For King and Country (11 page)

Poor mother. Restless, snappy and unable to settle to anything, Sally had spoiled her evening for her, and had wanted nothing but to be out, and alone.

The Leazes next to the hospital in Newcastle was a good place for a stroll, and Jesmond Dene was even lovelier, and worth the half hour walk it took to get there from the hospital, but for
Sally, neither could hold a candle to Old Annsdale. The nights were drawing in, and although it was only eight o’clock, the light was fading. With no idea in her mind other than to get away
from the house and her mother’s probing and to breathe clean country air, Sally found herself wandering along the lane to Annsdale Colliery, glad to be away from the stink of pus and
carbolic, the sight of wounds that took months to heal, and the constant demands for Nurse to do this, and that, and something else, and the knowledge that however hard Nurse worked she would
never, could never, get through all the tasks allotted to her. But somehow, she did.

Here, in this lonely, darkening place she was free, with nothing but the rustling of the wind in the trees and the occasional hoot of an owl for company, such sounds as must have been heard in
the world from the beginning of time. She abandoned herself to them and to the sweet scent of the good earth, the mother and end of us all. The winding gear of the colliery village stood black and
silent against a red sky, and by the time she reached its terraced rows of tiny cottages her restlessness was gone, replaced by a deep calm.

There was a light on in Mrs Burdett’s house, and someone was just drawing the curtains. In one fluid movement and without a second thought Sally walked through the gate and closed it
behind her. The door was opened by a grey, gnarled old man she’d never seen before.

A little surprised, Sally asked, ‘Is Mrs Burdett in?’

In unfamiliar accents, he bade her: ‘Coom in, mi duck. You’m here at the right time. Kettle’s nearly boiled,’ and led her into the kitchen, where sat another stranger. A
gaunt lady with hollow eyes and an old, sagging face smiled and got up to greet her, the ample folds of her too large dress held close with a belt. Sally gave them a brief smile. ‘I came to
have five minutes with Mrs Burdett. I didn’t realize she had visitors.’

The woman’s hand flew to the white roots of her brown hair and her eyes darted to the oval, mahogany framed mirror that hung over the mantelpiece. ‘Don’t you recognize me,
Sally?’

Sally sank slowly down onto the sofa. ‘Oh, Mrs Burdett, I wouldn’t have known you. You’ve lost so much weight!’

‘It’s not good for your appetite, hinny, losing all your sons.’

‘Oh. Oh, dear,’ was all Sally could say.

‘I’ll make the tea,’ the old man volunteered, and shuffled towards the kettle. Sally gave Mrs Burdett a questioning look.

‘My father,’ she said, with the ghost of a smile. ‘He’s a widower. Poor old codger, he’s come all the way from Staffordshire. He thinks I need looking
after.’

‘Oh, Mrs Burdett!’

‘She’m been dwine since the first one went west, and now they’m all gone, she’m pining away,’ her father said. ‘You’m doing no good here, Bess. With the
men gone, they’ll throw you out of the house for sure, once the war’s over.’

‘And when’s that going to be, Dad?’

‘Sooner than you think. We’ve got the Germans properly on the run now. They’ll be bellocking for mercy afore long.’

Mrs Burdett gave a mirthless smile. ‘I’ve heard that one before,’ she murmured, and Sally, who had hardly understood a word her father had said, looked at her for an
explanation.

‘He wants to take me back to Staffordshire to live with him. He’s on his own, as well.’

‘Ah,’ said Sally.

‘You talk some sense into her,’ came the father’s voice. ‘She’ll do better among her own people where she grew up, instead of biding among strangers, worriting
herself away on her own.’

‘I’ve lived here over twenty-five year, and he still talks about me being among strangers,’ Mrs Burdett murmured. ‘And I’m not moving.’

Her father brought in the tea. ‘And I’m not such an old fool I can’t guess why,’ he said. ‘You’m all alike, you women; clinging on, when there isn’t a
hope in hell.’

Mrs Burdett’s nostrils reddened and her face fell as she looked towards the dresser where a group of photographs stood, all of sturdy, handsome young men. ‘Oh, my poor lads, my
bonny, bonny lads. There must have been a mistake. There must be one of them left! There must be one.’

