The Island Nurse

by Mary J. Macleod

  ‘Look, Nurse! Tis fallin to pieces. Oh, what would ma mother say? Oh dear, dear!’

  Huge tears formed in the old eyes and ran down the smoke-grimed cheeks. ‘Ach. I’ll be puttin it back. Twill do for to dress me when I go to meet ma mother.’ She looked at me. ‘You’ll do that for me, Nurse, won’t you?’

  I felt a sense of shock. It would be hard to say why, but I think it was to do with her complete and unquestioning belief that she would see her dead mother soon and that I would be here to dress her for that great journey. I assured her that I would do what I could when the time came. What else could I say?

  The next minute, Sara had forgotten the dress and all that it meant and was bustling about. ‘I’ll be cleaning up all this mess and then I’ll get ma grate black-leaded.’

  I could do no more and left, determined to call tomorrow with a skirt of my own that I had ceased to wear. She was much smaller than I was, but with the addition of some waist elastic it would be fine and it would be a good excuse to see what she was up to the next day. I worried for her safety.

  Here we had the usual dilemma of the elderly when they became confused and forgetful. They were usually perfectly happy in the family home, in which they might well have been born. But they were often a danger to themselves with regard to fire, falls, electricity and sudden illness. So, was it better to leave them where they were, happy but in danger, or insist on removing them to some sort of care, where they might be physically safe but quite possibly miserable? The eternal problem.

  As I walked along the quay to my car, a voice hailed me.

  ‘Nurse! Tis good that I have caught you,’ Behag called from her doorway. ‘Tis old Neilly.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Neilly! He’s gone!’

  ‘Ah.’

  Behag shuffled her feet a little. ‘You’d best see Maggie afore you go to him.’

  ‘Yes. I know about Neilly’s circumstances, Behag. Dr Mac and I have tried to get him treatment and care again and again, but he wouldn’t have it.’

  ‘Aye. Maggie told me.’ She paused. ‘You’ll be goin there now, Nurse?’

  ‘Yes, I will, and I know only too well what I shall be dealing with there.’

  ‘She’ll be waitin there, outside the house. She saw your car at Sara’s.’

  I drove the short distance to a little copse beside the road. Through the overgrown trees and bushes, a narrow path led to the dilapidated croft house. The thatch was patched with bits of tin, the door propped up with a piece of wood, while thick brambles obscured the walls and windows. The place was a sad sight.

  Maggie was standing outside, whispering with two crofters. ‘Ah, Nurse. Tis a bad do, this.’ She was pale and her face had a wide-open, shocked look.

  ‘Maggie.’ I touched her shoulder. ‘You found him?’

  ‘Aye, I was making a try would he let me in to give him this.’ She indicated a cup of soup that she still held. ‘He usually shouts at me to go away. Ach! But today there was no sound, so I peeped round the door. And there he was. I didn’t go near, Nurse, but it was obvious that he had gone – a long time before.’

  Poor Maggie. She was the only person who had been able to get near the old man for weeks now. Neilly had known for months that he was dying of cancer but stubbornly refused all efforts to hospitalise him or arrange care and medication at home. Dr Mac had tried many, many times to reason with him, but even when he was in excruciating pain he refused drugs and would accept no treatment of any sort.

  Even before his illness, he had been a sour, grumpy old man. Even Dr Mac received the sharp edge of his tongue, which was something unknown on the island, as the good doctor was beloved by all. In spite of Neilly’s surly ways, everyone had tried to help him in the terrible months leading to his death. If ever a death was a blessed relief, this was the one.

  For years he had lived a hermit’s life, only emerging to pick up the food and milk that Maggie delivered to his door. The money for these meagre requirements was left in a bucket outside. We were aware that he never washed his clothes or himself, or cleaned his home. He did no repairs of any kind, went nowhere and saw no one, slipping outside only to gather peat from his dwindling peat stack or coal from a huge heap delivered several years earlier. How he spent his time in his dark, malodorous house, we never knew.

