A Nurse's Duty

by Maggie Hope

  When she awoke, the dark was absolute, a pitch black darkness. She felt warm and contented though for a moment she couldn’t think where she was or why she had such a feeling of well-being. Yet she could feel Patrick’s body, warm and long and lean, pressed up against her. And she smiled and turned to him, nuzzling into his neck and his arm tightened around her.

  ‘Karen,’ he murmured, and she leaned her head back and looked up into his face. He was still asleep, he had said her name in his sleep. He loves me, she thought with a rush of tenderness, and the thought flooded her with deep happiness.

  But then the events of the night came back to her, and she remembered where she was in a rush of alarm. She was supposed to be on duty, she might be needed on the wards, there were wounded soldiers to attend to.

  Raising herself carefully from under Patrick’s arm, she slipped out of bed and hurriedly dressed. But she found time to drop a kiss on his cheek and cover him lovingly with a blanket. He murmured in his sleep and turned over on to his side but did not wake. Smiling tenderly to herself, she let herself out of the room and went downstairs. Going over to the mirror above the mantle, she tidied her hair and pinned her cap straight. She was supremely happy, an emotion which seemed rock solid, unassailable.

  Glancing at the watch pinned to her apron, she was surprised to see she was not as late as she had thought. Smiling at her reflection, Karen went to check with the nurses on the wards. She had not been missed, there had been no emergencies or disturbances, the hospital slumbered as deeply as Patrick, her lovely man. It was almost as though God had allowed them time out to confirm and consummate their love.

  She forced herself to think of her work and the duties yet to be done as she came back into the hall and sat down at her desk to begin her report, though the words danced before her eyes and she found it impossible to stop her thoughts from straying to the small ward upstairs.

  ‘I’ll take my rest hour now, Sister, if I may?’ said Nurse Ellis as she came into the hall. ‘This must be one of the quietest nights we’ve had in an age. Apart from …’ She blushed painfully, remembering the tragedy of Private O’Donnel.

  Karen knew what Nurse Ellis meant and a tinge of sadness went through her again for the waste of a young life. But it was not enough to dispel her euphoria. She smiled sympathetically at the nurse.

  ‘It is, Nurse,’ she said. ‘Well, go on then, enjoy your meal.’

  Nurse Ellis put on her cloak against the bitter night wind and made her way over to the annexe. As she walked over the gravel path towards the lighted window of the nurses’ dining-room, she puzzled over the change in her superior. Sister had not taken her to task for her lack of respect for the death of Private O’Donnel; rather she had sympathized with her. And what on earth had brought such a glow to her face and brightness to her eyes? Shrugging, the nurse went into the rest room and washed her hands. Oh, well, it was none of her business in any case.

  In the hall, Karen glanced up from the case-notes as she heard someone coming down the stairs. She knew it was Patrick even before he came into view. She half rose and smiled as she saw it was indeed her love. But as he came nearer the smile disappeared as she saw his face was set and white, eyes dark and haunted and jaw clenched.

  ‘Patrick …’ she said uncertainly, suddenly afraid, dreadfully afraid, so that her heart began to beat painfully.

  ‘Goodnight, Sister.’

  His eyes were chips of flint, his voice like ice. He looked at her as though she were evil incarnate as, without another word, he rushed out of the hospital, wrenching open the front door and hurrying away, leaving it ajar.

  Karen stared at the door, paralysed in a long moment of fear. But at last she got to her feet and walked to the door, her legs wobbly and unsure. She stared after him but he had already disappeared and after a moment, through the drumming of her heartbeat, she could just hear the clop of the pony’s hooves fading into the distance. A cold wind blew into the hall and the papers on her desk rustled, a couple of them falling to the floor. She folded her arms across her breasts, wincing a little at the slight soreness left where his fingers had touched her. The pain brought her back to an awareness of herself and where she was. Slowly, Karen closed the door and walked back to her desk.

