‘Not really. Isn’t it something to do with heredity? Or just luck?’
‘It’s luck, all right. The luck of having parents who could afford to give us enough protein and milk as kids and to have been born to mothers who could afford to have enough of both when we were in utero. That’s why we’re bigger – and why we’ll eat army rissoles but none of the women here or most of the troops’ll touch ’em. You must’ve noticed that?’
‘I did in N.D.K. I couldn’t think why not. The men’s cook-house makes jolly good rissoles.’
‘If you thought the rissoles were made of minced dog-meat, would you eat them?’
‘Yeugh! Sister, they aren’t – are they?’
‘Of course not, but try telling that to any troops who come from homes where often that was the only kind of meat mum could afford and so she minced it, and as you’re a girl they’ll tell you politely to tell that to the Marines. If you were a civvy soldier, they’d tell you what you could do with them.’
‘Please, Sister, what does that mean?’
She explained clinically. My still very literal mind was more puzzled than shocked as the exercise struck me as even more pointless than uncomfortable.
The war was unnervingly quiet that night. At 4 a.m. in the kitchen, before making the tea the night staff drank standing at four-thirty prior to ‘starting work’ at a quarter to five, for once I had time to make a few notes on the back of an old temperature chart, and have an extra cockroach blitz. In the grip of pre-dawn euphoria, in place of my hymn I sang Noël Coward’s The Party’s Over Now. ‘… Night is over dawn is breaking,’ swat, ‘Everywhere the town is waking,’ swat, ‘Just as we are on our way—’ swat, ‘to sleep,’ swat, swat.
‘Andrews, stop this ungodly row at once!’ Sister General swept in crackling starch. ‘I heard you from my landing!’
‘Sorry, Sister. Just didn’t want them to think the war’s over because Jerry’s taken a night off.’
‘Don’t tempt providence!’ She rapped the wooden dresser. ‘Mrs Y’s actually having some sleep tonight.’
Mrs Y was a cardiac patient who always wore a green rubber oxygen mask and was too ill for me to be allowed to touch her on my own. ‘Sister, what’s wrong with her heart?’
‘What isn’t? Gone into failure, plus.’
‘What does that mean?’
She said slowly, ‘I keep forgetting how little you know. I can’t hang around to explain now as it’s too complicated. If Jerry lays off again tomorrow night, I’ll try and fit in a class. Very briefly now – her heart’s packing up, fast.’
‘She’s going to die soon – but she’s much younger than Mrs H.’
‘Mrs H didn’t have bad rheumatic fever as a kid. That’s what did for Mrs Y’s heart.’
‘How did she get rheumatic fever?’
‘Not sure. At a guess, poor feeding, poor, damp, living conditions and probably some fool somewhere said it was just growing pains.’
‘Some fool—? You mean a doctor, Sister?’
She smiled faintly. ‘No names, no pack drill, Andrews. If you want to go on believing no doctors can ever be fools, whatever you do, don’t do a general training. You going to?’
‘Oh, no, Sister. No point. I want to be a writer not a nurse when the war ends.’
‘Seems to have ended – God, you’ve got me doing it!’ She slapped the dresser. ‘I must get back up. Tea nearly ready? Good. I’m dehydrated, plus!’
The war quiet was still unbroken when I cooked our scrambled eggs the next night and carried the tray up to the maternity duty-room. Mrs N, a girl having her first baby, was in the first stage of labour and Sister Maternity wanted to eat within hearing distance. Both Sisters were already in the duty-room. Sister General was seated at the small table by the electric fire, with her sleeves buttoned, cuffs on, tin hat hanging from the back of her chair. Sister Maternity was perched on the desk buttoning her sleeves. As with all the ex-trainees of the voluntary hospitals I met, neither would sit down to a night meal in ward duty-room, kitchen or corridor, or drink a mug of tea standing, with their sleeves up and cuffs off. As I put the tray on the table the Alert sounded.
‘Blast Jerry! He’ll wake Mrs Y and I hate cold scrambled eggs!’ Sister General hauled off her cap, slammed on her tin hat and vanished. Sister Maternity damned all Germans. ‘My poor kid in first-stage is scared enough without Jerry’ She flung her cap on the desk, grabbed her tin hat and fled for her women. I cursed under my breath, kicked off the electric fire switch, slapped the empty side plates over the three plates of scrambled eggs and fled for my babies.
