A Hospital Summer Page 7

I said, ‘Where are they from, Beryl?’

  ‘France.’

  Mary and I asked together the question we were longing to ask, and dreading having answered. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ She jerked her head at the door that connected the hall with the first ward. ‘They say ‒ because we’re retreating. They say our whole Army is on the run.’

  Mary stiffened, and suddenly altered from a friendly V.A.D. to a Regular soldier’s wife. She was very much Mrs Major as she said sternly, ‘Don’t talk such nonsense, Beryl. I simply won’t believe it. Our Army never runs away.’

  Beryl shrugged. She was a small, thin girl, with a rabbity face ‒ and she was dead tired. ‘Have it your own way, Frantly-Gibbs. I’m too damn tired to care who’s running away from whom. I just want a bed ‒ and I’m just repeating what they’ve told me. Walk into that ward if you want the truth.’ She swung her cloak over one shoulder. ‘I’ve written the report ‒ such as it is ‒ and I’m going to hang on until Sister comes. None of them are ill. They aren’t patients. And now I’m going to get the hell out of it, in case another convoy comes in before I’m clear. If anyone asks me to heave another load of biscuits, or shove up another bed, I’ll burst into tears. Good morning.’ She marched out.

  Mary watched her go ‒ and for the first and only time I saw Mary angry. ‘What the blazes does she think she’s here for? To look pretty with that dirty great red cross on her apron? Oh hell, Clare.’ She turned to me. ‘I don’t believe any of this, but let’s get it over.’

  The telephone bell interrupted us getting anything over. It was Matron’s office. The office Sister told us Miss Thanet was already at work in the theatre, and would not be in the Block until later that morning. ‘Mrs Frantly-Gibbs must do the administration. Carry on with the routine as best you can. The M.O. will be there at his usual time to help you.’

  Mary sat down at the desk. ‘I’ll have to read the report through first, Clare. You get started. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve got a grip on what’s come in.’

  ‘Right. Mary ‒’

  ‘Yes?’ She looked up from the report-book. She looked much older this morning. Older, and strained.

  I said, ‘I’m sure Beryl’s wrong. I’m sure your David is all right.’

  She forced a smile. ‘Thanks, Clare. I’ll bet Charles is fine, too.’

  I returned her smile, and my smile felt as artificial as hers had looked. I walked alone to the doorway of the first ward, and the smile dropped from my face like an old coat from my back.

  I stood in that doorway for a few seconds unnoticed by the men in the ward. They were all airmen. Their uniforms were very dirty, their faces a uniform greyish-white. It was the first time that I had seen close at hand the pallor that extreme physical fatigue gives to a healthy man; I have seen it a great many times since then, and each time I have been taken back to that lovely summer morning in the Ob. Block when I saw young men with faces like fungi sprawling all over the normally immaculate ward.

  The men were very quiet; only two seemed to be asleep; the others lay silent on their beds, smoking and staring at the ceiling. A young corporal in the bed nearest to the door turned his head slowly and looked at me for perhaps a minute. He climbed off his bed, swung the rifle he had been nursing on to his shoulder, and came towards me. He was a very large man, with a round boy’s face that was shadowed by an ill-grown beard. His eyes were not a boy’s eyes; they looked old, and contrasted sharply with the rest of his face. ‘Nice little surprise packet for you,’ he said, in a slow West Country voice, ‘aren’t we, Nurse?’

  ‘Yes ‒ er ‒ you are.’ I made myself smile, and touched his rifle, clinging in this moment of shock to the security of routine regulations ‒ as if those regulations could remove the touch of nightmare from the air. ‘How have you managed to keep your rifle, Corporal? The Army’s pretty strict about weapons in hospital.’

  I watched his hand tighten on the butt of his rifle as he replied very politely, ‘Begging your pardon, Nurse ‒ but I’d like to see anyone try and take it away from me.’

  Someone in the ward chuckled, and then I realized that every man present held either a rifle ‒ or, even more strangely ‒ an officer’s revolver. The men, all awake now, had climbed off their beds and were gazing at me as if I appeared as unreal to them as they did to me. ‘As you’ve all got weapons,’ I said slowly, ‘I suppose you can’t be patients?’

  The men shook their heads, shuffled their feet, and looked at the corporal. He spoke for them. ‘That’s right, Nurse. We’ve been just bedding down for the night. We’re the first lot over. All the lads’ll be back soon. We hope.’

  ‘All?’

