A Weekend in The Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)

by Lucilla Andrews

  A Weekend in the Garden

  The Jason Trilogy Book 2

  Lucilla Andrews

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2017

  This edition first published 2017 by Corazon Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1981

  www.lucillaandrews.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images: Shutterstock © Georgethefourth/ADS Portrait/Chaadaeva Bairachnyi Dmitry/Apostrophe

  Also by Lucilla Andrews

  from Corazon Books

  One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)

  The Print Petticoat

  The Secret Armour

  Corazon Books is reissuing

  all of Lucilla Andrews’s novels.

  Be the first to know about the next reissue

  by signing up to our free newsletter.

  Go to www.lucillaandrews.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Preview: The Print Petticoat by Lucilla Andrews

  Preview: A Nurse’s Life by Jane Grant

  Preview: A Country Practice by Judith Colquhoun

  Preview: The Country Doctor by Jean McConnell

  Preview: A Doctor’s life by Robert Clifford

  Preview: Home from Home by Cath Cole

  Preview: City Hospital by Keith Miles

  JUNE 1951

  Chapter One

  It was very hot in the theatre that night. The day had been the hottest of the early June heatwave that started on Monday; the air-conditioner and the extractor fan in the funnel over the sterilizers hummed in unison like a hive of overworked bees; but at 11 p.m. the mercury in the wall thermometer nudged ninety. The cotton masks of the two surgeons were plastered to their faces, their green gowns to the white cotton T-shirts and operating trousers they wore beneath, and their damp tennis-socked feet burnt in their new white rubber theatre boots.

  The new boots had arrived in the small Garden Hospital last month. The consignment had been over-generous and all in men’s sizes. ‘But not all for the left foot, Sister,’ then observed Catherine Jason, the junior Night Sister, to the Night Superintendent.

  ‘Lads up at Ministry of Health must be slipping, lass,’ was the phlegmatic retort.

  On that Friday night, Catherine Jason in her unofficial alter ego as Night Sister Theatre, was taking the emergency operation on the unidentified young man admitted to the hospital an hour ago with severe abdominal injuries consequent on a road accident. Sister Jason was a slight, neat figure disguised in turban, mask, gown and gloves, with size 4 pre-war theatre galoshes over her uniform shoes. She stood in front instead of behind her instrument trolley set at the senior surgeon’s right, to enable her to combine the jobs of instrument nurse and surgical dresser, and the direct rays of the overhead table lights transformed the starched dog collar of the uniform dress under her gown into an iron band. If we have another emergency op. tonight, she thought, to hell with etiquette. I’m taking my damned collar off. She stepped slightly back from the rays to thread a small, curved cutting needle to a length of nylon, clipped the threaded needle into a holder, laid this on the surgeon’s end of her trolley and waited with gloved hands upraised. She had waited less than five seconds when again without a word or turning his head from the wound, the surgeon outstretched his right arm to her. She put the loaded holder in the mute open brown palm and only saw the faint nod of acknowledgement because she was watching him closely.

  It was the first time that surgeon had operated in the small, single-storey L-shaped theatre that was the only one in the hospital. Earlier that evening he had arrived from London to take over as temporary locum consultant general surgeon responsible for all general and orthopaedic surgical beds and admissions over the weekend. It was over a year since Catherine Jason had last worked with him, but then so regularly that she knew every aspect of his surgical technique and his dislike of unnecessary conversation whilst operating. What she had not known until the house-surgeon escorted the newcomer into the theatre proper from the back door of the surgeon’s room, was that she would know the locum. The Matron was off for the weekend. That night the handing over of the hospital report had been given to the Night Superintendent and Catherine by the Assistant Matron, a woman too weighed by real and imaginary responsibilities to get names right until she heard them for about a week. She had named Mr Gordon’s locum as ‘a Mr Mackenzie from St Martha’s’. Catherine’s immediate reaction to discovering the Assistant Matron’s error had been very similar to an acute electric shock. But her training, the second world war, and the peace, had taught her to keep her emotions out of her voice and eyes. Though only her forehead and eyes were visible when he came into the theatre, she had seen the locum had immediately recognized her, but was unsurprised that his ‘Evening, Sister,’ had been as non-committal as her welcome.

