by Maggie Hope
‘’Bye, Sister. ’Bye, Staff.’ The night nurse was going. Sister Smith was looking out the case notes ready for the rounds.
‘I hate getting used to new doctors,’ she said crossly. ‘Don’t you, Staff?’
‘What? Oh, yes, Sister.’ Had he left a letter for her? Of course he would have done. When she went on her break there would be one in her pigeon hole outside the main office. But why had he had to go so suddenly? Or had he known yesterday, was that what he had been going to tell her?
‘It was very sudden, wasn’t it, Sister?’
Sister Smith looked up from the notes and stared at Theda. ‘What was?’
‘Major Collins going,’ she managed to get out.
‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’ Sister shook her head impatiently. ‘Oh, come on, get a move on, Staff. You’ll have to get things organised or Mr Kent will be here to see the new man before we get the ward tidied up. And Major Koestler will be wanting to examine him.’
Somehow, Theda got through the morning, her training taking over so that she was able to put her mind to the jobs in hand. But when she had a few minutes to herself she hurried over to the cubby holes in Block One. There was no note from Ken. She couldn’t believe it. She even put her hand in and touched the bare wood of the hole. Later, instead of going to the dining-room for lunch she went to her room and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
The afternoon was little better. She told herself Ken must have let a message with someone but no one came up to her and gave her a note or a letter. Of course he could have posted a note to her . . . he probably had, she reckoned. There was nothing to do but wait for the postman to bring her word from him.
She couldn’t go home that evening, had to work extra hours as the Staff Nurse on Block Two was again off work sick. Which was just as well, Theda told herself. She didn’t think she could face the family without breaking down and howling her frustration at the world and the unfairness of it and the war and the way individuals were sent arbitrarily away at the whim of some nameless person, moving names around on a map. And without so much as twenty-four hours’ notice.
It was only as she sat in the dining-room with a fork in her hand, pushing around the mashed potatoes and tinned beans covered in dark brown gravy and pretending to eat it whenever someone she knew came in, that a horrible suspicion rose in her mind. Perhaps he had known about it? Perhaps that was why he’d seemed so cold yesterday evening? He just didn’t know how to tell her he was going away and didn’t think that what they had together was worth carrying on.
Well, she thought, sometime during the night, to hell with him! She wasn’t going to let a man like that get her down. So she had been a bloody fool, but she had learned something. It most definitely wouldn’t happen again. Oh, no, it damn well would not. She didn’t need a man and she definitely didn’t need that man. Not her.
Deliberately she forced herself to think of her future. Tomorrow she would apply to go to Sunderland Infirmary to begin her midwifery training. The war was almost over, so she should be able to get a transfer. There was bound to be a baby boom when the soldiers came back and the Government would be well aware of that. They would need all the midwives they could train, not least because a lot of the older ones had stayed on past retirement age because of the war and would want to retire as soon as it was over.
Then, later on, she would train to go on the district; that was what she really wanted, had always been her ambition. That was the trouble with women, she told herself sternly. They were too easily distracted from their ambitions and lost sight of their goals in life. To hell with men, and especially doctors. Especially handsome doctors with cool grey eyes who took advantage of gullible nurses and then left them high and dry.
Theda turned on her side and wept. She wept for Alan and how she had betrayed his memory, and she wept for herself. Then she got out of bed and went to the bathroom and washed her face and neck in icy cold water, rubbing hard at the skin with a rough towel. Going back to bed, she burrowed under the clothes, shivering until the warmth from the blankets seeped through to her bones and then she felt calmer. It would be the last time she wept over a man, she thought.
‘Bugger!’ she said aloud into the silence but the word wasn’t strong enough. She fell asleep as she was trying to think of a better one.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘There’s an urgent message for you, Ken,’ said Tucker when he called in on the Saturday evening with his basket of eggs and butter from the farm. ‘You are to ring the hospital, right away.’
