Bert Harper glanced at his neighbour’s face and then up and down the too-subdued ward. Time for the quick-march. Trust the Army to know a thing or two. Always got the band playing the quick-step when they marched you back to barracks after the funeral. His face lightened as he saw his chance. ‘Hullo, hullo, hullo! Watch it, mates! Young Paddy’s not going to like this one!’
Nurse Carter had just put a washing bowl on Murphy’s locker and was handing him his washing things. ‘I think you can manage it better down there than on your bedtable. Nurse Dean says you can do your own face and front this morning whilst I do Joe, then come back for your back.’
Murphy had been about to acquiesce without protest when his quick, dark gaze encountered Bert Harper’s wink. ‘Sure to God, Nurse Carter, if it’s fit I am to be washing myself why wouldn’t that lazy lout of a Bevin Boy be fit to be washing his own ugly face?’
‘Sorry. Nurse Dean says you are and he isn’t.’ Nurse Carter noticed Mrs Browne was having difficulty getting the trolley through the kitchen door. ‘Back in a moment, Joe.’ She sped off down the ward.
Joe Panetti lifted his curly head, smirking. ‘Know what I am, Paddy? Nurses’ pet. Know what you are? Bleeding leadswinger!’
‘Will you be watching your bloody mouth, man, with herself to be hearing you behind 11 and Nurse Carter and the Major’s lady not yet into the kitchen! And is it a leadswinger I am and me with my bum hanging in ribbons and yourself with no worse than the cracked pelvis or two?’
The sound of Wally’s first laugh for too many hours swept through the ward and out into the flat. Wally’s relaxed against pillows and enjoyed the slanging match that was temporarily suspended when Nurse Carter returned, and restarted, with a little encouragement from Bert Harper, every time she disappeared.
Jarvis heard the laughter. He was too weak to talk, but one of his amused eyes winked at Nurse Dean. She was so relieved by his condition and to hear her ward sounding happier, that she winked back. She didn’t realize it, but it was the first time she had ever winked at anyone. Thank goodness, she thought, none of them has guessed. They’ve been a bit worried, but they haven’t guessed.
‘Mrs Browne, God bless you! You’ve done all my washing-up.’ Nurse Carter flopped onto the breadbin and rubbed her calves. ‘I was just coming to do it though I’ve four more backs before Dean and I start ordinary beds. We must get as many as possible done before Elsie starts scattering tea-leaves as the sower his seeds, or there’ll be so much blanket-fluff around that she’ll have to sweep the ward twice. If she’d come on to a dirty kitchen and that, she’d demand her cards and Sister Wally would’ve created to me even worse than yesterday morning about the tea. Elsie’s our wardmaid. She comes on at seven and sweeps first. That’s why all the beds are shoved out.’
‘One wondered why.’ Mrs Browne gave the clean sink a final rub with a damp pillowslip. She was really concerned about the child and her concern surprised her. Normally, she’d never had much use for gels. Poor child was white as a ghost and all eyes. ‘Usually get this fagged in the morning, m’dear?’
‘Sort of.’ Nurse Carter stood up. ‘Backs!’ she encouraged herself.
‘Four chaps with bad backs?’
‘No.’ She slapped her bottom. ‘If you’re a Martha’s patient this isn’t your bottom, it’s your back and you keep having to have it washed, rubbed with meths and powdered, or you get bed-sores. If you get even a threatened bed-sore the roof comes off without any help from Jerry. The nurse responsible gets sent to Matron ‒ there’s a fearful row.’ She turned to go and swung around. ‘I’ve just remembered ‒ there’s something I think you’d like to know about the Major. Something he said when that rocket woke him.’
Mrs Browne stood very still and suddenly looked older. ‘Oh? Up to a natter, was he?’
‘Only sort of. I was with him as ‒ as ‒ well, I was there. His eyes had opened and he seemed awake enough to understand, so I said it was just a rocket and all over ‒ that sort of thing. And he sort of smiled and said with a bit of a slur, “Hellish noisy chap, Jerry. No consideration for others. Too many guns and not enough butter. Other chaps all right? Good show.” Then he went back to sleep. I thought that rather splendid, so I thought you’d like to know.’
