Now the War Is Over (31 page)

Rachel sighed as she shut the door behind her. Funny, she thought, how you want your children to grow up, but then again, you feel lost when they do. A feeling of grief rose in her for a moment
and her eyes filled.

Danny was at the table in the kitchen doing their accounts for the market. Kev had gone to see a pal of his and she could hear the other three upstairs, playing at something, not fighting for
the moment. Rachel filled the kettle, wishing there was no one else in the house just for a while.

As she tidied the kitchen her mind wandered to Tommy and she felt immediately anxious. It was Melly who had forced her to see what was in front of her eyes.

Melly had come home for Christmas but she had only been able to stay one night. She was on an early shift on the ward on Christmas Day, so Danny had had to go and pick her up afterwards. Rachel
felt a bit hurt that she did not appear to mind this. Her daughter had been sucked into the life of the hospital and did not seem to need them any more.

But Melly had taken her aside, upstairs, that evening.

‘Mom –’ She closed the door of the bedroom she was now sharing with Sandra. They stood between the beds, on the runner of blue carpet. ‘I want to talk to you. What the
hell’s wrong with Tommy? He looks terrible!’

Rachel was on the defensive immediately.

‘What d’you mean?’ But she knew. She had been trying not to notice because she had no idea what to do about it.

‘He looks . . .’ Melly tried to find the words. ‘Not like Tommy. He looks sad and not himself. I asked him about the job again – I mean, he’d said he didn’t
like it very much. Now he won’t say anything.’

‘Well, he’s only been there a little while,’ Rachel said, turning away to sit down on Sandra’s bed. She tried to sound as if it was nothing to worry about.
‘It’s bound to be difficult, isn’t it? He’ll take longer than most people to settle in. And everyone has to do jobs they don’t like sometimes.’

Melly folded her arms. Rachel felt as if her daughter could see right through her and was suddenly older than she was. This made her bristle with annoyance. After all, she was the one here with
Tommy day after day – why did Melly always think she knew better?

‘I’ll talk to him,’ was all Melly said.

She hadn’t said anything else. Rachel wondered now whether she had managed to get anything more out of Tommy. He went off to work with Danny every day, uncomplaining. Perhaps if he got one
of those trike things he would be able to go on his own. Maybe that would cheer him up, she thought. He never complained, but try as she might to tell herself that he was all right, she could see
he was shrouded in misery.

But what could she do? Rachel made tea and placed a cup in front of Danny, who muttered, ‘Ta’. She stood, looking at his bent head. He was barely aware she was there. She climbed the
stairs to gather bits of handwashing.

As she worked she felt a pang of envy for Melly, full of her new job, a life all before her. Melly didn’t know she was born. Not that she would have wanted Melly’s job. The thought
of it made her shudder. At her age, Rachel thought, I had two kids already. No life of my own. And God, she’d been so young. All because of Danny. She would have followed Danny anywhere then,
done anything for him.

Back downstairs with an armful of washing, as the tap ran into the pail, she turned and looked at Danny again. Skinny little thing he used to be. He had filled out and was now a strong-looking
man getting on for thirty-seven, his face still handsome. His hair had darkened from fair to brown but there was still plenty of it. She looked at his hunched shoulders in his dark blue jersey,
suddenly filled with tenderness. What else could she have done at fifteen? With a mother like Peggy and bloody Fred Horton in tow?

Once Cissy, Fred’s own child, arrived she had felt like an outsider, a cuckoo in the nest. Cissy was the one who had given Fred and Peggy everything they wanted. And now Cissy had given
them Andrew – a proper grandchild, of both of them. No doubt there would be more fuss made over Cissy’s kid than there ever was over any of her six, Rachel thought sourly. Not that she
blamed Cissy. She was delighted for her sister, had worried for her that she might never have a baby as it was taking so long. It was her mother’s snobbery she couldn’t stand. Even now
she was only just about polite to Danny.

She turned the tap off and tilted the packet of Omo –
Adds brightness to cleanness and whiteness . . .

‘Danny?’

‘Ummm – what?’ He turned to her.

She wanted him to look, to notice she was there. She smiled. ‘Nothing – doesn’t matter.’

To her surprise, he grinned back, as if he had heard something in her voice. ‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Their eyes met for a moment before they turned away again.