She whispered it, and in her lustreless eyes was something near, Sally thought, to the edge. Not quite sane. Her father glanced at her and saw it too, and a shadow passed over his face. With no
words of comfort for either of them, Sally could only repeat: ‘Oh, Mrs Burdett!’

She stayed over an hour, listening intently to the old man’s tales of the family and trying to understand him. Mrs Burdett hardly spoke and Sally said little enough herself, but being
there seemed to be enough to show sympathy, to the father at least.

The wind had freshened and there was a thin crescent moon when they opened the door.

‘Yow’ll never find your way. It’s nearly pitch black,’ the father said, with an anxious glance at his daughter. ‘I’ll get the hurricane lamp and walk with
you.’

‘No,’ Sally said. ‘I know the road like the back of my hand. I could walk it blindfold.’

But he insisted on lending her the lamp, at least. To save argument she took it, and rather than give him the chance to change his mind again and come with her she walked quickly away, into the
darkness and the cool air that caressed her cheeks like a lover.

What a strange turn her life might have taken on the night of Lizzie’s wedding. If she’d actually believed he was serious she might have given Will a lot more encouragement. If
he’d really liked her as much as everybody seemed to think she might even have ended up married to him. Then she’d have been another Mrs Burdett, in widow’s weeds and probably
living in the same house as his mother, related to the old man who’d given her the lamp, maybe even with a bairn clinging to her skirts.

If, if, if. But fate takes strange twists and turns, and had decreed otherwise. It seemed to be part of the divine plan that she should nurse, and for all its trials she was beginning to be
happy in nursing, and would no doubt be nursing for the rest of her life, or until she was too old.

She looked up to the vastness of the sky and watched a cloud drift over the moon, obscuring its faint glow, and was glad of the lamp to light her three miles of mystical solitude. Odd that she
should feel such transcendent calm after poor David’s death and after visiting a mother almost driven to madness by the loss of her sons. But no matter how deep they are or how much they
consume us, what are our human troubles after all, measured against the ageless earth, the boundless sky, the stars, the eternal, immortal, imperishable universe? What do they signify, compared to
that?

Her mother was frantic when she got in, but Sally cut through her protests. ‘Mother, I’ve just understood something,’ she said. ‘We can’t be beaten. I can’t
tell you how I know it, but I do. In the end, we’ll win through.’

Back on duty early the following morning, she went straight into the sluice to read the Esbach’s albuminometers. There were six of them. It was the night nurse’s
job to set them up, to fill up each glass tube with the patient’s urine to the first mark, top up with reagent to the second mark, mix the two by inverting the tube twelve times, seal it with
a bung and set it aside for twenty-four hours. Now the albumin, the protein that had leaked from the patients’ kidneys had settled in the bottom of the tubes as a white sediment, very plain
to see. Her mind entirely on the task, Sally carefully took readings from the scales on the sides of the tubes and recorded them just as carefully in the book. The young captain with the belly
wound who’d had his operation on her day off had a high reading, and Lieutenant Raynor’s was still quite high as well. Dr Campbell would be coming directly after breakfast to see them,
and he’d want to know.

She went straight to the captain’s bedside, and Maxfield was at her elbow, thrusting his notepad under her nose.

‘Where’ve you been?’ the uneven handwriting read like an accusation, and the look he gave her was the same.

‘I had a day off,’ she shrugged, picking up the captain’s chart to record his result.

His hand shaking, Maxfield scribbled, ‘You didn’t tell me.’

She laughed, and after replacing the chart turned to face him. ‘I didn’t realize I had to get your permission.’

It sounded more mocking than she’d intended, but there was no time to bother about it now. She ignored his frown and passed on to fill in the rest of the charts. Crump had gone off duty
with the ’flu, so although they had another probationer, Sally had too much to do to smooth Maxfield’s ruffled feathers, or wait for him to compose his dispatches. She had to get a move
on; Sister would soon be giving the report, and she’d want the results before the doctor’s round. And there were breakfasts to give out, and beds to make, and temperatures and medicines
to do, patients to be discharged and new ones admitted, and somebody, probably her, would have to go down to the porter’s lodge to get the new admissions’ notes. Always too much to do,
and never enough time. She was making progress, though – she was doing less ward cleaning and Sister was trusting her with more and more real nursing.

