by Norrey Ford
“Timberfold will be dowly when you’ve gone, Jacky. Come back soon. And don’t forget you’re my girl and you are going to marry me.”
“I didn’t say so.”
“But you will. You must—you belong here. Don’t you know all the big black Clarkes marry small, fair girls? I used to wonder why, but when I saw you, I knew.” He held out his huge hand, brown, firm and horny with manual work. “See—I’d like to stand you on my hand like a fairy. You’d be as light as an eggshell.” Slowly, keeping his gaze on his palm, he closed his muscular hand till the fingers were pressed down tightly and his knuckles showed white.
Jacqueline shivered. “I think it’s getting a bit cold out here. Shall we go in?”
Jacqueline had been posted to the Men’s Surgical Ward, known as Pasteur, or, as the patients said, Pass-chewer. She presented herself rather shyly the first morning, feeling very much a new girl, but was greeted with glee by Mary Leigh, with whom she’d done preliminary training. She had been sorry to leave Liz, but Mary was compensation. Bridget, she heard, was now up and had gone to Lister Ward.
“The staff nurse is called Knight,” Mary briefed her swiftly. “Known as Stilly Knight or the Soul’s Awakening. She is engaged to a man in the Forces, and will tell you all about him if she gets a chance. Sister is Birdie Cartwright, you’ll see why. She has beady eyes and hops about like an important little robin. There are four dogsbodies, ourselves and Nurse Banks and the Junior, who is even more junior than us, believe it or not. Her name is Lowe, and she’s known as The Poor Indian.”
“Good heavens, why?”
“Didn’t you have to learn a poem about ‘Lo, the poor Indian whose untutored mind’... That’s Lowe.”
Sister “Birdie” Cartwright looked Jacqueline up and down as if she were a caterpillar. “Lister? H’m. Well, Nurse, you’ll find Pasteur different. The tempo is, I think, a trifle faster.” She gave a wintry smile to indicate that this was sarcasm. “We’ll see what we can make of you, but don’t expect Lister ways here.”
Jacqueline felt hot loyalty to dear old Lister arise in her bosom, but she said meekly, “Yes, Sister.” Then she wondered nervously if she ought to have said, No, Sister. ‘ Sister Cartwright was right. Pasteur Ward was conducted at the double; Lister by comparison seemed a rest-cure. Birdie believed in getting routine duties finished ahead of time to “be prepared for emergencies, Nurses”. To give her her due, emergencies were liable to happen on Pasteur.
“No need to comb your ‘air, sonny, if you’re stopping on this ward,” said Jimmy Tummey to a dandified young miner who has been injured in the pit. “Nurses ‘ull do it for you, dashing up and down. If you hear a bang, it’s Nurse Knight breaking the sound barrier.”
Jacqueline, Mary and Nurse Banks went off-duty dazed with tiredness every night. It was an effort to get out their lecture notes and study for their examination. Liz and Jacqueline swopped notes and solemnly “heard” each other three evenings a week, and on the other evenings they went into the nurses’ sitting-room and fell asleep in front of the television set. Mary Leigh tried conscientiously to start discussions on Art or Literature, or even Music, and Bridget O’Hara kept up a running commentary on her affair with Dr. Gregory, whose acquaintance she had made while having her stomach X-rayed. The affair waxed and waned sporadically, until O’Hara had the luck to be moved to X-ray Department when, she admitted, it galloped ahead like a horse on fire.
“The word,” drawled Mary, looking up from the Lives of Great Painters, “is house.”
“In my case,” Bridget retorted loftily, “it is horse. Whoever heard of a house galloping?”
The first time Dr. Parsons came into the ward he recognised Jacqueline, neighed, and demanded that she should take her cap off and show him how her hair was growing.
“You must be hard-headed, Nurse. No scar at all. By rights you should have cracked your skull.” Sister stood by, puffing with impatience, a tiny shunting-engine with steam up.