  Another man answered. ‘That’s a fact, miss.’ He had a clipped Londoner’s accent. He glanced at his companions, then went on, ‘It’s this way, miss, like what the corporal said. We’re the start ‒ but the rest of the lads’ll be along soon. You see, miss’ ‒ he hesitated ‒ ‘well, it’s this way ‒ you see,’ he said again, ‘we’re ‒ on the run.’

  I looked from one weary face to another. They looked more than weary, they looked ashamed; and they avoided looking at me. ‘The R.A.F. ‒ and the Army?’ I did not think of Mary’s husband or Charles. I did not dare think.

  A man clutched my arm. His hand shook as he grasped me. ‘We been on the run across France for six days, miss ‒ afore we got near the coast. We’d move to one place, see ‒ build a new runway in a new field ‒ and he’d find out and bomb it an’ we’d have to shift again. So we shifts, see ‒ builds another ‒ and he finds that out, too. All the time we were going back ‒ all the time ‒ and he’d find out ‒ and then ‒ we couldn’t go back any farther as we’d reached the sea. See?’

  I nodded at his urgent face that was so near to mine. ‘Yes. I see.’

  The large corporal moved closer. ‘It were no good, Nurse. Charlie’s right. Wherever we got ‒ he got there too. Whenever we made a change ‒ he knew about it.’

  The small Londoner said shrewdly, ‘It doesn’t sound as if we done much good, miss, when we tells it, like. But we did what we could. Only it weren’t enough. So we had to pack it in.’

  I could not ignore Charles any longer. I had to think of him and ask questions. ‘What squadrons are you from? Are all the R.A.F. back? What about the pilots?’

  They looked at me now and shook their heads. The Londoner said they couldn’t say, he was sure. I looked back at them, and realized that ambiguity would not help me to find out about Charles’s squadron. They might be retreating men; they were not defeated men. I recognized that. They were tired and depressed but they were still fighting-men who would give no details away. I stopped trying to hedge and told them the truth. In a few moments I was in a ward full of brothers.

  ‘He’ll be home already, miss, sure he will!’ they assured me heartily. ‘You don’t want to worry about him, you don’t! Pilots is valuable, so they got to look after them. Didn’t they take that lot off in Blenheims ‒ based in Wales, they said? You wait, miss ‒ you see if your brother’s not along of the Taffies, already! Soon as he’s had a good kip down he’ll be giving you a ring. You see if he don’t!’

  Their kindness was wonderful, but it could not quite reassure me, because I had seen the glances they had exchanged when I mentioned Charles’s squadron number. I could not spend more time thinking and worrying about Charles, because they were now all talking at once.

  The little Londoner talked the loudest. ‘I’ll tell you what gives me a good headache, miss, an’ that’s me kit. Got a food parcel from my missus, I did, only last week. Sent me a cake she’s made an’ all ‒ and I had to leave most of it to Jerry!’

  The corporal said that was nothing to his loss. ‘What about them shoes my dad sent over for me? New shoes they were, Nurse ‒ a fine good pair, and I had to leave them behind.’

  I sympathized with them both. ‘What rotten luck, I am sorry.’

  ‘You don’t want to waste no sympathy on the corporal, miss!’ retorted a chubby air-gunne
r. ‘It’ll be the country what’ll need your kind words. Think of the shocking name it’ll get when Jerry finds them shoes and thinks as we’ve all got plates of meat that size. Talk about big! Cor! Needed a whole airstrip to himself to turn round in them, he did!’

  The corporal laughed deeply. ‘When Jerry catches sight of them pictures of Betty Grable you been hanging up he’ll have other things to think on, Charlie, besides ‒ oh! ‒’ He broke off sharply, as someone kicked him hard. ‘Begging your pardon, Nurse, I am that. I’m afraid I was forgetting myself.’

  I smiled, feeling only too thankful to Miss Grable for lightening the moment. ‘That’s all right, Corporal. I think she’s smashing too. She was on at the camp cinema last week.’ I shook my head, as if the movement would clear my mind. I knew that there was so much I must do for these tired, kind young men, only I did not know where to start. Then I looked at their beards. ‘Have any of you got any razors?’

  They had not one razor between them.

  The corporal fingered his beard. ‘Be nice to have a shave and a clean-up, miss.’

  ‘Right.’ I looked round, and they smiled at me hopefully, and with a wonderful trust in all their faces, as if I could provide the answer to all they needed to ask. ‘What about soap? No?’ I thought of our small stores, and decided that was something else over which I must not waste time in thought. ‘All right I’ll fix something for you all directly. First I’ll just nip through the other wards and see how the other newcomers are.’

