A Hospital Summer Read online

  I looked at her, and thought about what she had just told me. ‘Isn’t it agony for you, Mary? Worrying?’

  ‘No. Unless you call a toothache agony. I don’t. I call it a nagging ache; worry’s the same, when it’s constant. And I know it won’t be constant for long.’

  ‘You’ve got a hunch you’re going to hear from David soon?’

  ‘Not that. Merely on past showing. Nothing ever lasts, Clare. Good or bad, nothing lasts. David and I have had a lot of fun together ‒ we’ve been luckier than kids like you ‒ we managed to get our fun at the right age. We had rows, too; hundreds of them, particularly after little Dave died, and we were both near screaming-point with our despair. Then we settled down!’ ‒ her voice sounded as if she was smiling ‒ ‘we jogged along like most married couples do, and although that may sound dull at your age, it isn’t. I can’t wish you anything better, Clare, than that when this rubbish is over you’ll be able to jog along with some good man.’ She laughed quietly. ‘There’s a Victorian statement for you! And why not, as I’m talking about goodness in the old-fashioned sense of the word? It’s a rare quality in a man; kindness is even more rare. David’s kind. He never makes a fuss about not wanting to hurt people, he just doesn’t hurt them. Which is why he’s such a rotten soldier. He detests killing.’

  ‘What made him become a regular soldier?’

  ‘His father was a brigadier. David just drifted into the Army automatically. Once in he hadn’t the energy to get out. It would have meant a family row as well as everything else. He sampled one of those when he married me; he was officially too young to marry then; his colonel was pretty decent about it, his father was hell. Luckily David had some money of his own his mother left him, so we didn’t have to rely on my father-in-law for that, and he came around in time.’

  I said, ‘Charles must be something like David. He’s nuts on flying, but he loathes killing.’

  She yawned. ‘Someone must, or we wouldn’t be here now. To-night’s original thought. We’d better go in to bed, Clare. It’ll be dawn soon.’ She stood up stiffly. ‘Wonder what to-morrow will be like?’

  The next day, and the days that followed, were so exactly like that previous day that the period seemed timeless, and the only constant facts in our lives were the sun, our personal anxieties, and our aching feet. The hospital filled, emptied, filled, emptied again, to the great civilian war hospitals inland; those of us who spoke only school-room French found our knowledge of that language became much improved as we discussed les avions allemands; les bombardements; and les “dive-bombers” ‒ zut alors!’ Our French-speaking patients ‒ and these now included some North African troops ‒ quickly learnt a mixed Anglo-American-hospital-barrack slang, and loved nothing better than trying out this strange, but perfectly intelligible, language on us.

  One morning I handed a mug of cocoa to a very young Frenchman. He made a charming little bow from his waist as he sat up in bed; ‘I am thanking ye kindly, ye Goddamn nurse.’

  Our own troops in that ward were horrified. The Geordie lance-corporal in the next bed bounced up sternly. ‘And have ye no bluidy manners at all, man, to use such language to the nurse?’

  The British troops were now beyond horror. They gazed at Geordie in united disapproval, and I had to grimace hideously to control my facial muscles. They would have been even more shocked had I been caught smiling. The men would not countenance even the mildest oath being used in the presence of a Sister or nurse. As Mary said, ‘Really, dear, they are such a strain, as I have to watch my language all the time.’ It was only in the officers’ wards that we heard in ordinary conversation the four-letter words that are reputed to be written on the walls in gentlemen’s lavatories.

  That morning I distributed the rest of the cocoa to a silent ward and avoided looking at Geordie’s apologetic, purple face, or the astonished, slightly pathetic expression worn by his next-door bed neighbour, who had no idea what he had said, but had grasped from the atmosphere, and Geordie’s tone, that he had committed some unforgivable sin.

  Fortunately just then Geordie chanced to look through the window behind his bed. ‘Will ye take a look at this little lot, Nurse! Seems there’s a packet coming in!’

  The up-patients crowded round the windows with me and watched the slow, apparently endless line of ambulances creep in under the hospital arch. Mary appeared beside me. ‘Not more Frenchmen, please,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t take any more interpreting. It gives me too much time for standing and staring.’

