A Nurse's Duty

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Why do you keep on repeating that?’ she asked. Surely he would send for her, couldn’t she take that for granted?

  ‘Well, I will,’ he answered.

  He’d been telling her he would send for her ever since the day he first told her he was going, she thought. Only now did Karen suspect he had been thinking of emigrating even before they were married, else why had he agreed to her going off to train?

  ‘Leave your ring at home,’ Dave had advised her when she had gone to Newcastle. ‘Someone will see it.’ But she couldn’t do that, it would be bad luck. Why, Gran thought that if you took your wedding ring off your finger something bad would happen to your marriage. And she’d been right, an’ all, Karen thought miserably. For Dave had seen the notice pasted to a wall in Bishop Auckland and he was going to emigrate. Miners were wanted for the goldfields of Australia and her men were going. There would be only Da left.

  ‘Gold must pay better than coal, eh?’ Dave said to Karen, and she stared at him, disbelieving. But all he could think about was Aus tralia. Even when she came home on her days off and he took her roughly, swiftly, he seemed far away from her. The distance was there in his eyes, it was a mechanical kind of loving only. And now the day had come, he was going. And not only Dave but Joe and most of the other boys she had grown up with. Oh, she thought desperately, she knew the wages had been cut at Morton Main Colliery and things were bad in the village, the future was bleak for the young lads. But Australia?

  ‘Howay, lass, smile,’ said Dave as he held her hands on the station platform as they waited for the train, ‘I’ll be gone in a minute.’

  Karen smiled. The muscles of her face felt stiff and unyielding but Dave didn’t notice. He grinned, excitement creeping back into his eyes. Once again his thoughts were in Australia.

  ‘I don’t know what you have to grin about,’ Mrs Mitchell said in a voice rough with weeping.

  ‘Nay, Mother,’ he answered, ‘don’t be upset. You want me to get on, don’t you?’

  ‘There’s nowt the matter with England. You can get on in England,’ snapped Mrs Mitchell. ‘There’s plenty of coal to dig here.’

  Her mouth worked and her voice rose so that the other members of the group began to take notice. Both Joe and Da had turned to look, concerned, for if only one of the mothers broke down they all would.

  They were saved by the whistle of the approaching train. There was a sudden flurry of activity as last hugs and kisses were given and boxes lifted on to shoulders strong from hewing coal underground.

  ‘I’ll send for you, Karen, I promise I will,’ whispered Dave yet again. He was the first to jump on the train when the doors opened. There was a chorus of farewells and the doors were closed and the train was on its way, puffing out of Durham and taking away so many of the young men of Morton Main.

  Karen waved until her arm ached, everyone left behind did. But it was Joe who stuck his head out of the window and waved back. There was no sign of Dave.

  ‘Will you have time for a bite before you go back?’

  Karen looked round at the sound of her sister’s voice. Kezia was standing with Da and Mam, all three wearing that same look of anti-climax. There would only be Kezia left in the village to give an eye to Mam now, thought Karen with a pang of guilt, and glanced at her mother.

  Rachel seemed weary, and was very pale. Now that Joe had gone she had dropped her brave front and looked as though she could do with a sit down and a cup of tea. Karen studied her, remembering the last time Mam had worn that exhausted look. It had ended in her being confined to bed for a month on the orders of the panel doctor, the one Da paid fourpence a week for. Kezia and Karen noticed the look at the same time and moved forward together, both of them watching for signs of collapse in their mother.

  ‘We’ll go to the tea-room, it’s not far, can you manage?’ asked Karen as she took Mam’s arm. ‘I have a couple of hours before I have to be back on duty.’

  They settled Mam on a seat in the tea-room and Karen brought her tea from the buffet and sat down herself before she remembered Mrs Mitchell. She would have to have a word with her mother-in-law, she realized, and hurried out on to the platform again. There were a few people from the village hanging about still but no sign of Mrs Mitchell. She must have gone straight home.

  Well, there was nothing she could do about that, thought Karen. Dave’s mother knew about her mam’s poor heart, everyone in the village did; the damage done by the rheumatic fever had made her prone to fainting fits and collapsing at times of strain.

