by Mark Neilson
‘I better go,’ said Jonathon. ‘If he sees this car, he’ll be into it in a flash – you’re sitting in his seat, by the way. Where can I drop you off?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Mary. ‘I’ll get a cup of tea, then walk home. Thanks for the lift.’
‘Pleasure.’ Jonathon half rose to help as she hauled out the two kitbags, then sank back. No help was needed. Expertly, she hoisted one onto her shoulder and gripped the other by its straps. He watched her slim figure walk towards the cottage: more than able to look after herself, like all these local quines. She turned and smiled back at him. He waved, then let his clutch in.
An attractive young woman, he thought, as he headed away.
Down in the harbour, there were other comings and goings. Andy hesitated at the foot of the ladder. ‘Are you sure you don’t fancy having a pint with the boys?’ he asked. ‘It will still be on credit, until we get our wages from the fishing.’
Most of the town lived on credit, during a fishing: the fishermen’s wives having every loaf of bread and box of matches meticulously entered in the grocery’s black book, on the understanding that as soon as their man was paid, the debt would be settled. It always was: bad credit meant that a family might have to starve until the wages came from the next fishing – which could be eight or ten weeks away.
‘No. I’m cleaning out the galley. I’ll be home later,’ Neil said.
‘Suit yourself.’ Andy trotted after his crew, who had already worked up a fair head of steam as they set course for the Harbour Inn.
Neil worked on steadily. Now that they had finished the trip, he could wash out everything properly in fresh water – every drop of which was precious for drinking and cooking at sea. So fresh water was rationed. You washed out the galley in water drawn in a bucket from the sea: and you washed your plates and pots and pans in condensed steam from the engine. Even the crew had to wash in cold seawater. There was an art to filling a bucket while the ship was in motion. Get the timing wrong, and you risked being pulled into the sea – or having the cost of a bucket and a rope deducted from your wages.
‘You’re busy.’
Neil turned round, to see his father leaning against the galley doorway.
‘And you’re blocking my light,’ he smiled.
Eric came over, gripped his son’s shoulder briefly. ‘How are ye feeling?’
‘A lot better. You were right about the sea.’
‘I was right about you.’
Eric felt for his tobacco tin, and went through the ritual of taking a flake, then rubbing it between the heels of his hands, to crumble it. He glanced up. ‘How was the fishing?’ he asked.
‘Good, and bad. Andy’s got the figures in the Catches book.’
‘But you covered your costs?’
‘At a rough guess, yes. Andy keeps the figures to himself.’
‘Skipper’s work,’ said Eric absently. ‘How is he shaping up?’
‘He’s good. With a bit of coaching, he could be better than either of us. You hung up your boots too soon, Da. You could have brought him on.’
‘I’m too old, too slow,’ said Eric. ‘He did nothing stupid then?’
‘He did as well as he could, in a poor fishing.’
‘He’s too hot-headed. Takes too many risks.’
‘He’s trying too hard. That’s all,’ Neil defended him.
‘Aye,’ said Eric. Doubtfully. He puffed at his pipe. ‘Right. I could swallow a pint. Are you coming?’
‘I’ve just turned down Andy and the boys.’
‘Does that mean you’re turning me down as well?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Then what’s keeping you? Let’s go.’
Jonathon looked down with a mixture of sympathy and irritation at the nurse’s crumpled body on the floor. He had a severely injured, possibly dying man on his hands in the cottage hospital. The last thing he needed right now was a fainting nurse. But he could understand why she’d reacted like that: this was the worst emergency he’d handled in years, and he was fighting panic himself. Even doctors are human.
Sympathy aside, there were priorities: fainting came a distant second to someone bleeding to death. He reached across her, in the small theatre, taking the injured man’s pulse as he lay deep in shock. Desperately weak. No time to mess about. If only the fellow’s workmates had stayed to help, instead of bolting. They could have carried her out for him: cleared the way. Jonathon bent down, turned the young nurse over onto her back and took a firm grip underneath the shoulders.
