She felt sorry for Jinx who was a gentle soul, and who she sometimes heard reciting poetry in between bouts of imitating machine-gun fire and the screams of the injured and dying.
For his own sake, it would be better if he was moved to the old mental asylum ward, but as Connie knew it was already full with other men like Jinx – and worse – for whom the War was a torment that would never end.
‘Bloody coward, Connie heard the Sergeant muttering, as she walked past. ‘He’s orf his ‘ead. Should have been shot for desertion, not given a bed amongst real soldiers.
‘He’s an injured man, Sergeant Bailey, just like you and the other men on this ward, Connie stopped him sharply.
‘No ‘e bloody ain’t – anyone can see as how ‘e’s got it in his back – and we all know what that means, even if you don t, Sister, the Sergeant answered her angrily.
Connie repressed a sigh. The Sergeant was a brave man, no one could doubt or question that. He had, after all, single-handedly dragged three of his injured comrades one by one through no man’s land, rather than leave them there to be picked up by a stretcher party. The other men in the ward tended naturally to follow his lead, but the ward was not the Army, she was in charge here. And she already had more than enough work to do.
She went over to the Sergeant’s bed and looked down at him. ‘I shouldn’t really be telling you this, Sergeant,’ she said quietly. ‘But I think for both your own, and Jinx’s sake, I have to. He received his wound in his back when he threw himself on top of an injured comrade who had already fallen, so that he might protect him. The machine guns he imitates are our own British guns, which he lay listening to for three nights before a stretcher party found them. And the cries and the screams of the dying are those he had to listen to of the men around them, as they waited for help.’
A dull red tide of colour had crept under the Sergeant’s skin. ‘If that’s the Gawd’s ‘onest truth, Sister.’
‘It is,’ Connie told him crisply, tensing as she saw the way the Sergeant had turned his head to look at her black armband.
‘Ah, Sister!’ she heard Mr Clegg, the senior consultant, addressing her, causing her to turn away from the Sergeant, and automatically hold herself straighter. She cast an admonishing look at the wan-faced junior whose scrubbing brush was not moving as rhythmically and efficiently as it might.
‘We have a new patient.’
Connie frowned. They had new patients every day.
‘One who Mr Raw has had sent especially to us for care.’
Immediately Connie’s frown disappeared. Mr Nathan Raw, the Medical Superintendant, was now in charge of a mobile hospital unit at the Front which dealt with those cases deemed too serious to be moved. The whole hospital was intensely proud of the unit and their connection with it.
This would not be the first time that Mr Raw had sent one of his mobile hospital patients on to them and Connie, as befitted a surgical nurse, was immediately curious to know what manner of injuries this one might have sustained. Mere amputations were no longer considered serious enough to merit special treatment, and those suffering from gas poisoning were not sent to the surgical ward.
‘The patient has lost one eye, and the wound has become badly infected, Mr Clegg told her, as though he had read her mind. ‘Captain Forbes’s father is a close friend of one of our Governors, and for that reason he has requested that his son be nursed here. Oh, and the family have requested a private room. There was a certain woodenness to Mr Clegg’s expression.
Connie was frowning again, and forgot herself so far as to repeat questioningly, ‘A private room? before subsiding into pink-cheeked silence as Mr Clegg looked at her.
‘I know that we don’t normally give our patients private rooms, Sister, but I am instructed that we are to treat the Captain as a special case, in view of his family connection with the hospital. Matron has kindly agreed that the Captain might be placed in the small linen room off your ward. I think we might consider changing his bandages, and getting a closer look at his wound.
‘I ll scrub up immediately, sir, Connie answered him briskly, even though she had just been on the point of leaving the ward for her already delayed evening meal.
The small linen room was used to store bandages and was barely big enough to hold a bed, but somehow Connie managed to position one in it so that there was room for the Second Year to bring in a trolley, and for Connie to stand close enough to Mr Clegg to hand him whatever he might need.
They had seen all manner of wounds since the start of the War, and the Captain’s looked by no means as severe as some had been.
