The Bad Penny (21 page)

On the ward, Sister came hurrying out to meet them as soon as they went through the double doors. The nurse explained who Patty was and Sister looked at her for a long moment, her expression a mixture of doubt and sorrow. ‘I don’t think it will hurt her to see you for a moment, dear,’ she said at last. ‘She was asking for Patty – that’s you, isn’t it? – when she was first brought in. But not your friend, she can wait in the corridor. Nurse Mitcham, you take the child down to Nurse Roberts’s bed, but she must not stay for long, and if Nurse Roberts shows any signs of distress you’d best bring her away at once.’

‘Yes, Sister,’ Nurse Mitcham said. She took Patty’s arm and led her along the ward, saying in a low tone: ‘She’s at the far end, queen, on the left-hand side. There’s screens round the bed to try to keep the noise to a minimum, but most of the women in here are too sick themselves to chatter much.’

They reached the screens and slipped inside them, and then Patty clutched her companion’s arm and gasped with shock. Selina was lying almost flat on the bed, with various tubes and bottles attached to her person. But what horrified Patty most of all was the state of her. Her body seemed to be a mass of bandages and her face was black and blue; her nose looked broken and two of her front teeth were missing. Her eyelids were puffed and blackened, though she seemed to be asleep, and her breathing was laboured.

Patty turned to her companion. ‘I – I thought she had the ’flu,’ she muttered. ‘But this isn’t like any ’flu I’ve ever seen. Oh, Nurse, what on earth’s happened to her?’

‘It were on Victory Night,’ the nurse began, but at the sound of their voices the figure on the bed moved slightly and gave a deep, tearing cough. Patty flew to the bedside and took one of Selina’s hands gently in both her own. She could see the gleam of Selina’s eyes beneath the puffy lids and noticed blood seeping from the corner of her mouth. Terrified, but determined not to show it, she spoke gently. ‘It’s me, Patty. Don’t try and talk, Selina, because it must hurt even to speak. I came to ask if there was anything you wanted but I’m sure Sister will tell me what you need. I’m going to stay with you for a little, Sister said I might, so just you go off to sleep again, if you can.’

There was a short pause and then Selina spoke, her voice no more than a harsh whisper. ‘Victory Night,’ she said. ‘I was minding my own business … coming back to the hospital… down near the docks … sailors … attacked me …’

‘Oh, Selina, how dreadful to hurt you so,’ Patty cried, gently stroking her friend’s bruised and battered fingers. ‘But don’t try to talk, you mustn’t talk, it will only tire you.’

‘Must tell you … warn you …’ Selina mumbled. ‘I’m not pretty, never have been, but you’re pretty. Men … wicked … wild animals …’

‘Yes, yes, I can see what they’ve done to you,’ Patty said distressfully. Tears formed in her eyes and began to trickle slowly down her cheeks. ‘They must have been mad, as well as wicked, to attack you. Oh I wish I could do something to help you!’

‘You can. Be very, very careful. Don’t trust any men,’ Selina said. She spoke clearly now, almost forcefully, and the hand in Patty’s stirred a little. There was a weak pressure from her fingers, the bruised and battered mouth seemed to try to smile and then Selina said, with a sort of desperate satisfaction: ‘I fought them. I fought like a tiger, Patty, but it weren’t no good. Be careful, little Patty.’

‘I will, I will,’ Patty promised her, her own voice choked with tears. ‘But you’ll get better, Selina, you’ll be better soon, then we can get the scuffers to search for the men who did this.’

Selina sighed. ‘Thirsty,’ she said vaguely. ‘So thirsty.’

Nurse Mitcham picked up a glass of barley water which was standing on the bedside locker and began to prop the patient up on her arm to offer her the glass. Selina’s head came forward as though to drink but suddenly Nurse Mitcham turned her head slightly and said in an authoritative voice: ‘Go back to your friend, queen. I’ll – I’ll just make Selina comfortable and then I’ll follow you.’

