A Nurse's Courage

by Maggie Holt

  ‘What about that day off ye’re supposed to get at the end o’ the month?’ he asked as they looked down at the flowing water.

  ‘We-ell, as a matter o’ fact it’s next Saturday,’ she answered after a slight hesitation. ‘And I’ve said I’ll go down to Belhampton to see Daisy – oh, yer must understand,’ she added quickly, seeing the disappointment in his eyes. ‘I haven’t seen my sisters for three months and I worry about my little Daisy, yer know I do.’

  ‘Yeah, ‘course I understand, Mabel. I was just hopin’ that – oh, never mind, I couldn’t get away Saturday anyway. Will yer stay down there overnight?’

  ‘No, I’ll get an early train and make it a day trip. Be back at Waterloo about eight, ’cause I’m on again Sunday mornin’.’

  He considered for a moment. ‘Tell yer what, Mabel, I’ll meet yer off the train an’ walk yer back to Booth Street.’

  ‘Ah, would yer? Ye’re so good to me!’ She smiled up at him and as always his heart melted.

  ‘I’d do anythin’ for yer, Mabel.’

  ‘I know.’

  It was true and not for the first time Mabel was aware of a sense of unease. For him there was no conflict between his dedication to the Salvation Army and his love for her. Men were not pulled in opposing directions as women were, she thought. She needed to complete her training, knowing that he did not really like her working at the Infirmary. He worried about the long hours and the infections she might catch from the dregs of humanity admitted to the former workhouse. His dearest wish was they would be a Salvation Army couple like his parents, like his sister Ruby and her husband, fellow soldiers together in the war against sin and social degradation. Mabel’s dearest wish was to look after children in need of love and care, and she dreamed of a day when their aims would coincide, running a children’s refuge on behalf of the Army. Harry always said that their future was in the Lord’s hands, and that if it was His will that they should work with children, He would bring it about in His own good time.

  And Harry did not want to wait another two years to be married. She knew that his parents thought her stubborn, and she suspected that they wished their son could find a more suitable young woman, more obedient to the Lord’s will and ready to devote her life to the Army as Ruby had done.

  But he had chosen Mabel Court and had stood by her like a rock through the tragedy of her parents’ deaths and the break-up of her family. Dear Harry! Just as soon as she had her certificate from Booth Street Poor Law Infirmary, they would be married at a Salvation Army ceremony where she would vow to serve the Lord and her husband. And as she had already reminded him several times, she’d be so much more use to both as a trained nurse.

  ‘Heard from Albert lately?’ he asked as they turned away from the river and skirted the gardens of the Archbishop’s Palace.

  ‘Oh, yer know my brother, he’s no writer! He sent me a birthday card in March, otherwise not a word. He’ll turn up out o’ the blue one day with his pockets full o’ back pay – though he’ll have to stay at that Sailors’ Home down by the docks, poor boy.’ Mabel sighed. ‘I miss him, Harry, an’ George too, just as I miss my Daisy – and Alice o’ course – but as long as they’re happy where they are – yer know what I mean.’

  He smiled and gave her arm a squeeze. Albert, a year younger than Mabel, was away at sea and fourteen-year-old George was working as a hand on a huge prairie farm in Alberta; he had been sent to Canada on a child emigration scheme following their father’s death – and Harry knew better than to cause Mabel distress by bringing up that subject. Her sisters Alice and Daisy had been adopted by an aunt and her husband, and lived in the country.

  It was time to return along Lambeth Road to Booth Street. The sun had gone down and the summer dusk had descended around them: it was the moment they had both been waiting for without saying so, the brief closeness when they said goodnight in a dingy brick recess near to the back entrance of the nurses’ hostel.

  ‘Dearest Mabel, I see so little o’ yer – we’re never alone, not for so much as a kiss,’ he whispered, drawing her close to him. He had put down the trombone and she felt his arms around her body, the roughness of his uniform jacket against her cheek, his lips upon her forehead, his hand on her shoulder, her waist – and lightly on the soft curving beneath the layers of jacket, blouse, liberty bodice . . .

  ‘Oh, Mabel, Mabel –’

  A sudden sharp intake of breath, a quickening pulse: Mabel was conscious of her own physical reaction, the indescribable tingling of that secret place where a man becomes part of a woman’s body. She and Harry had known each other for four years, they were closest friends, they would one day be married – but that was not allowed, was not even to be thought of.

