So they ignored her, and the creature, who was terrified of Nurse Fitt and almost fainted when she heard Sister’s skirts coming, had to go to Sonny for all her information. She would have to be there for the wedding. It was going to be the biggest thing ever, but Fewling would probably sing hymns or forbid the banns or something mad. She was queer, said Barnes and Potter, who applied this adjective to everyone who was not like themselves.
The wedding was not for three weeks, but already Sister had started sending Barnes and Potter up step ladders to wash down the walls, or on to the floor with a knife to scrape bed wheels. Anyone would think it was going to be a surgical operation instead of the happiest day in Sonny’s life.
Ever since what he called his little tumble he had been trying unsuccessfully to persuade Nelly not to ruin her life for him. He had finally decided that if she was going to wait, as she said morbidly, to the grave, she might as well be Mrs. Burgess while she was doing it. He had prevailed on the hospital chaplain to let him be married in the ward, and Nelly was going to be there in white satin and a silver headdress, with two children in organdie, and be joined in holy matrimony to Sonny in his plaster trough. Potter had started his nails on an intensive course already, and in her off-duty Barnes was making a white and gold satin banner, which was to hang over his bed saying Good Luck. The newspapers had got hold of the story through Fitt’s milk-bar man, and there were going to be pictures taken, and a great crowd of guests, and altogether the wedding was going to put St. Patrick’s, which had always played second fiddle to the bigger London hospitals, right on the map.
Then Sister launched a bombshell by saying that one of the probationers must have her day off on the day of the wedding. They could decide between themselves, she said, and they had a terrible quarrel about it in the linen cupboard and didn’t speak to each other for a whole day, except through the patients: “Please tell Nurse Potter to pull the draw sheet tight her side.” “Ask Nurse Barnes whether she’s eaten that last bit of soap or what.”
Although they were bosom friends and shared not only a bedroom but each other’s aprons and stockings, they fought often. They were either as thick as thieves, so that no one could get a word in edgeways through their giggling gabble, or waging war in every way they knew.
They had entered the hospital on the same day, but because one must be senior on the ward Barnes was put over Potter, since she had actually entered the portals first, having come by a slightly earlier train. This Nurse Potter could not forgive. As first and second probationer, they had their own jobs allotted, and if Barnes was up to the neck in dirty lines and the bell long gone for supper would Potter give her a hand? Like hell, she would, for Barnes would not dream of helping her clean the bedpans except on her day off, and then she did not do them properly, so that Sister raised Cain and it was Potter’s fault, for the bedpans were her responsibility her sacred trust.
They had their ways of getting back to each other, a never-ending game, because each dirty trick must be countered by another. When Barnes, who was bulky, and slow in her movements, but thorough, had spent an hour cleaning tooth-mugs, Potter would stain the insides of half of them by using glycothymoline too strong. So when they were making the bed of a heavy, helpless patient, Barnes would get him rolled over to Potter’s side, and then while she was standing on tiptoe, red in the face, bursting her heart to hold him, Barnes would remember that she had left the steriliser boiling dry and leave her—” But don’t let him go, or we’ll never get him over again.”
At dinner-time Potter would stay in the kitchen, soaping round Sister by offering to put the spinach through a sieve, so that Barnes would have to feed Daddy Ledward, who would not swallow, but just held it in his mouth, moving his gums feebly, until you nearly went mad. On fish days Barnes hurried out with the first platefuls and took them round the top of the ward, where the men felt too ill to complain, so that Potter had to suffer the grumbles of the far end, where they always said the fish was stale. When Sister had gone to lunch, they both made a rush from wherever they were to finish up the pudding before Winnie got it.
When Sister allowed Barnes to take out some of Mr. Brett’s stitches, there was no holding her. They were the first stitches she had ever removed, so she looked on him thereafter as her private property. Until Potter was allowed to take him downstairs and help put the plaster on for his walking splint, so yah.
They came together somewhat over Mr. Brett, who, now that he had got over making a nuisance of himself, was becoming quite ward-minded, and was always good for a laugh. He had got a sketch block and would draw anybody’s picture, as good as the lightning caricaturist at the Olympia fun fair. There was not a plaster cast in the ward which was not adorned with some of Mr. Brett’s art work, and Winnie took twice as long to sweep the floor that side because she had to stop half-way and pose for a few touches to her potrait that Mr. Brett was doing for her young man. Barnes and Potter were always hanging round his bed giggling and making him draw things for them, and Sister said she didn’t know what young girls were coming to, but then she had never known that within living memory.
He had better visitors than most of the other patients. There was a dear old girl called Mrs. Weissmann who always brought him bags full of cakes and sweets. One day, Barnes stopped, goggling by the bed while she was unloading them.
“I hope it doesn’t matter that I bring these, Nurse dear?” she said. “But I am sure this poor boy goes hungry here.”
“Too true,” said Barnes. “So do we.” Mrs. Weissmann was horrified, so Barnes, calling Potter to corroborate, drew a heart-breaking picture of the food in the nurses’ dining-room. Ever after that Mrs. Weissmann never came without bringing cakes and pies and a loaf of her own braided cholla bread for the starving nurses.