Mrs Browne stared at the floor and compressed her lips. ‘Always had a good sense of humour. Thanks for passing it on.’ She looked up and added briskly, ‘Right. What’s to do now?’
‘Actually, now it’s only things we have to do ourselves. Would you like to sit with the Major? How about a tray for your cards?’
‘If there’s nothing else one can do to help.’
Nurse Carter hesitated. Poor old Mother B., still scared stiff and amongst strangers. ‘I say, do you feel up to a chat? Because if you do, Mercer, in 28, was in the 8th Army, taken prisoner somewhere in the desert and swapped back after Italy packed it in, as he’s minus a left foot. He’s sweet and I’m sure he’d like to talk to you, if you feel up to a chat?’ she repeated.
‘One hadn’t nattered with the chaps as one hadn’t wished to intrude.’ Mrs Browne straightened her back. ‘Always ready for a natter with an old soldier.’
‘That’s what I sort of thought, only I’d better warn you he’s not a Regular. He was a Territorial, though actually he works on a farm. I think he must be a shepherd as earlier last night he told me he can work his sheep quite well on his tin foot. Jerry smashed it up for him yesterday night, but Dean says he’s doing quite well under all his bandages. He’ll probably go down to the country today and I expect later he’ll be moved to our Orthopaedic Unit. I expect the Major’ll go there too when he leaves us, so if you chat with Mercer now, perhaps when you visit the Major in the OU, you can visit him too. I’m sure he’ll like that. Patients love being visited.’
Mrs Browne looked very thoughtfully at Nurse Carter. ‘That’s a kind thought, m’dear. You’re a good child. Many thanks. Mercer, eh? 28? Right!’
Nurse Carter, wearing a long red rubber apron over her white, was standing on a wooden duck-board rinsing soiled linen in one of the sinks in the sluice, when Nurse Dean ushered in the senior Night Sister.
‘Just turn off those taps, Nurse Carter, but don’t step down as I won’t delay you long.’ Night Sister’s stern eyes appraised the white walls, green floor, the buckets awaiting the rinsed sheets, the shelves with enamel mugs, bowls, basins, urinals and bedpans arranged in the approved order. She noted, but made no mention of the absence of any article made of glass or china. ‘I’ve stepped in to deliver to you both a personal message from Matron. Matron wishes me to tell you that she will see you both individually, after you have had a good sleep, but she wants to assure you now that she will arrange for you to have one extra night off either on the night immediately before, or following, the day appointed for Nurse Smith’s memorial service. The family have already requested that the funeral be purely private. Matron knows you will understand that you cannot both have the same night off, as that would not be fair to your patients, or your reliefs.’
Nurse Dean said, ‘Thank you, Sister. And please would you thank Matron for us.’
Nurse Carter clasped her wet hands more tightly behind her back and gazed at the tip of Night Sister’s cap.
Night Sister’s cap frills rustled to signify she had no more to say on the subject. She looked as grey, stooping and severe as she had when the night started, and looked every night. She had seen too much, experienced too much, and was no longer capable of exhibiting personal emotion. She said, ‘Before you get on with your work, Nurse Carter, dry your hands and rectify the disgraceful angle of your cap. It’s nearly off the back of your head.’
Nurse Carter apologized and obeyed, mechanically.
That’s what we are, she thought, when she was alone again. Machines. That’s what we’ve turned into and that’s what we’ve got to be; if we weren’t, we couldn’t keep going and we’ve got to keep going. We can’t just walk out on a ward of bedridden patients. She wasn’t a machine and
that’s why she couldn’t take it, but she couldn’t walk out on them up here. Not up here, back in the war. Different in the country. Nothing dropping out of the sky down there. But she couldn’t take it there either … and once more her mind went back to the night she had raced into a ward kitchen and made a pot of strong, salted, black coffee.
She had remembered that coffee directly when she saw the desolation in MacDonald’s face as he came out of the duty-room and closed the door behind him. She had remembered how swiftly Dean had just screened the entrance and Dean’s expression when she had told her to get the tea in stat. She had stopped in the middle of the chaotic flat and felt an icy calm penetrating her mind and bones. She had asked calmly, ‘Has Nurse Smith been killed, Mr MacDonald?’