  ‘So give us a kiss instead, Harry.’ Did she whisper the words to him, or were they uttered silently within her head? She put her arms up round his neck, letting her hands clasp together, her fingers in his hair.

  ‘Whoops, there’s yer cap gone – oh, Harry!’ She giggled nervously. ‘Sorry!’

  She would have stooped to pick up his cap with its red band and gold lettering, but he held her tightly and mumbled that it didn’t matter. Her giggle was stifled by his lips pressed on hers and she felt the tremor that ran through his whole frame. Then he released her just enough to put his lips to her ear and speak in short, jerky breaths.

  ‘Mabel, could yer – could yer think about – maybe we could be married sooner – then I – I’d be able to hold yer and love yer as yer lawful husband –’ The words were almost incoherent, but she understood. And had to give him the answer she had given before.

  ‘But we can’t, Harry, not yet. We’ve got no money, and –’

  ‘Yer could come an’ live at Falcon Terrace, Mabel. Lots o’ couples start that way, livin’ with parents – and we’d get accommodation from the Army if we were both officers.’

  He was practically pleading with her: she saw his eyes glittering in the faint light of the street lamp as he heard her refusing him what he wanted most in the world. But –

  But she could not live with his parents in a Salvationist household run by his mother.

  ‘Harry, I need to finish me trainin’, yer know I must. We’re young, we can wait, other couples have to –’

  As if at the mention of other couples, they became aware of the whisperings of another young man and a girl near to them, also having a surreptitious cuddle in the grey shadow of the Infirmary – another nurse saying goodnight to her young man and canoodling like themselves.

  Canoodling. In public, under cover of semi-darkness, after a Salvation Army meeting. The thought seemed to strike Harry at the same time, for he gave her a last despairing kiss on the cheek, replaced his cap, picked up his trombone and with a whispered ‘God bless yer, me own dearest girl’, he walked swiftly away.

  So abruptly did he leave her that she almost called out to him, but checked herself because of the other couple. And also because she felt strangely ashamed, not of her feelings for him, but because their love was somehow tarnished by this furtive snatching of kisses and embraces: it did not seem right that his faithful love for her should be dragged down to the level of vulgar canoodling.

  Suddenly sad at heart she hurried inside, ran up the stone stairway for two flights and opened the door of the room she shared with three other first-years. They were in and sitting on their beds, folding their caps for the next day. They looked up in surprise at her flushed face.

  ‘Whoa! Steady on, Court!’ said Nurse Tasker. ‘Somebody after yer?’

  ‘Thought yer was goin’ to a Sally Army do,’ said Nurse Davies with a wink at the others.

  ‘Ah, now, don’t be botherin’ her, yer can see she’s upset.’ Nurse McLoughlin’s soft accent reproved them. ‘I’ll get yer a nice cup o’ tea, Mabel, so I will.’

  She rose and went out to the little alcove along the corridor where there was a gas ring for boiling a kettle. Mabel followed her gratefully.

  ‘Norah, ye’re an angel.
It’s me young man, y’see, we’re that fond of each other, but I can’t marry him until we can get a place of our own,’ she explained, blinking back tears.

  ‘And aren’t ye the lucky one, Mabel Court, for to be havin’ a young man o’ yer own? If I had a nice fella like your Harry, I’d wait for ever an’ a day to be married.’

  Mabel’s only answer was to kiss her. Poor Norah was from a Cork orphanage and had not a relative in the world. The two girls had been drawn to each other from the very first day they had met, both being orphans, though Norah was never tired of hearing about Mabel’s two brothers and two sisters, all younger than herself and now dispersed in different directions.

  ‘Come on, Mabel, let’s take the pot an’ go back to the others.’

  ‘Done yer cap for yer, Mabel,’ said Nurse Tasker on their return.

  ‘Thanks, Betty.’ The probationers wore caps folded from lengths of finely woven cotton tied round the head and secured at the back with a double button like a collar-stud, so that the ends hung down in a ‘tail’. Depending on how skilfully they were folded, they could look charming or unflattering, or even downright comical.

