by Betty Neels
‘You’ll be able to manage? I’m having days off— I’ve not had any for two weeks. The student nurses aren’t due to come for another two weeks and one of the part-time nurses has left. There’ll be one in tomorrow after dinner, so that you can have the afternoon off.’ She was sitting at the desk, pulling the Kardex towards her. ‘I’m very sorry you’re being thrown in at the deep end.’
Tilly stifled a desire to turn and run. ‘That’s all right, Sister, I’ll manage. This Mrs Dougall, is she trained?’
‘No, but she’s been here for five years, longer than any of us, and she’s good with the old ladies.’ She nodded towards a chair. ‘We’ll go through the Kardex…’
The rest of the day and the two which followed it were like a nightmare. Mrs Dougall was a tower of strength, making beds, changing them, heaving old ladies in and out of their chairs, a mine of information. When she wasn’t on duty Tilly had to manage with the three other nursing auxiliaries, whose easy-going ways tried Tilly’s temper very much. They were kind enough, but they had been there long enough to regard the patients as puppets to be got up, fed and put back to bed. Which wasn’t the case at all. At least half of them could have been at home if there had been someone to look after them; the patient despair in their eyes almost broke Tilly’s soft heart. It was always the same tale—daughter or son or niece didn’t want them, because that would mean that they would have to stay at home to look after them. Tilly was of the opinion that a good number of the old ladies were perfectly capable of looking after themselves with a little assistance, but the enforced idleness and the hours of sitting in a chair staring at the patients opposite had dulled their energy and blunted their hopes. However strongly she felt about it, there wasn’t very much that she could do. She suspected that a new principal nursing officer might alter things; it was lack of staff and the adhering to the treatment used several decades earlier which were the stumbling blocks. The geriatric wards in her own training school had been light and airy, decorated in pastel shades, and the patients had been encouraged to take an interest in life.
Sister Evans looked ten years younger when she came back on duty.
‘You coped?’ she asked, and added, ‘I see that you did. We’ll be able to have days off each week now, thank heaven.’
At Tilly’s look of enquiry she said, ‘No staff, you see. They won’t stay because Miss Watts won’t allow us to change the treatment. She ought to retire—she’s not well—but she won’t. I’d have left months ago but my fiancé is in Canada and I’m going out to him as soon as he is settled.’ She looked at Tilly. ‘You’re not engaged or anything like that?’
‘No, Sister.’
‘Well you ought to be, you’re pretty enough. If you get the chance,’ went on Sister Evans, ‘don’t let a sense of duty stop you from leaving. As soon as Miss Watts retires all the things you need doing will be done.’ She opened the Kardex. ‘Now we’d better go through this…’
The week crawled its slow way to Sunday and on Monday Tilly had her days off. She wanted very much to go to her uncle’s house but that wouldn’t be possible; she wouldn’t be welcome. She had written to Emma in the week and mentioned that she would have two days off a week and explained why she wouldn’t be returning to her old home. To her delight Emma had written back; why didn’t Miss Tilly go to Emma’s sister who lived at Southend-on-Sea and did bed and breakfast? The fresh air would do her good.
Tilly had never been to Southend-on-Sea and certainly not in early March, but it would be somewhere to go and she longed to get away from the hospital and its sombre surroundings. She phoned Mrs Spencer, and found her way to Liverpool Street Station early on Monday morning. It was an hour’s journey and the scenery didn’t look very promising, but the air was cold and fresh as she left the station and asked the way to Southchurch Avenue. Mrs Spencer lived in one of the streets off it, not ten minutes from the Marine Parade.
The house was narrow and on three floors, in a row of similar houses, each with a bay window framing a table set for a meal and a sign offering ‘Bed and Breakfast’. In the summer it would be teeming with life, but now there was no one to be seen, only a milk float and a boy on a bicycle.
Tilly knocked on the front door and it was flung open by a slightly younger version of Emma.
