by Maggie Hope
‘Oh aye, so you’ve come to see me at last,’ she greeted Ada. ‘After all I did for you an’ all.’
‘Hello, Auntie,’ said Ada, ignoring the old woman’s querulous tone. When she had worked in St Margaret’s she had got used to old ladies and their bad tempers. Though when she thought about it, Auntie Doris had been little different when she lived in Finkle Street. Ada forced herself to smile.
‘I’ve brought you some flowers, Auntie,’ she said, ‘do you want to smell them? Violets are lovely.’ Auntie Doris curled her nose and shook her head.
‘I can’t abide them nasty smelly things.’
Not put out, Ada laid them on the bedside cabinet top, the only flowers in the ward. She’d see about something to put them in when she went out, she thought.
‘How are you, Auntie?’ she asked brightly.
‘How do you expect me to be, lying here? Eeh, look what I’ve come to, me, who’s worked hard all me life.’ She looked hard at Ada, taking in the nice costume and the warm woollen coat, her gaze lingering on the fur collar.
‘Mind, you seem to have done all right for yourself. Married a toff, did you?’
I did, Ada thought wryly, a little surprised at it; she hadn’t thought of it that way before.
‘Aye, well, you would fall on your feet, just like our Ada, no matter what she did she fell on her feet. I suppose that’s why she didn’t come back,’ Auntie Doris said sourly. A speculative gleam came to her eye. ‘Have you come to take me out? It would be only right, after all I took you and I didn’t have to, you had no claim on me.’
‘Oh, Auntie, I can’t. I’m a nurse now, I’m going to live at the hospital. I couldn’t have you living with me even if –’ She stopped, realising what she was going to say.
‘Even if you wanted to, you mean, don’t you? Bye, you always were an ungrateful little bitch. I should have knocked it out of you when I had the chance.’
Ada took little notice as Auntie Doris went into a tirade of abuse. There was a time when it would have had its desired effect on her but now she took it for what it was, an old woman releasing her pent-up rage for the situation she found herself in. But Auntie Doris was getting too excited, she’d better leave.
‘I’ll come back to see you, Auntie, first chance I get,’ she said and hurried off down the ward.
She travelled back to Durham in a reflective frame of mind. The events of the last few days had been momentous for her. Once again she thought of her mother – had she really fallen on her feet as Auntie Doris had said she would? She would try again to find her, she thought suddenly.
Arriving back in New Elvet, the first thing Ada did was write an advertisement and send it off to the London papers.
‘A letter for you, Sister Gray!’
Ada was hurrying from the nurses’ dining room to the men’s medical ward one morning after breakfast. She was in a hurry, for she was now Sister in charge of the ward and liked to be punctual for the report from the night staff. She paused impatiently as the porter called her from the hospital entrance, and retraced her steps. It was from Tom, she saw as she recognised the familiar handwriting on the buff-coloured envelope. The usual twinge of guilt assailed her as she tucked it into the bib of her apron.
‘Thank you, Geordie!’ She smiled at the cheery little man with the blue-black scars on his hands and face from a lifetime spent down the pits. Geordie beamed at her, he was glad Sister had got word from her husband. He knew it was her husband because of the army envelope.
‘I hope he’s in good fettle, Sister!’ Geordie stumped off back to his post.
‘Thank you,’ Ada answered as she went on her way. Most of her patients were miners as Geordie had been before his accident, which had given him a permanent limp. Some of them were ex-miners or their wives who had fallen ill. They kept their cheery spirits, though, she thought as she shed her cloak and straightened her apron before taking the report from the night staff nurse. She shivered slightly; there was an early morning mist which was damp and cold, a penetrating cold. Perhaps it was a sea fret rolling in from the coast, that sometimes happened.
Nice to think it was Wednesday and her half-day. She would get right away from the hospital and do a little shopping if she could manage it. It was 16 December already, time was getting on.
