Through The Storm

by Maureen Lee

  Kitty wasn’t entirely sure if she liked Harriet Mansell, although she was undoubtedly friendly and very helpful. She’d never known a woman swear before, apart from mild words like ‘bloody’ and ‘bugger’ which almost everyone used. She even came out with the occasional ‘damn’ herself, but it seemed odd to hear proper swearwords coming from a respectable middle-aged woman, particularly one who spoke so well, not posh, like Miss Ellis, but in a nice cultured, well-modulated voice. In fact, she wondered what someone so clearly well-educated was doing cleaning hospital floors.

  Harriet was regarding her critically. ‘I think you’ll do. At least the cap won’t fall off. Now, we really must get on with some work. We’re already miles behind.’

  Just then, a young girl in an auxiliary’s uniform came skidding around the corner, carrying a coat over her arm. She opened the door of the rest room and chucked the coat inside.

  ‘Harriet, you’ve brought me a bucket! You’re a dead good sort,’ she panted. ‘I felt sure Staff would nab me before I could get upstairs.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I covered for you. I said I’d already seen you around.’

  The newcomer seized a mop, dipped it in a bucket and began to clean the tiled floor where Harriet had left off. She was a plain girl, almost ugly, with an unnaturally narrow face and odd eyes – one seemed to be set at a slightly different angle from the other. There was a yellowing bruise on her right cheek.

  ‘Me dad came home pissed as a lord last night,’ she explained. ‘I knew there was no way he’d get our Hazel and Benny off to work. I virtually had to drag the pair of them out of bed, else they’d have still been there by midday.’ She suddenly became aware of Kitty’s presence. ‘Oh, hello,’ she smiled. ‘You’re new, aren’t you? I’m Lucy Peterson, the worst nurse in the world.’

  ‘I’m Kitty Quigley. You won’t be the worst nurse now I’ve started. I’ve done nothing right so far.’ Kitty wet her mop and began to dab at the floor, and Harriet did the same as they talked.

  ‘Well, this isn’t exactly an efficient use of labour, three of us cleaning the same little bit of floor,’ Harriet said crisply. ‘You stay here, Kitty, Lucy, you take the far end, and I’ll do the corridors leading to the wards.’

  ‘Do we have to do the whole hospital?’ asked Kitty. If so, they’d be cleaning for hours.

  ‘No, just this floor. There’s four auxiliaries on each level. Watkins, the fourth, is helping with the breakfasts.’

  The hospital was gradually coming to life. As Kitty mopped and dried the floor, more nurses appeared, most of whom totally ignored her and left footprints all over the wet tiles which meant she had to do them again. She could hear dishes rattling and the smell of food being prepared. A young man in a short white coat came walking towards her, whom she assumed must be a doctor.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind if I spoil your nice clean floor, but I have to go downstairs,’ he said jovially.

  Kitty wondered what his reaction would be if she said she did mind. ‘Of course not,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Are you new here?’

  ‘I only started this morning.’

  ‘Finding it all a bit strange, I suppose.’

  ‘A bit,’ Kitty whispered.

  ‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ he assured her.

  Will I, wondered Kitty after he’d gone and she wiped away the marks left on the tiles. I hate the building, for one thing, it’s every bit as horrible inside as it is out, dead gloomy. The bare red-painted bulbs in the high ceiling cast a ghostly light over the sickly-coloured walls. A weak sun was beginning to glimmer around the edges of the black blinds on the narrow windows. A nurse, scarcely out of her teens, emerged from a room further along the corridor and said irritably, ‘Why on earth don’t you pull the blinds up?’

  ‘I didn’t know I was supposed to,’ Kitty stammered.

  ‘For God’s sake, girl, if you see anything that needs doing, just do it!’

  Kitty abandoned the floor and began to struggle with the blinds, feeling as if she’d never get the hang of things. Why hadn’t she asked Miss Ellis if she could work in a factory? Eileen Costello had really enjoyed working at Dunnings in Melling, and Kitty would like to bet she’d never felt like a serf.

  She’d only managed to pull one blind up, with some difficulty, and was trying to untangle the cord of the second, when Harriet Mansell appeared with her bucket and mop. ‘You’ve done a lot,’ she said sarcastically. ‘You’re scarcely any further than when I left.’

