A Nurse's Duty (8 page)

‘Stop fiddling, Nurse, and get on with your work,’ Sister snapped.

Sister missed nothing, thought Karen as she dropped her fingers from her neck where she had been touching her wedding ring through the cloth of her uniform and returned to her work, terrified Sister would ask to see what was under her dress.

Sometimes it was hard to believe that she was really married, she mused, as she scrubbed the sluice and bedpans until they shone before taking them out on a ward round and bringing them back to be scrubbed again. And the second-year nurse was waiting for her to help make the beds and Karen knew she wouldn’t get her corners right first time and would have to face Sister’s lashing scorn. Despairingly, she thought that the most important thing in the world to Sister was that the corners of the bedclothes should be just at the right angle and the wheels turned in precisely. Even the patients were expected to show just the right amount of arms and chest, covered of course in white linen, above the turned down sheets.

There were no letters from Dave or Joe either. She hated going back to Morton Main and facing people and telling them, no, she hadn’t heard. They would look at her pityingly and she would know they thought she was a deserted wife.

Then one morning there was a lovely long chatty letter from Gran. Karen’s heart lightened as she took it from Home Sister and slipped it into the bib of her apron to be read later during her ten-minute break for breakfast. She had recognized the copper-plate handwriting at once, the letters formed laboriously and painstakingly as Gran had been taught at the Wesleyan School in her youth. The beautiful letters contrasted oddly with the content for Gran wrote as she spoke, in the idiom of Weardale, words coming straight from the heart. She wrote of the doings in the dale and then continued to her main reason for writing:

Your mam telled me that man of yours went off to Australia along of Joe. There’ll be nowt good comes of it I doubt. It’ll all end in tears, a young couple separating like that. Maybe you should not have denied you were wed, our Karen, when you went to that grand hospital of yours. It was a lie and nowt good comes of a lie. Though I know how badly you wanted to better yourself, be a nurse. But why you had to go away and do this new-fangled training in Newcastle, I’ll never know. You could just as well have learnt the trade from the lying-in nurse at Morton Main or gone as an assistant at the workhouse hospital in Auckland. Still, you know what you’re doing no doubt.

Aye, well, I reckon your time there will pass. But I’m thinking of your mam. What’s she going to do if you go gallivanting off to Australia after that man of yours? Kezia will likely have enough on her plate with the new babby coming and I fear for your mam.

Hoping you are keeping well as I am.

Your loving grandmother,

Jane Rain

Karen, sitting in a corner of the ward kitchen, reading the letter during her break, smiled wryly. She could almost hear Gran saying the words she had read. Gran’s thoughts were always for her daughter, she worried incessantly about her.

Gran herself was wiry and strong and had never suffered a day’s illness in her life. But her daughter Rachel had been at a vulnerable age when the hard times came to Weardale and they had left their mark. Thinking about her mother, Karen sat on longer than she should have done and was brought back to the present by the appearance of Sister in the kitchen doorway, the bow under her chin quivering with indignation.

‘Are you intending to sit there all day, Nurse?’ she demanded.
‘It’s
Matron’s round this morning and the sluice is a pig-sty! Now, get in there at once.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

Karen fairly scuttled past the bristling starch of Sister’s apron, heading for the sluice. It was gleaming, not a thing out of place, just as Karen had left it before going on her break. Sighing, she picked up a cloth and the bottle of Eusol and began wiping everything once again. It was Thursday tomorrow and her day off. She would go and see Gran in Weardale. If she was up at dawn she might still have time to call at Morton Main on her way back. She could spend an hour or two with her family before reporting back to the hospital at eight o’clock.

‘Eeh, our Karen, what are you doing here?’

The carrier’s cart creaked to a halt and Karen climbed down before answering her grandmother who was walking along the path from Low Rigg Farm. Gran was dressed for a journey, she saw, her black, shiny straw hat clamped over her iron grey hair and a thick natural wool shawl tied round her shoulders. Karen’s heart sank. Obviously Gran was going off somewhere.

‘Whyever didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ the old lady demanded, placing her hands on her hips and surveying Karen.

‘I … I thought I’d be a surprise,’ she answered weakly.

