by Annie Groves
‘It’s not natural, that isn’t. Stands to reason that if a lad is asking you out all the time he must have summat in mind,’ Iris had told her forthrightly.
‘Teddy knows how important my training is to me, and we know that we have to stay single if we want to be nurses. We’re just friends, that’s all,’ Grace had responded firmly.
She knew, though, that they weren’t entirely convinced and the truth was that she wasn’t entirely convinced herself either. It wasn’t that she wanted Teddy to ask her to be his girl or say that he loved her, but it did seem funny that he never made any attempt to, well, do the kind of things she had heard other girls saying their dates did. Of course, it was a good thing that Teddy respected her and treated her properly, but surely there was nothing wrong in him putting his arm around her in the pictures, or perhaps kissing her good night?
Teddy was a decent sort and she ought to be grateful for that, Grace told herself sternly after they had said their goodbyes and she was on her way back to the nurses’ home.
Because she was now on nights and would be changing shifts with the girls on days, Grace was already eating when Hannah joined her at the table. Whilst the sisters had their own dining room, the junior nurses ate in the same room as the seniors and the staff nurses, although each rank had its own separate area of the room.
‘We’ve had one of the merchant seamen from your ward in theatre today,’ she told Grace as she tucked into her shepherd’s pie. ‘He’d got frostbite in his toes on account of being in the water when his ship went down, and Mr Stewart had to amputate them in case he got blood poisoning. Poor chap, he’s in a very bad way – and not the only one, by all accounts.’
Hannah loved working in the operating theatre, and Grace suspected that she would ultimately choose to specialise in theatre work. Her comments, though, coupled with Grace’s own tiredness, had made Grace feel slightly nauseous.
The rest of their set were filling up the table, all of them, except Lillian, who was also now on nights, chattering about their day.
‘Shepherd’s pie again,’ said Lillian, shuddering as she sat down.
‘Well, with any luck you’ll soon have that new doctor you’ve bin making eyes at all week taking you out for dinner,’ Doreen ribbed her goodnaturedly.
‘What do you mean, making eyes at him? I’ve been doing no such thing,’ Lillian denied sharply.
‘Well, from what I’ve heard, you’ll be wasting your time if you have because he’s already spoken for, and engaged to a girl down in London,’ Jennifer announced, sliding into the last empty seat in time to join the conversation. ‘And I collected your letters for you seeing as I was coming past anyway. Looks like Grace’s brother is still pretty keen on you: there’s three letters here from him.’
‘I don’t know why he keeps writing to me, because I’ve told him I haven’t got time to keep writing back. Some people just can’t seem to take a hint, though,’ said Lillian.
Grace could feel her face burning with a mixture of anger on Luke’s behalf and embarrassment on her own, at the open contempt in Lillian’s voice. She pushed away her unfinished meal and stood up, too angry and upset to trust herself to say anything.
Hannah caught up with her halfway down the corridor, catching hold of her arm and saying comfortingly, ‘That was a rotten thing of Lillian to say, but take no notice. My guess is that she’s made a bit of a fool of herself over this new doctor, and he’s told her that he isn’t interested, so now she’s taking it out on everyone else.’
‘I just wish that Luke had never met her and it’s my fault that he did. I never thought that he’d be silly enough—’ Grace broke off and shook her head. ‘You did warn me, I know, but I thought he’d see through her like we have.’
‘Men aren’t like us,’ Hannah told her wisely, ‘All it takes to pull the wool over their eyes sometimes is a pretty girl letting them think she’s in love with them. And, of course, it’s so much worse during wartime. It might be a good idea, though, if you were to write to him and drop him a hint, for his own sake.’