Ken groaned. That was just what he needed: an emergency at the hospital. All he wanted to do was retire to his room and try to analyse his mixed-up feelings. The day hadn’t gone at all as he had intended it to, at least the end of it hadn’t. And it was his fault, he was well aware of that. Julie had been dead for two years now, and it really was past the time he should let her memory overshadow his life. And there was Theda now, his feelings for her were . . .
‘Ken?’
‘Yes, righto. I’ll ring now, if I may?’
It took only a minute or two to get through to the porter on duty at the hospital.
‘A telegram for you, sir, from the War Office,’ the man informed him. ‘It’s marked urgent, sir. Shall I read it out? It’s been here two hours.’
‘Two hours? Then why didn’t you try to contact me? I left word of where I was.’
‘Yes, sir. But I thought you would be back tonight anyway, and it seemed a shame to spoil your leave.’ Ken remembered the porter was an old soldier invalided out of the army only the year before. He probably had the fighting man’s philosophy that if there was bad news that would wait until tomorrow, why let it spoil today? ‘Shall I open it and read it out to you, sir?’ he asked again helpfully.
‘No, I’m coming in now.’
Ken’s personal problems were forgotten when he got in to the hospital and opened the telegram. His orders were to proceed to Hull the following day, Sunday, and board a ship leaving at 8 p.m. for Le Havre, and from there onward to ‘somewhere on the Rhine’. His precise destination would be communicated to him once he was on board.
Ken felt a surge of excitement. He had thought his part in the fighting had ended with his posting to look after prisoners-of-war and now he had a chance to go on to the end. He rubbed his hand over his injured leg. It was fit enough now – there was no reason why he shouldn’t go back into service at a field hospital, tending his own countrymen.
‘I’m going back to the front,’ he informed the porter, a grin of anticipation lighting up his face so that the man was astonished. It was the last thing he himself would have been glad about. Still, it takes all sorts, the porter reflected. And that explains why the powers that be have brought in that new registrar, Doctor Strange, all of a sudden. A pity, because Major Collins was a good bloke.
‘If that’s what you want, sir, good luck to you,’ he replied.
Ken went back to his rooms and packed his bags before making his way to the doctors’ dining-room. It was deserted and he felt frustrated at having no one to talk to about his new orders. He ate his solitary dinner and retired to bed.
If he set out early enough he would be able to go back to Marsden and say goodbye to the family and take the train from there to Hull, then he could leave his car at the farm. He would write to Theda, he decided, as he wouldn’t have time to call and see her in Winton and she wouldn’t be back at the hospital until Monday. Still, she would understand. Anyone who had been through this war understood that orders were orders.
He wrote a note to put in her pigeon hole: ‘Sorry, I have been ordered back overseas in a tremendous rush. I’ll write to you. Love, Ken.’ When he had a moment, perhaps on the boat, he would think things through before writing to her properly. But not now.
The following morning he was ready to be off by eight o’clock, the only difficulty being he had to wait until Dr Strange came at nine so as to hand over. Not that there was a lot to discuss, most of hi
s patients were fairly straightforward, but courtesy demanded it. Well, he could say his farewells to Major Koestler and if he were very quick, he would have time to rush round the wards and do the same to the nursing staff.
It was all happening so quickly. He wondered why there should have to be such a hurry as he started out for the prisoners’ section. If only he had had time to talk to Theda. But he was worried about his mother, had to go over to the farm to reassure her he would be all right. It was very unlikely he would be going near the fighting. She was so frail now, that was another thing, he had hoped to have a talk with her doctor . . .
‘Good morning, Major Collins.’
It was Major Koestler coming up behind him with a white-coated stranger who could only be the new registrar.
‘It’s lucky I’ve met you – I wanted to say goodbye. I have been ordered away,’ said Ken, after acknowledging his replacement.
‘I heard so,’ Major Koestler said gravely. ‘I am sorry to see you go. May I ask where it is you are going?’
‘You may ask but I can’t tell you,’ Ken replied, smiling.
‘No, of course not.’ Major Koestler looked thoughtful. He stood aside as Ken had a few words with Dr Strange. They began to move towards the huts when Ken remembered the note for Theda.