‘Come in, my dear,’ invited Mrs Spencer, ‘and glad I am to see you. Emma wrote and I’m sure I’ll make you comfy whenever you like to come. Come and see yer room, love.’
It was at the top of the house, clean and neat, and, provided she stood on tiptoe, it gave her a view of the estuary.
‘Now, bed and breakfast, Emma said, but it’s no trouble to do yer an evening meal. There’s not much open at this time of the year and the ’otels is expensive. There’s a sitting-room and the telly downstairs and yer can come and go as yer please.’
The kind creature bustled round the room, twitching the bedspread to perfection, closing a window. ‘Me ’usband works at the ’ospital—’e’s a porter there.’ She retreated to the door. ‘I dare say you could do with a cuppa. I got a map downstairs so that you can see where to go for the shops, or there’s a good walk along the cliffs to Westcliff if you want a breath of fresh air.’
Half an hour later Tilly set out, warmed by her welcome and the tea and armed with detailed instructions as to the best way to get around the town. It was a grey morning but dry; she walked briskly into the wind with the estuary on one side of her and the well-laid-out gardens with the houses beyond on the other. By the time she reached Westcliff she was glowing and hungry. There were no cafés open along the cliff road so she turned away from the sea and found her way to Hamlet Court Road where she found a coffee bar and she had coffee and sandwiches. Then, since Mrs Spencer had warned her that it was nothing but main roads and shops when away from the cliffs, she walked back the way she had come, found a small café in the High Street and had a leisurely tea, bought herself a paperback and went back to Mrs Spencer’s.
Supper was at half-past six when Mr Spencer got back home; sausages and mash and winter greens and apple pie with cups of tea to follow. It was a pleasant meal with plenty to talk about, what with Mr Spencer retailing his day’s work and Mrs Spencer’s careful probing into Tilly’s circumstances. ‘Emma didn’t tell me nothing,’ she assured Tilly, ‘only of course we knew that you worked for your uncle…’ She smiled at Tilly so kindly that she found herself telling her all about it, even Leslie. But she made light of it and, when she could, edged the talk back to Emma.
It was a fine clear morning when she woke and after breakfast she helped with the washing-up, made her bed and went out. This time she walked to Shoeburyness, in the other direction, found a small café for her coffee and sandwiches and started to walk back again. She hadn’t realised that it was so far—all of five miles—and half-way back she caught a bus which took her to the High Street. Since she had time on her hands she looked at the shops before going back to Mrs Spencer’s. It was poached egg on haddock for supper, treacle tart and more tea. She ate everything with a good appetite and went to bed early. She was on duty at one o’clock the next day and she would have to catch a train about ten o’clock.
It had been a lovely break, she reflected on the train as it bore her to London, and Mrs Spencer had been so kind. She was to go whenever she wanted to, ‘though in the summer it’s a bit crowded—you might not like it overmuch, love. Kids about and all them teenagers with their radios, but it’ll stay quiet like this until Easter, so you come when you want to.’
She would, but not for the next week; she would spend her two days going to the local house agents and looking over flats.
Going back on duty was awful but the awfulness was mitigated by Sister Evans’s real pleasure at seeing her again. They had been busy, she said, but she had felt a bit under the weather and would have her days off on Saturday and Sunday and have a good rest.
Tilly, once Sister had gone off duty for the afternoon, went round the beds, stopping to chat while she tidied
up, fetched and carried, and coaxed various old ladies to drink their tea. Some of them wanted to talk and to hear what she had been doing with her free days and she lingered to tell them; contact with the outside world for some of them was seldom and most of them knew Southend-on-Sea.
The later part of the afternoon was taken up with the Senior Registrar’s visit. He was pleasant towards the patients but a little bored, too, and not to be wondered at since he had been looking after several of them for months, if not years.
‘There are one or two temps,’ Tilly pointed out, ‘And a number of headaches.’
‘’Flu? Let me know if they persist. Settling down, are you?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
He nodded. ‘This isn’t quite your scene, is it?’
She had no answer to that so it was just as well that he went away.
