Giant's Bread (30 page)

It shot through Nell's mind that Mrs Curtis had not had to endure any discipline, which robbed her pronouncement of some of its impressiveness. But she continued to stand there looking attentive and impressed.

‘I have a list of girls on the reserve,' continued Mrs Curtis. ‘I will add your name. Two days a week you will attend at the Out Patient ward at the Town Hospital, and thereby gain a little experience. They are short-handed there and are willing to accept our help. Then you and Miss –' she consulted a list – ‘I think Miss Cardner – yes, Miss Cardner – will go with the District Nurse on her rounds on Tuesdays and Fridays. You've got your uniform, of course. Then that is all right.'

Mary Cardner was a pleasant plump girl whose father was a retired butcher. She was very friendly to Nell, explained that the days were Wednesday and Saturday and not Tuesday and Friday – ‘But old Curtis always gets something wrong' – that the District Nurse was a dear, and never jumped on you and that Sister Margaret at the hospital was a holy terror.

On the following Wednesday, Nell did her first round with the District Nurse, a little bustling woman very much overworked. At the end of the day, she patted Nell kindly on the shoulder.

‘I'm glad to see you have a head on your shoulders, my dear. Really some of the girls who come seem to me half-witted – they do indeed. And such fine ladies – you wouldn't believe! Not by birth – I don't mean that. But half-educated girls who think nursing is all smoothing a pillow and feeding the patient with grapes. You'll know your way about in no time.'

Heartened by this, Nell presented herself at the Out Patient Department at the given time without too much trepidation. She was received by a tall gaunt Sister with a malevolent eye.

‘Another raw beginner,' she grumbled. ‘Mrs Curtis sent you, I suppose? I'm sick of that woman. Takes me more time and trouble teaching silly girls who think they know everything than it would to do everything myself.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Nell meekly.

‘Get a couple of certificates, attend a dozen lectures and think you know everything,' said Sister Margaret bitterly. ‘Here they come. Don't get in my way more than you can help.'

A typical batch of patients were assembled. A young boy with legs riddled with ulcers, a child with scalded legs from an overturned kettle, a girl with a needle in her finger, various sufferers with ‘bad ears', ‘bad legs', ‘bad arms'.

Sister Margaret said sharply to Nell:

‘Know how to syringe an ear? I thought not. Watch me.'

Nell watched.

‘You can do it next time,' said Sister Margaret. ‘Get the bandage off that boy's finger, and let him soak it in hot boracic and water till I'm ready for him.'

Nell felt nervous and clumsy. Sister Margaret was paralysing her. Almost immediately, it seemed, Sister was by her side.

‘We haven't got all day here to do things in,' she remarked. ‘There, leave it to me. You seem to be all thumbs. Soak the bandages off that kid's legs. Tepid water.'

Nell got a basin of tepid water and knelt down before the child, a mere mite of three. She was badly burnt, and the bandages had stuck to the tiny legs. Nell sponged and soaked very gently, but the baby screamed. It was a loud long-drawn yell of terror and agony, and it defeated Nell utterly.

She felt suddenly sick and faint. She couldn't do this work – she simply couldn't do it. She drew back, and as she did so she glanced up to find Sister Margaret watching her, a gleam of malicious pleasure showing in her eye.

‘I thought you couldn't stick it,' that eye said.

It rallied Nell as nothing else would have done. She bent her head, and setting her teeth, went on with her job, trying to avert her mind from the child's shrieks. It was done at last, and Nell stood up, white and trembling and feeling deathly sick.

Sister Margaret came along. She seemed disappointed.

‘Oh, you've done it,' she said. She spoke to the child's mother. ‘I'd be a bit more careful how you let the child get at the kettle in future, Mrs Somers,' she said.

Mrs Somers complained that you couldn't be everywhere at once.

Nell was ordered off to foment a poisoned finger. Next, she assisted Sister to syringe the ulcerated leg, and after that stood by while a young doctor extracted the needle from the girl's finger. As he probed and cut, the girl winced and shrank and he spoke to her sharply.

‘Keep quiet, can't you?'

Nell thought: ‘One never sees this side of things. One is only used to a doctor with a bedside manner. “
I'm afraid this will hurt a little. Be as still as you can
.”'

