A Hospital Summer Read online

  Joe Slaney, the Ob. Block M.O., was a very tall, very thin young man, with shoulders so broad that until the theatre V.A.D.s had assured us they remained broad in a cotton vest, we had all been convinced that his uniform jacket shoulders were grossly over-padded. He had very black hair, so black that it was faintly bluish, a long, thin, pale face, with a surprisingly strong jaw. Surprising, because Joe Slaney never gave the appearance of having strength in anything but the formation of his bony skeleton. His eyes were his best feature; they were well set, and a brilliant blue. He was about twenty-eight, but he still did not know what to do with his hands and feet, unless on a dance floor, where he turned into a professional. From what I had seen of him in the past few months he was far too good at dancing, and not much good at anything else; but, to be fair ‒ and that was not easy, since I never cared for our M.O. ‒ I had to admit to Mary that we had little opportunity of judging his knowledge of medicine, since he had so little opportunity for practising medicine in the Block. Normally he spent three-quarters of his working day in our hall drinking tea; the remaining quarter he devoted to filling in forms and chatting with the patients. Being an Irishman, he never stopped talking; his one great charm was his speaking voice, which was deep, as soft as Archibald’s, and always slow, as if he had all eternity in which to complete a sentence.

  He pushed his cap back on his head with a jerk of one thumb and smiled at Mary’s astonishment. ‘All things are possible, Mrs Frantly-Gibbs. Jerry may be taking tea with the O.C. right now, for all I know. I know nothing. No one ever tells me anything. Some brutal character threw me out of my bed in short order fifteen minutes ago and told me to come over here ‒ so here I am. The good God alone knows why. I’ve no conception.’ He drifted over to my side and peered into the empty tea bucket. ‘Would there be a drop of that left, Miss Dillon?’

  ‘About half an inch of dregs. Cold, and near solid. Does it appeal to you?’

  He leant against the wall, as if he was too weary to carry his own weight any longer. ‘Tea always appeals to me. And why wouldn’t it, when I’ve had no breakfast? Would you have a spare mug there?’

  I said, ‘I’ve got a message for you first. Jenkins rang for you just before you came in. He says there’s some sort of a flap on, and you’re wanted over there, sharp-like.’

  ‘There’s always a flap on.’ He searched among the dirty crockery, and found a clean mug. ‘By the time I’ve got this tea hot there’ll be a new flap, and Jenkins will be ringing round again.’ He emptied the tea bucket into a saucepan and thrust it on to the glowing coal. ‘You’ve a good fire here.’

  ‘It ought to be. I used half a tin of polish getting it going. Oh, lor’! That reminds me! Sister!’

  ‘What about Sister?’ He was absorbed with his tea-brewing. ‘Hasn’t she turned up? Jenkins flapping for her too?’

  I said, ‘She’s on all right. Doing a round. I’d better fetch her.’

  He glanced at me. ‘Why? Think she’ll be wanting some tea too?’

  Mary guffawed over her table-clearing. ‘Not her, Mr Slaney! Miss Thanet’s a keen type. She’s had us both on the carpet already. She says she’s going to run the Ob. Block like a proper hospital ward.’

  ‘Is she now?’ His brewing was done, and he smiled at Mary as he sipped the nauseating liquid. ‘This I must see. Thanet now ‒ wouldn’t she be the new girl who arrived yesterday? Keen type, is she? Well, now, there’s an exhausting prospect. And what did she beat you girls up about?’

  Sister’s return prevented our telling him. Although neither Mary nor I liked Joe Slaney, he was so much a part of the Ob. Block furniture that we had grown used to having him around, and regarded him as a necessary obstacle of our working lives, whom we had to walk round and feed with tea. Miss Thanet’s expression when she joined us showed how much she disapproved of the V.A.D.s treating M.O.s as part of the furniture. She greeted Joe primly ‘Good morning, Mr Slaney.’

  He waved his mug at her. ‘Hallo, Sister. Would you care to join me in a cup?’

  She smoothed her cuffs. ‘Not just now, thank you. Would you care to do your round?’

  He closed his eyes. ‘It’s not yet nine in the morning, and there’s Jenkins beefing for me, and you, Sister, asking me to do a round. Now, will you be the ministering angel that you are ‒ and not give me such shocks?’

