The Secret Armour

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Selfish, Sister?’

  ‘You are thinking too much of yourself, Nurse, and not your patients. That is selfishness.’ I was surprised by this; I was even more surprised when she spoke again. ‘Nurse Howard, do you like your patients?’

  ‘I don’t quite understand, Sister.’

  She repeated herself. ‘Do you like them? As people? Not simply as Mrs Smith, Brown, or Jones in No. 23, 24, or 25?’

  ‘I think so, Sister,’ I said slowly.

  ‘You should not have to think, Nurse, you should know! You cannot nurse patients properly unless you like them, are genuinely fond of them. Nursing is not something that can be done with the head and the hands alone. Unless you are prepared to put more into your profession than your brain you might as well give up at once. You’ll certainly never make a good nurse.’

  Then I would never make a good nurse, I thought. I was not going to risk any repetition of the way I now felt ‒ this constant loneliness, this sense of failure.

  ‘I see you do not agree with me,’ she said quietly. ‘I presume you have your reasons for disagreeing?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  She sighed. ‘You are being very stubborn, Nurse, and very childish. The Nursing Profession is not one for children. You must learn to control your own emotions, Nurse; to control them, and to forget them. They are unimportant. All that should concern you, on duty, are the emotions of your patients. Patients are sick people, and sick people cannot carry their nurses’ problems in addition to their own; it is the nurses’ duty to carry the patients, mentally as well as physically. You have not done that in Catherine Ward?’

  ‘No, Sister.’

  She nodded. ‘I want you to go back now,’ she said, ‘and go mentally round the ward. Think of those women as women. Think how their husbands, their children, their friends, are feeling without them. Do you know what is the greatest single cause of insomnia in St Benedict’s?’ she added.

  ‘No, Sister.’

  ‘This problem. “Did me neighbour give the Old Man and the nippers their tea?” The Almoners and the Ward Sisters hear this all the time. Have you ever heard it?’

  ‘No, Sister.’

  ‘Which proves you have appeared unsympathetic. You should have heard it from the patients in Catherine. A month is time enough.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  She was silent a moment, then she sighed again. ‘That will be all, Nurse.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’

  At the door she called me back. ‘Nurse Howard, it is also high time you learnt to control your cap. It is perched on the back of your head. Please do something about it.’

  I wished that I was off duty and free to go back to the privacy of my room. I was on, and, late as it was, I rushed back to Catherine by way of Matron’s office. My pigeon-hole was empty. The rack in which the hand-delivered letters were sometimes placed was empty too. I galloped up the stairs to Catherine, grateful that Sister Catherine was off that morning, and at least I would be spared a third degree about why I was late.

  The Staff Nurse looked up from the work-list she was making. ‘I forgot you were on, Nurse Howard. I thought I had only one second-year this morning.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late, Nurse. Sister Tutor wanted to speak to me.’

  Staff Nurse Fisher was a kindly person. She grinned sympathetically. ‘Poor kid. Been on the carpet?’

  ‘Yes, Nurse.’

  She glanced at my face, then had the tact to be engrossed by her work-list. ‘The linen-cupboard is in chaos, Howard. Will you go and sort it out while I straighten my list? I’ll come and tell you what I want you to do in the ward when I’ve got this organized.’

  ‘Thank you, Nurse.’

  I shot down the ward as quickly as I dared. No one stopped me for anything, none of the patients called me, and I reached the linen-cupboard before my face got out of control.

  The linen-cupboard was not a cupboard at all, but a small airing-room. It was also the traditional place for tears in all Benedict’s wards. The scent of the clean linen was soothing, the hot pipes relaxing. I wept over the clean blankets.

  A few minutes later I heard the door open. George Hartigan stood in the doorway, his stethoscope swinging in one hand, a packet of X-ray plates under the other arm. ‘Anything I can do?’ he asked conversationally.

  ‘No, thanks.’ I sniffed, and turned back to the blankets. I heard the door shut again, and thought he had gone.

  ‘Sure I can’t help?’

  ‘You can’t lend me a smooth, white-coated shoulder,’ I said savagely, ‘unless you want us both to get chucked out of Benedict’s! And for Heaven’s sake open that door, or well be chucked out in any ease!’