  ‘Er – it’s your turn for the bath tonight, Mabel,’ said Nurse Davies, knowing that it was her own but wanting to show sympathy for her friend’s trouble, whatever it was.

  ‘No, it’s all right, Ethel, thanks all the same. You have it.’

  Mabel knew that she would have to tell them something about the evening, if only to stop them jumping to a wrong conclusion, like thinking that she and Harry had had a row.

  ‘It was a good meetin’, more people than ever turned up at the Cut,’ she said lightly. ‘Harry had to stay on for ages afterwards at the mercy seat.’

  ‘Oh, ah.’ The others murmured and nodded, eagerly waiting for her to go on. They knew that Mabel’s young man was a good chap and not bad-looking, but they couldn’t believe that he’d be much fun to walk out with. No drinking, no smoking and you could bet your life not too much of the other . . .

  ‘He just doesn’t want to wait for another two years, that’s all,’ said Mabel in a sudden rush. ‘And I couldn’t give up me trainin’ now that we’ve got this far, no more’n I could live with his parents at Battersea.’

  ‘Ah!’ The girls now understood and were in complete agreement with her.

  ‘Oh, no, Mabel, ‘course yer can’t – an’ we couldn’t carry on here without yer,’ said Ethel Davies. ‘Told me mother only last week that I’d never’ve stuck it if it hadn’t been for you, Court. Ye’ve kept me goin’ when I was ready to give up.’

  ‘Me, too – and yer couldn’t live jam-packed in a little terraced house with his parents hearin’ everythin’,’ added Betty Tasker with a significant look. ‘Oh, Mabel, don’t do it!’

  ‘If ye love each other enough, ye’ll wait an’ be glad ye waited,’ said Norah softly.

  Mabel’s eyes filled with gratefulness. How lucky she was to have such friends! They had started their training together in the previous September and had got on well from the start. Betty Tasker’s father ran a fish-and-chip shop in Kennington and Ethel Davies’s widowed mother made ends meet by dressmaking for the better-off families of Clapham, so neither girl was suitable material for the big voluntary hospitals where ‘lady probationers’ paid for their training. And Norah McLoughlin had been in service to an Englishwoman who had brought her over from Ireland and then decided that she no longer needed her, but had helped her to apply to a Poor Law infirmary for free training. Sharing the day-to-day triumphs and disasters on the wards, and the added intimacy of a cramped bedroom, the four girls had learned the basic facts about each other’s histories and knew that both Mabel’s parents were dead and her family dispersed – something they accepted as unfortunate but no worse than some of the horrific backgrounds of their patients.

  ‘Sure and isn’t it grand to have friends like us!’ Norah would exclaim from time to time and the others could only agree that it was a life saver.

  ‘And now ye’re goin’ to see yer sisters and aunts in the country,’ said Norah wistfully on the evening before Mabel’s monthly day off. ‘Little Daisy’ll be longin’ for a sight o’ ye after so long.’

  For Mabel had told her about Daisy, born when Mabel was ten, and now ten herself, the last of Annie Court’s children.

  ‘We were always extra close to each other, right from when she was born,’ Mabel recalled fondly. ‘I used to come home from school, and there she’d be, runnin’ up to me with her arms open wide and callin’ out, “Maby, Maby!” And then when she started school, I was workin’ close by at the Babies’ Mission, a sort o’ nursery where the younger children could be left and looked after, ’cause – well, a lot o’ the older girls used to miss school, kept at home to mind the babies and help out – washdays in the winter were a nightmare for my poor mum.’ Mabel shook her head at the memory of wet sheets and clothes hung up indoors, and the number of schooldays she herself had missed.

  ‘Mother o’ God, what I’d give to have brothers an’ sisters like yerself,’ sighed Norah with innocent envy. She had never known any other home but St Joseph’s Orphanage in County Cork, run by the Sisters of Mercy. ‘I haven’t a single relative in all the world.’

  Which was a timely reminder to Mabel to be thankful for having had a family life, for all its ups and downs and the double tragedy that had ended it.

  ‘Mabel, Mabel!’ Daisy came running to her with outstretched arms, just as she had done as a toddler, to be gathered in a loving embrace on the station platform. Alice, now an attractive girl of seventeen, stood back a little and rather awkwardly offered a cool cheek for Mabel to kiss. Both girls had the dark eyes and black hair inherited through their father from an unknown grandfather, while Mabel’s fair colouring was her mother’s, shared with George and little Walter who had died.

