The Secret Armour

by Lucilla Andrews

  Billy thought this over as he allowed George to remake his cot. ‘She’s not a lady,’ he said reasonably, ‘she’s a nurse.’

  George’s long mouth twisted downward. ‘Could it be, Billy, that I walked into that one?’

  Billy smiled broadly and tugged George’s stethoscope out of his pocket.

  ‘Here, young man, you give that back,’ said George. Then he said more seriously, ‘If you promise to be a good boy you can listen with my listening thing.’

  ‘Garn,’ said Billy, ‘truly?’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ said George, ‘only you mustn’t take off your pyjamas again.’

  George crossed the ward to where I was making Rosemary’s bed as the junior pro bustled in from the kitchen. ‘Can I start teas now, Nurse Howard?’

  I glanced at the clock. ‘Better wait till half-past. Sister doesn’t like them to have it too early.’

  George picked up a corner of the sheet and tucked it under the mattress on the far side of the bed. ‘You in charge, Nurse Howard?’ he asked casually, but his eyes were amused.

  ‘Yes. Something I can do for you, Mr Hartigan?’

  ‘When you’ve finished here. No hurry.’

  I lifted Rosemary’s head carefully and gave her a drink of the lemonade that had been waiting in a feeding-cup on her locker. ‘Comfortable, duckie?’ I asked.

  ‘Thank you, Nurse.’ She smiled, but she seemed worried about something, so I waited. Then she said, ‘Nurse, when did you start being a nurse and stop being a lady?’

  George looked at the floor as I said, ‘Nearly two years ago.’

  Her always anxious little face relaxed slightly as she thought this over.

  ‘Nice,’ she said suddenly. ‘Nice.’ She did not explain what was nice, and after a few seconds she said, ‘Will I be able to be a nurse like you when I’m bigger?’

  ‘Of course you will,’ I said untruthfully. I hated having to lie to a child, but I could not disappoint her. In her particular case the disease was badly advanced, and nothing short of a miracle would make her heart strong enough to stand up to the physical work of nursing.

  George said quickly, ‘You won’t have to grow much bigger, Rosemary, to be as big as Nurse Howard is now,’ and we all laughed.

  He and I walked over to the desk. ‘You like working here, don’t you, Maggie?’ he murmured, as we sat down and he sorted his notes.

  I said, ‘I do, but how did you know?’

  ‘It sticks out all over you.’ He sighed, ‘Ah, me. If this heat goes on much longer I shall have heat-stroke! But to work, to work. Do you know anything about the bed-state, here? My boss wants to do a couple of infant hernias.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. All that part is still beyond me, but Nurse Naylor will be back from tea in a few minutes, and you can ask her, if you are sure you don’t mind waiting? She knows all about everything.’

  George said he was quite happy to wait for my omniscient Staff Nurse. I thought he would stay sitting at the desk writing the interminable notes which all housemen seem to write, but he said, ‘Can I help with the tea?’ and took Rosemary’s tray over to her. He sat on her locker-seat and fed her carefully, talking as seriously to her as he did to his adult patients. I noticed Rosemary ate far more tea than usual.

  ‘That was kind of you, George,’ I said as he carried the empty tray into the kitchen.

  ‘I enjoyed it,’ he said apologetically, ‘I like this ward.’ He glanced over to where I was stacking the dirty mugs on the draining-board.

  ‘Are you glad you moved here now, Maggie?’

  ‘Very. But how do you know all these things, George? How did you guess I wasn’t glad?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. These things get around on the hospital grape-vine.’

  It was some time later that I realized that Rose was the only person to whom I had mentioned that I was not keen about leaving Catherine for Ed Donell. I thought, Rose could not have wasted much time after our little chat, and the thought amused me. And then I wondered if Rose was in love with George. Or beginning to be in love with George? She had always been quite open about the fact that she found him very attractive. If she showed this to him, as clearly as she had to Alice and myself, the result must be a foregone conclusion. How could George, or any other man, not fall for a girl who had a face and figure like Rose’s? It must be wonderful, I thought, to look like that. Then, as always, my mind rushed back to David, and I wondered what he would have done if I had been Rose? Rose would not fade into any background, hospital or otherwise. But I was not Rose, I was Maggie Howard, and I was still waiting to hear from him again.

