A Wartime Nurse

by Maggie Hope

  The blue-shaded headlights of the bus gave a ghastly glow to the houses as it went around the corner on its way back to town, and then the blackness was absolute until Theda switched on her flashlight. Pointing it to the ground, more from habit than the fear of an enemy plane overhead spotting the light, she set off. It had been a long time since a German plane had been seen over this part of County Durham, she mused as she increased her pace to a fast walk towards West Row. In fact, the last one had been during the Battle of Britain and that was in daylight. It had dropped a bomb on the old pithead at Black Boy, missing the pithead further down which was in full production. The children had spent hours searching around for bits of shrapnel despite dire warnings from the authorities about the danger. There was not a child in the street that didn’t have a piece of shrapnel hidden away.

  They didn’t see danger, that was the trouble. Which was why Peter Patterson was lying in a hospital bed right now. She sighed. At least he had pulled out of his coma to open his eyes and see his mother and father hovering anxiously at the bottom of the bed.

  ‘Are you going to play war with me, Dad?’ his first words had been.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ Mr Patterson had answered. ‘How do you feel now, lad?’

  ‘Sore.’

  ‘Aye, well, it likely serves you right.’

  Theda had ushered the parents away once the immediate danger was past; they were not allowed on the children’s ward unless the child was dangerously ill. The powers that be had decided it upset the children too much.

  West Row was very dark and the back street quite deserted, every window closely curtained with the blackout material obtainable from the Co-op store. The band of blue paper that shaded half the beam of her flashlight reduced visibility further but Theda walked confidently to the gate of her home and turned up the brick-paved yard to the back door. The scene that greeted her as she stepped into the kitchen was all the brighter for the gloom outside.

  ‘Now then, how’s my best girl?’

  Dad was sitting in his rocker, dressed in his pit clothes for he was on fore shift and Mam sat opposite him with a smile on her face bright enough to break any blackout regulations. But it was the soldier standing before the black-leaded range with his hands on his hips and a wide grin on his face who had spoken. Theda flew across the room and flung her arms around him.

  ‘Joss! I didn’t know you were back in England, let alone coming home on leave. Why didn’t you let us know?’ She leaned back in his arms and gazed up at him in delight before giving him an extra hug for good measure.

  ‘I didn’t know myself, that’s why,’ answered her brother, laughing down at her. His eyes were strikingly dark, as were all the Wearmouth eyes. But in his case his face was dark too, tanned deeply by his years in India where he had served as a young soldier after being laid off at the pit. The tan remained, thanks to his time in North Africa and, later, Italy.

  ‘I’m just making supper, Theda,’ Bea interjected. ‘It’s a shame we used the salmon yesterday. If I’d known – well, never mind, I still had the corned beef and I’ve made a hash and dumplings. There’s plenty for an extra one.’ She lifted the lid of the pan, which was sitting half in the fire and half on the bar, and an appetising smell wafted through the kitchen.

  ‘Well,’ said Joss, ‘I thought I’d had enough bully beef in the army to last a lifetime. And here I am, coming home to it!’ He winked at his father.

  ‘Oh,’ said Bea, distressed. ‘It’s all I have, lad. I’ve made herby dumplings though, I had a bit of suet from the butcher today. Your dad and Chuck get eightpennyworth of extra meat each for working down the pit but I have to take it in corned beef.’

  Joss put an arm around her and laughed. ‘Only joking, Mam, I love your corned beef hash. It bears no resemblance to what we get in the army anyway. Fetch it on, I’m starving.’ He thought of something and fished in the pocket of his battledress to pull out a paper. ‘You can get more meat tomorrow, I’ve brought my emergency ration card. Just forty-eight hours’ worth but better than nothing.’

  Theda watched happily as the family gathered round the kitchen table. By, she thought, it’s grand to have him home. It was almost two years since they had last seen him but now he was here it seemed as though they had seen him yesterday.

  After supper, Theda and Clara reluctantly decided it was time they went to bed.

  ‘I have to be up at five to catch the bus,’ said Clara. ‘Violet and me are on day shift this week.’