He was an extremely good-looking young man, Connie had to admit, as he lay rigid on the bed, refusing to betray any sign of discomfort as she worked to remove the bandages, as quickly and as carefully as she could.
As she did so though, Connie had to clench her stomach muscles against the now familiar stench of rotting flesh. Behind her she heard the nauseous retch of the second-year nurse, who was supposed to be assisting her. The wound was certainly very badly infected.
Whoever had sewn up the Captain’s wound was not very good with his needle. Her sister Ellie would have been shocked to see such uneven ugly stitches, Connie reflected, deliberately conjuring up the safety of such a mundane image as she worked on.
Ten minutes later when Mr Clegg had finished his examination, he motioned to Connie to follow him back onto the ward.
‘The Captain has already lost an eye, Sister, and we shall have to work very hard if we are to ensure that he does not lose his life as well,’ he pronounced seriously.
Connie folded her hands across her apron. They were very proud of the fact that here in the hospital they lost so very few patients to septicaemia, unlike some hospitals, but that was when the patient had been operated on here and when they observed very strict cleanliness procedures, as laid down by Florence Nightingale. Those sorts of procedures were a luxury for those working in field hospitals. Connie did not need Mr Clegg to tell her that septicaemia was far easier to prevent than to cure.
‘Have the Captain prepared for the operating theatre, please, Sister. I don’t want to lose any time in cleaning out that eye socket. How soon can you have him ready?’
‘As soon as you wish,’ Connie answered him calmly.
So much for her supper, and her rest period.
Connie stood in the middle of the ward listening to the various sounds of breathing from her sleeping patients, interspersed here and there with the more raucous sound of someone snoring.
So far as Connie was concerned, a sleeping ward was a sign of a well-run, orderly ward, where patients had been tended to the best of a nurse’s ability, and were not lying awake in their beds, in either pain or distress.
Slowly she walked down the ward. Even their newest patient, a boy of sixteen who had cried piteously for his mother after he had discovered they had had to amputate his feet, was peacefully asleep.
She had reached the end of the ward now, and she hesitated for a second before walking past the door to the Captain’s room. It was just over a week since he had arrived, and Mr Clegg believed they had won the battle to stop the infection from his wound spreading.
He was certainly an extremely brave man – off the battle field as well as on it, Connie acknowledged, and a charming one according to everyone who had any dealings with him. Yet for all of that there was something about him that made her feel on edge and wary. Something about the way she had caught him looking at her when he had thought her unaware, a blatant, brutal kind of male scrutiny that raised memories and fears she had thought safely buried. And thanks to her own folly, the Captain knew of her fear.
She had just finished cleaning his wound this morning – a twice-daily ritual that Mr Clegg trusted only to her – when, before she could move away from his bed, he had reached out and taken hold of her wrist. His thumb caressed her bare flesh with bold intimacy, as he said softly, ‘Your pulse is racing, Sister. Why? Surely you aren’t afraid of me
?
And as her gaze had been jerked to meet his like that of a puppet on a string, she had known, oh, how she had known, that secretly he was exulting in the thought of her fear. His grip on her wrist had tightened past imprisonment to pain, and then he had slowly let his gaze move insolently over her body making her recoil from its lecherous intent.
It had been the sound of Jinx and his machine-gun fire outside in the ward that had broken his concentration, causing him to swear savagely, and allowing her to pull away.
Whilst the other men practically worshipped Captain Forbes, Jinx was petrified of him. Could only a poor deranged, damaged man, and a woman like her, sense that vile darkness about him; that dangerousness and evil intent?
Certainly the other nurses didn’t share her feelings. They were always giggling about how handsome he was, and how gentlemanly his compliments.
Connie couldn’t wait for the day when he would be well enough to leave. She had thought she had all but forgotten the horrors of her past; that they were buried deeply and safely out of reach, but now she had started having night terrors in which Bill Connolly and the Captain were trying to hunt her down.
