A Mother's Gift

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Aren’t you from Winton?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Matthew. He continued looking at her and she stood simply, waiting for him to stop. She had been striking as a young girl, he thought, now she was grown, she was beautiful, even in the ugly nurse’s uniform with the mid-calf-length apron and striped dress, the black lisle stockings and sensible shoes. If she took off the silly cap that was tilted slightly to the right, she would be even more striking, he thought.

  ‘Matthew?’

  Though it had only been a minute Mary Anne had got tired of pretending to sleep and had opened her eyes and seen that her husband was in a wheelchair.

  ‘What on earth happened?’ she cried in alarm. He turned back to the bed and his wife. She’d failed him again, he thought, what a bloody Christmas this had been.

  ‘Wait outside,’ he said over his shoulder and Katie went out though inwardly she was seething. Who the heck did he think he was, coming in here and behaving like he owned the whole hospital?

  Chapter Eight

  ‘IT’S NOTHING, A slight accident at the works. I have a broken ankle and a few bruises, that’s all,’ Matthew said to Mary Anne. He didn’t mention that Jackson, the works manager, had head injuries and hadn’t come round yet. Mary Anne wouldn’t know whom he was talking about anyway.

  ‘What happened with you, madam? I thought you were going to carry this one. I suppose you’ve been lifting that great girl of yours, you never learn.’

  Mary Anne laid still, the lethargy induced by the pre-medication drug creeping back over her now that the shock of seeing Matthew in a wheelchair was fading. Though she still felt the depressing ache of failure, she could read correctly the contempt in Matthew’s expression.

  ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘It just happened. Sometimes it does, Matthew. It’s not my fault.’

  ‘Then whose—’ Matthew began to ask then saw the tear that slid down Mary Anne’s pink-tipped nose. He wasn’t entirely free of compassion, it was simply that he was so disappointed in her. He hadn’t only married her for the prospect of gaining her father’s works; he needed an heir, a proper heir. She had produced two children, why couldn’t she produce one for him?

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, don’t cry, Mary Anne,’ he said roughly, too roughly he realised but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Luckily they were interrupted by a knock at the door and Sister came in.

  ‘The trolley’s here to take Mrs Hamilton to theatre,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry but you’ll have to go now, Mr Hamilton.’

  Matthew looked at the officious little woman but didn’t deign to reply to her. Instead he looked at his wife’s white face. ‘I’ll see you later. You’ll be all right,’ he said. He meant it kindly so that it was a pity that Mary Anne took it as a vague sort of threat.

  The girl from Winton was not in the corridor despite the fact that he had told her to wait there and this added to his irritation. But as he passed the open door of the sluice he saw she was in there, washing bedpans and that irritated him even more. She had nice hands, well shaped though a little red and with the nails cut very short and it was a shame to use them for such work.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ he ordered the man pushing his chair. He looked at Katie and, feeling his eyes upon her, she turned and he felt the full impact of her dark blue eyes.

  ‘So you are nursing now,’ he said. ‘It’s a long way from Winton Colliery rows, surely?’

  Katie flushed. ‘Not so far,’ she replied and belatedly added, ‘Sir.’ She stood, rubber apron covering the white cotton one and with bedpan in one hand and scrubbing brush in the other and he thought she looked delightful. She in her turn saw only the man, his dark hair swept back from his high forehead, his brown eyes, keen and seeming to take in everything at once. He looked about thirty-something to her, an older man though not as old as her grandfather. Why was he bothering with her? She was too lowly a nurse to be concerned with the care of private patients.

  Matthew had been staring, he realised and now, recollecting, he glanced back at the orderly.

  ‘Righto, man,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  Matthew forgot about his intention to have himself transferred to a private hospital. The chairman of the Hospital Board, who was a fellow member of the Board of Guardians and a friend of sorts, soon had him transferred to a private ward in the South-East Durham. Somehow he never thought of having Mary Anne transferred to the wing too, she was in a side ward anyway, wasn’t she?

