by Maggie Holt
Contents
About the Author
Also by Maggie Holt
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One: Girls in Love
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Part Two: Women Alone
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Epilogue
Copyright
About the Author
Maggie Holt was born in Farnborough, Hampshire, in 1931. She worked as a nurse and midwife for many years before marrying and moving to Manchester where her two daughters were born. Having been an avid reader and scribbler all her life she took a correspondence course in creative writing after her husband’s death in 1983, and won the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Award in 1992. She is the author of A Nurse at War (previously published as For Love of Lily by Maggie Bennett). Writing as Maggie Bennett, she is also the author of A Child’s Voice Calling, A Carriage for the Midwife and A Child of Her Time, all available from Arrow. A Nurse’s Courage was previously published as A Child at the Door under the name of Maggie Bennett.
Also by Maggie Holt
A Nurse at War (previously published as
For Love of Lily by Maggie Bennett)
Also available in Arrow by Maggie Bennett
A Child’s Voice Calling
A Carriage for the Midwife
A Child of Her Time
A Nurse’s Courage
Maggie Holt
For Audrey Yvonne Smith,
SRN, SCM, QN, HV Cert, RNT
and
Joan (Paddy) Robinson, RSCN
With love and grateful thanks for all they taught me.
‘. . . a stranger, and afraid,
In a world I never made.’
– A. E. Housman
Last Poems, XII, 1922
Prologue
BENEATH A FRAMED lithograph of Their Majesties King George V and Queen Mary, little Dickie wakes from his afternoon nap and discovers that he’s feeling much better. He shakes the high sides of his cot and calls to the wax-pale girl asleep in the bed beside him, her arms outstretched on the counterpane.
‘Wake up, Queenie, soon be teatime!’
Some of the women smile and wave to the undersized, snuffly-nosed five-year-old, but Queenie does not stir; the soft rise and fall of her chest is almost imperceptible.
‘Shut yer gob, monkey-face,’ snaps the sharp-faced older girl sitting opposite them in Women’s I. ‘Ye’re not to disturb ’er, Sister said so, cos she’s got manaemia.’
Dickie turns and stares at her.
‘What’re them things on yer legs?’
‘Them’re leg-irons, nosey, cos I got resistant rickets, if it’s any business o’ yours.’
‘Will yer die?’
‘’Course not, don’t be daft. An’ stop rattlin’ yer cage, it gets on people’s nerves.’
He sticks out his tongue at her, but before she can retaliate Nurse Court comes hurrying down the ward to check on Queenie. Dickie and the girl with the calipers are all attention.
‘’E keeps ’ollerin’ at ’er, Nurse Court – can’t yer tell ’im to shut up?’
‘An’ she made a stink, blowin’ orf!’ he retorts, grinning and wrinkling his snub nose. ‘Pooh!’
‘Now, now, Dickie, yer mustn’t be rude,’ murmurs the young nurse, relieved to see him so much improved; last week he had been fighting for breath. She gently takes Queenie’s hand and feels her pulse. The girl stirs and flutters her eyelids.
‘Had a nice sleep, dear?’ Nurse Court touches her forehead.
‘Did yer dream anyfing?’ asks Dickie.
Queenie smiles contentedly. The afternoon sunshine pours in through the opened window and bathes her in a pool of golden light. She has been halfway to heaven, carried upwards in warm and loving arms like a mother’s, safe and happy. She clings to the last wispy vapour of her dream before it fades.
‘She ain’t got no blood, ’as she, Nurse Court? Can I feed ’er wiv ’er tea when it comes rahnd?’ begs the older girl – but before the nurse can reply there is an urgent call from further up the ward and she has to leave the children.
‘Be good, poppets, I’ll be back soon’s I can,’ she promises.
‘Can yer help me sit Mrs Graves up, Nurse Smith?’
‘But I’m jus’ fetchin’ the pan for the ol’ woman in the end bed – the one ’oo’s ’ad the stroke.’