Maxfield shuffled off back to his bed, looking very disgruntled. Oh, dear, she really had offended him. Never mind, she’d be as pleasant as she could next time she saw him, and he’d
get over it.

Before he left the ward that morning, Dr Campbell took a moment to hold his own tutorial, in imitation of the chief. ‘Very well, Sister,’ he challenged.
‘Let’s see whether your probationers bring their critical faculties to work with them. How serious is it, this albuminurea?’ He nodded towards the man with the belly wound, and
then rounded on Sally.

She answered him shyly. ‘I don’t know, doctor.’ He looked at Sister, and grimaced. ‘I told you so. They leave their brains in the nurses’ home.’

Sally spoke up. ‘I only know that if it’s due to fever, it nearly always disappears when the fever subsides, and if that’s the case, it’s not serious.’

‘Then why did you say you didn’t know?’

‘Because I don’t know what’s causing the captain’s albuminurea, doctor. It might be fever, or it might be something I don’t know about. So I don’t know enough
to say how serious it is.’

Dr Campbell raised his eyebrows. ‘Good! A nurse with a capacity for rational thought!’

Sister gave him a sour look. ‘She wouldn’t last long on my ward if she hadn’t.’

‘That’s not all she has,’ Dunkley cut in, smiling sweetly. ‘She seems to have found an admirer in our Australian hero. He’s forever following her about, writing her
little
billets doux
, isn’t he, Nurse Wilde?’

‘Really?’ Dr Campbell said, but Dunkley’s face fell when interest sparked in his eyes. ‘Really?’ he repeated, his eyebrows moving up another notch and his mouth
turning up at the corners.

Sister Davies’ expression soured further. ‘We won’t keep Dr Campbell any longer,’ she said, as the trolley came rattling onto the ward with the morning beverages.
‘He’s got plenty to do, and so have we. Dunkley, you can do the medicine round, and then admit the new patients.’ To another probationer: ‘You, nurse, give the drinks out,
and help the patients who can’t manage. Nurse Wilde, we’re late with the temperatures Get them done before the patients get their drinks, and when you’ve finished, I want a
private word with you in my office.’

That sounded ominous. Better not give Sister any more reason for vexation than she already had, thought Sally, moving smartly off in obedience to the command. But really, she herself was the one
who ought to be vexed, what with Dr Campbell’s mischief making, and Dunkley’s spite. And she suspected he knew exactly what he was doing, deliberately using her to make Dunkley jealous.
And then there was Maxfield, always at her elbow, getting under her feet, wanting to know things about her that were really none of his business. It was his fault she was being hauled into the
office, and she’d be lucky if she didn’t get sent to Matron.

She got to Maxfield’s bed and shook down his thermometer, but before she could put it under his arm there he was again, with his shifty, penetrating green eye and another one of his
‘little
billets doux
’ – ‘Did you have a nice day off? What did you do?’

‘Nothing. I stayed in and talked to my mother,’ she answered him.

The whole ward seemed to be watching them when up popped, ‘When are you having another day off?’

She lowered her voice. ‘Not for a month. But why don’t you speak? I know you can.’

‘I can’t,’ he mouthed, and shook his head.

She shrugged. No point in arguing; she might as well let him have it his own way.

Was it really only the day before yesterday when she’d walked to Annsdale Colliery and back, and felt so tranquil? It felt like a million years ago – a million bloody years ago.

But she’d defy anybody to try feeling tranquil on Ward 7a.

‘Holy Mother o’ God! And falling over himself to talk to you, and him an officer, an’ all!’ Curran said with feeling, as they sat together in the dining
room, waiting for the maids to serve them lunch.

‘Hardly that,’ said Sally. ‘He can’t talk, remember, or he says he can’t. His voice went, something to do with his nerves, they think. And I wouldn’t mind,
but it’s always me he gives his notes to, and the whole ward’s beginning to make comments. I wish he’d pick on somebody else.’

This brought a fresh spurt of sympathy from Curran. ‘Sure, and the poor man must feel awful lonely, and him not able to utter a word.’

Armstrong gave a sardonic smile. ‘Probably Curran’s worst nightmare, that. Not being able to utter a word.’

‘Sure, and could anything be worse for cutting you off from other people entirely than not being able to utter a word!’ Curran exclaimed. ‘The poor soul never gets any
visitors, and none of the other officers talk to him.’