  For the last four or five days of his life, he had been unable to leave his bed, even to use the stinking bucket in the back porch. (Until then, a nearby crofter had emptied this receptacle weekly into his own cesspit.) Maggie had continued to brave the smell and the tantrums to leave glasses of milk or soup by his bed. So I was all too aware of the state in which I would find the deceased.

  ‘I’ll bring you some old rags and towels of mine, Nurse. They can be thrown out afterwards. And I have an urn of hot water ready that we’ll bring over. And some soap. I’ll bring a sheet too.’ Maggie set off.

  I pushed open the door. The smell was overpowering and I actually retched. Pulling myself together, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and then made my way to the window. With much effort, I was able to open it, poke my head outside and take a deep breath. Only then did I look at the bed.

  Poor Neilly must have died in torment as well as in filth. His face and his limbs were contorted, his eyes were staring, and one hand clutched the soiled sheet. I was appalled. Why had he refused help, care, ease from pain?

  I approached the bed with care. The rotten wooden floor was full of holes, some so big that a whole section had fallen down and now rested on the mud below. The bed was at a crazy angle, and one corner was held up by a concrete block. The room was bitterly cold and damp, having had no fire for many days.

  As I was putting my plastic apron and gloves on, there was a tap on the door. Maggie handed me the urn of hot water, the towels, rags and a crisp white sheet. I took these from her and prepared to turn away, but she said quietly, ‘Nurse, you have the window open.’

  I had forgotten the rule in island culture that while a ‘corpus’ is present, all doors and windows must be kept securely shut.

  ‘Maggie, I’m sorry, but I can’t work in here without some air. You know what the smell is like.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ replied Maggie. ‘Aye, well.’ I realised that I was flouting tradition, a thing I normally tried hard not to do.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I promise to shut everything tightly when I have finished.’

  ‘Right. I’ll have some hot water for you to have a good wash in my house, Nurse, when you have finished. And then a nice wee cuppie, perhaps?’

  ‘Thank you, Maggie.’ I had obviously been forgiven.

  I think there is no need to go into details about the next hour. It will not be difficult for the reader to imagine the state of the patient after four or five days unable to leave his bed and unwilling to allow anyone to wash or help him in any way. Suffice it to say that, with one horrendous exception, it was the worst service that I have ever had to perform for a patient, alive or dead. But finally poor Neilly was cleaner in death than he had been for many a year in life and, wrapped in the crisp white sheet, he finally looked at peace. I paused for a moment when I had finished, to pray that he was now in a better place than this awful hovel.

  I shut the window, did what I could to secure the door and then took the urn back to Maggie. She had the bathroom warm and the water hot, and I gladly washed and scrubbed myself before drinking the much-needed cup of tea.

  Maggie said, ‘You can ring Roddy [the undertaker] from here.’

  ‘It’s all right, Maggie. I’ll ring from home.’

  Maggie looked at me. ‘Nurse, you should ring now so that he can get here before dark.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘It’s near three now.’ But I still did not appreciate the urgency.

  She continued firmly, ‘Roddy must remove him, Nurse, in the next hour at the outside. Because of the rats.’

  I went cold. Rats! Of course! Many of those holes in the floor were not from rot but from rats. And
you cannot leave a corpse where there are rats. What a dreadful scenario that conjured up.

  ‘Maggie, of course! I still have a lot to learn.’ She smiled sadly and handed me the phone.

  But the story did not end there. When I went to inform Dr Mac of Neilly’s death (of course, he had already heard), he opened a drawer in his vast old-fashioned desk and withdrew two envelopes, one slim and one very bulky.

  ‘The last time I went to see Neilly to try to persuade him to allow us to treat him, he was a little more inclined to welcome me. Well, not exactly “welcome”, but he handed these to me. I was to open the fat one and read its contents but not tell anyone about it until his death, when I was to open the other one.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘The small one is a kind of will. He leaves everything to Maggie . . .’

  ‘But what on earth did he have that Maggie could possibly want?’

