Chapter 2
Sometimes I looked back at when I’d started nursing, before the war began, and marvelled at how I ever thought it was difficult, or tiring, or that shifts were busy when we had five beds on each ward and they were all full. Because it was a different kettle of fish now and no mistake.
I always felt tense when I was getting ready to start a night shift. I could feel my jaw clenching and my shoulders tightening, as I prepared myself for what the evening would bring. Today I felt even worse. I was unsettled by bumping into Jackson and I felt a bit off kilter.
Nelly and I worked on different wards, but I was hoping to see her before our shifts began, after I’d finished sorting out the blankets.
Sure enough she was in the cloakroom when I had delivered all the bedclothes to the right wards and had gone in search of a clean apron before we started work properly. She was looking much livelier than she had earlier.
‘You look better,’ I said.
‘Amazing what forty winks can do for a girl,’ she said. She opened her locker and pulled out a mirrored compact, checking her reflection.
‘Is Dr Barnet working tonight?’ I teased, as she pinched her cheeks to make them glow.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ She shut her compact with a snap and gave me a wink.
‘Then you won’t be interested in the dance at the Pig and Whistle,’ I said, turning away from her. ‘Never mind, I’ll find someone else to go with.’
Nelly shot out her arm to stop me leaving. ‘You wait a minute, Elsie Watson. What’s this about a dance?’
‘There’s an advert on the noticeboard in the nurses’ accommodation,’ I said. ‘I saw it when I was looking for blankets.’
‘You’re stealing blankets from your fellow nurses now are you?’ Nelly shook her head sadly. ‘Sure that’s terrible.’
I nudged her, laughing. ‘Do you want to hear about the dance, or not?’
‘I do.’
‘It’s on Friday week.’
Nelly’s eyes gleamed. ‘We’re off.’
I nodded with enthusiasm. ‘Exactly. It’s downstairs at the Pig and Whistle – you know, the big pub on the main road? It’s got a huge cellar apparently and they’ve done it all up for dances. There’s going to be a band playing.’
Nelly’s eyes lit up. ‘And will there be soldiers?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Will we go?’
‘We’ll have to double-check our shifts – you know how things can change – but it could be fun.’
Nelly clutched my arm dramatically. ‘I can’t even remember what fun is.’
‘Then we will definitely go.’
I tied my apron round my waist and checked my own reflection in the spotted mirror on the wall.
My cap was wonky so I straightened it. I loved that Nelly brought out the fun in me.
I’d always been rather quiet when I was young.
And losing my mother when I had barely left school made me grow up fast. Billy and I learned to look after ourselves when she was poorly, and there wasn’t a lot of time left for nights out when you had to do the cooking and cleaning and the laundry.
I’d met Nelly when we lived in the nurses’ accommodation when we were training.
Billy had stayed in our house, fixing cars in a garage nearby. He had loved engines, my Billy.
When Nelly and I qualified and the war began, there were so many new nurses jostling for spaces in the hospital digs, it made sense for us to move back to our old family home.
And heaven knows I’d been glad of her company when I got the news that Billy had been killed.
Living with Nelly had shown me that there was more to life than housework and worrying about money.
She always said I’d rediscovered my youth, even though I was only twenty-one.
‘I saw Jackson again on the way to work,’ I told her.
She made a face. ‘I don’t like him, Elsie.’
‘I don’t like him much either,’ I admitted.
I pinned my watch – a present from Billy – on to my apron and checked the time.
Then, making the most of the couple of minutes before the shift began, I sat down on one of the battered armchairs in the staffroom, and sighed.
‘He said he saw Billy as he was leaving, and he asked him to look after me.’
‘Well that’s not true,’ Nelly said immediately. ‘Billy knew you could look after yourself.’
I smiled, but it was a bit of a sad smile. ‘He did.’
‘And if he’d wanted someone to look after you, he’d have asked me.’
This time my smile was bigger. ‘That is very true.’ Billy had adored Nelly. He always said she was a “right card”. ‘If there’s anyone you want in your corner,’ he’d said to me more than once, ‘it’s Nelly Malone.’
‘Well, there you are.’
I nodded. ‘It just made me feel a bit prickly, you know? Him having spoken to Billy when he left.’
‘Because he spoke to Billy more recently than you did?’
‘That’s it.’
Nelly came over to where I sat and gave me a hug.
I had never been much of a hugger before I met her either.