By the end of the week a number of old ladies were feeling poorly.
‘I said it was ’flu.’ The registrar was writing up antibiotics. ‘You’ll need more staff if it gets much worse.’
Two extra nurses were sent, resentful of having to work on a geriatric ward instead of the more interesting surgical wing, but it meant that Sister Evans could have her weekend off. She had been looking progressively paler and more exhausted and Tilly went on duty earlier on the Friday evening so that she could go off duty promptly.
‘I’ll do the same for you, Staff,’ said Sister gratefully. ‘You’ve got days off on Tuesday and Wednesday.’
However, Sister Evans wasn’t on duty when Tilly got on to the ward on Monday morning. Instead there was a message to say that she was ill and Staff Nurse Groves would have to manage. The Principal Nursing Officer’s cold voice over the phone reminded her that she had two extra nurses.
‘We are all working under a great strain,’ added that lady. ‘You must adapt yourself, Staff Nurse.’
Which meant, in fact, being on duty for most of the day, for various of the old ladies added their symptoms to those already being nursed in their beds, so that the work was doubled, the medicine round became a major chore and the report, usually a quickly written mixture of ‘no change’, or ‘good day’, now needed to be written at length.
By the end of the week Tilly was looking very much the worse for wear; hurried meals, brief spells of off duty, and the effort of keeping a cheerful comforting face on things were taking their toll. The last straw was the Principal Nursing Officer informing her that Sister Evans was to have a further week’s sick leave and that Tilly could not have her days off until she was back.
Tilly tackled the Registrar when he came on to the Ward later that day. ‘Forty old ladies, more than half of them ill—there’s me, Staff Nurse Willis who comes in three times a week from two o’clock until six, and there is Mrs Dougall, two auxiliaries and the two extra I’ve been lent. With off duty and days off I’m lucky to have more than two on at a time. You must do something about it.’
He didn’t want to know. He was a good doctor, but overworked, and there were acutely ill patients on the medical side. He said unwillingly, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
He wasn’t very successful. Not only was she refused any extra help, but she was sent to the office where she was told that at the end of the month her services would no longer be required. ‘You are not suitable for the post,’ said the Principal Nursing Officer, ‘although I am sure that you have done your best.’
Matilda, since she had been given the sack already, felt that she could speak her mind. ‘What you mean is that my ideas of nursing geriatric patients don’t fit in with yours. They are human, you know, they still think and talk and take an interest in the things going on about them, but you haven’t moved with the times, you treat them as though they were workhouse patients, sitting in rows until they die of boredom.’ She was so carried away that she actually shook an admonitory finger at the incensed lady sitting behind the desk. ‘Many more staff, a little painting and decorating, organised occupational therapy, a chance for the more active patients to walk around…’
‘You will leave at the end of the month, Staff Nurse.’
‘Yes, I will. I shall also write to the local MP, the Regional Nursing Board, and anyone else I can think of. The geriatric unit is an absolute disgrace and you should be ashamed of yourself!’
She got herself out of the office, shaking with rage and presently with fright. Probably she would be struck off, or whatever they did to staff nurses who dared to argue with their superiors.
Off duty was quite out of the question. It wasn’t Staff Nurse Willis’s day to come in and though Mrs Dougall was perfectly capable of running the ward she wasn’t allowed to. Tilly plunged into a round of chores with brief respites for meals and at the end of a long day, sat down to write the report. The one nurse she had on duty had gone to her supper, so Tilly took her Kardex into the ward and sat at the table where she could see everyone. The old ladies were quiet now, dozing away the first early hours of the evening, and she wrote busily, making her tired brain remember the day’s happenings. She was almost finished when the door at the far end of the ward opened and Dr van Kempler came in.
CHAPTER THREE
MATILDA, her mouth slightly open, watched him make his unhurried way towards her. When he reached the table he stood quietly looking at her, his look so intent that she put a hand up to her hair and said stupidly, ‘I’m a bit untidy; I’ve had a very busy day…’
‘I only heard this morning.’ He had ignored her remark; she might never have made it. ‘I came at once. I’m so sorry—he was a good man. Why are you here, looking…’ he paused, ‘so tired? And why are you working in this place? Why have you left your home?’
