Chapter Two #2
I stepped forward and took the box. She brushed her hands down the front of her uniform and walked past me in the direction of the desk.
I followed. The box was an uncomfortable size, but not heavy, so when she stopped to straighten a blanket or check a dressing, I also stopped.
When she continued, I continued. We approached the bed with the pale boy among pale sheets and I saw the doctor with his stethoscope, listening to the boy’s chest. I slowed, expecting the matron to slow.
I watched the doctor for a moment. He held the stethoscope with one hand on the ear tubes and the other on the diaphragm, moving it here and there over the boy’s chest, stopping and turning his head slightly, closing his eyes to listen.
He didn’t appear to care at all that the boy was German.
‘The box, Nurse Taylor.’
The matron had not slowed and was standing by the nurses’ desk, her brows raised once again.
They were perfectly suited to the gesture, dark and full over mahogany eyes, and I thought her forebears might have been Spanish, or from somewhere further south.
She had the kind of brows that might have met in the middle if left untended.
Over the next two years I would come to read them like shorthand for any number of bemusements, shared frustrations, differences of opinion.
‘In the storeroom,’ she said. ‘And be sure to unpack the contents and dispose of the box. I wouldn’t want anyone coming across it and thinking we had garnered supplies that were not intended for us.’
The storeroom was as I’d imagined, with a wall of shelving that held linen and various small boxes, 24 General – GW stamped clearly on their sides.
I opened one, then another, and found scant supplies of bandages, gauze and wool dressings.
Then I turned to the box I’d brought in.
It too was stamped with 24 General but there was no GW.
This box was full: bandages, gauze and wool dressings intended for Allied soldiers.
I transferred everything to the shelves of the German ward, then dismantled the box and added it to a pile destined for the incinerator.
I washed my hands and found a tin of hand cream on the shelf above the trough; it was almost empty.
I extracted a smear to apply to the worst of the cracks that plagued my fingers.
They annoyed me, these cracks, for the risk they posed rather than the pain.
I barely felt them anymore but I feared that place would get under my skin, literally.
I stood in the doorway of the storeroom and rubbed the cream into a deep fissure at the knuckle of my forefinger. I felt the sting and kept rubbing, but it didn’t last. I took a moment to complete my inventory of the ward, of the nurses’ station opposite.
Matron was at the desk, writing up notes, her broad back slightly slumped.
The desk was positioned for a view of the beds and she would have to look over her right shoulder to see the surgery or the storeroom.
The rest was more or less as I had guessed.
A locked cabinet beside the desk, some low shelves, a medicine trolley and another, packed and ready for a dressings round. There was no comfortable chair.
I went and stood in front of the desk and Matron Livingstone looked up from her notes. The vigour I’d seen when she’d arrived with the box was gone and I assumed the adrenalin of the theft had left her. She was tired. We were all so tired.
‘Have you been here all night?’ I asked.
She sat up straighter to deny her fatigue. ‘I have, as it happens. The sister who had charge of this ward has abandoned us for the drudgery of marriage. No other sister is available.’
‘Sister Clare?’
‘Sister Clare.’
‘She did seem unnaturally cheerful at my interview,’ I said.
‘Her usual demeanour – irritating beyond belief – but she was an excellent sister and her resignation is a blow. Until I can recruit someone suitable’ – she sighed – ‘and willing, you will continue to have the pleasure of my company and that of whichever sisters can be spared from other rosters at 24 General.’ She returned to her note making.
‘And what makes someone suitable?’
‘Right now? Unmarried, uninterested in marriage, unattractive.’ She looked up from her ledger and appraised me, the way a director might, eyes narrowing to see the possibilities.
‘Or older,’ she added, a compliment and insult rolled into one.
‘I’m told you are capable, Nurse Taylor. That you can think for yourself.’
‘Not always a compliment,’ I said.
‘Definitely not. But on this ward I haven’t the time to think for you.’
‘You won’t have to.’
‘We’ll see.’ Her gaze didn’t waver and I imagined the legions of debutantes who’d withered beneath it. I looked straight back.
‘Your file says you’re forty,’ she finally said.
‘Thirty-nine.’
Her left eyebrow formed a mocking arch. The only thing worse than insecurity, I thought, was revealing it. She was getting the better of me and I remember now that it felt a little exciting. It had been a long time since I’d sparred with anyone. I needed to lift my game.
‘Parents?’ she asked.
‘Long gone.’
‘Siblings?’
‘A brother.’
‘Does he have a name?’
‘Bill.’