‘I’ve tried that already,’ Grace admitted, ‘but so far as he’s concerned, she’s the sweetest kindest girl ever and he can’t believe I could think they may not be suited.’ Grace gave a small sigh. ‘I suppose I could have a word with my mother, but I don’t want to worry her …’
What she didn’t want to say even to Hannah, who was probably her closest friend out of the whole group, was that from what he had said in his letters to her Luke genuinely believed that Lillian was far more committed to him than Grace knew her to be. So much so, in fact, that he had even talked of them becoming engaged just as soon as the war was over.
‘Lillian should have been straight with him from the start instead of leading him on. Now, of course, she’ll be worried about how it’s going to look if she sends him a Dear John letter whilst he’s away. If you ask me that’s why she’s acting the way she is, and hinting that she never encouraged him in the first place,’ said Hannah.
Grace sighed. She knew that what Hannah was saying was probably true.
She was still thinking about Luke and all the other young men like him for whom letters from their loved ones were so important when she went on to the ward. Even here in hospital, letters from their families were important to the men. Grace had seen the expectant look on their faces when the post was brought in and the disappointment when there was nothing for them.
The blackout coverings had already been put in place over the windows, which were now latticed with sticky tape to protect the patients from flying glass if the hospital were to be bombed, and the ward was shadowed and quiet. But that did not mean that there wasn’t plenty of work for her to do, Grace recognised, as Sister raised her head.
‘Lockers I think first, Campion, and then Staff Nurse Willetts will show you how to change Mr Simmonds’ dressing.’
‘Yes, Sister.’
Alfred Simmonds had been on the ward longer than anyone else. He had a nasty ulcerous sore on his leg that needed twice-daily dressing and which Grace had heard was ultimately unlikely ever really to heal.
‘He should be in a chronic infirmary ward really,’ Staff Nurse Willetts had told her, ‘but Sister reckons it would be the end of him if he was to leave here.’
Twice daily he was given M and B tablets, as the only medication available against blood poisoning was known, and the smell of the bandages that were removed from his leg and which it was Grace’s job to take away to the sluice room were enough to make her stomach heave.
There were screens around one of the beds, and Sister herself had disappeared behind them, a sure sign that the patient in the bed was poorly.
Seeing Grace looking toward it, Staff Nurse Willetts told her grimly, ‘We’ve got one of the merchant seamen in there. He had his operation earlier, and he’s not too well, poor chap. Now let’s go and see how you manage with Mr Simmonds’ ulcer, shall we?’
Cleaning Mr Simmonds’ leg was every bit as unpleasant as Grace had expected, but he was a kind man and he didn’t wince at all, despite the fact that Grace knew she must be hurting him. Her hands were trembling dreadfully by the time she had finished and his leg was finally rebandaged to Staff Nurse Willetts’ satisfaction. It was all very well practising bandaging and getting good marks; actually having to do it in reality was a very different matter, and Grace shuddered to think of what Staff might write in the plain cardboard-covered book all the junior nurses had to present to their seniors for their report every time they undertook a new procedure.
‘Now I want you to give Mr Simmonds his M and B. Can you remember the dosage?’
‘Two,’ Grace started to say and then changed it quickly to a three when she saw Mr Simmonds raising three fingers behind Staff’s back.
‘Good.’ Staff gave an approving nod of her head. ‘I’m glad to see you’re paying attention, Campion. Dr Lewis only increased the dosage yesterday.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Once Mr Simmonds has had his medication, and you�
�ve given out the urine bottles, you can go off for your break.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ Grace responded meekly.
The M and B tablets were huge and she wouldn’t have wanted to swallow one herself, but Mr Simmonds, bless him, was as good as gold, winking at her when she thanked him for helping her earlier and telling her that he wouldn’t mind a glass of whisky to help the pills go down.
Grace shook her head reprovingly. He knew as well as she did that alcohol was forbidden on the wards, although the patients were always trying to get some smuggled in by their visitors.
‘Always check the parcels that visitors bring in, Nurse,’ Staff Nurse Reid had told Grace on her first day on the ward. ‘Remove them from the visitors and take them straight to the sluice room for proper inspection.’
