A Wartime Nurse

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Well, I’m off out, got a big date tonight,’ said Joss, breaking into her thoughts.

  ‘With the lovely Beth, is it?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Just a lucky guess.’

  Joss laughed easily. ‘We’re going to the pictures to see how John Wayne won the war. It’s just as well to know in case we have to do it all again.’ He stubbed his cigarette out on the ashtray and went off to the bathroom to get ready.

  Please God, never again. The thought of Richard having to go through a war such as the last one or the one before that filled Theda with horror.

  She took her cup into the sitting-room and put on the wireless. Soft music filled the room. She sat by the fire and sipped at her tea, wondering what she would do if Joss decided to get married and wanted to set up home on his own. Which he had a perfect right to do, she reminded herself. And if that was the way things were going, it would be just as well if she prepared herself for it.

  First of all, she would have to go to a larger hospital and take her second-part midwifery. It would only be six months and then she would be well on her way to being qualified to go on the district. The thing was, would she be able to get a place in Sunderland or would she have to go elsewhere? If she had to, she didn’t know how she would manage.

  Finishing her tea, Theda took the cup out to the kitchen and began the washing up. Afterwards she would write a letter of application to the Infirmary.

  The summer and autumn of 1946 passed in a whirl of work and study, rushing to pick up Richard from Ruby, and sometimes having to rely on Joss and Beth to look after him.

  ‘Don’t worry, I don’t mind at all, I enjoy looking after him,’ Beth reassured Theda when she apologised for the umpteenth time. And Richard enjoyed being with Beth. Sometimes Theda couldn’t help a pang of jealousy when she saw his face light up when Joss and Beth came in, how he laughed when Joss threw him up in the air, how it was her brother and his girl who were there to encourage him in his first attempt at crawling and when he pulled himself upright with the aid of a chair leg.

  ‘You should have see it, Theda,’ said Beth, laughing.

  ‘I know.’ Theda was not laughing.

  ‘I meant – oh, I’m sorry, I know you would have loved to see it.’ Beth was apologetic.

  Theda leaned over Richard’s cot one night as he lay sound asleep, his thumb firmly in his mouth, not stirring when she tucked the sheet round him more securely. Once again she had got in too late for his bedtime and Joss and Beth had seen to him.

  ‘It’s good practice for when we have our own,’ said Joss. That was how Beth treated it too; she liked playing house in the cosy prefab.

  But there were times when it was just impossible for any of them to be in two places at once. Beth was a clippie on the buses, usually on the same shift as Joss, and naturally they liked it that way. Often Theda thought she wouldn’t be able to carry on for there was no one to look after the baby. Like the time he caught chicken pox right at the beginning of her course. But Theda was in quarantine too, she hadn’t thought of that, and Richard was a healthy little boy and his a very light case of the disease.

  One afternoon Theda walked with him in his push chair to the entrance of the hospital. Joss had been on early shift and had promised he would meet her at the gates and pick up the baby.

  ‘I finish at twelve-thirty. I’ve loads of time to get there from the depot,’ he assured Theda. But here it was, five to one, and there was no sign of the ancient Austin Ten which was Joss’s pride and joy.

  Richard was lying back uncomplaining, only his bright eyes darting about as he watched an ambulance negotiate the entrance and the people going backwards and forwards. Theda was gazing up the street where she expected the Austin to appear. If Joss didn’t come soon, she thought, she would just have to go home again.

  ‘Hello, it is you, isn’t it?’

  The well-remembered voice came from behind her. Theda turned round, disbelieving. Not now, not at this precise moment. Oh, no, she didn’t want to meet him again now.

  ‘Theda Wearmouth?’

  She gazed at him. He was unchanged except that he wore a well-cut suit, not at all like the demob suits most of the returned soldiers she knew wore, ill-fitting and badly put together. His eyes were the same, though, cool and grey, and his hand as he held it out to her was the same surgeon’s hand she remembered, so clean and firm and capable-looking.