  Sister joined us a few minutes later. ‘Casualty have just rung. We’ve to take twenty men. The Pack Store are bringing over extra bedsteads and biscuits.’

  Staff Williams spoke to me when he deposited his final load of iron on the hall floor. ‘Between you and me, miss,’ he said, flexing his shoulders, ‘this is about the last bedstead in the camp. If they don’t shift them Frogs out soon we’ll have to put our own lads on the floor.’

  I was surprised. ‘Are the French due to be shifted, Staff? I hadn’t heard.’

  He pulled his left ear-lobe. ‘That’s as may be, miss. But you mark my words. They’ll not mix ’em in here with our lads much longer.’

  I stacked three biscuits and lifted them together. ‘Why?’

  His lined face was thoughtful. ‘Seems as if asking for your cards is catching like, miss. So the lads as are coming back now says.’ He tucked an iron bed-head under each arm. ‘Where’s the Sister wanting these beds fixed? Down the centre of the wards, like as before?’

  ‘Please. But, Staff ‒ one moment ‒ who’s asking for their cards now? Surely the French aren’t giving in?’

  ‘You talked to the lads, miss?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, miss, then you can’t hardly say as them Frogs are holding out, can you?’ He did not wait for an answer. He marched stolidly into the first ward, put down the bed-heads, and returned for the foot rails and the springs.

  Joe walked into the hall while we were serving lunches. He walked heavily, like an old man. He looked so ill that once again I was convinced he had a weak heart. I had discussed this with Mary when I told her about his faint. She had agreed that there was something wrong with Joe, but doubted that what was wrong concerned his heart. ‘He’s not got a cardiac colour. He hasn’t any colour at all. And if he gets any thinner his cheekbones will break through the skin of his face. Yet there can’t really be anything much wrong with him, Clare,’ she had added. ‘He manages the work all right. No man who was really ill could work as our M.O.s are working these days. They’ll pass out ‒ and stay passed out.’

  Joe walked up to Sister, who was dishing out the stew. ‘Got a moment, Sister?’

  She held the ladle poised as she smiled at him. ‘No, Mr Slaney.’ She and Joe were on amicable terms now they had faced so many problems together. ‘Have I got to make one?’

  ‘You have.’ He crossed to her desk and sat down. ‘We’ve got to shift all the French that can be moved. Which means eighty per cent of ours. We have got to produce beds for our own chaps. They’re all on their way back.’

  ‘All?’ Sister, Mary, and I spoke together.

  He leant one elbow on the table and supported his head with his hand, as if his neck was too weary to bear the weight any longer. ‘All who can swim,’ he said gently, ‘so they tell me.’ The telephone in front of him rang. He reached for the receiver. ‘Slaney. Observation. Who?’ He looked at Mary. ‘Yes, she’s here. Hold it ‒ what? Will I tell her you haven’t time but will ring her later? I will.’ He smiled at Mary. ‘Congratulations.’ He replaced the receiver and stood up. ‘That was a chap called David Frantly-Gibbs. He wanted to tell you he’s fine, in a hurry, and will try and call you later.’ He had walked round the table, now and was confronting Mary, who stood clutching a plate of stew. He removed the plate from her unresisting hands. ‘Well, now, and why would you want to weep tears into that when it’ll be too salt already?’ He patted her shoulder with his free hand. ‘Can you raise a drop of bran
dy for the lady, Sister? She looks as if she could do with it ‒ and not only in celebration.’

  The controlled Mary was sobbing unashamedly over the medicine glass of brandy a couple of minutes later. ‘I never realized I was scared until now, when there’s no more need to be scared.’

  Joe returned to the desk. ‘That always happens when you sit on a fear. It ups and hits you below the belt when it’s all over.’ He glanced at me as he spoke, and his expression was very kind. This did not surprise me, for during this last couple of weeks or so we had all had the opportunity to discover that when Joe Slaney was too busy or too tired to be affected, the kindly streak in his make-up, on which he had previously sat as firmly as Mary had sat on her fears for David, came to the surface. I knew exactly why he glanced at me like that; now we all knew each other so much better David Frantly-Gibbs and Charles Dillon were invisible members of the Ob. Block day staff. Some time afterwards, during that lunch period, when I returned for the pudding jam, I heard Sister ask him, ‘Do you think there’s any hope for that girl’s brother?’ He had seen me come in. He did not answer.