  ‘I told you you shouldn’t have come, Rachel,’ Da was saying as Karen returned to her family. ‘I told you it was too much for you.’

  Da’s hair was grizzled now and his breath short with the lung disease. Oh, he was an upright man, one who modelled himself on Job. But he was a quiet man at home and gentle with his women. It was in Chapel that he gave his impassioned sermons. There he was a ‘blood and thunder’ preacher. The pews were full when Thomas Knight was preaching, Karen thought proudly. He could hold a congregation enthralled for hours and never need to refer to a single note. All he needed was his Bible, his dog-eared copy of the King James Version which went with him everywhere except down the pit.

  Karen rose abruptly to her feet. She had to get away. It was all right now she saw her mother was not going to have one of her turns. She bent over the table and kissed Rachel, anxiously noting the dry skin of her mother’s cheek. Was it too hot? There were dark shadows under her eyes too; were they darker than usual?

  ‘I have to go Mam, Da,’ was all she said.

  ‘I’ll walk to the train with you,’ said Kezia, quiet now, the acerbic note gone from her voice.

  The sisters stood on the up platform waiting for the Newcastle train. The wind grew stronger now, blowing in gusts and lifting Kezia’s shawl, showing the thickening of her waist, the start of a pregnancy.

  ‘You’re having a baby?’ asked Karen, feeling another pang of conscience as Kezia nodded. With Jemima in Lancashire and herself in Newcastle, Kezia had a lot to cope with already.

  Kezia correctly interpreted the look Karen gave her.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said, ‘I’m strong enough. I can manage fine.’

  ‘Maybe I should have stayed in the village.’

  ‘Why no, man,’ Kezia said sharply. ‘In spite of the fact that he didn’t agree with you telling the lie about being married, Da’s that proud of you getting on, he would hate it if you came home now. Anyroad, what’s the difference? You’ll be going off to Australia in a year or two, won’t you?’

  Karen glanced up the line, not knowing how to answer. The small local train chugged into the station and Karen kissed Kezia on the cheek, feeling the slight shrinking. Kezia was never one for displays of affection. The train came in and Karen climbed on and found a seat by the window where she could wave to her parents, now standing in the doorway of the tea-room watching her. Kezia had already crossed the bridge and was standing next to them, alternately glancing at the train as it pulled out of the station and keeping a watchful gaze on her mother. Karen settled down for the short journey to Newcastle, trying to quieten her mind for she had to be on duty in an hour or so and already she felt tired to death, strung out emotionally. She stared out of the soot-blackened window, not seeing the fields and trees and small groups of tiny houses clustered round towering winding wheels and colliery yards and tall chimneys belching smoke. Her thoughts were still with her family and the mining folk she grew up with. There would be a deal of sadness in Morton Main tonight.

  ‘Stop fiddling, Nurse, and get on with your work,’ Sister snapped.

  Sister missed nothing, thought Karen as she dropped her fingers from her neck where she had been touching her wedding ring through the cloth of her uniform and returned to her work, terrified Sister would ask to see what was under her dress.

  Sometimes it was hard to believe that she was really married, she mused, as she scrubbed the sluice and bedpans until they shone befo
re taking them out on a ward round and bringing them back to be scrubbed again. And the second-year nurse was waiting for her to help make the beds and Karen knew she wouldn’t get her corners right first time and would have to face Sister’s lashing scorn. Despairingly, she thought that the most important thing in the world to Sister was that the corners of the bedclothes should be just at the right angle and the wheels turned in precisely. Even the patients were expected to show just the right amount of arms and chest, covered of course in white linen, above the turned down sheets.

  There were no letters from Dave or Joe either. She hated going back to Morton Main and facing people and telling them, no, she hadn’t heard. They would look at her pityingly and she would know they thought she was a deserted wife.

