A Nurse's Duty (3 page)

‘Go away!’ she shouted at the top of her voice and marched into the house closely followed by Joe, who banged the door shut behind him. Only later, after they had eaten the dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and vegetables which Da had grown in the allotment down the road, did she remember Robert. Had he got away without having to fight? She felt a momentary pang of guilt at not checking he got home all right. Oh, well, she would thank him properly when she went to the evening service, she thought. But for some reason he wasn’t at the service and eventually she forgot about the incident.

‘Karen is a very bright girl,’ said Miss Nelson, and Karen squirmed in her seat on the sofa. The horsehair cover was prickling through the thin cotton of her dress and petticoat but she daren’t scratch the place, not when they had the headmistress visiting. It was the last week of the summer term and Miss Nelson was there to persuade her parents to allow her to stay on as a pupil teacher. The headmistress put her cup, a delicate, china cup with roses painted round the bowl which was one of the precious set Mam kept for important visitors, on its matching saucer and placed them on the table. She looked earnestly at Thomas and Rachel Knight. ‘It would be a shame if she had to leave school and go into domestic service. It would be an absolute waste of a good brain.’

Karen waited, holding her breath. Until now she hadn’t let herself even consider the possibility of being allowed to stay on at school, though she had dreamed of being a teacher. She saw her father glance at Mam but she couldn’t tell what they were thinking.

Oh, yes, please God, put it in Da’s mind, let me be a teacher, she prayed, desperately trying to will him into agreeing. But her father still didn’t say anything.

‘Well,’ Miss Nelson pulled on her gloves and rose to her feet,
‘I’ll
leave you to discuss it. I’m sure you will do what is best for Karen.’

Karen jumped up and accompanied her to the door leading directly out to the front of the row. Miss Nelson paused in the doorway and looked round. ‘Goodbye, then.’

‘Goodbye, Miss Nelson,’ echoed the family in unison, almost as Karen’s class would do in school.

After she had gone, Karen looked anxiously round. Da was pursing his lips thoughtfully and Joe was grinning at her in delight.

‘Clever clogs! Clever clogs!’ he shouted, and Jemima, who was home for a week’s holiday from her job in Manchester and looking very smart and grown-up, burst into angry speech.

‘Why should she stay on at school? Me and our Kezia never had the chance. It’s not fair.’

‘Eeh, I don’t mind,’ said Kezia. She was eighteen now, courting Luke Nesbitt and saving hard for her bottom drawer.

‘I had to go away to Manchester when I was only fifteen,’ said Jemima. ‘And Kezia has had to work in the manager’s house and help Mam. Why should our Karen have it easier?’

‘Jemima, you wanted to go to place,’ put in Mam gently.

‘Only so that I could see a bit of life and not be tied in the house all day. And anyroad, I’ve been able to send a bit home, haven’t I?’ Once, and it was when Jemima got her first pay, Karen remembered, she had sent five shillings home.

‘You’re jealous, Jemima,’ observed Joe. She rounded on him and clipped his ear with the back of her hand, her face suffused red with anger. Da stepped forward and towered over her, his hand raised.

‘That’s enough, Jemima! I’m ashamed of you. Now keep quiet or I swear I’ll take the belt to you, big as you are. Sit down and keep quiet, do you hear?’

The whole family, including Jemima, sat still and gazed at him. Karen could only remember one or two occasions when Da had
raised
his voice in the house but when he did everyone sat quiet and listened to him. Once everyone was silent, Da sat back down in his chair and looked at Karen and she could tell by the pity in his eyes that any hope she had had of becoming a teacher was gone.

‘You know how we are held, pet,’ he said. ‘You’re old enough to know the pits aren’t doing so well. You know we can’t afford to keep you on at school, feeding and clothing you and buying books and things and you bringing nothing in. And though Jemima shouldn’t have said what she did, it’s true – she took her turn in helping your mother and so has Kezia. It’s Kezia’s time to do something different now, you know it is.’

‘I’m all right, Da,’ said Kezia, and he smiled at her.

‘Aye, pet, I know you are, you’re a good lass, a proper blessing from God. But you are courting Luke and you will be wanting to get married afore long. And why not? It’s only natural.’ He sat silent for a few minutes while he lifted a glowing coal from the fire with the steel fire tongs and lit his pipe. When he had the pipe going to his satisfaction he sat back in his chair. ‘Well, Rachel, what do you have to say?’