  Miss Thanet’s mouth tightened in the manner that I had already come to recognize as a sign that someone was in for trouble. ‘I see. Since you are here, Mr Slaney, would you be good enough to give me some advice?’

  Joe opened his eyes and smiled at her. Mary grinned at me ‒ she was standing behind Sister, and could grin with impunity. ‘Sister,’ said Joe, ‘I never give advice. Not any more. The Hippocratic spirit has long been beaten out of me, and with it has gone most of the medicine I once knew. I now content myself with giving out aspirins and iodine, and when I’m not dispensing the two I’m filling in forms. I know my place.’

  She looked as if she would like to hit him. ‘There is a man in Bed 18 I’m worried about. He’s complaining of epigastric pain, and has a raised pulse-rate.’

  Joe bowed gallantly. ‘If you took his pulse, Sister, I’m not at all surprised to hear that it’s racing. I don’t doubt that most of the chaps in there have raised pulses and blood-pressures this morning.’

  She ignored his compliment magnificently. ‘I would like you to look at him, Mr Slaney.’

  He put down his mug reluctantly. ‘For you, Sister, I will do anything. But will you just tell me one thing? Would this ailing soldier by any chance be a fairish chap with the name of Marsden? A chap with a scar over his right eye-brow?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She looked surprised. ‘Do you know him? He said he only came in the night.’

  ‘Indeed I know him. Very well. He’s working his way through Conybeare, is Marsden. I think he must have borrowed the book from somewhere; he always manages to have the classic symptoms. Last time he came in he had acute abdominal pain; the time before’ ‒ he grinned at her astonished face ‒ ‘it was the shocking renal colic; before that ‒ as I remember ‒ his heart was going into failure ‒ or it might have been then that he had the ugly gangrene of the left foot. It took your nurses here a lot of washing to get off the green dye. Poor Marsden; I’ve to hand it to him; he’s putting in a lot of medical reading to get that ticket of his. Snag is he doesn’t recollect that once, long, long ago, we chaps read the books, too. Who let him in last night?’

  She consulted the report-book. ‘The O.M.O. for the night. His initials are D.B.B.’

  Joe glanced at the book over her shoulder. ‘David Brown must be slipping. He does not generally fill us up with lead-swingers ‒ but even Homer sometimes nods. Right, Sister. Let’s go and look at his epigastrium. In one moment. First I suppose I had better let the miserable Jenkins know I’m here.’ He took up the telephone. ‘Jenkins? Slaney here. They say you’ve been ringing for me.’ He listened for a couple of seconds, then said calmly, ‘Now why could you not have said that to Miss Dillon in the first place? Right, man. I’ll be across. I’ve to see a sick man first. I’ll come when I’m done.’

  When we were alone Mary said, ‘I really thought she was going to throw something at him.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have blamed her if she had.’ I swept out the hearth. ‘That man is the end.’

  She glanced up from the kitchen table she was scrubbing. ‘You loathe his guts, don’t you, Clare?’

  ‘Don’t know about that. A person has to be definite for you to work up a good hate of him. You have to know someone to loathe them. I don’t know Joe. The man’s a walking bunch of poses; he’s never natural for three minutes on end.’ I turned my broom upside down and pulled off a lump of fluff from the hairs. ‘I wish they’d either give us back our orderlies or let us have new brooms. I can’t sweep anything with this monstrosity! It’s worn to the wood, and makes dirt instead of removing it. Why can’t the Army give us decent brooms?’

  ‘Stop talking like Sister,
dear,’ she said placidly. ‘You’ve done six months. Since when has the Army replaced any object before it falls into little pieces? That broom’s got at least seven good hairs in it.’

  ‘That’s true.’ I bent my back again. Then I had an idea. ‘Maybe, as Sister obviously intends to be a new broom sweeping clean, she might ‒’

  ‘Clare.’ Mary’s calm voice interrupted me. ‘I can stand a lot ‒ but not you making horrible cracks. On with your sweeping, slave, and no more mutinous talk.’ But despite this admonition, she stopped scrubbing herself and tilted her head as if listening to something. ‘Stop banging that grate a second, Clare.’ She walked to the entrance door. ‘Come over here. Can you hear what I hear?’