  ‘Well, mind you take your flashlight this time,’ Theda said drily, and they all laughed but Joss.

  ‘What’s this then?’ he asked, looking from Theda to Clara.

  ‘Aw, take no notice, Joss, they’re just getting at me,’ said Clara crossly.

  ‘Clara missed a shift last week,’ her mother explained. ‘She was late getting up and by the time she was ready the others had gone and she had to walk to the bus on her own. And then she forgot her flashlight. She decided to take a shortcut across the gardens and ended up getting lost in the dark.’

  Clara frowned fiercely at the amused expressions around her. ‘It wasn’t funny,’ she observed. ‘I thought I’d never find my way. I’d been walking round in circles and somebody’s goat frightened me to death. And I tripped over its dratted chain and fell into the muck and messed up my trousers.’

  ‘No, pet, I can see it wouldn’t be funny,’ said Joss solemnly, and then spoilt it by bursting out laughing.

  Clara tossed her head in the air. ‘I’m off to bed. Mind, don’t make so much noise neither. Think on – my work is just as important as yours, and hard an’ all in that munitions factory.’

  ‘Yes, Clara. Goodnight, pet.’

  Joss managed to keep his face straight while his young sister made a dignified exit, and then he pulled down the corners of his mouth and gazed round at the others wickedly.

  ‘Aye, well,’ said Matt as he laced up his boots. ‘She’s right there. Mind you, sometimes she comes home with more of that yellow powder on her than I have coal dust. It cannot be good for her. By, it smells like fire-damp gas! But the pay’s good, I’ll give you that. She fetches in more than I do.’

  In fact, Clara earned more than any of them, Chuck included, and he was on top wages at the pit, hewing, thought Theda as she too said her goodnights and followed Clara up the stairs. It was a bone of contention with the miners that though they worked an extra day during the war they earned little more than they had done before, unlike other workers. But at last there were some signs of its being put right, the government currently negotiating with the union.

  Next morning, when Theda went down to the kitchen, there was a brown paper bag on the table and a note from Joss with her name on it.

  ‘I thought you could take these for the bairns on the ward,’ was written in his careless scrawl.

  Theda picked up the bag and opened it. Inside were six oranges and four bananas. The bananas were slightly over ripe but not spoiled and Theda gazed at them in delight. It was four years since she had last seen a banana and she lifted one to her nose, breathing in the almost forgotten aroma. Smiling, she slipped it back into the bag. She had to get on if she wanted breakfast before she went to work.

  The kettle was still warm and she placed it on the gas ring by the side of the range and lit the gas before spreading margarine on a slice of bread she had cut from the loaf and covering it with a smear of jam. There was a small amount of dried egg left in the packet but she would leave it for someone else, and she had eaten her four ounces of bacon on her day off. But the milkman had come early so at least there was real milk for the tea.

  ‘Gosh!’ said Nurse Elliot, peering over Theda’s shoulder at the exotic fruit she was cutting up and spreading on bread and butter to make it go further. She placed a piece on each of the children’s tea plates along with a section of orange, careful that there was an equal share on each. ‘Don’t bananas look funny, Staff Nurse? I’d forgotten what they were like. Do you know, I u
sed to love banana custard before the war.’

  ‘We didn’t see many bananas before the war,’ commented Theda. ‘Not even in the local Co-op store. There wasn’t much call for them in a mining village with most of the miners out of work.’

  Nurse Elliot, a Red Cross nurse, looked at her blankly. She was not from a mining village, her father was a bank manager in the town.

  ‘Come on,’ said Theda, ‘let’s get them on the trolley and pass them out. I want to see the children’s faces when they taste the banana.’

  The reactions of the children were all she could have hoped for. Only Peter Patterson was not well enough yet for solid food but Theda was thankful that he was at least taking an interest in his surroundings now. He had been to X-ray but no skull fracture had been discerned, though he had been badly concussed. His arm, now plastered and supported in a sling, lay heavily on top of the bedclothes.

