She asked if there was more news of Betty’s special boyfriend at home, now posted ‘missing’ in France.
‘None.’
‘He’s not “believed killed”?’
‘Just missing.’
‘Poor Tony. Nice bod. Could be a prisoner. Poor Betty. Were they actually engaged?’
‘Not officially. They meant to fix it on his next leave.’
‘Hope to God he’s all right, somewhere.’
‘Hope so.’ I sounded casual and knew it, but knew not whether she realized this was in self-defence. From hearing the news, I had tried to avoid thinking about Tony and Betty as it hurt so much. Yet there were moments when intentionally I reminded myself he was ‘missing’; these were the moments when I squirmed anew over the arrival of the CO.’s party in my ward in ‘A’. The reminder served to illustrate the triviality of that anxiety and to sow the first seeds of the realization that one of the few advantages of having to face tragic problems is the way this ever after reduces the lesser to their right proportions.
‘Wakey, wakey! Third time!’ My top bedclothes were stripped off. ‘Gone half-past! Get your skates on!’
No space for shock and sadness in a two-minute bath, frenzied race into uniform, to the Mess to swallow congealed baked beans on soggy toast and lukewarm tea, ride to the hospital. No second for recalling Father on the first day of Tony’s last leave, ‘Betty, I’ve just answered the door to a tin-hatted young soldier who hasn’t yet been issued with a service cap, looks about ten foot tall in his new boots and is asking to see you. I dimly recognize him as that nice young fellow Tony … who used to work in the City.’ Or playing poker in the ante-room with Peter and Martin in their Shepherds’ sacks and bottle straws and the three of us moaning about our School Cert. exams the next summer. Or Ronald calling to show off his new Acting Pilot Officer’s uniform, embryo RAF moustache, and, puce with pleasurable embarrassment, rotating on our sitting-room hearthrug, ‘I say, Lucilla, do you think if I asked your parents that they’d let you meet me in town sometime? Ever been to the Café de Paris? Nor’ve I. Shall – er – shall we try it?’
No time for that either.
The memories had to wait and in the waiting be imprinted for life. The sick, the pregnant nearing labour, the newly delivered mothers, the newly born babies, could not wait. ‘Get a move on, Andrews! Get those first drinks out all round fast as you can. If our poor women can’t get in some sleep early, they’ll get even less than last night. Moon’s on the wane.’ When the moon went in, then, the bombers came out. Later, when instruments and aircraft improved, we loathed the moon. Later still when the bombing planes had no human pilots, the moon was unimportant.
The senior of the two Night Sisters was an S.C.M. as well as S.R.N. and in overall charge with particular responsibility for the maternity floor. Her junior, an S.R.N. (as all QAs), was responsible for the general wards. (For convenience here only, Sister Maternity and Sister General). Sister Maternity was a tall, slim, attractive brunette of twenty-six. Sister General was a few months younger, and an unusually pretty, slender, blonde. Both were from separate London teaching hospitals, much-liked by their patients, and treated me more as a junior pro than as a VAD. Since junior probationers in large teaching hospitals were expected to be ignorant and needed to be taught how to nurse, they made reasonable allowances for the former and, whenever possible, practised the latter. At first I rather resented this, being so accustomed to being told by a Sister to do a job and get on with it as best I could, but slowly I began to appreciate that nursing was a skilled, complex occupation about which I knew next to nothing and they knew a great deal. I liked working with them and the way the night, and above all the raids, lowered the normally insurmountable barrier hospital etiquette raised between the trained and untrained.
The London Blitz had started in the late afternoon on 7th September. That first attack lasted until just before dawn. It was a Saturday night that at first seemed to me the same as any other night on duty. At supper I had heard London had been attacked and assumed only by a short, sharp, daylight raid. That night, as usual, our M.O., Major X, arrived for his medical round. Normally, I barely registered his appearance as he was purely the Sisters’ concern, but that night, though it was warm, I noticed he had on a British Warm (short officers’ greatcoat) and looked as if he needed it. After he had gone, Sister Maternity told me in the nursery that London was still under attack. ‘Don’t say anything to the patients until they have to know. Some are bound to have relatives or friends in London.’
