A Nurse's Duty (2 page)

There was the ordeal of having Gran wash her hair though, she thought ruefully. One Friday night the bath tin was out on the clippie mat before the fire and Gran was kneeling by it, rubbing soft soap into Joe’s hair. He was twisting and turning, shrinking from the feel of her hard hands and fingers; his lips clamped tightly together to stop himself from crying out loud for he was six now and a big boy.

‘Sit still, will you?’ said Gran, exasperated. ‘I’ll be finished in a minute. Fetch me a ladle of water to rinse it, Karen, and put a dash of vinegar in it.’

Karen rushed to do her bidding and Joe froze, his eyes tightly shut, while Gran poured the water over his head, catching his breath so that he stood up suddenly, coughing and spluttering.

‘Your turn now, Karen,’ said Gran, pulling a towel from the brass rail under the mantelpiece and wrapping it round Joe.

‘I can do myself,’ said Karen, but she didn’t have much hope that she would be allowed to.

Why were Gran’s hands so much harder than Mam’s? she wondered, as tears were forced into her eyes under her grandmother’s ministrations. Even on the occasions when Da had had to wash her hair it hadn’t been quite so painful as this. And afterwards, when her hair was brushed and shining and Gran took the small-toothed nit comb down from the shelf and raked it through her hair over an old copy of the
Auckland Chronicle
, just in case she’d picked anything up from those mucky bairns down the row, Karen was sure the skin would be broken and bleeding. But the next minute it was all worth it for when they were all clean and in their nighties, sitting before the fire drinking cocoa, she heard Gran talking to Mam in the front room.

‘I’ll take the two little bairns up with me, while the school’s out,’ Gran said. ‘Then it’ll be easier for you. I’d take Kezia an’ all but likely she’s a good help to you here. Mind, if I was you I wouldn’t let your Jemima get away with what she does. I mean, where is she the night? Out gallivanting, I bet. By, it’s a good job your Thomas is on the night shift or he’d belt her for staying out so late. She’s nigh on fifteen and it should have been her seeing to the bairns’ bath night.’

Karen and Joe looked at each other, their eyes shining. They were going up to the farm, Gran’s farm in Weardale, wasn’t it grand?

‘It’s good of you, Mam,’ they heard their mother say. ‘If we have a bit of warm weather and there’s not so much to do, likely I’ll get my strength back. As to Jemima, you’re right. I’ll have to
have
a talk with her, that’s all. But, you know, she’s of an age when her friends are earning and she’s tied to the house helping me. She’s bound to feel a bit restless.’

Gran snorted but before she could retort the back door opened and Jemima rushed in, for once her face all radiant with eagerness.

‘Mam!’ she said, ignoring Karen and Joe and going straight into the front room. ‘Mam, me and Kathy Taylor, we want to get a place. Look, there’s an advertisement in the
Northern Echo
. House maids wanted in Manchester – £26 a year and all found.’

‘Manchester? Don’t be so daft, lass,’ snapped Gran. ‘What about your mam, the way she is? You’re needed here, at home.’

‘There’s our Kezia,’ said Jemima. ‘She’s big enough to help Mam. Why should it have to be me? Anyroad, it’s for Mam to say, not you.’

‘Don’t you be cheeky to your gran!’ said Mam, and Karen jumped in her chair, spilling a little cocoa down her nightie. For Mam’s voice sounded louder and stronger than it had been for a long time.

‘You’ve upset your mam now,’ said Gran. ‘Just you wait until your father gets in, he’ll give you what for. Now leave your mother in peace while I get the bairns to bed. They have a long day tomorrow. They’re coming up to the farm with me.’

‘Please, Jesus,’ breathed Karen as she knelt by the bed to say her prayers, ‘make it so that Jemima can go away to place. And God bless Mam and make her better. And God bless Da and Gran and Kezia and Joe and me.’

She climbed into bed and lay waiting for Jemima to come. It was no use going to sleep now. Jemima would only pinch her awake to tell her all her complaints. When Jemima was in a bad mood she always did that.

‘Are you asleep?’ asked Joe from behind the blanket which was slung on a rope down the middle of the room to afford the girls
some
privacy.

‘No, not yet,’ answered Karen.

‘It’s going to be grand up on the fell, isn’t it?’

‘It is that.’

‘I can’t go to sleep, Karen, tell us a story.’