  She shivered though she was not really aware of the cold air which had come into the hall. Mainly, she realized, she felt dirty, soiled. Her vision blurred, the room swam about her and she had to grasp the desk with both hands to lower herself into the chair. She sat perfectly still as she fought her encroaching faintness and struggled to regain her composure. Picking up her pen she forced herself to go on with the report. One by one she brought to mind the names of the soldiers asleep in the wards and wrote a few words by each name. And eventually, her long years of training came to her aid and she was able to complete her night of duty, though there were intervals when she had to struggle to hold on to her composure.

  At last it was morning, a dark and dank morning. Karen’s mind and body relaxed in spite of herself as her spell of duty came to an end. As she did so she found she was beginning to feel the aches and bruising left by their violent love-making, and total exhaustion threatened. But at long last she was handing over the report to the day staff and was free to stumble down the drive and along the lane to the cottage.

  Mumbling something about a headache and only wanting her bed, she ran past a concerned Annie to the haven of her room. Here for the first time she turned the key in the lock of the bedroom door. Flinging off her clothes, she scrubbed herself all over in the cold water from the ewer until her skin was red raw. Then she dried herself sketchily and, getting quickly into her all-enveloping nightgown, crawled under the covers.

  Unbidden, her thoughts ran chaotically over the night. Her own shamelessness. How could she have done it? What did he think of her? Wanton? An evil Jezebel? Her knowledge of Catholicism was scanty, she had not even considered it in the euphoria following the discovery that she loved and was loved in return.

  Painfully aware that what had happened was wrong in her own world, deeply wrong by the standards of her own family and the mining community in which she had spent her childhood, Karen’s thoughts ran on as she moved restlessly in the bed. Sex before marriage was not unknown in Morton Main but it was frowned upon heavily. And if it happened then the man was expected to marry the girl or be drummed out of the village, whether there were any consequences or not.

  Consequences! A baby! Dear God, no. What would she do if she was to have a baby? Karen sat up in bed as the thought came to haunt her. She would be an unmarried mother, an outcast, she knew she would, for hadn’t Patrick shown by his precipitate rush from her that he wanted nothing more to do with her?

  Roman Catholic priests do not marry. Oh, yes, she knew this. But in her ignorance she had thought that now he loved her, he would leave the priesthood and everything would come right.

  How naive this idea had been was slowly dawning on her. How could she have imagined that she meant more to him than his church? They hardly knew each other! After her years in hospitals, why was she so ignorant of the world? The despairing questions went round and round in her mind. How could she possibly know if she was pregnant or not after only a few hours? Fallen wrong, the folk at home would say. Fallen wrong. Fallen wrong, fallen …

  There was a soft knock at the door which startled Karen out of her frenzied thoughts.

  ‘Are you all right, Karen?’ came Annie’s whisper.

  She didn’t answer, pretending to be asleep. She heard Annie try the door, then, finding it locked, she sighed heavily and went downstairs and Karen relaxed. She could not have faced her friend, not yet; everything was too new and raw, she would not have been able to conceal how she felt and thought. Restlessly, she turned over on to her stomach and pressed her face into the pillow.

  Total exhaustion finally overtook her and she slept, a heavy, dreamless sleep which lasted until the banging of Annie’s fist on the door and her friend’s anxious calls woke her.


  ‘Karen, is there something wrong? It’s past six o’clock.’

  Making a supreme effort to rouse herself, Karen called back:

  ‘Righto. I won’t be a minute, Annie.’

  She was heavy-eyed and the headache she had pretended in the morning was painfully real now; her temples throbbed with it.

  She had come to a decision, though. If Patrick made it plain at their next encounter that he wanted her out of his life she would apply for a transfer back north, the Cameron at Hartlepool perhaps. Or, no, she probably could obtain a post in Bishop Auckland itself; there was the cottage hospital or the workhouse hospital. In any case, she would go back. It was the only thing she could do. Like a wounded animal, she would bolt for home.

