She made her habitual response in these over-familiar moments and turned with some relief as Nurse Dean joined them. ‘Mr MacDonald asked me to say he’ll be out in a minute or two, Sister. Major Browne has come round and gone to sleep. His general condition is unchanged, but colour improving a little.’
Mrs Browne acknowledged Nurse Dean’s arrival with another perfunctory nod and fixed her gaze on the liftwell.
‘At this stage,’ explained Night Sister, ‘a slight improvement can be more encouraging than a too rapid rally.’
‘Softlee, softlee, catchee monkee,’ Mrs Browne informed the liftwell.
‘Quite so,’ said Night Sister. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs Browne, I’m afraid I’m needed elsewhere. I’ve arranged a bed for you in Nightingale Ward in our basement. Nurse Dean will look after you and when you are ready to retire her junior will take you to Nightingale. I hope you manage to get some sleep. Try not to worry too much.’
‘One can but try, Sister. Many thanks.’
‘I’m going straight to Rachel Ward now, nurse. I’ll see myself out.’
‘Thank you, Sister. Would you like a cup of tea whilst you’re waiting for Mr MacDonald, Mrs Browne?’
Mrs Browne’s upward glance was mildly curious. Gel not only sounded but looked a lady. ‘Just had some with Night Sister but never say no to a cuppa, nurse.’
‘I’ll just call my junior.’
Nurse Carter was turning Murphy. He looked over her shoulder. ‘Herself is after you, Nurse Carter.’
‘Oh no ‒ yes ‒ thanks. I’ll have to go. How’s that?’
‘Grand it is and why wouldn’t I be the fine way you’ve tied me up?’
She smiled, tucked the bedclothes over his shoulder and sped away. He smiled sleepily after her and saw Joe Panetti in the bed directly opposite raise his curly head and two fingers at him. Murphy grinned, returned the gesture and Joe Panetti lowered his head grinning.
‘Tea for one, fresh, stat., Carter, then get back to the ward, stat.’
Nurse Dean paused for a long look at Jarvis. His screens were folded half-back to make him more visible from the flat, as there was nothing in his appearance to distress his fellow-patients. The ends of the Major’s screens were now open and Briggs’s closed. The surgeons were still with the former, Nurse Smith back with the latter. Nurse Dean glanced at the shadows on the ceiling then had to turn back to the immobile, indomitable, figure in the armchair. ‘Was your train much delayed?’
‘Only for the last thirty miles or so. Kept stopping outside stations. The odd buzz-bomb getting through, one imagines.’
‘Odd ones do get through.’
‘Bound to be one or two to dodge the coastal ack-ack ‒ and of course,’ Mrs Browne added in afterthought, ‘the RAF.’
‘One or two get tangled in the balloon cables.’
‘One had forgotten the balloons.’ Mrs Browne looked up again. Amazing. Gel was the right type, all right. Of course, she had never been in a London voluntary hospital before ‒ come to that never been in any civvy hospital ‒ and she had to remember there was a war on. Nevertheless, nurses were only nurses. ‘Couldn’t see the balloons in the blackout. Couldn’t see anything. Dark as the inside of a cow’s stomach and very slippery underfoot. Lot of rain recently, one imagines.’
‘I gather this afternoon’s downpour was our first rain in weeks.’ Nurse Dean hesitated, then decided not to add that that undoubtedly explained why the Major had slipped on the tramline. She had recognized Mrs Browne’s type. Nurse Dean came from a long line of what her mother termed ‘service people’, though her father had broken the family tradition by qualifying at Martha’s. Her mother wouldn’t have wanted to discuss the tramline. ‘Have you had much rain in Hampshire?’
‘Only this last week. Garden needed it.’
Nurse Carter, reappeared, deposited a tea-tray on the table and disappeared into the ward.
‘Nurse Carter, here, please ‒’ hissed Joe Panetti, ‘ever so sorry but me bedsocks is off again.’
‘Milk and sugar, Mrs Browne? We’ve plenty of both tonight.’
‘Milk only, thanks. Always carry saccs. Trying to bant. Bit of a bind as only stuff off-ration is stodge.’ Mrs Browne delved in her aged pigskin handbag for the saccharine and being dehydrated by shock, swallowed the hot tea as if it were lukewarm.