Patty made her way out of the ward and back into the corridor, so shocked and shaken by what she had seen that she could scarcely think straight. She told Laura a little of what had happened whilst they waited for the nurse to join them, but when she emerged from the ward she went straight past the girls and into Sister’s small office. After about five minutes the two of them emerged, the nurse to go off on some errand of her own whilst Sister came towards Patty and Laura. ‘My dear, I’m afraid your friend has died,’ she said gently. ‘It’s a merciful release since she had dreadful internal injuries and could not have survived as anything but a helpless invalid. I’m so sorry to be the bearer of such sad tidings, but I thought you would rather hear now than later.’

That night, Patty could not sleep. She lay in her bed and thought about Selina. A kinder, more generous girl had never lived, she told herself, so why should she die such a horrible – and protracted – death? She had been attacked last Friday but had not died until today, Monday. It seemed a cruel thing that she should have suffered for so long when, according to Sister, she had been far too badly injured to live. Why had the doctors not given Selina something which would have ensured her sleep until the end came? For Patty thought she would never forget that harsh breathing, the moan Selina had given only a few minutes before her death.

When they had got back to Durrant House, she had told Miss Briggs what had happened in the fewest words she could find and then asked permission to go to her dormitory. Miss Briggs had looked at her and what she saw in Patty’s face must have affected her for she had actually taken Patty’s hand and given it an encouraging squeeze before saying that she thought that a bad idea. ‘Your grief is understandable and must be given full rein, but it does not do to shut oneself away from the world and wallow in misery,’ she had said, and though her voice had been brisk, there was more kindness behind the words than Patty had ever heard from her lips before. ‘Helping Cook to prepare and serve the evening meal will take your mind off what has happened, at least for a little. I don’t mean to be hard on you, Patty, for I know how fond you were of your friend, but I promise you that the less you dwell on what has happened, the better it will be for you in the long run. You want to be able to remember Selina with affection and pleasure, not as a sort of nightmare which haunts you. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. My fiancé was killed at Gallipoli in 1915. I – I let myself dwell on what had happened to him and how he had died and now, when I try to see his face in my mind’s eye … but anyway, my dear, I don’t want you to go down that path.’

Lying in the dark and staring towards the lighter square of the window, Patty told herself that one should never judge people until one knew their full history. If she had known that Miss Briggs had lost her fiancé and was haunted by bitter memories, it would have been far easier to understand her and to make allowances for the bad temper and spite which the teacher had frequently displayed. She’s been much nicer lately, too, Patty told herself. I suppose it’s because she has taken her own advice and has stopped thinking about her fiancé whilst running the orphanage and nursing the sick. Why, this evening, I almost liked her – I
did
like her! And in future, I’ll try to be cooperative and do as she says without grumbling or making a fuss. And I’ll remember Selina as she was on our day out, when the sun shone and the sky was blue and we ate our picnic on the banks of the stream and talked about what we would do when we were both truly grown up.

In the opposite bed, Laura stirred and mumbled something beneath her breath and Patty, hunching the covers up to her ears, reminded herself that she really must get to sleep or she would be no use to anyone in the morning. And useful I must be, if I’m to follow Selina’s example and become a nurse, she told herself. It would be hard to cast from her mind the dreadful picture of Selina as she had seen her last, but she realised that it must be done. Selina’s advice, however, must not be forgotten. Selina had said that men were animals, that not one but several of them had attacked her. Patty still wanted to find out who had caused her friend’s death, still wanted revenge, but she knew in her heart that such men were probably visiting sailors and would never be punished for what they had done. But I know now that underneath, all men are beasts, Patty told herself as she felt the first waves of sleep approaching. I’ll never trust a man, never, never, never … and Patty slept at last.

It was not until the day after Selina’s funeral that Patty remembered glancing into the children’s ward on her way to visit her friend. Several times she had been vaguely aware that something had happened which was important to her, but because of her misery over Selina’s death she had been unable to concentrate, to think what it was she had seen. But quite suddenly, as she and Laura hurried along Dingle Lane on their way to the shops, a mental picture of the children’s ward popped into her mind and she knew at once what had caught her eye. So stunning was it that she stopped in her tracks, a hand flying to her mouth, and Laura, staring at her, said worriedly: ‘What’s up, queen? What have we forgot? Oh drat, don’t say you didn’t pick up the purse!’