‘Bill,’ she repeated, and the sound of his name made my heart lurch. ‘And where is Bill?’
I wanted to say England. I was still angry with him for signing up. ‘Loos, I think, but his last letter was censored, so I don’t really know.’
She nodded and changed the subject. ‘Never married?’
‘Not that I can recall.’
She looked at me for longer than was polite, exactly like a director, I decided, and I knew in that moment she was removing my nurse’s cap and dressing me in something fashionable, forming an opinion.
I was used to the scrutiny and if I’d thought it would serve me I might have made a gesture – a hand on my neck, a finger casually playing with a loose curl of hair.
My neck was long, and at thirty-nine, still lovely.
When I touch it now it feels like crepe.
I made no gesture, it would not have served me.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked.
‘Why are any of us?’
She continued scrutinising.
‘You’re older than most.’
‘And not as wealthy,’ I added.
‘But you are independent.’
‘I’ve made my own way.’
‘With your brother, Bill, I’m assuming. Is he older or younger?’
‘Younger.’
She nodded. ‘You strike me as an opportunist rather than a do-gooder.’
‘Should I be offended?’
Her eyes narrowed as she weighed up her answer. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You should not. Do-gooders inevitably fall short of their own expectations, and mine. But opportunists can lose interest.’
It was true. I had lost interest countless times and had come to see my life as a series of curtains falling, on and off the stage. Usually, I’d welcomed it.
‘You’ve lost someone,’ Matron said.
I did not expect it and I thought of Helen. It had been years but I still thought of Helen with longing and guilt.
Stay with me, she’d said.
For now, I’d said.
Forever.
That’s a long time.
Not always, just say you want to.
I did want to, but I didn’t say. Only now I understand the elasticity of loss. How easily the grief of it can stretch across time, thinning, but always there.
‘I haven’t lost anyone,’ I said to Matron Livingstone.
Her head tilted as she noted the lie. ‘What, then?’
‘Work dried up and I had nothing better to do.’
‘And what line of work were you in?’
‘I’m an actress. Was.’
The eyebrows again, and a small smile as various assumptions fell into place.
My introduction to the ward was brief.
‘It’s like any other ward,’ Matron Livingstone said. ‘But less so.’
I waited, sensing the deliberate pause.
‘There are fewer staff, fewer supplies and less time.’
They were lines being recited, and I recalled the rumour that VADs went through the German ward like diarrhoea through soldiers on a troopship.
‘There is less polish on the boards, less wool in the blankets and less heat in the food. We are the furthest hut of a large hospital and the kitchens are a quarter of a mile away.’
Another pause and some brow movement. The performance was nearing its climax.
‘And there is less scrutiny.’
It was perfectly delivered.
‘Scrutiny?’ I said, intuiting my line.
‘Scrutiny, Nurse Taylor.’ She motioned the length of the ward with a flourish of her hand. ‘They matter less, so you matter less. There are pros, but mostly cons.’
I had the urge to applaud. Instead, I scanned the ward. Unlike other wards, there was no evidence that anyone knew the men were there – no Red Cross plaques above the beds, no knitted rugs, no handmade cards or children’s drawings. And no one sat by a bedside reading or drafting letters.
‘Let’s start in the storeroom, shall we?’
We stood just inside the doorway.
‘Much like any storeroom,’ she said. ‘Clean on this side, dirty on that. I’m sure you’ll work the rest out.’
‘And the dirty?’ I looked at the overflowing laundry bag and the metal bins of waste. ‘Do we have orderlies to deal with all that?’
‘We do. But as with everything…’
‘We matter less.’
‘You are catching on, nurse. Excellent.’
The rest was done as part of the morning round, with Matron pushing the medicine trolley, dispensing and describing.
‘Amputee, foot.
‘Amputee, above knee.
‘Gastric, severe dehydration.
‘Sepsis, I doubt he’ll live.’
I stopped. The man with sepsis was awake and watching.
‘Don’t fret,’ she said, ‘he doesn’t understand.’
But, of course, he did. His fevered eyes were wide and desperate. We moved on.
‘Lung, punctured.
‘Abdomen. Quite a mess.’
We came to one of the beds with a frame, the patient’s leg in a Thomas splint.
‘Femur. Head. Also shoulder and arm.’
We came to the other frame.
‘Femur times two.’
We stopped at a bed with a man who had all his limbs and no bandages.
‘Nothing wrong with this one, but he neither eats nor drinks when left in the prisoners’ camp.’
The patient was sitting up, staring ahead with no expression at all. It was just as chilling on the face of a German as it was on the face of a Tommy.