For King and Country (25 page)

‘Dr Campbell!’ The tones of outrage came from Sister Davies, who had appeared from nowhere to poke him viciously on the shoulder. Nothing daunted, he abandoned Sally and took Sister
in his arms instead, to give her a smacking kiss. Bubbles of laughter rose to Sally’s throat at the sight of Sister’s eyes widening in shock, and even Will Burdett was forgotten for an
instant. She laughed aloud as she slipped away from them to search the chattering, cheering, bobbing, hopping, dancing throng for Sister Harding – and for a glimpse of Will, if she could
catch one. She sought them up and down the full length of the corridor but seeing neither, and mindful of the time, she made her way back along the corridor. Poor lad, except for knowing his
country was saved, he could hardly take much comfort in the news. His trials were only just beginning. She started up the stairs.

Sister Harding was waiting for her at the top, and halfway up Sally met her accusing stare. ‘Who gave you permission to leave the ward, Nurse?’

‘Mary’s taken a turn for the worse. I went down to look for you, Sister,’ Sally said, slowing her pace. Not the whole truth, but it would have to do.

Sister Harding was silent for a moment or two as if considering the excuse, and then gave her the news, ‘Mary’s collapsed. I’ve sent for the doctor, but I doubt there’ll
be much he can do. I’m going to ring the police to let her family know.’

Sally drew to a halt beside her. ‘It won’t be long before all her troubles are over, then, poor little mite.’

Sister’s tones were icy. ‘Don’t give your opinion before you’ve been asked for it, Nurse, and don’t jump to conclusions.’

For the rest of the day Sally and Curran slipped in and out of the little room to keep Mary clean, to keep turning her from one side to the other to prevent bedsores, and say a word or two of
comfort to her mother, as she sat watching her child slip into a coma.

‘She got diphtheria first, and then scarlet fever straight after it,’ she told them, her lip quivering. ‘She was in hospital six weeks. She was never really right again, and
then she started with this – kidney trouble. My poor bairn.’

‘Why, and she’s such a good bairn,’ Sally commiserated. ‘I am sorry.’ And she was sorry. She tried to show her sympathy with cups of tea and kind words but she saw
the mother’s grief with an awful detachment, didn’t so much as drop a tear for Mary, and began to wonder what was happening to her. Not to feel, really feel, for the death of an
innocent child, a child she’d known for over a month, seemed terrible. But she felt numb; her senses were becoming dulled by too much contact with too much suffering. This was part of the
nursing routine and she was getting hardened to it. She’d soon be like Dunkley, she thought.

No. God forbid she would ever be so callous. That was something she really
must
guard against.

‘Sure, and the war might be over, but dying goes on,’ Curran sighed, when they got off duty that evening.

‘If only she’d never caught diphtheria and scarlet fever in the first place,’ said Sally, ‘she’d be all right. It all started after that, her mother said. We ought
to make that our next war – the war on disease. Richmond was right about public health, and I would like to get into that. It must be something really worth doing, working to stop these
diseases happening at all.’

‘Sure, and I thought you were coming to Australia?’

‘I know, and I’ve been thinking about it, but there’s my mother,’ said Sally. ‘I’m the only one she’s still got at home. Will you really go, do you
think?’

‘If Armstrong does, I will. I’ll be there as fast as I can. We could have a great life, Wilde. You can’t
not
come. Leave this class-ridden old country to look after
itself; it’ll soon find a new set of serfs. And there’s still plenty of your family here to look after your mother. Sure, and you’re never at home anyway. And what would your
mother do if you were leaving home to get married?’

‘Hm, she’d be overjoyed at getting rid of me that way, I suppose,’ Sally admitted, and the image of the younger, unblemished Will Burdett popped into her head as large as life,
along with his mother’s words, ‘You’d have got a bonny lad for your husband – if he’d lived.’

‘I wonder what they’ll do?’ one of the gathering in the sitting room speculated that evening. ‘I wonder if they’ll send the men who’ve been
in France the longest back first?’

‘That’s the only fair way to do it, isn’t it? They’ll have done their bit, after all.’

‘I bet it’s the men who’re needed for industry and the mines get out first,’ said Armstrong. ‘The ones who’ve got jobs waiting for them.’

‘Either way, it won’t be long before both my brothers are home, God willing,’ said Sally.

‘Are they married?’ one of the new probationers demanded.

‘Aye, they are.’

‘No use to us then. But the Germans will be letting all their prisoners of war loose an’ all, – if they haven’t already. I wonder when they’ll get home?’