‘No, it isn’t that,’ Patty exclaimed. Before her eyes, the picture of the children’s ward still danced. Ten or twelve cots and an equal number of small beds – and each of the cots bore a scarlet blanket! It had never occurred to Patty before, but now it struck her it was possible that her mother had had some connection with the hospital – why, she might even have worked there. Red blankets were not something one often saw, and if her mother had been a nurse, then she would have had access to such things. What was more, it would explain Patty’s own deeply rooted conviction that she should join the nursing profession as soon as it was possible for her to do so. She knew Selina’s own attitude had been partly responsible, but that was just coincidence. Surely her mother must have been a nurse?

‘Patty?’ Laura’s voice was impatient. ‘What on earth’s gorrin to you, queen? You’re standing there like a perishin’ statue!
Have
you forgot the purse?’

‘No, I’ve got the purse all right,’ Patty said. ‘And it isn’t what I’ve forgotten so much as what I’ve remembered.’ And, as briefly as she could, she told Laura what she had seen in the children’s ward and the significance of the red blankets.

‘But if your mam were a nurse, surely the other nurses would have noticed if she were expecting a baby, wouldn’t they?’ Laura asked, as they continued towards the shops. ‘You can tell when a woman’s having a baby; remember Mrs Flagg?’

Mrs Flagg was Laura’s mother’s neighbour. She had eleven children and seemed, to the girls, to be constantly pregnant.

‘I know what you mean,’ Patty admitted. ‘But girls can be really sly when they’re expecting babies; Selina told me about one of the nurses who got herself into trouble. She had pains and they thought it was her appendix, so they shovelled her into a bed and the next thing they knew, pop! She’d had a dear little baby. Selina was cross because they kicked her out – the nurse who had the baby, I mean – but she went home to her mam and left the baby with her and then joined up to a different hospital and no one the wiser. So I dare say, if my mam had had her baby somewhere less public, she could have got away with it.’

Both girls slowed as they turned into Minshull’s butcher’s shop. Cook had told them to try the Park Road shops before going further afield since she wanted bones to make stock, and large marrow bones were a commodity which could probably be purchased locally more easily than in the city. She also wanted a large slab cake which could be softened with custard to make an acceptable pudding for the invalids. Since Mrs Clarice Parry, who owned the confectioner’s shop next door to the butcher’s, reduced her prices when such slab cakes began to go a bit stale, there was little point in the girls going elsewhere.

There was a queue in the butcher’s and the girls joined the end of it, hoping that Mr Hughes would still have some bones left by the time they reached the counter. ‘I dare say you’re right about your mam being a nurse and getting a blanket from the hospital,’ Laura remarked quietly as the line of women edged forward. ‘Tell you what, Patty, you want to get to know some of the older nurses on the children’s ward. I’ve always thought your mam must have had very blonde hair, like yours, because I don’t reckon your mam or dad could have been dark-haired, do you? Then, when you know them – the older nurses I mean – you can ask them if they knew a girl wi’ hair your colour about a dozen years ago. You never know, they might remember and be able to tell you something useful.’

‘It’s a grand idea, but I won’t be able to do it until I’m a nurse myself,’ Patty pointed out. ‘Nurses are always so busy – haven’t you noticed, Laura? Selina was always breathless when she came off the ward and though they aren’t allowed to run in the hospital corridors – unless someone haemorrhages, that is – they all seem to develop a sort of gliding walk which is nearly as fast as running. But when I start my training I’ll do as you suggest, I reckon.’

Later that day, as she peeled a mound of potatoes for Cook, Patty thought regretfully that it was a pity she did not have some good reason for going into hospital and talking to the nurses. I’m a child still, though I feel very old since Selina’s death, she reminded herself. If I were to catch this ’flu I might end up on the children’s ward and be able to ask all the questions I want. But of course, I might die and I don’t want to do that, not before I’ve had any sort of a life of my own. The trouble is, in half a dozen years, when I can go in as a probationer, most of the older nurses will either have forgotten what happened so long ago, or will have left. I wonder …