  ‘Doctor Collins,’ she managed to say, and looked quickly away from him and fussed with Richard’s blanket to hide the confusion she was feeling.

  ‘I wondered where you had gone, Uncle Tucker didn’t seem to know anything—’

  ‘Theda! Eeh, lass, I’m sorry. I got held up at the depot but never mind, I’m here now. Let’s have the little chap. Take him out of his chair and I’ll put it in the boot.’

  Joss had pulled up in his car and Richard was holding his arms out to him. ‘Da, da, da,’ he was gurgling, beaming at the sight of his beloved Uncle Joss. Theda lifted him out of his chair and it was all she could do to hold him for he was straining towards Joss, kicking and struggling and beginning to protest as she held on to him.

  ‘Howay then, son,’ said Joss, and put him in the seat beside him, bolstered on either side and in the front by cushions and tied round with a leather belt. Richard stopped complaining. He didn’t mind at all being strapped in, so long as he could go with Joss.

  ‘See you tonight, love,’ he said to Theda and she nodded and watched as he pulled away from the kerb and out into the road. She turned back to Ken, hardly knowing what she was going to say to him, whether to shout at him for going away as he had or fall on him and weep. It was like a punch in the stomach to find he had gone.

  She stared through the gates and up the drive to the main door. It was opening and shutting and a crowd of people were going in and out but she couldn’t even tell if he was among them.

  He didn’t want to know her. Oh, he had been polite and friendly but obviously that was all there was to it. Slowly she walked up the drive and on to the ward.

  ‘You’re late,’ snapped Sister. She was just coming out of a delivery room and hurried past Theda to go into another. ‘Hurry up and get ready, Nurse,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘We have a busy afternoon ahead of us, I think.’

  Fortunately from Theda’s point of view it was very busy, which allowed her no time to brood or even to think about anything but her work. Later, as she took a break for tea, she put the question to one of her colleagues.

  ‘Is there a Dr Collins working in the hospital?’

  The other girl stared at her. ‘Dr Collins? No, I don’t – oh, do you mean, Mr Collins, the surgeon? Yes, of course there is. He’s worked here for almost a year now. How come you don’t know?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose I don’t notice much outside the department.’

  ‘He’s really quite a dish. I don’t know how you could have missed him. Do you know him from somewhere?’

  ‘I used to. A long time ago, during the war.’

  ‘I suppose he’s married? The best ones always are,’ the other nurse sighed. ‘Sod’s law, isn’t it?’

  Theda felt a pang so strong she had to avert her face to stop it showing. ‘I don’t know, I suppose he probably is,’ she mumbled.

  On the other side of the hospital, Ken had just finished a theatre list and was sitting in the office, writing up the notes. He put the final stroke to the last report and closed the folder, putting it on top of the pile.

  Sitting back in his chair, he picked up the cup of milky liquid which was served up as coffee, just the same as that served in most of the hospitals he had been in, and sipped the lukewarm stuff.

  Dear God, he was tired, he thought, tired and depressed. And he had yet to go round the wards and check on his patients before he would be free to go home.

  He was well aware of the reason for his depression. When he came face to face with Theda outside the hospital he had felt a surge of pleasure, delighted
to see her again. So delighted that he even missed the fact that she had a child with her, a little boy by the look of things, he had noticed later. But at first all he could see was Theda and she seemed not to have changed at all; her dark hair still framed her face, pointing up the white of her skin, her dark eyes were as large and expressive as ever. He had greeted her without thinking, such a fool he was.

  What a shock it had been when her husband drove up in that old banger of a car and the baby had smiled radiantly with her smile and held out his arms to his father. Judging by the baby’s age, she must not have wasted much time after he himself had been sent back to the front line. Uncle Tucker must have been right about her. The thought brought a bitter taste to his mouth, which had nothing to do with the disgusting coffee.

  Rising to his feet, Ken called goodbye to Theatre Sister and went out on his tour of the wards. At least he was free now to put her out of his mind altogether, as he should have done long ago.