Nurse Court winces and rolls up her eyes. When will this girl learn to say old lady? Young woman is all right, but an old woman must always be a lady.
The two first-year probationers on Women’s I are both aged twenty, though Nurse Court started her training six months earlier than Smith. They have been left in charge of thirty patients, including three children, with a ward maid to help with kitchen duties and act as messenger if an emergency requires a trained nurse, when they’d have to summon Sister on Women’s II.
Women’s I is a medical ward filled with mostly chronic, long-term conditions, the results of poverty and deprivation. The patients at Booth Street Poor Law Infirmary are of the older, poorer sort, who less than twenty years ago would have been workhouse inmates; but now the soot-blackened stone building has been elevated to the status of a hospital licensed to train nurses and midwives. Girls who can’t afford the fees of the prestigious voluntary hospitals can train at a Poor Law infirmary with free bed and board and a small uniform allowance, that’s if they can survive the long hours and harsh working conditions for three years. About a third of them drop out, giving rise to situations like the one on Women’s I this hot July afternoon.
Apart from the children who are constantly on her mind, Nurse Court’s attention is centred upon two patients: young Mrs Graves in bed 7 and the woman sinking deeper into diabetic coma behind wooden-framed screens next to Sister’s desk. Her two daughters sit one on each side of her bed and Nurse Court peeps in from time to time to smile in silent sympathy at the sad-eyed women keeping vigil. There’s nothing more to be done for their mother.
But Mrs Graves has a chance. She was admitted yesterday, having fallen, or been pushed after some kind of altercation, into the Thames. Fished out by a passing bargeman, her lungs have become infected by the contaminated water, but with a young child to support, she ignored the symptoms until she collapsed and was brought into Women’s I with a high fever, gasping for breath and ominously blue around the nose and mouth. She now clutches at her right side, her eyes silently imploring Nurse Court to ease the needle-sharp pain that stabs her with every breath she takes.
‘All right, Mrs Graves, we’ll make yer comfortable, don’t worry,’ soothes the young nurse when Smith at last comes to the other side of the bed. ‘Put yer arm across her shoulder, Nurse Smith, and take hold o’ mine at the elbow, so – and put yer other arm under her knees like I’m doin’ – ready? One, two, three – and up! That’s right – and again, a bit higher still – is that better, Mrs Graves? I’ll make a nice warm poultice to put over yer bad side.’
The young woman moans
faintly. The pleuritic pain in her right side is obviously worse, but she’s not yet due for another dose of the opium tincture the house doctor has ordered. Nurse Court wonders if she could be given aspirin in the meanwhile.
While she prepares a kaolin poultice in the ward kitchen she ponders over the plight of Susan Graves who isn’t a Mrs at all, but a disgraced maidservant reduced to soliciting to support herself and the baby girl for which she has lost her place and who’s now in the dubious care of another young prostitute. The house doctor suspects a lung abscess, which could be fatal, and Nurse Court wonders what will then happen to her child – an overcrowded babies’ home, most likely, and quite possibly death from lack of care.
A cumbersome metal trolley is trundled in by the ward maid, carrying a large teapot, milk jug, cups, plates and sliced bread and margarine. Nurse Court looks round the ward: some need help with feeding, like the strokes and the confused old lady in bed 13 who keeps shouting, ‘Help! Help me, somebody, help, help!’ in her cracked old voice that most of the women have learned to ignore, though one or two are driven to yell back, ‘Shut up, Gran, for Gawd’s sake,’ not that she takes any notice.
Nurse Court asks the ward maid to see to the children’s tea, saying she will come to them as soon as she can. ‘And Nurse Smith, will yer feed number 13? Use a feeding cup and put a towel under her chin.’
At that moment a cheerfully wheezy woman with grey, begrimed skin gets out of bed 14 and offers her services.