  He did as I asked. I was in no mood for wondering about other people, but, even so, the expression on his face struck me as odd.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said mildly, as he opened the door. ‘I was just being a Girl Scout. Hartigan the Ever-helpful. That’s me.’

  I said, ‘Well, you can do something. I’m off this evening, and I don’t fancy a quiet evening with my thoughts. You can take me to a movie, or a walk in the Park.’ My courage and voice trailed away together. ‘But I suppose you have to work? You won’t be free?’

  His face had lost that peculiar expression. It was now blank, empty.

  ‘I expect I can get off,’ he said. ‘Shall I pick you up at six-thirty?’

  I suddenly realized what I had said. ‘It’s very kind of you. You don’t have to.’

  His light brown eyebrows shot up. He said nothing. He went out and closed the door quietly behind him.

  When I arrived back from lunch that day Alice was hidden behind a face-mask laying a dressing-trolley.

  ‘Maggie, Sister wants ‒’ she began.

  Sister Catherine, her sleeves pushed high, sailed down the ward at that moment. ‘Nurse Howard, I want you to come with me and admit the new patient.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ I did not know we had a new patient. She had not been there half an hour ago.

  Sister said, ‘She’s to go to the theatre at once. Either Nurse Fell or yourself will take her. I’ll decide later. I am just going to prepare her myself. She is in the small ward.’ At the closed door of the small ward Sister turned to me. ‘Have you ever seen a bad face accident, Nurse?’

  I said, no. Sister explained. ‘This girl is from the bottle-factory. One of the bottles exploded in her face, and she was not wearing her protective mask as she should have done, poor child. Her face is in a dreadful state, I’m afraid. All right, Nurse?’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ I said gratefully.

  I was still more grateful when I saw the girl in the small ward bed. If I had not known that she was a girl it would not have been possible to tell from her face. There was now very little face left. She was mercifully full of morphia, but her one eye was open. Sister’s warning had given me the chance to keep my own eyes under control.

  Alice pushed in the trolley, Sister scrubbed her hands, and began cleaning the injury. There was a thud, and Alice was flat on the floor.

  Sister said quietly, ‘Fetch the Staff Nurse and the sal volatile, Nurse Howard,’ and went on with her dressing.

  The Staff Nurse came, and in a little while removed a pale green Alice. Sister and I went on with the dressing.

  Twenty minutes later, when I was clearing the used trolley in the sluice-room, I suddenly vomited into the sink. When I straightened my back again Sister Catherine stood beside me. ‘What are you doing, Nurse Howard?’ she asked.

  I should have thought that was obvious, but you do not question Sisters, so I said I had been sick.

  She said, ‘I’m not at all surprised, Nurse. That poor child has one of the worst faces I have seen myself, even during the War. I was in my third year during the flying-bomb time. I can remember when this ward was full of similar cases.’ I was surprised to see her shudder. She must have noticed my surprise, because she smiled almost apologetically. ‘I’ve never been much good at standing s
ights,’ she went on. ‘I know it’s wrong of me, that I should he strong enough to forget myself, but I find it very difficult. Particularly in a case like this one, when it’s another young woman, about one’s own age. I saw you felt the same.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ My mind was on the girl in the small ward. It was not until later that I realized this was the first time any Sister had spoken to me as an equal. ‘I couldn’t help thinking, There but for the grace of God goes I.’

  She said, ‘You managed very well, Nurse. I’m glad you were able to wait until you got out here. I don’t like my nurses fainting all over the place. It upsets the patients so dreadfully. Of course, we all feel like fainting on occasions. But the antidote is to put yourself in the patient’s place. Think, How would I feel if I were ill, in pain, shocked, and knew I looked so ghastly that my fellow human beings lost consciousness at the sight of me? If you think that,’ she added briskly, turning back into a Sister again, ‘you’ll forget yourself and forget to faint. Now, Nurse’ ‒ I had finished the trolley ‒ ‘what are you going to do, next?’