  Nurse Naylor, the Staff Nurse, had come back from tea, dealt with George, and sent him on his way. She came over to the medicine cupboard now, where I was counting the spoons for the cod-liver oil and malt.

  ‘Nice boy, that Hartigan. I’m glad we are going to have some of his boss’s cases here again. Hartigan’s good with the nippers, and they like him. I think he’s the pick of his particular set,’ she said thoughtfully; then she smiled. ‘Or am I telling you, Nurse Howard?’

  I thought how right George was about the grape-vine. I said, ‘I think you are telling me, Nurse. I don’t know Mr Hartigan very well.’

  I saw she did not believe me, but I left her to make what she wanted out of my words.

  After the medicine round and the final face-washing, we tucked up the children, kissed them, unofficially, good-night, and pushed boiled sweets into the expectant mouths of the over-twos, and milk chocolate into the under-two-year-olds, who promptly wanted another face-wash. The Sweetie Round, as it was officially known, was sacred, and nothing was ever allowed to interfere with its performance. No villainy, however dreadful, was ever penalized by missing the good-night sweetie.

  George’s two patients arrived next day and were operated on a few days later. Forty-eight hours after their operations the two small boys, who were both twenty-three months old, were on their two feet, marching stolidly round their cots, poking their strapped dressings with inquisitive fingers.

  ‘How can they do it, Sister?’ I asked. ‘The men in Henry Gwatkin with hernias were prostrated for days afterwards.’

  She smiled. ‘I expect it’s because these babies are too young to know fear or anticipate pain. So they get up and walk, and feel all the better for it.’

  There was a big teaching-round in the ward that afternoon. The Consultant Paediatrician, the Children’s Registrar, all the housemen connected in any way with Ed Donell, with the young men thick behind them, crowded into the ward. Nineteen of the twenty infants lay, sat, or stood entranced in their spotless cots, their faces shining, their hair brushed to silk, like so many little angels. Billy Smith was the twentieth infant, and he was not feeling angelic. He turned his back on the physicians and stood on his head. When Dr Black, the paediatrician, reached him Billy was sitting in a pool.

  ‘Billy!’ Dr Black shook his head sadly. ‘Billy, what’s all this?’

  Billy smiled up cheerfully. ‘You don’t want to worry about that, mate! Nah, it were only a little drop!’

  At twenty minutes past eight that evening I was cutting dressings from a roll of gauze in the linen-room when Sister pushed open the half-shut door.

  ‘You’ll have to put that away at once, Nurse Howard. We have some emergencies coming in. There has been a bad bus crash. Martha Heller are taking three children; we have to put up cots for six.’ She said the children had been on an excursion to the sea.

  As I folded away my dressings quickly I remembered, like a dream from another, unregretted world, that yesterday was Bank Holiday, and we were at the height of the excursion season.

  Sister and I were alone on duty; the junior pros had gone off at eight. Matron’s office lent us two more second-year nurses and one third-year. Between us we put up the cots in the cubicles normally reserved for the occasional infection that developed while a child was in hospital, or any dangerously ill child.

  All the six children who ca
me into Ed Donell that night qualified as the latter, and before eleven o’clock, when I got off duty, two of those six had died.

  They had been on a street treat; the coach was almost home and full of children when the accident happened. Within an hour of their admission their parents and relatives began to arrive and hang round the corridor of the ward in pathetic little groups, desperately worried, and as desperately anxious not to disturb us when we were obviously so busy.

  The adults in charge of the party had all been too badly hurt themselves to give each child’s identity, and the children were all far too shocked for any possible questioning.

  We made those parents tea, and we asked them gently to describe their children and what clothes they wore, since we knew none of the names.

  ‘Is this your little girl’s dress, my dear?’

  ‘Is your little boy about eight? With fair hair and freckles?’