  ‘This,’ said the doctor, picking up the larger packet. ‘It is Neilly’s life story. His spidery writing is not easy to read and his grasp of English grammar is poor, but I’m quite sure that a publisher would be interested if it could be typed out and tidied up.’

  Dr Mac settled back in his chair. ‘Briefly, he was born on Lewis, the oldest child of a brutal, drunken father and a mother who committed suicide after the birth of her fourth child, who was malformed. Neilly was literally the “whipping boy” of the family. If the father beat him, he left the rest alone for some reason, so Neilly put up with this treatment to protect the other children. His father was in and out of prison, so Neilly, only a boy himself, brought up the three younger ones. They had very little money and none of them seem to have had much schooling, but eventually they grew and left. Neilly joined the army and saw action in several theatres of war, including the Second World War. He was captured, starved and beaten.’

  ‘I saw the scars,’ I murmured.

  ‘Aye, and from his father, I wouldn’t wonder,’ rejoined the doctor, who then continued this harrowing tale. ‘After the war, he went to the States, joining the New York Police Department. He married and had a son. His wife and son were both killed in a drive-by shooting. He blamed himself, as he believed it to be a reprisal because he had been the means of bringing some big-time gangster to justice. He came back to Papavray, to his uncle’s croft, a bitter man, resolved never to love anyone or trust another soul as long as he lived. His story stops abruptly when he became ill, but it would have been the end anyway, I imagine, knowing the sort of person he had become. His hermit-like lifestyle would not have yielded much of interest for his pen.’

  Dr Mac finished speaking. I remained silent for a moment, thinking of this terrible story.

  ‘So this is what he was doing in that dreary hovel. We did him an injustice, didn’t we?’

  ‘We couldn’t know,’ said Dr Mac.

  ‘But I still don’t understand why he would not accept any help and drugs when he developed cancer?’

  ‘I wondered about that.’ Dr Mac shook his head. ‘I think he saw it as justice – a rightful punishment. As I said, he blamed himself for the death of his wife and young son.’

  ‘Poor man! Poor man,’ I muttered.

  Dr Mac took a deep breath and straightened up as though throwing off the gloom.

  ‘Now this needs typing out.’ He looked at me, speculatively.

  I left to drive home, thinking about the day. Poor Neilly, with his terrible life and dreadful death, and old Sara slipping into dementia. Apart from the kindness of neighbours, they were both alone and unloved at the end. For all its beauty and gentle way of life, Papavray had its sad side.

  THIRTY-NINE

  John and Joanna

  My eldest son John was unable to spend much time on Papavray because he started working at an early age. Never one to enjoy school, he found college ‘boring’, he said. He left after only one term and found a job in a huge antique market. He loved the buzz and excitement of London. He shared a flat with some friends and enjoyed the independence and freedom of this pulsating city. Now, many years later, his one desire was to find a home with no buzz, no traffic and no crowds. But he wanted more sunshine than Papavray could offer.

  We knew that he had met a girl in London. Her name was Joanna and it seemed no time at all before they moved in together. This was not as common in the ’70s as now, but we had to accept the arrangement as John was 19 and Joanna 20.

  We had no sooner come to terms with this news than John rang to say that the antique market had closed and they were both out of a job. Optimistic as always, he was not worried as he would soon get something else, he said.

  The weeks passed and we heard nothing. He had no telephone and was the world’s worst correspondent, so we just waited to hear how they were faring. One evening, the phone rang.

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Yes. John! Lovely to hear from you!’

  ‘Mum, are you sitting down?’

  That question always meant trouble! I sat suddenly on the stairs.

  ‘I am now. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Mum, Joanna’s pregnant! Can you find me a job and somewhere for us to live on Papavray?’

  What a bombshell! I was very glad that I was sitting down. I was lost for words.

  ‘Mum? Are you there?’

  ‘Yes . . . What are you going to do? I mean . . . are you . . .?’

  ‘We are going to stay together and bring up the baby . . .’

  ‘When is the . . .?’

  ‘April.’ A silence.