‘I’m sorry, lass, but your da’s right,’ she answered. ‘I’m that proud of you doing so well though.’

Karen sat on the horsehair sofa, no longer feeling the hard prickle of the hair through her skirt. All she could think of was her crushing disappointment. Her eyes ached with unshed tears and there was a lump in her throat which felt as big as an apple.

‘I do believe she’s going to cry, the big babby,’ remarked Jemima, and Karen’s head jerked up.

‘I’m not. I was only thinking,’ she declared. ‘I didn’t want to be a teacher anyroad.’

Da looked keenly across the smoke billowing out of his pipe at her. ‘Lies are an abomination before God,’ he said. But he spoke gently, not exactly accusing her of lying.

‘No, I mean it,’ Karen said quickly. ‘I’ll leave school and see if I can get a morning job in Auckland. Then I can help Mam in the afternoons and study to better myself at night.’

‘Mind,’ said Jemima, smiling smugly now her views had prevailed, ‘you’re going to be the busy one, aren’t you? And don’t tell us you didn’t want to be a teacher, ‘cos it’s a lie, all right.’

‘I’m not lying,’ said Karen, and even as she said it she realized it was true. ‘I want to be a nurse.’

‘A nurse? You mean you want to work in the workhouse hospital at Bishop Auckland?’ asked Kezia, sounding very surprised.

‘No, a proper trained nurse,’ said Karen. ‘We learned about it at school. All about Florence Nightingale and how she started training nurses and they went out to the war in Russia and that. And now all the big hospitals train nurses. Hospitals like the County Hospital at Durham and the Cameron at Hartlepool.’

Miss Nelson had told them the story of the Nightingale nurses only last week, but this was the first time Karen had even thought of trying to become one. But she wasn’t going to let Jemima know how disappointed she was at not being able to be a teacher. No, she was not, she told herself. Mam interrupted her thoughts.

‘Mind, Karen, nurses have to do some dirty jobs. Emptying chamber pots and the like. Are you sure you want to do that?’

Karen nodded her head with enthusiasm. The more she thought of it the more she wanted to do it. She felt like going after Miss Nelson that very minute to see if the teacher knew how she should go about being a nurse. ‘I can do it, Mam,’ she said.

Jemima laughed. ‘Oh, aye? Well, we’ll just see if you do,’ she said, and Karen’s resolve hardened further. She jumped to her feet.

‘I’ll go and see Miss Nelson now,’ she said. ‘She will tell me what to do.’

It was harder than she had thought it would be but she was determined to succeed and Miss Nelson helped her. For the
County
Hospital in Durham insisted that only girls with a matriculation certificate would be considered. Karen went to bed each evening with her head buzzing with French irregular verbs and in her nightmares she wandered through a maze of mathematics. Then there was the walk to the hospital in Bishop Auckland and a mountain of work awaiting her in the hospital kitchen where she had secured a part-time job.

Praise the Lord for Sundays, she thought to herself one Sunday afternoon. Da didn’t allow studying of anything but the Bible on the Sabbath and no housework was done. And praise the Lord she was almost at the end of her studies. Soon she would be able to apply for a place as a probationer. She was sitting quietly, ignoring the whispers of the others, but all of a sudden she noticed that the noise had grown louder and they were looking over to the boys sitting on the opposite side. It was Robert Richardson they were all looking at, she saw. The Minister’s son was just taking a seat beside Joe.

Karen watched him. He didn’t usually attend the Chapel in Morton Main these days, but today his father was to preach. All the girls, apart from Kezia who was courting Luke Nesbitt, were watching Robert, and trying to attract his attention, he was so tall and good-looking and distinguished. And when he walked out to the lectern and read the lesson for his father, he looked so gravely handsome that there was not so much as the rustle of a sweetpaper from the girls and Karen watched him as hard as any of them. Why, she thought, he must be twenty years old by now. Hadn’t Da said he was going for a doctor? Well, she wasn’t going to be such a fool as to make sheep’s eyes at him, she decided. She hadn’t time for lads, not even those who were training to be doctors. Anyroad, doctors didn’t go out with pit lasses, she knew that, even if she had been interested in him.

