The First Year Read online

  The First Year

  Lucilla Andrews

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2018

  This edition first published 2018 by Corazon Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1957

  www.lucillaandrews.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images © Maksim Toome / Apostrophe (Shutterstock)

  Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd

  Also by Lucilla Andrews

  from Corazon Books

  The Print Petticoat

  The Secret Armour

  The Quiet Wards

  One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)

  A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)

  In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)

  Corazon Books is reissuing

  all of Lucilla Andrews’s novels.

  Be the first to know about the next reissue

  by signing up to our free newsletter.

  Go to www.lucillaandrews.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Preview: One Night in London by Lucilla Andrews

  Preview: A Nurse’s Life by Jane Grant

  Preview: A Country Practice by Judith Colquhoun

  Preview: The Country Doctor by Jean McConnell

  Preview: A Doctor’s life by Robert Clifford

  Preview: Home from Home by Cath Cole

  Preview: City Hospital by Keith Miles

  Chapter One

  A DUMMY PATIENT AND A LIVE SURGEON

  ‘The cranial nerves,’ said Sister Preliminary Training School, ‘radiate from ‒’ She stopped her lecture and sighed impatiently. ‘Nurse Standing, wake up! How many more times am I going to have to remind you that you are in my classroom and not in bed?’

  I shot up from my seat in the third row of desks. ‘I’m sorry, Sister.’

  Sister P.T.S. looked me over. ‘Since you have been good enough to rouse yourself from slumber, Nurse, you had better go out to the changing-room and do something about your cap. It is about to descend upon your right ear. Then you will have to return and copy down the notes you will thus miss in your break period. I cannot expect the whole class to wait while you see to your hair-dressing.’

  I said, ‘No, Sister. I’m sorry, Sister.’

  Her expression was coldly resigned. ‘So am I, Nurse. This is not the first occasion upon which I have discovered you day-dreaming in a lecture; nor is it the first occasion upon which I have had to inform you that your cap is intended to cover your hair and not be worn as a hair or ear ornament. I hope, Nurse Standing,’ she added awe-fully, ‘not to have to refer to either of these matters again.’

  I said, ‘No, Sister. I mean ‒ yes, Sister.’

  She dismissed me with a brief nod, and I left the classroom quickly. I had actually been listening to Sister; but I knew that I had also been gazing out of the window by my desk, watching the main hospital building that stood on the other side of the park. I had a perfect view of the whole hospital from my desk, and that view fascinated me. It was like watching a silent movie; I could see the white caps and aprons of the nurses flitting past the long, wide ward windows; the white-coated figures of the doctors; the careful ambulances nosing their way over the paved yard outside Casualty; the constant in- and out-going stream of tweed-jacketed students carrying armfuls of books; a stream that was matched by the steady trickle of up-patients and relatives all going to or coming out of the great long stone building that was St Martin’s Hospital, London. And I was soon going to be a character in that movie, as I was going to spend the next four years of my life in Martin’s.

  But I was not, I reminded myself gloomily as I fixed my cap, going to get into Martin’s unless I survived the final P.T.S. exam next week. That exam loomed blackly ahead; a far more difficult obstacle to overcome than the present minor obstacle of discovering how to keep my stiff, slippery cap in the correct position on my very fine, straight hair.

  Sister P.T.S. was right when she said she had had occasion to talk to me about my cap previously. As far as I could recollect, in my last ten weeks in the School she had never met me without discussing my cap or my absent-mindedness. I was trying to cure myself of the latter ‒ so far without much success. My cap had been equally resistant to my efforts and the efforts of the girls in my set. We had tried pins, brilliantine, hair-grips; nothing worked. The wretched little scrap of starched linen rose on my head two minutes after I had fixed it impeccably in place, and Sister P.T.S. continued to sigh impatiently.