  The corporal asked diffidently, ‘Could we be doing something to help you, Nurse?’

  I was going to refuse, on the grounds that they were far too tired to help anyone, when I read the appeal in his eyes. I looked at the other men. The corporal’s expression was mirrored in nineteen other pairs of eyes. ‘Could you get this ward clean for me? You will? Oh, bless you all!’ I raced off for a broom, dusters, biscuit-tins, scrubbing-brush, scouring powder, floor-polish, and bumper. They leapt to take the cleaning tools from me, as if I was offering them gold. ‘And there’s the fire in that hall there. Could you get it going for me?’

  They said there was nothing they liked so much as lighting fires. ‘Be a pleasure, Nurse. We’ll give this a good clean-up for you. Got any Brasso? Ta. Here ‒ Bert ‒ you got that bit of shammy you scrounged from that dead Jerry? Let’s have it, mate. Ta.’

  I went back to Mary. ‘Did you hear any of that?’

  She smiled slightly. ‘I heard. Thanks, Clare.’

  I could not linger; I went quickly through the six remaining wards, and six times that first scene was repeated; six times I discovered a razorless and soapless ward, filled with dirty, unshaven men; six times I was inundated with offers to clean, scrub, and polish. With the Block buzzing with energy, I returned to Mary.

  She had news for me. ‘The Ass. Mat.’s just been round to see if we were under control. I said we were. The Block has to be ready by nine. No clean beds. All these men are going this morning. How are you doing?’

  I told her. ‘I must have razors and more soap. Can I go scrounging?’

  ‘Go where you like. What about baths?’

  The airman lighting the fire looked up at that last word. He looked as if Mary had mentioned the keys of Heaven. ‘Did you say baths, miss? For us?’

  Mary smiled. ‘If we can raise them.’ She nodded at me. ‘Try Sister D.S.’

  ‘I will. I’ll go there first.’ I raced up the iron staircase and along the balcony. Sister Dirty Surgical received my somewhat breathless request calmly.

  ‘Miss Dillon, I have eighty men up here. You’ll never be able to fit your men in. But you may try.’

  I thanked her gratefully, tore down the balcony and stairs and across to the Orthopaedic Block. Sister O.B. gave me permission to send a dozen men over to use her bathrooms. ‘No more, as I’ll need them for my own men.’

  I was growing desperate when I remembered the missing T.B. patients in the Acute Medical Block. Sister A.M. said she had never heard such an absurd request in her life. ‘I can’t have healthy men tramping up and down my Block. You’ll have to tell your men to be very quiet, Miss Dillon ‒ and if they see anyone who looks like an M.O., tell them to cough, and try and look sick.’

  I thanked her. ‘They look sick all right, Sister.’

  Sister A.M. was a Scot; a stern disciplinarian and a very nice woman. Her face altered. ‘The poor laddies,’ she said, ‘you can send them here. As many as you wish, provided they are quiet. I’ve no up-patients at all, and nine bathrooms.’

  Flushed with triumph, I raced next to the Pack Store. ‘Staff, how many razors, towels, and how much soap can you give me? Off form?’

  For the only time in my Army life Staff Williams failed me. He had no razors. He loaded me with soap and towels. ‘What the Q.M.’ll say to me for this, Miss Dillon, I wouldn’t like to say. That be enough?’

  ‘I’m sure it will. Bless you, Staff. You’re an angel!’

  I went back to the Ob. Block and briefed the large corporal. He took the soap and towels, promised to organize the bath-queues, and make certain that the men going to the Medical Block produced graveyard coughs. In the hall Mary was serving breakfast, and being assisted by about fifty men, who bore a close resemblance to characters in a Hollywood horse-opera. ‘Any luck with razors?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a single blade. No one seems to have any,’ but as I spoke I had an inspiration. ‘Can I use the ’phone?’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Go ahead. Got a corner somewhere?’

  ‘One worth trying.’ I picked up the receiver. ‘Corporal Jenkins, can you get me Mr Slaney?’

  ‘Lieut. Slaney’s in Casualty, miss. He’s only taking urgent calls.’

  ‘This one’s urgent, Corporal. Put me through ‒ there’s a dear. I’ll take the rap.’

  He chuckled. ‘If you say so, miss.’

  Joe’s voice sounded on the line almost at once. ‘Slaney here. What is it?’

  I did not waste words either. ‘This is the Ob. Block. Can we please borrow your razor, Mr Slaney? And as many more as you can raise?’

