by Annie Murray
‘Well, you’re very popular, I can tell you,’ Annie said, indicating some of the eager-looking patients.
‘Ah, Dr Reid,’ said Matron, looming beside them. She was a woman in her late forties and kindly, but my goodness, she made sure you did as you were told. ‘You have come to assist. Come along, Nurse Hanson – to work. This dinner will not serve itself!’
There was a pause while the doctor said grace over the turkey, which Annie could not help finding slightly hilarious. Religious as she was herself, there was something about praying over a naked turkey with its legs sticking up . . . The new doctor carved and Annie and Susannah and the other staff filled plates almost to overflowing and distributed them round the ward.
‘Is that mine, nurse?’ one of Annie’s young patients cried eagerly. ‘I think I’m going to pass out if I don’t eat in a minute!’
‘I don’t suppose you will,’ she retorted. ‘But yes – this one’s for you.’
‘Oh!’ He feigned a faint for a moment. ‘Stuffing! Roast spuds! Bread sauce! Have I died and gone to heaven?’
‘Not last time I looked, no,’ she said, smiling as she placed the food on his table. ‘Go on – tuck in.’
Once they had taken plates to all the patients, Annie and the other staff came for their helpings. As she was spooning potatoes on to her plate, Dr Reid approached and quietly said hello.
‘Fergus Reid.’ He bowed slightly from the waist. ‘This is all very jolly. May I enquire of your name, nurse?’
‘Nurse Hanson,’ she said. She was really doing her best to remain formal, but in the face of Dr Reid’s infectious smile, she could feel a pinkness suffusing her cheeks and her lips turning merrily upwards. She was comforted by the thought that everyone was far too busy tucking into their Christmas dinner to take much notice of her.
‘May I be party to your first name, or is it a strictly kept secret?’ he said solemnly.
‘I suppose I might stretch a point,’ she said. ‘It’s Annie.’
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Nurse Annie,’ he said teasingly. ‘And merry Christmas.’
So began an afternoon of jollity. Fergus Reid lingered around long after they had eaten, chatting to some of the lads and helping clear up. Annie was surprised. Most doctors thought they were well above such things and second only to God. She couldn’t help looking curiously at him. He was a friendly man, even Matron softened in his presence and Annie saw her smiling. He talked to all the staff, though she was kept so busy she did not see a great deal of him – until he was about to leave.
She was talking to a young man in a bed up towards the high wooden pulpit and suddenly realized that Dr Reid was coming towards her along the ward. He had put his hat on again and seeing his face now looking out from under his cap brim, Annie thought his features seemed sharpened, more distinguished even than before. She felt her entire body prickle, almost as if there was some sort of danger close by. It was odd, disturbing, that he had this effect on her. She tried to put a cool, professional expression on her face.
‘Nurse Hanson,’ he said, very politely. ‘I shall be off now. But might I trouble you for a word before I go?’
‘One moment,’ she said to the lad she had been talking to. Walking beside Dr Reid, she said, ‘You have stayed a long time. I’m surprised no one has called you away – though of course we’ve been glad of the help.’
‘Well, I’m a new boy,’ he said. ‘Not everyone has caught on that I’m here. But I’ve had a quick look at the two patients they especially want me to examine. Nerve cases, you see. And it’s a good chance to get to know the place a bit. Um, nurse?’
They had just reached the nurses’ station, a table at the side of the room, where no one happened to be sitting at that moment. He touched her arm for a second to stop her and they stood face to face. Annie fingered the edge of the blotter on the table.
‘I, er . . .’ He spoke very quietly. ‘I’m new around here, as you know. In Birmingham, I mean. I don’t know the city at all – I’ve come down from Edinburgh, you see. I don’t even know that I’ll be here all that long. Might I impose on your time for an hour or two, to show me around a bit – when you come off duty, or another day?’
Annie was so surprised that she was speechless for a second.
‘I . . .’ She took a breath. ‘Today, I’m afraid I have promised to go and visit a friend – and family.’
‘Well, of course,’ he laughed. ‘It is Christmas Day.’
‘But another day – yes.’ A genuine sense of pleasure rose in her and she beamed at him. ‘I’d be glad to.’
