A Wartime Nurse

by Maggie Hope

  Theda walked up the yard to the back door, feeling dispirited. It was Friday, her day off, and almost a month since Alan had gone back to wherever he was going.

  ‘I wouldn’t tell you love, even if I could,’ he’d said to her. But she knew that wherever it was it must involve parachuting out of planes and most likely over enemy territory. She was at the pictures with Clara and the news came on. She could hear the plummy voice of the announcer: ‘This is Gaumont British News,’ and there were pictures of paratroopers saluting cheerily before stepping out of a plane and floating down to earth. Except that one of the parachutes didn’t open and the camera followed him down and got closer and closer, and when it was close enough she imagined it was Alan.

  Sometimes, the parachutes all opened and she was ecstatically happy as they floated down but when they reached the earth they were surrounded by German soldiers with bayonets on their rifles and they were prodding at the paratroopers . . .

  Theda shook her head to clear it and opened the door and walked into the kitchen. Her mother had a visitor, a man. Oh, God. Theda stood, just inside the door, staring as he got to his feet. It was Mr Price. Even as she saw the buff envelope in his hand she was telling herself that there were other reasons why he had come visiting; he could have had the day off and been out walking and just happened to be passing, he could be there for many a reason. Why should she jump to the worst conclusion?

  Mr Price had risen to his feet and she gazed at him, begging him not to say the words. And Bea Wearmouth moved to her daughter’s side and took hold of her arm and drew her in towards the fire.

  ‘Theda, pet,’ she began.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Oh, I wonder, how I wonder,

  When the pit starts work on Monday,

  Will the galloway pull the tub for me?’

  Charles Wearmouth, resplendent in his Sunday suit, utility though it was, combed back his Brylcreemed hair before the press mirror as he sang. Bea frowned at his reflection in the glass.

  ‘Hush, lad,’ she whispered. ‘Can you not show a bit more sense? You know Alan was always singing that tune.’ She nodded towards Theda who was sitting in her dad’s rocking chair, one elbow propped on its wooden arm. She was staring into the fire as in a dream, her thoughts far away.

  ‘Aw, Mam, he always sang the proper words, you know he did,’ Chuck said, raising his eyebrows in pained innocence. It sometimes seemed to him that he spent his life tip-toeing round people’s feelings. Why shouldn’t he feel happy that it was his day off and he was going to meet his sweetheart? But still, Theda was his sister and remorse struck him.

  ‘It’s the tune, Chuck,’ his mother began, but Theda interrupted her. She had not been so lost in thought after all.

  ‘Never mind, Mam, I hear it often enough on the wireless anyway.’

  By, thought Bea as she regarded her elder daughter, a large family was supposed to be a consolation in your old age. But these days, the more children you had, the more worry and heartache you had to go with them. She noted the shadows under the girl’s dark eyes, and how pale she was. Were they working her too hard in that hospital? After all, she could hardly have got over poor Alan being killed, and so soon after he had been home on embarkation leave. Bea glanced at the girl’s hand, noting she was no longer wearing his engagement ring.

  Theda put the hand up to her stiff white collar and loosened the stud as though it had suddenly become too tight. She was still in her nurse’s dress though she had removed her apron and white cap, revealing the way her hair was pinned up off her neck. Some dark tendrils had escaped the pins and curled over her nape and around her temples. Bea sighed. The poor lass seemed so vulnerable somehow. She cast around for something to engage the girl’s attention; Bea didn’t believe in morbid thoughts.

  ‘Why don’t you and Clara go out for a walk before chapel, pet?’ she suggested. ‘You look really peaky. The fresh air will do you good after being cooped up in that hospital all week.’

  ‘Oh, I would but I promised to go over to Violet’s house today.’ Clara was just coming down the stairs and heard her mother’s suggestion. Her dark, curly hair, so like Theda’s and indeed all the Wearmouth family’s, was strained into rolls on top of her head in imitation of Lana Turner.

  Bea tightened her lips in annoyance. Did Clara think of no one but herself?