  ‘Help the Staff Nurse straighten the beds, Sister. Unless you want me to go to the theatre?’

  She said slowly, ‘No, I think Nurse Fell had better go through with that case. She’ll have to get used to these things. You help Staff Nurse with the beds. But before you do, Nurse …’

  ‘Yes, Sister?’

  ‘Go in to the kitchen and ask Amy for a cup of tea. (Amy was the ward-maid.) I expect you can do with one. I don’t imagine there is much of your lunch left.’

  ‘No, Sister. Thank you, Sister,’ I said gratefully.

  George Hartigan was early. At twenty-five past six the portress rang our floor.

  ‘Would you tell Nurse Howard that a friend of hers is waiting in the smoking-room, please?’

  I said I was Nurse Howard, and would be down in a few minutes.

  I hardly recognized the young man who rose from the sofa as I opened the smoking-room door. I had seen George as a tweedy student and a white-coated houseman. This individual, who wore a smooth, dark suit and held a black hat in his hand, was a stranger. I said as much.

  He smiled. ‘Well, I thought this was quite an occasion.’

  I stiffened. ‘Why?’ I was sure he was going to say because I had made the date, which was true, but I did not want to be reminded of the fact.

  ‘It’s about five months since I first asked you out and you turned me down. I’ve had a nasty feeling lately that you were going to finish your training without having so much as one meal at my expense.’

  ‘Is that what we’re going to do?’ I was now ashamed of my original thought and smitten with guilt about spending his money.

  ‘Do you propose we starve?’ he asked gently.

  ‘No.’ The snag was that I knew how hard-up the housemen all were. Most of my friends now consorted with housemen, and the financial aspect of gallivanting with the young men now ran ‘what Sister said’ a close second as their main topics of conversation.

  ‘You don’t sound very sure. Perhaps you have strong views on eating with the medical profession? You don’t have to worry with me, Nurse. I only use my knife for peas.’

  ‘No,’ I repeated, and smiled. ‘It’s just that ‒ well, this was my idea. I was just wondering ‒’

  ‘Well, stop wondering,’ he said, ‘or I’ll take umbrage.’ His lips turned down in the way I now recognized as a sign that George was very amused. ‘I don’t hold with these modern goings-on. I’m the old-fashioned type. So cast no slights on my manly privilege! And as for it being your idea ‒ well, I would have suggested this myself this morning, if I had dared. The thought was there, but I was afraid you would crown me with one of those sandbags you were weeping on if I upped and said so.’

  I said, ‘I was weeping on the blankets.’ I was glad to know there was to be no pretence about my behaviour in the linen-cupboard.

  ‘The blankets are on the shelf over the sandbags in Catherine,’ he said patiently. ‘Or don’t you know your own linen-cupboard?’

  ‘I do now. I know the wretched place by heart.’ We were out in the hall, and he held open the front door. ‘I’m sorry I was such a fool,’ I added.

  ‘Don’t let it get you down,’ he said; ‘it’s all part of the curriculum. My mama was at Benedict’s, and she’s told me that in the old days no linen-cupboard was considered complete without a weeping pro. I guessed what was up when I saw you hare in there as if the hounds of hell were on your tracks.’

  ‘Not the hounds of hell,’ I said, ‘Sister Tutor.’

  He waved at a passing taxi. ‘She does qualify occasionally,’ he murmured, ‘so they tell me.’

  ‘Why did you come in if you knew something was wrong?’

  He sat back on the seat beside me. ‘I told you. I’m a Girl Scout.’ He leant forward and pulled down the seat opposite to my own. ‘Would your feet care for this?’

  ‘My feet would love it.’ I laughed suddenly. ‘You know an awful lot about nurses. I didn’t realize you were such a mine of information.’

  ‘My mama is a chatty soul,’ he said, ‘and since she and my father didn’t run to daughters ‒ I’ve two brothers ‒ she natters to us, instead of reserving her girlish reminiscences and womanly heart-to-hearts for our non-existent sister. It’s been no end useful’ ‒ he turned and smiled at me ‒ ‘because my father was here too. So, roughly, I have been here before, and St Benedict’s Hospital, London, is to Hartigan an open book.’