There was also a visitor called Ossie, who made a joke every time you came near the bed, and seemed to be telling Mr. Brett funny stories all the time, judging from the laughter.
“He’s a scream,” Barnes and Potter said afterwards. “You have got killing friends, Brettsie. What was he telling you that was so funny?”
“Nothing special. Telling me about his girl, among other things. She’s gone off with a man from some dog kennels.”
“Was that funny?” asked Potter.
“He’s doing his best to think it is.”
“Gosh,” said Barnes, “how queer”
“What are you doing gossiping there, Nurses?” Sister called. “Get on with your work.”
“We are,” they said. “We’re making a bed.”
“It doesn’t look like it. Anyway, Mr. Brett is to get up for bed-making now. You’re not to baby him any more. Come along now, Mr. Brett. You’re not going to stay in my ward for the rest of your life. You’ve got to start using that leg.” She came clapping her hands at him and he groaned and turned up his eyes at her. “You made enough fuss about getting out of here at first,” she scolded him, “but now you’ve got too spoiled and lazy to make the effort.”
“Yes,” he said.
Barnes and Potter giggled. “He’s afraid you’ll send him home before the wedding, Sister.”
“He’ll walk for the wedding,” she said, “or not see it at all. I’ll need to have half these beds out with the crowd there’s going to be, and Daddy Ledward will have to go in the side room, poor old soul. It’s a terrible upset. I can’t think what the Reverend was about to allow it to happen on my ward.”
But the probationers, who knew all the gossip of the hospital, on every stratum, knew that Sister Ferguson was really as excited as anybody and had bored everyone to death in the sisters’ sitting-room by talking about nothing else.
On the morning of the wedding she was in a flat spin and had been over to the hostel to change her apron at least three times, although nothing would happen until after lunch. Nurse Fitt had washed her hair the night before and wore it in rolls under her cap, ready to comb out later. Nurse Fewling was not there, for Barnes and Potter had resolved their argument by f
oisting the day off on to her. They were both as excited as if they were going to be married themselves, and kept goading Sonny for lying there so calmly, although he could do nothing else. “You are queer,” they said, “you’re not a bit romantic.”
One of the men said something which made Potter collapse on to the end of a bed and stuff her giggling face into the blanket, but Barnes did not understand, so Potter took her out to the annexe to explain it.
When they were not teasing the bridegroom, the men spent all morning shaving each other, and there was a constant stream to the door of the ward of wives bringing brown-paper parcels of clean pyjamas. People kept coming along from other wards to ask if they could come and bring their up-patients, but it was to be the fracture ward’s day, and no outsider was invited except Matron and Sonny’s gallery of doctors and surgeons. There would not be room, because of the size of his family. They began to arrive even before lunch was over, and Sister kept them lined up in the corridor in their wedding clothes, until the last plate of treacle batter had been served, although no one wanted treacle batter with the sight of the wedding feast arriving on trolleys.
Then the sheer weight of Sonny’s mother burst open the doors and the guests streamed in, aunts, uncles, cousins, fat and thin, shy and jolly; pimply youths and vague old men who were steered about and told: “Not there, Grandpa!” Children who stared at the patients, and Sonny’s twin sisters, who stared at them, too, but in a different way. Sonny’s father, with a strawberry nose and a buttonhole as big as a cauliflower and Sonny’s mother looking like a bulldog in an aggressive black hat and a young tree of carnations hanging upside down on the shoulder of an edge-to-edge coat that was made to be a wrap-over.
The Press arrived in mackintoshes, although it was a fine day, and took up strategic crouching positions. The chaplain arrived calmly, as if this was like any other wedding. Barnes and Potter held hands and their breath, Sonny began to giggle, and then, with the doors held back by two porters in white coats and theatre caps, came Nelly, overpowered by her headdress and looking as if she wished she were the least instead of the most important person.
It was all over too quickly. Old Fergie dropped a tear; Barnes and Potter didn’t miss that, and then everyone was breaking into noise and kisses and the flash bulbs were going tike a film premiére. The nurses had to come forward and be photographed with the married pair, who should have looked somehow different, but didn’t. Jacky was there, with circles under her eyes. She had stayed out of bed for the wedding, “just to get her picture in the paper”, said Nurse Fitt, shoving her own head well in front of the cameras, and oh, joy! That one never appeared in print. Potter and Barnes were in the paper, however, and although Barnes was all teeth and Potter had her apron hitched up, their mothers sent for copies and had them framed to stand on their mantelpieces, where they may be seen to this day.
That night the ward was very difficult to settle. The wedding had gone to their heads, and they were laughing and calling out ludicrous jokes about Sonny’s wedding night long after Jacky had turned out all the lights except the desk lamp and the shaded light over Daddy Ledward’s bed. The noise did not disturb the old man, for he was miles away from them already, fighting out the last battle between body and spirit.
Jacky went out to the kitchen to set the breakfast-trolley, for she was always in a mad rush in the morning. While she was stacking the plates, Winnie arrived in a long brown coat, a green dog hairslide and orange lipstick overrunning the edges of her mouth like the colour in a badly printed comic paper. Jackie was not surprised to see her, for Winnie often came back after the day staff had gone, with fish and chips or sausage rolls for the men to eat in bed. Tonight, however, she had brought nothing, for she reckoned that everyone had had enough to eat today. She had certainly cut enough sandwiches to bring up a callous on her finger.