Only today, listening whilst her junior nurses giggled over the Captain unaware of Connie’s presence, their conversation as bold and flirtatious as her own had been as a girl, she had recognised abruptly how much she had changed, how alien that girl she had been now seemed to her.
Those dreams she had had then were so meaningless for her now; the carelessness with which she had flung herself heedlessly into her love for Kieron, the stubborn wilfulness, had all been tamed. She had learned too late what true love was, and she felt she had lost, too, the closeness of her friendship with Mavis, and that recent part of her life would soon be gone as well.
She had already decided that her future lay here in the hospital doing the work, which against all odds, she had come to love. As Sister Pride she was respected, and she respected herself and her own skills. She believed she had earned the right to cut herself off from the mistakes she had made and the shame she had brought on herself. But now suddenly, the Captain had created an unwanted bridge between the old Connie and the new, even if only inside herself. A wave of fear shuddered through her.
‘Connie, I’ve just heard the best possible news.’
It was Mavis’s last evening, and they were having supper together.
As she saw the happiness illuminating her friend’s face Connie’s heart bumped against her ribs. Putting down her cutlery she whispered, ‘Harry …’
Mavis’s smile trembled. No … No … Not that … How could it be? No, Connie, Rosa has written to Mother to tell us that she is to have Harry’s child!’
The pain ripped and tore at Connie, unbearable and unending, her face drained of blood and a cold faintness spread out from the pit of her stomach. Harry’s child! Rosa was to have Harry’s child! The pledge and proof of his love!
‘You can imagine how Mother feels, how all of us feel. Of course, nothing and no one could ever replace Harry, but to know that he is to have a son or daughter …’
She couldn’t bear it. She could not bear it. Memories flooded through her. Kieron deserting her; the realisation that she was to have his child; the panic and fear she had felt; the knowledge of her shame – the shame that Harry had witnessed.
‘We are going to do all we can to support Rosa, of course. We are her family after all, and the baby will be Mother’s grandchild – Mother wants to have her to stay for a while …’
As she listened to Mavis, Connie tried to battle against the hurt and jealousy she was feeling. Years ago as a young girl, she had stood on the sidelines watching as a new closeness developed between Ellie and their cousin Cecily. She had felt shut out of what they were sharing, and not just shut out, but hurt and jealous. Ellie was her sister and not Cecily’s she had reasoned childishly then, resenting having to share the sister she had thought of as exclusively hers, with someone else.
Now, although she was grown-up and Mavis was not her sister but her friend, what she was feeling – the sense of being excluded and the hurt that caused her – reminded Connie sharply of what she had felt then. She didn’t want to lose her friend to someone else, but it hurt all the more knowing that the person she was losing her to, was Harry’s wife.
Connie tried to be rational about it, and to tell herself that of course it was only natural that Mavis, as a young wife, should make friends with another young wife, especially when they were already related by marriage. And she tried to tell herself, too, that Mavis with her tender caring heart was bound to want to comfort and protect Rosa.
But a part of Connie didn’t want to be rational and grown-up, and that part of her reacted to what Mavis was saying by deliberately withdrawing from her in hurt and anger, and to find excuses not to spend as much time with Mavis as she had.
It was, of course, Connie’s way of protecting herself, but Mavis was not to know that!
‘You’ve told them then?’
‘That I’m to have Harry’s child?’ Rosa answered Gerald’s wary question. ‘Of course. They can’t hear enough about it. They’ve even invited me to go and stay in that stuffy house in New Brighton – as if I’d want to go there!
‘You haven’t told them that, have you?
‘Of course not. I’ve said as how I’m feeling too sickly to travel.
‘So what are they going to say when they find out you’ve travelled here to see me? Gerald challenged her.
Rosa tossed her head. ‘Who says they are going to find out? I told my father I was coming to stay with Phyllis. He doesn’t know that she isn’t here.
What did you tell Beth?
‘The same. That I was coming to see Phyllis.