‘If you don’t mind playing messenger boy for me, you could take this up to the staff pigeon holes and leave it in Staff Nurse Wearmouth’s,’ he said to the German. ‘Dr Strange and I can go over the patients’ notes and then I’ll be away all the sooner. I’ve a long way to go.’
Dr Koestler nodded. ‘Of course. Have a good journey.’ He took the note and walked back to Block One. He was the only German on site who was allowed out of the prisoner-of-war enclosure and even he was supposed to have someone with him at all times. But the staff were used to seeing him about the place and no one questioned his lack of an escort.
Inside the swing doors of the main block, he walked past the notice board and pigeon holes and went into the lavatory, locking the door. Perhaps there was some clue as to Major Collins’s destination in the note? One never knew what might be important. But there was nothing of importance in the note, which was disappointing. Tearing it up, he flushed it down the lavatory bowl. It had too obviously been tampered with for him to put it where it was meant to go.
As soon as she was off duty that Monday, Theda checked her box again, even though she knew it was too late. Ken was long gone, and he certainly couldn’t have come back to leave a note for her. She was being irrational, she told herself, and had to forget about him. Going to her room, she got out her writing case and composed an application to Sunderland Royal Infirmary to be considered for the midwifery course. Then she changed into her everyday clothes and went out to catch the bus to Winton Colliery, posting the letter on the way.
It wouldn’t be as easy as that, she was well aware, but at least she had taken the first step. If she was accepted it would be easier to go before the Board to ask for her release from the hospital.
She managed to find a seat on the bus, which was something to be thankful for. It was raining once again, streaking the dirty window as she stared dismally out at the blackness, relieved only by her own reflection and the dim glint on the raindrops running down the windowpane. The man sitting next to her got up and worked his way to the door and someone slipped into the vacant seat, but Theda didn’t turn away from the window.
‘You not speaking to me now, Theda Wearmouth?’
Theda looked round. It was Renee Coulson with Maurice, her toddler on her knee, his face pale and tired-looking and his thumb stuck firmly in his mouth as she stared at Theda with wide blue eyes. His mother grinned cheerfully at her.
‘You were miles away there, all right. In love, are you? Come on, tell Auntie Renee all about it. I could do with a bit of amusement. It’s bloody murder hanging about for buses in this weather – I wouldn’t be surprised if Maury caught his death. Workers only, indeed! If this isn’t bleeding work, hauling a kid about with you all the time, I don’t know what is. I tell you, it’s a break to get off to work after this. I’ll have to rub his chest with Vick when I get him home or he’ll keep me awake with his coughing all the bleeding night.’
Theda forced herself to smile. ‘Sorry, I was thinking about—’
But Renee wasn’t listening. She looked stricken for a moment. ‘Gawd, my big mouth! I forgot about your Alan, dear. It’s not so long since he went missing, is it? What a bleeding world, it is, isn’t it?’
‘That’s all right,’ Theda murmured, but Renee wasn’t really listening. She was off on a monologue, the gist of which Theda couldn’t catch so she just sat there, nodding or shaking her head according to what seemed most appropriate. She wondered what Renee would say if she knew the truth: that it was a new man occupying her thoughts, not Alan at all. She was a traitor to Alan’s memory.
At the bus stop she helped Renee off the bus with her bags and Maurice. The child had gone to sleep and now he had been wakened as his mother pushed her way through to get off the bus and was tetchily crying and refusing to be put down to walk, clinging to Renee’s shoulders with tiny iron fists.
‘I’ll carry the bags,’ offered Theda, thus condemning herself to walking slowly by their side in the rain as Renee struggled up the bank to the colliery rows, hugging the boy to her and yet managing to talk all the time: about her mother-in-law, about her husband still overseas, about how she had nowhere to go now if she went back to London and no one to go to now her family were all gone. And wasn’t it lovely that Clara was getting married on Saturday?
‘Saturday?’