It was already dark again before she reached the yard in Pope Street.
‘Miss Hanson!’ Ivy opened the door and grinned with delight. ‘You never said you was coming!’
‘Oh, yes, ’er did,’ Lizzie said, coming over with the baby, Ann, in her arms. ‘Only I never said – thought it’d make a bit of a surprise.’
As they closed the door, Annie took in the poor little room and tried to assess how things were going. Even though everyone – the doctor, Lizzie and Ivy – had assured her they laid no blame at her door for what had happened, she still felt a terrible sense of responsibility over Mary Poole.
Poor Lizzie, alone now with the family to look after, looked very thin and tired, but she was smiling cheerfully. Ivy, whose childhood blonde hair had darkened to a mousy brown, was a practical girl who had found work learning enamelling at the Trafalgar Works – Thomas Fattorini’s factory in Regent Street. She was of a stockier build than her willowy elder sister, and seemed very sensible and older than her years. Annie remembered with a terrible pang the day she and Margaret had found Ivy’s sister, Ada, dead beside Ivy in the bed upstairs. This family had had such a lot to contend with and with Den gone as well now, Ivy and Lizzie had to be parents to the two young ones, Ethel and baby Ann.
‘It looks nice in here!’ Annie said, trying only to see the best of it. The cold and the smell of damp, the mouldy ceiling and the beetle scuttling across the floor, she edited from her thoughts. Because as well, today there were streamers across the ceiling, holly along each end of the mantle and a decorated candle in the middle. Lizzie, who was feeding Ann with a bottle, smiled with pleasure.
‘We wanted it nice for Christmas,’ she said. Her eyes filled. Their mother had only been dead seven months. What a sad, gruelling struggle it all was, but Annie was full of admiration for these sisters and the way they were pulling together.
‘Did you make the streamers, Etty?’ she asked the little girl, who was sitting at the table, looking very much as Ivy and Ada had at six years old, when Annie first met them.
Etty, who was playing with some buttons, nodded shyly, pleased to be noticed.
‘We did ’em together,’ Ivy said. ‘Now, d’yer want a cuppa tea, Miss Hanson?’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Annie smiled.
Ivy looked stricken. ‘Sorry – only . . .’
‘I was joking,’ Annie said. ‘But yes, Ivy – I’d love one. And do please stop calling me Miss Hanson. Annie’s perfectly fine.’
‘All right,’ Ivy said, busying herself with the kettle. ‘Water’s boiled, Lizzie . . .’
‘Make us a good pot,’ Lizzie said. ‘And don’t hang about. Annie’ll be wanting to get off to her family.’
‘Oh, there’s no hurry,’ Annie said. ‘It’s a treat to see you all.’ She reached into her bag. ‘Look, I’ve brought some nice biscuits, shortbread! And a fruitcake – and a few little gifts.’
The girls exclaimed with pleasure and Etty slid down from the table and came to stand shyly by Annie’s chair, staring at her in wonder.
‘You’re pretty,’ she said, wide-eyed.
Annie laughed. ‘Well, that’s nice, Etty – and so are you. Come here and help me hand out these little presents, will you?’
‘We’ve got one for you too,’ Ivy said over her shoulder. ‘Ain’t we, Lizzie?’
‘In a minute,’ Lizzie said, winding Ann over her sho
ulder. ‘Ooh, that cake’s making my mouth water. You are kind, Annie. You shouldn’t be spending your wages on us.’
‘Well, I don’t have much time to spend them on anyone most of the time,’ Annie said.
She handed out the little gifts, each wrapped in tissue. She had bought a pretty silk square for Lizzie, flowers and leaves all in blue, red and green on a cream background.
‘Oh, Annie, that is pretty!’ Lizzie’s eyes lit up and she stroked it in wonder. For Ivy she had a bar of perfumed soap and a tortoiseshell comb and for Etty, a wooden jigsaw puzzle of a group of children playing with a skipping rope. Etty gasped at the sight of it and took it immediately to the table, gazing solemnly as she opened the box.