  ‘It’s all right, Clara,’ said Theda, who was well aware of her sister’s plans for the day and certainly didn’t want to spoil them. All she wanted was for her mother to stop treating her like a convalescent.

  Clara grinned in relief and held out a black eyebrow pencil to her sister. ‘Will you draw me in some seams?’

  ‘Righto.’

  Theda took the pencil from her sister’s hand, which was stained as much as her legs from the ‘liquid stockings’ she had been painting on. ‘Stand on a chair then,’ she said, and carefully drew straight lines from the top of her sister’s wedge-heeled shoes to the middle of her thighs, lifting her skirt to reach the last bit.

  Behind her, Chuck finished combing his hair at last and stuck the comb in the top pocket of his jacket, ready for the frequent touching up he felt his hairstyle would need during his walk with Norma Musgrove, the overman’s daughter. They had been walking out for a year now and still he dithered about getting married.

  ‘Ta-ra,’ he called as he strode out of the kitchen and down the yard. Bea watched him go up the row before looking back at the girls.

  ‘Why don’t you go with Clara, pet?’ she asked Theda. ‘I’m sure Violet won’t mind. You can all come back for your tea; I’ll open that tin of salmon I’ve got saved from last month’s ration.’

  Theda was hard put to it not to burst out laughing when she saw her sister’s dismay. Clara and her friend had dates with a couple of soldiers, or were they Canadian airmen? She remembered Violet and Clara had been talking about the Canadians stationed at Middleton St George. They were going into Bishop Auckland to the pictures at the King’s Hall. There must be more to it than usual too, Theda reckoned, for the airmen to come into Bishop Auckland; Middleton St George was nearer Darlington.

  ‘No, Mam, I don’t want to. I’ve made plans of my own for this afternoon,’ she said quickly, and Clara’s face cleared.

  ‘Oh and what might they be?’ asked Bea.

  ‘I’m . . . I’m going to change and then I thought I would go over to see Alan’s mum and dad. They’ve been asking me to go to see them and I said I might today.’

  The idea of going to see Mr and Mrs Price had but that moment jumped into her head and she surprised herself by putting it into words for she dreaded having to go. But when she thought about it, it was true: Alan’s parents had invited her and she had to go sometime. Might as well get it over with.

  ‘Mind, I don’t want you going upsetting yourself again,’ warned Bea, looking grave.

  ‘No, Mam, I won’t. I’m all right now. And, after all, I’m not the only one to lose her fiance in this war, am I?’

  Bea nodded. ‘Though, please God, not many more now, eh? Surely it can’t go on forever.’

  It was almost six o’clock when Theda came out of the Prices’ house in Shildon. The Eden bus wasn’t due for nearly half an hour but she had made the excuse that she felt like walking the two miles home for she’d felt that if she didn’t get out then she would go mad.

  ‘The fresh air will do me good,’ she had said to Mrs Price. She was too late for chapel but that didn’t worry her much; chapel didn’t mean a lot to her since Alan had been killed at Arnhem. Killed at Arnhem . . . Dear God, just hearing the words in her head sent such distress coursing through her; she wondered clinically if she could go mad.

  She set off down the road, desperately seeking something else to think about other than those awful words. The wind lifted her hair off her forehead where it had escaped from her headscarf, cold and damp on her flushed skin.

  It had been an ordeal sitting in the front room of Alan’s home, surrounded by photographs of him
and listening to his mother talking about him. She had forced herself to respond, to add her own reminiscences to those of Mrs Price. The older woman needed to talk about her lost son. Poor soul, he had been her only child.

  Theda had steeled herself to sip the too-weak tea from one of the best china cups and eaten a piece of eggless sponge cake filled with home-made plum jam, though it had taken an effort of will to swallow it. And the feeling of desolation she had been keeping at bay ever since Mr Price had called to show her the telegram from the Ministry of War with the bald statement that Alan had been killed in action rose in her and threatened to engulf her altogether.