  ‘People kept walking on it and I had to clean it again, then I was told to pull the blinds up and I’ve got this cord in a ravel.’ Kitty was close to tears. To think she’d been longing to work for years, yet at that moment, she would have given anything to be home with her dad.

  Harriet, though, looked entirely unperturbed. ‘As long as you clean yesterday’s dirt, it doesn’t matter about today’s. You’d be cleaning the floor till kingdom come if you worried about fresh marks. As to the blinds, leave them, that’s the porter’s job. He’s the only one who can do them without getting the cords all tangled up. You help Lucy in the sluice room, and I’ll finish the floor.’

  As Kitty picked up her bucket and began to hurry away, Harriet said, ‘Before you go, don’t you think it might be a good idea if I told you where the sluice room is?’

  ‘Oh, yes please.’

  ‘Turn right, then right again, and it’s the first door on the left.’

  Lucy Peterson was already hard at work emptying a row of bedpans which had been left on the sluice-room floor. Kitty gritted her teeth and tried not to look at the contents as she joined in.

  ‘Rinse them in the sink,’ directed Lucy, ‘the pee bottles, too. I’ve already filled it with disinfected water. Then lay them upside down on the ledge to dry. Make sure you wash your hands well when you’ve finished, ’case you catch something or pass germs to one of the patients. In fact, every time you go near a sink, it’s wise to wash your hands – that’s the very first thing nurses learn to do.’

  ‘Is it? Until now, I’ve only been in hospital as a visitor. I’ve made a right old mess of things so far,’ Kitty confided. ‘I can’t do anything right.’ Lucy seemed more on her level than Harriet Mansell, who was a strange sort of person altogether.

  ‘Everyone makes a cock-up of their first day. I know I did.’

  ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘Three months. I hated it at first, but now I wouldn’t be anywhere else. Trouble is, when I’m on the morning shift it’s awful hard getting me brother and sister up for work – me dad’s useless, he’s hungover most of the time.’ She suddenly grinned. ‘The thing is, the Labour Exchange have caught up with him. They want to see him on Friday. It’ll do the lazy ould sod a power of good to do a job of work.’

  ‘Is your mam dead?’ Kitty asked sympathetically.

  ‘No, she did a bunk when us three kids were only nippers, which me dad seems to regard as our fault, not his.’

  The bedpans and bottles were finished and laid neatly in rows on the slatted ledges which ran the full length of the walls on two sides of the room. Lucy quickly mopped the floor. When Kitty tried to help, the mops collided, so she edged to the corner, feeling useless.

  ‘Now it’s time to do the wards,’ Lucy said, squeezing the water from her mop and putting it over her shoulder like a rifle. ‘Come on.’

  Kitty felt overwhelmed by the barrage of admiring comments which greeted them when they entered the ward.

  ‘Well, there’s a sight for sore eyes. Two beautiful young ladies come to spruce us up.’

  ‘Good morning, me lovelies.’

  ‘Someone take me temperature, quick. I reckon it’ll bust the thermometer. Lucy, gal, you set me blood boiling, you really do!’

  ‘A new one! What’s your name, darlin’?’

  Kitty blushed and dropped her mop in embarrassment, taken aback at the sight of about twenty men all in their striped pyjamas, some still in bed, some already up and wandering around on crutc
hes in their dressing gowns, all obviously more than pleased to see them. Their happy young faces glowed the very warmest of welcomes.

  ‘I’m Kitty,’ she croaked shyly.

  ‘Come on, youse lot, get your feet off the floor, we’re in a hurry,’ Lucy said sternly, but she smiled as she spoke. ‘Go right under the beds with the mop,’ she told Kitty, ‘and move the lockers and do there. If Staff finds you’ve just gone round them, she’ll have a fit. I’ll do the window side, and you take the other.’

  ‘Right.’

  Every man had something to say when Kitty reached him.

  ‘Are you married, luv?’

  ‘Do you come from Liverpool, Kitty?’

  ‘Me sister’s got lovely pink cheeks like yours. I thought it was her for a moment when you first came in.’

  ‘I bet you’re Irish, Kitty. You’re a real wild Irish rose.’ He was as Irish as they come, this particular sailor, with a boy’s skin and a wispy stubble of hair on his childish chin. Kitty noticed both his hands were heavily bandaged. He began to sing ‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen,’ and the whole ward joined in.