I exchanged my cap for a tin hat as I pushed the empty trolley into the sleeping nursery. I no longer put on my respirator in Alerts as it got in the way when I carried a baby under each arm, or soothed, or fed in my arms, fretful babies in the shelter. Only very occasionally did the Sisters notice and tell me to put it on properly as they were too occupied looking after their own patients.
The gunfire and growls of approaching aircraft were louder, but none of the ten babies woke as I scooped them from their cots in pairs, and laid them on their sides, as that took less space and whenever possible I tried to move all on one trip. Back in the corridor, I hung the unlit hurricane lamp on one stretcher pole, my respirator on another and pushed on to the lift as Sister Maternity galloped back up the stairs, her tin hat a halo behind her neat dark head. ‘I’ve had to keep up Mrs P as well, Andrews. She’s just started and being her fifth junior won’t hang about. Got them all? Good. Get ’em down. This sounds more than a couple of strays with bombs to unload on the way home.’ She closed the lift gates for me. ‘Rest of mine are all down.’
In the shelter Sister General was fixing cushions behind and spreading rugs over the women sitting on the floor. She had to go back to her floor as neither Mrs H nor Mrs Y could be moved. She told me she intended wheeling Mrs H’s bed into Mrs Y’s ward. ‘Company for each other and I can keep an eye on both.’
The move into the portable cots woke three babies. When the babies cried it upset their mothers and as that upset the other women and the raid was already making enough noise to upset the serenity of the Archangel Gabriel, I hitched a theatre stool up to the cots and settled down to feed glucose water to the three awake. The women settled down to their knitting and hopes that young Mrs N wouldn’t have too hard a time and Mrs P would have the girl she wanted after the four boys. ‘Nasty night for ’em, mind you. Don’t like to think of ’em all up there and the Sisters. Can’t be doing that poor soul with the poorly heart no good. Thought this quiet too good to last.’
One of the general patients asked me how the two women’s labours were progressing. Before I could explain my ignorance, the maternity patients did it for me. ‘N. Andrews isn’t allowed to go into the labour ward when Sister Maternity’s delivering, dear. Under age, aren’t you, dear, and not a proper hospital nurse like the Sisters. Nursery and ward only, aren’t you, dear?’
‘That’s me!’ And mentally, as when Sister Maternity had told me of this official rule on my first night, I thanked God and preferred not to dwell on her rider: ‘Now you know the rule, listen to this.’ She rang three short, sharp, rings on the nearest electric bell. ‘Get that? Don’t forget it, because that is the labour ward SOS. I hope I’ll never have to ring it for you, but if I do, whatever you are doing, drop it, and beat it at the double to me in the labour ward.’
About twenty minutes later, for the only time I heard those three short, sharp, rings. Momentarily I was numbed as by an electric shock. But the patients, as patients everywhere, instantly recognized the inter-staff secret code. ‘Sister Maternity needs you quick, dear – yes, we’ll be all right – we’ll watch the little loves – we’ll not move till the All Clear – off you go, dear – God bless …’
Once clear of the thick theatre walls and sandbags, the noise was literally staggering. When I was half-way up the stairs the lights flicked off, but came on again before I reached the top corridor and charged into th
e labour ward far more frightened of what I was about to see than any air raid.
Sister Maternity, masked, gowned, rubber-gloved and bare-headed, was stooping between the two occupied labour beds. She glanced up. ‘Get up that mask, girl! Get into a gown and gloves – no time to scrub – get dressed – that trolley back there. Then come here, quick as you can! Now’, she stepped a little to one side without altering the position of her right hand, ‘put your right hand over mine in the same position. Finger on finger. Right. Now, keep that same grip on the head when I slowly move my hand away. Good. Just keep that grip on the crown – that’s junior’s crown – and when he moves, don’t fight him, or let go. Just widen your grip.’ As she spoke she watched both women. Suddenly she muttered, ‘Knew it!’ and lunged for the other bed. ‘Looks like you’ll be first, Mrs P!’ She had to shout over the renewed violence of the guns, and I only then discovered I was attending young Mrs N. Both women lay on their sides with their legs drawn up and heads turned away from me and sweat had darkened Mrs N’s light brown and Mrs P’s greying-brown to the same dark shade. Sister shouted, ‘You’re both doing fine, ladies!’ And overhead a plane dived. The sticky, black-haired object under my right hand jerked forward and grew bigger, and I thought I heard Mrs N scream, but was not sure owing to the guns’ thunderous answer to that dive.