  Mechanically she began her preparations to go on duty. As she pinned her hair up before the tiny mirror her brown eyes looked back at her from great, dark circles set in a white face. Even her lips were pale and colourless. Resorting to an old childhood trick, she wet her little finger and rubbed it on the red cover of her hymn book, transferring the colour to her bottom lip. Rubbing her cheeks to give them some colour too before she went down to the kitchen to face Annie’s concern, she braced herself for the ordeal of the night. She had to work at Greenfields and Patrick, as a priest, had to minister to the Roman Catholics among the wounded soldiers. She would have to meet him, she thought dismally, they would probably meet quite often. And she had to be prepared for that, she had to be in control of herself, she could not break down.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘ARE YOU SURE you’re not coming down with something?’ asked Annie. ‘You’re so pale, Karen. It worries me to see you looking so tired all the time.’

  ‘No, I’m fine, Annie,’ she answered. ‘It’s just the wrong time of the month, that’s all.’

  Thank God, she thought, at least that particular worry had been dispelled when she woke a few days ago with the familiar ache in the small of her back. It was such a relief to have to get out of bed for a sanitary cloth from the clean-washed pile in the bottom drawer.

  Five nights had gone by and Karen hadn’t seen Patrick. If he had been in the hospital it wasn’t during her spells of duty. The nights had dragged for there were still a number of empty beds in the old house. A lull in the fighting at the Front, she supposed dully, though she couldn’t think about the war, her mind was so filled with Patrick. Every time the front door opened, her heart leaped in case it was him. The ache for him was ever-present, all-consuming.

  ‘It’s a good thing it’s your night off the night after tomorrow,’ declared Annie. ‘It’s not natural for folk to work all night and sleep during the day. It’ll make a nice change for you to be free on a Saturday. It’s better than your usual Friday at least.’

  It was the time of day Annie enjoyed the most, the half-hour before Karen had to go on duty. It was a chance to talk except that lately Karen had had much less to say for herself. She seemed to have something on her mind.

  ‘There’s nothing bothering you, is there, Karen?’

  The question made her glance up, startled. She had been staring at her teacup thinking of Patrick. Why had he acted as he had? He loved her, she was sure of that, he couldn’t have made it any more plain. And yet he had acted as though he hated her afterwards. She could not rid herself of the memory of him as he came down the stairs that night; he had acted as though he couldn’t bear even to look at her. She went over and over the scene in her mind. Feeling wretched, she forced herself to reply to Annie.

  ‘No, don’t worry so much about me,’ she said, making a deliberate effort to lighten her mood. ‘As you say, I’m ready for my night off. And the weather has been so wet and dreary. I think we are all waiting for the spring.’ The phrase sounded trite in her ears.

  ‘Look, I’m going into Romford on Saturday, why don’t you come with me? We can look round the market and have a spot of lunch, what do you say? If I feed the animals before we go, they’ll be all right until tea-time. What do you think?’

  ‘Oh, I think I’d rather just spend a lazy day at home, Annie. You don’t mind, do you? I’ve letters to write and I want to sort out my wardrobe. But you stay as long as you like. I tell you what, I can lock up the hens and feed the pigs then you could go to the moving pictures, what about that?’

  Annie was disappointed and it showed on her face. ‘Well, if you don’t want to go with me …’ she muttered, and disappeared into the scullery.

  Karen gazed after, knowing she was upset. But her own misery was so intense it excluded other feelings. All she wanted to do was hide away at home, she felt so depressed and tired. Sighing, she went back up to her room to prepare for work. Only one more night after this one. With any luck she would get through to Saturday without encountering Patrick, she told herself, yet she longed to see him.

  The unusually long-lasting lull between batches of new patients was over, she discovered, as she entered the old house. There was an air of bustling activity about the place though the hall was deserted. Karen climbed the stairs to Matron’s office to take the day report.