She had come for a cup of tea. “Got a bit of time to fill in, because I can’t meet my boy till half-past ten. He’s on the late run now, on the seventy-sevens.”
“Useful for you when you want a free ride.”
“Not bad. It was better when he was a dustman. All kinds of things he used to bring me. You wouldn’t believe what people throw away. How’s your fellow, Nurse, by the same token? We don’t hear so much of him these days.”
“Nor do I,” said Jacky. “I think he’s given me the chuck, because I can’t be bothered about nail varnish any more. He didn’t like me going on night duty, anyway.”
“Ah no, that you can understand in a man, when he’s on days,” said Winnie, who led a full sex life in spite of her appearance.
Jacky had not seen Paul since they met for a drink one evening before she went on duty. She had been tired and vague from having got up too early. It was six a.m. for her, and that was what she felt like, not yet come to life, remote from the crowd in the bar to whom it was six p.m. Paul was irritatingly lively. He had finished his work, while hers was still before her.
“It seems terrible,” she said, “to be drinking gin and French before breakfast.”
“It’s a terrible life you lead altogether,” Paul said. “You should just be starting out for an evening with me now, not going back to that mausoleum to put on those black stockings.” She had told him about those and he could never forget it. The black stockings came into every argument they had about the hospital. “What am I supposed to do with the rest of my evening? “he asked. “You put that place before me. It’s damned unfair.”
“Nonsense, Paul. You’ve got plenty of friends. You don’t need me, and there are lots of people in the mausoleum who do. That’s why I like it.”
“I don’t want you to like it,” he said sulkily. “It’s ruining you. Drop it and marry me, Jacky. You’ll have much more fun.”
When he could have had her he had never asked her. She would have married him once. Now she knew that she would never give up nursing for him. Or anybody. This loving need that drove her could never be satisfied anywhere else.
“You must have done something awful in your past life,” Paul said, “so you have to half kill yourself in that place to expiate it, or something.” He always said “Or something” when he had made a serious remark, to leaven it. “Still, I’ll say one thing for you being a nurse. It saved you wanting to be a nun. Or something.”
The ward settled to sleep at last. Only Daniel was awake. Jacky could hear him fidgeting and muttering as she sat at the desk filling in charts, the corner of her eye irked by the vast pile of mending that Sister had left out for her. She was clumsy and slow at sewing and Sister always complained that the pile looked no smaller in the morning, so Jacky had taken to hiding bits of it in odd cupboards, banking on being off night duty before Sister discovered them.
Daniel lit a cigarette and she went to him. “Look out. Night Sister hasn’t been round yet.”
“What the hell. I can’t sleep. Got any dope?” He lay with his hand behind his head, looking at her with wakeful eyes that were black in the dimness of the ward.
“Nothing for you. You’re supposed to be convalescent. You’re going home soon, aren’t you?” She realised that she would miss him. Odd how your life was made up of little bits of other people. You were close for a time, but it was touch and then away, like flies on a ceiling. In hospital you got to know people so intimately, and then never saw them again. For a few weeks you were the most important person in their world, but soon afterwards they would have difficulty in remembering your name.
She would miss Daniel, but there would be others, and after them others, so many people to whom you mattered, who mattered desperately to you.
“You can have Mr. Price’s Veganin, if you like,” she said. “He’s sleeping like the dead.”
When she had brought it, he said: “Don’t go,” and caught her apron. “Stay and talk to me.”
“I can’t. I’ve got a million things to do. That old man-”
“How is he?”
“Not too good, but there’s nothing one can do. He’s s
o old.” She looked down the ward to where Daddy Ledward was propped high on his pillows, his chest moving at long intervals, the light sharp on the pale ridge of his nose. She looked across the ward to where the bridegroom slept in his coffin of plaster with his arms flung out and his fists clenched like a child.
“Look at him,” she said. “And that poor girl going back to that rabbit warren in Camden Town and taking off that dress in a room she shares with three other people.”
“Seems so pointless getting married.”
“Don’t you know why he did it?”
“Bit of sensationalism, I suppose.”
“No. Remember that American surgeon that came up that day Sister was so wild with me about moving the beds? He’s going to try something a bit drastic, and there’s a chance Sonny won’t come through it.”
“Oh God!” said Daniel. “Poor kids. I wish there was something one could do to help. But I haven’t got any money. What could I do? I haven’t got the habit of being any use to anyone. It’s easy for you, because you do it all the time. Comes naturally, like breathing.”
“That’s a nice thing to say.” Jacky was touched. “You have got much nicer, you know, since you’ve been here.”
“Oh me. I’m lovely.”
“What about saving that child, anyway? That wasn’t so useless.”
“First disinterested thing I’ve ever done for anyone in my life, and look what it got me.” He kicked his leg under the bedclothes. “Oh Lord,” he said, as the swing door sighed, “here comes Lady Macbeth.”
Flowers on the Grass Page 27