  I joined her, broom in hand. ‘That’s a band. Jenkins was right. Someone is moving out.’

  She looked towards the ward entrance. ‘Sister’s happy with Joe. Let’s go up on the D.S. balcony and see if anything is in sight.’

  We ran up the iron staircase that connected our ramp with the Dirty Surgical Block above. The upper-storey blocks all possessed balconies which ran their full length and overlooked the square. The D.S. balcony had the advantage of being built parallel with the main hospital entrance, and from that balcony you could see over the flat arch to the road that lay beyond. When we reached the upper storey the road was occupied only by a line of stationary ambulances, but the sound of music drawing nearer acted as a Pied Piper to the staff, and the balcony round us filled rapidly with V.A.D.s holding brooms and dusters, scarlet-caped Sisters with charts under their arms, M.O.s in khaki, patients in blues, and a small group of overalled orderlies, who, seeing the M.O.s, stubbed their cigarettes and tucked them behind their ears.

  Joe Slaney propelled an indignant Miss Thanet into the space by my elbow. She frowned at us. ‘I’m sure we should not have all left our Block.’

  ‘Relax, Sister,’ advised Joe. ‘The Ob. Block’ll survive. The chaps we’re about to see may not. This is a new experience for you. Make the most of it. You may not look on them again.’

  She frowned at him instead of Mary and me. ‘I don’t understand you, Mr Slaney?’

  ‘You will, when you’ve been here a while longer.’ He draped his angular body sideways against the balcony rail. ‘A band in this camp is synonymous with trouble. Trouble ahead, trouble past. They play merry little tunes when they march the boys back from a soldier’s funeral. Courage music. They lay it on again when boosting the boys off. This is the works, you’ll understand. Away with you, boys; fight for England, Home, and Glory, and shed your last drop of blood ‒ to music.’

  She turned on him furiously. ‘What are you doing in that uniform if you feel like that.’

  He smiled at her as if she was a foolish child. ‘And did I say one word about how I feel? And have you not noticed this, Sister?’ He touched the twined snake badge in his lapel. ‘Strictly non-com., that’s Slaney. I’m just the chap that stands by with the needle and the thread to stitch up the pieces of the poor devils who get blown apart. I’m no man of action.’

  Her colour rose, making her look very attractive. ‘Then you’ve no business to scorn those who are willing to do the fighting for you.’

  ‘And when did I say I scorned them?’ he drawled. ‘I’ve no scorn for anyone ‒ not for the back-room boys, not even for the big-time politicians who shout and rant on about that fine last drop of blood. Not that there isn’t one question I’d like to ask the big boys.’

  ‘Which is?’ Her voice was razor-edged.

  ‘Whose blood, chum?’ murmured Joe Slaney. ‘Whose blood? Not your own; that’s for sure. But hold it, Sister! Here they come.’

  The bandsmen, marching ahead, led the regiment that was marching in battle order down the road that ran past the hospital. The marching men whistled to the music; the soldiers on the balcony with us, and the sick soldiers in their beds on that flat arch of the hospital across the square, whistled with their colleagues. No woman watching whistled; we only stood very still ‒ we were too far from the men on the road to need to force ourselves to smile. We had seen this scene re-enacted so many times in the last couple of weeks, when rumour after rumour had raced round the camp, and every rumour added to the dark score of something being very wrong in France. After each grim rumour another regiment was moved from the great camp around the hospital, marched in battle order down that white road in the sunshine that was as constant as the music that always accompanied soldiers marching to battle.

  Miss Thanet could not know what her fellow-women were thinking. She raised herself on her toes. ‘I think this is all rather thrilling.’