  ‘Good evening, Sister. Fifteen new patients today, amputees mostly. I’ve put them in the small wards so they can have some peace and quiet.’

  The small two-bedded wards, thought Karen numbly. If they had only arrived five days earlier, then there would have been no place in the hospital for her to come together with Patrick and she wouldn’t be carrying this great lump of misery around with her now. But even as she walked over to the desk and took the book from Matron, she was berating herself for thinking such a thing. What were her troubles compared to those of the wounded?

  ‘They are a little later than usual coming to us, casualties from the November campaign at Cambrai,’ Matron was saying. ‘All of them are recovering nicely, so you shouldn’t have much trouble with them.’

  As Karen entered the first of the two-bedded wards with her medicine tray, she was struck by the cheerfulness of the two soldiers lying there, even though one had only one arm and the other’s leg had been amputated below the knee. Nick was sitting on a hard chair between the two beds but he sprang to his feet when he saw Karen.

  ‘Hello, Sister,’ he said, sounding quite animated, the depression following the death of Private O’Donnel lifted now. ‘I didn’t know you were back. We’ve been talking. John here says that now the Americans are coming over, none of us will have to go back, not never. There’s thousands and thousands of Yanks, you know, millions. The war will be over before we know it.’

  ‘Well, I daresay John knows what he is talking about,’ she answered him as she put the tray down on an elegant inlaid occasional table, probably dating from the Regency period and left here by the owners of Greenfields. ‘Now … Private Jenkins. That’s you, John, I take it?’

  He nodded and pulled a wry face as she measured out a dose of Syrup of Ferrum, and handed it to him. ‘Do I have to, Sister? I feel fine, really I do.’

  ‘You’ve lost a lot of blood. Now don’t be such a baby,’ she said severely.

  ‘Well, can I have a black bullet for after?’

  Karen cast him an exasperated glance and saw he was grinning impishly, obviously ragging her.

  ‘Just take your medicine, Private Jenkins,’ she said, trying to sound like Matron.

  ‘Well, orders is orders,’ he replied dolefully and downed the thick treacly stuff. Groaning, he clutched his stomach theatrically with his one hand.

  ‘I’ll fetch you your cocoa, that’ll take away the taste,’ said Nick sympathetically and hurried from the room.

  ‘I won’t have him running about after you two always, mind,’ declared Karen as she handed the other soldier his dose, ‘tomorrow you will wait for the trolley coming round like everyone else.’

  Private Jenkins grinned at her as she left the room but his grin faded as he glanced over at his companion. ‘A nice little billet we’ve landed in, mate,’ he said. ‘Nothing like a pretty nurse or two about the place, is there, Tommy? A better t
onic than that bloody awful syrup.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ Tommy nodded. ‘But then, any billet’s better than the one we had in Cambrai. It’s almost worth having to learn to walk with a peg leg to get away from that hell-hole.’

  In the next ward, Karen heard the conversation through the thin wood of the partition as she measured out a dose of the medicine for the occupant of the bed where she and Patrick … No, she wasn’t going to think about that, not now. She deliberately began to consider the progress of the war. Was it true that the arrival of the Americans would be enough to tip the balance in favour of the allies? Fervently, she hoped so. The fact that Joe was still over there, in ‘that hell-hole’ as Tommy described it so graphically, was a constant worry in the back of her mind.

  Karen was lying on the sofa before the fire in Annie’s cosy parlour. The house was quiet. It was Saturday and Annie had gone to Romford so Karen had the house to herself. She couldn’t even hear the ticking of the kitchen clock from where she lay. She felt warm and content as she drifted off to sleep. Her agony over Patrick was less dominant in her thoughts though still there, hovering in the background.

  Her dreams were of home. She was sitting in the front room of the house in Morton Main with Dave. They were on the horsehair settee and Dave had his arm around her waist and was whispering in her ear.