  There was a small silence. Then he said curtly, ‘Miss Dillon, I’m very busy. Did you bother me only for that?’

  ‘I’m busy, too!’ I snapped. ‘We’ve got one hundred and forty unshaven men here and no razor. You’re our M.O. You told me to ring you if I wanted anything. I do. Your razor and spare blades.’

  He made a sound that was half a grunt, half a laugh. ‘I’ll have a selection of both sent over,’ he said, and rang off.

  Two hours later the Ob. Block was full of clean, smoothly shaven men, who had breakfasted enormously on porridge, eggs, bread, butter, and tea; the wards shone with an equal cleanliness; the floors were like glass; the lamp-shades spotless; the lockers scrubbed white; the brasses burnished to gold.

  Sister returned to us at half-past nine. She rolled up her sleeves, pinned back her shoulder cape, and left Mary and me gasping at the speed she suddenly produced as she went about her work. She also looked much happier than we had ever seen her; she had done four hours’ work in the theatre before rejoining us, but she did not look at all tired. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes shining with pleasure at being able to do what she called ‘real work’ at last.

  She told us that all our men were to parade on the square at midday to be ready to move off. ‘As soon as they’ve gone start stripping all the beds and then make them up clean.’

  Before the men left every man shook hands with Sister, Mary, and myself. They gave Mary and me their cap-badges and bits of insignia as farewell tokens; the large corporal took me to one side and furtively handed me the first piece of shrapnel I had seen.

  ‘Thought you might like it as a curio, miss.’ He lowered his voice conspiratorially, and added, ‘Could you be coming into the first ward, please? The lads are wanting to see you.’

  There were many more than the twenty occupants waiting in that ward. When the corporal led me in the men moved their feet as if embarrassed, smiled she
epishly, then thrust forward one young Yorkshireman. He grinned at me, and turned purple, He wanted, he said, to say a few words on behalf of ‘t’lads.’ The lads nodded, and looked at him expectantly, but he had lost his nerve. He turned a deeper shade of purple, and pushed a vast box of Naafi chocolates into my unexpecting hands. ‘Appreciation ‒ Nurse ‒ we’re reet grateful ‒ t’lads and me ‒ and we ‒ hope as your brother ‒’ He was too shy to go on; he simply stared at me dumbly while I clutched my chocolates, stared back, and felt my eyes pricking, and then without warning the tears rolled down my face and I could do nothing to stop them. The corporal patted my shoulder in a fatherly way, and the men near to me smiled agonizingly.

  ‘I felt such a fool and so ashamed,’ I told Sister and Mary later as we shared the chocolates. ‘I hadn’t done anything but find soap and rustle up a few razors, and they were acting as if I had nursed them tenderly for weeks.’

  Sister said soberly, ‘You were the first human being they met, Dillon. They must have been dreading meeting you.’ She looked at me and gave a curious little smile. ‘You were their mums, their wives, their girl friends, for them this morning. In fact ‒ you were England. That’s true. I expect they’ll remember you for a long time.’

  ‘But they met Jacks last night?’

  ‘Last night they were too tired to care. This morning was different. Now let’s get on with those beds. I’ll give you a hand.’ When the beds were done we straightened our aching backs. Sister asked, ‘Have either of you seen a paper yet?’

  We said no. ‘Anything new in them, Sister?’

  ‘Nothing. Just the usual about strategic retreats and everything going according to plan. I thought you’d like to know.’ That afternoon we filled up again, this time with soldiers, who were graded ‘walking wounded.’ Over half our new patients were French. Sister asked Mary and me if we spoke their language. ‘I’m hopeless at more than the gardener’s cat.’

  I said I knew little more than that, but Mary was fluent.

  Sister told Mary to deal with the Frenchmen. ‘Keep them in the last four wards. Dillon, put the English into the first three.’ She sat down at her desk. ‘I must get their papers straight, then I’ll come and help you both. Give them all tea and cigarettes before you do anything else. I’ve put out boxes of cigarettes and matches on the kitchen table. Then each of you start in one corner of a ward, help them wash, into bed, and work round. If anyone needs a dressing put on a clean, dry dressing until the M.O. or I get to him.’ She smiled at us both; she was an experienced friend, and not an aloof Sister to-day. ‘Sorry there won’t be any off-duty to-day, but you wouldn’t take it if I gave it you. Off you go ‒ and if you set eyes on Mr Slaney or any M.O. say I’m in here.’