  ‘How nice!’

  ‘Wouldn’t it seem so,’ he said, ‘if it were true? The first bit is,’ he said quickly; ‘I’ve just gone astray over the corollary.’

  He had booked a table at some restaurant in Levant Street. We were both hungry; housemen and nurses always are. Not that the food was not good at Benedict’s, it was often very good, but we were still hungry. It was nearly two hours later when we sat over our coffee.

  ‘What would you like to do now, my dear Nurse Howard?’ His words jolted me back to reality. His words were David’s words.

  He said, ‘Did I say something wrong?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Damn David, I thought, and then damned myself as a hopeless fool. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I was brooding.’

  George flicked the edge of his cigarette. ‘Sister Tutor is a worthy woman, no doubt,’ he said, ‘but it’s a mistake to take her too seriously.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said, ‘but she wouldn’t agree.’

  ‘She doesn’t hold with the lighter touch? Sitting lightly to life and avoiding hurt? She thinks it’s a bad thing?’

  ‘A very bad thing.’ He was an easy person to talk to, and I felt like unburdening my soul, so I told him the greater part of what she had said.

  ‘The truth hurt a lot?’ He offered me a cigarette as he spoke.

  ‘How do you know it’s the truth?’ I asked shortly. ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been you wouldn’t have minded,’ he said. ‘Have some more coffee?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The quartet of musicians in the far corner of the room switched from their apparently endless repertoire of Richard Rodgers to straight dance-music. Two couples got up from one of the tables on the edge of the pocket-handkerchief dance-floor and began to dance.

  George said, ‘Are your feet killing you, or would you care to dance? If you wouldn’t, I expect we’ve still got the time to see a movie.’

  ‘My feet are always killing me,’ I said, ‘and I don’t really mind. I’m happy to do whatever you care to do.’

  His eyebrows lifted. ‘I feel like dancing.’

  I pushed back my chair. ‘Whatever you say, Doctor.’

  He stood up and held out a hand. ‘Don’t you feel we’ve reached the stage to plunge into informality and call each other by our Christian names?’ We moved on to the floor. ‘I must say,’ he went on, ‘I do rather enjoy the sensation I get from inviting a girl out for the evening.’ He stopped suddenly, caught my eye, and we
both laughed. ‘As you were. I’ll start again. In being with a girl I even think of as Miss Howard. It does lend such a solid air of nineteenth-century respectability to an outing. I feel, any moment now, I’ll be called upon to face Papa with my intentions.’ I felt him looking down at me again. ‘Strictly honourable, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ I echoed. I tried to copy his tone, to be all merry and bright, as he was. I was not much good at copying, I thought. Everything he said and did was reminding me of David. And then I thought, is there anything any man can say, even a pleasant, unexciting soul like George Hartigan, that hasn’t already been said? That will not remind me of David?

  George said, ‘Don’t look so gloomy. I won’t call you Marguerite if you feel as strongly as all that. I said I was old-fashioned. A Victorian anachronism am I, Miss Howard.’

  ‘I’m sorry, George.’ I glanced up at his face. He wore the same odd expression he had this morning in the linen-cupboard. His expression altered as he saw me look at him. ‘Brooding again?’ he asked casually.

  I was quite grateful to Miss Galvaston-Graham. I nodded.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I seem to do nothing but lecture you. I’m going to do some more. But really, you mustn’t let things get under your skin this way. They don’t matter.’

  ‘I expect you’re right.’ I thought of something to change the subject. ‘You can call me Maggie if you like. All my set do. I don’t mind at all.’

  He said slowly, ‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’

  We danced in silence. George danced well, and the fact that he was so much taller than I did not matter as much as it usually did. There are as many snags in being too small for your dancing-partners as I imagine there are in being too tall.

  I could not keep David out of my mind, so for a few seconds I gave up and played the stupid, hackneyed game of pretence. I could dance as easily with my eyes shut as open.

  Closing my eyes was a mistake. Instead of being carried away by thoughts of David, I suddenly visualized the face of that poor girl in the small ward in Catherine. I winced involuntarily, and opened my eyes quickly.