  Joss was married in March 1947 at a small Methodist chapel in one of the half-demolished streets of Sunderland. His parents travelled up with Chuck and Norma and all four stayed at a small hotel on the seafront at Roker. Da had declined to stay in the house in Laburnum Road.

  ‘There isn’t really room for us all, pet,’ Bea had written in a letter. But Theda knew it was because of her that Da wouldn’t stay with them. After all, on other family get-togethers they had all piled into the house in West Row.

  Outside the church was the first time Theda had seen her father for fifteen months and he looked older somehow, greyer, but still as upright as he had always been.

  ‘Are you coming home now that our Joss is getting married?’ he asked her without any preliminaries. ‘We can start again, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.’

  ‘No, Da. I’m staying here. I have a good friend to look after Richard when I’m working.’

  ‘You know my views on that,’ Matt Wearmouth said, and turned his back on her.

  Theda refused to let it spoil the wedding for her. And if she felt an aching regret for what might have been, such as she’d felt when Clara got married, she put it firmly behind her. Ken Collins, Mr Collins now he had the letters FRCS after his name, had made it plain to her that he regarded her simply as an old acquaintance. Not that she would marry him now, not if he begged her. But she couldn’t marry anyone else either, so no doubt she would stay single.

  Listening to Joss and Beth making their vows before the minister, Theda looked down at Richard’s bent head as he stood beside her on the pew seat, studying the hymn book with an air of concentration. Gently she turned it round in his hands so that it was the right way up and he looked up at her with wondering grey eyes, so like his father’s.

  The father who didn’t want him, she thought, but that wasn’t fair really. She should have let him know about Richard, he had a right perhaps. But no, he had not. He had gone off without a word, hadn’t he?

  The bridal party had gone into the vestry to sign the register and the congregation sat down. There was a buzz of whispered conversation.

  ‘Go?’ demanded Richard, losing interest in the hymn book.

  ‘In a minute, darling.’

  She picked him up and sat him on her knee and he leaned against her. After a moment the organ started up the ‘Wedding March’ and the company rose to their feet as the bridal couple led them out of the chapel into the pale sunshine. Bea, as she went past, smiled happily at Theda and Richard. Matt stared straight ahead of him at Joss’s broad back.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Theda was thinking about Joss and Beth and the fact that next weekend it would be their third wedding anniversary, as she walked up and down by the school gates. She would have to remember to send a card. She sighed. Durham City was a nice place to live and work, it was true, but she did miss having them near, being able to rely on them for help with Richard. And not only that, Beth was a good friend, and Joss – well, Joss was Joss; always the same ever since they were children.

  Theda leaned against the school wall, staring at her feet as she waited for Richard’s class to come out. A light drizzle had begun to fall and she turned up the collar of her uniform coat and pulled her hat more firmly on to her head. Today she had been so determined to get here on time that she had actually arrived ten minutes early.

  A few more mothers were arriving now, some pushing prams or pushchairs. One or two spoke to her. She had become quite well-known in the few months she had been in Durham. Some of the babies in the prams she had delivered herself and these she had to admire and make favourable comments on.

  ‘How well he’s looking!’ Or: ‘Goodness, hasn’t she grown?’ she said when the mothers said hello and looked expectantly at her. It was when she lifted her head to reply to one such greeting that she noticed Mrs Carter by the gate, her shopping basket hooked over one arm.

  Of course she should ignore the woman, Theda was well aware of that, but it had been a frustrating sort of day for her.

  First of all, the letter she had been expecting concerning her application to become a Health Visitor had not turned up, then a mother had suffered unexpected complications so that Theda had had to call out the doctor to her in a hurry and her patient had been rushed into hospital for the delivery. Thankfully it had turned out all right in the end, but there had been a worrying hour or two first and not even the satisfactory lift of delivering the child herself. She looked at Mrs Carter and a surge of anger rose in her. On impulse Theda walked over to her, though she knew it was a mistake as she did it.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Carter,’ she said, and even in her own ears she sounded aggressive.

