him. Even if he himself had lost his faith, what did it matter if she had Brian baptized? He whimpered then cried in earnest, stirring restlessly in her tight clasp. She hushed him automatically, her face flushed, still staring at Patrick. He stood silently, staring back at her, his eyes hard.

  ‘Good God deliver us!’ Gran came in the door from the yard where she had been feeding the hens. ‘What’s the matter with the babby? Give him here to me.’ She took the child, holding him against her shoulder and clucking softly. Sitting down on the rocker before the fire she rocked him gently until his sobs quietened to an occasional hiccup and at last he fell asleep on her shoulder. Gran took no further notice of Patrick or Karen, focusing all her attention on Brian. She had a rare talent for making herself practically invisible when she thought they needed some privacy.

  Meanwhile the young couple stood like statues, Karen moving only to give the child up to Gran, until at last Patrick turned wordlessly and stalked out of the door and on up the fell. Only then did the tension leave Karen and she sank down on the settee. Mechanically she adjusted her hair, pinning it back into its bun, and wiped her face with her handkerchief and blew her nose.

  Gran watched her over the downy black tuft of Brian’s hair. Best not say anything, she thought with great forbearance, they would sort it out. All couples had their problems at first, but there was no getting away from the fact that these two had got off to a particularly bad start even though this was the first time she had heard them row. So she sat rocking the child and staring into the fire. Eventually Karen stood up and went out to the scullery where she could be heard clattering and banging a bucket about against the flagstones as she scrubbed the floor. She was trying to calm herself with hard physical work.

  When Patrick came in to supper they spoke calmly enough to each other about the ordinary everyday things of the farm but they were avoiding each other’s eyes.

  When the snow abated and it was safe to take the boy to the Chapel, Karen had him christened there by the Minister. It was a quiet ceremony before the Sunday Service and she said nothing to Patrick about it. Brian’s baptismal certificate she hid in her dressing-table drawer.

  Slowly the immense attraction they had for one another overcame everything else, drawing them together as closely as before. Their passion was undiminished and the secret delights of the marriage bed through the cold winter nights were yet only part of the deepening love which enveloped them both. The sound of Patrick’s step in the yard brought a lightening to Karen’s heart, a feeling echoed in his eyes when he saw her waiting for him. And Brian throve and Karen thought this was the happiest winter of her life. Sometimes she would look at her baby and words from the New Testament would run through her mind: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ And she couldn’t think it was blasphemy.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘HEY, MISSUS, YOU haven’t got a cup of tea in the pot, have you?’

  The woman who had been washing the front windows of the cottage jumped at the sound of the man’s voice. She hadn’t noticed anyone coming up the lane when she’d started the job. The lane led up from the main road into Hexham but not many people turned up it unless they had business at the farm further up.

  ‘By, you made me jump,’ she said now, looking the man at her garden gate up and down. A poor sight he was an’ all, she thought, thin and scrawny, his hair down to the collar of his scruffy suit jacket and what looked like a week’s growth of stubble on his chin. He stooped over the gate, one hand held behind his back and the other holding on to the gatepost.

  Mrs Timms wrung out the wash-leather in her hands as she looked at him, feeling a bit apprehensive. She was on her own in the row of four cottages, the men were at work on the farm and the women had gone into Hexham for it was market day.

  ‘Come on, missus, just a cup of tea.’

  Nick asked again, without much hope. The last few months had taught him that women and even some men felt threatened by such as him and resented his presence if they had men-folk away at the war. For he couldn’t bear for anyone to see his hand had gone. He usually managed to hide the stump so that people thought he was whole.

  ‘Aye, all right then,’ Mrs Timms said reluctantly. After all, it was her Christian duty. And God knows, she thought, he didn’t look like he could be a threat to her. A puff of wind would blow him over.

  ‘You can come in and sit on the bench,’ she said, indicating a garden seat under the window.

  ‘Thanks, missus.’

  Nick carefully inserted his stump into his frayed jacket pocket, making sure she didn’t see what he was doing, before opening the gate and walking up the path. This made him look lop-sided and Mrs Timms showed her puzzlement. But she said nothing, merely going into the house and fetching an old enamel mug from the pantry, filling it with tea from the pot standing as usual on the hearth. She added a good dollop of sweetened, condensed milk and stirred it vigorously. As an afterthought she buttered a fresh-baked scone and took that out too. The lad looked like he could do with something in his belly. She smiled as she handed it over to him, feeling pleased at her magnanimity. She felt a bit more pleasantly disposed towards him now she was feeding him, despite the rank stink of him as she came near.

  ‘Eeh, thanks, missus.’ Nick took the mug of tea and put it down on the bench before taking the scone.

  ‘Something wrong with your hand?’ she asked.

  Nick shoved the stump further down behind the rags he kept in the pocket for bulk. He shook his head vigorously and chewed on the scone. His mouth was dry but he had to get rid of the scone before he could drink.

  Mrs Timms looked at him, her lips pursed. Well, if he didn’t want to talk, she certainly didn’t. Anyway, the smell from him was getting stronger. She backed away and carried on washing the windows, rubbing angrily at the panes. Idle good for nothing, why wasn’t he away a
t the war anyway? she thought. Her good mood had evaporated swiftly and she was sorry now she had let him into the garden. Well, she’d stay out here washing windows till he’d gone and make sure nothing of hers went with him.

  Nick finished the tea and put the mug down on the bench.

  ‘By, that was grand,’ he said fervently and looked up at Mrs Timms hopefully.

  ‘You haven’t got a tab about the place, have you, missus?’

  She exploded. ‘No, I have not got a cigarette,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘What do you think it is?’ She picked up the mug and faced him, quivering with rage.

  ‘You’ve had your tea, now get off the place or I’ll call my man.’

  Nick sighed and got to his feet. This happened so often he was getting used to it.

  ‘Thanks, missus, anyhow,’ he said and trudged off, down the lane and on to the road to Hexham. Maybe he would get something to do there. The spectre of the workhouse was looming larger as the summer faded and the nights grew colder. What’s more, he had left his greatcoat in the barn of the last farm he’d stayed at.

  Nick had returned to the farm where he had worked before the war, the farm which had taken him on as an orphanage lad. He had been there four years before the war. Surely that counted for something? he had thought. He had always been a good worker, he had worked hard all his life. But that had not counted in his favour, not now he was short of an arm.

  ‘You can sleep in the barn tonight,’ the farmer had said to him. ‘But there’s no work. Why, lad, what good is a one-armed man on a farm? I ask you, man, I’m not running a blooming charity.’

  The farmer spoke in a reasonable tone, putting to Nick the unfeasibility of a farm worker with one hand. Besides, the war would be over soon and there would be plenty of men after work – two-handed, able-bodied men.