Then I took a hold of myself and opened the door. ‘Now you can get back to your marathon, Mr Corford. I’ll have to join Nurse Spikes in the back room.’
‘You’ll come and say good-bye to me in the morning? Wake me up if I’m asleep. Don’t let me snooze on the way you do these days until the day girls arrive.’
‘I will,’ I promised, ‘unless, of course, there’s a flap on.’
‘Then this might be good-bye, now?’
I was too happy to worry about that. ‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you believe it, my love. Don’t you believe it!’ The way he was looking at me made me feel as if my heart had turned over. ‘Like a certain Yankee general, I will return.’
At ten minutes past six the next morning a compound fractured femur came in to William Brown. The new patient was still in the operating-theatre when Sister Willy B. sent one of the day nurses to relieve me two hours later. ‘Sister says you are to go straight on to breakfast, Howard, and not to bother about the report, as this man isn’t finished. I’ll take up the notes when I take him back.’
After breakfast I went back to William Brown to fetch my cloak from the changing-room. Hospital etiquette and the fear of Sister prevented my going in to the patients. I did not really mind. David had already said all I could have wished him to say. He would be back, and then we could laugh about it all.
In Kent my father’s orchards were in bloom, and the plum-tree outside my bedroom window was a white cloud. My holiday was as good as a holiday can be in the country in late spring, when you are in love for the first time. I was happy, every moment of the nine days, and happier still when the time came to go back to Benedict’s.
Alice and I had come off nights together, and for the only occasion in our training we were sent to the same ward. Catherine, women’s acute surgical.
On the evening of my return from holiday we discussed the change over tea in Rose Barnaby’s room. Rose was due to come off night duty herself in a few days. She was having an odd night off at the moment. She was a very slim, very dark, quite outrageously good-looking girl. Alice and I were very fond of her. I had said I was glad to be going to Catherine, and Alice had agreed with me.
‘Makes a nice break,’ said Alice, ‘after three men’s wards in a row.’
Rose groaned. ‘A break! I could do with one. Here am I bound for Agnes Small, after Martha. Nothing but women, women, women, have I ever had. I wouldn’t know what a sick man looked like.’
Alice said, what did Rose expect?
‘What do you mean?’ asked Rose.
‘Look in the mirror,’ said Alice, ‘and don’t blame Matron’s office, Rose. Can you wonder if they are scared? Hurling you among the men would have the same effect as a Mills bomb without its pin. Probably more so.’
‘Thank you, dear,’ I said sadly.
Alice laughed. ‘Don’t be a mug, Maggie. You know quite well what I mean. You may have black curls and a baby stare ‒ but you ain’t a Rose! In fact,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘I expect it’s the stare that gets the office. They think, how can anyone who looks so dumb have any sex appeal? And you’re too small.’
‘Better and better,’ I said, ‘vacant insignificance, that’s me.’
Rose stood up. ‘Well, I don’t think it’s fair,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think you’re being fair to Maggie, Alice.’
We looked up at her. Her eyes were that very dark blue that in some lights seem purple, her skin was pale and clear.
‘Of course I’m being fair’ ‒ Alice was firm ‒ ‘and you know it, Rose. You know about your face.’
Rose nodded her lovely head mournfully. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. And really it’s a dreadful snag at times. I’ve yet to meet the Sister who’ll take me seriously. Heaven knows why they think I’ve come to Benedict’s.’
‘They don’t think,’ said Alice; ‘they take one look at you and hiss. That was my own immediate reaction until I got to know what a simple soul you are and how you find it a bit of a bind.’
Rose looked worried. ‘Did it get you that way, too, Maggie?’
‘I can’t remember exactly.’ I thought back. ‘I did wonder what a girl with a face like yours was doing taking up nursing, and then I thought you probably wanted to be a nurse, and left it at that. All I do remember clearly about the P.T.S. was that I was far too busy being frightened of Sister P.T.S. to wonder much about anything other than how to keep out of her way.’
They both laughed. ‘And this from the girl who’s just taken Sister Willy B. and old Spikes in her stride,’ said Alice. ‘How have you done it, Maggie? Whence this great and novel courage?’