But she was so affectionate and open, that I’d soon had to learn to love her impromptu expressions of friendship.
‘Your Billy knew how much you loved him,’ she said.
‘And you know that he thought the world of you too. Nothing Jackson can say can change that.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I just wish I’d had the chance to tell him, that’s all.’
‘I know.’ Nelly looked thoughtful. ‘I was thinking that last night. There was this man brought in, and he was bleeding so badly, and he knew he was going to die – you know how some people just know? And he was saying “tell Susie I love her” over and over.’
I found myself blinking away tears, even though we dealt with death every day. ‘Did you?’ I asked. ‘Did you tell Susie?’
‘Ach, no. How could I? I didn’t even know his name, let alone who Susie was,’ Nelly said. ‘He was brought in wearing his pyjamas.’
I felt desperately sad for the man who’d died without telling Susie what he wanted her to know. Was she his wife? I wondered. His daughter? Maybe even a secret lover. But she’d never know that this man had been thinking of her in his final moments.
‘This war,’ I said, my voice slightly croaky. ‘This awful war.’
‘Ladies,’ a voice said. ‘Should you be sitting in here, or should you be on the wards?’
We both looked round to see the matron from Nelly’s ward at the door. She sounded cross but she was smiling.
‘Just going,’ I said.
‘Nurse, there are tin hats on every ward now,’ Matron said. ‘Make sure everyone puts them on when the siren goes.’
I groaned. ‘Really?’
‘Really. We’ve got more sandbags being delivered and the operating theatre downstairs is up and running now, but we can’t be too careful.’
I nodded and Nelly did too.
‘Go on then,’ Matron said. ‘Off to the wards please, Nurse Malone and Nurse Watson.’
*
I worked on a women’s ward. It was meant to be a surgical ward, but all bets were off now we were a casualty clearing station and part of the Emergency Medical Service.
We were already double the capacity we’d been before the war, and they’d put up huts in the grounds too that were going to be used as more wards.
The children’s ward was now where the dining room had once been, and the staff canteen, which had been in the basement was – as Matron had said – now the operating theatre.
It had taken some getting used to, and things were still changing.
I kept thinking that these nightly raids couldn’t last much longer, but the Luftwaffe didn’t seem like they were giving up.
And I was fairly sure the powers that be wouldn’t have made so many changes to the hospital if they were expecting the bombs to stop.
That thought made me shiver every time something new was built, or more alterations were made.
‘This war has made them do more for this hospital in ten months than they’d done in the previous ten years,’ Matron was fond of remarking, pointing out the new equipment we had, and the extra staff.
Though the fancy new bits and pieces weren’t much use when the electricity went out in a raid and we had to sterilise equipment in a saucepan of water heated on a Primus stove.
It was dark outside already and the windows were covered. I cast an experienced eye around the ward. We had three empty beds, which was unusual.
‘Calm before the storm,’ said another nurse, Phyllis, coming to stand by my shoulder.
And she was right. It wasn’t long before the siren was wailing and we knew our steady evening routine, giving the patients their medication and settling them down for the night, would soon come to an end.
We didn’t move the patients when the siren went.
We didn’t have enough room to transfer them all downstairs to the basement – and even if we had, some of them were so poorly they wouldn’t have lasted the trip.
Anyone who was able went to the hospital shelter, but our patients were normally too weak.
So we just kept going. When the siren went we pushed the beds into the centre of the room, away from the windows even though they were boarded up, just to be on the safe side.
‘Hats please, nurses,’ Matron called, handing out tin helmets just like the ones the ARP wardens wore. Feeling faintly ridiculous, I strapped mine on, making a face at Phyllis as I did so. She grinned back, rapping her knuckles on the top of her head.
The planes were overhead now, and I could sense everyone holding their breath, while we pretended to be normal. Phyllis and I were giving one of our patients a bed bath, and changing her sheets, so we carried on our jovial conversation.
‘I reckon a couple more days and you’ll be back home, Mrs Marsden,’ Phyllis said, raising her voice over the sound of the anti-aircraft guns. ‘What do you reckon, Nurse Watson?’
I reckoned poor Mrs Marsden wasn’t actually a missus, for one thing. She’d got a nasty infection from a backstreet abortion and the ring she wore on her left hand had gone green underneath. But that was none of my business, so I smiled at Phyllis and then at Mrs Marsden.