The cottage hospital doorbell rang. Typical. Whoever it was would have to wait. His priority was to get the nurse out of theatre, then start on a radical surgical procedure, which he hadn’t attempted since his student days. Entirely on his own.
As he struggled to haul the nurse out, he heard footsteps break into a run along the hallway.
‘Wait a minute. I’ll take her legs.’
A young woman brushed past him, gripped the nurse’s ankles, and helped him lift her from the floor.
‘Down here will do,’ he gasped, laying the body down gently in the corridor, then turning her onto her side. She would have to lie there until she recovered – or his more seriously injured patient died.
He looked up. ‘Mary Cowie!’ he exclaimed.
‘I heard down the town that there had been a bad accident. I knew you were short-staffed, from what you said to Aggie. I’ve done theatre work. I rushed up to see if I could help.’
‘God sent you,’ he replied. ‘It’s going to be an amputation – have you tackled any of these?’
‘More than I want to remember. What happened? Where do we scrub up?’
He guided her to the sluices and turned the taps on. ‘Shipyard worker,’ he summarized, concentrating on building a lather between his fingers. ‘Was working a steam winch. They were hauling a fishing boat up onto the slip. The winch jammed …’ He held his hands up under the running water, carefully sluicing off the last traces of soap. ‘The man stopped the engine and went in to find out what had caused the problem … the brake slipped … the ship started sliding back into the harbour … and the poor devil got drawn into his own machine. Its gears have eaten most of his right arm.’
‘Morphine?’
‘Enough to sedate – but he was far into shock. Didn’t want to use too much.’
They went into the theatre, where the mutilated body lay under the sharp white lights. Jonathon checked again. Pulse weaker still. Blood starting to run thin, almost like dirty water. This was the worst emergency he had tackled since he left Glasgow and came back home.
He was conscious of Mary quietly checking the tray of surgical instruments, adding a few more vascular clamps. Then he saw her upend a phial and draw morphine into the syringe. With well-practised ease. The reprimand died in his throat: a theatre nurse from a war hospital would be more experienced than himself.
‘How much?’ he asked.
‘Just what we always used.’
He glanced at the side of the syringe, nodded. Then fixed on his mask.
‘Not enough bone left to mend,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m taking off what’s left of the arm … maybe here …’
‘Leaving a pad of muscle, when you close the wound?’
‘Exactly.’ He looked up. ‘Maybe we’re too late. He has very little blood left and has already suffered horrendous shock – before we even start.’
‘He’ll live,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen men recover from worse than this.’
‘It’s ironic,’ he said. ‘But you’ve had more experience of radical surgery than the man who is doing the operation.’
‘We’ll manage fine,’ she reassured, her voice muffled by the mask.
‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ said Jonathon.
He hesitated. The surgical saw glinted from the tray, his fear of using it drawing his eyes back to it every time. He suppressed his fear. Forced himself to concentrate, to think. How far above the remnants of shattered bone should
he cut?
The only way to know was to expose it.
‘Scalpel,’ he said.
And felt the instrument being slapped firmly into his gloved hand.
They washed together at the sluice. Jonathon’s legs were trembling from his reaction to the strain of working methodically through an amputation. He had never, not in all his life, felt so exhausted.
‘Did your war surgeons use blood transfusions?’ he asked.
‘Routinely, in the last year of the war. When we could get the blood stocks.’
‘Did it really reduce the effect of the trauma and surgical shock?’
‘Dramatically. Have you any blood stocks here?’ Mary asked.
Jonathon shook his head. ‘No call for them. And, outside war surgery, the whole concept of transfusions is still in the research stage.’
‘We can analyse his blood type. If it’s common, ask his mates to let us check their blood. If we can match two or three, it would be enough.’ Mary dried her hands.
Jonathon studied her. ‘It’s asking the impossible but, do you know…?’
‘Yes. The unit’s surgeons taught us how to analyse and match the groups.’
‘Could you…?’
‘Have you a microscope? Glass plates?’