By a quarter past eight the beds were all freshly made and breakfast dishes cleared away. The ward became quiet as the men dozed after all the early-morning activity. Ada was preparing the treatment trolley, watching the patients as she did so, reminding herself which patient needed which treatment and putting the appropriate articles ready for use. There was a pleasant hum of conversation among the patients who were recovering and well enough to start taking an interest in life again.
And then, quite out of the blue, the very walls shook and the windows rattled as distant but loud thuds and booms resounded in the air.
Ada froze, astonished. A particularly loud bang caused the enamel kidney dishes to dance on the trolley. Patients started up in alarm and Ada collected herself swiftly.
‘Nurse Brown!’ she called urgently as an old man attempted to get out of bed. ‘Quickly, now!’
Ada’s young probationer rushed out of the sluice, where she had been cleaning bedpans, her eyes wide and frightened. The ward had erupted noisily, there were raised voices and panic-stricken cries.
‘An explosion! A pit explosion!’ one of the men shouted.
‘No, man, it’s the Hun. They’re here, we’ll all be murdered in our beds!’ cried another and tried to climb out of bed. Ada walked over to him, pushed him firmly back between the sheets and tucked him in, looking round for signs of panic among the others as she did so.
‘Nonsense! Of course the Germans aren’t here,’ she said, though in truth she wondered about it herself. The nurses had their hands full trying to calm the patients and keep them from attempting to flee their beds while the strange thuds and booms continued.
Had there been a pit explosion? Dear God, please not, Ada prayed. In her time as a probationer she had had to help with some of the injured men from a pit explosion and she never wanted to see it again. The hospital had been flooded with men crushed and broken when the roof of the tunnel where they had been working caved in. No, it couldn’t be a pit explosion, the booming was going on too long for that. Apprehension flooded through her as she wondered what it could be.
As suddenly as it started, the noise faded away and the ward quietened down. The old men lay back on their pillows, looking at one another, and the younger ones began to talk excitedly. Whatever it was, perhaps they were not going to be murdered that day.
‘What do you think it was, Sister?’ Nurse Brown was still pale and shaken as they began the treatment round with the trolley. ‘Do you think the Germans have landed?’
‘Oh no, I don’t think so. I hardly think they would land up here in the northeast. No, I’m sure we’ll soon find out what it was. In the meantime try to keep your feelings to yourself. We are not here to alarm the patients.’ Ada spoke severely. It was for the nursing staff to keep their heads no matter what, that was the teaching of the great Florence Nightingale and it still held true today. Nurse Brown looked suitably chastened at the reprimand, blushing furiously. She carried on with the work without saying any more.
Ada discovered the reason for the disturbance later in the morning when she found herself summoned to Matron’s office.
‘Ah, Sister Gray.’ Matron looked up from her desk where she was studying the off-duty chart. ‘It’s your afternoon off, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Matron,’ Ada admitted. Was she going to be asked to work through her free time yet again? Inwardly she sighed; it was getting to be the usual thing.
Matron’s reply came as a complete surprise but the thuds and booms of the morning were explained, though the explanation brought Ada’s heart to her mouth.
‘I have some bad news, Sister. Word has come through by telephone that all off-duty staff, medical and nursing, are needed a
t Hartlepool,’ she said. ‘German warships have bombarded the coast and there is a great deal of destruction in the town. We don’t know yet how many are injured. Are you willing to go?’
‘Of course, Matron,’ Ada had no hesitation in replying. All thoughts of her afternoon shopping were abandoned. She wondered how many had been injured; she had only a hazy idea of what damage the guns of a warship could do to a town but guessed it might be extensive.
‘Good.’ Matron smiled her approval. ‘You can leave on the twelve-thirty train, you’d better go now and get ready. Report to the Cameron Hospital.’ Matron looked down at her chart. I’m hoping to send at least six nurses. By the way, you’d better pack an overnight bag. Goodness knows what you’ll find when you get there.’
She shook her head sadly as Ada left the office. Now she had the task of reorganising the nursing staff left to her to cover the wards.