She did still love him, that was all. It was one of the moments when she stopped and knew it. She pushed the dirty clothes down into the white bubbles, smiling to herself.

‘Melly – you seen the list?’ Margaret slouched against the door frame of Melly and Berni’s room in the nurses’ home. ‘I’m on with you
this time – A3, male medical.’

‘Oh – is the list up?’ Melly said. They always waited anxiously to see where they were going next. ‘Good! We’ll be on different shifts, though.’

‘At least we can compare,’ Margaret said. She came and sat on the edge of Berni’s bed.

Now they were no longer the new intake and were seasoned second years who had survived their first-year exams, they were no longer in the ‘huts’ outside, but in the nurses’
home. Some of the girls had rooms to themselves, but Melly had been allocated to share with Berni. Berni’s cheerful, freckled face could always cheer her up and their room was often the
meeting place for some of the others who came in with cups of cocoa and sat chatting and laughing on the beds. But today, Melly and Berni were sitting propped against the pillows, studying. This
was their last week of the latest training block in the classroom and there was a lot to cram into their heads.

‘Did you see where I am?’ Berni asked.

Margaret frowned. ‘C4, I think – women’s medical and ENT.’ Her face broke into a grin again. ‘With Mavis.’ Mavis was the least agreeable girl in their
group.

‘Jaysus, Mary and Joseph!’ Berni groaned, stretching and yawning, hands above her head. ‘I don’t know how that one ever makes anyone better – she looks like the
wrath of God.’

‘So I’m with you?’ Melly smiled at Margaret.

‘Yes, brainbox, you are,’ Margaret said, pouting. ‘Don’t go showing me up.’

‘I’ll try not to.’ Melly gave a happy smile.

To her amazement she had achieved the second-highest mark overall in the exams in October. She had come first in anatomy! And she was only a couple of marks off the girl who had come first. The
glow of finding out that she could do something well, of being praised by the nursing tutors and finding that anyone could look up to her for something had still not worn off.

‘Being a nurse isn’t about passing exams anyway, is it?’ she added, not wanting to seem too pleased with herself.

‘Ohh, C4!’ Berni groaned. ‘Ladies – they make so much fuss – and they can’t pee into a bottle. Give me men to nurse any time!’

‘Well,’ Margaret said, ‘I’d say it’s about the only chance they get to make a fuss.’ She eyed the open packet of custard creams beside her on Berni’s
bed. ‘Can I have one? Or two?’

‘Help yourself,’ Berni laughed.

Melly had grown to like Margaret a lot and she admired her determination. Both she and Denise, the two West Indian nurses, had met with hostility on the wards. Melly wondered how they stood it.
Denise, who was a quiet girl, never said much about it. Margaret got angry, but not in front of the patients themselves.

‘It’s something new for them,’ she would shrug, trying not to show how hurt and insulted she was. ‘Foreign. Maybe they’ll get used to us.’

Sometimes being kind to unkind people was the hardest job of all.

The first year had passed with what seemed to Melly like amazing speed. She had never in her life been so happy. As well as flying through the exams – though not without
slogging very hard for it – she had completed two ward placements, one on ENT and one men’s surgical, and between those, a block of nights on women’s surgical. It had been strange
and nerve-racking at first. They had visited a couple of wards during the classroom period. And they had learned the basic work, of bed-making and how the ward was to be arranged and giving bed
baths.

When she walked on to her first ward for a placement, though, the strangeness of it hit her all over again. There were the hospital smells of disinfectant and soap; and human smells of
excrement, the acetone aroma of the very sick, ether and sweat; and sometimes, intermingled, a whiff of flowers. Appearing in uniform, she knew that most patients did not realize she was a new
student nurse and would expect her to know what to do. And there was the challenge of dealing with real patients instead of the uncomplaining Mrs Bedworthy with her blank smile.

Melly had made her mistakes – misunderstood and brought the wrong things for senior nurses, got procedures awry, not arranged pillows the perfect way that Sister required and all sorts of
human things.

She had, as predicted, found herself sobbing in the sluice, the room at the end of the ward where there were sinks and where they emptied and disinfected the bedpans and sterilized instruments.
Sometimes she had cried not out of shame for her own stupidity but out of shock and sadness. A death, or the sadness of someone’s life or someone in pain. She had shed a lot of tears already
and learned that this was a part of nursing.