‘Questions, questions,’ said Tilly peevishly. ‘I’ve no time to answer them. There’s the report to finish and the night staff will be here in ten minutes.’
‘In that case, once you have dealt with it, we will go somewhere quiet and you shall answer them.’
He drew up a chair and sat down and when Tilly said, ‘You can’t do that,’ he said calmly,
‘A friend of mine is on the committee here. I arranged to come and see you; some gorgon on the telephone did her best to prevent me.’
‘The Principal Nursing Officer. She has given me the sack.’
‘Yes? That’s good.’
There was a flutter of movement as the night nurses came on to the ward; two auxiliaries, and one of those would only stay until the patients had been settled for the night.
‘I’ll stay here while you give the report,’ said Dr van Kempler. He spoke with a quiet authority which took it for granted that she would do just that; so she did, with all her usual calm, her quiet voice omitting nothing, while at the back of her head there was a rising tide of disbelief. She had imagined it all; doctors who weren’t attached to hospitals didn’t just walk on to wards and sit down coolly as though they had a right to do so. She got to the end of the report and stole a look out of the open office door. He was still there, sitting relaxed like a man at his own fireside.
She went with the nurse to take a final look at the ill patients and found him walking beside her as she left the ward. At the head of the staircase he said, ‘I’ll be at the front entrance—is fifteen minutes long enough for you?’
She pushed back a dark curl. ‘I’m tired…’
‘We will go somewhere quiet.’ The smile he gave her was very kind.
It would be a waste of time arguing with him. She nodded and turned away to go to the nurses’ home.
She looked a fright. She cast one look in the mirror on the dressing-table and tore out of her uniform. She had showered, got into a tweed suit, done the best she had time for with her face and hair, and pushed her tired feet into high heels. It had been a grey day and it was dark now; she hoped she would be warm enough as she hurried down to the front entrance.
Dr van Kempler was lounging against a Grecian pillar bearing the bust of some long-dead gentleman with side whiskers and a stern mouth. He reached the door
as she did and opened it with a cheerful, ‘You were quick—the car is here.’
Her tired head seethed with questions but it was too much bother to utter them. She sat in blissful comfort while he drove away from the hospital and the rows of small, dull streets until they reached Oxford Street. He turned off at St Giles’s Circus and presently stopped at Neal Street Restaurant, smallish and quiet, somewhere, she thought gratefully, where her suit wouldn’t look too out of place.
They had a table in a corner and the doctor spoke for the first time. ‘What would you like to drink while we choose, Matilda?’
She sipped her sherry and studied the menu, aware that she was hungry.
‘Did you have lunch?’ he asked casually.
‘Well, a sandwich…’
‘Iced melon?’ he suggested. ‘And how about sole véronique to follow?’
The food was delicious and beyond a modicum of conversation the doctor spoke little, leaving her to enjoy the fish and the splendid dish of vegetables which went with it—new potatoes, broccoli and artichoke hearts. A hot soufflé covered in chocolate sauce followed and it wasn’t until she had finished these and the coffee had been put on the table that he sat back and said quietly, ‘Now, from the beginning, Matilda.’
The hock had loosened her tongue. Besides, it was marvellous to be able to talk to someone; someone who would listen, she felt instinctively, and who had known Uncle Thomas well.
It was fairly difficult to begin, but once she had started, words came easily. She laid the whole sorry story before him in a matter-of-fact voice and when she had finished she asked him, ‘More coffee? I’m afraid it’s not very hot now.’
He ordered another pot with a gently raised hand. ‘Thank you for telling me. I have to go back to Holland,’ he didn’t tell her that he was flying back, leaving his car in London, ‘but something shall be done, I promise you.’
‘You are coming back?’ She had no idea that she sounded so anxious, and his bland face and heavy-lidded eyes told her nothing.