He had looked at her for a few seconds, then inclined his dark head. Then he told her in toneless, terse, medical terms that she saw cost him as much to utter as her to hear. That didn’t prevent her ignoring his explanation, and hospital etiquette.
‘I don’t think it was that, Mr MacDonald. I think it was fear. Can’t fear kill? If it’s acute enough?’
‘In certain circumstances. But as I’ve just told you ‒’
‘I know you have. Perhaps you’re right, but I don’t think you are. I think it was the rocket itself, not the blast, not hitting her head. It was her first near one. She wouldn’t have known the second roar was all part of the first. Lots of rocket casualties have told me they nearly died of fright when they heard the second as they thought it was another landing on top of them. I expect that’s killed lots of other people. Couldn’t it do that?’
He shrugged jerkily. ‘I don’t know. Possibly. There’s so much we still don’t know about rockets and rocket-blast.’ He glanced towards the ward. ‘Nurse Dean’s just said the chaps are a wee bit stunned but otherwise intact.’
‘Yes. That’s why they’re so quiet. They make corny jokes after doodles like they used to in ordinary air-raids. After rockets, they never talk at all.’ She looked him straight in the face. ‘Rockets are sort of like perverted Acts of God, aren’t they, Mr MacDonald?’
‘Not sort of, Nurse Carter. Precisely.’ He raised an arm as if to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, then dropped his arm and walked into the ward.
Before she reached the kitchen, the telephone rang.
‘Casualty want Mr MacDonald? Hold on, please. I’ll get him.’
Nurse Dean looked up in surprise from the final comments she was adding to her night report at Sister’s ward table. ‘Good morning, Mr Jason. What brings you in here at ten past seven?’
‘’Morning.’ Jason acknowledged the greetings of the ward by touching his forehead with one forefinger, and lowered his voice. ‘Ostensibly, I’m looking for my fountain pen. I’ve left it somewhere. It’s not in Cas. or William Harvey. Thought it might be here. Dark blue with my initials in tatty gold. I won’t spell out the real reason as the chaps are watching, but I couldn’t be more bloody sorry for one and all.’
Nurse Dean kept her downcast eyes on her search for his pen and her voice only just audible to him. ‘I’m sure you are. We all ‒ well ‒ it’s quite dreadful and coming just after ‒ but we mustn’t talk about it all here. As you say, they’re watching. They don’t know and they mustn’t. Dark blue, you said?’
‘Yes.’ He looked the ward over. The only other visible member of the staff was the wardmaid sweeping down behind the beds on the left. ‘All right with you if I ask Elsie to give me a shout if she finds it?’
‘Do. Or perhaps Carter’s seen it. She’s in the sluice.’
‘Thanks. I’ll ask her. I thought it would be best if I nipped up now before the day hordes come on.’ He didn’t, but could have, added: whilst Night Sister is on her way to the dining-room to read the day nurses’ roll-call and list of today’s staff changes, which never takes her less than fifteen minutes; and the Night Assistants are at their desks completing their night’s paperwork. ‘Browne’s looking as he should. And Briggs still with us.’ He blinked at the balcony end. ‘How are the new chaps?’
‘Coming along quite nicely. In fact ‒’ she looked at her report, ‘quite a good night for most of the patients.’
Jason looked at her lowered head. ‘That’s something. Did you hear Prof. Surgery pulled rank and strong-armed Mack to bed?’ She nodded. ‘The Prof, says he’ll hamstring personally without anaesthetic anyone who wakes Mack for any reason other than the basement caving in, before second lunch. Now he’s got the week off, he can go down to Kent this afternoon.’ He hesitated. ‘You ‒ er ‒ know Davis is taking over for good, as it were?’
She looked up slowly and he found himself thinking, she hasn’t grown up much, but she’s grown up a little.
‘Yes.’
He said kindly, ‘Davis is a decent chap but he’s not in Mack’s class. Martha’s, London, is going to miss him and so is yours truly, though I bet I have an easier life ‒ Jerry permitting.’
A small half-sad, half-satisfied smile lit her tired eyes. ‘He needs the rest. I just wish his last night here hadn’t been as it was. I haven’t told the patients yet. I think Sister would prefer to do that herself.’