The young doctor proceeded to extract a couple of teeth, flinging them carelessly on the floor, then he treated a smashed hand that had just come in from an accident.

It was not, Nell reflected, that he was unskilful. It was the absence of manner that was so disturbing to one's preconceived ideas. Whatever he did, Sister Margaret accompanied him, tittering in a sycophantic manner at any jokes he was pleased to make. Of Nell he took no notice.

At last the hour was over. Nell was thankful. She said goodbye timidly to Sister Margaret.

‘Like it?' asked Sister with a demoniac grin.

‘I'm afraid I'm very stupid,' said Nell.

‘How can you be anything else?' said Sister Margaret. ‘A lot of amateurs like you Red Cross people. And thinking you know everything on earth. Well, perhaps, you'll be a little less clumsy next time!'

Such was Nell's encouraging début at the hospital.

It grew less terrible as time went on, however. Sister Margaret softened, and relaxed her attitude of fierce defensiveness. She even permitted herself to answer questions.

‘You're not so stuck up as most,' she allowed graciously.

Nell, in her turn, was impressed by the enormous amount of competent work Sister Margaret managed to put in in a very short time. And she understood a little her soreness on the subject of amateurs.

What struck Nell most was the enormous number of ‘bad legs' and their prototypes, most of them evidently old friends. She asked Sister Margaret timidly about them.

‘Nothing much to be done about it,' Sister Margaret replied. ‘Hereditary, most of them. Bad blood. You can't cure it.'

Another thing that impressed Nell was the uncomplaining heroism of the poor. They came and were treated, suffered great pain, and went off to walk several miles home without a thought.

She saw it too in their homes. She and Mary Cardner had taken over a certain amount of the District Nurse's round. They washed bedridden old women, tended ‘bad legs', occasionally washed and tended babies whose mothers were too ill to do anything. The cottages were small, the windows usually hermetically sealed, and the place littered with treasures dear to the hearts of the owners. The stuffiness was often unbearable.

The worst shock was about two weeks after beginning work, when they found a bedridden old man dead in his bed and had to lay him out. But for Mary Cardner's matter-of-fact cheerfulness, Nell felt she could not have done it.

The District Nurse praised them.

‘You're good girls. And you're being a real help.' They went home glowing with satisfaction. Never in her life had Nell so appreciated a hot bath and a lavish allowance of bath salts.

She had had two postcards from Vernon. Mere scrawls saying he was all right and everything was splendid. She wrote to him every day describing her adventures, trying to make them sound as amusing as possible. He wrote back:

‘Somewhere in France.

‘Darling Nell,

‘I'm all right. Feeling splendidly fit. It's all a great adventure, but I do long to see you. I do wish you wouldn't go into these beastly cottages and places and mess about with diseased people. I'm sure you'll catch something. Why you want to, I can't think. I'm sure it isn't necessary. Do give it up.

‘We think mostly about our food out here, and the Tommies think of nothing but their tea. They'll risk being blown to bits any time for a cup of hot tea. I have to censor their letters. One man always ends “Yours till Hell freezes,” so I'll say the same. ‘Yours Vernon.'

One morning Nell received a telephone call from Mrs Curtis.

‘There is a vacancy for a ward maid, Mrs Deyre. Afternoon duty. Be at the hospital at two-thirty.'

The Town Hall of Wiltsbury had been turned into a hospital. It was a big new building standing in the cathedral square and overshadowed by the tall spire of the cathedral. A handsome being in uniform with a game leg and medals received her kindly at the front entrance.

‘You've come to the wrong door, Missie. Staff through the quartermaster's stores. Here, the scout will show you the way.'

A diminutive scout conducted her down steps, through a kind of gloomy crypt where an elderly lady in Red Cross uniform sat surrounded with bales of hospital shirts, wearing several shawls and shivering a good deal, then along stoneflagged passages, and finally into a gloomy underground chamber where she was received by Miss Curtain, the chief of the ward maids, a tall thin lady with a face like a dreaming duchess and charming gentle manners.