She heard Alan’s name daily, but on the first two occasions when he came into the ward she was doing something menial in the sluice or the kitchen, and missed him. Patients who had been operated upon by him patted their dressings cautiously but proudly and said “Broderick” in the tone a woman might use in showing off a dress by a great Paris couturier. Other, lesser men, who had not had Broderick, kept quiet. Mary said, “Like St. Crispin’s Day”, and Jacqueline did not know what she meant until she looked it up in a Shakespeare Mary lent her for the purpose. One day she was in the kitchen supervising the tea-trays and feeling important and responsible. Lowe the Poor Indian was a plain, good girl who never tired of telling them about happy times she’d had in the Methodist choir at home. For nursing, she lacked common sense and needed supervision.
Jacqueline remarked acidly that there was no need for pepper and salt for a tea of bread and jam, cake and tea.
Lowe agreed cheerfully and removed the condiments without resentment. Her trouble was that she was too humble to mind being told off, and so went to no particular pains to avoid it.
Mary entered at Pasteur Ward pace, a quick trot which only just escaped being a run. “Mr. Broderick’s been in. Isn’t he smashing? He’s been in to see that sweet ginger boy, Harold something. Pity you missed him. Sister says we can start teas now, we’re late.”
“I’m not late,” Jacqueline pointed out. “Teas have been ready five minutes. If Mr. Broderick holds us up by coming at tea-time, it’s not my fault.” It was absurd to feel so disappointed. “And anyway, Nurse—for a nurse who’s so keen on Eng. Lit., I think smashing is a poor adjective.” Mary snatched a tray and hurried out, more than a little annoyed that Jacqueline had caught her out like that.
“After tea,” said Nurse Knight, “Sister and I are going to discuss Christmas plans for the ward. Have you nurses any good ideas for decorating?” She did "not wait for an answer, knowing full well that the word “discuss” did not really apply. Old Birdie had had the same scheme every year for donkeys’ years, and the only variations would be those introduced by the nurses in the process of carrying out the basic plan or modifications brought about by the patients’ high spirits. Balloons, now. That was asking for trouble. They’d all be burst in the first five minutes by the men. Nurse Knight had seen ever such a nice idea in white and silver in a magazine, and wondered if, this year, she might suggest it. Experience warned her it was hopeless. Birdie’s Christmas was Dickensian, and nothing would induce her to go contemporary.
One afternoon, when the ward was full of visitors steaming gently in damp clothes, the beds and lockers untidy with paper bags, the wood-block floor dulled by the passage of damp shoes, Sister beckoned Jacqueline.
“Get Nurse Lowe and prepare two beds in the corner. It means moving Jackson to the other side. Put screens round the beds and don’t waste a minute. There’s been an accident at one of the engineering works. Two casualties are coming in by works ambulance.”
Jacqueline sent Lowe to collect linen and went herself to explain to Mr. Jackson that he must be moved across the ward at once. He had two visitors, his bed and locker were stacked with brown-paper bags, clean washing, damp flowers. Mr. Jackson grumbled, and his aunt, who knew a town councillor, said she would write to the papers, she was that incensed; callous, it was, in her opinion, and just because nurses were nationalised they thought themselves everybody.
“You’ve a right to stay where you are!” she told Jackson, purpling all down her three chins. Jackson, who knew better and had seen Sister giving the order, mumbled that he didn’t mind if he did.
The other visitors enjoyed the excitement, while Jacqueline got redder and redder. When a bag burst and an orange rolled half-way up the ward, the men cheered and someone shouted, “Good old Goldie. Two to one the field.”
When Jackson was settled, the beds made up and the red screens pulled into position, the ward grasped that this was not comedy but drama. The visitors sucked their teeth excitedly and began to tell each other what they thought the
minute they saw That Sister speak to That Nurse.
“They’re only boys!” Jacqueline murmured to Jimmy Tummey, who wheeled in the first trolley.
“Apprentices. Skylarking and fell off the roof of a big shed.”
“What were they doing on the roof?”
“What is any young lad doing anywhere, Nurse? Getting into mischief. This one was lucky, dropped on to the wire-netting roof of the time office. The other one—didn’t.”
Both boys were in oily overalls, bruised, bloody and unconscious. Both were to go down to theatre as soon as they could be prepared. Jacqueline had never worked so fast Miraculously, her hands did the right things without a pause—she had never been so deft, so sure. She and Mary did the first boy, the lucky one. Nurse Knight and Nurse Banks did the other, and Sister supervised both.