I risked an apprehensive glance over my shoulder. Mrs P had turned onto her back, had her legs crooked, the long operation stockings in concertinas round her ankles, and the whole head of a baby between her thighs. The head was small, bald, round, and in the small round face were two placidly blinking eyes. Whilst I glanced, the rest of the baby slid as placidly into Sister’s waiting brown hands. ‘You’ve got your daughter, my dear! Well done, Mrs P!’
Mrs P’s answer was drowned by what sounded like a plane just skimming our roof. Instantly, the worst hell of that, or any other night for me that summer, was let loose. Impossible to differentiate between ack-ack shells, traces, aircraft engines and explosions, but we all heard the small shrill whistle of one falling bomb. Every instinct I possessed demanded that I dived under Mrs N’s labour bed, but her baby’s whole head had shot out and with the bomb’s explosion he catapulted from the vagina into my hands trailing a long silver-blue veined cord. He was so covered in grease and so furiously flaying the air with minute arms that I was too busy trying not to drop him to be more than semi-conscious that medicine and lotion bottles, metal kidney dishes, enamel bowls, jugs, and blackout screens were dropping around us.
Sister dodged back from the other bed to tie the baby boy’s cord in two places and cut between the ties. He lay on the bed in the curve of his mother’s legs, bellowing with more strength than I ever heard from a new baby. Sister told me to wrap him in towels and blankets, tie round his wrist the waiting name-tape, put him in the waiting cot. ‘Then get that large kidney dish in position for the placenta.’ She shouted, but not as loudly as before. ‘You’ve got a son, Mrs N, with good lungs. Just the afterbirth, dear!’ She noticed the blackout screens. ‘Andrews! Get those screens up, fast! I must have the lights on.’
Two screens merely needed replacing. A third had been blown out of its frame and torn in half. I stuck it together with rolls of three-inch adhesive strapping, and then noticed the raid seemed over. The guns were firing only spasmodically and the sound of engines had gone. I looked properly at the patients’ faces for the first time. Mrs P had her baby in her arms, her eyes closed, and looked exhausted. Mrs N did not even look tired. She was smiling to herself, but breathing as if she had been running hard. Sister told me to go back to my shelter family. ‘I can cope here. Thanks.’ She held the baby boy, and as I left the labour ward I saw her put him in Mrs N’s arms, ‘Meet your son, my dear,’ she said.
I heard the ringing of the duty-room telephone through a haze of delayed-action shock. ‘Families?’ echoed an irate male voice. ‘About time, too! I’ve been trying to get through to you for the last fifteen minutes! I am ringing for the Garrison P.A.D. Officer to complain about the lights you have been showing on the upper floor …’ I stopped listening and when he stopped for breath I apologized mechanically and rang off. I heard the telephone ringing again from the stairs but did not go back. I had to get back to the shelter because Sister Maternity had said so and suddenly I was incapable of thinking for myself. The stairs had become strangely steep. I had to hang on to the banisters to keep my balance and there seemed many more stairs than usual. The All Clear went as I reached the ground floor and then all the lights went out. One ATS girl, a post-appendicectomy, lit the hurricane lamps for me as my hands shook out the matches. ‘Always worst when it’s over, isn’t it, nurse?’ I nodded in the darkness. A nod was easier than speech.
The Sisters had come down to help back their patients. Sister maternity, still capless, gowned, masked, but with her gloves off, told me to wait a few minutes before bringing back the babies as all were asleep and she wanted the lift for the maternity patients and herself. ‘I don’t want to leave my two in the labour ward alone longer than I have to. Neither have lost much, or need stitching, but after producing at that speed anything can, though probably won’t, happen, as both babes are fine and wanted.’ In the lamplights her mask and forehead were jaundiced. ‘Have a quick tidy in here, we may have to use it again tonight, but I doubt it. Dawn soon.’
