by Daisy Styles
‘But,’ she said as she glared at her wretched hands, ‘they’re much better than they were.’
‘Time off has helped,’ the doctor agreed. ‘But just from looking at your skin I can see the condition would immediately flare up again.’
Almost at screaming point, Gladys burst into tears. ‘Don’t you understand? The Phoenix is my life – I love it – I don’t want to be sent away!’ she pleaded as tears fell from her lovely blue eyes.
Dr Grant shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Dear child, I’m simply trying to protect your health, not send you away. I could sign you off right now but you’d be back here in less than a week, I can promise you.’
‘But I never had this condition in the filling shed; it’s only the cordite line that brings it on,’ she cried, repeating something she said on every visit to the surgery.
‘It’s a build-up of both,’ he told her firmly. ‘All I can say is, with those hands of yours, working with explosives is quite out of the question.’
When Gladys left the doctor’s surgery, she was still crying. ‘This is the end of the road for me,’ she thought to herself as she walked home. ‘I’d better pack my bags and say my goodbyes right away – no point in dragging it out. My Phoenix days are over.’
With Manchester and Liverpool being regularly targeted by the enemy, precious artworks had been removed to safety, but there were temporary rolling exhibitions, and the gallery, nothing really but an old shop in Salford, was one such. The curator was busy hanging pictures when they arrived, and there was a big sign in the window announcing the ‘Women at War’ exhibition.
‘Looks like we’ve come to the right place,’ said Malc as he and Edna helped Rosa unload her work from his car. ‘Right, then,’ he continued as he strode towards the shop. ‘Best foot forward.’
Once they were in the exhibition space, Rosa did most of the talking. The gallery owner was charmed by her sketches and accepted them with great enthusiasm. ‘It’s wonderful that word is getting around,’ he told them. ‘I’m hoping we’ll have an interesting, eclectic set of works to show to the public.’
Malc picked up one of the pamphlets lying on a bench by the door. ‘I see there’s prizes?’ he said curiously.
‘Fifty pounds for the first prize,’ the owner replied. ‘That should help any struggling artist, not with foreign travel, unfortunately,’ he quickly added. ‘Sadly that’s out of the question these days, though there’s nothing like the works of the great masters to broaden the mind.’
‘I hope the Raphaels and Tintorettos, and all other masterpieces, are locked away from thieving Nazis,’ Rosa said heatedly.
The gallery owner turned to her and said, ‘We hear terrible things about priceless works of art being stolen by German officers. God, they must have had a field day when they invaded Paris,’ he said with a small groan.
Rosa’s brow crinkled with fury. ‘Nazis destroy all they touch!’ she fumed.
Seeing the conversation was taking a turn for the worse, Edna asked in a cheerful voice, ‘So when does the exhibition open?’
‘Any time now,’ the owner replied. ‘Work’s coming in all the time …’ His eyes lingered over Rosa’s sketches ranged on the table before him. ‘I must say, Miss Falco, your images of women at war really are most insightful.’
Rosa almost skipped into Malc’s car, where, in the back seat, she hugged Edna. ‘Thank you, thank you, this is very exciting!’ she cried as she clutched Edna’s hand and squeezed it hard.
Malc, in the driver’s seat, turned on the ignition and they cruised slowly through the bombed streets of Salford, past shattered mills and rows of tenement blocks reduced to heaps of rubble. ‘Look at the kiddies picking through the wreckage,’ Edna exclaimed. ‘Poor little mites.’
‘Odds on they’re looking for bits of scrap metal to sell to the rag-and-bone man,’ Malc remarked.
‘Who is this rag-and-bone person?’ Rosa asked.
‘They’re fellas that go around the area with a handcart, looking for rubbish to trade in for a few coppers,’ Edna explained. ‘You sometimes hear them calling down the back streets. “Any old iron! Any old iron!” ’
‘You won’t hear ’em up on’t moors,’ Malc chuckled as they made their way home. ‘There’s nowt up there for them bar a few wild birds and a clump o’ heather!’
Rosa asked Malc and Edna if they’d like to pop into the cowshed when they dropped her off. ‘I make you brew,’ she said, using one of Edna’s favourite expressions.
‘Much as I’m gagging for a cuppa, lovie, I’ve got to get back to the shop and set up my stall for my customers,’ Edna replied as she gave the excited girl a farewell kiss.