  The mother clutched my arm. ‘That’s ’im, duck! That’s ’im! Oh, take me to ’im! Take me to ’im!’

  The father and mother followed me on tip-toe to the bedside. All that night they sat silently by the cot. The father had to go to his work next day, but the mother stayed holding the little boy’s hand until the evening, when he was out of danger.

  The tired-looking woman was still holding the small frock when I got back to her. ‘That’s not my Linda’s, Nurse. Oh, Nurse’ ‒ her voice shook ‒ ‘Nurse, do you think my Linda’s all right? You see, she ain’t never seen the sea before.’

  A student who had appeared, the way students always do appear helpfully in a crisis, said quietly, ‘Shall I take the lady to Martha Heller, Nurse? I’ve just come from there. All their children are girls, and they are all doing quite nicely.’

  I was opening the bathroom door when a girl, not much older than myself, followed by a white-faced boy, rushed into the corridor. ‘Oh, Nurse!’ Her voice rose joyfully. ‘Nurse! Them’s my Mabel’s! Them red sandals.’ Her arms were round my shoulders and her cheek pressed mine. Her cheek was very soft. ‘Gawd bless ye, duck. Take me to ’er.’

  I stood quite still and looked down at the little pair of red sandals in my hand. I could not take her to her little girl. Not yet. Because the little girl who had worn those red sandals had just died.

  I could not take her to Sister, who was desperately busy giving a blood transfusion with the Registrar. Next to Sister, since I belonged to the ward, I was now the most responsible person. This was something I should have to do alone.

  I put my arms round her and held her as I had held her daughter. Then I told her.

  At eleven Night Sister discovered me changing a bottle of plasma with the night pro.

  ‘When you finish that, Nurse Howard, off you go at once.’

  George looked up from the blood-pressure he was taking on the child in the next cot. He looked drawn and tired, but I could not see his features clearly. I saw instead the face of that young father when he had slowly taken those red sandals from me.

  I walked heavily along the ramp towards the park. I did not know if our Home would be shut, and I did not care. I was half-way across the park when I began to cry. The night was full of moonlight, but I could not see where I was going, so I stumbled off the path and on to one of the wooden seats under the plane-trees.

  Some time later I felt my arm touched. George stood above me. ‘I can’t stay, Maggie. I’ve my round to do in the rest of the hospital, but I saw what you looked like just now. I guessed I’d find you here.’ He sat down wearily. I did not speak. After a while he said, ‘Remember those two kids had had a lovely day. And they didn’t suffer at all.’

  I said, ‘But those parents. What about them?’

  George said simply, ‘God help them. To-night they’re in hell.’

  We were silent again, then he sighed. ‘At least the others look as if they are all going to make it, thank God.’ He stood up, reached out a hand, and pulled me to my feet. ‘Are you all right, now, Maggie? I mean all right to get back?’

  I swallowed. ‘Yes, thanks. Are you going back to Ed Donell?’

  ‘After my round. Good night.’

  ‘Good night,’ I answered mechanically.

  It was too late to use the lift when I got in. I signed my name in the Late-in Book. I wrote, ‘No late-leave applied for; on duty,’ as my reason for being late. Then I climbed the six flights of stairs to my room.

  I did not undress at once. I leant out of my window and stared into the black night. The moon had gone, and some clouds arrived from somewhere. I was glad the moon was hidden.

  I thought, Those children will never see the moon again.

  I turned away from the window and unhooked my belt.

  Chapter Nine

  COFFEE WITH GEORGE

  The next day the heat-wave broke, and although it was still only early August that was the end of the summer.

  I stayed in Ed Donell for the following two months. During those two months I saw George daily in the ward and around the hospital. He never mentioned the night of the coach crash again; he was always the same pleasant, quiet George. I never felt that I knew him any better than I had done on that one night when we had specialed that head injury in Judson together. I decided that if we worked together for twenty years we would still have the same easy, undemanding relationship.

  ‘Which all goes to show,’ I told Alice one morning in the canteen, ‘how wrong you are, my love. You are always saying that these relationships can’t stand still. That they must progress, or regress. George and I prove the fallacy of your argument.’