“He’s only a baby!” said Mary, almost in tears, as the bruised, blackened face was cleaned, revealing a cupid’s-bow mouth and long dark lashes which lay on rounded cheeks. “His poor mother!”
“Mr. Broderick’s ‘ere,” said Jimmy, reappearing with his white-coated assistants. Trust Jimmy Tummey to know everything. “And lucky for you he is, my lad,” he added softly as he started to push the trolley with practised smoothness. “Anybody playing Humpty Dumpty, like you have, needs Mr. Broderick to put him together again. His Mum’s here, Sister. His Dad is at work, she says.”
“I’ll have them sent up. Nurse Leigh, telephone—no, go and fetch them yourself. Nurse Clarke, go with the boys.” When the procession emerged from the sheltering screens, Jacqueline noticed with surprise that the visitors had gone and Lowe, without waiting to be told, was tidying after them. Not one of the team behind the screen had heard the bell or been conscious of the four o’clock exodus, usually so noisy and prolonged.
Jimmy nodded towards the clock. “Well done, Pasteur. I reckon that’s the quickest ever.”
“Jimmy, do you think we’ll save them? They are so young!”
“Now, Nurse, you know, not even a doctor will say yes or no for certain if he can help it. When they are past man’s help they’re not past God’s. I’m not a churchified chap, but I’ve been wheeling ‘em in and out of this theatre long enough to know that. Only I hope his folks”—he pointed with his chin at the still, covered figure on his trolley—“are the praying sort. He needs it.”
“I’ll pray for him, Jimmy.”
As she entered the white, shining theatre behind Jimmy, she caught a momentary glimpse of Alan Broderick talking to the anaesthetist, before the theatre nurses took gentle, determined charge and shoo’d her outside. How calm, how quietly efficient it looked in there. If lives could be saved, that white-clad team would do it! For the first time, she looked forward eagerly to her training in Theatre. Some day I’ll be there, at the heart of this great drama of life and death which is going on all around me.
And we did our part, too. We in Pasteur—a team. Now, Sister is talking to two women, giving them strength, courage, confidence; two homely Mums on whom disaster has fallen in the middle of an afternoon’s ironing or baking, or maybe a doze with the feet up and a cup of tea before the men get home. Now they, too, are among the select company who wait on hard chairs, watch the clock, listen and wonder and hope; flicked by Fate’s finger into a loneliness, an isolation, from which they look out like figures in a glass ball staring out at the distant world which, against all reason, goes on behaving in the same old way, seeming to belong to a previous existence long ago.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said to Mary when she got back to the ward. “I’m proud of being a nurse.”
Mary grinned. “I see what you mean. But if those kids die, how will you feel?”
“They won’t. Broderick is there.”
“Nurses!” Birdie Cartwright was on her ward again. ‘Teas, at once. Can’t this ward be kept running smoothly two minutes in my absence?”
Soon Jacqueline, Mary and Nurse Banks were scurrying up and down the ward at the Pasteur trot, while the luckless Poor Indian struggled to cut wet raffia from tightly bunched chrysanthemums and cram the dripping stalks into vases too small for them.
Speed, speed! But now I know why! How is Alan faring, how long will it take? Please, God, oh—please, God!
She gave cake to a man not entitled to it, and snatched it from him as he opened his mouth for the first bite. Mr. Jackson complained that the light was in his eyes and this side of the ward was draughty.
Just before the day nurses went off duty, Alan came into the ward. He stood a long time in silence, looking down on the two boys. The parents were there, too, still in their working clothes, their eyes dazed with shock and despair. Sister motioned Jacqueline to adjust a screen, and Alan looked up and thanked her absently, not really seeing her. He looked angry, helpless, compassionate—and Jacqueline knew then that at least one of the boys would die.
She went into the kitchen and cried over the sink, her hands blindly washing up the cups and saucers used by the parents ten minutes ago. The tea in them was almost untouched, melted sugar unstirred thick in the bottom of the cups. There was no time in the schedule for private grief; when the night nurses came on they would expect to find the kitchen tidy.
An arm took her shoulder in a warm, masculine, comforting grip. “It can’t be helped, Jacky. We’ve done all we can. Sometimes we’ve just got to take a beating.” It was Alan.
