A Wartime Nurse (26 page)
Authors: Maggie Hope
Tags: #Nurses, #World War; 1939-1945, #Sagas, #War & Military, #Fiction
‘Ken?’
‘Yes, righto. I’ll ring now, if I may?’
It took only a minute or two to get through to the porter on duty at the hospital.
‘A telegram for you, sir, from the War Office,’ the man informed him. ‘It’s marked urgent, sir. Shall I read it out? It’s been here two hours.’
‘Two hours? Then why didn’t you try to contact me? I left word of where I was.’
‘Yes, sir. But I thought you would be back tonight anyway, and it seemed a shame to spoil your leave.’ Ken remembered the porter was an old soldier invalided out of the army only the year before. He probably had the fighting man’s philosophy that if there was bad news that would wait until tomorrow, why let it spoil today? ‘Shall I open it and read it out to you, sir?’ he asked again helpfully.
‘No, I’m coming in now.’
Ken’s personal problems were forgotten when he got in to the hospital and opened the telegram. His orders were to proceed to Hull the following day, Sunday, and board a ship leaving at 8 p.m. for Le Havre, and from there onward to ‘somewhere on the Rhine’. His precise destination would be communicated to him once he was on board.
Ken felt a surge of excitement. He had thought his part in the fighting had ended with his posting to look after prisoners-of-war and now he had a chance to go on to the end. He rubbed his hand over his injured leg. It was fit enough now – there was no reason why he shouldn’t go back into service at a field hospital, tending his own countrymen.
‘I’m going back to the front,’ he informed the porter, a grin of anticipation lighting up his face so that the man was astonished. It was the last thing he himself would have been glad about. Still, it takes all sorts, the porter reflected. And that explains why the powers that be have brought in that new registrar, Doctor Strange, all of a sudden. A pity, because Major Collins was a good bloke.
‘If that’s what you want, sir, good luck to you,’ he replied.
Ken went back to his rooms and packed his bags before making his way to the doctors’ dining-room. It was deserted and he felt frustrated at having no one to talk to about his new orders. He ate his solitary dinner and retired to bed.
If he set out early enough he would be able to go back to Marsden and say goodbye to the family and take the train from there to Hull, then he could leave his car at the farm. He would write to Theda, he decided, as he wouldn’t have time to call and see her in Winton and she wouldn’t be back at the hospital until Monday. Still, she would understand. Anyone who had been through this war understood that orders were orders.
He wrote a note to put in her pigeon hole: ‘Sorry, I have been ordered back overseas in a tremendous rush. I’ll write to you. Love, Ken.’ When he had a moment, perhaps on the boat, he would think things through before writing to her properly. But not now.
The following morning he was ready to be off by eight o’clock, the only difficulty being he had to wait until Dr Strange came at nine so as to hand over. Not that there was a lot to discuss, most of his patients were fairly straightforward, but courtesy demanded it. Well, he could say his farewells to Major Koestler and if he were very quick, he would have time to rush round the wards and do the same to the nursing staff.
It was all happening so quickly. He wondered why there should have to be such a hurry as he started out for the prisoners’ section. If only he had had time to talk to Theda. But he was worried about his mother, had to go over to the farm to reassure her he would be all right. It was very unlikely he would be going near the fighting. She was so frail now, that was another thing, he had hoped to have a talk with her doctor . . .
‘Good morning, Major Collins.’
It was Major Koestler coming up behind him with a white-coated stranger who could only be the new registrar.
‘It’s lucky I’ve met you – I wanted to say goodbye. I have been ordered away,’ said Ken, after acknowledging his replacement.
‘I heard so,’ Major Koestler said gravely. ‘I am sorry to see you go. May I ask where it is you are going?’
‘You may ask but I can’t tell you,’ Ken replied, smiling.
‘No, of course not.’ Major Koestler looked thoughtful. He stood aside as Ken had a few words with Dr Strange. They began to move towards the huts when Ken remembered the note for Theda.
‘If you don’t mind playing messenger boy for me, you could take this up to the staff pigeon holes and leave it in Staff Nurse Wearmouth’s,’ he said to the German. ‘Dr Strange and I can go over the patients’ notes and then I’ll be away all the sooner. I’ve a long way to go.’
Dr Koestler nodded. ‘Of course. Have a good journey.’ He took the note and walked back to Block One. He was the only German on site who was allowed out of the prisoner-of-war enclosure and even he was supposed to have someone with him at all times. But the staff were used to seeing him about the place and no one questioned his lack of an escort.
Inside the swing doors of the main block, he walked past the notice board and pigeon holes and went into the lavatory, locking the door. Perhaps there was some clue as to Major Collins’s destination in the note? One never knew what might be important. But there was nothing of importance in the note, which was disappointing. Tearing it up, he flushed it down the lavatory bowl. It had too obviously been tampered with for him to put it where it was meant to go.
As soon as she was off duty that Monday, Theda checked her box again, even though she knew it was too late. Ken was long gone, and he certainly couldn’t have come back to leave a note for her. She was being irrational, she told herself, and had to forget about him. Going to her room, she got out her writing case and composed an application to Sunderland Royal Infirmary to be considered for the midwifery course. Then she changed into her everyday clothes and went out to catch the bus to Winton Colliery, posting the letter on the way.
It wouldn’t be as easy as that, she was well aware, but at least she had taken the first step. If she was accepted it would be easier to go before the Board to ask for her release from the hospital.
She managed to find a seat on the bus, which was something to be thankful for. It was raining once again, streaking the dirty window as she stared dismally out at the blackness, relieved only by her own reflection and the dim glint on the raindrops running down the windowpane. The man sitting next to her got up and worked his way to the door and someone slipped into the vacant seat, but Theda didn’t turn away from the window.
‘You not speaking to me now, Theda Wearmouth?’
Theda looked round. It was Renee Coulson with Maurice, her toddler on her knee, his face pale and tired-looking and his thumb stuck firmly in his mouth as she stared at Theda with wide blue eyes. His mother grinned cheerfully at her.
‘You were miles away there, all right. In love, are you? Come on, tell Auntie Renee all about it. I could do with a bit of amusement. It’s bloody murder hanging about for buses in this weather – I wouldn’t be surprised if Maury caught his death. Workers only, indeed! If this isn’t bleeding work, hauling a kid about with you all the time, I don’t know what is. I tell you, it’s a break to get off to work after this. I’ll have to rub his chest with Vick when I get him home or he’ll keep me awake with his coughing all the bleeding night.’
Theda forced herself to smile. ‘Sorry, I was thinking about—’
But Renee wasn’t listening. She looked stricken for a moment. ‘Gawd, my big mouth! I forgot about your Alan, dear. It’s not so long since he went missing, is it? What a bleeding world, it is, isn’t it?’
‘That’s all right,’ Theda murmured, but Renee wasn’t really listening. She was off on a monologue, the gist of which Theda couldn’t catch so she just sat there, nodding or shaking her head according to what seemed most appropriate. She wondered what Renee would say if she knew the truth: that it was a new man occupying her thoughts, not Alan at all. She was a traitor to Alan’s memory.
At the bus stop she helped Renee off the bus with her bags and Maurice. The child had gone to sleep and now he had been wakened as his mother pushed her way through to get off the bus and was tetchily crying and refusing to be put down to walk, clinging to Renee’s shoulders with tiny iron fists.
‘I’ll carry the bags,’ offered Theda, thus condemning herself to walking slowly by their side in the rain as Renee struggled up the bank to the colliery rows, hugging the boy to her and yet managing to talk all the time: about her mother-in-law, about her husband still overseas, about how she had nowhere to go now if she went back to London and no one to go to now her family were all gone. And wasn’t it lovely that Clara was getting married on Saturday?
‘Saturday?’
‘That’s right, didn’t you know? You could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard. Isn’t it lovely and romantic? Of course it isn’t so nice that Clara will be going away. She’s been a good friend to me—’
‘Well, here we are, Renee. I’ll give you a hand in with your bags. That young man looks like he’d be better off in bed.’
‘Yes.’ Renee broke off talking to look fondly at the blond head on her shoulder. ‘I won’t bother to bath him tonight; he can wait till tomorrow. Straight upstairs for him. His gran will wash him tomorrow while I’m at work.’
If she’d been asked to hazard a guess, Theda thought, she would have said the boy hadn’t had a bath last night either as he smelled a bit stale. She followed Renee into the house and put the bags down on the kitchen table before saying goodnight and going back out to her own back door. She stood for a moment, hand on the sneck, composing herself. Then, fixing a smile on her face, she went in.
‘What a rotten night it is,’ she commented as she took off her sodden scarf and raincoat. ‘What’s for supper?’
‘Eeh, I haven’t had time to think about supper,’ said Bea. She and Clara were sitting side by side on the settee, sewing at a length of material, which Theda recognised as parachute silk.
‘See what Dean brought me, Theda,’ cried Clara, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘He’s got a special licence – we’re going to be married on Saturday! We’re making a wedding dress now.’ She suddenly shrieked as she stabbed her finger with her needle, and thrust it in her mouth, sucking loudly.
‘Aye,’ Bea remarked drily. ‘But it’s me that’s doing most of the sewing and Clara who’s going to have a red-spotted dress if she’s not careful.’
‘Can you get Saturday afternoon off?’ asked Clara anxiously. ‘It’s going to be in the chapel. We’ve asked the minister and he says it will be all right. Eeh, I hope you can come, our Theda.’
‘We’ll see,’ she said, and picked up the kettle, taking it into the pantry which held the only tap. ‘How about having some of those eggs I brought yesterday?’
‘Nay, lass. I did boiled eggs for your dad and Chuck, then I’ve had to use the rest of them for the wedding cake. Can you not smell it? It’s just about ready to come out of the oven now. I got some real currants an’ all. It’s going to taste grand. There’s a tin of beans, though. Why don’t you have them?’
Theda sighed. ‘No, I’m not hungry really. I’ll just have a cup of tea.’ She looked at the two heads bent over the sewing. They weren’t really with her; she had never seen Clara being so industrious with a needle, she who hated to sew on a button. ‘I think I’ll just go up to bed, Mam,’ she said.
‘Righto, pet,’ her mother answered absently. ‘Have something at the hospital, did you? That’s all right then. Did you have a bad day an’ all? Tiring, I mean?’
‘You could say that,’ said Theda. ‘Goodnight then.’
She trailed up to bed feeling very low indeed. She hadn’t even wished her sister well, she realised as she crawled between the sheets. But Clara didn’t appear to have noticed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘I will expect you to work every weekend for the next few weeks, Staff Nurse,’ said Matron. She stared disapprovingly at Theda over her glasses.
‘Yes, Matron.’
‘I don’t deny that you will want to go to your sister’s wedding, but after all you have had a lot of Saturdays free lately. More than your fair share. It’s not fair to the rest of the staff.’
‘No, Matron.’
‘Well, go along then. No doubt you are needed back on the ward.’
‘Yes, Matron.’
Having been dismissed, Theda walked back to Hut K, automatically checking her pigeon hole as she passed, feeling the familiar pang of disappointment when there was nothing in it. Fool that she was, she didn’t know why she’d even looked. It was obvious she had just been a diversion for Ken for the brief time he was in Bishop Auckland. Julie was the girl he loved, whoever she was. For herself, Theda was determined to put him out of her mind altogether.
The trouble was her mind vacillated all the time. She was determined not to think of him, not to let him affect her at all, and then a moment would come when she yearned to see him again, her body longing for the touch of his hands and the surge of feeling they could induce. What a weak-minded woman she was! Ruled by her senses. But, no, her feelings for Ken were more than that, surely. She shook her head as though that would clear it of such thoughts. There was work to do.
Dr Strange was in the ward with Major Koestler when she got there. Sister was off duty and only Nurse Elliot was with the doctors so Theda put on her cap and apron and went up to them.
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