A Wartime Nurse (36 page)
Authors: Maggie Hope
Tags: #Nurses, #World War; 1939-1945, #Sagas, #War & Military, #Fiction
Theda leaned against the school wall, staring at her feet as she waited for Richard’s class to come out. A light drizzle had begun to fall and she turned up the collar of her uniform coat and pulled her hat more firmly on to her head. Today she had been so determined to get here on time that she had actually arrived ten minutes early.
A few more mothers were arriving now, some pushing prams or pushchairs. One or two spoke to her. She had become quite well-known in the few months she had been in Durham. Some of the babies in the prams she had delivered herself and these she had to admire and make favourable comments on.
‘How well he’s looking!’ Or: ‘Goodness, hasn’t she grown?’ she said when the mothers said hello and looked expectantly at her. It was when she lifted her head to reply to one such greeting that she noticed Mrs Carter by the gate, her shopping basket hooked over one arm.
Of course she should ignore the woman, Theda was well aware of that, but it had been a frustrating sort of day for her.
First of all, the letter she had been expecting concerning her application to become a Health Visitor had not turned up, then a mother had suffered unexpected complications so that Theda had had to call out the doctor to her in a hurry and her patient had been rushed into hospital for the delivery. Thankfully it had turned out all right in the end, but there had been a worrying hour or two first and not even the satisfactory lift of delivering the child herself. She looked at Mrs Carter and a surge of anger rose in her. On impulse Theda walked over to her, though she knew it was a mistake as she did it.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Carter,’ she said, and even in her own ears she sounded aggressive.
The woman’s eyebrows soared. Evidently she thought Theda did not know her well enough to greet her so familiarly. She murmured something non-committal in reply and stared into the middle distance.
‘I understand you have been saying some rather unkind things about my son,’ Theda went on, twin spots of colour brightening her cheeks.
‘I have? You must have been misinformed. Why should I say anything about your son?’
‘You called him a bastard.’
There was a murmur of shocked disapproval from the mothers near enough to hear.
‘Really! I did nothing of the kind. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Mrs Carter was disdainful. The other women were showing a great deal of interest now but Theda was at the stage where she didn’t care.
‘Do I not indeed? Richard tells me your Billy told him you did. In fact, they had a fight about it. Now I’m telling you: if you say anything else about me or my son, I’ll have you up for slander!’
‘Hoity-toity! Who do you think you are, threatening me? Coming out of nowhere with a bairn in tow . . . you’re no better than you should be—’
‘You mind what I said. Here are the children now. If you say anything before them, I’ll have the law on you.’
Theda moved away. Battle honours to her, she thought. She had seen Miss Robinson come around the far corner of the building followed by the class walking decorously in twos. Right at the back came Richard, on his own. As he walked he was pulling off his coat and then he held it over his head to protect himself from the rain.
‘Richard Wearmouth!’ said Miss Robinson, stopping the column. ‘Put your coat on at once. What do you think you are doing? Your shirt and trousers will get wet.’
‘But my head is getting wet now, Miss Robinson,’ he pointed out.
‘Put your coat on,’ she ordered. ‘And don’t answer me back. How many times do I have to tell you? You should have remembered to bring your cap in any case.’ She glared at him and then turned to Theda and glared at her, as though she had behaved very naughtily indeed in having such an awkward child, Theda thought, resisting the urge to giggle. Her brief spell of anger had evaporated.
The class moved on and stopped by the gate, waiting in silence to be dismissed. The mothers waited patiently in the rain.
‘Class dismiss,’ said Miss Robinson at last, and the children scampered out, Richard’s face beaming as he saw his mother was there and he was not going to have to wait for her, all alone except for Miss Robinson.
Theda bent over him and helped him rebutton his coat. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Billy Carter’s mother grab him by the arm and march him off down the street, almost running him off his feet with the pace she was keeping. Theda’s own mood was much lighter now, her outburst had done her good.
‘Mam, can we go down by the river and have a picnic?’
‘Richard, it’s raining. We can’t go for a picnic in the rain.’
