Connie’s Courage (6 page)

‘Yes, please, I would appreciate it if you would speak with your niece,' she told the midwife, and already, although she didn't know it herself, she was sounding more like Miss Connie Pride, and less like the disgraced young woman who had run away with Kieron Connolly.

Connie sat nervously beside Ma Deakin as the bus jolted through the streets. Thanks to the good offices of the midwife's niece, she had been granted an appointment to be examined by the Matron to see if she was fit to train as a nurse.

‘Where are we going?' she asked anxiously, as she looked out of the bus window. ‘This isn't …'

‘Mill Road, o'course, ninny, Ma Deakin answered her affectionately, giving her a dig in the ribs with her elbow as she chuckled.

‘Mill Road, but that's where the poorhouse hospital is!'

‘Aye, that's right, where else would we be goin'? Come on, ‘ere's our stop,' Ma Deakin instructed Connie, heaving her weight out of the seat.

The Infirmary, in other words, the Poor Hospital. All the bright dreams Connie had been weaving suddenly collapsed. To have to be taken into one of the Poor Hospitals carried as much stigma as being taken into the
workhouse, and, for a minute, she was tempted to get off the bus and run away. But
she had nowhere to run to, she reminded herself in despair, as she followed the midwife.

Even on this sunny day, the Infirmary cast a dark shadow which made Connie shiver. When Ma Deakin had spoken of her going into nursing, it had never occurred to her that she had meant her to go into the Poor Hospital. Why, it would be as bad as though she were in the poorhouse itself.

‘I'd best not come any further with yer,' Ma Deakin was saying. ‘T' matron here don't approve of the likes of me – yer have to have a proper training to call yersel' a midwife round ‘ere. Now, you haven't forgotten what yer have to do, ‘ave yer, luv?'

The motherly concern in her voice gave Connie a pang of guilt. Ma Deakin had been so kind to her, she couldn't offend her by telling her that she could not work in the poorhouse hospital.

‘Yer to go in and ask for t' matron, and to give ‘em our Sarah's name. Tell ‘em she's arranged everything like!'

Numbly Connie nodded her head. Was it really to come to this wretched place that Ma Deakin had washed and mended Connie's shabby dress, shaking her head over Connie's best one, ‘No, lass, that's too fancy.' She had pursed her lips and added, ‘Yer don't want ‘em thinkin' yer flighty, like!'

‘Connolly will never come looking for yer in here.'

Connie looked at her saviour, her eyes suddenly
brimming with emotional tears. Flinging her arms round the midwife, she gave her a fierce hug.

‘Eeh, lass, don't be such a softie,' the midwife told her, giving her a push in the direction of the hospital. ‘Off yer go now, and think on, lass. No more getting yersel' into trouble!'

The entrance to the Infirmary loomed in front of her, and Connie knew that if Ma Deakin hadn't been standing watching her, she would have been tempted to turn and run away. The poorhouse hospital! The life she had known really was lost to her now, and as for her dreams about the fun she would have going to the music hall and the picture house … She gave a small shudder of fear. They locked you in your room at night at the poorhouse, didn't they? Everyone knew how cruelly its inmates were treated.

She checked, and turned to look over her shoulder. Ma Deakin was still watching her. With feet that felt like lead, Connie took a reluctant step into the new life she was now dreading.

Harry Lawson grimaced to himself in disgust as the pungent smell of bad drains filled his nostrils. The sooner he could get his mother and sisters out of their current accommodation, and into something decent, the better.

He had to return to Hutton in the morning, but he was hoping he might have obtained some translation work from the P&O shipping line. It would
mean long nights spent working over complicated documents translating them from Spanish in the main, and sometimes French into English. The pay wasn't very good, but, so far as Harry was concerned, every penny helped.

As he passed the spot where Connie had gone into labour, he averted his gaze. The plight of the young woman had concerned him, for her own sake, and for his sisters' as well. He couldn't bear the thought of them being pulled down to such a level, but poverty dragged clanging chains of other ills with it, as Harry knew.

His mother was waiting for him when he opened the door to their shabby accommodation.