  Walking down the bank from Shildon, the fresh air made her feel somewhat better. At least she had got the visit over. As she walked, she found the tune that her brother had been singing so light-heartedly earlier in the day running through her mind, but this time it was Alan’s voice she seemed to hear singing it:

  ‘Oh, I wonder, how I wonder,

  If the angels way up yonder,

  Will the angels play their harps for me?’

  Oh, yes, she told herself as she rounded the corner into the pit rows of Winton Colliery. Oh, yes, Alan, they will indeed. And for her own brother, Frank, only eighteen when he was killed on Dunkirk beach.

  Frank had been one of the young ones who had been in the territorials and so had gone with his marras, his mates, who had all been out of work practically since leaving school, until the year before the war when the country found a need for coal and the pit winding wheels started rolling again. Of course, that was before the government stopped the miners going to war.

  ‘The young lads didn’t stand a chance on those French beaches, strafed by the Luftwaffe,’ Joss had said. She remembered it now and her mind filled with bitterness. But these days, even with the war nearing its end, she was bitter about everything. It kept her from thinking about . . . Her mind shied away, back to Joss.

  Joss had returned with the troopship coming from Bombay, just like in that other song, he had gone through the North African campaign and on to the Italian one with the Durham Light Infantry, and had survived, thank the Lord. Did the German wives and mothers and sweethearts thank God? she wondered.

  Theda controlled her rambling thoughts as she approached home. She stopped just before she got to their gate and blew her nose and took out the powder compact, which had been Alan’s present on her last birthday, to powder her nose. Best not to let Mam see she had been upset again. Pinning a bright smile on her face, she walked up the yard to the back door.

  ‘Was it all right, pet?’ asked her mother anxiously as she went in.

  ‘Yes. Don’t worry, Mam, it was fine.’

  Bea lifted the iron kettle, weighing it in her hand to see if it held plenty of water before setting it on the fire.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you went to see them then, Theda,’ she commented. ‘It was only right. Mrs Price is a decent woman and Alan was her only lad. Now, I’ll open that tin of salmon and if you butter the bread we’ll have sandwiches for supper. Go and call your dad, will you? By the time he gets downstairs it will be ready.’

  Obediently, Theda called up the stairs and after a moment Matt Wearmouth answered: ‘I’m coming, I’m coming, there’s no need to wake the whole row,’ just as he always did.

  She heard him cough as he got out of bed and the nurse in her paused, listening. Was it worse than it had been last year? Perhaps not. But she had little doubt that he was beginning to suffer quite badly from what he called ‘the miner’s lung’. Still, if he was no worse . . . Satisfied, she returned to the table and began to spread margarine thinly on the bread. The butter ration was too precious to eat with anything as tasty as salmon. Butter was best eaten on its own on new bread, when it could be savoured properly.

  The tune that Alan had liked to sing was still running through her head, refusing to go away. The miners had taken it up, devising their own words to suit the melody.

  ‘Will the galloway pull the tubs for me?’ She found herself humming softly and the words brought to mind the time before the war when Joss had been fined five pounds for kicking a pit pony, a galloway that had refused to pull the tub and so threatened to put his whole weeks’ wages in jeopardy. She’d been a young girl at the time, studying in her spare time so that she could pass the entrance examination to Newcastle General Hospital. She remembered the row there had been at home, though.

  ‘How could you do it, lad, a poor dumb beast?’ her mother had cried. ‘And five pounds lad, it’s a mint o’ money.’

  But Theda had known why he did it and so did his mother really. For weeks Joss had come home from the pit full of frustration because Bessie the galloway had found herself a nice narrow part of the tunnel and wedged herself there, refusing to move. Oh, she was a wily pony all right. She would turn her head and look at him, Joss would say, and he swore that in the gleam of his head lamp her eyes would be triumphant. In other circumstances it would have been funny but when it meant the difference between a living wage and a pittance, oh, yes, she understood. The seam of coal was poor enough as it was. It wasn’t long after that that Joss’s name had come out of the hat when the mine had to cut down expenses. The gaffer had decided that that was the best and fairest way to choose and Joss had lost his job and had to leave Winton. For some reason, thinking of that reminded her of wild strawberries . . . what a butterfly mind she had, she chided herself.