I was bottle-feeding a baby. ‘All this time, Sister?’
‘Yes. Jerry’s sending in wave after wave of Heinkels.’
‘Not Stukas?’
‘Just Heinkels. The Major says Jerry’s stopped using Stukas. Don’t know why.’
‘Maybe he’s run out of ’em?’
‘Maybe.’ She filled a basket with dried nappies from the airing-cupboard and methodically folded each before adding it to the depleted pile on the changing-table. ‘For the first time in my life I wish my training hospital wasn’t so handy for Central London.’
‘Central London getting the worst?’
She shrugged. ‘Sounds like Jerry’s trying another Rotterdam. At least my hospital’s not slap on the river opposite Westminster. Jerry’s bound to aim at Westminster. Goebbels’ll have a field-day if he can boast about flattening the Houses of Parliament. The Major’s a Tommy’s man. Tommy’s is sitting in the bullseye tonight. Your lass finished? I’ll change her whilst you get on with the next feed.’
We were still in the nursery when, just after eleven, my ultra-acute ears first picked up the most disturbing sound I could have imagined at that hour of the night in a military camp. ‘Sister! That’s the reveille!’
We went into a sluice, closed the door, switched off the lights, removed a blackout screen and opened a window. And from the surrounding barracks we heard the bugles sounding the reveille. ‘Suppose Jerry’s landed, Sister?’
‘Maybe. Or just another flap. Or someone thinks it a good idea to have the camp standing-to because of what’s happening in London. If anyone tells me what all this is about, I’ll let you know.’
If she ever heard, she forgot to tell me and I forgot to ask her about it. Night life in Families became even busier, as the night Alerts increased; whether they were false alarms, enemy planes that had become isolated from their main force and had bombs to unload before returning to Germany, or the rare direct attack caused, rumour insisted, by the enemy pilots mistaking the camp for a small town – until the All Clear sounded the Alerts meant upheaval for patients and staff. All patients who could be moved were either taken, or took themselves, down to the shelter. The Sisters moved out the women and I moved all the babies except those actually born during the specific Alert. I never discovered if this was an official rule, but it was one on which Sister Maternity was adamant. ‘Men make wars and men make air raids, Andrews, but no man is making me part mum and babe within minutes of birth. At that stage they’re still a part of each other and as mum can’t be moved either junior stays in her arms or in a cot close enough for mum to see and feel her babe. They’ll live, or die, together.’ She did not add – and so will I, with them – as it was ‘raid routine’ that she should stay on the top floor with any immovable maternity patients and Sister General do the same for the general patients. When the Sisters were absent, I was in charge in the shelter.
The responsibility would have alarmed me had I had time to dwell on it and had the patients in my charge not been so sensible, helpful and brave. They never screamed, grew hysterical, or even grumbled. If one wept, it was invariably quietly and as invariably she was comforted by the others. They wore their own or hospital dressing-gowns over night-gowns and pyjamas and sat on cushions on the floor with the blankets spread over their legs. Beside them – aside from the few ATS patients’ service respirators and tin hats – were civilian gas-masks in cardboard boxes and knitting bundles. Night after night, som
etimes more than once a night, they knitted and chatted and I felt as if presiding over an extended Women’s Institute meeting. The needles clicked on, the conversations ran on, from husbands, children, boyfriend, in-laws, to the difficulties of married quarters, the move from those quarters they all expected very shortly (rightly), to dressmaking, cooking, making one penny do the job of two, to the many-sided job of one parent doing the job of two when dad was a serving soldier, or already for some, a prisoner-of-war, or dead.
