For King and Country (18 page)

‘Sure, and you’ll get kicked off another ward if she comes in here and sees that. You might get kicked out of the hospital entirely.’

For a fraction of a second Sally hesitated, then said: ‘She’s not likely to see it, is she? I’ll give it to Alfie when she’s gone over to the other kids’ ward for
one of her confabs with Sister Fawcett.’

‘And what if he tells her?’

Sally paused for thought, then said: ‘He’s not likely to, is he, if he thinks he’s stolen it. If I just leave it where he can see it he’ll help himself, and then
he’ll keep his mouth shut about it.’

Curran’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Tch, tch! Leading a child into the ways of unrighteousness. And I always thought you were such a good-living girl!’

Sally rounded on her. ‘Do you blame me? Do you think we ought to be feeding pigs, before children?’

Curran backed away, and put her hands up in mock surrender. ‘Sure, and I do not, but he does get his own food, Wilde, and much more might not be good for him yet. And another thing –
he’s got enough to battle against just being a deserter’s child, without anybody setting him on the road to being a thief into the bargain. Have you thought about that?’

Deflated, Sally thought for a moment. ‘No, and you’re right. But I can’t stand the thought of him being hungry, man. I’ll just leave one sandwich out for him.’

‘Sure, and that’ll be enough to put temptation in his way.’

‘What do
you
think about deserters, Curran?’ Sally burst out. ‘Do you think they deserve to be shot?’

‘It depends why they’ve deserted, entirely. You’d think Alfie’s daddy certainly deserved to be shot, but the ones you hear of who’ve been shell-shocked, I’m
sure they don’t. But you’d get everybody pretending to be shell-shocked, if they could get out of the war that way. The Irish lads, now, I don’t think they’d desert. Where
would they go to? They’ve no homes in England, and they daren’t go back to Ireland when they’re on leave – not since the Easter Rising. Sure, and they’d get strung up
for fighting alongside the English.’

‘Would you report a deserter, if you knew of one?’

‘I would not, indeed! Not if he was Irish.’

‘What if he was English? Wouldn’t you think he’d let the rest of the lads down, left them in the lurch, like?

‘How would I know that, unless he told me, and he wouldn’t do that, would he? “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” That’s a good motto.’

‘Would you help him to get away, though?’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that’s something else, I’d have to think about that one. I wouldn’t want to get meself locked up. But I wouldn’t stop him from getting away
himself.’

‘Not even Alfie’s dad?’

‘Not even Alfie’s dad. Sure, and you’re asking some peculiar questions, Wilde. Do you know where the man’s to?’

‘Why no,’ Sally said. ‘How could I?’

When Sister Harding departed for the ward on the other side of the long corridor, a potted meat sandwich mysteriously made its way to Alfie’s locker and, making a great
show of seeing it there, Sally frowned and said: ‘Why didn’t you eat your sandwiches, Alfie?’

At the word ‘sandwich’, he sat bolt upright with his fists gripping the arms of the rocking chair by the fire, and turned towards her, eyes wide and ears cocked. ‘I did, Nurse.
I ate them all.’

‘Now don’t tell fibs. You’ve left one on your locker, and if you don’t eat it, I’ll have to throw it away.’

He was out of the chair like a shot and at his locker, greatly puzzled. ‘Why, I thought I’d had them all, like.’

‘You must have forgotten. Hurry up and finish it, pet. We want to wash the plates.’

It’s a sin to steal a pin. Rather die than tell a lie. They were precepts she’d grown up with and had wholeheartedly believed, but now, watching Alfie eat, Sally
began to think there must be exceptions, circumstances where stealing or lying might be justified.

Alfie’s eating a tiny sandwich was not a long process, and Sally was taking the plate back to the kitchen when she heard the telephone ring. Although still a little nervous of it, she went
into Sister’s office and picked up the receiver.

‘Have you got the bulletin, Sister?’ a disembodied voice demanded.

She looked at the instrument, as if for an explanation, and then carefully spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘The what?’

‘The bulletin. This is the
Evening Chronicle
, ringing for the bulletin.’

‘Oh, yes, I’m sorry. Sister’s not here, but I think this is it, on the desk. Shall I read it over the telephone?’

‘That’s the usual way, pet. We stopped using carrier pigeons a while ago.’