  He hadn’t exactly forgotten about Katie in the years since he had last seen her. But now he had nothing else to think about as he lay in the hospital bed and he amused himself finding out about her.

  ‘She is a first-year probationer nurse,’ Lawson reported to him. ‘She’s only been at the hospital for a month or two.’ Her home address was still West Row, Winton Colliery; her next-of-kin was Noah Benfield, her grandfather. And she had a sweetheart. All this Lawson had discovered in the café outside the hospital gates and all for the cost of a few cups of coffee for the junior nurses who frequented it.

  ‘I have a deep respect for your work,’ he had told them. ‘But I’ll put my cards on the table. I really like that nurse on F Ward. Nurse Benfield, is it?’ The first thing they told him was about Katie’s sweetheart.

  ‘I don’t think the nurses should be encouraged to have followers,’ Matthew said to Lawson and the chauffeur managed to keep his face expressionless despite his inward amusement. Matthew frowned at him. Logic told him that a girl as beautiful as Katie would have a beau but all the same he couldn’t bear to think of it.

  ‘I’m sure Florence Nightingale did not encourage them,’ said Matthew.

  ‘No sir,’ said Lawson. ‘Neither do the hospital authorities.’

  Flaming hypocrite, he thought to himself. Being his chauffeur, Lawson was in a good position to know how Matthew Hamilton spent some of his time when out of the house and it was not always at the works. There was a certain house in Middlesbrough … Still, that was rich men for you. Liked to indulge their appetites.

  Matthew was visiting his wife every day, first in a wheelchair and later, as his ankle improved, with the aid of crutches. It was very nice of him, thought Mary Anne, but not at all in character when she thought about it. But she was starved of affection and warmed to him as he showed her small kindnesses, patting her hand, insisting on bringing in the children to see her despite the scandalised opposition of Sister.

  ‘Good morning, Nurse,’ he said to Katie one bright frosty morning. It was the New Year’s Day and once again he was on his way to F Ward ostensibly to see his wife. Somehow he was always there when Katie was on duty.

  He was being discharged today and was dressed in a suit and crisp white shirt brought in by Lawson and had exchanged his crutches for a walking stick.

  ‘It would have been better if you had waited a day or two more,’ Mr Caine had said and Matthew had frowned.

  ‘I tell you it feels fine,’ he had snapped. ‘I have work to do in any case.’

  ‘I hope you don’t intend to walk very far on that ankle,’ had said Mr Caine. ‘I’m warning you—’

  ‘Oh never mind,’ said Matthew and the surgeon had subsided. It was Matthew’s opinion that the doctors kept you down as long as they could if only to inflate their fees. Scoundrels and charlatans, the lot of them. Though Caine was not so bad, he had to concede. He’d made a good job of setting his ankle, so why couldn’t he leave well alone now?

  The conversation with the surgeon was running through his mind as he walked along the corridor leaning heavily on his stick. Because, if he had to admit it, the ankle did pain him if he walked more than a few steps on the specially reinforced plaster. Seeing Katie outside the ward was a piece of luck, he’d hit just on the right time. It drove any thought of his ankle out of his mind.

  Katie went pink. ‘Morning sir,’ she replied, hoping neither Sister nor Staff Nurse would come out and catch her talking to hi
m, a patient and a private one at that. ‘Er, how are you feeling?’ she went on as he stood still and seemed to be waiting for her to speak.

  ‘I’m going home today,’ he said. ‘I feel much better, thank you.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  He gazed at her; she was so obviously uneasy in the way she kept glancing back at the closed door to the ward. She edged away.

  ‘I have to go, I have a message for Matron,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, sir. I hope everything will be all right.’ She slipped past him and walked rapidly away. He watched her and felt a small tingle of satisfaction as he saw her turn to glance back at him before turning a corner.

  Katie left her message at Matron’s office and went on to the nurse’s dining-room for her break. She collected a cup of coffee and a biscuit and sat down at a table on her own, for she had things to think about. Mr Hamilton she thought about most of all. She realised now that he must be going out of his way to bump into her and she couldn’t think why he should be so interested.