Feeling happy and light-hearted, Rosa almost glided into the cowshed, where there was no sign of Gladys in the kitchen or sitting room. ‘Gladeeees!’ she called.
‘In here,’ came a low reply.
With her heart sinking, Rosa hurried into Gladys’s bedroom, where she found her friend lying miserably on her narrow single bed.
‘Mia cara!’ Rosa said softly as she sat down on the bed and stroked Gladys’s limp hands.
‘I’m leaving the Phoenix, Rosa.’
Stricken Rosa put her hand to her mouth. ‘NO! That’s not possible.’
‘It’s more than possible,’ Gladys retorted as she dragged herself upright. ‘There’s nothing here for me with these damn hands!’ she raged.
‘Come, my sweet,’ Rosa urged as she held out a hand to Gladys. ‘Let me make you tea.’
Gladys followed her friend into the sitting room, where Rosa busied herself with boiling water and stoking the wood-burner with fresh logs.
‘I suppose I’ll just go back home and find work in Leeds,’ Gladys said, as she gratefully took the mug of hot tea that Rosa proffered.
‘No! You cannot leave me!’ Rosa exclaimed. ‘You my best friend, Gladys, you and the girls here, you are my family, you cannot leave me,’ she wailed as she burst into tears.
Seeing poor Rosa so upset took Gladys’s mind off her own misfortunes. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart, it’s not like I want to leave you or this place, where I’ve been so happy. I’ve racked my brains over and over trying to think what I could do in order to remain at the Phoenix. I even begged to go back to the filling shed, where I worked without any problem before I joined ENSA, but Dr Grant’s adamant: he said explosive material is bad for my health,’ she sighed as she stared into the fire that crackled cheerily and warmed the room. ‘I wish Myrtle was here – oh, what wouldn’t I give for her sound advice right now,’ she said as she felt fresh tears sting her eyes.
Rosa’s eyes widened at Gladys’s words. ‘MYRTLE!’ she exclaimed.
Gladys looked alarmed. ‘What about her?’
‘You loved nursing, mia cara?’ Rosa enquired.
Looking puzzled by her obvious question, Gladys replied, ‘You know I loved it, but I loved Myrtle, so it was no hardship.’
‘But you did the things the nurses do?’ Rosa enquired with a calculating look in her big, dark eyes.
‘Yes,’ Gladys answered. ‘In the end, the nursing staff, encouraged by the matron, let me do everything for Myrtle; they trusted me to look after her and she preferred me to nurse her rather than strangers, no matter how well intentioned they were.’
Rosa sprang to her feet and started mumbling in Italian. ‘Allora, ecco la risposta al tuo problema!’
‘What?’ cried Gladys who had no idea what she was going on about. ‘Speak English, for God’s sake!’
‘Here is the answer to your problem!’ Rosa announced.
‘What?’ Gladys said again.
‘Think!’ Rosa exclaimed, patting the side of her head.
Frustrated almost beyond words, Gladys raised her voice: ‘WHAT are you talking about?’
‘My Gladeeees, you must be a nurse! You must train as nurse!’
Gladys’s jaw literally dropped wide open.
‘You would be perfetto!’ Rosa exclaimed.
‘ME? A NURSE?’
Gladys almost choked.
‘That is what you have been, a nurse,’ Rosa pointed out.
‘But that was for Myrtle,’ Gladys reminded her.
‘So now you do for others,’ Rosa said with a gentle smile. ‘Myrtle has blessed you – this is her advice.’
The hairs on the back of Gladys’s neck stood on end and she felt goose bumps on her skin. ‘Oh, my God!’ she gasped as she buried her face in her hands. ‘I can almost feel her beside me,’ she whispered.
‘She is here, for sure,’ Rosa said with simple faith.
Gladys took her fingers away from her face and stared at the scudding clouds outside the window. It was true that she had enjoyed the experience of nursing; apart from the pleasure she’d had from being with Myrtle right up until the end, she had liked the ordered atmosphere of the sanatorium and the conscientious care of the staff. Taking hold of Rosa’s hand, she kissed it. ‘I’ll go and see Dr Grant tomorrow – and this time,’ she laughed joyfully, ‘it won’t be about my bloody hands!’
As the girls had their sparse tea of fish paste on toast with a grilled tomato on top, Gladys apologized for not asking about Rosa’s gallery visit earlier. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot about it after the doctor dropped his bombshell.’