But she learned fast. And she loved it. Every time she started on a shift she felt excited. In the long Nightingale wards with the beds in rows along each side, you could see everyone, more or
less. There was the caring for people, making them feel better even by just replacing a sheet, smoothing a pillow or giving a kind word.

Melly loved the feeling of restoring order, of tidying and rearranging, making everything fresh and right. It gave her a motherly, protective feeling. Every spare moment she had, she would move
about the ward tucking in a sheet here, straightening the wheels of a bed there. Some of the other nurses teased her about it. ‘Miss Perfect’, Jen called her.

But she did feel she wanted things to be perfect. It was bad enough that people were sick and in pain. The least they could do was to keep the wards looking cheerful and neat and under
control.

Each day was like watching a story unfold. She hardly thought about anything else, wondered about her patients even when she was off duty and they were safe in the care of another team of
nurses. Sometimes she found herself thinking about Mr So-and-So or Mrs So-and-So and hoping they were not having a bad night.

‘You never know a ward,’ one sister told her, ‘until you’ve seen it at night. That’s when people are at their most fragile.’ She learned that people who were
most ebullient in the daytime were sometimes the most vulnerable at night.

Despite the hard work, tough on the back, the feet, the emotions, Melly loved almost every day of it and was looking forward to starting on a new ward. She was riding high. This was what she was
made for and she wanted to be the best nurse ever.

She had no idea that things could tilt downhill so quickly.

‘Welcome to the ward.’ Sister Anderson, a stern-looking woman in her forties, dressed in her navy uniform, brown hair scraped back tightly under her frill-edged
‘Sister Dora’ cap, greeted Melly when she arrived for her first early-morning shift.

Once they had received the handover from the night staff, Sister Anderson drew Melly aside with a first-year nurse who was beginning her first placement, an Irish girl called Cath O’Shea
with black curly hair. She was so frail she looked as if she would snap in half and was trying hard not to appear terrified.

‘You’ll be all right,’ Melly told her, also trying not to look terrified and to seem like an old hand.

‘Now –’ Sister Anderson’s tone had an edge of sarcasm – ‘do pray tell me, what is a medical ward?’ She looked from one to the other of them.

Melly could almost feel Cath seize up with nerves beside her, so she spoke quickly.

‘It’s for diagnosing and treating illnesses that do not require surgery, usually with drugs,’ she recited.

‘Good,’ Sister Anderson said, without warmth. ‘Now – Nurse Jenkins over there will be working with us and the SEN and auxiliary nurse.’

Nurse Jenkins, a third-year student, was a homely-looking girl in her twenties who Melly had often seen around the hospital. She looked nice, Melly thought.

‘If you have any questions, never be afraid to ask. Always better to find out than do something wrong because you’re afraid to question. Right – now the morning work needs to
begin – ah, no, no, stop!’

They both turned, immediately feeling guilty of wrongdoing. But it was the newcomer who was at fault.

‘Your apron straps are not crossed correctly at the back,’ Sister told her. ‘Sort them out immediately. Nurse Booker, it would be quickest if you could help her.’

Melly quickly refastened the girl’s apron, unable to resist feeling proud of her own seniority. She could remember her first days on a ward and how ham-fisted she had felt.

‘You’ll soon be doing it standing on your head,’ she whispered and the girl gave her a grateful glance.

Breakfast was over and the first job was the bedpan round for those patients not allowed up. After that, they made the beds, moving the top sheet to the bottom and supplying fresh pillowcases,
before the beds were wheeled into the middle of the ward for the cleaner to come and mop the floors. The junior nurses’ job was to wipe all the lockers with disinfectant before the beds were
pushed back against the walls.

Melly worked as hard and quickly as she could, keen to prove to Sister Anderson that she was an excellent nurse. Over the past months she had become lithe and strong. She liked the feel of her
muscles working as she pulled the beds and bent, tucking in a sheet, making it neat and tidy at the corners. She also loved the approval of the senior staff and had worked hard to get it, wanting
to be looked upon as a good student, a hard worker and a promising young nurse. She zipped around the beds, proud that she knew what to do and loving comments from the patients, the older men
especially who would say things like: