After the Storm

by Margaret Graham

  They wrote for the next two hours in a classroom cramped with desks and other girls until Annie’s hand and mind were as jumbled as the room. There was an overwhelming smell of beeswax and the desks were sticky with it and a blackness formed on her cardigan.

  The next day they were issued with pale blue uniforms and starched aprons and caps which crackled when they walked, but she did not glide as Sister Maria had done. Her heavy black shoes felt like boats and her feet at the end of that day were swollen and throbbing. Together she and Julie dabbed methylated spirits and talcum powder over the toes, the feet and up to the ankles before they crawled into bed, unaware of the heavy blankets, unaware of anything but the white-tiled corridors, the rows of beds, the sisters and nurses, the doctors and students, the dining hall, the mortuary, the Children’s Ward. Unaware of anything until the call at five-thirty the next day.

  For six weeks, they wrote and watched and listened in the classroom but did not see the wards again. Annie wondered if she would die of cold in her short-sleeved uniform, but each morning she hugged to herself the thought of the future, of the present, of her freedom.

  She learned of leeches and smiled to think that Don could have used them after his discussion with Tom over the interest rates. Sister Tutor asked her to share her joke with the others and when she could not, she had to write out the lesson twice.

  She learned about enemas, bedsores; about dangerous drugs which must always be locked. Suddenly through the open window the sound of the gulls seemed much louder and the whistle of the butcher’s boy, the grinding of gears as a lorry struggled up the hill past the hospital. So simple really, she thought, a pin anchoring a few keys in a nurse’s pocket could have saved a woman’s life, not any woman but my mother. She had to copy up the notes she missed during that lecture from Julie that night.

  They had no days off for those first six weeks or for the next four when they were on the wards at last.

  The wards were large and white and smelled of disinfectant. Her feet swelled every night and did not go down by the next morning. She was in casualty when twelve miners came in and the enamel bowl shook in her hands as she washed and washed until the blackness was gone, leaving white flesh and red eyes.

  She could see the blood then, but Sister drove her on to the next for washing and she smiled and talked soft words and pushed the thought to the back of her head that this could be Tom; this could be Tom. And so on to the next and the next and the next. Her apron was black and her hands too and later she scrubbed until they were red raw, until the smell of the coal and the sight of it was gone. But she could still smell it, see it as she cut clothes from a child who had hurt his arm, still smell it above the vegetable soup she served for lunch and that night she dreamed of dark tight streets, of pitwheels and slag-heaps, of allotments, of a shop, of a room with a snake which writhed and vomited gas. When she woke, in that moment before Julie’s breathing was heard and the day had really begun, she knew that memory was still hers, that hate still remained. She was tired all that day and made sure that the black box in her mind was pushed tightly shut.

  The week before her first day off she was moved to the Women’s Ward. At six-thirty she took tea round, at seven she bathed and washed and combed hair. At eight she made beds, folding corners and putting on clean pillowcases with their openings away from the door. At nine she had a cup of tea and poured one in the small kitchen off the corridor for Julie who was on Men’s further down.

  ‘Guess,’ Julie said, as she walked in, her hands behind her back. ‘Guess what I have here.’ Her eyes were dark with bags beneath and Annie knew that hers were the same.

  Annie sat back in her chair, her legs up on the table, her ears pricked for Sister. ‘Guess you’re an idiot. Come and have some tea, we’ve only another seven minutes.’ She checked the time against the watch that Sarah had given her when she was accepted for training by the hospital. ‘Another eight minutes,’ she corrected.

  Then she saw the crumpled letter that Julie brought from behind her back but dropped and they watched as it floated to the ground, blue against the white of the tiles and the green of the linoleum.

  It was from Georgie. Annie knew before she saw the writing, before she held it in her hands and saw the creases and stains from miles of travel. She tore at the envelope, ripping it open.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ she asked, not listening as Julie told her Sarah had brought it into the hall porter.

  She searched now for his words of love.

  June 1932

  My dearest darling love,

  You will be 18 by the, time you read this and probably bossing everyone around in the hospital but I want you to know that I don’t miss you any less with time, I just love you more and more. It is deeper and tucked down inside me but I am still seeing everything new here with your eyes as well as me own. I wonder, I do, if you would like the mountains which sometimes I can see as clear as day but which can get hidden by the thick clouds that clump together all of a sudden, here in the Himalayas.

  How are you, my bonny lass, my darling girl? How are your feet? Tom says you soak them in vinegar like the miners do. He says it’s a voluntary hospital supported by contributions from the miners mostly; have you had any in yet? If you have, try not to worry about Tom. Push it away, it can’t happen, you love him too much.

  It’s hot here, the rains haven’t come yet so it is a wet heat and I’m drinking lime juice until it comes out of me ear holes.

  We’ve been down to the plains to Lahore which is in a right mess. There’s been a lot of fighting between the Muslims and the Sikhs and we’re supposed to stand in the middle and calm it down, which I suppose is what we did. It’s all a bit difficult, you know, here with the Indians. They want their freedom from us, (and I can’t say I blame them) and I reckon there’s going to be some fighting before too long; against us and one another. Anyway, I got me corporal’s stripe out of it all, so now I’m waiting for me sergeant’s but that could take a while.

  Will you wait, my love? I don’t mean miss out on things, just want me when I come, because I will come but it is all taking so long and I worry that you’ll get tired and find someone else; a permanent someone else.

  You would like it here today, my love. The geese and ducks have just flown over, heading for the water on the plains, and the bullock carts have been plodding by the station all day, but they always do. We have musk-roses which are white with a scent that your Sarah could put in her pot-pourri and make the Morris smell as sweet as a baby’s bum. The whitebeams are trees which I really like. They are everywhere and have huge leaves which are dark green above and furry white below. There’s a bitty fruit which changes to English autumn colours and the birds make right little pigs of themselves.

  It was grand that the boys have sorted themselves out and that Don is back with you all. Who’d have thought that Bob was Sarah’s flappy ears in Wassingham but I’m right glad he’s keeping an eye on the lad. He needs a bit of controlling, you know.

  I’ll write again, my darling. I’m hoping to go to Kashmir because I’m told that it’s beautiful, but before that we’re off on exercises which will mean marches of ten or fifteen miles a day, so we’ll both have sore feet.

  I’ll love you forever, want you forever, your soft skin, your beautiful face; my dearest darling, I miss you so.

  Georgie.

  Annie looked up at Julie. ‘He still loves me.’

  Julie smiled and took their cups to the sink. ‘Sister won’t love you if you don’t get back, you know. It’s the nit-round after the doctors.’

  The medical students were crowding round the small man in a dark suit as he walked swiftly down the corridor and Annie pushed the letter into her pocket and slipped into the ward ahead of them and took up her place beside the senior nurse at Sister’s desk. Mr Morton, the small physician, marched past, three of the medical students with him but the fourth stopped to tie his shoe lace in front of her. His blond hair was cut short and his neck bris
tled with shaved hair. He turned and winked and she blushed; his shoelace had not needed tying, she could see that now.

  ‘Such nice legs, nurse,’ he murmured, his wide mouth barely moving but his voice carrying beyond Annie to the senior nurse.

  Annie flushed and he grinned, walking away now to catch up, his white coat flapping, a stethoscope dangling round his neck. Senior Nurse Wilson, her lips pulled into a thin line, pointed to the screens around the bed at the top of the ward near Sister’s table.

  ‘Try and leave your love-life outside the ward, nurse. There’s a septicaemia case just come in. Doctor’s already seen her so get on and delouse her and better stay with her for a bit. She’s very poorly.’

  Annie felt her hands grow damp. How poorly was poorly, she wondered.

  The woman was lying still when Annie moved the screen gently, slipping through and pulling it closed behind her. She was yellow and thin, her face ravaged by illness, her eyes bright but not with health, with fever. Annie longed for the day when she would be able to take pulses and temperatures, give medication instead of dragging a steel comb through nit-infested hair.

  She smiled at the woman. ‘Hallo,’ she whispered. ‘I’m Nurse Manon, I have to check your hair, I’m afraid.’ She wanted to think of Georgie’s letter but knew that it must wait until tonight.

  She hated it, hated the humiliation that they must feel. The lice she found were big and black and full of blood and Annie touched the woman’s hand.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked and had to lean forward to catch the faint words.

  ‘Well, Mrs Turner, you’re fine here, nothing at all on your hair, but I’ll just run me comb through and put a bit of this stuff on just as a precaution.’ She held up the brown bottle. ‘We don’t want you picking up anything while you’re in here, do we?’ It was a very small lie, she thought.

  Mrs Turner’s hair was dry and split, shot through with grey. She moaned as the comb pulled through.

  Annie stroked her face with one hand. ‘There now,’ she soothed. ‘This won’t take long.’ She squashed the lice between the bowl and her fingernail, hating them, wanting them to die for sucking what little blood this woman had and for forcing her to do this to an already ill patient. At last it was done and Annie smoothed back Mrs Turner’s hair, wiping the tears from her cheeks where they had smeared as she had tried to brush them away before Annie saw.

  ‘Oh, lass,’ she whispered ‘It’s no job for a young girl. I’m right ashamed, you know.’ She turned her face away from Annie, towards the tiled wall but the glare was too bright and she shut her eyes.

  ‘There was nothing there, I promise, Mrs Turner. Nothing.’ She put the bowl on the locker, covered with a cloth.

  ‘Let’s get you comfortable now.’ She smoothed the sheets down and gently plumped the pillows, then sat. The woman was hot, very hot and Annie remembered that when she had been feverish with a heavy cold every touch had felt like a needle on her skin, so what must this woman have gone through just now.

  ‘You’ll soon begin to feel better you know, now you’re here.’

  Mrs Turner turned, her eyes were sunken and the lines around them were so deep it was as though they were coloured in with soot.

  ‘Aye, lass, maybe I will. I lost the bairn see, lost the wee thing and now I’ve got the poisoning.’ She coughed slightly and Annie held a glass of barley-water to her lips, holding her as she took a sip.

  ‘I’m sorry about the baby, Mrs Turner.’

  The woman smiled weakly. ‘Thank God, you should say, lass. One less to worry about.’ Annie laid her back on the pillow. She did not try to argue with the woman because she had not forgotten Wassingham; the cold, the hunger, the men on street corners.

  Mrs Turner died at the end of her shift.

  ‘Died just like that,’ Annie told Julie as they ate their supper in the dining-room. ‘There was this funny breath outwards; it went on and on and then she was dead.’

  The cabbage was soggy and the fish dry and tough. It had been left too long in the oven again.

  ‘No talking shop,’ called a senior nurse from the other side.

  Annie stood up and walked out of the dining-room, out of the hospital to stand by the grass. There was a rich smell of grass cuttings; it must be the last cut of the season she thought. For God’s sake, it’s the end of October already. She walked on past Queen Victoria who had her nose in the air. Well, it can’t be the lobelia, they’re not here any more, it’s got to be me feet and she looked up at the plump shape and out through the gate over the town where the lights made the sky seem black above it. She stood with her arms crossed. That woman was starved before she came in, she thought. She died because she was poor, not because she had septicaemia. You don’t die from septicaemia without a fight unless you take bloody poison or are starved. She said it again, challenging herself to shrink from the thought of her mother. She walked up and down and she felt the tears come down her cheeks and the heat of Mrs Turner as she had held her hand, the moan as she had torn the metal comb through her hair. There shouldn’t be bloody nits, she shouldn’t have had to go through that. She breathed in deeply and looked up at the sky wondering if she would be able to take the suffering that she was going to have to see over the next few years, but knew that she would. Above the glow of the town the sky was black and the stars were vivid. She wiped her cheeks and shook her head, angry now. These women needed work, needed money and one day she would do something about that, she and Tom together would make it a little better between them but not now because Tom had other things to do and so had she.

  Annie caught the train to Sarah’s on her first day off. The walk from the station was cold but the sky was a bright blue and the light seemed to fill the streets again, just as it had done when she had first come here from Wassingham.

  She walked up the path, breaking off a leaf from the privet hedge, bending it over, hearing it crack clean, free from sap. Sarah held her close in her arms and Val hugged her and she took the bowl of corn that Sarah gave her and walked down the garden past the pruned roses, opened the wire gate and threw the corn to the hens, watching as they jerked, watching as the cock strutted.

  The shed door opened easily and the smell of creosote was slight without the hot sun and she edged in past the bike, past the worn rubber grips to the window. She rubbed the glass, looking out into the open sky and leaned against the wooden frame. She loved it, she loved nursing. Loved the work, the girls, the being on her own, but she was glad to be back.

  Lunch was calm until the doorbell rang and there were Tom and Grace, Don with a girl. Tom held her close, looked at her feet and said they were like bloody battleships. Grace kissed her and said how she’d grown. Don hugged her and gave her a bag of victory drops to keep away the germs and introduced Maud who was little with very curly hair and had Don right under her thumb.

  Val laid more places at the table and Sarah laughed. They ate well and laughed and talked, then sat in front of the fire and Tom told them about Bob; how he had met him, how he was teaching him all about the unions and Sarah and Annie did not look at one another but at him and acted surprised. Don held Maud’s hand and Tom winked at Annie. Grace asked about her work, about the food and they all laughed, Don too.

  She told them about the Sister Tutor who had dragged them over the coals for the first six weeks, about the doctors who thought they were God but not about the blond medical student, William. She told them about the boy who had come into casualty with his head stuck in the potty but not about the child who had died of a congenital deformity and who she had carried in her arms, wrapped in a cloak, to the mortuary; you did not let the little ones take that last cold journey on their own, on a trolley. She told them about the woman who had produced a bairn when she thought she was suffering from indigestion, but not about Mrs Turner.

  The train ride back was quiet after the talking and the laughing and the hugs and kisses. They had asked after Georgie and she had told them about Lahore, about the he
at, the fighting. She had not told them that he had said she was to live her life until he was back. The train pulled into the station. It was dark and the sparks flew up until they died and disappeared. She took the eggs and cakes that Val had made, the toffee that she and the others had boiled up in pans, then rolled and thrown at a nail Don had hammered into the door. Again and again they had taken the slack and thrown it and stretched it until it was ready. They had left it to harden while they had taken a last look at the hens, at the garden, then Tom had hammered it into pieces and they had taken some home with them but the rest was here, in this white box, for her patients in the morning.

  The platform was empty by the time she had collected her parcels and climbed down from the step. She walked to the domed exit, through the dim lighting and the smell and huff of the trains and there was William, as he had said he would be.

  He took her parcels but she kept one so that they each had a hand free to hold loosely. The night was fine and papers flew about their feet. Taxis waited in the ranks and they saw the glow of cigarettes in the cabs.

  They walked back to the nurses’ home and now everything was close to her after a day of distance, of waiting. They stopped at the pork stall on the corner and William ate a dripping sandwich which oozed and ran down his chin and Annie wiped it with her handkerchief. His laugh was light and easy and that was what she wanted. He took a piece of his bread and put it in her mouth, his hands were small and pale; he was going to be a surgeon.

  He kissed her lips at the gates, away from the lights and she could taste the pork as his lips opened over hers. The parcels were in the way and she laughed and pushed him away knowing that she would see him again when they were on nights next week.

  She was on duty at Christmas and sang carols round the tree and kept her hand in her pocket clutched tightly round Georgie’s letter, the one that she had received in October. She smiled across at Julie, at William and knew that Georgie was safe deep inside her, quite safe from William or any other man.