  Alice was unmoved. She said it did not prove anything of the sort, but she did not explain what she meant, and I was not sufficiently interested to probe. Then she said, ‘Has George never asked you out again, Maggie?’

  ‘That’s just what I’m telling you. He hasn’t. Not since that night when I gate-crashed a date. I expect it put him off.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  I smiled. ‘People are always asking me do I mind about George. No, I don’t. Why should I?’

  She stirred her coffee thoughtfully. ‘I just wondered.’ She looked up at me. ‘David still in the way?’

  ‘David will always be in the way as far as I’m concerned,’ I said hopelessly, ‘at least for the next couple of hundred years. But I don’t see that he can be in George’s way. He couldn’t have cared less.’

  ‘Does George know about David?’

  ‘More or less. Perhaps less than more. He doesn’t know him by name, just that he exists.’

  Alice said, ‘Then I’m not really surprised that he hasn’t asked you out again.’

  ‘You think he minded?’

  ‘Are you really so dumb, Maggie? Can’t you see an inch in front of your face?’

  I said, ‘If you think I imagine that George Hartigan is pining with unrequited love for me, then you’ve another think coming. People just don’t fall in love with me as easily as that.’

  She did not answer. David might be scores of miles from Benedict’s in fact, but at that moment he was sitting there at the table with us.

  The canteen door swung open, and George followed Rose into the room. Rose said something over her shoulder, and George laughed down at her. I jerked my head their way.

  ‘There’s your answer to that one, Alice. I’ve never seen George look at me ‒ or laugh with me ‒ in that way. Have you?’

  ‘No.’ Alice’s fair round face was worried. ‘I haven’t. But I’ve seen him looking at you all the same. When he’s not laughing.’

  I said, ‘The thing I like best about hospital life is the way every one goes round watching every one else. Go on, Alice, tell me how George looks.’

  She did not smile as I had expected, instead she said, briefly, ‘Hurt.’

  ‘Alice! What rubbish!’

  ‘What’s rubbish?’ asked Rose’s high voice above us. ‘Can we join you girls?’

  George said he would get Alice and me more coffee first. He returned with our cups and sat down
.

  ‘Is the whole of the first-year off duty this morning?’ he asked.

  ‘First-year nothing, Mr Hartigan,’ said Alice severely; ‘we are now second-years. Hovering on the brink of the exalted third!’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ George offered me the sugar as he spoke. ‘How many lumps, Maggie? And is it really as long as that?’

  ‘Is what really as long as which?’ asked Rose.

  He hesitated, then he said, ‘Is it really two years since you all arrived in Benedict’s?’

  ‘But of course it is, George,’ said Rose patiently, ‘if we are almost third-years.’

  Alice came into my room as I was changing my apron to go back on duty.

  ‘That was a jolly little coffee-party we had this morning,’ she said dryly.

  I turned to look at her properly. ‘I thought it was rather fun. What was wrong?’

  ‘Maggie! What was right? And I’ll tell you what.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All that we really need to complete our glorious quintet is for your David to fall in love with me.’

  ‘Alice, what are you talking about?’

  She frowned, impatiently. ‘For crying out loud, Maggie, come out of your childish armour-plating and look round! Then you’ll understand what I’m talking about!’ She rushed out to her own room, and I heard her shut her door quietly ‒ always a sign that Alice was angry. Normally she slammed it.

  I made stock in Ed Donell duty-room that evening after the pros had gone off duty. The Staff Nurse was in the ward writing the day report, and all the children were asleep. Someone knocked quietly on the door, I called ‘Come in,’ and George came in.

  ‘Oh.’ He smiled. ‘Am I intruding? I’ve got some forms to fill in, and Nurse Naylor told me to do them in here as the light was better. Do you mind? Will I be in your way?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’ I moved my clean roll of cotton wool and the packet of gauze off half the table. ‘I hope this stuff doesn’t make you sneeze?’ He was being so civil that I felt I too ought to show willing.

  ‘I can always put on a mask,’ he said, and pulled up a chair.