‘Yes, Sister. Oh, Sister—’ I told her about the irate telephone call.
‘Narked, eh? H’mmm.’
It was peaceful alone in the shelter with the babies. It took me much longer than usual to tidy all round. I could only move slowly, carefully, as if suddenly very old. The babies did not wake when I re-stacked them and then plunged us in darkness by turning off all the shelter lamps before I remembered to light the one for my trolley. The seventh match stayed alight long enough to start the lamp. I held it in one hand, as I was forbidden to hang a lighted lamp to a pole of a baby-laden trolley, slowly pushed out of the theatre corridor into the main and hit something soft. A torch was switched on. I held up my lamp. The yellow rays illuminated men in uniform. I counted the faces mentally, one by one. Five faces. One face was vaguely familiar and after a second or two my slow-motion brain identified it was the R.S.M.’s. He was a square-shouldered, very straight, little man and at his side was a taller, thinner, man wearing a major’s crown and belligerent expression. Someone, I thought the R.S.M., announced the Major as the Garrison P.A.D. Officer. Someone else, probably the Major, cleared his throat purposefully and began a long spiel about the lights we had been showing. When he stopped for breath, as before, I apologized mechanically, adding, ‘I’m afraid when the blackout screen in the labour ward fell down …’
‘When any blackout screen falls, all lights must be extinguished, forthwith! Is Sister-in-charge available as I wish …’
Sister Maternity’s stage whisper from the darkness above, cut him short. ‘Andrews, what you doing down there with those babes? Want to give them all pneumonia? And who’ve you got down there with you?’
I hissed back, ‘Sister, it’s about the labour ward lights. The Garrison P.A.D. Officer has—’
‘Sent someone to tear us off another strip? Huh! Please send my compliments to the Garrison P.A.D. Officer and add – if he wants two women delivered simultaneously in the dark he can come and do the job himself – with tin hat and respirator at the alert! Being only a qualified midwife, when my patients are giving birth I have to see what’s happening and until I’m sure neither mums nor babes are going to die on me I’ve no time for coping with ruddy blackout screens! Now get those babes back up here at the double!’ The landing floor above creaked as she stormed back into her department.
The posse were silent. Then the Major again cleared his throat, but less purposefully, and rounded on the R.S.M. ‘All screens should be in good order, S’arnt-Major! Can’t have these good ladies distressed in this fashion! Mustn’t delay this charming young lady in her excellent work! Nurses – what would we chaps do without ’em, eh?’ He steppe
d back, saluted me, smartly. The R.S.M. shouted in whispers, ‘Yessir! Rightaway, sir!’ and escorted my trolley and self to the lift. In the lamplight his face was solid teak and when he opened the gates for me his left profile was to the posse. Very deliberately, he lowered and raised his right eyelid. It was the only time in my life that I was winked at by a Regimental Sergeant-Major and, as my shock was beginning to wear off, going up in the lift I wished I could have told the men I nursed in my first weeks in N.D.K. But I knew none would have believed it.
The following night I arrived on-duty to find many of our patients had vanished to hospitals further inland. Those that remained were still discussing the new craters outside. ‘Nearly got us last night, Jerry did. Still – nearly never killed a man.’
A few nights later I came off night-duty. It was my last night in the camp. The next day, with Betty and ten other VADs I was posted to a new, specialized, military hospital, in a semi-industrial city approximately sixty miles inland from London. I neither saw nor heard anything of those two Sisters again. On my final shift in Families I moaned to both, and the babies and the cockroaches, about being ordered to travel on my sleeping day.
‘Typical of the Army to forget you’re just off nights,’ said the Sisters. ‘Don’t forget to ask for your four nights off as soon as you arrive or you’ll never get them.’
I took their advice when reporting to our new Commandant the following evening. She looked considerably younger than the Commandant we had left behind and addressed us not as ‘Members!’ but as ‘Gels!’
‘Just off night-duty?’ She smoothed her pale hair and pursed her pale lips. ‘Well, I’ll try and have a word with Matron and see if we can sort this out, but as the hospital is so short-handed I don’t see how Sister can spare you from your new ward tomorrow. Report at the usual time in the morning and I’ll see what can be done. Only try and remember –’ she smiled palely, ‘there is a war on!’
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