‘’Ere, Nurse Court, I’ll feed ol’ Mrs Oo-jah for yer, an’ Nurse Smiff can go an’ see to them poor little kids. Give us the feedin’ cup, dearie.’
‘That’s really good o’ yer, Mrs Tollett, ye’re a brick,’ says Nurse Court, and the woman grins broadly and toothlessly.
‘Got a nice young man, ’ave yer, nurse? Goin’ aht wiv ’im tonight, are yer?’ she asks with a knowing wink, and chuckles at seeing a blushing response. Approaching bed 13, she expertly tucks a towel round the old lady’s scraggy neck.
‘’Ere, come on, Gran, stop ’ollerin’ for ’alf a minute an’ get this dahn yer – keep yer marf open, ’ere we go – whoops! Nice cuppa Rosie Lee, eh?’
Nurse Court pours out milky tea for Mrs Graves, and gently places the spout of the feeder on the gasping girl’s lower lip.
‘Come on, Susan, yer need to drink all yer can, so’s to get better an’ see yer little girl again.’
The faint gleam in Susan’s sunken eyes shows that she’s still fighting and Nurse Court longs for her to recover for the sake of her child. As the liquid slowly disappears she feels a tap on her shoulder and hears a sepulchral mutter in her ear.
‘Don’t want to interfere or nuffin’, Nurse Court, but ye’d better go an’ ’ave a look at ’er be’ind them screens. If yer was to ask me, I reckon she’s jus’ gorn.’
Mrs Tollett is right as usual. There is a sound of subdued weeping as Nurse Court hurries up the ward, and as soon as she sees the still, parchment-yellow face on the pillow, she nods to the daughters and beckons them to follow her. The ward maid is despatched to fetch Sister on Women’s II, and Nurse Court puts the kettle on in the kitchen to make tea for the bereaved. She’s had scarcely a minute to spare for the children this afternoon.
And as always when she looks upon death, she experiences that lurch of the heart, seeing again her mother’s drowned face on the mortuary slab.
And her father, felled like a tree in his own home.
For Nurse Court had encountered death long before she entered the Infirmary.
Part One
Girls in Love
Chapter One
THE NOTICEBOARD OUTSIDE the red-brick hall advertised times of meetings and offered an invitation to all. On this particular Sunday evening the meeting had been held outside in the Cut, now empty of the street traders that made it one of London’s oldest and largest open markets. The strains of the last hymn carried all the way down to the Lower Marsh, the well-rehearsed brass band accompanying the hearty upraised voices:
‘What a Friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear –’
Mabel stood a little way apart from the crowd, fanning herself with a hymn sheet, for the air was stifling and dust-laden. Her fair, wavy hair was once again escaping from its pins, and she put up a gloved hand to push back a stray lock under the wide-brimmed buckram hat that she had covered in navy-blue silk to match her skirt and jacket, beneath which her long-sleeved white blouse buttoned up to the neck. Harry must be sweltering, she thought, under his navy serge uniform jacket.
She nodded and smiled to familiar faces in the dispersing crowd, her widely spaced grey-blue eyes alight with easy friendliness. The Salvation Army attracted a very different mix of humanity from the congregations of the established church in which she had been brought up.
‘Good meetin’ tonight, wasn’t it?’ – ‘Yes, praise the Lord’ – ‘Peace be with yer, sister.’
Mabel was prepared for a long wait, knowing that Captain Harry Drover might be required for some time. He had stayed behind in the hall to offer up prayers for those in special need, and Mabel could picture him kneeling down now with some troubled soul, placing his hands on a possibly verminous head and asking the Lord to send down his Spirit and the gift of grace to overcome a particular trial or temptation. All sorts of men and women who would never enter a church came to the mercy seat of the Salvation Army; the drunkards, the prostitutes, the victims of all kinds of social evils came to be consoled and perhaps transformed: all were welcomed. Mabel waited until Captain Drover’s last penitent had been sent on his or her way with the Lord’s blessing.