Listening to, and watching, those women provided me with an insight into my own sex and an oasis of sanity badly needed when the anger of the guns, the whines of diving aircraft, the ugly shuddering roars of exploding bombs convinced me our shelter was the bombers’ target-for-tonight. The twitter of voices stopped abruptly when a bomb fell close enough for us to hear it whistle on the way down. The grey, black, brown, English mouse, peroxide blonde heads in curlers, tousled, or newly combed, swayed forward into their laps as some corps de ballet making a final curtsey. The patients recovering from abdominal operations instinctively flattened both hands over their wounds. ‘That was a near one, eh, nurse? Know what they say – nearly never killed a man! There now, lovey! Did the nasty bangs wake you up, then? Never you mind! Nurse has got a nice drinkie for you – loves his glucose water doesn’t he, nurse? Oh, it’s a her – your little love, dear? Your first is she, dear? There. That’s nice. Now when I had my first …’
Every night Sister Maternity prepared the babies’ individual ‘shelter bottles’. Only nine on that occasion as only nine babies to go down. Some nights there were more, others less. The most I moved on one night was fourteen babies. ‘Only use the glucose drinks if you must, Andrews, as their mums won’t thank us for sending them out addicted to nocturnal tipples. But if you must use ’em, use ’em.’
Those women, the first I had nursed, in a very few nights demolished all my preconceived ideas of women as patients. I had expected to find them fussy, nervous, tearful, demanding. They only fussed on my behalf. ‘Not like that, dear, or you’ll have the Sister after you. You nip down for a tray, then collect the empties. Sister Maternity’s ever so kind, but she’ll not have you carrying nothing but on a tray.’
I should have remembered. The previous night Sister Maternity had stopped me on the stairs as I rushed back to the kitchen with four empty cups strung from my left hand and the four saucers in my right. ‘Miss Andrews, where is your tray?’ She always addressed me formally when I was at fault. ‘How many more times must I tell you, crockery in a hospital must only be carried on a proper crockery tray. A war is no excuse for slovenly nursing!’
Certainly in the maternity ward, at some period, most of the patients wept. Sister Maternity said this was perfectly natural. ‘All women get a bit weepy after giving birth and why not, as it’s the most tremendous hard labour – I’m not punning, I’m being literal.’
The women on both floors appeared far less nervous about their health than the troops in the men’s hospital, and with very rare exceptions, astonishingly undemanding. Next to their courage, what most surprised me was their humour. When the maternity ward, especially, was not briefly subdued by a perfectly natural weep, it resounded with yells of laughter and jokes too Rabelaisian for my understanding. I asked Sister Maternity for explanations as we fed bottle babies in the nursery. She censored some. ‘You didn’t get that bit about it being a man’s bike? I should hope not at your age! Skip that one. I don’t expect old Mother P knew you were listening. Maybe you should shove cotton wool in your ears when up the far end amongst the multips. When they get down to it, they’d make the bluest Garrison Theatre comic blush. How’s he getting on with that bottle?’
‘Bit slow, I’m afraid, Sister.’
She tucked her baby under one arm and stood by me. ‘Your poor lad hasn’t good sucking pads and he’s tired. Put your thumb under his chin, so – that’ll help him and he must have more as his mum’s dried up. No wonder after last night. Dry my milk if I’d to stagger up and down these stairs like a yo-yo within hours of my milk coming in. When he’s finished, don’t disturb him with a change unless he’s dirty. Put him down to get some kip whilst he can.’
I loved feeding the babies. It meant I could sit down, without risk of falling asleep, as they were so interesting, and provided another surprise by being such fun. I had not met babies before, and had not thought I would like them as I had never consciously wanted a baby, or clucked over prams. It took only a couple of nights in the nursery to rid me of the fear that either the babies would fall apart in my hands or I would drop them, and to turn me into an ardent clucker over cots, nappy changes, feeding bottles, and nursery Alerts. I was rather worried the first time I heard myself talking when alone with them in the nursery. Sister Maternity overheard. ‘Don’t flap, Andrews, you’re not daft. Babies like being talked to and even this young once they get used to a voice, most’ll stop bellowing to listen. I’ll show you.’ It was just before the 10 p.m. feed time and two-thirds of the nursery was shouting. She stood in the middle and clapped her hands. ‘Pipe down, you lot! Grub’s coming!’ The shouts subsided to hiccups.