Back in the Nurses’ Home, Ada briskly set about preparing to leave. Taking out her small travelling bag, she put in a couple of clean aprons and caps alongside a change of underwear and her night things. It wasn’t until she undid the bib of the apron she was wearing before changing into her outdoor bonnet and cloak that Tom’s letter fell to the floor.
Picking it up she gazed at it guiltily, she had forgotten all about it. Well, she thought, she could read it on the train. She barely had time to get to the station on time as it was. Swiftly she donned the distinctive outdoor bonnet and cloak and hurried out of the door.
Once safely on the train, Ada was lucky enough to find a seat, albeit squashed in with four other nurses on a bench in a third-class compartment which was meant to take only four in the first place. But she was in the corner and was able to read the letter as the others chatted among themselves, speculating what they would find when they got to Hartlepool. The letter was brief, almost curt, and Ada couldn’t help thinking about the happy, chatty letters he used to send her in his university days.
Dear Ada, I hope you are well as I am. I thought I would let you know that I am going off to xxx. [Here the words had been erased by the censor but Ada knew that he meant he was embarking for the continent.] I am back in England for a few days but have decided not to come home but spend the leave I have due to me here in London. I will write to you when I can.
Regards,
Tom.
Guilt once again struck Ada. Because of her he would not be coming home to see his family before he went out again to France or Belgium or wherever it was he was going. She had been an ungrateful fool or worse, for she had hurt the family which had befriended her. She thought about Virginia’s reaction if she ever found out that Tom was back in England and not coming home. It didn’t bear thinking about. Folding the note, she replaced it in her bag. This was no time for personal thoughts and emotions. The train was pulling into Hartlepool Station and the nurses were about to face they knew not what; none of them had had to deal with the victims of shelling before. Already they could hear some of the pandemonium outside.
Getting down from the train with four of her colleagues from Durham, Ada saw immediately some of the results of the shelling. The station yard had been hit and workmen were busy trying to clear a way for wheeled traffic, that was the shouting she had heard.
‘Can you get us a cab to the Cameron Hospital?’ she enquired of a porter with a wheelbarrow full of rubble rather than the luggage which was his usual load. ‘Or at least tell us where we can get one?’ she amended, for it had been silly of her to ask. He released the handles of the barrow to rub a grimy hand down the side of his face, leaving sooty marks on his sweat-stained cheek.
‘I dunno, Sister,’ he replied. ‘All the cabs are busy like, with those injured, you know.’
‘It’s not far to walk,’ one of the nurses broke in. ‘I know the way. We’ll be better off walking in any case.’
The small party of nurses picked their way out of the station yard and set off for the hospital. When they arrived, the Cameron was a hive of activity. Injured men, women and children were being brought in even now, so many hours after the shelling had happened, and the steady flow of people seemed endless. The nurses from Durham were welcomed with open arms by the hard-pressed staff and were soon hard at work helping to calm both the injured and their families, helping to strap up broken limbs, clean and bandage wounds and prepare patients who needed surgery.
In fact they were doing the work of any casualty department but on a much larger scale. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of patients for them to treat before sending them on to where porters were putting up extra beds on the wards.
‘There now,’ said Ada as she straightened up after bandaging a splint into place on a young boy’s broken arm. ‘You’ll be all right now, fine and dandy. John, isn’t it? You’ll see, you’ll be as right as rain in a week or two, John.’ She paused for a moment before going on to her next case and smiled down at the thin face of the boy who was scratched and bruised from his encounter with a falling wall. He was white with the shock and pain, his eyes ringed with tear-sparkling lashes.
‘Bloody Hun!’
The boy’s father, a burly fisherman, put his arm around him protectively. ‘Aye, but never you mind, lad, we’ll get our own back, aye and more besides!’ He looked up at Ada. ‘Did you see how the patrol boats chased them off, Sister? Bye, I’d bloody well like to see them blown out of the sea, begging your pardon, Sister, for me swearing, but it’s enough to make a saint swear, it is that, shelling and killing innocent bairns!’