‘All right.’ Karen turned on her back and launched into the story of the Lambton Worm, a favourite of Joe’s. ‘Once upon a time, Lord Lambton’s son caught a fish in the Wear. But it wasn’t like any other fish he’d ever seen before …’

‘No, it was great big long worm with goggly eyes an’ great big teeth and so Lambton tossed it down a well,’ said Joe.

‘Well, if you want to tell me the story, you can,’ said Karen.

‘No, tell me. Tell me how he went to the foreign war and while he was away it growed and growed and growed –’

‘Will you two go to sleep?’ demanded Gran from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Mind, if I hear another peep out of you I won’t take you back with me the morn.’

The threat was enough for both of them and they soon settled down to sleep and this time Karen’s fears were unfounded for she didn’t even wake when Jemima came to bed.

Karen’s heart sang as she turned down the track to Low Rigg Farm and saw the rowan tree standing by the gate. It always came into view first and she watched out for it. She breathed deeply of the moorland air. It was so fresh and tangy, not like the air in Morton Main which was thick with the smell of the cokeworks, sulphurous and heavy and overlaid with the stink of the middens lining every back row. Even the muck heap by the barn smelled better than that, she decided.

‘The rowan berries will soon be ready. You can help me make jelly,’ said Gran. ‘You can pick the wild raspberries in the ghyllie an’ all. Oh, aye, you two are going to be a grand help to me.’

And they were. They picked pounds and pounds of the wild
fruit
and helped Albert, the orphan boy from Durham, look after Posy the cow and Daisy the Dales pony.

‘Daisy’s not a bit like a pit pony,’ said Joe, searching in his pocket for the crust he had secreted from breakfast. He found it at last and held it out to her, and though there were bits of fluff stuck to it she didn’t turn her nose up at it but delicately took it from his fingers and munched contentedly.

‘Well, she’s too big for the pits anyroad, she’s bred to work on the fell,’ said Albert. He was a big-boned lad of about fifteen and already he was putting on the stature of a man. Joe idolized him and followed him about all day. ‘I’m going up the high moor to check on the sheep later on,’ Albert went on. ‘Does you want to come?’

‘Eeh, yes, Albert, that I do,’ cried Joe, his eyes lighting up.

‘Right then, better ask your gran.’

Joe raced into the kitchen where Karen was kneeling on a stool by the table helping Gran roll out suet pastry for the pot pie which they were going to have for dinner.

‘Can I go up the high moor with Albert later on? Can I, Gran?’ he asked, his brow knitted in anxiety in case she said no. But Gran nodded.

‘You can both go, Karen an’ all. It’ll do you good, blow the cobwebs away. You can take some sandwiches and a bottle of water for a picnic tea.’

After dinner they set out, Karen carrying the basket and the two boys with crooks, Joe’s almost twice his height. But he carefully watched Albert and tried to hold his crook just the same way though more than once he stumbled and almost tripped himself up with the unwieldy stick. But Karen was lost to everything but the moor stretching away above and below and all around them, for miles and miles. She watched the sheep skipping away at their approach, the lambs almost as big as the ewes now it was August. She laughed aloud at the cock pheasant which started up almost
under
her feet with a flash of rainbow colours, and the hen birds, dowdy and fluttering, in the brilliant purple of the heather.

They reached a good spot for a picnic and Albert went off to check on the sheep which didn’t take him long for Gran’s stint on the moor didn’t allow for many animals. And then they settled down to their picnic though it was little more than two hours since they had eaten the pot pie. Karen gazed about her, looking for the lone curlew which was calling out persistently but she didn’t see it until Joe pointed it out. It must have some chicks close by, she thought. Its cry was so plaintive yet so throbbingly beautiful, it made her heart ache somehow.

‘I wish we lived here all the time,’ she sighed, and Joe looked surprised.

‘But you’d want Mam and Da, wouldn’t you?’

For a moment, Karen’s happiness dimmed as she thought about her mother and father. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But they could come and live here with us, couldn’t they?’ Yet she knew it was only a dream. There were no coal mines this high in Weardale so where would Da get work?

Chapter Two

‘JEMIMA’S GONE AWAY
to work in Manchester,’ said Kezia. ‘I’m leaving school at Christmas anyroad. And mind, our Karen, you’ll have to help me as much as you can till then, run the messages and such and do what I say.’

Karen and Joe were back in Morton Main for the new school year. Karen gazed at her elder sister but she was too miserable at leaving Low Rigg Farm and her gran to bother complaining about Kezia’s being so bossy.