‘Sister, how can they possibly understand?’
‘How do you, or anyone, know they can’t? They told you? All I know is, if you hit the right tone, you can get through from the first week of life.’ She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Get out of that nursery apron, nip away those last three beeps, and then I’ll start bringing in the hungry.’
The only thing I really disliked about nursing women was the fact that they had to have bedpans. I loathed the bedpans and bombs alike and would probably have hated both, had not all my hatred been concentrated on the kitchen cockroaches. On my first night when I switched on the light and the black floor scuttled towards me, for the only occasion in the war I screamed in terror. From then on, as I had to be in and out of the kitchen all night and despite constant complaints to and onslaughts from the Sanitary Squads, and pounds of killer-powder I put down nightly, the cockroaches not merely survived but flourished. I maintained a private war in the kitchen. When swatting them I encouraged myself by singing:
Christian, dost thou see them
On the holy ground,
How the troops of Midian,
Prowl and prowl around?
Christian, up and smite them …
I scattered so much killer-powder that only by a miracle did none get into the adult patients’ milk (the babies’ artificial feeds were prepared in the cockroach-free nursery), and the scrambled eggs and cheese toast I cooked on alternate nights for the meals the Sisters and I ate together, deliveries and raids permitting, between 1 and 2 a.m. Whatever was in that powder, though I inhaled quantities, it did me no more harm than the cockroaches. Every time I replugged their holes they staggered out again, shook themselves free of white and advanced as before in good battle order. ‘Sister, unless this kitchen has a direct hit, I’ll bet they’re here for the duration.’
‘If they can survive your hymn-singing blitzes, they can survive anything. From the row just now, I thought you’d got a Jerry in here.’ Sister General kicked aside corpses. ‘Come up and give me a hand with old Mrs H. She’s too low in bed. I didn’t ring not to wake the others.’
Mrs H, in her late forties, was the wife of a regular soldier back from Dunkirk and posted elsewhere. She was an amiable grey-haired woman with three chins, weighed fourteen stones and had recently been operated on during the day for a strangulated hernia. Sister General had taught me the rudiments of lifting and, being the more experienced lifter, gripped my wrists. ‘Dig your heels in, Mrs H, and go floppy. Ready, Andrews? Up we go. Fine. More comfortable, Mrs H?’
Mrs H said she was lovely and she didn’t know she was sure how two slips of girls could toss her about lovely. ‘Time I turned me ankle last year took hubby and two of his mates to get me off me kitchen floor.’ She reached for the largish piece of white tissue paper I had removed from her bedtable and was about to scrumple. ‘Don’t want to
waste that, dear. Cut up lovely, it will, and I’ll fetch it home seeing you’ve enough here. Hubby’, she added cryptically, ‘won’t let me use newspaper. Not nice, hubby says.’
Outside the ward I asked, ‘Sister, what did she mean?’
‘Sergeant H doesn’t hold with using newspaper as lavatory paper.’
‘That’s why she wants to save it – Sister! You can buy lav. paper for 3d. and 6d. in Woolworths!’
‘If you don’t need that money to feed your family. You can get half-a-pound of stewing steak for 6d. – more if you’ll take scraps, or a pound of beef sausages. If you’d a family of hungry kids, would you give ’em bread-and-scrape for supper because you’d spent the money on a luxury like lav. paper? You do know what bread-and-scrape is?’
‘Sorry. No, Sister.’
‘Bread with a scrape of margarine.’
‘That’s – supper?’
‘For thousands of kids. Maybe hundreds of thousands or more.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘But you must’ve come across enough troops by now to have noticed how much bigger the majority of the ex-public school conscripts and civvy soldiers are than the others. I wasn’t thought tall at school or in training and you’re my height, but we tower over most of these soldiers’ wives. Know why?’
No Time For Romance Page 12