  Aunts Kate and Nell greeted their eldest niece with smiles and kisses, and Uncle Thomas had his motor car outside to take them all to Pear Tree Cottage where the Somertons lived with their two nieces. Miss Chalcott, Aunt Kate, still lived at Pinehurst, the handsome house where the three Chalcott girls had grown up. Anna-Maria had been the youngest and prettiest, the darling of her widowed father – until the scandal of her elopement with Jack Court. Chalcott had suffered a stroke and died, it was said, from the shock; and only after their unfortunate sister’s death had Kate and Nell emerged from the past and their long, bitter silence, to offer a home to the two younger girls.

  All over now, but Mabel had mixed feelings about the Belhampton connection, the well-ordered lives of her aunts and sisters. She could never reconcile the two pictures of her mother, the lovely, wilful Anna-Maria Chalcott and the worn-out drudge Annie Court, dead at thirty-seven. Mabel had dearly loved her, defending her against the malice of her mother-in-law, comforting her when little Walter died and covering up for her on the occasions when she had given way to the oblivion of the gin bottle. Grateful as she was to her aunts and Thomas Somerton for their belated kindness, she had turned down Aunt Kate’s invitation for her to live at Pinehurst as niece and companion; her heart was firmly fixed in London with Harry and her life at Booth Street.

  Dinner at the Somertons’ was at midday on that Saturday, with Aunt Kate over from Pinehurst to share it.

  ‘Are you still happy at that Infirmary, Mabel?’ she asked. ‘It sounds a very hard sort of life.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s wonderful when yer patients thank yer for what ye’ve done,’ answered Mabel eagerly. ‘I know the big teachin’ hospitals look down on the infirmaries, but Matron says we get just as good a trainin’ – sick people need nursin’ wherever they are, and besides, not havin’ medical students means that the nurses get a chance to do more. We’ve got this poor young woman in at present, very ill with pneumonia and a lung abscess – the doctor thinks she got infected when she –’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Mabel, do we have to listen to all this at the dinner table?’ asked Alice with a pained expression.

  �
��I’m sorry, but I can’t stop thinkin’ about her and her little girl,’ muttered Mabel and said no more, though Daisy was loud in her indignant defence.

  ‘I like listenin’ to everything Mabel says – it’s better than your rubbishy old dances and stuff!’

  ‘Hush, Daisy,’ reproved Aunt Nell, though Mabel smiled at her young sister. It was just as well that Alice had interrupted, for she had been about to say that Susan Graves had nearly drowned in the Thames – a painful subject in the present company.

  ‘Do you have a room to yourself, Mabel?’ asked Aunt Kate.

  ‘And are your meals adequate?’ asked Aunt Nell.

  She assured them that she had as good a bed as any of the patients, and that the food was of the same standard as theirs. She did not add that the room she shared with three other girls was cramped and ill-ventilated, nor that all the food came from the same kitchen and had to be carried across an open courtyard in all weathers to the nurses’ hostel.

  ‘Do you have to nurse people with infectious diseases?’ asked Aunt Kate with a look of distaste. ‘Consumptives and – er – other horrible diseases?’

  ‘Not very often, Aunt Kate. They get sent to isolation hospitals as soon as possible,’ replied Mabel, not adding that the Infirmary held separate clinics for the Lock cases, the syphilitics who came up for their painful injections and applications; only those in the late second or third stage of the disease were kept in wards. Her mouth briefly tightened: her aunts had never known the real reason why their sister had drowned herself.

  ‘And is there a children’s ward?’

  ‘No, we don’t get that many children, only the very poorest, and they’re put in the women’s wards, poor little souls,’ she explained, remembering Queenie. ‘Miss Nightingale thought that sick children do better nursed at home if possible, otherwise they should go in women’s wards, and older boys in men’s.’

  ‘And do you think that’s a good idea, Mabel?’

  ‘I’m really not sure, Aunt Kate. Quite a lot of ours are sent in from children’s homes and they often die because they’re so bad by the time they come in – but it’s wonderful when they get better and they’re the patients I most love lookin’ after.’