‘Why not, Mam? I like picnics in the rain.’
‘A minute ago you didn’t want to get your head wet,’ she pointed out.
‘But it’s wet now, so it’s too late. We can sit in that shelter anyway, the one by the cricket field, you know. It’s got a roof,’ he insisted.
Theda wavered. It wasn’t too cold after all and she didn’t often have the time to take him anywhere. So they bought pasties from the butcher on the parade of small shops halfway down New Elvet bank and two bottles of lemonade from the newsagents’, and sat in the shelter and ate their pasties and drank the lemonade and watched the River Wear flowing past, swift and peaty.
A water vole slipped along the bank and plopped into the water and a family party of ducks sailed along serenely. Richard threw them bits of pastry and the mother duck led her ducklings over and they quacked excitedly as they gobbled them up, anxious not to miss any. The university rowing crew went past, practising despite the rain, the coach riding his bike along the towpath and calling the stroke. Richard was fascinated.
He watched them raptly, not speaking, forgetting his lemonade. But the light was already beginning to fall and a cool wind was blowing on the water, rippling the surface. I’m crazy, thought Theda, shivering. We’ll have to go home. I’ll put him in a hot bath straight away. Richard was tough, never seemed to suffer from coughs and colds – or not very often. But there was no sense in taking chances.
‘Can we have a baby, Mam?’
The question took her by surprise. For a minute she could only stare at him as he turned away from the river. The rowing crew had disappeared round the bend. It was very quiet, even the birds seemed to have gone to roost early.
Theda took him on her lap and hugged him as she gathered her thoughts. ‘Has one of your friends got a new baby brother or sister?’ she temporised.
‘Gary Nichols has. And he says his dad said you brought it.’
Theda remembered the Nicholses, of course, the baby boy was about two weeks old. She sighed. ‘No, we can’t have a baby, Richard.’
He clambered down and they began walking back up the lane to the main road. Waiting to cross it, he said, ‘It’s not fair.’ But he didn’t ask any more questions though she was dreading having to explain why a baby brother wasn’t going to materialise and that once again it had something to do with his lack of a father.
Later, as she made toasted Marmite fingers for his supper and Richard was upstairs in the bath, the door bell rang. Her heart sank. She really didn’t want to have to go out again tonight and it would mean getting Sheila in again to look after Richard and Theda hadn’t even eaten yet. She went out into the hall and saw a dark shape through the ornamental glass of the front door, a man’s shape. Best put on the chain, she thought, just in case.
It was a postman. Surprised, Theda took off the chain and opened the door wide and he handed her a telegram.
‘Any reply?’
She hadn’t even read it yet, just stared at the yellow envelope in her hand. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. But before she could open it the telephone rang and she started, pulse racing.
What a fool she was, she told herself, and went to pick up the receiver. Maybe one of her patients was early. Everything always happened at once. That was one thing about midwifery: life was full of surprises.
‘Theda?’
It took a second or two for the voice to register and she realised it was her mother. But why should she ring? Bea hated the telephone.
‘Theda?’
‘Hello, Mam? Is that you?’ Something in her mother’s voice alerted her, filled her with a nameless fear. ‘What is it? Mother?’
‘Where have you been, Theda? I’ve been trying to ring you for the last hour. I tried and tried, and managed to ring Joss and he tried to get you an’ all. Eeh, Theda, where’ve you been? Did you get the telegram?’
Theda looked down at the telegram still unopened in her hand. ‘I’ve got it, Mam, I haven’t read it yet. Mam,
what’s
the
matter
?’ She was practically shouting down the phone now, the fear growing in her, choking her. Dear God, was it Da? Had he been hurt in the pit?
what’s
the
matter
?’ She was practically shouting down the phone now, the fear growing in her, choking her. Dear God, was it Da? Had he been hurt in the pit?
She could hear her mother begin to sob, great breaths being drawn in and whistling over the line. Tearing open the telegram, Theda had trouble focussing on the words and then she had trouble taking in the sense of them.