  Staff Williams stopped me in the square when I went to my own lunch. He was beaming. ‘My boy’s back, miss! He just give me a call. At Upper Weigh, he is! Think of that! Seems as they’re sorting their lads out there! Heard from your brother?’

  ‘Not yet, Staff. There may be a message waiting at our Mess. I’m so pleased about your son!’

  His eyes were alight with relief. ‘It’s been on me mind, miss, I can tell you. His mum’ll be glad, too. He’s our only lad. You keep your chin up about your brother, miss. He’ll be back. You see.’

  ‘I hope you’re right, Staff.’ I told him about Mary’s husband. ‘That’s good news, too.’

  He was delighted for Mary. ‘There now. That Mrs Frantly-Gibbs’ll be on top of the world, I reckon. A real nice lady is that Mrs Frantly-Gibbs. What I call a proper lady, and no side to her, for all her gentleman’s a major. That just goes to show, Miss Dillon. Your brother’ll make the third. Everything always goes in threes, it does.’

  ‘I hope so, Staff. I really do. Thanks.’

  We had thought the hospital very busy up to that time; that evening we discovered our previous admissions had been a mere trickle in comparison to what then arrived, and continued to arrive for the next few days. During those days every Sister and nurse in the hospital was occupied washing the earth of France ‒ the sand from Dunkirk, the dirt from Saint-Malo, Brest, and Cherbourg ‒ the oil from wrecked ships, and the salt from the Channel from the weary, wounded bodies of the men of our own Army. As we washed and dressed those men we listened to what they said as they relaxed for the first time. Those soldiers talked and talked; they talked long before they had the chance to read a newspaper or listen to a wireless bulletin; they talked before they had any chance to compare notes with each other, or spin the stories which later would become legends; and they talked as freely as people will only talk to their nurses. They had many accents, but only one voice; and that voice said the same thing. ‘So Froggie’s going to pack it in, eh, Nurse? Oh, well. He weren’t much use. Be better now we’re on our own. We’ll know where we are, like.’

  It was a day or so later that the loudspeakers in the corners of the ward crackled to life as Mary and I were serving cocoa. The assorted troops lying in bed looked expectantly at the loudspeakers as, in English, we heard the news of the French capitulation. When the announcement was over a Green Howard sergeant said quietly, ‘That’s that.’

  There were three Frenchmen in that ward. They had been too ill to be moved out with their compatriots. The English-speaking men glanced at the Frenchmen and were silent. One Frenchman looked at Mary. He had not understood the announcement. He asked her to translate.

  The Green Howard sergeant nodded. ‘Best tell them, Nurse. They got to know some time.’ But before she had to say a word the news was repeated in French. Again the ward listened in silence, and when that announcement was over they remained silent, and the silence was broken only by one of the three French soldiers who began to cry. For the rest of that day that one ward in the Ob. Block was filled to capacity with dumb men who avoided each other’s eyes and buried themselves in Razzle.

  The remaining six wards, having no Frenchmen in their midst, were anything but silent. There was a relieved, almost gay ‒ seconds out of the ring ‒ atmosphere. One sapper whom I washed that evening said this news was going to be a reg’lar tonic for his old dad. ‘Proper made up he’s been ever since he joined the L.D.V.! Reckons as he’s fighting Jerry single-handed now, he does! He ain’t half going to be bucked about this! I tell you, Nurse, he was real narked last year when they told him as he was too old for this do!’

  ‘I’m glad he’s going to enjoy himself.’ I smiled at the sapper, who had bad facial injuries and dangled his uninjured hand in my basin of hot water. ‘Your face hurt much?’

  ‘Nah. Ta.’ He winked above his bandages. ‘Reckon as they’ll call me Scarface when I gets back home. I won’t half put the wind up Jerry with my physog if he comes over!’ He dabbled his fingers in the water. ‘This feels good, Nurse.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ When I dried his hand I asked, ‘Think Jerry’s going to try and invade us now?’

  ‘I dunno. But I tell you what, Nurse ‒ I wouldn’t half like to see him try!’ He raised his voice to shout over the screen separating his bed from the ward. ‘Oy! Robin Hood! You think Jerry’ll try and have a bash over here, mate?’