‘You’d be surprised the tricks the patients get up to,’ one of the other junior nurses had told Grace. ‘I had one a while ago that tried to sneak in some beer in a hot-water bottle.’
Grace had carefully loaded all the urine bottles onto the trolley and was just wheeling it past the curtained off bed when she thought she heard a sound from behind the curtains. She stopped the trolley and listened and heard it again, a sort of dripping noise. She looked towards the table in the centre of the room where the night sister and the staff nurse were working.
Staff Nurse looked up and, although Grace hadn’t said anything, she got up and came over to her demanding quietly, ‘What is it, Nurse? Why aren’t you giving out the bottles? The visitors will be here soon.’
‘I thought I heard something,’ Grace told her, feeling more foolish and uncomfortable by the second as she looked towards the screens.
Staff Nurse looked too. ‘Continue with your duties,’ she instructed Grace, before disappearing behind the screens, only to reappear again very quickly, so quickly in fact that Grace hadn’t had time to move.
It was an absolute rule that no nurse ever ran in sight of the patients, no matter what the emergency, so as not to panic or upset them, but Grace had never seen anyone move as swiftly as Staff Nurse did now as she went to the desk and then returned to the patient, accompanied by Sister, both of them gliding at such a speed that it was as though their feet didn’t even touch the floor.
Within seconds a doctor had been summoned and within minutes after that, the patient was being wheeled out of the ward.
‘Wonder what’s up wi’ him,’ one of the other men mused as Grace handed him his bottle.
Grace had to wait until she had come back from her break to find out. Staff was waiting for her as she walked into the ward and told her to follow her into the sluice room.
Once they were behind the closed door she told Grace approvingly, ‘That was very quick of you to spot that something was wrong, Campion. The patient had started to haemorrhage. He’s had to go back down to theatre, but with any luck he should be all right. However, next time you spot something don’t just stand there looking green, waiting for someone to notice. The patients get upset if they think that something’s wrong with someone. The correct procedure would have been for you to walk over to the desk and inform either myself or Sister of your concern.’
‘Yes, Staff,’ Grace agreed woodenly.
Bella glowered bad temperedly, as she stared round the shabby-looking school hall, with its smell of cold and damp and its hard wooden benches. She hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place, and she wouldn’t have been here if it hadn’t been for Alan’s mother sticking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted and volunteering her spare rooms as billets for refugees. Her spare rooms, mind, not Alan’s mother’s own spare rooms. It was because of that that she, Bella, was here in this freezing cold school hall along with all the other householders who had been asked to come along and be matched up with the Polish refugees who had arrived in the area, and for whom the local council needed to find accommodation.
Alan’s mother had only volunteered her because Mr Parker was on the council and Alan’s parents wanted to be seen to be doing the right thing, thought Bella crossly.
The refugees were a sorry-looking bunch, mostly family groups of shabbily dressed men and women clutching grubby bundles with even grubbier-looking children clinging to their side. Some of the men looked positively disreputable, and Bella wasn’t surprised to see her mother-in-law’s friends making a beeline for the few refugees who seemed to be on their own – older women, in the main, who looked too exhausted and beaten down by what they had endured to be much trouble.
Bella had already told both her own mother and Alan, in no uncertain terms, what she felt about what she was being forced to do. Her mother naturally had been sympathetic and had agreed with her that Alan’s mother had a nerve volunteering her, but she had also reminded Bella that the Government could force her to provide billets for the refugees, if she didn’t volunteer, and that at least by volunteering she could have some say in who she had.
‘What you want to do is look for a strong sturdy woman who could do the rough work for you, darling,’ her mother had told her. ‘But make sure that she hasn’t got any children.’
Alan, typically, had sided completely with his mother, and had added fuel to the fire of Bella’s irritation by going on about all the voluntary work Trixie was doing, as well as working full time in the Parker family’s office.
Bella scowled now, remembering how furious she had been when she had learned that her fatherin-law had given Trixie a job answering the telephone and typing letters in his office.