  ‘Sing before breakfast, cry before tea,’ yelled Lucy.

  Kitty had almost reached the end of her side when she noticed the final bed was curtained off. She peered through and saw a figure covered entirely in bandages, from the very tip of his head down to where the bedcovers began at waist level. His arms lay like two white logs beside him.

  ‘Oh, dear God!’ she whispered. What unspeakable thing must have happened to this poor young man?

  ‘Am I supposed to clean in here?’ she asked the man in the next bed.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, luv. That’s Geordie.’

  Kitty worked as silently as she could, lifting the locker rather than sliding it along the floor as she’d done with the others. The figure didn’t move, apart from a slight breathing movement of the chest. She’d almost finished when a husky voice said painfully, ‘Who’s that?’

  There were tiny apertures in the bandages on his face where a nose and mouth should be, and two others for the ears. There were none, Kitty noticed, for the eyes.

  ‘I’m the new auxiliary,’ she said gently. ‘Me name’s Kitty.’

  ‘What time is it, Kitty?’

  ‘I’m not sure. About seven o’clock, I think.’

  ‘Is that night or morning?’

  ‘Morning.’ Never, in her entire life, had Kitty felt so moved. She sat on the edge of the bed, a lump in her throat, wanting in some way to touch and comfort the young sailor whom she didn’t know from Adam, to hold his hand or stroke his cheek.

  ‘What sort of a morning is it?’ Talking was clearly an effort. The voice sounded rusty, unused, an old man’s voice.

  ‘The sun keeps coming out, then going back in again.’

  ‘Patchy?’

  ‘That’s right, patchy.’

  He didn’t speak for a while. Kitty stayed where she was, work forgotten, wondering what he looked like, or had looked like before it had been necessary to blot out his face and body with bandages.

  His voice came again, a faint rustle. ‘Are you still there, Kitty?’

  ‘Aye, I am. What’s your name, luv?’

  ‘Everyone calls me Geordie.’

  ‘I meant your real name.’

  There was a long pause and she wondered if he’d heard. Perhaps he’d gone to sleep? But no. ‘Martin,’ he whispered. ‘Martin McCabe.’

  ‘Martin’s a nice name, much better than Geordie,’ Kitty said. She smiled at him, though the smile was wasted. She forgot he couldn’t see.

  ‘It’s the one me mother gave me.’

  ‘Quigley!’ The curtains of the cubicle were abruptly drawn back and Staff Nurse Bellamy stood there, her white veil quivering. She glared at Kitty, outraged. ‘We’ve been searching for you everywhere. What on earth are you doing, tiring out this patient when you should be working? They’re waiting for you to serve the breakfasts. Get to the kitchen this very minute. Come on, girl, move!’

  Kitty picked up her bucket and mop and stumbled out of the ward feeling totally humiliated, though several men gave her a sympathetic wink as she went by, and as she began a frantic search for the kitchen, the young Irish lad began to sing again, ‘… And when the hills are fresh and green, I’ll take you home again, Kathleen.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kitty, but by the time I’d finished my side, you’d completely disappeared. I thought you’d gone. I didn’t realise you were in Geordie’s cubicle.’ Lucy was full of apologies. Then she giggled. ‘Harriet and me thought you were fed up and had gone home.’

  ‘As if I would!’ Despite her humiliation, Kitty felt slightly better about everything. Those sailors had been thrilled to bits to see them. ‘This has made my day,’ one said, and she was convinced Martin McCabe had appreciated the few words they’d managed to exchange.

  They took the breakfasts round on a trolley, collected the dirty dishes and washed them, cleaned more bedpans, gave each man a clean white towel. The soiled towels were removed for washing, and Harriet took Kitty down to the laundry so she would know where it was in future.

  On the way, Harriet explained there were two wards on the first floor with beds for twenty men in each. ‘General Medical,’ she said, ‘which means it can be anything from getting over a ruptured appendix to exposure and frostbite.’

  ‘I noticed some patients had their hands bandaged,’ Kitty remarked.