‘Right.’ He didn’t remind her that had the night been otherwise it would not have been Mack’s last. ‘I don’t want to hold you up any longer. See you tonight. Sleep well.’
‘Thank you, Mr Jason, I’m sure I will,’ she replied as he expected. ‘See you tonight.’
Nurse Carter was on the balcony leaning on the cold, damp balustrade, watching the seagulls swooping over the quiet sepia river and lining up on the anchored barges. In the pale light of the belated morning sun, London was sepia and grey, splashed with the red of the double-decker buses and the swaying, rumbling trams. London was awake and hurrying homewards laden with bulging holdalls, empty vacuum flasks, and dusty rugs after another night on the platforms of the Tubes; or hurrying to work with faces that beneath the fresh make-up or fresh shave, bore traces of the night above ground. The night was over and it was time to get on with the new day and find out if the shop, or the office, or home, was still there.
‘One thing, mind ‒ St Paul’s is still there. Hasn’t got it yet, has he? And not for want of trying.’
The few high clouds were white wisps in the gentle blue sky and lower down the balloons were poised above the great sprawling city and river, like massive grey pregnant spiders languidly trailing their long legs. The faint haze that rose from the river on still, late autumn mornings, glistened on Nurse Carter’s face and hair and dampened the starch in her cap and the clean apron she had put on before coming out with her buckets as the arrival of the day staff was so near. It was an unbroken tradition that Martha’s night nurses greeted the official start of the day in clean aprons.
She had left the door open on the latch but didn’t hear Jason until he was beside her. She turned as if she had been waiting for him and the look in her eyes made him feel as if his heart had turned over. She said, ‘I thought you wouldn’t oversleep. What time did you get back to bed?’
‘Quarter to six. I didn’t sleep. I had a couple of fags, then got up and had a bath and shave. I came up here as soon as I dared risk it. I couldn’t wait till you were off. I had to come. I only heard after the flap. I ‒ I knew what it would do to you. I had to see you and tell you ‒’
‘I know.’
He nodded unhappily and told her about his pen. ‘Dean said I could ask if you’d seen it.’ He produced it from a trouser pocket. ‘This one.’
Their eyes were having another conversation. ‘Did I find it?’
‘Yep. On the floor by the breadbin.’
‘Okay.’ She peered round him at the door he had left on the latch as she couldn’t see over his shoulder. ‘Thanks for coming but you’d better go.’
‘I will.’ He didn’t move. ‘Are you all right?’
She sighed. ‘No. Nor are you. But it wasn’t your fault ‒’
‘If I’d reported her she’d have been sent off.’
‘But I heard ‒’
She cut him short firmly. ‘I don’t give a damn what you heard. I didn’t know her well but I knew her well enough to know what I think. I liked her a lot though I sometimes thought her nutty as a fruit cake. I think she was dead scared and I think she wanted to die and I know when patients want to die they always do. I won’t tell you now why I think she wanted to as I don’t want to talk about it. Tell you one day, if you’re still around.’
His face grew less tense. He said, ‘I’ll always be around unless you give me the oh-heave-ho ‒ or Jerry does the job for you. I love you so much, I ‒ just ‒ so bloody love you.’
Her eyes had come back to life and smiled at him. ‘Thanks. Stay around, please.’
He was too frightened by his own happiness to smile. ‘ “From this day forth”?’
‘Okay,’ she whispered.
He reached for her hand under the shelter of the balustrade as Murphy’s stage whisper vibrated with urgency, ‘Nurse Carter! Nurse Carter! Herself is wanting you and coming up!’
Nurse Carter catapulted back into the ward with her buckets just before Nurse Dean reached the balcony doors. ‘Oh, there you are, Carter. See Mr Jason? He’s lost his ‒ oh, you found it for him? Jolly good. I was looking for you to ask you to get these doors open. It looks like a lovely day and as 20 and 21 are empty, it shouldn’t be a draught for the others. It’ll be nice for the patients to see the sky and have some really fresh air.’ She glanced around. ‘Did you want me, Harper?’
One Night in London: a hospital in wartime (The Jason Trilogy Book 1) Page 17