  Then one morning there was a lovely long chatty letter from Gran. Karen’s heart lightened as she took it from Home Sister and slipped it into the bib of her apron to be read later during her ten-minute break for breakfast. She had recognized the copper-plate handwriting at once, the letters formed laboriously and painstakingly as Gran had been taught at the Wesleyan School in her youth. The beautiful letters contrasted oddly with the content for Gran wrote as she spoke, in the idiom of Weardale, words coming straight from the heart. She wrote of the doings in the dale and then continued to her main reason for writing:

  Your mam telled me that man of yours went off to Australia along of Joe. There’ll be nowt good comes of it I doubt. It’ll all end in tears, a young couple separating like that. Maybe you should not have denied you were wed, our Karen, when you went to that grand hospital of yours. It was a lie and nowt good comes of a lie. Though I know how badly you wanted to better yourself, be a nurse. But why you had to go away and do this new-fangled training in Newcastle, I’ll never know. You could just as well have learnt the trade from the lying-in nurse at Morton Main or gone as an assistant at the workhouse hospital in Auckland. Still, you know what you’re doing no doubt.

  Aye, well, I reckon your time there will pass. But I’m thinking of your mam. What’s she going to do if you go gallivanting off to Australia after that man of yours? Kezia will likely have enough on her plate with the new babby coming and I fear for your mam.

  Hoping you are keeping well as I am.

  Your loving grandmother,

  Jane Rain

  Karen, sitting in a corner of the ward kitchen, reading the letter during her break, smiled wryly. She could almost hear Gran saying the words she had read. Gran’s thoughts were always for her daughter, she worried incessantly about her.

  Gran herself was wiry and strong and had never suffered a day’s illness in her life. But her daughter Rachel had been at a vulnerable age when the hard times came to Weardale and they had left their mark. Thinking about her mother, Karen sat on longer than she should have done and was brought back to the present by the appearance of Sister in the kitchen doorway, the bow under her chin quivering with indignation.

  ‘Are you intending to sit there all day, Nurse?’ she demanded. ‘It’s Matron’s round this morning and the sluice is a pig-sty! Now, get in there at once.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  Karen fairly scuttled past the bristling starch of Sister’s apron, heading for the sluice. It was gleaming, not a thing out of place, just as Karen had left it before going on her break. Sighing, she picked up a cloth and the bottle of Eusol and began wiping everything once again. It was Thursday tomorrow and her day off. She would go and see Gran in Weardale. If she was up at dawn she might still have time to call at Morton Main on her way back. She could spend an hour or two with her family before reporting back to the hospital at eight o’clock.

  ‘Eeh, our Karen, what are you doing here?’

  The carrier’s cart creaked to a halt and Karen climbed down before answering her grandmother who was walking along the path from Low Rigg Farm. Gran was dressed for a journey, she saw, her black, shiny straw hat clamped over her iron grey hair and a thick natural wool shawl tied round her shoulders. Karen’s heart sank. Obviously Gran was going off somewhere.

  ‘Whyever didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ the old lady demanded, placing her hands on her hips and surveying Karen.

  ‘I … I thought I’d be a surprise,’ she answered weakly.

  ‘Aye. Well, you are that,’ asserted Mrs Rain. ‘I was just on my way to Stanhope, I was going to walk to the train. I’ve got a new lad now, he’s not over bright but he’s a good lad, he can look after the place for a couple of days. Aye, Alf’s all right, not like the last ’un.’

  Karen remembered the last young lad Gran had. He had been a disaster, always skulking in the barn.

  ‘It’s too far for you to walk, Gran,’ she said now, bending down and kissing the old lady on the cheek. ‘You should get the cart.’

  ‘Hadaway wi’ ye. It’s nought but a stride or two. But you’d better come in now anyroad, I expect you’re ready for a cup of tea.’

  She turned to the carrier who was still standing, listening to the conversation with interest. It wasn’t often Mrs Rain had visitors and he took his unofficial job as news gatherer seriously.

  ‘You can call back for us on your way back from High Rigg, Amos,’ she said. ‘We’ll be catching the Auckland train.’

  ‘Aye, right you are, Jane.’

  Amos touched his cap and clucked his horse into motion.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ asked Karen as she and her grandmother turned into the gate of Low Rigg, past the rowan tree which stood sentinel there. A carpet of leaves surrounded the trunk now that the summer was over, and the women crunched them beneath their feet.

  Jane glanced quickly up at her granddaughter.