  I fixed four hair-grips in a row down the back of my cap; they were pinching my scalp, so I thought they might do the trick and returned to the class-room as the break-bell rang. Sister dismissed the class, but remained at her desk. As the girls filed out one girl, called Josephine Forbes, lingered by my desk.

  ‘I’ve got it all down, Rose,’ she murmured. ‘Want to borrow my book?’

  Sister’s head jerked up from the notebook she was correcting. ‘Nurse Forbes, if you are offering to assist Nurse Standing with the notes she has missed, kindly refrain from so doing. I do not approve of young nurses borrowing each other’s books or brains. When you get into the wards you will have to stand on your own feet; so you must allow me to teach you to do that in this School. Get off to your break, Nurse Forbes, and leave Nurse Standing to find out for herself what she has missed through her untidiness.’ She glanced at the board behind her. ‘The notes are all there, Nurse Standing. If you hurry you should be done in time to have some break yourself.’

  Josephine and I chanted, ‘Yes, Sister; sorry, Sister’; then she vanished to the refectory, and I copied Sister’s neat drawings into my notebook. I labelled each cranial nerve rapidly, checked once to see I had missed nothing, then went out to break, chanting the cranial nerves under my breath. Sister did not look my way again.

  I helped myself to a cup of cool cocoa and a pile of bread and dripping, and joined Josephine at one of the long tables. She raised her eyebrows at my stack of bread and dripping.

  ‘Rose, did they starve you at home? How can you eat all that and not grow fat?’

  ‘I’m just always hungry,’ I apologized, ‘and, anyway, worry keeps me thin. I’m scared stiff about that exam. I feel in my bones that something ghastly is going to happen to me. If by any miracle I get through the written either my cap’ll drop off in the practical or I’ll spill something on Matron in the viva.’

  Josephine, being a practical girl, said I would not have anything in my hands to spill during the viva. ‘You just have to hold your hands behind you and answer questions. But, for goodness’ sake, don’t go off into one of your comas like you did this morning. I saw Sister looking at you several times before she bawled you out. You just weren’t with us, Rose. I
did try to catch your eye, but it wasn’t any good. You kept gaping out of the window and then closing your eyes as if settling down for a nice little snooze.’

  ‘But I always close my eyes when doing heavy thinking,’ I protested, ‘and I really was listening to Sister. I can quite well listen with my ears and watch something else with my eyes at the same time. And, Josephine,’ I turned to her, ‘I was watching Cas. yard. You can’t think how exciting it looked this morning; there was something big going on, and the yard was simply stiff with cops, bodies on stretchers, doctors ‒ the lot! Just like watching the curtain go up on the first act of a play ‒ or a movie,’ and I went on to tell her about my silent movie.

  ‘Rose’ ‒ she shook her head ‒ ‘if you don’t keep your cap on your head and your eyes on Sister P.T.S. you almost certainly won’t get into the act. You’ve got to concentrate on the present; let the future and the hospital take care of itself. Unless you get through the P.T.S. exam your nursing career will end next week; and unless you get through your practical try-out with Sister this afternoon you may not even get to the exam. Remember, they do throw us out before that exam if they think we are no good. So do be careful with your blanket-bath and don’t spill your water all over the bed like you did last time.’

  I swallowed my last piece of bread and dripping. ‘Not to worry, Josephine. I’ll be so careful and professional that Sister won’t know me.’

  I was careful with my water during that blanket-bath; I did not spill a drop or drop the soap; and my cap miraculously stayed in place. But Sister was furious with me when I finished. The reason she was furious was that just after I had finished bathing my life-size dummy patient I inadvertently pushed her out of bed. The dummy dropped on to the floor with an ugly thud and cracked one of its knees.