‘I’ll get them.’ He turned at the door. ‘Miss Cowie,’ he said.
‘Mary.’
‘Mary. Between the two of us – and the credit is fifty/fifty – we have just about saved the life and what’s left of a destroyed limb for that young man. Before I thank you, I have a simple question to ask …’
‘Fire away,’ said Mary, her mind on the analysis she was about to do.
He stared at her, serious blue eyes in a dark and sombre face.
‘Someone with your skills is wasted as a gutting quine. Would you come and work for me as my senior nurse, in the cottage hospital? I need you. The whole town of Buckie needs you. What do you say? Will you be our nurse?’
Chapter 4
Mary stared at Jonathon. Returning to nursing had never crossed her mind. After her voluntary work at the convalescent hospital had finished, all she’d wanted to do was get back home. Return to normality, find a decent man, and settle down. The war had claimed enough of her life already.
‘I mean it,’ Jonathon said quietly. ‘You are exactly what this town needs. A nurse who can act as a theatre sister, in emergencies.’
‘But I was a volunteer. I don’t have proper nursing qualifications.’
‘You’ve learned from experience, working in that front line unit. Nurses aren’t like doctors, spending years studying before practising. They’re trained more by their matrons, by hands-on working with patients than by teachers. You handled that amputation as competently as any experienced theatre sister. I couldn’t have managed without you.’
Mary flushed. ‘I only came here in case you needed help,’ she said.
‘And I did. You have no idea how much. Say yes. Please?’
‘But I can’t,’ said Mary. ‘I’ve given my word to Gus Walker. I’m under contract to work for him until the season ends, in Yarmouth.’
‘Maybe, if I spoke to him…?’
This was spiralling out of control. Mary shook her head.
‘I can’t,’ she repeated. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to Gus – or the other two girls in my team. Gus would never be able to replace me, this late in the season. It would leave him short-handed and cost the other two their jobs.’
‘But I desperately need an experienced nurse.’
His insistence was driven by real need, not a whim, Mary judged.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll work for you, until we leave for Aberdeen. That’s two or three weeks away – giving you time to look for someone else.’
‘You’ll be paid, of course,’ Jonathon said.
His blue eyes were earnest, in a face which responsibility had moulded into a severity that was at odds with the verbal sparring matches which Aggie’s presence always sparked. Then, it was his impish good humour she had seen.
‘Let’s get on with analysing the blood groups,’ Mary said.
After four hours, they had found two matches with the injured man’s workmates, and given him a blood transfusion that would set him on the way to recovery. Tired, but elated, Mary knocked on Chrissie’s door.
‘Where on earth have you been?’ the older woman asked. ‘We were expecting you hours ago …’
‘There was an accident in the harbour. I’ve been helping Jonathon.’
‘Oh,’ said Chrissie. This was a different Mary from the one who had come back from war, she thought. The dark shadows and drawn look had gone: in their place a sunburned face, and eyes with a sparkle in them, a new confidence. What had happened up at the cottage hospital?
‘Aggie is playing with the Wee Man,’ she said.
They went through the narrow hall to the main room at the back, where Aggie and her son were sprawled on the carpet, playing with a new-looking wooden steam train. ‘She’s never been on her hind legs in two days,’ Chrissie smiled. ‘I told her it was daft to buy the toy, when our money was so scarce.’
Aggie sat back on her heels. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded.
‘Giving Jonathon a hand. Nursing an emergency.’
‘I thought you were done with all that?’
‘So did I.’
Aggie pushed herself from the floor. ‘I’ll get the kettle on,’ she said. ‘How was Jonathon anyway?’
‘He did fine. It was a really bad accident. But he handled it well.’
‘He would,’ Aggie said proudly. ‘He’s the best there is – but don’t tell him.’
Mary went through to the kitchen with her friend. ‘He wants me to come and be his nurse,’ she said. ‘At the cottage hospital.’
The hand which was lifting a spoonful of tea leaves into the pot stopped: then completed the action. ‘Oh,’ said Aggie. ‘And what did you say?’