‘Yes, how have you done it?’ echoed Rose in her soft voice. ‘Do tell me the secret, Maggie. What’s your private line of defence?’
‘Maggie has “secret armour”,’ announced Alice.
‘What is it?’ I spoke more sharply than I could have wished.
‘The trouble with you children,’ said Alice, ‘is that you are so uneducated. Didn’t you learn anything at school?’ Alice was twenty-four, Rose three years younger.
Rose said, ‘Don’t be upstage, Alice. What are you talking about?’
‘The secret armour of a quiet mind,’ said Alice. ‘I can’t remember who said it or wrote it, but it just fits Maggie.’
‘Have you got a quiet mind, Maggie?’ asked Rose, ‘or is it just your line?’
Alice said, ‘Our Maggie hasn’t enough guile to have a line.’ I looked from one to the other as they discussed me. I was quite used to this. When we three were together they talked and I listened. We were all happy that way.
Rose said, ‘I want some more tea.’ She filled all our cups and went on, ‘I think you’re rather clever, Maggie.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, helping myself to sugar, ‘the brains of the set, that’s me.’
Alice said thoughtfully, ‘Of course you did come top in our first-year exams. Maybe Rose is right.’
‘I’m always right,’ said Rose simply, ‘but I wasn’t talking about that kind of cleverness.’
I met Miss Parks in the hospital grounds next day. ‘Did you have a nice holiday, dear? You look ever so much better for it.’ She gave me all the news of William Brown. ‘The boys’ll be ever so interested to hear I’ve seen you. Did you know Langley’s gone to convalescent?’
I said I did not.
‘Went this morning, he did, Nurse. ’Course he had to go on a stretcher with that leg, see. But Sister said she thought he could do with a change, and his eyes are coming on lovely.’
‘Any other discharges since I left, Miss Parks,’ I asked casually, then hung on her words in case she should mention David.
‘That Mr Corford went this afternoon,’ she said, ‘least he said last night as how he was leaving to-day, but I didn’t see him, naturally. Langley was gone by eight, just as we was coming off.’ She thought for a moment. ‘That Nurse Willows (my successor) is coming along nicely, but she’s having a cruel time, Nurse, a cruel time!’
‘Doesn’t she get on with Sister?’
‘I couldn’t say, Nurse, I’m sure. But that Nurse Spikes is on to her all night long. The way she was with you, only it worries Nurse Willows. I tell her she don’t want to take no notice, like you, but poor Nurse can’t do it.’
She was clearly not going to say any more about David, so I had to ask. ‘How was Mr Corford’s leg? Has he gone to convalesce too?’
She said David had gone home, and his leg was doing lovely. ‘His sister’s home, like. He’s another bachelor, like our own Mr Corford, and their sister looks after them, if you see what I mean? She’s married, lives in Salisbury, I think it is, and he’s gone to her. Oh, yes! I knew I had something to tell you, Nurse Howard.’
‘Yes, Miss Parks?’
‘I give him your message that last morning you was on. Ever so sad he was to hear you’d gone to the theatre. Told me to be sure to remember him to you, he did.’
I thanked her, and she left me. She was on her way to
the orderlies’ room to collect her clean laundry. It was six o’clock, and I was off duty for the rest of the evening. I had nothing special to do, so I walked round the hospital. I walked round William Brown’s block twice. The building, from the outside, looked grey and cold and empty. For no reason at all I felt depressed.
I went on feeling depressed until the first post arrived next morning. David’s letter read:
I’ve posted this myself in the box outside your Nurses’ Home. (I hope that suits your correct mind.) I had so hoped I would see you again before I left, but now I find that’s not going to be possible. There is so much I want to tell you, so much that will now have to wait.
What can’t wait are my thanks. My very grateful thanks to you. I’m not sure, but I think you probably saved my life. I had to have something to hang on to on that jolly afternoon when I provided the visitors with a spot of drama. I hung on to you. Truthfully, if I had not known you then I doubt that I would have bothered. One can have too much of anything, even a leg.