  ‘Poor young men, their feet are bandaged, too. You don’t stand a chance if you’re pitched into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Five minutes, that’s all, and then you’re dead. Even if you’re picked up almost immediately, you’ve lost your fingers and toes.’ Harriet’s voice was devoid of the humour Kitty had come to expect. It throbbed with sympathy and not a little anger. ‘Wars are the most stupid thing imaginable, such a terrible, tragic waste of life. At least our young men are still alive, some only barely, though their bodies will be blighted for ever.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Martin – I mean, Geordie?’

  ‘He’s dying,’ Harriet said tightly. ‘His ship was torpedoed and he leaped into the ocean with the rest of the crew. Unfortunately, a slick of burning oil washed over half a dozen men. Geordie was the only one to survive. It destroyed his face and body and there’s scarcely anything left of his lungs. The shock to his system has severely damaged his heart. Under normal circumstances – if you could call any such circumstances normal – he would have been sent to the burns unit in Yorkshire, but it would be a waste of time with Geordie. Anyway, he’s not up to the journey. I suppose some people might think he’s better off dead, considering what he must look like underneath those bandages.’

  Kitty sighed. ‘Would it be all right if I went and talked to him after I’ve finished work?’

  ‘I reckon so. He hasn’t any family, so friends are what he needs. The nurses are kind, but they’re too rushed off their feet to stop and talk. The other men see Geordie as what they might have been themselves. I think he frightens them a bit.’ Harriet glanced at Kitty, her face serious. ‘You must never become emotionally involved with the patients, Kitty. Never, never, let them see you cry or be upset. They need you to be strong; not hard, just strong. All of them will leave us sooner or later, some in coffins. You must learn to accept that as part of the job.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re not a nurse yourself, Harriet – I mean a proper one.’ She was awfully wise, thought Kitty, as well as being remarkably knowledgeable.

  Harriet smiled. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I am a proper nurse. Us auxiliaries have far more to do with the patients on a day to day basis than the SRNs. Now, come with me, Kitty, and I’ll show you how to make the beds ready for the MO’s inspection. Once the great man’s on his rounds, us serfs can disappear into our cubbyhole for a welcome cup of tea.’

  Chapter 4

  Jimmy Quigley was sitting up in bed reading yesterday’s paper for the second time and feeling intensely sorry for himself. The wireless
was on and he’d already listened to Up in the Morning Early, and been told to fetch a chair and swing his legs back and forth as high as they would go.

  ‘Both at the same time?’ he enquired sourly of the presenter.

  Then came The Kitchen Front, and Freddie Grisewood gave the recipe for a cake made out of grated carrots which he promised was delicious.

  ‘Sooner you than me, mate,’ said Jimmy.

  Now the Radio Doctor was rabbiting on about the importance of regular bodily habits. ‘There is nothing more effective than the humble black-coated worker,’ he intoned, and Jimmy assumed he meant funeral directors, but it turned out to be prunes.

  He switched the wireless off in disgust. They were women’s programmes. Kitty listened to them sometimes when she first got up.

  Kitty! He felt a surge of resentment against his daughter for abandoning her ould dad. Surely she could have pressed her case a bit more firmly at the Labour Exchange? Trouble was, the girl was dead soft. Anyone could twist her round their little finger. It didn’t cross his mind that he was the most adept at this of all.

  Jimmy couldn’t stand to be alone. Whenever he was, his mind went back to the day when his entire life had changed for ever, the day Everton Football Club told him they didn’t want him any more.

  He was twenty-one, just married to Audrey, and until then, the future had been bright and full of promise. Footballers earned three, perhaps four times as much as the average worker. Not only that, they were respected, looked up to. Some became household names. Jimmy had hoped that one day he might be as well known as Dixie Dean or Ted Sagar were now.

  Instead, he’d been told he wasn’t good enough and forced to find a job, just like any ordinary man, and had gone into the Merchant Navy which was what virtually half the men in Bootle seemed to do. It wasn’t a bad life, and visiting other countries gave him a hankering to emigrate as soon as the Great War was over; Australia, Canada, a place where there was a bit of adventure. Audrey was all for it.

  Peace came at last in 1918, but then, as if Lady Luck had decided to turn her back on Jimmy Quigley altogether, the peace was shortly followed by Audrey’s death and he was left with a four-year-old daughter to bring up on his own. He left the Navy and went to work on the docks, like the other half of the men in Bootle.