The surgeons had come out together. She returned her cup and saucer to Nurse Dean and all the fear she had been trying to ignore returned to grip her throat. Chin up, Adela, she admonished herself, and tucked in her chins. She accepted MacDonald’s apology for keeping her waiting, introductions of Jason and himself, and report on her husband’s condition with a gracious nod, and shook hands with both men. Nurses, whether the right type or otherwise, were other ranks; doctors, brother-officers. ‘So you’re the MO who chopped off his leg, Mr MacDonald? Ah well. Worse things happen at sea.’ The machine was talking. ‘Does he know?’
MacDonald watched her closely and compassion erased some of the tension from his face. Jason stared unhappily at some point in the middle air. Nurse Dean exuded calm and covertly watched her ward.
MacDonald said, ‘I have told him, but as I’ve just explained he was only conscious a wee while and though he seemed fairly coherent, inevitably he had some mental confusion. I doubt he’ll remember much, if anything, said to him, but in my opinion, when such news has to be given, the sooner the better.’
Another gracious nod. ‘Got him well doped?’
‘Naturally, at this stage.’
‘He’ll need it. Never could stand pain. If he pricks his finger in the garden from the fuss you’d think he was ‒’ the machine switched off. ‘Bowler hat,’ she crooned softly to herself. ‘Amazing.’
MacDonald said quickly, and very kindly, ‘I’m sorry to have to say this, Mrs Browne, but I cannot advise you to look too far ahead tonight. Tonight your husband is a very ill man.’
She was too far away. ‘Amazing thing luck,’ she crooned on. ‘Luck of the devil all his life. Soldiered through two wars. Last show three years in France ‒ not a scratch ‒ Dardanelles ‒ had dysentery, of course ‒ not a scratch. This show ‒ Dunkirk ‒ Malta ‒ Alamein ‒ not a scratch. Not even gyppy tummy in Cairo. Comes off after a forty-eight in London ‒’ she shook her head. ‘Ah well. Always use an extra pair of hands in the garden.’
Jason stirred. MacDonald caught his eye, and both men waited in silence, watching her. Nurse Dean moved imperceptibly closer to the armchair.
Mrs Browne looked back at MacDonald and as his face returned in focus saw the kindness in the tired dark eyes. The machine switched on again. ‘Very ill you said.’ He inclined his dark head. ‘Trying to tell me he’s had it?’
‘It’s far too early for me to make any comment on his eventual outcome. It will probably be several days before I can. But tonight is especially crucial. If we can get him through the rest of tonight that will be a hopeful sign. You’re staying with us?’
‘In Nightingale,’ Nurse Dean cut in quietly.
‘Good. Quieter down there. Nurse Dean will take you to see your husband now, but I must warn you to prepare yourself for his appearance. I’ve told you he’s having a blood transfusion and why you’ll find his bed up-tilted at such an extraordinary angle. Do you remember? Good. But he looks just now the very ill man he is. Should he waken, don’t be distressed if he doesn’t recognize you. He may do so at once, but if not ‒ that is a very usual occurrence in times like this.’
She breathed in deeply through her nose and stayed seated. Rather a decent chap, she decided. Scotch. She always liked the Scotch. Splendid fighting men the Jocks, her father used to say. Always ready to have another go at the Hun. ‘Message received loud and clear, Mr MacDonald. Do you ‒ ummm ‒ want one to sit with him?’
‘Not unless you insist on remaining at his bedside and in this hospital that is your right as he is on the Danger List and you’re his next-of-kin. I’d prefer you just to take a wee look. What he most needs now is abs
olute quiet.’
‘You’re the MO I/C. If you say just a look ‒ just a look. Of course ‒ ummm ‒ if there’s any change ‒’
‘You’ll be told immediately and a nurse will bring you up here from Nightingale.’
‘Fair enough.’ She rose very slowly, clutching her handbag. She no longer looked middle-aged, self-assured. She looked old, exhausted, and very frightened. In a voice she had forgotten she possessed, she said, ‘Never a dull moment in this war, is there, Mr MacDonald.’
‘Never, I’m afraid.’ He patted her shoulder, kindly. ‘Nurse Dean will look after you.’
Nurse Dean tucked a hand under Mrs Browne’s elbow and led her into the ward as if she were blind. Only Nurse Dean heard the sudden ring of the telephone behind them and MacDonald’s voice, ‘SSO in Wally’s ‒ yes, Sister?’ Only Jason saw MacDonald suddenly close his eyes. When he reopened them his face was so taut the cheekbones looked in danger of breaking through the skin. ‘Right, Sister. Yes, that quarter, stat. I’ll come down now and write her up for more.’ He replaced the receiver as if it were brittle and for a few moments stood staring at it.