I will write again, my dear, dearest, Nurse Howard. And I shall be a devil and call you Marguerite. It’s a sweet name, and you are as your friend Miss Parks says ‒ ‘ever so sweet.’
Bless you, my love.
DAVID
P.S. Or would you prefer me to sign, ‘Mr Corford’?
Chapter Six
LINEN-CUPBOARDS ARE FOR WEEPING
Catherine was a pleasant, lively ward, as acute surgical awards generally are. The women lost their appendixes, or other detachable parts of their anatomy, as cheerfully as they exchanged knitting-patterns, magazines, recipes, and advice on how to wean baby.
Sister Catherine was quiet and gentle, and refreshingly different from Sister Willy B. She never raised her voice, frowned, exposed her elbows, or allowed her pale gold hair to look anything but plastered to her head.
One evening when I had been in Catherine a week I drew back the curtains from the bed of the patient whom I had just finished washing. Catherine was in the new building, and all the beds were fitted with their own curtains. These curtains tied behind the lockers that stood between the beds. I was going to tie the curtain when I realized a houseman was sitting, writing notes, on the locker seat.
‘Excuse me, Doctor, would you mind moving a moment?’
The houseman had very fair hair. He glanced up and smiled, and I saw he was George Hartigan. ‘Hallo!’ I nodded at his white coat. ‘How splendid! When did you get the promotion?’
He stood up. ‘For Pete’s sake, Nurse! Don’t broadcast the fact that I’m a new boy in white! To-day.’
I picked up my bowl of washing water; he tucked his sheaf of notes under his arm, and walked down the ward beside me. I glanced automatically at Sister. She was writing at the desk and did not look up.
‘Careful young woman, aren’t you?’ he murmured.
He was a tall man by any standards: by mine he was a crick in the neck. We were out of the ward and in the corridor before I turned to face him and answer him at the same time.
‘Look, Mr Hartigan,’ I said, ‘you’ve been around Benedict’s a good many years; if you haven’t noticed that the way to a quiet life for a nurse is not the way of the young doctors, then you must be blind. I doubt that you are.’
He smiled faintly. ‘I see very well, thank you, Nurse. Even in the dim dark watches of the night. I also take your point. You want a quiet life.’
I said, ‘I’m sorry. I feel I’ve been rude.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not rude. In fact, you give one the brush-off as civilly as any young woman I know.’ His mouth turned down at the corners, the way I had noticed before.
That reminded me of something else. ‘I never thanked you for cutting all that bread.’
‘You did,’ he said mildly, ‘but thank you for the repetition.’
That week had passed without my getting another letter from David. Three more days dragged by, then another week; then a third. I tried to understand ‒ I failed. At first I had worried. He must be ill again ‒ something had happened to his leg. Perhaps he had had an accident? He must have had an accident. To his hands? But Alistair Corford, the S.S.O., was about the hospital as usual. If anything had happened to David surely their sister would have sent for Alistair. And if anything had happened to David the second thing to happen would be his return to Benedict’s in an ambulance. If he had come back I would have known. The nurses in my set covered every ward and department in the hospital, and we all gossiped about old patients.
I went through the wonderful relief of believing his letter had been lost in the post. Then, as the days went by, I thought, what about his other letters? They could not all be lost. He could not be waiting for my answer, for that letter, that one letter, was written from Benedict’s; I did not know his address; this had not worried me, at first. He had said he would write again. He did not write again.
Miss Heralda Galvaston-Graham, the Sister Tutor to the Nurses’ Training School, stood by her desk in the great classroom of the Nurses’ Home and watched us file into our places. Our desks were arranged alphabetically. Mine came in the third row. Sister looked us over, then inclined her head. ‘You may sit down, Nurses.’
She was a tall woman, her long navy dress and high lace cap made her seem even taller. Her dark red hair was drawn down over her ears and tied in a bun high on her neck. Her features were pale and composed, her myopic eyes, kind. She smiled upon us.
‘Your examination results have been most gratifying, Nurses.’