  Now she remembered where she had seen him before. It had been years ago, during the awful, hungry times of the Great Strike and after she remembered the lake of pitch, the sack filled with pitch balls, the feel of the pitch on her hands. And walking along the path in the bitter cold with bare legs stinging and fingers numb. And the taste of the raw carrot left by the galloways, the pit ponies, she could almost feel the hard lumps in her mouth now. She looked at the biscuit on the plate before her; it was a digestive biscuit, plain and wholesome but she couldn’t eat it. Then there had been the gentleman in his thick overcoat and felt hat and the striped trousers below the hem of the coat and his shiny shoes, only barely touched with the black mud of the path by the wagon way. How he had looked at her grandda, diminishing him somehow.

  Now she knew who he was though she hadn’t at the time. She doubted her grandda had known either. The big boss, the supreme gaffer. The owner of the ironworks that used the coal and coke produced at Winton Colliery and no doubt half a dozen other collieries.

  Life was strange, thought Katie as she drank her coffee and rose to go back to the ward. Mr Hamilton lived in a different world and no matter how she worked and studied and tried her best she would never be in a position to enter that world. And she didn’t want to, she told herself as she strode briskly along the corridor.

  Now there was work to do, Mrs Hamilton was going home today too and the side ward had to have the bed stripped and made up again and she had to help the maid wash the walls and the furniture and polish it until it sparkled ready for the next patient. Not a private patient this time but one who was terminally ill with cancer of the uterus and permanently on morphine to keep the pain at bay.

  When Katie returned to the ward there was no sign of either of the Hamiltons. The rest of the morning was taken up with scrubbing and making up the bed. And when she thought she had it right Sister came to the door.

  ‘Strip that bed and start again, Nurse,’ she ordered Katie. ‘Have you learned nothing about bed making since you came? Turn the openings of the pillowcases away from the door if you please and straighten that corner. Both should be alike, you should know this. And don’t forget to turn the bed wheels in—’

  In the afternoon Staff Nurse instructed Katie on the proper procedure for administering morphine to the woman lying on the bed. ‘Just in case, you understand,’ said Staff Nurse. ‘I expect Mr Hobson will increase the dose when he comes in after his theatre list. She is having a quarter of a grain now, every four hours but may need more.’

  ‘But why me? Staff Nurse?’ asked Katie, in surprise. She had not yet got as far as giving injections.

  ‘You may be the only Protestant available. The Catholics refuse to give more,’ said Staff Nurse. Katie blinked. She couldn’t imagine refusing to do anything if Sister ordered her to. On the bed the woman, Phoebe Smith, moaned and it was the loneliest sound in the world.

  Altogether, Katie was very thankful to go off-duty at six o’clock that evening. All she really wanted to do was go back to her room and to bed but it was her day off tomorrow and she had promised her gran she would go home to Winton.

  As Katie alighted from Radley’s bus around twelve o’clock the next day she saw Noah just turning the corner, evidently just coming off fore shift. He was in his black, his eyes gleaming through the coal dust, his helmet pushed to the back of his head. He was still wearing the leather knee protectors he needed for his work where the seam he was in was low and the only way he could swing a pick was on his knees.

  Katie hadn’t seen her grandfather for a few weeks and she got a cold feeling inside her now; she hadn’t realised he was looking so old. He was bent over against the wind and though his coal-dust encrusted jacket was open he had an old muffler around his throat and he was walking much more slowly than she remembered.

  ‘Grandda!’ Katie called and waited for him to catch up to her. Noah grinned and straightened up, even quickened his gait.

  ‘Katie, flower!’ he said. ‘By, you’re a sight for sore eyes!’

  She fell into step with him, not kissing him or touching him in greeting; he was too dirty for that. Not that she would have done had he been dressed in his Sunday best. That sort of thing was not done on the streets of Winton Colliery. Yet anyone watching would have known there was a bond between them as they turned into the back street of West Row, the studs of Noah’s pit boots ringing on the cobbles.