Sally blushed at her own stupidity. At admission, every patient’s relatives were given a number to check in the paper every night, to find out how the patient was progressing. Sally picked
up the bulletin and read it out. Three of the numbers had ‘dangerously ill’ written beside them, and Sally guessed they must be Edith, Joshua and Ernest, and the number with
‘improving’ must be Alfie. The rest were ‘very ill’, ‘slight improvement’, or ‘much the same’.

When she put the receiver down, Sally’s glance fell on the paper rack on the desk, full of printed forms, letter paper and envelopes. An envelope would be very useful, and she had just run
out. She separated one, just one, then stung by conscience took fright and pushed it back. If she carried on like this, she’d find herself on the slippery slope to perdition. Honest and
trustworthy, that’s what a nurse was expected to be, and that’s what Matron and the sisters believed she was. Bad to let them down, and not only that, she thought, a good
reputation’s like virginity – when it’s lost, there’s no amount of tears and sighs will get it back.

‘You write a lot of letters, Armstrong,’ Sally said, when they were sitting cosily round the fire in the probationers’ sitting room. ‘I don’t
suppose you’ve got an envelope and a stamp you could give us the lend of? I want to drop my sister a line.’

‘I’ve got envelopes. Do you want one now?’

‘Aye, if you don’t mind.’

‘Oh.’ Armstrong looked reluctant, obviously unwilling to sacrifice her comfortable chair right beside the fire to one of a dozen or so other probationers who were milling about with
envious eyes on the best seats.

‘Meet you upstairs before lights out, then,’ Sally said. ‘There’s something else I want to do, anyway.’

He was alone again in that peaceful place, facing the altar to the right of the door, kneeling with head bowed and chin supported in his palms with every appearance of being
deep in prayer, but waiting, in any event, for her. She knelt in the pew behind and to the right of him, and from that angle he looked the perfect young officer with the perfect profile. He turned
slightly, giving her a glimpse of the gauze and strapping covering the other side of his face. ‘I thought you’d come,’ he said.

‘I can’t stay more than a minute. I got a warning yesterday for being here on my own with you, and I daren’t let her catch me again.’

‘Meet me on the Leazes, then, by the bandstand. In about ten minutes.’

‘I daren’t, Will. I daren’t, for my soul. I’ll lose my job if I get caught fraternizing with the soldiers.’

‘I daren’t, Will,’
he mimicked. ‘Who’s the coward now?’

‘Look, I’ll send your letter to our Ginny. Your mother should have it before the week’s out. I can’t do any more,’ she said, and stood up.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘No fraternizing with the soldiers. You might find out what it is to be a woman, and you don’t want to risk that. Away and jump into your
good little nun’s bed, then.’

She blushed, and left without another word.

W
hile Curran was at supper the following day the telephone rang in Sister’s office. Sally was surprised to hear Dr Campbell on the line.
‘You’ve an empty cubicle on your ward, haven’t you?’ he demanded, very abrupt, and with an urgency in his voice she’d never heard before.

‘Yes, Doctor.’

‘Have you had diphtheria, Nurse?’

Strange question. ‘Yes, Doctor, when I was eleven. I think they gave me antitoxin after it, as well.’

He sounded much relieved. ‘Good. Get the cubicle ready and prepare for an emergency tracheostomy at once. We’ve got a case coming in, and it’ll be better done on the ward so
that we won’t have to disturb him afterwards. We’ll be with you in five minutes.’

Diphtheria? What was he asking about diphtheria for? Diphtheria cases shouldn’t come into this ward, or even this hospital; they had to go to the City Hospital for Infectious Diseases.
‘But, Dr Campbell . . .’ she protested, and heard the click of the receiver being replaced at the other end.

But Dr Campbell, Sister Harding’s been called home because her father’s had a stroke, and I’m here on my own. The only other probationer has gone off to supper, and so has
Sister Fawcett, and she’s sharing herself between both the children’s wards, and it’ll take longer than five minutes to go and fetch her, and I’ve never set up for a
tracheostomy on my own before! She’d have told him it all if he’d given her the chance, and the way her heart was pattering in her chest, she might have added – and I’m
absolutely petrified. She stared at the wall above Sister’s desk for a moment or two, trying to collect her scattered wits.