‘Aye. Well, you are that,’ asserted Mrs Rain. ‘I was just on my way to Stanhope, I was going to walk to the train. I’ve got a new lad now, he’s not over bright but he’s a good lad, he can look after the place for a couple of days. Aye, Alf’s all right, not like the last ’un.’

Karen remembered the last young lad Gran had. He had been a disaster, always skulking in the barn.

‘It’s too far for you to walk, Gran,’ she said now, bending down and kissing the old lady on the cheek. ‘You should get the cart.’

‘Hadaway wi’ ye. It’s nought but a stride or two. But you’d
better
come in now anyroad, I expect you’re ready for a cup of tea.’

She turned to the carrier who was still standing, listening to the conversation with interest. It wasn’t often Mrs Rain had visitors and he took his unofficial job as news gatherer seriously.

‘You can call back for us on your way back from High Rigg, Amos,’ she said. ‘We’ll be catching the Auckland train.’

‘Aye, right you are, Jane.’

Amos touched his cap and clucked his horse into motion.

‘Where are you off to?’ asked Karen as she and her grandmother turned into the gate of Low Rigg, past the rowan tree which stood sentinel there. A carpet of leaves surrounded the trunk now that the summer was over, and the women crunched them beneath their feet.

Jane glanced quickly up at her granddaughter.

‘How long is it since you were home, Karen?’ she asked instead of answering.

‘A fortnight. Why, is something wrong?’

‘Well, I wondered.’

They had reached the kitchen door and Jane moved quickly to stir the fire together and put the iron kettle on the coals. Karen waited, knowing better than to question further.

‘I had a funny night last night,’ mused her grandmother, almost to herself. ‘I was sure Rachel needed me. I kept waking up and going off again and there she was, time after time, holding out her hand to me.’

‘Oh, Gran, it must have been something you had for supper,’ said Karen, relieved that she had nothing really to go on.

‘Aye, well.’ Gran pursed her lips. ‘I know the Minister says we shouldn’t take any heed, it’s only superstition, but I’m telling you … I have to go and find out for mesel’.’

‘We can go together, Gran,’ said Karen. ‘I was going anyway.’ A tiny throb of anxiety went through her. Gran’s dreams had
proved
pretty reliable before now. She remembered the time she had come in from school to find Mam stretched out on the kitchen floor, the first time Karen had seen her collapse. Da had been down the pit and Kezia off to Auckland for the messages and Karen was panic-stricken, not knowing what to do. And then, miraculously, there was Gran coming in the door and taking off her shawl, her sharp eyes taking in what had happened as she moved to pick up her daughter. Small and slight though she was, she pushed Karen out of the way and lifted Rachel on to the settle, holding her against her thin chest, rocking her, talking to her. And Karen had watched, trembling, as Mam came to herself and cried softly and Gran carried on rocking her.

‘Howay, my lass, your mam’s here. You’re fine now. I knew you needed me. I felt it when I was having me dinner, and I did no more than run for the train.’

Karen remembered, oh, she did. Was this another time like that or worse? The two women drank their tea quickly and were waiting at the gate when the carrier’s cart came round the bend from High Rigg. The journey down, by cart and then by train, seemed twice as long as it usually did for both Karen and her grandmother were lost in their own anxieties.

‘Mother! And our Karen an’ all. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’

Rachel Knight looked up in surprise as they walked in through the open front door of number two Chapel Row. Karen’s heart lightened at the sight of her mother, obviously not having one of her turns. Rachel was standing by the table peeling vegetables and she looked fine. The dark shadows under her eyes had receded and her normally pale face was flushed. Whether it was from the heat of the fire or not, she looked well, better than the last time Karen saw her.

‘You’re not badly then? Do you mean to say I’ve come all this
way
and there’s nowt the matter with you?’ demanded Gran. Karen caught her mother’s eye and had to smile.

‘Oh, Gran, would you rather she was badly?’

‘No, I never said that,’ admitted Gran.

Rachel wiped her hands on her apron and turned to lift the kettle on to the fire. ‘Have you been having a dream again, Mam?’ she asked.

‘Aye, I did, an’ it’s not usually wrong neither,’ snapped Jane, sitting down at the table and loosening her shawl.

‘It’s not wrong this time either, Mam, only it’s not me for a change.’ Rachel paused and sat down herself before continuing. ‘It’s our Kezia. She’s lost the bairn.’