  I saw Mary look at Sister in silence. No one said a word. Mary’s husband was a Regular soldier, a major in a Rifle Regiment. We were still silent when the marching men had vanished and the last faint notes of the music faded. I tucked my broom under my arm and followed Mary and Sister down the iron stairs. Just before I reached the bottom I stopped to pluck more fluff from my broom-head, and while doing this glanced up at the D.S. balcony, that had now emptied as quickly as it had filled. Only Joe Slaney remained on the rails. He was staring at the road, his hands threading and rethreading the rubber of his stethoscope through his fingers. He looked as if he were watching something important, and, wondering what there was to see, I went a few steps up again. The road was empty, but Joe did not look away, or notice what I was doing. His face wore an expression I had not seen on it before; he looked curiously vulnerable, and at the same time knowledgeable. He looked as if he were looking at the future. The future was something that none of us in that hospital ever talked about. We seldom talked about the past either. We who were young that summer had been born during, or in the shadow of, one war; a war our parents told us, that had been fought to end war; a war on whose ending ‒ so our parents told us ‒ every one suddenly burst out singing. As soon as we could read, or listen to broadcast news, we had realized that these tales our parents told us were fairy tales that belonged in the same category as Cinderella and Snow White. We enjoyed the tales; we did not believe them; we had no reason to believe them, having grown only to exchange our school uniforms for other uniforms, to spend the high summer of our lives in another war; a war for which we could scarcely be held responsible, since most of us were too young to possess so much as a vote. We possessed only our youth; a slightly cynical tolerance of our elders and all authority; and a capacity for appearing bored. That last was our great secret defence.

  I looked once more at Joe Slaney, and wondered why his defences were down. I could not guess the answer, so I tucked the broom under my arm once more and went back to my sweeping.

  Chapter Two

  END OF THE BEGINNING

  Miss Thanet was unlucky. She spent most of her first two hours on duty in the Observation Block, drawing up work-lists and reorganizing what equipment we had; then a new order from the Company Office caused her to tear up her work-lists and to instruct Mary and me that the equipment was to remain where it was for the time being.

  ‘Or the duration,’ murmured Mary, as she and I carried the kitchen table back to its former site beside the grate.

  Sister looked at Joe who had returned to us, and was sitting at the table, drinking tea out of a cup this time. ‘Will you please tell me, Mr Slaney, just how do we empty the whole Block? What do we do with the men?’

  Joe found a spot among the many papers on the desk for his saucerless cup, put it down lovingly, and picked up the typed order that had just come in. ‘We do just what it says here, Sister. We discharge all who are fit to be discharged, transfer those who are not.’

  ‘Transfer ‒ to where? We can’t send them to the other blocks, as this order applies to every block. And how can any of the men be fit for discharge if they’ve been admitted as needing hospitalization?’

  Joe read the order carefully. ‘With the exception of Marsden, I agree with you. Despite what the Company Office imagines, we don’t admit at random, just because we consider the soldiery needs a rest. Just let me ta
ke all this in a moment, Sister; there’s generally a loophole somewhere if you look hard enough; Hold it.’ He beamed at her. ‘Here we are. This lets us out. Here,’ he thrust the paper at her. ‘Read that last paragraph.’

  She read it aloud. ‘ “No patient may remain longer than twenty-four hours in the minor blocks such as Observation.” ’ She looked up. ‘That doesn’t give us much help, surely?’

  ‘Well, now, I’m not sure that it doesn’t,’ said Joe, watching Mary and me. He nodded at us, as if to say he agreed that this was going to mean a damned awful lot of work for us, but there was no way round it. ‘This’ll be the way of it, Sister. The chaps we can transfer we don’t have to worry about. They’ll not be transferred in this hospital, as you imagine, but go to some other place farther inland. All we’ve to do for them is see their notes are up to date, get their kit from the Pack Store, bung them on stretchers or wheel-chairs, and leave the rest to the Office. On past showing a convoy’ll take ’em off our hands around lunchtime. The chaps who are going to be our big problem are those who aren’t ill enough to be transferred by Office standards, but aren’t well enough by our standards to be bunged back to the camp. They are the chaps who will need the loophole, and this is what we’ll do.’ He pulled the report-book from the litter of forms that buried it and opened it at the right place. ‘We’ll discharge all the non-transfers this morning. We have to do that, as the book of words says so, but it does not say one word about admitting or readmitting. So we’ll readmit the lot; minus Marsden. It’ll mean a packet of work, and produce a mountain of forms, which will make the back-room boys in the Office as bucked as hell, and highly impressed with our zeal. Nothing pleases the back-room boys so much as the very devil of a lot of forms ‒ and in triplicate! That really gets ’em hopping with joy, and why shouldn’t we make them happy? There’s no doubt at all that if we play our cards properly we may get ourselves promoted for this, Sister. So let’s get cracking.’