‘And there’s something tiny for the little one,’ Annie said, handing Lizzie a small rattle. ‘For when she’s a bit bigger.’
‘Thanks ever so much,’ Lizzie said. ‘You’re ever so kind.’Ere, ’ave a hold of ’er a minute, Annie, so I can cut some of that cake!’
Annie took the contented baby on to her lap and enjoyed the warm feel of her. She was wide awake, staring round at them all.
‘Have you heard any more from Den?’ Annie asked. She had been full of questions about how they were coping, but those could wait. So far as she could see they were doing very well – all these girls had had a lot to manage from a young age.
‘There was a card when he got to France, saying he was all right,’ Lizzie said, bringing a little plate over with slices of the cake. ‘Ooh, look at that – I love marzipan!’
As they sat in the warm, Annie said softly to Lizzie, ‘You all right?’
Lizzie’s eyes filled and she gave a sad smile. ‘I’m getting by. Mrs B has this one –’ she nodded down at little Ann – ‘a day or two and then I pay Mrs Felton up the road to have ’er some of the time.’ But her eyes clouded and she seemed troubled.
‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you sure she’s doing a good job?’
‘I don’t know.’ Lizzie hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. I just don’t like handing her over, some’ow.’
‘She seems contented enough.’
‘Yeah.’ Lizzie eyed her sister in Annie’s lap. ‘I s’pose. Yes, you’re right.’
Annie looked at her old friend, her heart full of sadness for her and admiration.
‘Never mind, Lizzie – your prince’ll come one day.’
‘Huh – what, for me? Yer joking. Who’s going to want an old maid like me, with all this round me?’ She took a mouthful and a sudden look of bliss came over her face. ‘This cake is one of the nicest things I’ve ever tasted.’
Revd Hanson had had rather a shock at their insistence on celebrating Christmas in a less austere way than he was used to – for the sake of John and Lily as much as anything.
‘We never had a tree or decorations when Annie and I were growing up,’ Margaret told them.
But they had all decked out the house for when Philip arrived, making paper streamers and going out to raid the hedgerows for shining red hips and haws, holly and clusters of mistletoe. William Hanson drew the line at having alcohol in his house, but Miss Berry had made blackberry cordial in the summer and they celebrated happily enough. By the evening, everyone sat round the fire, reflecting on their luck at being together when so many were separated from loved ones. The year had brought increasingly terrible news from the Western Front – huge losses at Ypres and at Loos – and the Hun using gas on the enemy. Margaret had been horrified by stories Annie had reported from the hospital.
‘We must be grateful,’ William Hanson said. ‘These are grave times – grave times indeed.’
And Daisy realized that despite his gloomy words, he seemed happy to have them all there. It was the first time they had all spent Christmas together in his home. As she sat, that evening, the melting sensation began again, as if something within her was cleaving open.
She was sleeping in the smallest room, which Margaret told her had once belonged to their baby brother John, before he was taken from them as an infant by a terrible fever. Margaret and Annie’s heartbroken mother had kept the room intact afterwards, unable to bear to change it. Even now, it still looked much as it ever had and Daisy liked the simple little room with its pale green walls and cosy green eiderdown.
But sleep would not come to her that night. The hot, almost tearing feeling in her body continued and she felt suddenly wide awake and bursting with energy, as if her body was on full alert. She had not said anything to anyone all day about these feelings. She heard William Hanson’s tread on the wooden stairs as he retired to his room, then Ma and Pa, who had settled an excited John and Lily to sleep downstairs. The two of them had been turfed out of Annie’s old bed now that Pa was here. She heard something give an unearthly shriek outside. It began to rain, a swish of sound and a rattle on the window. Let me sleep, please, she thought, wanting to escape what she knew had begun. The force of it was building in her.
It was a while before it became pain. When it came it was shocking in its sharpness – like a crushing band of iron about her body. She leapt up in the bed and knelt, pressing her head sideways into the pillow, gasping until it began to die away.
Oh, my heavens, she thought, what am I supposed to do?
It was pitch dark. With shaking fingers she re-lit the candle, comforted by the light. Every so often, the iron hand grasped hold of her again, its force increasing so that she could not help a moan escaping her lips. She dozed a little, then woke again. On it went, growing more frequent. I must get someone, she thought, but she could not seem to find the impetus, to take in that this was really happening.