‘Kezia? No!’ exclaimed Karen, that it should be Kezia had not occurred to either her or Gran. Kezia never had an illness in her life, why on earth should she lose her first baby?

‘I knew it. I knew there was something,’ said Gran. ‘Where is she then?’

‘She’s upstairs. She was here when it happened which is just as well, I could see to her. But sit down and have something to eat before you go up to see her. Kezia’s all right now, she’s got it over.’

Rachel poured out tea and buttered teacakes, working swiftly and surely as Karen remembered her doing in the days before her heart trouble became apparent. Karen got to her feet. ‘I’ll just go up, Mam, I’d rather go now.’

Opening the door of the bedroom she had shared with her brother and sisters – in those days there had been a rope slung across the room with blankets over it for a divider between the boy and the girls – Karen looked anxiously at the bed in the corner. ‘Kezia?’

Lying in the middle of the bed, her sister turned to look at her. Her normally rosy face was pale and her eyes red with weeping. She looked strangely vulnerable as Karen walked hesitantly over to her.

‘I lost the bairn,’ Kezia said weakly, as though she was confessing to wrong-doing, and Karen rushed the last few steps and took her hand. It felt cold and limp and not at all like Kezia’s capable hand.

‘I know, pet.’

There was a short silence. Karen stopped herself saying the obvious phrases like ‘You’ve time yet’ or ‘You’ll have another’. She was aware that for the moment Kezia couldn’t think like that. She was in mourning for the child she had just lost.

‘I’m that sorry.’

Kezia blew her nose on a man’s handkerchief she drew from under the pillow. ‘I know I’m a fool, making such a fuss. And it’s too much for Mam to run up and down the stairs after me. I’m going to pull myself together and go back to my own house.’

‘Gran’s here,’ said Karen, ‘there’s no need for you to do anything. And Mam looks well, doesn’t she? Do you think she’s beginning to improve?’

Kezia brightened for a minute. ‘She does look well, doesn’t she? She likes to be needed same as us all, I suppose. I just hope she doesn’t try doing over much. You know what she’s like, when she’s well. She thinks she’s better altogether, she thinks she’s had a miracle cure.’

‘Well, Gran’s here. She’ll keep us all straight.’

The sisters smiled at each other, remembering other times when Gran had come to the house and taken over, organizing the three girls and giving them their own lists of chores to do when they came in from school. Only Jemima had grumbled.

‘Have you heard anything from Jemima?’ asked Karen.

‘A letter last week. It was the first since Christmas.’

The front door opened below and the sound of pit boots clumping through resounded up the stairs, ringing out as they did on the stone floor. Kezia’s face crumpled.

‘That’ll be Luke, he’s been on fore shift. He doesn’t know about me losing the baby yet.’

Karen rose to her feet and patted Kezia’s hand. She felt like weeping with her sister’s pain.

‘I’ll go down now. I’m sure you want to see him on your own,’ she said awkwardly.

In the kitchen Kezia’s man was sitting on Da’s chair by the fire and taking off his boots. Rachel and her mother were standing by the table setting out his food. Having told him the news they were giving him a few minutes, not looking at him, allowing him the only privacy these tiny cottages could afford.

Luke was a quiet man. He rarely had much to say at any time. He glanced up at Karen as she came into the room and nodded a greeting, his face a mask of sweat and coal dust yet strangely white above the line of his forehead where his pit helmet had come to. Stiffly, he stood up and took off his jacket, dropping it on to the newspaper in the corner which was there for the purpose of protecting the floor from the coal dust.

‘Go on up now, Kezia wants to see you,’ said Karen.

Luke looked down at his clothes, so permeated with the dirt from the pit that his body and clothes were the same uniform black.

‘I thought mebbe I’d better have a bath first, like.’

‘Nay, lad,’ Gran interposed. ‘Go on up. Your meal will keep till you come down and I’ll have the bath tin in an’ all. But the lass’ll be waiting for you, man.’

In his stockinged feet and pit dirt, Luke climbed the stairs.

In the kitchen below, the three women heard him groan and the thud as he fell to his knees by the bed and pulled Kezia into his arms.

‘Nay, lass,’ he cried, ‘don’t take on so. It’s me that’s sorry.’