‘Now, Kezia,’ laughed Mam, ‘I think you’ll both still be doing what I say. I’m still the gaffer here and I’m not completely useless yet.’

That was the nice thing about coming home though, thought Karen. Mam was looking and feeling better. She felt the lightness in the air. The house itself was brighter somehow, because Mam was better.

‘Thank you God, for making Mam well again,’ she whispered the next day, which happened to be a Sunday. She was sitting in Sunday School with the other girls in her class and Mr Dent, the Sunday School superintendent, was praying aloud in front of the crowded room and the children were sitting with their hands together and their eyes closed. Karen’s thoughts began to wander as the prayers went on and she cautiously opened her eyes and squinted through her lashes at the boys’ benches, across the aisle.

Robert Richardson was there, his head bowed in reverence. He was the son of the Minister and Karen supposed all his thoughts must be pious. Idly, she studied him. He sat next to Joe who was
swinging
his legs backwards and forwards impatiently though Robert seemed oblivious of it.

‘In the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ,’ said Mr Dent. ‘Amen.’ Everyone shuffled about and sat up and Mr Dent launched into the Old Testament reading and followed up with his sermon. He was talking about the trials of Job.

‘Job was a just man and true yet many misfortunes and calamities fell on him. But Job submitted himself to the Lord and God magnified and blessed Job. And we have to remember the story of Job when our way is hard and everything is going wrong, we have to trust in the Lord as he did and the Lord will help us in our troubles.’ Mr Dent paused and turned the page of his Bible and began to read. Karen sat listening to the drone of his voice, waves of sleepiness threatening to overwhelm her. But she sat up, suddenly awake, as she heard the words of the text which hung on the wall at home.

‘“… He had also seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first Jemima, and the name of the second Kezia, and the name of the third, Keren-happuch. And in all the land were no women found so fair …”’

Karen smiled, thinking of the many times Da had sat her on his knee and quoted the text. But when she looked up she saw Dave Mitchell and his friends nudging each other and grinning at her. She scowled fiercely at him. She didn’t like Dave Mitchell, he was a big boy and a bully. And when Sunday School was over and she came out with the other girls, she wasn’t surprised that Dave and his friends were waiting for her.

‘Keren-happuch, Keren-happuch! Is that your proper name, then? Does your da think he’s Job?’

‘Leave me alone!’ Karen shouted at them, her dark eyes snapping with anger. ‘My name is Karen, you know it is.’ Her father had changed the spelling of her name to the more usual Karen, but it was from the Book of Job that she’d got her name.

‘Go on then, make us leave you alone,’ said Dave. ‘Or mebbe you can get your seven brothers to chase us off, Keren-happuch.’ The crowd of lads began to jeer and Karen bunched her fists in frustration.

‘Leave our Karen alone!’ cried Joe, running up and aiming a punch at Dave, but Dave easily held him off with one hand and slapped him with the other. He was at least a head taller than Joe and the younger boy was no match for him.

‘Hey, there, stop that!’

Robert Richardson came out and strode up to the two boys, pulling Dave away from Joe and putting the younger boy behind him. Karen felt a surge of gratitude to him for sticking up for her and Joe.

‘Aw, go on, what’re you going to do about it?’ asked Dave. ‘You’re a proper pansy. You won’t fight on a Sunday, your da wouldn’t like it.’

He planted his feet apart and grinned. ‘Go on then, hit me, go on,’ he jeered, and behind him his friends snickered. Karen’s temper rose and spilled over. She rushed forward and kicked Dave hard on the shins, the steel toe protectors on her boots drawing blood so that he stepped back and shouted in surprise at the pain. Before he could recover himself, Kezia rushed up and grabbed Karen and Joe and darted into the yard of their house with them.

‘It’s lucky for you we live so close to the Chapel,’ she said grimly to them. ‘An’ don’t you let Da know you’ve been fighting on a Sunday or you’ll get a belting. It would serve you both right, I reckon, but I won’t have Mam upset, do you hear?’

Karen was still shaking with rage at the way Dave had held Joe and hit him and the way he had spoken to Robert, but she saw the sense of what Kezia was saying. She closed her eyes tight and tried to force herself to calm down.

‘Mind, hey, your sister has some spunk, hasn’t she?’ said Dave.
His
tone was admiring and Karen opened her eyes to see he was watching her and Joe over the yard gate.