Her smile deepened at the audible wave of relief that swept over the classroom. We had heard that we had all passed the anatomy and physiology examinations, the first serious obstacles in our second-year era. We had not heard how well or how badly we had all done. In the difference lay a visit to Matron’s office. Matron herself dealt with nurses who had low examination marks.
‘You have now done nearly fourteen months in the wards,’ she was still smiling, ‘and this morning, Nurses, I want for once to tell you what the hospital is going to do for you ‒ instead of my more usual subject, what are you going to do for the hospital? I am sure you will be interested in what I have to say.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ we chanted, and nodded in unison. The lace bows on the backs of our second-year caps swung like butterflies in a summer wind.
‘Our aim at St Benedict’s,’ said Sister Tutor, ‘is not only to train you to become responsible nurses, but to train you to become responsible young women. Your characters, your futures, are being formed by us, here, now. Intentionally. You have all altered a good deal since you entered the Preliminary Training School some sixteen months ago. It is to be hoped that when you leave here, in two and a half years’ time, you will all be as we could wish.’ She waited a moment to let this sink in. We did not interrupt. You did not interrupt Miss Galvaston-Graham.
‘You must not think, Nurses, that this is an impertinence on our part. This hospital exists to do good. It has existed for centuries for that very purpose. We hope it will continue to do so for many more.’ We nodded again, and again there was that feeling of high summer in the classroom.
‘But the hospital does not confine its work to the sick. There are the relatives, the medical staff, the orderlies, the ward-maids, the scrubbers, and, of course, the second-year nurses!’ We smiled, as we were expected to smile.
‘And the good the hospital will do for you, Nurses, will be by strengthening your characters, exposing your weaknesses, showing you how to conquer those same faults.’
She told us a great deal more on the same lines; after a while she began to repeat herself, intentionally. There were night nurses present, and night nurses never assimilate anything at first hearing.
When the lecture was over and the class dismissed Sister remained at her desk. ‘I want to talk to Nurse Howard.’
Rose and Alice, in front, and the line of nurses beside me, turned quickly to look at me, then as quickly away. The room cleared in a minute. There were many more than sixty seconds in t
hat minute as far as I was concerned.
Sister Tutor said, ‘Come here, Nurse Howard.’ I walked over to her desk. I felt eight years old.
‘I expect you are wondering why I want to speak to you, Nurse?’
‘Wondering’ was a mild word! I said, ‘Yes, Sister.’
‘I want to talk to you about your work, Nurse Howard.’
‘Yes, Sister.’
‘Until this past month,’ she said, ‘your ward reports have been moderately good, your examination results excellent. Sister William Brown was quite pleased with your work. But I’m sorry to say that after one month in Catherine Ward Sister Catherine is not at all pleased with you.’
‘I’m sorry, Sister.’
‘Are you, Nurse Howard?’ she asked coolly. ‘I am afraid I doubt you.’
I did not answer. I was too surprised to think quickly, a feat I have always found difficult.
Sister said, ‘Perhaps I have not made myself clear. Sister Catherine is not complaining about your actual work, but of your attitude to your work. She says you are not careless, but you are not interested. She tells me you are efficient ‒ in a mechanical fashion. But patients are not machines, Nurse Howard.’
I said, ‘No, Sister.’ I knew she was right. As Sister Catherine was right. Everything I had done in this last month had become mechanical. As mechanical as that endless walk to my pigeon-hole outside Matron’s office to look for my post and the letter which never came.
She was watching me closely. She said more gently. ‘Is something wrong, Nurse? Your family? Are you worried about your home in any way?’
‘No, Sister. Thank you, Sister,’ I said flatly.
‘Nurse Howard!’ She spoke sharply again, ‘I am trying to help you. You had the makings of a good nurse, we thought; but now, although not careless, you are not caring. Do you understand the difference?’
‘Yes, Sister.’
‘Is it anything you can tell me, Nurse?’
‘I’m afraid not, Sister,’ I said unthinkingly.
She took that up at once. ‘Then there is something wrong? Very well. You must do something about it, Nurse! To begin with, you must stop being so selfish.’
The Secret Armour Page 7