  ‘And lucky for you, young man, that you weren’t killed,’ Sister had said sternly. ‘Or at least suffered a fractured spine. Why, you could have been paralysed for life.’

  ‘What’s a factured spine, Nurse?’ the boy had whispered to Theda after Sister had returned to her office.

  ‘Fractured spine,’ Theda had replied. ‘And it means a broken back.’

  Peter had blanched. He knew well enough what that was and he lay quite still for the rest of the day. Mr Gates, a man who lived at the other end of his street, had a broken back from the pit and had to be wheeled about in a long carriage as though he were a baby.

  David, the boy recovering from an appendicectomy, gazed dubiously at his bread and banana. ‘I’m not sure I like it, Nurse,’ he said.

  ‘Go on, have a bite,’ urged Theda, and he took a tiny morsel in his mouth. His face cleared and he grinned.

  ‘By, it’s lovely, isn’t it?’

  All in all, the fruit, especially the bananas, were an enormous success, Theda reported to Joss that evening.

  ‘Where did you get them? I didn’t know they grew bananas in Italy, Joss,’ she said.

  He tapped his nose and looked mysterious. ‘Now then, careless talk costs lives.’

  ‘Oh, aye, and where is the German spy who might be listening in here?’ asked Chuck, sitting in his black having just come in from the pit as he had worked overtime on his back shift. Chuck was training to be a deputy overman and had ambitions to raise himself to manager at least in time to take over from Tucker Cornish when he retired. Norma, his girl, fuelled his ambitions. She fancied rising above the pit rows and becoming mistress of the manager’s house on the outskirts of the village.

  Next morning Joss travelled into Bishop Auckland with Theda, his forty-eight-hour leave over, gone in a flash. Now he had to catch a train to somewhere in the south of England to join up with his regiment and then they would be off again, to somewhere on the continent.

  They walked up the path from the bus stop together, Joss with his kitbag on his shoulder and Theda in her nurse’s uniform. They paused on the station bridge where she had to turn left for the hospital and Joss had to cross the road for the station.

  ‘Mind you look after yourself, our Joss,’ she admonished. ‘Don’t walk under a tank, especially not a German one.’

  Joss grinned. ‘Nay, lass, you know me. I keep my head down all right, I’m not one for trouble.’ He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and then changed his mind and hugged her tight so that the passers by turned to look at the handsome soldier and his girl saying their goodbyes and Theda thumped him on the chest.

  ‘Behave yourself, our Joss,’ she said, and his grin grew wider. He stepped back and waved cheerily before striding the road, whistling merrily: ‘I’m Going to Get Lit Up When the Lights Go On in London’.

  Theda gazed after him until he had rounded the corner into the station before she continued on her way to the hospital. Oh, well, she thought, Joss had survived Tobruk and the landings in Sicily – maybe he did bear a charmed life. In any case, it was no good worrying about it. With a bit of luck the war would be over soon.

  The following Sunday, Theda had to report to Sister Smith on Hut K. A man in hospital blue came out of the toilets as she entered the ward.

  ‘Morgen, Nurse,’ he said, bowing his head in what she knew was a courteous gesture though it seemed very foreign to her.

  ‘Good morning,’ she answered, nevertheless. There were two more ambulant patients in the kitchen, she saw, murmuring in what she presumed was German as they washed up the breakfast pots. Of course, she thought, they would have their own men working as orderlies. Well, it would save the nurses a lot of cleaning work, she didn’t object to that. She took off her hat and coat in the tiny cloakroom and put on her apron and white cap. Taking a deep breath, she walked down the corridor to Sister’s office and knocked on the door.

  Afterwards, when the day was over and she was free to leave Hut K, Theda was startled to realise she had almost forgotten her patients were anything other than British. Which was strange, she mused as she walked down the ramp between the wards to the dining-room, for there had been plenty of reminders, what with the difficulties with the language and the exuberant behaviour of the few Italians, whose favourite game appeared to be to flirt with the junior nurses, calling out outrageous remarks to make them blush. She was pleased that most of them were convalescent; they would soon be on their way back to the main camp at Weardale.