  ‘How long is it since you were home, Karen?’ she asked instead of answering.

  ‘A fortnight. Why, is something wrong?’

  ‘Well, I wondered.’

  They had reached the kitchen door and Jane moved quickly to stir the fire together and put the iron kettle on the coals. Karen waited, knowing better than to question further.

  ‘I had a funny night last night,’ mused her grandmother, almost to herself. ‘I was sure Rachel needed me. I kept waking up and going off again and there she was, time after time, holding out her hand to me.’

  ‘Oh, Gran, it must have been something you had for supper,’ said Karen, relieved that she had nothing really to go on.

  ‘Aye, well.’ Gran pursed her lips. ‘I know the Minister says we shouldn’t take any heed, it’s only superstition, but I’m telling you … I have to go and find out for mesel’.’

  ‘We can go together, Gran,’ said Karen. ‘I was going anyway.’ A tiny throb of anxiety went through her. Gran’s dreams had proved pretty reliable before now. She remembered the time she had come in from school to find Mam stretched out on the kitchen floor, the first time Karen had seen her collapse. Da had been down the pit and Kezia off to Auckland for the messages and Karen was panic-stricken, not knowing what to do. And then, miraculously, there was Gran coming in the door and taking off her shawl, her sharp eyes taking in what had happened as she moved to pick up her daughter. Small and slight though she was, she pushed Karen out of the way and lifted Rachel on to the settle, holding her against her thin chest, rocking her, talking to her. And Karen had watched, trembling, as Mam came to herself and cried softly and Gran carried on rocking her.

  ‘Howay, my lass, your mam’s here. You’re fine now. I knew you needed me. I felt it when I was having me dinner, and I did no more than run for the train.’

  Karen remembered, oh, she did. Was this another time like that or worse? The two women drank their tea quickly and were waiting at the gate when the carrier’s cart came round the bend from High Rigg. The journey down, by cart and then by train, seemed twice as long as it usually did for both Karen and her grandmother were lost in their own anxieties.

  ‘Mother! And our Karen an’ all. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’

  Rachel Knight looked up in surprise as they walked in through the open front
door of number two Chapel Row. Karen’s heart lightened at the sight of her mother, obviously not having one of her turns. Rachel was standing by the table peeling vegetables and she looked fine. The dark shadows under her eyes had receded and her normally pale face was flushed. Whether it was from the heat of the fire or not, she looked well, better than the last time Karen saw her.

  ‘You’re not badly then? Do you mean to say I’ve come all this way and there’s nowt the matter with you?’ demanded Gran. Karen caught her mother’s eye and had to smile.

  ‘Oh, Gran, would you rather she was badly?’

  ‘No, I never said that,’ admitted Gran.

  Rachel wiped her hands on her apron and turned to lift the kettle on to the fire. ‘Have you been having a dream again, Mam?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye, I did, an’ it’s not usually wrong neither,’ snapped Jane, sitting down at the table and loosening her shawl.

  ‘It’s not wrong this time either, Mam, only it’s not me for a change.’ Rachel paused and sat down herself before continuing. ‘It’s our Kezia. She’s lost the bairn.’

  ‘Kezia? No!’ exclaimed Karen, that it should be Kezia had not occurred to either her or Gran. Kezia never had an illness in her life, why on earth should she lose her first baby?

  ‘I knew it. I knew there was something,’ said Gran. ‘Where is she then?’

  ‘She’s upstairs. She was here when it happened which is just as well, I could see to her. But sit down and have something to eat before you go up to see her. Kezia’s all right now, she’s got it over.’

  Rachel poured out tea and buttered teacakes, working swiftly and surely as Karen remembered her doing in the days before her heart trouble became apparent. Karen got to her feet. ‘I’ll just go up, Mam, I’d rather go now.’

  Opening the door of the bedroom she had shared with her brother and sisters – in those days there had been a rope slung across the room with blankets over it for a divider between the boy and the girls – Karen looked anxiously at the bed in the corner. ‘Kezia?’

  Lying in the middle of the bed, her sister turned to look at her. Her normally rosy face was pale and her eyes red with weeping. She looked strangely vulnerable as Karen walked hesitantly over to her.