Nell was instructed in her duties which were simple enough to understand. They entailed hard work, but no difficulty. A certain area of stone passages and steps to scrub. Then the nurses' tea to lay, wait on, and finally clear away. Then the ward maids had their own tea. Then the same routine for supper.

Nell soon got the hang of things. The salient points of the new life were, one, war with the kitchen, two, the difficulty of providing the sisters with the right kind of tea.

There was a long table where the VAD nurses sat, pouring down in a stream, frantically hungry, and always the food seemed to fail before the last three were seated. You then applied to the kitchen through a tube and got a biting rejoinder. The right amount of bread and butter had been sent up, three pieces for each. Somebody must have eaten more than their share. Loud disclaimers from the VADs. They chatted to each other amiably and freely, addressing each other by their surnames.

‘I didn't eat your slice of bread, Jones. I wouldn't do such a mean thing!' ‘They always send it up wrong.' ‘Look here, Catford's got to have something to eat. She's got an op. in half an hour.' ‘Hurry up, Bulgy (an affectionate nickname, this) we've got all those mackintoshes to scrub.'

Very different the behaviour at the sisters' table at the other side of the room. Conversation there went on genteelly in frosty whispers. Before each sister was a small brown pot of tea. It was Nell's business to know exactly how strong each sister liked it. It was never a question of how weak! To bring ‘washy' tea to a sister was to fall from grace for ever.

The whispers went on incessantly.

‘I said to her: “Naturally the surgical cases receive the first attention.”' ‘I only passed the remark, so to speak.' ‘Pushing herself forward. Always the same thing.' ‘Would you believe it, she forgot to hold the towel for the doctor's hands.' ‘I said to Doctor this morning …' ‘I passed the remark to Nurse …'

Again and again that one phrase recurred. ‘I passed the remark.' Nell grew to listen for it. When she approached the table, the whispers became lower and the sisters looked at her suspiciously. Their conversation was secretive and shrouded in dignity. With enormous formality, they offered each other tea.

‘Some of mine, Sister Westhaven? There's plenty in the pot.' ‘Would you oblige me with the sugar, Sister Carr?' ‘Pardon me.'

Nell had just begun to realize the hospital atmosphere, the feuds, the jealousies, the cabals, and the hundred and one undercurrents, when she was promoted to the ward, one of the nurses having gone sick.

She had a row of twelve beds to attend to, mostly surgical cases. Her companion was Gladys Potts, a small giggling creature, intelligent but lazy. The ward was under the charge of Sister Westhaven, a tall thin acid woman with a look of permanent disapproval. Nell's heart sank when she saw her, but later she congratulated herself. Sister Westhaven was far the pleasantest nurse in the hospital to work under.

There were five sisters in all. Sister Carr, round and good-tempered looking. The men liked her and she giggled and joked with them a good deal, and was then late over her dressings and hurried over them. She called the VADs ‘dear', and patted them affectionately but her temper was uncertain. She herself was so unpunctual that everything went wrong and the ‘dear' was blamed for it. She was maddening to work under.

Sister Barnes was impossible. Everyone said so. She ranted and scolded from morning to night. She hated VADs and let them know it. ‘I'll teach them to come here thinking they know everything,' was her constant declaration. Apart from her biting sarcasm, she was a good nurse, and some of the girls liked working under her in spite of her lashing tongue.

Sister Dunlop was a dug-out. She was kindly and placid, but thoroughly lazy. She drank a great deal of tea and did as little work as possible.

Sister Norris was theatre sister. She was competent at her job, rouged her lips and was cattish to her underlings.

Sister Westhaven was by far the best nurse in the hospital. She was enthusiastic over work and was a good judge of those under her. If they showed promise she was reasonably amiable to them. If she judged them fools they led a miserable life.

On the fourth day, she said to Nell:

‘I thought you weren't worth much at first, Nurse. But you've got a good lot of work in you.'

So much imbued by now was Nell by the hospital spirit that she went home in the seventh heaven.

Little by little she sank into the hospital rut. At first she had suffered a heartrending pang at the sight of the wounded. The first dressing of wounds at which she assisted was almost more than she could bear. Those who ‘Longed to nurse' usually brought a certain amount of emotionalism to the task. But they were soon purged of it. Blood, wounds, suffering were everyday matters.