‘Soon, with a bit of luck! Hurry up and drink your tea,’ said Crump, handing Curran’s cup back to her. ‘Maybe’s I can find a bonny lad for you in the leaves, when
I’ve done Armstrong’s reading.’

‘You can’t read the leaves in these vulgar articles,’ said Curran, replacing the cheap white hospital cup back on its saucer with a disparaging expression on her face.
‘They’re no good at all. You have to have fine bone china with broad rims, am I not right, Wilde?’

‘How do I know? But she couldn’t very well tell
you
you were going on a journey, Curran. She’s said that to three of Armstrong’s lot already,’ said Sally.
‘If she sends many more away, we’ll hardly have a nurse left. Anyway, I shouldn’t be having anything to do with this. I’m a chapel-goer; my mother would have a fit if she
could see us now. These heathen antics would never be countenanced during Bright Hour in Annsdale Chapel, I can tell you that.’ She pursed her lips in mock disapproval.

‘Oh, shut up, Wilde. And if you don’t like your fortune, Curran, I can’t help it, but it would have been just the same with a china cup. I can tell fortunes just as well with
pot as china. I had a good teacher; my Aunt Mima’s been reading tea leaves for years. Anyway, with a man in uniform who’s going to get very attached to you, I don’t know what
you’ve got to complain about,’ Crump said. ‘It’s your turn, Armstrong. Drink up, and give us a hold of your cup and saucer.’

Armstrong gulped her tea down. Crump took the cup and saucer from her hands and swirled the dregs round three times to the right, and three times to the left, before inverting the cup onto the
saucer. She glanced round the company then with great ceremony handed the saucer back to Armstrong and turned the cup slowly and deliberately three times to the right, before subjecting the
contents to intense scrutiny. Wide-eyed and with mouths agape, the probationers watched the pair in perfect silence. Sally sat looking at the lot of them, trying to suppress the pressure welling up
from deep inside her. It was no good; it finally escaped in a disrespectful burst of laughter.

‘Shut up, Wilde!’

‘Shut up?’ Sally repeated. ‘Is that the way you speak to your elders and betters?’

‘It is just now,’ Crump protested, almost managing to keep the smile off her own face. ‘Telling fortunes is a very serious thing.’ She peered into the leaves and said:
‘Hm. Mmm. Yes. Yes, it’s getting clearer. I see a . . . Yes, it
is
a ship. Armstrong . . .’

Someone threw a cushion at Crump’s head. Everybody chorused, ‘You’re going on a long journey!’ and then burst into laughter.

‘Why, look!’ Crump insisted. ‘There it is, right on the rim, as plain as the nose on your face! A ship!’

‘Aye, if you say so,’ said Sally, and then listened in silence, yawning from time to time while Crump continued, giving another half dozen of the probationers men in uniform and
three baby girls and two boys, or one girl and three boys, or various other combinations.

When every other fortune had been told Crump turned to Sally. ‘I don’t suppose you want yours doing, being as you’re so chapel.’

‘Why, of course I do. You can’t leave me out, when you’ve done all the others. Go on, tell me I’m going to sail away on a man in uniform and marry a ship, and have lots
of babies on the way.’

Crump gave her a disapproving frown as she took her cup, and with even more ceremony and solemnity than she’d afforded any of the others she swirled, upended and turned the cup, then
tilted her head back and studied the leaves, long and hard. At last she shook her head. ‘There’s a fork. That means a terrible decision. I see a tragic foreigner in uniform . .
.’

‘Oh, a
foreigner
in uniform this time. That makes a change,’ Sally murmured.

‘Sure, and it’s probably that old Belgian porter,’ Curran exclaimed.

Crump’s face assumed a tragic expression. There’s a deep, dark place, and danger. And a death.’

‘There’s no shortage of deaths here,’ Armstrong cut in. ‘You don’t need your fortune told to know that.’

Crump frowned, and then suddenly brightened and looked up at Sally with a smile. ‘But here, you’ve got a secret admirer to rescue you!’

‘A lot of nonsense!’ Sally laughed, as everyone rose and began to file out in the direction of bed. She followed, thinking that Crump couldn’t very well have given them all
good fortunes; it would have been too monotonous. She had to throw a bit of gloom in somewhere, dream up something a bit different to men in uniform and ships and long journeys, if she wanted to be
believed. Her mother was right; it was all superstition.