For Harry Drover was Mabel Court’s young man. They were walking out together, an engaged couple, though marriage was still a long way off. Like thousands of others they had not the means to set up house for a year or two or three: he had just finished his training to become a fully-fledged Salvation Army officer, and she had nearly completed her first year at Booth Street Poor Law Infirmary. They both worked long hours, so their time together was all the more precious. She attended the Sunday meetings when she could and sometimes went back to his parents’ home in Battersea; this evening there would only be time for him to walk her back to Booth Street. A church clock struck nine and she sighed: she had to be in by ten.
The crowd had broken up and Mabel’s face relaxed into thoughtfulness. No longer obliged to smile, her mouth drooped a little and her eyes were shadowed. She had come on duty that morning to find Queenie’s bed empty and the other two children sadly subdued. Her heart still ached for them, for she could never leave her work entirely behind her.
This was the picture that Captain Drover saw when he came out of the hall, locking the door behind him. He placed his crested cap squarely over his light-brown, rather floppy hair and held his trombone in its case under his right arm. For a long moment he stood unobserved by her, longing to hold her, cherish her and guard her from all the misfortunes of the world; but this he knew he could not do, for it was not in his power: he believed their lives to be in the Lord’s hands.
She caught sight of him and made a quick movement.
‘Harry! I didn’t see yer come out.’
The smile that lit up her face made him catch his breath: the same smile that had won his heart four years ago when he’d worked on the railway depot with her brother Albert who’d taken him home one Friday evening. He had never forgotten his first sight of the pretty sixteen-year-old laying the table for a fish-and-chips supper and issuing orders to her younger brothers and sisters. Watching her push back a strand of silky hair from her forehead, he’d thought she was the sweetest thing he had ever seen; and when she shyly asked him to say grace for them as the packets were unwrapped and served on hot plates, his heart was hers from that moment on. He had never once looked at another girl.
He now linked arms with her and they walked down the Lower Marsh to Westminster Bridge Road and the river, where they lingered on the Albert Embankment.
; Harry wanted to tell her how lovely she looked and how much he adored her, but straight after a Salvation Army gathering the language of love did not come easily to him.
‘Good meetin’ tonight, Mabel. People are turnin’ to the Lord, what with all this talk o’ the ol’ Kaiser stirrin’ up trouble.’
‘Yer don’t really think he’d go to war with us, do yer, Harry? I’m shut up in that Infirmary, I only hear bits o’ news. Is it that serious, d’ye reckon?’
She looked up at him anxiously. For her Harry Drover was the sort of young man that any girl would trust, with his open face and honest brown eyes that looked so earnestly into hers. Her brother Albert teased him unmercifully for his lack of humour, yet they were true friends, always pleased to see each other when Albert turned up on leave from the merchant service.
‘I can’t see the Kaiser darin’ to take on the might o’ the British Empire,’ Harry replied slowly.
‘But isn’t he goin’ to war against France and Russia?’ asked Mabel.
‘Yes, and we signed a treaty with France some years back to defend each other if need be – and we’re both bound to defend the Belgians if he decided to march through their country. But no, Mabel, I reckon there’s too much against him. From what I’ve heard there’s more danger o’ civil war breakin’ out in Ireland ’cause o’ this Home Rule, and we’re more likely to have to send troops over there. I’d let ’em rule ’emselves if they want to, it’s their country.’
Mabel did not know enough about the Irish question to agree or disagree, but she trusted his judgement and was willing to be reassured. Kaiser Wilhelm was after all King George’s cousin, both being grandsons of Queen Victoria.
‘And in any case, Mabel, I don’t believe the Lord would allow such a war to break out in Europe, not in this day an’ age,’ Harry added seriously, and Mabel was content to believe her wise young man.
They strolled along Bishop’s Walk and stopped by Lambeth Pier.