‘Harry, the best of news!' she exclaimed happily. ‘I took the ferry across to New Brighton to see your father's Aunt Martha. She has agreed that we may move in with her, Harry, on condition that I look after her. Oh, Harry, I am so pleased. The house is big enough for any family, and there is a garden for Sophie. The air is so much healthier there as well, and you are to have a room of your own for when you come home from Hutton! Harry, it is such a relief! I do not think I could have tolerated another night in this dreadful place.'

Harry looked ruefully at his mother. ‘Great Aunt Martha is an old, cantankerous bully who will treat you like a servant, Mother. You know how Father always said how mean she was. I might have secured some extra work …'

‘I shall not mind looking after her, and anyway
it will give me something to do. I don't want you to put your career at risk by taking on so much extra work that you neglect your teaching duties, Harry,' she told him gently.

Harry sighed, but he knew better than to argue with her.

‘There is more good news,' she continued merrily. ‘We have heard today that they are taking on probationer nurses at the Infirmary. You know how much Mavis has always wanted to be a nurse!'

‘The Infirmary!' Harry stopped her sharply. ‘But mother that is the poorhouse hospital.'

‘Well, we are poor, aren't we?' Harry heard his sister Mavis challenge him, as she came into the room.

‘I shall have my board and a wage, and I shall be training to do what I have always wanted to do,' she told Harry proudly.

Harry's heart sank. It hurt him inside that they had come to this, and that there was nothing he could do about it.

‘It is what I want, Harry. To be a nurse!' Mavis told him fiercely.

‘A nurse, yes,' Harry stopped her. ‘But an Infirmary nurse is not …'

‘Not what? she demanded. ‘Not as good as other nurses? Well, let me tell you something, Harry Lawson. I am going to be the best nurse there is! If the Infirmary will take me on, then that's where I shall go! And if you're ashamed of …'

‘I shall never be ashamed of my family,' Harry
stopped her fiercely, adding in a quieter voice, ‘But I am ashamed of myself, for not being able to do better by you all.'

The Matron of the Infirmary was not a person to be trifled with, and she was no fool either. When she glided, like a ship under full sail, into the carbolic-smelling, scrubbed room in which the batch of would-be new nurses were waiting for her, it was with the express purpose of ensuring that they recognise her authority and quailed under it.

Her experienced glance took in the gaggle of young women in front of her, but it was the sudden giggle of one of them that caused her to turn her head and focus on her.

A potential troublemaker. Matron knew exactly how to deal with those and if she hadn't just had an interview with Mr Harris P Cleaver, Clerk to the Board of Governors of the Hospital, during which he had appealed to her not to turn down any of the new recruits so that they could meet the Government's demands, Connie would have been shown the door without any further ado.

However, the ears of the British Government had already caught the first threatening rumble of war, lying menacingly in the distance like thunder, and had started to prepare for it. More soldiers would be needed and more nurses to mend their wounds. Decisions were made and orders given.

Matron's bosom had heaved, as she had drawn
herself up to her full height, and reminded him, ‘Sir, this hospital has always put the thorough and excellent training of its nurses above their number. Quality before quantity has been our motto, which is why we have never, as some other Poor Hospital's have done, taken onto our wards untrained girls from the poorhouse itself.'

‘Matron, it is because of your excellent reputation for training young women to become firstrate nurses, that we have been given this task of recruiting and training more.' Mr Cleaver had informed her. ‘It is because our Government wants the very best of nurses to care for our wounded soldiers – should there be a war, our wounded heroes,' he had emphasised, ‘that we are required to train more.'

There had been several more very flattering remarks of this nature made to her by Mr Cleaver, and, eventually Matron had acknowledged that if the Government were in need of more nurses, then no hospital in the entire length and breadth of the country, was more equipped to train them to the highest of standards than the West Derby Union Infirmary.

And possibly no Matron! Because the Infirmary was no ordinary poorhouse hospital! Thanks to the foresight of one of its Guardians, its nursing practices and training methods had been recommended by no less personage than Florence Nightingale herself.