All the same, she climbed the stairs wishing she’d never had her fortune told at all. Disquieted in spite of herself, she undressed and lay down in bed, and the more she tried to drive it
all out of her mind the more her mind drifted back to pondering on what the danger might be, whose the death, and what the terrible decision? After lights out she lay in the dark, her imagination
running riot. She ought to have known better than to have her leaves read. Such things smacked of the netherworld; they opened a gateway to the regions of hell.

‘W
e sent a couple of the night staff off sick last night,’ the deputy matron told Sally a week later. So you’ll be off duty from
twelve o’clock today, Nurse Wilde. Go to dinner and then try to get some sleep. You start the night shift as from tonight.’

Sent off sick? They didn’t do that for nothing. Sally had heard a rumour that a couple of the soldiers on men’s medical had already died with the typical blue-black marks of cyanosis
on their faces. She couldn’t forbear enquiring, ‘Was it Spanish influenza, Sister?’

Deputy Matron hesitated. ‘I’m afraid so,’ she said at last, with a look that told Sally she ought not to have asked. ‘Report to the night superintendent before half past
eight, Nurse. She’ll tell you which ward you’re on.’

It was influenza then, but why did they want to keep it a secret? It would be far better to let people know what was facing them, Sally thought. Still, hers not to reason why, and there was no
time to think about that now, with patients needing to be cared for. She went into Mary’s room to find her lying on her left side, barely breathing, and her mother sitting with her elbows
supported on the bed, holding her hand. She raised a pair of weary eyes to meet Sally’s, and smiled a greeting.

‘Are you still here?’ Sally asked the obvious. ‘You look worn out. You should have gone home and got some sleep. I’m surprised they let you stay.’

‘I think they were glad of the extra pair of hands. It can’t be long now, and I want to be with her until the end. It can’t be much longer, can it?’

Sally looked at the child in the bed. ‘I don’t know. I’ll clean her mouth, shall I?’

‘I’ve already done it,’ her mother said.

‘Would you give us a hand to turn her, then?

Nurse and mother stood either side of Mary’s bed, and clasped hands underneath her, to lift her and lay her gently on her other side. At that moment Mary uttered a sigh. Sally began to
arrange her pillows, and then realized she’d stopped breathing. She put her cheek close to the child’s lips, and felt no breath, then lifted a mirror from the wall, and held it against
her mouth. There was no vapour on the glass.

‘She’s gone,’ her mother murmured.

‘I’ll go and fetch Sister,’ Sally said.

‘No, wait a minute.’ Mary’s mother stooped to gather her child into her arms and hold her for a while, and then she laid her on her pillow and closed her staring eyes.
‘Her last sleep,’ she said. ‘She was all for you, you know. She thought the world of Nurse Wilde.’

Sally felt a tightness in her throat and her chest. Tears pricked her eyes, and she knew her nose was reddening. ‘Oh, dear me,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, dear me,’ and turned
away to dab her eyes and blow her nose.

‘Well,’ Mary’s mother sighed, ‘I brought her into the world, and I’ve seen her out of it. My poor bairn’s dead. That’s the worst the world can do to
anybody, and it’s done it to me.’ She crossed to the window and, dry-eyed, stood gazing out on the still November day, at a pale sun glinting low in a blank expanse of near-white sky.
‘Nothing that happens to me can ever be as bad again if I live to be a hundred.’

Sally stood beside her. ‘Look at that. It looks as if we’ll get some snow before long,’ she choked. ‘The sky looks full of it. It’s cold enough, an’ all. She
was a grand little lass. I’ll miss her.’

Mary’s mother nodded, and threw the window open. ‘To let her soul away,’ she murmured.

At that instant something brushed against Sally’s cheek, and was gone.

‘I’ve checked the ward linen, Nurse, and we’re half a dozen drawsheets and pillowslips missing,’ Sister Harding told her. ‘Before you go off duty
I want you to take the book across to that laundry and ask the head laundress to look into it. She’ll have to send us replacements if they can’t be found. Otherwise, I’ll be
forced to speak to Matron. Tell her that, will you?’

‘Yes, Sister,’ Sally said, and thought how like Harding it was to give her a job like that the minute before she was supposed to be off duty. She raced across to the laundry block
and as she entered the ironing room in her search for the head laundress Mrs Burdett, iron in hand, glanced up. The eyes that looked into Sally’s were red rimmed, and full of alarm. Sally
hesitated, but not daring to pause or ask what the matter was she passed on, and then the look she got from Mrs Burdett put her in mind of somebody under torture.