‘What’s he asked her for?’ she had demanded, when Alan had told her. ‘I could have done that, and I’m sure the customers would much rather look at me than at Trixie.’
‘You?’ Alan had retaliated nastily. ‘You can’t even type. Trixie’s a proper shorthand typist. She’s got her head screwed on firmly, and she’s a lot pleasanter to be with than you are.’
Bella had been too furious to say anything, but she had poured out her fury to her mother later.
‘It’s Alan’s mother that’s gone and got her working there. I just know she has. She’s never liked me. Well, she can wish that Alan had married her precious Trixie as much as she likes, but it won’t do her any good because it’s me that’s his wife.’
A young woman with four small children all clinging to her looked pleadingly at Bella. Determinedly, Bella looked away, ignoring the desperate anxiety in her gaze.
She could see an older woman standing on her own. One of Alan’s mother’s friends was also studying her. Bella made up her mind. Determinedly she pushed her way to the desk, ignoring the fact that the three WVS women manning it were all already occupied with other householders, and announced firmly, to the one closest to her, ‘I’ll take that woman over there.’
The woman who had already been speaking to the WVS volunteer behind the desk looked crossly at Bella but Bella ignored her. The WVS volunteer sighed and reached for a fresh form.
‘Very well. And you are …?’
Bella gave her details, imperiously beckoning over the refugee she had chosen.
‘She’d better be able to speak English,’ she told the WVS worker, who had now turned to the refugee and was speaking to her slowly and politely, for all the world as though she was a proper person and not someone who was only here because of the war, Bella thought contemptuously. It seemed that the Polish woman could speak English, although not very well.
It was horribly unpleasant in the hall, and Bella couldn’t wait to get home. She would have to tell the woman to have a bath and make sure she washed all her clothes. She had been horrified when her mother had warned her that she must check to make sure that she didn’t need delousing.
‘Please sign this,’ the WVS woman told Bella, handing her a form.
Impatiently Bella signed it. ‘Do I have to take her with me now?’ she asked.
‘Yes, please.’ The WVS volunteer turned back to the waiting woman, and told her, ‘You and your daughter will both be billeted with Mrs Parker. She will take you home with her now.’
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Her daughter? Bella stared at the WVS worker in furious outrage. ‘I never said anything about taking two of them.’
Was that triumphant dislike she could see in the volunteer’s eyes as she told her calmly, ‘Well, you’ve signed for them both, my dear, so I’m afraid you have no alternative. Next,’ she called out determinedly, ignoring Bella’s fury.
Two of them! Just what she hadn’t wanted, and she had been tricked into having them, she knew she had, Bella fumed as she glared at the two women who were now standing huddled together watching her.
The daughter was as plain and unprepossessing as the mother, both of them sallow-faced, with brown eyes and limp brown hair. They were as thin as sticks, and their clothes looked like rags. Bella was ashamed to be seen with them, even if they were only refugees and nothing really to do with her at all. How dreadful it was that these wretched refugees should have come over here like this, expecting to be taken into decent people’s homes, and how wrong of the British Government to force people to accept them.
By rights Alan should have been here to help her with them instead of expecting her to manage on her own. It was his mother’s fault, after all, that she had been landed with them, Bella decided crossly, ignoring the two women following her as she walked quickly home, hugging the warmth of her fur coat around her, her feet snug inside the thick fleecy boots her mother had bought for her.
Luckily, because of his business, her father was able to get a regular supply of coal and had had the good sense to stock up with it down at his business premises so that Bella was able to keep two good fires burning in the house, which was more than Alan’s mother was able to do, she thought smugly as she turned her key in the front door.
‘You two are to go down there,’ she told the two refugees, indicating the pathway that led to the back door of the house. She wasn’t going to allow them to use the front door.
When she had let them into the back kitchen, Bella made them stand there whilst she went to telephone her mother.