‘So does that mean we’ve got the whole day together, and maybe tonight as well? Rosa asked him suggestively, drawing her fingertip along his arm.
‘What about …? Gerald gave a small nod in the direction of her stomach.
‘Well you put it there and no one else, Rosa pointed out coarsely. ‘You should have married me you know, Gerald …
‘Don’t you think I wish that I had,’ he responded thickly, pulling her into his arms. ‘We re a good match you and me, Rosa.
‘But you married Beth, and she’s carrying your child as well.
‘More’s the pity. All she ever does is complain.
She’s been driving me mad with her moaning about her bloomin’ headaches.
The Captain’s parents had arrived to see him and the Captain’s father had announced that he wanted to see Mr Clegg.
‘Instantly and no messing! Tell him it’s Councillor Forbes who is wanting him.
Connie didn’t care very much for the Captain’s father, but for very different reasons than those that made her fear his son. Whilst the Captain spoke with the accent of a gentleman, his father was hewn from a much rougher stone. And obviously believed that his money could buy him whatever he wanted.
Had it bought him the thin, cold-looking woman who was his wife and the Captain’s mother, Connie wondered?
They had brought the Captain’s betrothed with them, Miss Burrell Howard, a haughty, proud-looking young woman, who had got the backs of all the nurses up good and proper.
‘Fancy er being engaged to someone as good-looking as the Captain, and er that plain, an all, one of them had sniffed, after one of her earlier visits.
‘Good-looking or not, she’s welcome to him, Connie had replied grimly.
‘Ooh, ‘ow can you say that – ‘e’s a fine well-setup man the Captain is, and always got a cheery word and a bit of a twinkle in his eye, if you know what I mean.
‘Aye, well we all know what you are likely to get if you pay too much attention to it, and it won’t be a wedding ring on your finger!’ Connie had warned, not mincing her words.
The other nurse, a pretty, pert young woman who reminded Connie very much of the girl she herself had once been, had tossed her head and announced boldly, ‘Well, you can’t blam
e him for wanting sommat warm in his bed with a cold piece like ‘er.’
Connie ignored her, but an older nurse who had happened to overhear the comment, came over to Connie once the girl had flounced off, and began disapprovingly, ‘Little Madam, she wants to be tekken down to the women’s ward to see what happens to girls who warm men’s beds without a wedding ring. There’s two of them on there now, two who got themselves into trouble and tried to get out of it! she told Connie scornfully. ‘Brung their disgrace on themselves they have. Shameful that’s what they are, and shouldn’t be allowed on the same ward as respectable women.
‘Time was when the likes o’ them would have been tied to the cart-tail and whipped through the streets. And if you want my opinion, it’s a pity that their sort isn’t still made a public spectacle of. Any woman who bears a child outside of wedlock is a disgrace to her sex and should be punished accordingly, and I’m not the only one as thinks so.
Connie knew that the other nurse was speaking the truth, but hearing it made her mouth go dry and her hands start to tremble slightly. She didn’t want to be reminded of the fate that could have been her own, and she was relieved to see Mr Clegg walking toward her. Connie sensed, as she had done before, that Mr Clegg was no fonder of Captain Forbes than she herself was.
‘There you are, Clegg. Took yer time, didn’t yer. You know I’m a busy man …’ The Captain’s father puffed out his chest. ‘I’ve got a munitions factory to run, I’ll ‘av you know.’
Discreetly Connie moved away from the door. She had other patients to attend to, and it didn’t matter how much the Captain’s father bullied and blustered, Mr Clegg would not allow the Captain to leave the hospital until he was well enough to do so.
Walking down the ward, she stopped by the Sergeant’s bed. He was well enough to be discharged now.
‘Mr Clegg tells me that we shall need to find a new patient for your bed, Sergeant.’
He beamed at her, whilst several other men on the ward started to cheer. As Connie knew, it always lifted the spirits of the whole ward when one of their number was declared fit enough to leave, just as the death of one of them plunged the whole ward into gloom.
Connie’s Courage Page 22