‘Rachel?’ prompted Jason. ‘That WREN?’
‘Yes.’ MacDonald didn’t look up. ‘Fully conscious. Fully coherent. No vision yet.’
Jason breathed in sharply, ‘Bloody hell,’ he whispered.
MacDonald looked up and nodded.
‘Want me along or shall I stay and finish in here?’
‘Stay. I’ll start my basement round in Rachel, then work through from below up. William Harvey next unless I’m sidetracked.’
‘Right.’ Jason drew back a chair but didn’t sit down. ‘I know we had to try and save her ‒’ he spoke with stiff white lips. ‘I’ve been hoping to hell we’d lose out before she properly surfaced.’
‘Who hasn’t, who’s seen her?’ asked MacDonald evenly.
Jason stood very still. ‘Just a kid ‒ Christ ‒ why?’
MacDonald looked at him. ‘If you want to keep your sanity, Jason, don’t ask that one.’ He glanced upwards for the first time in many weeks. ‘Not whilst this war lasts,’ he added almost casually and walked off and down the stairs.
Jason stayed on his feet and the terrible, silent anger of a peaceful man finally aroused, drained his face of colour and youth.
Chapter Four
Jason had been born in 1920 in the shadow of one war, to reach manhood in another. He could recall no period throughout his entire childhood where the conversations of his parents and elders had not gravitated to talk of war; or when his father’s old stained Army greatcoat had not hung in the cupboard under the stairs. He belonged to a generation that as small children accepted as the natural order the abnormal proportion of widows amongst the mothers of their friends.
Long before he left school, he had read All Quiet on the Western Front, The Silence of Colonel Bramble, Tell England. The war poems of Owen, Sassoon, Blunden, Graves, were part of the folklore of his adolescence. He had gone with his mother, elder sister and younger brother to see Journey’s End, first as a play in London, later as a talkie in Hastings. On both occasions his father had apologetically declined to join the family outing. ‘I don’t think I need the reminder,’ his father said.
There were other reminders to remove from growing young minds the comforting Edwardian cushion of their parents’ pre-Great War ignorance. By their early teens they had understood the significance of too few fathers and too many mothers at school sports and open days; of too many unmarried aunts; of too many tears on too many women’s faces at Armistice Day services; of too many unknown young faces in old family snapshots, ‘that was your Uncle David and that your Uncle Archie and that your cousin, John …’ There was no longer any pretence that war was a splendid cleansing experience for gallant young men, that there was any glory in hanging on the old barbed wire, drowning in gassed lungs, in dying of typhus or in smithereens. Another war meant simply, more dead men. Not dead soldiers, sailors and airmen ‒ dead men. Rich men, poor men, yeomen, and above all, young men; another war would take them all again whether good, wicked, brave or cowardly, death wasn’t particular.
By the time Jason qualified and was appointed MacDonald’s house-surgeon, he had long been emotionally prepared to see and treat men war casualties with the spilt blood still sticky and the torn tissues still caked with grime. But as the air attacks had been in abeyance during his various weeks as a resident student in Martha’s, London, and his student years had been spent either in the country hospital, or as an undergraduate at Cambridge, he had been totally unprepared for the sight of the mutilated, mangled women and children carried into Casualty after air attacks. In cities, not infrequently, more women and children, and especially women, than men, since so many of the younger men were away in the Forces. Jason’s horror on observing that war could kill and injure women and children as indiscriminately as men, had had a profound and lasting effect. Outwardly, he generally managed to conceal this. If his colleagues had noticed recently that he was more silent than formerly they had probably put this down to fatigue. The entire resident staff in London was so tired that when any one of them sat down to glance at a paper in either senior or junior restroom, he fell asleep before he was half-way down the front page.