‘Regret to tell you Charles had accident. Come home.’ It was signed simply ‘Mother’.
‘Mam, what happened? Is Chuck all right?’ But she knew he couldn’t be, not when Bea called him by his given name.
‘An accident. At the pit. My bonnie lad . . . oh, my bonnie lad.’ Bea began to moan, a deep terrible sound. ‘An’ him just made under-manager an’ all. Eeh, we were that proud, your da and me.’
‘Mam?’
‘He’s gone, pet.’
‘I’ll come home, Mam. First thing in the morning.’
‘Yes, that’s right, pet. First thing in the morning.’ Bea repeated the words but it was clear to Theda, even over the phone, that she hardly knew what it was she was saying.
‘Mother, sit down, take it easy. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You’re not on your own, are you?’
‘Nay, lass, of course I’m not. I’m at Norma’s. We’re both at Norma’s. Of course we are, her family an’ all. Poor lass is due next month. I’m coping fine, it was just with not being able to get in touch with you. No, I’m all right now, we’re bearing up. We have to, for Norma’s sake. She’s having a lie down at the minute. I’ll go now. See you in the morning, pet.’
The telephone went dead and Theda put it back on the rest.
‘I’ll have to go, missus. There’s no reply, I take it?’ She had forgotten all about the postman, still patiently standing at the door.
‘No, no reply.’
Theda closed the door and went upstairs. Richard was already out of the bath and dripping water all over the bathroom linoleum but she hardly noticed, just wrapped him in a towel and carried him out to his bedroom and sat on the bed drying him. She put on his pyjamas and Mickey Mouse dressing gown and took him downstairs to sit him in front of a plate of Marmite toast.
He was quiet, drooping sleepily over it. She had to remind him twice to eat a little more. She warmed milk and made him a mug of cocoa and he only drank half of it before falling forward sound asleep. She only just caught him before he landed on the floor. Yet all the time she was doing it in a kind of shocked limbo, as though it was someone else dictating her actions.
Later, when he was tucked up in bed, she made her plans to get away, ringing up her supervisor and arranging to take compassionate leave, ringing Sheila to explain where she was going and that she wouldn’t need her childminding services for a few days.
‘By, I’m sorry,’ said Sheila. ‘What happened, do you know?’ Theda had to admit that she didn’t, she had just taken it for granted that Chuck had been killed in the pit. A fall of stone? A waggon gone amain, out of control? There were so many accidents that could happen in a mine.
‘It doesn’t matter how it happened in the end,’ she said.
‘No, of course not.’ Sheila was silent for a moment.
‘Well, look here, do you think it would be better if I kept Richard with me? I could you know, he’s no trouble.’
‘Good of you, Sheila. But no, I’ll take him. I might be away for a few days.’
It was nine o’clock by the time Theda put down the phone. She went upstairs and packed a case for herself and Richard. She would go on the first bus, she decided. That would be the Newcastle to Bishop Auckland. It called in at Durham bus station at eight-thirty. She made a list and checked off everything she needed to take and tried to think of anything she needed to do before leaving, and all the time a part of her wondered at how she was keeping control when all she wanted to do was weep.
She had thought that she would not be able to sleep but somehow, round about midnight, she turned over on her side and next thing she knew it was already morning. She had missed the bus from Newcastle and caught the one from Sunderland at nine o’clock instead.
‘But where are we going, Mam?’ Richard asked, clambering on to the double-decker bus and making for the stairs. He loved sitting upstairs at the front and luckily the seats were vacant. ‘Will Miss Robinson be annoyed at me for not going to school?’
‘We’re going to see Grandma and Grandda,’ said Theda. ‘And no, Miss Robinson will understand.’
‘Where do they live, Grandma and Grandda?’ asked Richard, and she realised with a sharp pang of shock that he had not been to Winton Colliery, at least not that he could remember. And with the shock came apprehension. Would she not be welcome in her father’s house? Surely he would not turn her away, not now, not when Chuck . . . Suddenly she had to search in her bag for a handkerchief as the full force of losing her brother hit her.
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