  She’d no time then or since to dwell on her first reaction. She took now a professional look at his pale, black-browed forehead and with her eyebrows summoned ‘the dirty’ to her side. ‘Mr MacDonald needs mopping again please,’ she murmured glancing at the puce-browed houseman across the table. ‘Then Mr Rolls.’

  Nurse Blake, ‘the dirty’ nurse, did a double-take over the first name, and grimaced behind her mask as she hurried silently for the sterile face towel reserved for drying the surgeons’ brows. She had forgotten the new pundit wasn’t Mr Gordon as both men had the same longish, thin build, dark hair and eyes and in theatre clothes looked to her identical. How could she be expected to remember his name, or come to that, anyone’s name, she reflected belligerently. She was never anywhere long enough to remember names. She was supposed to be the third-year in sole charge of Casualty at night and instead what was she? Just a flaming displaced person. For the last three weeks since she had come back on nights, every night she’d been shunted on loan to the wards, the theatre, Matron’s Office, the night switchboard ‒ you name it she was flaming there and it was flaming unfair! She loved ward and detested departmental nursing. All the other third-years in her set, the senior on nights, were in charge of wards. She longed for her own ward and all she had was Cas. ‒ when she was there. Personally, and unknown to her rightly, she blamed the old Gasworks. (The Night Superintendent.) Nurse Blake was too inexperienced in hospital administration and emotionally insecure to suspect that she had been especially chosen for her itinerant job as she was an exceptionally reliable and quick-witted third-year student nurse. She wouldn’t have believed this had she been told so by the Matron of The Garden. Nurse Blake was a slender, quietly pretty brunette with watchful hazel eyes and a wary mouth who had been a desperately homesick nine-year-old evacuee in Devon when her parents were killed in the first London blitz in September 1940. At twenty she was still incapable of accepting good news concerning herself and of not expecting
the worst to happen again.

  As ‘the dirty’ nurse she was the one gloveless member of the surgical team whose job it was to act as untouchable liaison between the others and, amongst innumerable other objects, such items as X-ray screen lights, elbow tap handles, the constant replenishing and replacing of the saline and sterile water in the double-bowl stand at the far end of the instrument trolley, sterilizer lids, the sterile saline cauldron tap, and in that theatre, the hand-switch of the mechanical sucker since the surgeons’ foot-pedal was habitually erratic. Since this was an abdominal operation she was also responsible for ‘the count’ ‒ this was the constant check to ensure used dressings equalled the figures of the fresh sterile dressings chalked up on a blackboard hanging on one of the windowless walls. Every discarded dressing and swab, she removed with long-handled ‘dirty’ forceps from the dirty-dressing buckets under the table, and arranged in the appropriate order on the large red mackintosh sheet spread on the floor beneath the blackboard. In addition to all the fetching and carrying she took all messages to and from the world outside the closed double doored main entrance from the theatre corridor.

  In the daytime, the permanent day theatre nursing staff was just large enough for ‘the dirty’ to be a theatre junior under the constant supervision of a more senior student nurse free to take over immediately if unexpected crises occurred. The day staff was not large enough to cover the night and since night theatre-calls, particularly after the opening of the new Arumchester bypass a few months ago, were almost invariably major emergencies, the loaned night ‘dirty’ was always a third year who had previously had the three months theatre training on days given to all student nurses in the Nurses’ Training School that had operated throughout the Arumchester Group of Hospitals that included The Garden, since the Group’s formation after the advent of the National Health Service almost three years ago in July, 1948. For the last year, unless Catherine Jason was acting-Night Superintendent or on nights off, she had taken all night theatre-calls.