His wife shushed him uncomfortably. She too had her arm in a sling but her eyes were on her son, anxious and dark with shock.
‘Don’t you shush me, woman!’ The father gave vent to his feelings. ‘I’m telling ye, they won’t get the better of us, by hell they won’t. I’ll be volunteering for the navy the day. And by God, we’ll chase them to hell and back, we’ll show them not to fight their war against little bairns and women.’
‘Eeh, no, Harry, don’t say that!’ his wife cried. ‘How will we manage without you if anything happens to you? And what about the boat? Who’ll go after the fish?’
‘Please try to be quiet,’ Ada intervened softly. ‘You’re not helping things here, these people need peace and quiet.’
‘Aye, sorry, Sister, you’re right.’ The seaman lowered his tone. ‘But you’ll see, everybody will want to go now. Did you hear they’d hit St Hilda’s? And the gasometer’s alight. Why, I heard a whole family in Dean Street got wiped out. Bloody –’
‘Yes, yes, it’s terrible, but think of the boy now, you have to get him home and keep him quiet.’
Ada finally managed to usher the family out, still arguing about who would do the fishing if the man went to war.
‘I tell you, woman, there’s bigger things to catch now than fish!’ he exploded as he reached the door.
Ada sighed and turned to her next patient.
She worked steadily on through the afternoon and evening, for the dead and injured were much more numerous than was thought in the beginning, and were still being dug out of the rubble. This was by far the largest disaster she had had to help with, although she had often tended to injured miners after small explosions or falls of stone. That experience stood all the doctors and nurses here today in good stead, she thought wryly. The injuries were pretty similar, though it was heartrending when it involved women and children too.
A similar attitude to that of the vociferous fisherman was beginning to surface among all the people around. There was a general outrage and desire to fight back, give as good as they got. Now the initial shock had passed, the desire for revenge took hold of them. Ada was beginning to think that she might go herself, perhaps answer the advertisements in the Northern Echo for nurses to join the Duchess of Westminster’s teams to go out to France. But it was only a thought really, she knew she was needed just as much here at home.
As the numbers killed and wounded in the bombardment rose and the full extent of the damage became known, more and more men enl
isted in the army; war fever was at its height and Ada could understand why it was so. Not only Hartlepool but Scarborough and Seaham had been shelled and the people of the northeast were up in arms.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was a warm afternoon in June 1915 and Ada was off duty. She felt strangely restless as she changed out of her uniform in the bare little room of the Nurses’ Home, not sure how she wanted to spend her precious few hours of freedom. She stood at the window and looked out at the fresh green leaves on the trees, bright against the pale-blue sky with its white shreds of cloud.
There was Mr Johnson. She hadn’t seen him for a good while, she ought to visit him. Sighing, she turned to the small looking glass on the wall and combed through the curls which had fallen to her shoulders when she let it down from the tight bun she wore under her ‘Sister Dora’ cap on the wards. It was only two o’clock, she thought dreamily; she would take her time, stroll by the river and enjoy the warm, fresh air. It would be a nice change from the acidic smell of carbolic solution, which did not always eliminate that of septic wounds.
Picking up her hat, Ada left the hospital and turned towards the old city, walking slowly and looking around her as she went, noting with pleasure the slowly opening buds of roses in the tiny front gardens, the boughs laden with May blossom leaning from the hedges and beginning to shed flakes of white on the paths. Spring was late this year as it so often was in the northeast, but when it came it was the more welcome for that.
She came to a newsboy and bought a Northern Echo, thinking she would read it later, when she got back to her room in the evening. The war news was usually depressing but there were sometimes articles of local interest. Tucking it under her arm, Ada went down to the river and strolled slowly along, delighting in seeing a small family of ducks – father, mother and half a dozen chicks – sailing along like a miniature fleet of ships, quacking softly as they went and leaving a shiny wake in the quiet waters of the Wear.