  Everything looked strange, Katie thought as she gazed around the kitchen half an hour later. She sat at the table spooning up a plateful of Gran’s broth, which was thick with vegetables and bits of ham from the knucklebone she had put in it. It was hot and filling and just the thing for a cold winter’s day, she thought as she broke homemade bread into it.

  ‘Howay, then, tell us all about this fancy hospital where you’re at,’ said Gran. She had a half-pint mug of tea in her hand, laced with a generous dollop of condensed milk. And her hair looked thinner and greyer and her face more lined than Katie remembered. Yet it had only been a few weeks since Katie had gone away to train for a nurse.

  ‘It’s big,’ said Katie. ‘Very big. And I’m working on the women’s gynae ward.’

  ‘An’ what’s that when it’s at home?’

  ‘You know, Gran, women’s troubles,’ said Katie. ‘Where they come with abortions and things wrong with the uterus – womb, that is.’

  ‘That’s enough of that sort of talk,’ said Gran shortly but keeping her voice down. She nodded to where Noah was dipping bread into his bowl of broth and stuffing it into his mouth. He was pretending not to hear any of this women’s talk.

  ‘But Gran, you asked,’ Katie protested.

  ‘Aye well, mebbe I did. But it’s not decent to talk about it in front of the men.’ This last was said in a harsh whisper.

  Katie bent her head to her plate. She tried to think of something else to talk about. ‘Hey, Grandda, you know that chap we met years ago down on the wagon way near Eden Hope? The posh one? During the strike it was.’

  Noah lifted his head now it was safe to join in the conversation. ‘When we were after the pitch, do you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Him. Well, I’ve seen him again. He must live near the hospital because he was in there. His wife an’ all. He had a broken ankle and she—’ Katie stopped before she said something indecent again. ‘She had an operation,’ she amended. ‘He was in a private ward. Must have pots of money. Hamilton you call him.’

  ‘Hamilton? Hamilton? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am.’

  ‘Why ye bugger!’ Noah ejaculated. ‘I thought there was something about that toff, I did.’

  ‘Do you know who he is, like?’ Kitty asked, curiosity lighting her face.

  ‘Why aye, of course I do! Mind I never expected to see him round here and not walking along the wagon way neither.’

  ‘Go on then, tell us,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Do you not know who the big boss is? The one who owns the pits and the ironworks and God know
s what else?’

  ‘Noah!’ Kitty was becoming impatient with him.

  ‘Hamilton! Hamilton Ironworks! You must have heard it woman, lest you go about with your eyes and ears shut.’

  ‘Aye, yes, I have but I never thought it was a man,’ said his wife.

  Katie said nothing. Why hadn’t she associated the name with the big boss?

  Chapter Nine

  KATIE WALKED UP the street to the Co-op store, Gran’s shopping basket over her arm. ‘I’ll go for you, Gran,’ she had said, glad of the excuse to get out into the fresh air andhave a look round Winton at the same time. She smiled to herself, it felt as though she had been gone for ages but it was, after all, only a few weeks.

  ‘Well, look who’s back,’ the girl standing by the counter with a clipboard in her hand said as Katie opened the door to the grocery department. There were only a few people in besides the two assistants but they all turned to look.

  ‘Hallo June,’ Katie said quietly as she took her place in the queue. It was Billy’s sister who worked in the office at the store. When they had been at the Junior Elementary Katie and June had been great friends but June going off to grammar school had put a distance between them.

  June smiled rather stiffly. ‘What’s it like in the big city then?’ she asked. ‘We didn’t expect you to come back. Slumming, are you?’ She smirked at the line of customers.

  ‘Fine thank you,’ Katie answered civilly though she had gone pink. ‘I’m on my day off today.’

  ‘Mind, you’ve done well, lass,’ Dottie Dowson butted in and Katie smiled at her. ‘You’ve worked hard to get there, I was just saying to our Jim. I hope you do well, pet.’ There was a murmur of assent from the queue and it was June’s turn to flush.