  ‘Are you going to get married?’

  ‘Well, perhaps. We hadn’t thought about it.’

  Another shock! Papavray was old-fashioned – 30 years behind the times. This would not go down well. I turned my attention to his requests.

  ‘I can probably find you a job of some sort, just to start you off here. When you have been here for a while, I expect you will find something else for yourself. Somewhere to live will be more difficult, but I’ll try. A caravan is about the only thing I shall be able to find, I think.’

  ‘Please try, Mum. We are a bit desperate as we’ve no money, or not much. I need a job badly. I’ll ring in a couple of days.’ A pause. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks.’ The pips went, signalling that he’d run out of money, and he was cut off.

  For a while, I sat where I was, looking at the phone. John – out of work – no money – a pregnant girlfriend – hadn’t thought of marriage – needing a home and a job on Papavray. It was a lot to take in. It was as well that he had told me to sit down!

  The first thing was to send him a cheque and then ascertain if there was work and accommodation to be had. And, amazingly, it was easy. Two days later, I had found a residential caravan for rent in Dhubaig. It was a bit basic, but they could take showers at our house and do their laundry in my machine. It so happened that the captain of a lobster fisher was looking for a deckhand and, although John would have to be away for three or four nights a week, the work was available immediately and the wages quite good by Papavray standards.

  John rang. ‘Great, Mum. Thank you. We’ll be there the day after tomorrow. I’ve bought an old banger from Gerry. You remember Gerry?’

  I did – just. But he was part of a different life.

  ‘Will Joanna be happy about the caravan, do you think?’

  ‘It can’t be worse than this miserable hole. See you soon.’

  Two days later they arrived. A few clothes, some blankets, a number of personal items and quantities of tools and spare parts for the ‘banger’ were packed into a battered minivan.

  Joanna, a pretty girl, was a decided shock to Dhubaig, with her flowing dresses, headband and carpet shoulder bag. She rapidly added an old Afghan coat and some workman’s boots to this startling ensemble.

  After they had settled into their caravan and eaten an enormous meal with us, John lost no time in going to see the captain of the Silver Fish – certainly fishy but far from silver. He was a man of drunken habits and
uncertain temper, but John was ‘set on’, to start at 4 a.m. the following Monday, the Sabbath being safely over.

  I tried to spend some time getting to know Joanna. Although they seemed very happy together and she was coping with her pregnancy well, it became worryingly obvious that she was a city girl at heart, and I wondered how she would deal with the quiet isolation of Papavray. And a more personal worry was whether the notoriously fraught relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law – or as near as – was going to work. We were so different! I thought of myself as a very ordinary wife, mother and district nurse. Joanna was a colourful hippy, or free spirit, with an intolerance of the ordinary and a rejection of all things traditional.

  John hated the job and was not sorry when the captain ran amok one night and was arrested. No one knew what was to happen to the boat, so John promptly left to look for other work. He became an estate worker for Duncan’s farm manager and was much happier; he was also home every night, so Joanna relaxed and began to enjoy the island. They moved to a bigger caravan in Cill Donnan and started to make friends, so I was cautiously optimistic about their future together on Papavray. After all, we had done much the same thing ourselves: abandoning everything we knew in the south and coming to the island, and we did not regret it for a moment.

  FORTY

  Days of ice and fog

  It was the sixth day of the great freeze! The cold air seemed to ignore the presence of eiderdown and electric blanket, and seeped into the bed so that I was almost glad to leap up and rush below to huddle by the Rayburn. The boys were there before me, as were two dogs and two cats. No one wanted to move from the warmth, but even the Rayburn, that traditional bringer of comfort, was sluggish in the windless, freezing air. There were no teasing gusts in the flue to coax life into the reluctant coals this morning. The night storage heaters had been set to ‘high’ for days, but the cold was so intense that they only warmed a few feet of space around them.

  Wet and windy we could manage; this intense, all-pervading iciness was something else. The boys, although chilly, thought that the weather was not all bad, as every school in the Highlands and Islands was closed.