  Last summer when Catherine had first applied for a job at The Garden, the Matron had offered her the post of Sister Theatre. ‘After eighteen months as a senior theatre staff nurse in St Martha’s, London, you’re more than ready for it, and my Sister Theatre is getting anxious to retire. Wouldn’t you consider it, Mrs Jason?’

  ‘Only if you can’t use me on nights, Matron. For the reasons I’ve just given, I’d prefer nights.’

  The Matron nodded reluctantly and with experienced eyes studied the delicate lines of the transparently fair-skinned face and neatly french-knotted silver-blonde hair of the young woman sitting with quietly folded hands across the desk. I know I’m being selfish, thought the Matron, but thank God the girl’s got a husband to keep her down here or with her qualifications and training she’d give notice after her first month. She said, ‘Yes, naturally I appreciate why you want as much free daytime as possible and can most certainly use you on nights. I urgently need a junior Night Sister. I have to have two to assist my Night Superintendent now this new law says we must always have two SRNs on at night. Without a trio to cover nights off and holidays, I’ve either to break the law, or, as I’ve been doing, loan day staff nurses on rota to the night. I haven’t one day staff I can spare for permanent nights. All my night nurses are students and they’re getting so short we’ve already had to take on a few untrained non-nursing night orderlies. And whilst ‒’ she smiled wearily, ‘I’m delighted for my night staff’s sake that the law insists on two nights off a week, I can’t pretend that doesn’t give me as big a headache as the marriage-rate. You might think that The Garden in Oakden ‒ just a little hospital in a little country town ‒ wouldn’t be plagued by nurses marrying as we’ve no hordes of medical students and residents such as you’ll be used to in a big place like Martha’s, but ‒’ she shook her head. ‘Alas! Oakden is surrounded by farmlands and young farmers back from the war or National Service and they will marry my staff nurses! Not really surprising. Young farmers need wives as badly as young doctors since in neither occupation is success easy for bachelors. And the trouble is ‒ as you know from your own experience ‒ hospital hours are just not compatible with running a home. In fact ‒’ the Matron paused abruptly. She was a kindly woman. She had been about to say that the only married nurses employed in the Arumchester Group had either been widowed, divorced or legally separated from their husbands. She substituted, ‘In fact, as I keep saying, I think our only hope will be to take back married trained nurses on a part-time basis. But neither my Management Committee nor any other of my knowledge share my views. So all we can do is face each day, or in your case it’ll be each night, as it comes. Very like we did in the war.’

  Catherine looked at her hands. ‘I can understand your problem, Matron.’

  The Matron looked at the young downcast face and recalled the telephone conversation she had had the previous evening with a senior consultant physician who still insisted on being known by the old pre-NHS title of Medical Superintendent of Oakden Sanatorium. ‘Quite so. Now, about night hours. You all come on at 8.30 p.m., go off, 8 a.m.; you have 40 minutes for the night meal taken in the night dining-room, 10 minutes for a pre-midnight tea or coffee break, 10 minutes for early morning tea at about 4 a.m. Your pay ‒’ she consulted a typed list, ‘as you want to live out ‒ approximately £34 per month. All right, Mrs Jason? Splendid! How soon can you join us?’

  ‘Do you know this fellow’s name yet, Sister?’

  Catherine shook her head at the elderly anaesthetist hunched on a high stool at the head of the table with one thin, mottled, blue-veined hand on the anaesthetic mask over the patient’s face and the other hovering over the taps and knobs of the anaesthetic machine at his side. ‘I’m afraid not, Dr Edgehurst.’ Dr Edgehurst nodded his capped egg-shaped head, re-adjusted the pince-nez clamping the mask to his long thin nose, and peered into the wound. ‘I daresay the fellow slung his jacket onto the back seat and the Identity Card in his wallet went up with the car. There it is. They will do these things.’