Matron was justly proud of that reputation, and
she looked upon it as almost her sacred duty to maintain it. Her experienced gaze assessed and judged the freshly scrubbed faces in front of her.

Connie looked right back at her defiantly, ignoring the sharp tug the girl standing next to her gave her gown.

They had been waiting for nearly half an hour for the Matron to see them to assess their suitability, and Connie had learned that the calm steady-eyed, brown-haired young woman tugging her gown was Mavis, and that she had wanted to be a nurse all her life; and the anxious-looking redhead with the freckled nose and gangly body was Josie, whose stepmother had no longer wanted her at home. The blonde girl with her cheeky grin and upturned nose was Vera Harper, and Connie had already recognised that she and Vera were kindred spirits. In no time at all, they had been chattering happily together.

‘So you all wish to train as nurses! Well, make no mistake it is very demanding work and not for the work-shy or feckless.'

She paused and gave Connie a very long, cold look.

‘No matter how humble your position, and how elevated my own, no error on your part will escape my notice.'

Josie made a small anxious sound, and Connie gave her a withering look.

‘Do you have a problem with your eyesight, Miss?' the Matron asked Connie coldly. ‘When I

am speaking to you, your gaze, in fact the whole of your attention, should be on me and not wandering around the room.'

Connie fought back the blush she could feel wanting to burn her face. The teachers at the Park School in Preston had sometimes been strict, but nothing like this, and she wasn't a schoolgirl any more, she was … Connie tensed, as she remembered just what she was, and why she was here.

‘You will be working a probationary period, after which your suitability to continue your training will be assessed.'

Matron had two strict rules, neither of which she ever allowed to be broken! The first was that her wards were, at all times, kept in a state of total cleanliness and the second, that her nurses were, at all times, kept in a state of total obedience. Occasionally, as now, there were situations when the two rules married admirably together.

‘One of my nurses will come and escort you to a bathroom where you will wash and then present yourselves for inspection.'

Not even her imposing presence could check the murmur of apprehension that ran round the room. One girl put up her hand ‘Please, ma'am, does that mean we will have to take off our clothes?'

Matron pursed her lips. Of course, it was a good sign that a young woman should be modest, but as Matron had good cause to know, some of the girls who came to her for training were from the poorest families. Their clothes were removed from them
and washed in the hospital laundry; every inch of their skin was scrubbed clean, and every hair on their head checked to make sure they were not bringing any kind of infestation into the hospital with them. Matron was as relentless, as she was tireless, in her war against dirt and its potential to carry disease.

Sternly she looked at the girl. ‘Of course it does. How else would you take a bath? This is a hospital,' she reminded them, ‘and within it you will see certain sights that would not normally be witnessed by an unmarried woman. But you will not be women – you will be nurses!'

‘I won't do it. I'm not letting anyone see me without my clothes,' one of the girls announced, pink-cheeked.

Matron had left in a crackle of starched dress and apron, and Connie listened, waiting to voice her own refusal, when Mavis said quietly, ‘It is simply a necessary precaution, and nothing to be feared.'

Feared? Who was afraid! Certainly not her, Connie decided!

And it seemed later, when they all huddled together after undergoing their examination at the hands of a stern-faced Sister, that none of the others had been either.

‘I felt a right Charlie,' one of the girls announced. ‘A proper telling off I got for droppin' me drawers
straight off, instead of waiting behind the screen for Sister to call for me!' ‘Urgh, she had such cold hands,' one of the other girls laughed, and within seconds they were all chattering and giggling, trying to outdo one another as they described their embarrassment.

‘So why did you decide to become a nurse, Connie?' Vera asked her.

For a moment Connie froze, feeling trapped. How could she tell them the truth? They would shut her out if she did. This was meant to be a fresh start for her.

She took a deep breath. She didn't want to lie to them but she knew that she had no alternative.

‘Oh, it was a bit the same for me as it was for Josie,' she announced, as carelessly as she could. ‘I was living in Preston with my father and my stepmother, but my stepmother didn't want me around. She'd got a couple of little ones of her own, and I heard they were wanting to train up nurses here.'