  Sister’s foot beat a positive tattoo of irritation on the wooden floor. ‘Nurse Standing, what will you do next? Poor Mrs Clark!’ Her voice softened at that name, and she helped me lift the large, heavy, placid-faced doll back into bed. ‘My poor Mrs Clark! You have survived three decades of pupil-nurses without ever having such a dreadful accident occur to you before. Now you will have to go to the carpenters’ shop to have that knee mended.’ She straightened the bedclothes, then frowned at me. ‘Settle her on her pillows comfortably, Nurse Standing ‒ using care this time ‒ and then prepare to bath Janet. As Janet is fortunately made of rubber,’ she added drily, ‘not even you can do any damage to her.’

  We had a whole hierarchy of dummies in the P.T.S. Mrs Clark was the senior member, but both she and her daughter Lady Smith (no one knew why she was titled) had been in use for thirty-odd years. Lady Smith had a son, Tom, who was an eternal twelve-year-old; and there was a granddaughter Janet. Janet’s parents had both vanished at some period, and the empty bed in the practical class-room was always called unofficially ‘The Missing Link’. Janet was a lovely baby doll, life-size like all the other dummies and a joy to bath. I tidied the broken Mrs Clark, avoided her wide, staring blue eyes, and rushed off thankfully to do the baby. For once I managed without mishap.

  Sister watched me in silence. When Janet was back in her cot she said, ‘It appears I have at least taught you the correct manner in which to bath a baby, Nurse Standing. I suppose I must be grateful if only for that. That will be all your nursing practice for this afternoon; but before you go off duty for the evening I want you to wheel Mrs Clark to the carpenters’ shop. We must have her back for the examination, and I do not wish anyone to touch her until she has been properly repaired. Go and fetch your cloak and a wheel-chair while I write up a request-form.’

  The wheel-chairs and our cloaks were kept in the changing-room. Several of the other girls were in that room, sitting on the wheel-chairs waiting for us all to come off duty. ‘I’ve got a hunch,’ I told them as I found my cloak, ‘that I’ll get that wretched doll in the exam. I’ll bet she’ll topple out of bed again in front of Matron.’

  Josephine said I really must take life more seriously. ‘How would you like that to happen to you if you were ill, Rose?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have happened with an ill person,’ announced a girl called Angela Black. ‘Real patients can co-operate. They’re much easier to wash than dummies.’

  Angela always knew the answers. She had been a part-time nursing cadet in Martin’s for two years, and consequently was able to give us an endless fund of inside information on nursing.

  ‘Is that really a fact, Angela? I’ve been panicking about that ever since it happened, for all Josephine says I don’t take life seriously. I’ve been worrying just what would have happened if the patient hadn’t been made of wood and papier mâché like Mrs Clark.’

  Angela said all that would have happened would have been that my patient would have felt herself slipping and told me so. ‘Then you would have known what to do.’

  I said, ‘But supposing she was too ill to tell me?’

  Angela smiled knowingly. ‘Then you wouldn’t have been allowed to touch her. Junior pros. don’t get near very ill people. You don’t wash the really ill until you are in your second or third year.’

  I sighed with relief and swung my cloak round my shoulders. ‘Thank goodness for that.’ I buttoned the collar quickly. ‘I must get moving or Sister’ll send me to Matron for dawdling. Out of that chair, Angela! Thanks.’ I pushed down the footstand and tested the chair. It ran easily on the polished wooden floor. ‘Be seeing you, girls!’ I put one foot on the rail of the chair and scooted to the door. ‘I rather like this form of transport.’

  ‘Rose!’ Josephine rushed after me. ‘Rose, you mustn’t do that. You’ll snap that rail. It isn’t made of cast-iron.’

  Angela drifted over to us. ‘And you’ve knocked your cap sideways, too. Here.’ She adjusted it for me, straightened my cloak collar, then dusted me down as if I was one of Mrs Clark’s family. ‘That’s better. But do walk slowly, like a proper nurse.’

  ‘Proper nurses bustle ‒ like this ‒’ I waddled across the room at a jog-trot. ‘I know. I’ve watched ’em out of the classroom window.’