Mary didn’t notice. ‘I told him we were under contract to Gus.’
‘And?’
‘I said I’d help, until we left for Aberdeen.’
‘And?’
‘That’s it.’ Mary looked searchingly at her friend. ‘What’s up?’
Aggie rubbed the small of her back, with a hand that trembled. ‘It’s my back,’ she said. ‘I’ve been hunkered down with wee Tommy for longer than was good for me.’ She poured three cups of tea. Added milk, and sugars.
‘Once you’ve had that cup of tea, you can be Tommy’s stationmaster,’ she said. ‘And, if you thought that nursing was hard work …’
The boat felt dead in harbour, Neil thought. Of course there was movement, from the swell that surged across the harbour entrance, and noises from the mooring ropes rubbing against the quay. But the Endeavour always seemed to be waiting for someone to bring both her and her old engine back to life.
He stayed quiet, at the far end of the table in the crew’s quarters. Sure, this was a skippers’ meeting, past and present. Which included him, from the years before he left to go to war. Yet somehow, he felt an interloper: his dad and young Andy were the main skippers, to his mind. Covering the past, the present, and the future. He was here on sufferance. He sipped his tea.
Eric studied the Catches record that Andy had kept on the Orkney fishing, slowly turning the pages as his mind converted the figures into the hard cash that was needed to keep the boat afloat. Finally he sighed, closed the book and pushed it back to Andy.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It could have been worse.’
‘We did as well as anybody else,’ Andy replied indignantly. ‘The fishing was poor. Ask any of the boys, when they come back from Wick.’
‘No need,’ said Eric. ‘You’ve told me.’ He gulped a mouthful of tea, then began to search through his pockets.
‘The tobacco’s in your right jacket pocket,’ Andy exploded. ‘Your pipe is in your breast pocket. And your matches have been in the left jacket pocket since I was a bairn at school. It’s never ch
anged – so why the performance?’
‘Mmmphm,’ Eric said absently. He continued searching, then brought out his tobacco tin and eased a dark flake away from the rest of the block inside. Slowly, deliberately, he began to grind it between the heels of his hands.
Andy looked across at Neil, impatience verging on anger in his eyes.
‘We’ve had three thin years,’ Eric mused, ramming the tobacco into his pipe, and beginning the search for matches. ‘That’s two years more than outside investors are happy to suffer. But it’s the same for everybody. Until this year, most of the boats were laid up, or crewed by men as old as myself.’ He stopped, sparked a match, held it over the bowl of his pipe, then puffed steadily, filling the cabin with acrid smoke.
He fanned the burnt-out match in the air, killing its flame. ‘This is the first year we’ve been able to fish where we wanted, with proper crews. Now that the U-boats are gone and our lads are back from the war.’
Andy scowled at the scrubbed table top. The war was a sore point: at first too young to enlist with the others, then held on a tight rein aboard the Endeavour by his father, exempt from military service because he was in an essential industry for a desperate nation’s food supplies. In a boatload of old men, he had grown up quickly, doing more than his share.
But he hadn’t been to war. Neil and the others had.
White feathers were never fashionable in Buckie. They were a silly, fatal game played by safe and opinionated middle-class ladies down south. There was more than enough risk at sea, and not a woman in the north who didn’t know that.
‘We more than covered our costs on the Orkney fishing,’ Andy argued.
Wreathed in tobacco smoke, Eric nodded. ‘You’ve done that, and more,’ he agreed. ‘If we keep that going down the east coast, there will be money to share out among the shareholders. But, only enough to cover this season. Not enough to compensate for the last three seasons.’
Ownership of most fishing boats lay in the hands of a limited number of shareholders. The skipper usually held a share, although he was paid the same wages as his deckhands: the family held a few shares – all three men at the table were shareholders. But the problem was that where shares were held by one or more local businessmen, they were looked on as an investment, and had to make a return like any other financial asset. Worst of all, if the bank held shares, then they kept a cold commercial eye on things.