‘By, that Robert Richardson is a bonny lad, isn’t he?’ Kezia’s friend, May Thompson, was saying as the group of girls paused outside the Chapel after the meeting. The girls always stood for a
few
minutes by the Chapel railings, watching the boys who were standing across the road, laughing and talking together. Both groups were very busy pretending not to notice each other, laughing just a bit too loudly at their mates’ jokes and glancing across the street and catching the eyes of the girls, quite accidentally of course.

Not Robert of course. He was in the vestry with his father and the Chapel steward. In any case, Robert, at twenty, was far too old to hang about outside the Chapel. Not that he ever had done, thought Karen, grinning to herself at the idea. Robert had been a serious boy, always by himself if his father wasn’t around and always teased by the other boys.

‘He is nice-looking,’ Kezia said judiciously.

‘But not as nice-looking as your Luke, eh?’ laughed Karen as Luke detached himself from the boys and came over to claim Kezia for their regular walk. This was what usually happened; the courting couples gradually paired off for a walk and the unattached eyed each other surreptitiously before reluctantly walking home on their own.

‘Not as nice-looking as me either, is he, Karen?’

She spun round in surprise. Dave Mitchell had crossed the road and was standing before her. Behind her she could hear the other girls tittering.

‘Whoever said you were good-looking needs a pair of glasses, Dave Mitchell,’ she retorted, drawing herself up and glaring disdain fully at him. Dave was not put off.

‘Aw, go on, I know you like me really,’ he said, grinning all over his freckled face. ‘Howay, lass, come for a walk with me up the lane.’

Karen studied him haughtily. He didn’t seem in the least put out by her remark. ‘I’m walking up no lane with you,’ she said at last, and set off for home. As that was the house next to the Chapel she had only a few steps to go but when she opened the gate and
turned
to fasten the latch after her, she found she was staring straight into his blue eyes.

‘Dave Mitchell,’ she snapped, ‘will you leave me alone or have I to fetch my father?’

‘You da’s not in yet though, is he?’ said Dave, grinning. ‘And your Joe’s gone down the dene with his mates. Come on, Karen. I crossed the road for you after Chapel, didn’t I? You know that means I’m serious about you.’

‘Maybe you are,’ she said, ‘but I’m not. I haven’t got time to go out with lads, I’m going to be a nurse.’ Without more ado, she walked off into the house without looking back.

‘Who was that you were talking to?’ her mother asked as she hung her hat up on the row of hooks under the stairs.

‘Nobody special,’ Karen answered, but Rachel noted the colour in her normally pale face and her curiosity deepened though she said no more.

Casually, Karen glanced out of the window before putting the kettle on for tea. No one was looking over the back gate, the row looked deserted. Maybe Dave Mitchell had at last got it into his thick head that she didn’t want to go with him, she told herself, but strangely she felt a little flat as she got out the Sunday table cloth and set the table for tea.

It was May when Karen travelled to Durham to sit her matriculation examinations. She fingered the piece of coal in her skirt pocket. Joe had dug it up specially for her to bring her luck. Taking it out, she gazed at the outline of an oakleaf, miraculously preserved from eons ago in the black coalforest beneath their feet.

‘A black diamond, it is,’ Joe had said.

‘Karen, you know what the good Book says about superstition,’ Da had warned, frowning heavily. ‘If it be the Lord’s will that you should pass then you will, without the help of a dead lump of coal.’

‘Yes, Da,’ said Karen meekly. But all the same she wrapped the
coal
up carefully and put it in her skirt pocket. It might not bring her good luck but on the other hand it might and she didn’t think that God was so mean-minded as to penalize her for thinking it.

The week of the examinations went off in a blur of nervousness and work, so that she did not even notice that the other girls looked at her askance, so obviously a pitman’s daughter in her black serge skirt and cheap shirtwaister and with her hands so red and roughened with the scrubbing in the workhouse kitchen for some extra pennies. But then came the weeks of waiting for the results, when, for the first time in years, Karen had a little spare time after the flurry of excitement caused by Kezia marrying her Luke.

‘Why don’t you go walking with Dave?’ Kezia asked her one Sunday afternoon after Chapel. ‘Goodness knows, he asks you often enough. You should get out more, Karen, and going for a walk with a chap doesn’t mean you have to marry him.’ Though in Kezia’s case, it had meant that which made Karen smile. They were standing with Rachel by the back gate for a few moments, enjoying a chat in the summer sunshine before Kezia went on to her own house with Luke.