  The young boy she had noticed on her first visit to the ward was still poorly. He was first on her long list when she set out round the ward with her dressing trolley, accompanied by a Red Cross nurse, a pretty nineteen-year-old with rosy cheeks and green eyes. Nurse Cullen, she introduced herself as, and pushed a lock of bright auburn hair back under her cap before Matron came round and saw it dangling on her collar.

  ‘I haven’t seen you before,’ said Theda as they turned down the sheet from the boy’s arm and shoulder.

  ‘No, I only came last month,’ Nurse Cullen admitted, and Theda’s spirits sank.

  ‘Can you take off the bandage while I scrub up?’ she said, and backed out of the screens. As she took up the scrubbing brush at the sink at the end of the ward, she thought, well, she would see what sort of a nurse the girl was going to make soon enough. By the end of this dressing round in fact.

  Surprisingly good, she had to admit later. Nurse Cullen had gentle hands, safe and sure, causing the minimum of discomfort to the patients as she worked and seeming to know just what Theda wanted her to do.

  The young soldier, Johann his name was, according to the chart on the end of the bed, was cause for concern. He had an inflamed wound on his shoulder which Theda guessed was probably causing his pyrexia and as she cleaned it with Eusol and packed it with sterile gauze she could feel that his skin was hot and febrile and hear him muttering constantly and incomprehensibly.

  The dressing round was hardly over and Theda was washing her hands when the main doors opened and into the ward came Major Collins, favouring his left leg a little, Theda noticed, even as her heart sank as she saw the German doctor at his side. Sister was on her break, she remembered, still had ten minutes to go. The doctors were early.

  Major Collins halted at the door of the office and looked up the ward directly at Theda. She finished drying her hands and went to meet him.

  ‘Morning, Doctor. Sister isn’t back from her break,’ she said, acknowledging Major Koestler with a brief nod.

  ‘No matter, Staff, I have something I want to do in the office. Will you take the round with Major Koestler this morning?’

  No! was Theda’s instinctive reaction. For a moment she thought she had shouted it out loud but it resounded only in her mind. She tried to control her expression, not let it show on her face, but something must have done.

  ‘You will do the round with Major Koestler,’ said the Englishman, and this time it was an order.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Theda.

  Chapter Seven

  Theda walked across to Block Five during her dinner break. She had the la
test copy of Film Fun for the children in the side ward and wasn’t feeling very hungry anyway, the last hour on the ward having taken away her appetite. In any case, she felt like a chat with Laura Jenkins if the ward wasn’t too busy.

  Major Collins had made her feel like a naughty child, she thought rebelliously. Surely it was natural to feel some resentment toward the German doctor? After almost five years of war, and Alan and everything? Oh, he had said nothing, he hadn’t needed to: it was his tone of voice when he spoke to her; it was the steely look in his eyes when he looked at her.

  ‘Perhaps you would find it easier if you called me Doctor?’ Major Koestler had suggested, looking at her keenly. Obviously he was well aware of the tension in the atmosphere and what had caused it.

  ‘If you insist, Major Koestler,’ she had said stiffly, and he instantly turned his attention to the patients, saying no more to her than was absolutely necessary for them to get round the ward. But the constraint she felt soon eased as her professionalism took over.

  The Italians, usually so vociferous, especially when there were pretty nurses about, fell silent as he approached their end though Major Koestler did not examine them, most of them being medical rather than surgical cases anyway, Theda realised. They had been prisoners since the North African campaign and their main camp was further up the dale.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said to them. They stared back, their normally merry faces impassive, but he didn’t appear to notice anything, merely going smoothly to a middle-aged German who was sitting by the stove, one arm in a sling.

  ‘Don’t get up,’ he said in German, or at least that was what Theda surmised he said for the elderly soldier half-rose from his seat and then subsided again.

  Afterwards, when the round with Major Koestler was over and she had gone back into the office with him to leave the case notes, the English doctor had looked at her impersonally, almost as if he had trouble recollecting who she was. Sister was back and he was deep in an animated discussion with her over Johann Meier.