  Momentarily, Joe Rolls the houseman, looked up from the pair of abdominal retractors he was holding in position and caught Catherine’s eye. Had Mr Gordon been operating he would have winked at her. Joe Rolls was in his fifth month as The Garden’s one houseman and on winking terms with most of the younger sisters and senior student nurses. He was a sturdy, sandy-haired young man of twenty-three with a cheerfully pugnacious face who had arrived in the hospital for his first appointment outside his northern teaching hospital convinced that his qualifying degrees fitted him for all professional problems The Garden could provide. The week before he arrived, the Arumchester bypass was opened. Arumchester General, in the large town of that name that was twenty-seven miles from Oakden, was the senior hospital in the Group and much larger, better staffed and equipped than The Garden. But the latter was less than three miles and the former twenty-nine from what was proving the worst black spot on the new road. Another, apparently unexpected, result of the new road had been the way it had transformed the old London road that ran down from the long arm of the downs that overhung Oakden and through the town to the sea thirty miles south-east, into one of the short-cuts from London to the Kent coast. The impact of this combination of circumstances had caused Joe Rolls insomnia for the first time in his life, in his first few weeks in The Garden. Being intelligent and imaginative, he had lain awake nightly and sweated over his lack of knowledge and experience. It had not been familiarity but the joint consequences of seldom working less than one hundred and twenty hours each week and his better knowledge of Mr Gordon that ended Joe’s insomnia. Mr Gordon, the consultant general surgeon in the Group whose main responsibilities lay in The Garden, was an amiable man of forty-one who knew his surgery, was deservedly popular with his patients and the staff, lived just across the high street from the hospital, never objected to being called back unnecessarily, never expected a new young houseman to know anything and was agreeably surprised when he did. Mr Evans, the consultant
orthopaedic surgeon was less than patient with inexperience. Joe Rolls regarded Mr Evans’ alternate weekends off as high holidays and had enjoyed the last ten days more than any he had spent in The Garden. Ten days ago Mr Evans had started a touring holiday in Italy.

  Life, mused Joe, returning his attention to the retractors whilst trying to ignore the tingling numbness of his fingers, the ache across his shoulders and the heat, had been a bundle of bliss until this morning when old Alex’s mother rang from Aberdeen saying his old man had had a coronary. Panic stations for hours, then old Alex bucked as hell at getting hold of some old school pal he had met up with in Martha’s when he did a post-grad refresher there after the war. It was just before he pushed off to Arumchester for the London train that he added, ‘Off the record, Joe, watch it. George MacDonald’s been on Martha’s Staff since ’45, he was SSO (Senior Surgical Officer) there most of the war when the bloody joint copped it like nobody’s business. Couldn’t believe my eyes when I got there after they let me out of the bag. Nothing left but a trio of blocks surrounded by the rubble of the other five. They had to shove him up onto the Staff as even with the joint falling on his head he still had the best surgical statistics in Martha’s. Top class, knows it, and a bloody nice chap ‒ once you get used to him. He’s free as he was just about to go on holiday. I think you’ll get on with him all right, but just remember his bite’s worse than his bark ‒ though he can bark.’ Mr Gordon grinned. ‘And some.’

  He hadn’t barked in Cas., thought Joe. The old Super had rung the Gordons’ house directly the police-call came in. MacDonald had walked into Cas. a couple of minutes before the ambulance arrived and stood around in his natty Big Doctor’s dark suiting as if waiting for his first half-dozen registrars to show up. Then this poor nameless sod had been wheeled in and even the experienced ambulance chaps hadn’t been certain he wasn’t a B.I.D. (Brought In Dead). The young cop who had been first on the scene and followed the ambulance on his newly issued motorbike had still been a dirty shade of green. ‘Never seen nothing like it, doctor, nor never wish to. When I first see the flames and the telegraph pole gone over like a matchstick I reckoned he must have gone up with the car and then I sees him lying out the road with blood everywhere and his guts spilling all over the shop.’