  ‘Not across the park,’ said Angela importantly. ‘You can bustle up and down a ward, but you must walk across the park with ‒ with ‒’

  ‘Decorum?’ I suggested.

  Josephine said she was surprised I knew that word. ‘But that’s the idea, Rose. You mustn’t scoot or jog-trot or sway or run. Nurses only run ‒’

  We all interrupted her with the chant: ‘‒ in case of haemorrhage or fire!’

  Josephine smiled. ‘So something has actually penetrated through to you at last, Rose. Jolly good. There may be hope after all. Good luck with the carpenter.’

  I spun the wheel-chair round and stood primly behind it. ‘Mrs Clark’s the object that needs the luck.’

  ‘And what makes you think,’ asked Josephine smoothly, ‘that Mrs Clark is the only one with the loose screws?’

  I laughed. ‘I walked straight into that one.’

  She held open the door. ‘Well, don’t walk into anything else, Rose.’

  Sister P.T.S.’s lips were a thin line of disapproval as she tucked the red blanket firmly round Mrs Clark.

  ‘That should hold the poor doll securely in place. Now, Nurse Standing, I have explained where you are to go. Are you quite clear of the way?’

  ‘I think so, Sister. Thank you.’

  She gave me a shrewd look. ‘And which way are you to go?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Straight across the park, along the yard that runs by Casualty, turn left at the main Dispensary, keep on to the Medical School, then turn right; there I will see a side turning that leads down into the basement ‒ I go down there, take the left fork of the corridor, and it is the third door on the left once I pass the laundry.’

  Sister’s lips twitched slightly, then she controlled them. ‘Quite correct, Nurse.’ She looked down at the doll. ‘If,’ she went on, ‘you ever succeed in becoming a St Martin’s trained nurse, Nurse Standing, I suspect you will have your memory to tha
nk for your certificate. It appears to be your greatest ally.’

  I was so shaken by the hidden compliment in her words that I blushed. ‘Thank you, Sister.’

  She glanced up at me. ‘Off you go, Nurse.’

  It was a lovely evening. It was one of those evenings you sometimes get towards the end of an English summer, when the whole world is golden. The sun was still quite high in the sky; it shone on the old grey stone of which the hospital was built, softening the corners and plating the windows with gold. The grass in the park had dried after the unusually hot summer we had just had; this evening the withered patches were a warm, glowing rusty yellow. The lack of rain had affected the plane-trees too, and some of their leaves had already turned; several were a brilliant yellow, and here and there one was scarlet. The park was sprinkled with up-patients in wheel-chairs enjoying the late sunshine. Like Mrs Clark, these patients were wrapped in red blankets which made vivid splashes of colour against the dying grass. The patients’ hands and faces were all tanned by the sun, and to me they appeared incredibly and uniformly healthy. They smiled at me as I walked by with my wheel-chair; then, as they recognized what it was I was pushing, their smiles vanished momentarily, then reappeared more widely.

  ‘I thought she was real, duck!’ called one woman. ‘Proper life-like, ain’t she? She from the School over there? And are you one of the new nurses what’s learning to be a nurse?’

  I stopped beside her. ‘Yes. This is one of our dolls. We learn on dolls.’

  ‘There now!’ She surveyed Mrs Clark with admiration. ‘Think of everything, don’t they, duck, to teach you girls proper? And how you getting on?’

  I smiled at her. ‘Not very well, I’m afraid. I’m always doing the wrong thing.’

  ‘There now,’ she said comfortingly, ‘you don’t want to let that fret you ‒ not that you look the fretting type, duck. But you’ll learn. We all got to make mistakes afore we learn not to. And this here’ ‒ she nodded at Martin’s ‒ ‘is a lovely hospital, and they learn you nurses to nurse real lovely. Mind you, it’s hard work; and they do say as you have to be born to it.’ She looked up at me curiously. ‘How do you feel about it? Think you’re going to like it?’