Five minutes, he’d said. It didn’t really leave her enough time to have a seizure, so she’d have to calm down and do the best she could. Get Curran and Sister Fawcett back, for
a start, and no need to go running after them with a telephone staring her in the face – just do what Sister would have done. She picked it up, and with trembling fingers dialled, for the
first time in her life.

Message given, she breathed a sigh of relief. Next, find ‘tracheostomy’ in the reference book on the desk. She skimmed through it, and oh, mercy, what were they going to use for
instruments? She’d seen none on this ward. She took a deep breath and straightened her apron, and at the office door she almost collided with an orderly, who was holding a glass tray covered
with a chromium-plated lid similar to the one she’d seen during Raynor’s operation. Thank goodness for that. Just hope Dr Campbell had sent everything he needed, and all nicely
sterilized in strong carbolic.

She took the tray into the cubicle that had once been Edith’s. ‘If there’s nothing can be done for her, she might as well be at home,’ her parents had said, and
they’d taken her. It was a mercy they had or all these kids might end up with diphtheria, Sally thought.

Whatever was Dr Campbell thinking of, admitting a case like that here?

Still alone on the ward, Sally had just set the trolley and boiled the kettle to rig up a steam tent when the child was carried into the cubicle by Dr Campbell himself. Mrs Lowery, of all
people, was close on his heels and in a state of near hysteria.

One glance at the child that Dr Campbell laid gently on the bed convinced Sally that he was almost at death’s door, near suffocated, with beads of perspiration standing on his pale skin,
and such anxiety on his little face.

‘He’s in shock,’ Dr Campbell said, and time seemed to slow as Sally moved towards their patient, feeling nothing now but an icy calm, noting the sucking in of the spaces
between and under his ribs as the blanket fell away from him, the swelling of the glands of his neck and the strain of his neck muscles as he gasped for air. Little Christopher Lowery’s face
was blue, and he looked at her with unseeing eyes as she cast the blanket away and wrapped a drawsheet tightly round him with firm, calculated movements, pinning his arms to his sides and making it
impossible for him to struggle.

‘All right, Kitten, all right. We’re going to make it easier for you to breathe now.’ She made soothing noises while picking up the sandbag and placing it carefully under his
shoulders to raise and extend his neck.
Spine and neck must be straight,
she remembered;
keep the windpipe in the midline.
Without a second thought she commanded his mother,
‘You stand at the top of the bed and keep his head absolutely steady, Mrs Lowery. I’ll control his body.’

The patient was in the perfect position. Dr Campbell took his scalpel from the tray of antiseptic solution and rinsed it.

‘Ooh,’ Mrs Lowery winced, and turned her head away.

Swift and competent, he made the incision. There was an inrush of air and a splutter of mucus, and relief was instantaneous; the strained little face began to relax, even to its eyelids.
Christopher’s breathing quietened and the blueness faded from his lips.

The job was done. ‘There you are, Beatrice, crisis over for the moment,’ Dr Campbell said, inserting the inner tube.

Mrs Lowery looked at her boy, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Oh, thank God, thank God! And thank you Iain,’ she choked between her sobs. ‘Thank you.’

The task finished, Dr Campbell straightened up and gave her a nod and a smile, then turning to Sally, who was removing the drawsheet and sandbag, he boasted: ‘Under ten minutes this time,
I think, Nurse. Not long to save the life of a seriously ill child, is it?’

‘No, Doctor,’ Sally said, anxious for the other children on the ward now that the threat to Christopher’s life was past. ‘But, you see, we’re very understaffed at
the moment, and unless Curran and Sister Fawcett are back, I’m the only nurse here, and we have a lot of seriously ill children. How can I go onto the ward and nurse them after dealing with a
case of diphtheria?’

He frowned. ‘You can’t. Of course not.’

‘Then somebody will have to be found to nurse the others, Doctor. Would you mind speaking to Matron about it, and explaining things to Sister Fawcett?’ Underlying the sweet but
determined smile she gave him was the message – and if you won’t, I’ll have to.

‘Certainly I will,’ he said, and to Mrs Lowery, ‘You see what a fix we’re in, Beatrice. He won’t be able to stay here. We’ll transfer him to the City Hospital
for Infectious Diseases tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Nurse, I’ll have a private word with you.’

Sally followed him outside the cubicle, and met his disapproving gaze. ‘You ought not to have said that in front of his mother, Nurse Wilde. The other children aren’t her
concern.’