‘I must get up . . .’ she whispered.
She had lost track of all time. The house felt deadly quiet around her. After a bout of pain, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. As she did so, liquid gushed from her, soaking her legs and into the rug beside the bed. She looked down in horror, but then the pain ambushed her with such force that she bent over the bed again, groaning and sobbing.
‘Daisy?’ Margaret was beside her. ‘Oh, my dear – why didn’t you come for me?’
Daisy had no idea what happened next, except that she was in a stormy sea of pain, hurling her forward then receding so that all other reality was lost to her. People were in the room; another candle’s wavering light, voices – Margaret, her father, another woman . . . Oh, thank heaven someone was here to help . . .
‘Right – we’ll get you on the bed, lovey,’ the woman’s voice said. She had the impression of a plump person, hair in some sort of wrapper and a round face.
Everything was going so fast. ‘I can’t,’ she panted. ‘I can’t do this . . .’
No one else could do it. She was the only one able to birth this child. When the final pains felt as if they were cracking her apart, she still felt incapable of it, even when the village midwife was saying things like, ‘Good, good, lovey, that’s right, you keep that comin’,’ and there was something vast trying to force its way agonizingly out of her and then a slither and a sudden feeling of being released. Everyone was exclaiming and she heard, to her utter astonishment, the loud, outraged cry of a baby.
‘My dear . . .’ Margaret had tears running down her cheeks. ‘She’s a little girl – a beautiful little girl.’
Daisy, her body cleft open, lay in blood and sweat, her hair lank about her, limp as an old cloth and full of bewilderment. She felt like someone else, not herself at all. The woman who had helped, whose name turned out to be Mrs White, came to her with a little wrapped bundle, her fleshy face beaming.
‘Well, she’s a lively one,’ she said. ‘’Ere you are, my dear. You ’ave a look at her, the little princess . . .’
‘No!’ Daisy protested weakly. All she could feel was fear. Don’t let me – don’t ever let me see . . . ‘No, I don’t want to . . .’
The woman either did not hear or did not understand. The bundle was laid in her arms. Daisy felt a surprisingly solid little body find its space against hers, life
clamouring through it. She turned her face away, pushing at it, seized with panic. This was not meant to be happening.
‘Get it away from me – just take it away!’ she cried frantically to Margaret. She was the one who knew what they were to do. She had arranged it all. ‘Get it away from me.’
‘Oh, Daisy, are you sure?’ Margaret rushed over and took the warm weight off her. ‘But you should give her a drink . . .’
‘No!’ Daisy shouted. ‘Take it – get it out of here, now!’
She lay back and closed her eyes as Margaret carried the bundle away, whispering something to the midwife. Daisy was suddenly sharply conscious now, attuned to every movement in the room, every sound, the minute snuffle she could hear coming from that warm thing that had lain on her, and just for a few seconds the place it had occupied felt empty, bereft.
The whispering continued. Daisy heard the door open as if Margaret was about to leave and it became impossible, like a tearing apart in her, this now or never, never again.
‘Wait!’ She shot up on to her elbows. ‘All right, wait just a minute – let me see before you go.’
She saw Margaret and the midwife exchange looks, their eyes full of some doom felt between them. Margaret seemed to find permission in that look somewhere.
‘All right, Daisy.’ She came close again, but did not push the child into Daisy’s arms. Instead she leaned down, opening the little cream blanket. Daisy saw dark hair, tiny features, the mouth moving slightly pursed, as if looking for something, but for the moment there was no sound except tiny, squeaky breaths. It was utterly extraordinary.
‘So,’ she whispered, ‘it’s a girl?’
‘Yes,’ Margaret said. Her voice was tight, held in. ‘Do you want to . . . ?’
‘No.’ Daisy recoiled and lay down again, closed her eyes. ‘Take her – now, Ma.’
She heard the footsteps leave the room again. After a few moments the other woman spoke. Her voice was calm, but neutral, with little warmth.
‘All right, my dear. Now I need to see to you – all right?’