‘That’s right, didn’t you know? You could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard. Isn’t it lovely and romantic? Of course it isn’t so nice that Clara will be going away. She’s been a good friend to me—’
‘Well, here we are, Renee. I’ll give you a hand in with your bags. That young man looks like he’d be better off in bed.’
‘Yes.’ Renee broke off talking to look fondly at the blond head on her shoulder. ‘I won’t bother to bath him tonight; he can wait till tomorrow. Straight upstairs for him. His gran will wash him tomorrow while I’m at work.’
If she’d been asked to hazard a guess, Theda thought, she would have said the boy hadn’t had a bath last night either as he smelled a bit stale. She followed Renee into the house and put the bags down on the kitchen table before saying goodnight and going back out to her own back door. She stood for a moment, hand on the sneck, composing herself. Then, fixing a smile on her face, she went in.
‘What a rotten night it is,’ she commented as she took off her sodden scarf and raincoat. ‘What’s for supper?’
‘Eeh, I haven’t had time to think about supper,’ said Bea. She and Clara were sitting side by side on the settee, sewing at a length of material, which Theda recognised as parachute silk.
‘See what Dean brought me, Theda,’ cried Clara, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘He’s got a special licence – we’re going to be married on Saturday! We’re making a wedding dress now.’ She suddenly shrieked as she stabbed her finger with her needle, and thrust it in her mouth, sucking loudly.
‘Aye,’ Bea remarked drily. ‘But it’s me that’s doing most of the sewing and Clara who’s going to have a red-spotted dress if she’s not careful.’
‘Can you get Saturday afternoon off?’ asked Clara anxiously. ‘It’s going to be in the chapel. We’ve asked the minister and he says it will be all right. Eeh, I hope you can come, our Theda.’
‘We’ll see,’ she said, and picked up the kettle, taking it into the pantry which held the only tap. ‘How about having some of those eggs I brought yesterday?’
‘Nay, lass. I did boiled eggs for your dad and Chuck, then I’ve had to use the rest of them for the wedding cake. Can you not smell it? It’s just about ready to come out of the oven now. I got some real currants an’ all. It’s going to taste grand. There’s a tin of beans, though. Why
don’t you have them?’
Theda sighed. ‘No, I’m not hungry really. I’ll just have a cup of tea.’ She looked at the two heads bent over the sewing. They weren’t really with her; she had never seen Clara being so industrious with a needle, she who hated to sew on a button. ‘I think I’ll just go up to bed, Mam,’ she said.
‘Righto, pet,’ her mother answered absently. ‘Have something at the hospital, did you? That’s all right then. Did you have a bad day an’ all? Tiring, I mean?’
‘You could say that,’ said Theda. ‘Goodnight then.’
She trailed up to bed feeling very low indeed. She hadn’t even wished her sister well, she realised as she crawled between the sheets. But Clara didn’t appear to have noticed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘I will expect you to work every weekend for the next few weeks, Staff Nurse,’ said Matron. She stared disapprovingly at Theda over her glasses.
‘Yes, Matron.’
‘I don’t deny that you will want to go to your sister’s wedding, but after all you have had a lot of Saturdays free lately. More than your fair share. It’s not fair to the rest of the staff.’
‘No, Matron.’
‘Well, go along then. No doubt you are needed back on the ward.’
‘Yes, Matron.’
Having been dismissed, Theda walked back to Hut K, automatically checking her pigeon hole as she passed, feeling the familiar pang of disappointment when there was nothing in it. Fool that she was, she didn’t know why she’d even looked. It was obvious she had just been a diversion for Ken for the brief time he was in Bishop Auckland. Julie was the girl he loved, whoever she was. For herself, Theda was determined to put him out of her mind altogether.
The trouble was her mind vacillated all the time. She was determined not to think of him, not to let him affect her at all, and then a moment would come when she yearned to see him again, her body longing for the touch of his hands and the surge of feeling they could induce. What a weak-minded woman she was! Ruled by her senses. But, no, her feelings for Ken were more than that, surely. She shook her head as though that would clear it of such thoughts. There was work to do.