  The Sherwood Forester on the other side of the screen guffawed. ‘That’ll be the day? Eh, Bert?’

  I asked, ‘You think we can hold out?’

  The now listening ward did not bother to think about this. ‘Course we will, Nurse! We’ll sock him ‒ ’cause we blooming well got to ‒ if you’ll pardon the word, Nurse!’

  That ward spoke for the Ob. Block, and the Ob. Block, according to our fellow-V.A.D.s, spoke for the hospital. Just let the bastard try ‒ begging your pardon, miss ‒ and he’ll find what he could do with his something dive-bombers, his something something machine-gunning pilots who used unarmed refugees as target practice, and his something something bag of Fifth Column tricks. Just ‒ let ‒ him ‒ try.

  A wounded R.A.M.C. orderly in the end bed smiled dreamily as I screened his bed to wash him. ‘He’s a cunning one, though, Nurse. Got to hand it to him. We was evacuating some of our wounded over there, see. We had ’em on stretchers, and was getting ’em into a lorry. We sees a couple of lads coming across the field towards us in Froggie uniform ‒ so we stops to wait for them, seeing as them two lads has a stretcher between them. We waits. They gets quite near us, then they puts down their stretcher, seemingly as if they was tired and had to rest. They even smiles and nods, like, as they stretches their arms. And then up pops the Jerry what’s been lying doggo under the blanket. He’s got a Tommy in his hands, and he lets us have it ‒ proper.’ He laughed softly. ‘Thought as he’d fix us, he did; only he didn’t reckon on two of our lads as was standing in the back of that lorry picking up the machine-gun what we didn’t ought to have by rights, us being non-com. Our lads finishes them three Jerries off pronto, but first we lost five of our lads, and that’s where I picks up this packet in me legs. Still, fair’s fair,’ he added reasonably, ‘and you got to hand it to Jerry. He knew as he might cop it ‒ he took the chance. Jerry’s got guts all right.’

  ‘Is Miss Dillon there?’ Sister’s voice came over the screen. Her tone was urgent and glad. I shot around the screen quickly.

  ‘Yes, Sister?’

  She was looking radiant, the way people do look when they bring good news. ‘Your twin brother has just been on the telephone. He didn’t say where he was, only to tell you he’s back. He says he came home the long way round. He asked me to give you his love.’

  I could not say anything. I did not want to cry, I just wanted to smile and smile, and when I looked round all the men were smiling at me too. Sister had to go back to her work, and I went back to my R.
A.M.C. orderly. He shook my hand warmly. ‘That’s a bit of good news, eh, Nurse? Real glad I am, an’ the lads’ll be too!’

  The lads were wonderful; they shared in my happiness as if it were their own, increasing, if it was possible, the glorious sensation of relief and joy that filled me that evening. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever had a nicer bunch of men in the block,’ I told Mary enthusiastically that night as we undressed. ‘I could have kissed them all with the greatest of pleasure.’ I pulled my dress over my head and threw it on my bed. ‘I think soldiers are heaven. I love ’em!’

  She laughed. ‘If they could see you now in your pants and brassiere they’d love you! Clare, you have got long legs. You ought to have been a dancer.’

  ‘I wanted to be once, when I was a kid. I think the parents had ideas about ballet too, but they turned it down.’

  ‘The life too tough for their cherished daughter?’

  ‘Cherished daughter too tough for ballet. Father said I’d be too tall ‒ and I am. I’m five eight. You can’t be a ballet dancer at my height; you’re too heavy. All my poor little partners would wilt if they had to pick me up.’ I spun round on one leg in my happiness. ‘Mary, isn’t it heaven not to have to worry about one’s nearest and dearest any more!’

  She said mildly, ‘The War isn’t exactly over yet, dear.’

  ‘Phooey! I agree with the men. It’ll be much better now we’re on our own, and not cluttered up with gormless allies.’ In my energy I knocked my dress to the floor. I picked it up, and as I did so something dropped out of the pocket. I recognized the little object as a parting gift I had received from one of our Frenchmen.’

  Mary held out a hand. ‘What’s that?’