  Theda cut the sandwiches in two and arranged them on a plate and got out the blackberry pie her mother had made with the last of the season’s berries. She would have to be getting back to the hospital as soon as tea was over. There was flu among the nurses and she had to work extra hours.

  On the bus going into town Theda was lucky enough to find a seat by the window and sat dreamily looking out of the window at the darkness. She thought about Alan, lying somewhere in the Dutch countryside, but for the first time her thoughts were not really melancholy. She had met him first on a bus and then at the dance at the church hall in Eldon. Oh, he was handsome in his soldier’s uniform with the sergeant’s stripes, his red beret tucked into his shoulder epaulette . . .

  The bus had reached her stop. She struggled to the front and got out, pulling her uniform hat firmly down on her hair for the wind was strong now. At least, she thought, she had been to see Mr and Mrs Price. Alan would have been pleased with her about that.

  Poor Alan. Oh, not because of how he had died – though bad enough, it happened to thousands in this hell of a war. No, poor Alan for being landed with a girlfriend as stupid as Theda Wearmouth! Why hadn’t she said yes that time, the last time he had been on leave? She should have gone away with him, anywhere so long as they could have been together, snatched a few days and nights on their own, gone to bed together. How could she have denied him?

  But the pain of that thought was too much for her altogether so she set off up the path that led to the road outside the hospital, trying to concentrate her mind on the ward and the work that lay in front of her.

  The Children’s Ward was quiet, the patients already bedded down for the night, the lights dimmed. Sister was in her office finishing off the report and her junior nurse was walking softly round the beds and cots, giving sips of orange juice out of feeder cups to the one or two children still awake, fetching a bedpan for one little girl who was whimpering with the need to go and fear of asking.

  ‘Nothing much to report tonight, Staff Nurse,’ said Sister. ‘By, the nights are cutting in, aren’t they? I suppose before we know where we are it’ll be winter.’ She yawned and sat back in her chair; Sister was never in a hurry to get off these nights unless her husband happened to be on leave from his unit, something which wasn’t happening very often these days to any of the soldiers, Theda knew.

  She went into the cloakroom and took off her coat and outdoor hat and pinned on her apron and cap. She looked at herself in the tiny mirror and rubbed at her cheeks, trying to bring some colour to them. You’re not the only one to lose your man, s
he told her reflection fiercely. But it didn’t help. She was the only one to lose Alan.

  Chapter Five

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t want to work with the prisoners, Staff Nurse? You’ll go where you are directed, like everyone else. Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ Matron stared sternly over her half-glasses at Theda.

  ‘But, Matron, I don’t understand why I’m being transferred? Surely I’m needed where I am, on Block Five? When we’re short-staffed as it is—’

  ‘Are you presuming to tell me my job, Staff Nurse?’

  ‘No, no Matron. I’m sorry.’

  Theda lowered her eyes and gazed at the floor, the habit of obedience to orders reasserting itself. It had been too long ingrained in her to do anything else. But at the same time a wild emotion was surging within her, churning her stomach, and the emotion was close to hatred.

  ‘Flaming prisoners-of-war!’ Chuck had said when it was first proposed that the wounded POWs should be nursed in the hutted wards of the emergency hospital, which had started out as a workhouse hospital. ‘There’s likely to be Nazis and worse in among them. Right in the middle of the town, an’ all! It’s bad enough having the Italians giving our lasses the glad eye, but Germans! Well, I ask you. Someone should complain to the council.’

  But the council had had little to say in the matter; it was a Government directive. And besides, the huts had been added to the hospital for the care of war casualties, and wounded were wounded whether they were allies or enemies. Theda had pointed the facts out to Chuck but he had simply snorted his disapproval. She dragged her wandering thoughts back to the present.