Rosa shrugged as she bit into her hot toast. ‘You had much on mind.’ After she’d munched her mouthful, she told Gladys about the gallery owner’s reaction to her drawings, then she surprised Gladys by saying, ‘You remember the relatives I stayed with in Manchester?’
Gladys nodded as she recalled the conversation they’d had some months ago. ‘Yes, you said they helped you when you first arrived, after your escape.’
‘I feel bad that I do not visit them,’ Rosa admitted. ‘Always there is so much to do here at Phoenix,’ she said with a smile. ‘But now is a good time to meet; maybe they will enjoy to see my work in Salford?’ she said a little uncertainly.
‘I’m sure they will be very proud of you,’ Gladys assured her modest friend. ‘In fact, we’re ALL proud of you, Rosa, our little Phoenix artist!’
17. The New Girl
The next day, Gladys wasted no time in seeing Dr Grant at the Phoenix Infirmary. After she’d explained her intentions, the doctor was truly astonished. ‘You really want to train as a nurse?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I think I do, but I’ve no idea how to go about it,’ Gladys admitted.
‘Well, you could start right here,’ he said. ‘Most of our trained nurses have been deployed to field hospitals – an extra pair of hands would be a godsend. Here we nurse the sick and wounded from the factory in two small wards, one male, the other female; children are usually admitted on to the women’s ward, which we also use as a maternity unit.’
A smile lit up Gladys’s rather tense face. ‘Start here, at the Phoenix?’ she asked incredulously. ‘That would be perfect – I wouldn’t have to leave – I could stay!’ she exclaimed as she broke into a laugh.
‘I warn you, Gladys, you’ll be thrown in at the deep end; we have no choice but to train nurses on the hoof these days,’ Dr Grant explained with an apologetic smile.
Gladys’s smile faded. ‘How will I know what to do? Who will teach me?’ she asked nervously.
‘It’s myself and the ward sisters; there isn’t time for the intensive-theory courses we used to provide. Any lectures you do attend will be in your own time off,’ Dr Grant replied. ‘To be blunt, it’s a case of getting stuck in. You’ll find out soon enough if you have a real vocation,’ he assured her. ‘Our two ward sisters are notoriously overworked and consequently fairly impatient,’ Dr Grant warned. ‘One of them will be your assigned nurse: stick to her like glue – watch and learn, Gladys.’
With everything happening so quickly, Gladys began to panic. ‘B-b-but isn’t there something I should read first?’ she babbled.
‘You can read as much medical information as you want, but believe me there’s nothing like first-hand experience on the wards,’ Dr Grant replied. ‘I don’t think your hands will trouble you too much in a hospital environment,’ he added with a grin. ‘We don’t deal with raw explosives!’ he teased.
In a daze, Gladys left the infirmary; it had all happened so quickly. What if she wasn’t a bright learner? Would they throw her out at the end of her first week? Excited, elated and nervous, Gladys shook her head as she muttered to herself, ‘Singer, Dancer, Bomb Girl – and now a Nurse!’ Then another thought hit her: if she was training to be a nurse, would she be able to stay on in the cowshed, or was it only for munitions workers? Hurrying over to the Phoenix, she knocked nervously on Mr Featherstone’s door, which was flung open by the imposing figure of Marjorie, Mr Featherstone’s secretary, who protected her boss like a Rottweiler protects a bone. ‘Yes?’ she snapped. After Gladys explained her situation, Marjorie shut the door in her face then reopened it ten minutes later, ‘He’ll see you now, but only for five minutes.’
After hearing what Gladys had to say, Mr Featherstone looked doubtful; Gladys’s heart fluttered – would he ask her to leave the cowshed? Should she have even come here and blurted out the truth? She could have kept her circumstances a secret, but then somebody would inevitably see her in her nurse’s uniform and there would be questions asked. Bomb Girls didn’t normally go to work in a starched white uniform and a winged starched cap!
‘There are only two of us in a three-bedroomed accommodation,’ she quickly informed Mr Featherstone.
‘We’d normally install you in the nurses’ quarters,’ he told Gladys. ‘But they got blown up in the recent explosion, so you might as well as stay put for now. Of course, we’ll be sorry to lose you off the bomb line, but needs must in these hard, dark times,’ he concluded gloomily.
Too restless even to consider going back home to the cowshed, Gladys all but skipped out on to the misty moors; she couldn’t believe her luck. She’d been accepted to train as a nurse at the little Phoenix hospital, and she could stay in the cowshed with Rosa too. She could never have dreamt of a better outcome. Singing loudly, she stopped in her tracks and smiled. ‘You’re singing, Gladys Johnson,’ she laughed at herself. ‘You’re singing because you’re happy and there’s a big new world waiting for you.’
Still singing, Gladys struck out for Yew Tree Farm, where she hoped to find Kit. Luckily Kit was on afternoon shift, so she was in with Billy, but she looked unusually pale and wan when she opened the front door to her friend. ‘Come in,’ she cried when she saw Gladys on the front doorstep. Desperate as she was to talk to somebody about her new appointment, Gladys couldn’t ignore how poorly Kit looked.
‘Are you sick?’ she asked as she scooped squealing Billy into her arms and kissed him on both dimpled red cheeks.
‘I’m pregnant,’ Kit said with a weak smile.
Gladys was so shocked she almost dropped the child in her arms. ‘Pregnant? Really?’ she gasped.
Kit grimaced as she replied, ‘Really, really, if being sick all morning has anything to do with it. Come on,’ she urged, ‘I’ll put the kettle on, but if you’ll excuse me I won’t make a brew – the smell of tea turns my stomach,’ she admitted.
‘I’ll do it,’ Gladys said as she popped Billy back on his feet, and he promptly ran off to chase the cat. ‘Does Ian know the good news?’
‘How could he not?’ Kit chuckled. ‘With breasts as big and tender as mine, plus the morning sickness, he couldn’t fail to notice.’
‘He’ll make a wonderful father,’ Gladys said as she popped tea leaves into the pot and poured boiling water on top of them.
‘He’s already a wonderful father to Billy; there could be none better,’ Kit assured Gladys. ‘He’s so caring and loving – I couldn’t be luckier.’
Gladys gave Kit a glass of cold water whilst she filled a mug with strong tea and then added a splash of condensed milk.
‘You know something,’ Kit continued, ‘this pregnancy couldn’t be more different from my first, with Billy. I was as sick as this but trying to hide it from mi da. I was genuinely starv
ing; it’s a miracle that Billy was born so healthy; all that I lived on for nine months was spuds and cabbage. Look at me now, safe and warm in a lovely home.’ She sighed with contentment. ‘I never fail to thank God for his blessings.’
Tall, slender Gladys leant over to kiss small slight Kit. ‘You deserve every blessing,’ she said with real love. ‘The family and the home that you’ve created here are a joy to all who visit. Now listen,’ Gladys said excitedly, ‘I’ve got news too!’
After Gladys had told her about her visit to Dr Grant, Kit clapped her hands. ‘Nurse Gladys Johnson!’ she cried excitedly.
‘But …’ said anxious Gladys. ‘There has to be more to becoming a nurse than wanting to stay on at the Phoenix just so I can be near my friends,’ she said with a guilty giggle. ‘I mean, nursing is a vocation; it’s not about where you live.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself; it’s not like you haven’t nursed before,’ Kit said, reiterating what Rosa had previously said to Gladys. ‘You know, to a fair extent, what you’re doing.’
‘It’s still scary,’ Gladys confessed. ‘The thought of not being a volunteer but a real trainee nurse. Plus Dr Grant gave me a fright when he said there was no time for proper training these days – it’s all a bit sink or swim,’ she added with a nervous laugh.
Kit gave Gladys a reassuring pat on the arm. ‘Take it a day at a time, sweetheart, and see how you get on: that’s my advice. Try not to worry about what’s round the corner – you’ll find out soon enough if it’s the job for you – and one thing’s for sure,’ Kit said as she burst out laughing, ‘you won’t be working with cordite in the Phoenix Infirmary!’
On the bus home, with Kit and Billy sitting beside her on the back seat, Gladys remembered about Kit’s efforts to find Flora, and asked if she’d made any progress since they’d last chatted about it. Kit shook her head. ‘We’ve given up, to be honest; what with me expecting and working long shifts and looking after Billy, there’s not much time left over to work my way through long lists of personal ads,’ she admitted. ‘I’d do it if I thought there was any real hope, but the chances of her getting in touch … I suppose we’ve given up for the time being,’ she confessed.