She turned towards him. She could not stop crying at once, and he kept his arm round her.
“Why does God want him to die? He’s so young, all his life before him. It’s cruel.”
“Jacky, girl—don’t fight it like that. And don’t blame God for everything.”
“Aren’t we supposed to be His children?”
“His grown-up children, not His toddlers. We have to take responsibility for our own actions. The human body just isn’t built to fall from a roof on to a concrete floor. We know that. That boy knew it, but he deliberately took the risk, against which he’d been warned. He broke the rules—God didn’t.”
“Isn’t that rather hard?”
“It is unsentimental. God isn’t sentimental. That is one of the biggest mistakes people make. The law of gravity makes a body fall. God can’t alter the laws of His universe to suit the individual case. It’s man who must alter the cases to suit the universe.”
“For instance?”
“God made human beings to need food. We know that—all of us. So if we let a child starve to death it’s our fault, not God’s. We have broken the law, not God. And be sure we shall have to answer for it one day.” He gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze and released her. “I missed my dinner. Sister said there’d be a cup of cocoa if I asked nicely.”
Jacqueline wiped her eyes and smiled. “I’ll bet she didn’t. I’ll bet she beat her head on the floor and said Yes, Mr. Broderick, No, Mr. Broderick, certainly! You are spoilt and idolised, but it doesn’t seem to go to your head. I’ll put the milk on.”
“My housekeeper doesn’t spoil or idolise me, thank you. She’ll be furious—she is always cooking a nice chop or a nice bit of steak or a nice cup of tea, which I fail to consume. I’m a trial to her.”
“Rich tea biscuits or toast?”
“Toast, please.” He pottered round the kitchen in an interested way until Sister popped her head in and said in a scandalised voice, “Mr. Broderick, there are some chocolate biscuits in my room. Do come and sit down. Nurse, bring Mr. Broderick’s cocoa as soon as possible.” She sniffed like a pointer. “Toast? Who’s that for?”
“Mr. Broderick, Sister.”
“Oh, I see. Well, hurry up. Excuse me, sir—I’ll just finish my report” She glanced at the kitchen clock and bounced away.
“Little Lord Fauntleroy!” Jacqueline whispered. “Go on, into her room. You’re not kitchen company, Mr. Broderick.”
As Jacqueline crossed from kitchen to Sister’s room with a tray, she saw Mary come out from behind the red screens. Sister was sitting at her table writing the report, but she
looked up and quietly replaced the cap of her fountain-pen; then she moved towards Mary and together they went into the screens.
Sometimes you just have to take a beating.
The men said, “Only twelve more operating days to Christmas, Nurse?” The cupboards rained decorations if opened sharply, and Lowe revealed a talent for making paper lanterns which put up her stock with Sister, and heaven knew she needed it. The night nurses swayed around blear-eyed, what with staying up to shop or to practise carols. Nobody did any exam, work, and Sister Tutor’s Cassandra warnings fell on heedless ears.
Jacqueline wrote to Guy, inviting him to be her guest at the Christmas dance in the Nurses’ Home. Liz invited Tom Fielding, a rugger player who had just left Private Patients after a knee injury. Bridget hoped for Greg, and even the Poor Indian, flown with the success of her lanterns, admitted to a boy in the post office.
Mary Leigh’s portable gramophone worked overtime as the nurses showed each other versions of the newest dances; the keenest ones bought or borrowed dance records, to Mary’s distress. She preferred Bach.
Jacqueline’s dance frock was green and silver. When she admitted she had made it herself, she was unanimously appointed Dress Adviser to her friends. Firmly, she took in Mary’s bodice, and when Mary complained that it now fitted as closely as a ballet dancer’s tights, everyone said yes, it did, and wasn’t she lucky! Liz yelled when Jacqueline thrust scissors into her neckline, but had to admit the resulting chic was worth it. Little Nurse Lowe was forbidden a black-and-crimson fringed stole, the darling of her heart. Too long, said Jacqueline, too broad, and Lowe wasn’t the type; she’d get it entangled in her feet or strangle her partner.
“That’s enough,” Liz decreed. “Draw the line or you’ll be giving dresses the Continental touch until the cows come home. Take a butcher’s at this—Sister’s Christmas present from Liz with love.”