  The woman’s eyebrows soared. Evidently she thought Theda did not know her well enough to greet her so familiarly. She murmured something non-committal in reply and stared into the middle distance.

  ‘I understand you have been saying some rather unkind things about my son,’ Theda went on, twin spots of colour brightening her cheeks.

  ‘I have? You must have been misinformed. Why should I say anything about your son?’

  ‘You called him a bastard.’

  There was a murmur of shocked disapproval from the mothers near enough to hear.

  ‘Really! I did nothing of the kind. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Mrs Carter was disdainful. The other women were showing a great deal of interest now but Theda was at the stage where she didn’t care.

  ‘Do I not indeed? Richard tells me your Billy told him you did. In fact, they had a fight about it. Now I’m telling you: if you say anything else about me or my son, I’ll have you up for slander!’

  ‘Hoity-toity! Who do you think you are, threatening me? Coming out of nowhere with a bairn in tow . . . you’re no better than you should be—’

  ‘You mind what I said. Here are the children now. If you say anything before them, I’ll have the law on you.’

  Theda moved away. Battle honours to her, she thought. She had seen Miss Robinson come around the far corner of the building followed by the class walking decorously in twos. Right at the back came Richard, on his own. As he walked he was pulling off his coat and then he held it over his head to protect himself from the rain.

  ‘Richard Wearmouth!’ said Miss Robinson, stopping the column. ‘Put your coat on at once. What do you think you are doing? Your shirt and trousers will get wet.’

  ‘But my head is getting wet now, Miss Robinson,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Put your coat on,’ she ordered. ‘And don’t answer me back. How many times do I have to tell you? You should have remembered to bring your cap in any case.’ She glared at him and then turned to Theda and glared at her, as though she had behaved very naughtily indeed in having such an awkward child, Theda thought, resisting the urge to giggle. Her brief spell of anger had evaporated.

  The class moved on and stopped by the gate, waiting in silence to be dismissed. The mothers waited patiently in the rain.

  ‘Class dismiss,’ said Miss Robinson at last
, and the children scampered out, Richard’s face beaming as he saw his mother was there and he was not going to have to wait for her, all alone except for Miss Robinson.

  Theda bent over him and helped him rebutton his coat. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Billy Carter’s mother grab him by the arm and march him off down the street, almost running him off his feet with the pace she was keeping. Theda’s own mood was much lighter now, her outburst had done her good.

  ‘Mam, can we go down by the river and have a picnic?’

  ‘Richard, it’s raining. We can’t go for a picnic in the rain.’

  ‘Why not, Mam? I like picnics in the rain.’

  ‘A minute ago you didn’t want to get your head wet,’ she pointed out.

  ‘But it’s wet now, so it’s too late. We can sit in that shelter anyway, the one by the cricket field, you know. It’s got a roof,’ he insisted.

  Theda wavered. It wasn’t too cold after all and she didn’t often have the time to take him anywhere. So they bought pasties from the butcher on the parade of small shops halfway down New Elvet bank and two bottles of lemonade from the newsagents’, and sat in the shelter and ate their pasties and drank the lemonade and watched the River Wear flowing past, swift and peaty.

  A water vole slipped along the bank and plopped into the water and a family party of ducks sailed along serenely. Richard threw them bits of pastry and the mother duck led her ducklings over and they quacked excitedly as they gobbled them up, anxious not to miss any. The university rowing crew went past, practising despite the rain, the coach riding his bike along the towpath and calling the stroke. Richard was fascinated.

  He watched them raptly, not speaking, forgetting his lemonade. But the light was already beginning to fall and a cool wind was blowing on the water, rippling the surface. I’m crazy, thought Theda, shivering. We’ll have to go home. I’ll put him in a hot bath straight away. Richard was tough, never seemed to suffer from coughs and colds – or not very often. But there was no sense in taking chances.