Jason loved his family and home. At first, last summer, every injured woman reminded him that she could have been his mother, every injured girl, his sister. But as the days and weeks went by, the constancy of the incoming stream of casualties and the twenty-hour days, combined to eradicate from his mind all thoughts but those pertaining to the work in hand. Until the night he came into Wally’s for his usual round and first saw Nurse Carter. The nightmare of seeing her lovely face as he had seen so many other faces that had possibly been just as lovely, haunted his sleep; and when awake, his subconscious. He had been aware of this when he first looked at that WREN this afternoon. The new dresser beside him had fainted. He saw the two girls’ faces in his mind, as they were now, and the anger that had been kindling since June consumed him. For the first time in his life he longed to be a soldier, but not just a chap with a gun. A Commando. Commandos killed with their bare hands.
He looked down at his waiting notes through a haze. They had to be done and he had to do them. He had to force himself to sit down and start writing. He wrote quickly, cursing to himself and didn’t notice if the Alert had sounded. He just heard the bomb that was flying much faster, and from the noise much lower, than usual. He stopped writing to peer into the ward and Nurse Smith rushed out, pulling down her mask with a trembling hand. ‘Save the Mickey Finn for the next one, nurse,’ he snapped curtly. ‘This bastard’s too fast for us.’
She was too frightened to act. ‘Don’t bloody ask for it! I’ve come for the hypodermic tray ‒ Dean said on this table ‒’ Her last sentence was drowned by the roaring low overhead. Less than five seconds later the engine cut out. She flung herself under the table and her cap fell off as she huddled on her knees, her head in her lap. Jason shot an agonized glance into the ward, saw Nurse Carter streak across and between Briggs’s screens and Nurse Dean from the Major’s to Jarvis. The nurses crouched with their hands on their patients’ shoulders to keep them steady in their beds, their own heads downcast, and their apron bibs just clear of the green masks. Jason hauled off his glasses, flattened his face on his notes and crossed his arms over his head.
The bomb fell just over the river. The explosion was the loudest Wally’s had heard that night and woke every sleeping patient but the Major. Mrs Browne sat heavily back on the locker seat, folded her hands in her lap, glanced from her immobile husband to the immobile crimson vacolitre hanging from the transfusion stand tied to the footrail and thought about luck.
Jarvis clasped Nurse Dean’s arm. ‘Near one … that one … know what … they say …’
‘ “Nearly never killed a man”, Jarvis, dear ‒ there now. All over now. Just lie back and don’t try and talk for a bit ‒ that’s better.’
Briggs
was incapable of speech. A spasm of pain ripped him with the violence of the explosion and the sides of his green rubber bag clamped together. Nurse Carter held her breath and reached for his pulse, but already the bag had restarted fluttering. Like a trapped butterfly, she registered, as her own racing pulse slowed to normal. Briggs had gripped her free hand and his sunken eyes stared at her over his mask. ‘It’s all right, Briggs ‒ it’s all right ‒ over the other side ‒ it’s all right.’
‘You all right, Mrs Browne?’ Nurse Dean smiled brightly, checked the Major’s transfusion, amputation, pulse and skin temperature, and was gone again. She looked quickly round the ward. They were all awake and they would need the main lights on for a few minutes to reassure themselves that it was tonight and not last night when so many of them had lain injured and buried in the darkness. She turned on the lights. ‘Sorry you’ve all woken, gentlemen. Bit rowdy that one, but not to worry! All over now,’ she insisted in her calm, bright voice. ‘I’ll be round to settle you all in a jiffy and Nurse Carter’ll make you all a nice cup of tea to help you get off again.’
Nurse Carter couldn’t leave Briggs. She stood on her toes to get her senior’s attention and immediately two-thirds of Wally’s chorused softly, ‘Nurse Dean ‒ 29!’
Mrs Browne heard the chorus and then the men talking quietly to each other but not what they said. The brighter lights exposed in full the greyish tinge of her husband’s high forehead, the streaks of grey in the thinning brown hair, the transparency of the brown mottled skin over the blue-veined hands. Small, beautifully-shaped hands. Woman’s hands, she thought, and looked at her own large red, capable hands, roughened by housework and gardening. Amazing to recall they belonged to a woman who had never had to boil an egg for herself until she was forty-five. Service life, that was the life, the only life ‒ but he’d never taken to it. She watched his hands not his face. If he opened his eyes and recognized her, he might start talking. She imagined being so doped must be like being one over the eight. He’d always talked too much when he’d had one too many ‒ not that that was often as he’d never been a drinker. Never cared for the stuff, he said. Hadn’t made him too popular in the Mess.
One Night in London: a hospital in wartime (The Jason Trilogy Book 1) Page 6