She gazed round the ward; there were some empty beds, their counterpanes lying smooth and green and with the sheet turned over them showing white for the regulation twelve inches. Everyone who could be sent home for the holiday had been but there were still patients who needed to stay. Women who had had emergency operations within the last week; a ruptured ectopic pregnancy case and three who had miscarried. Or had tried to abort their babies, depending on the way you looked at it, Staff Nurse had said caustically.
‘A bit too heavy with the pennyroyal,’ the senior nurse had muttered. A bit hard, they were on this ward, Katie thought. Especially remembering some of the young women from Winton Colliery trying to bring up three or four children born in as many years with next to no money.
For the hard times were back yet again, the men
working
short time or not at all. According to the wireless, it was all due to something that had happened in America, the Wall Street crash they called it and it triggered off depression around the world. Three days’ pay a week went absolutely nowhere, she knew that all right.
Katie had just started her probationer nurse’s training and had been on the wards of South-East Durham General Hospital for only a few weeks yet she had dared to voice her opinion of the staff’s suspicious attitudes to some of the unfortunate women once. Only the once had she done that for she had had her head bitten off for her trouble.
‘What do you know about it?’ Nurse Potter had snapped. Nurse Potter was a third-year nurse who would soon be taking her finals and so someone not to be argued with.
‘Well, she has five children already and she is only twenty-two, I—’ Katie had begun, referring to a recent emergency admission but she had shut up as she saw the quelling look on Nurse Potter’s face.
‘They deserve what they get,’ the senior nurse had said as they walked down the corridor on their way to the breakfast break. ‘She could have left those bairns without a mother, did you think of that? And any road, it’s against my religion. It’s murder.’
What Doris Teasdale, the girl in question had got was a night of appalling pain after the registrar had examined her. ‘She won’t die this time,’ he had said. ‘Let her stew for a few hours.’
‘Arrogant pig,’ Katie muttered, fortunately not close
enough
for Dr Raine to hear properly. He had eyed her suspiciously however and after that ignored her presence completely, sailing past her down the ward as she stood, often with mop in hand cleaning the floor or coming and going to the sluice with bedpan in hand.
Doris Teasdale was one of the patients still in the ward. She lay against her pillow with a face so white it matched the pillow slip as Katie handed out the tea.
‘There’s a nice bit of cake, today, Mrs Teasdale,’ Katie said as she brought round the tea trolley. ‘Howay, I’ll help you sit up. I’ve put two sugars in the tea and there’s some nice bread and butter. It’ll do you good to eat it.’
‘I’m not hungry, Nurse,’ Doris said, her voice thin and weary.
‘Mebbe not but you have to eat it, man, it will get thrown into the pig bin if you don’t. Anyway, think of the bairns,’ said Katie and tucked her own arm under Doris’s so as to haul her up the bed. ‘The visitors will be here in half an hour, there’s a full hour today, won’t that be lovely?’
‘I’m not expecting anybody,’ said Doris. ‘Just me mam and she can’t stay long ’cause she has to leave the bairns with the neighbour.’
Katie almost asked where her man would be but bit the words off unspoken. She’d only seen Mr Teasdale once before and then he had stayed for all of ten minutes of the allotted half-hour. He was probably out getting a skinful, she thought.
Doris took a sip of tea, however, and started on the bread and butter. She just couldn’t leave good food to get
thrown
in the pig bin. She’d eat it now, Katie knew, even if she had to force it down.
‘Don’t stand there talking to the patients all morning, Nurse Benfield.’
Katie jumped at Sister’s voice, she hadn’t realised she was in the ward. Sister was standing only a few feet away frowning heavily.
‘No Sister.’ Katie hurried back to the trolley and pushed it on to the next patient jerking it a little and catching it on the end of Doris’s bed and making the cups rattle. Behind her she heard Sister’s long-suffering sigh.
‘And hurry up with the teas,’ said Sister. ‘Father Christmas will be in shortly.’
A merry Christmas to you, too, Katie muttered under her breath as she hurried round the rest of the patients. She took the trolley in to the ward kitchen and cleared it. There would be the washing up to do later for the maid had the day off on Christmas Day. The nurses and housemen were the only ones working today. All the nursing staff was because, as had been explained to Katie, it wasn’t fair for only some of them to have the day off. So it was decreed that there should be no off-duty at all on this special day. With the number of patients down and empty beds on the wards it meant that the nurses spent a lot of their time avoiding Sister who was of the opinion that a good nurse could always find something useful to do.
Consequently, Katie was lurking in the sluice when the consultant, Mr Hobson, came sweeping into the ward, booming heartily. His cotton-wool beard and moustache
clung
precariously under his nose, rather in the way his theatre mask so often did. His red gown, the hospital’s second best, for the best one was doing duty in the children’s ward, barely fitted his rotund figure but the few patients hardly noticed. As usual they were struck with awe at his august presence.
The nurses were in a row with Sister at the head, ready to do Mr Hobson’s bidding. All except Katie, that is, she was coming into the ward behind him. When she did manage to sidle round him and attach herself to the end of the line, she was rewarded with another of Sister’s black looks.
She hadn’t time to be apprehensive, however, for Mr Hobson was fishing in his bag and bringing out small parcels and handing them to the nurses to give out. So for the minute it was all bustle. And when the surgeon went off down the corridor, having done his duty so that he could go home to his own Christmas, it was time for the visitors to be allowed in.
Altogether, Katie thought to herself as she trailed off-duty at half past eight in the evening having been on the ward for thirteen hours, her first Christmas on the wards had been long and hard. For in the middle of the visiting hour there had been an emergency patient to be prepared for theatre who turned out to be a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Mr Hobson had been called out to operate and he was none too pleased about that. Then old Mrs Turner, who had an prolapsed uterus sticking out between her legs, had had a touch of diarrhoea from a surfeit of Christmas cake her daughter had brought in for her. The
daughter
had also brought a quarter-bottle of navy rum to wash the cake down and the old lady had kept it under the bedclothes so she could take an occasional sip.
By six o’clock the odour of rum had begun to permeate the ward and Mrs Turner was complaining that she was feeling badly and a body could die in this hell-hole of a place. And other, worse smells got mixed up with the rum and there was a great deal of shouting when Staff Nurse found the almost empty bottle and tried to take it away. And Katie and the third-year nurse had the job of cleaning up Mrs Turner and stopping her from climbing out of bed. Then they had to make her comfortable which wasn’t too difficult because the old lady fell asleep halfway through her bed being re-made.
The bed had to be made up for the patient returning from theatre and Sister wasn’t satisfied with the way Katie had done her hospital corners and pulled them out so they had to be done again. Staff Nurse was doing the round of dressings and douches and when she woke Mrs Turner up to do her, once again there was pandemonium.
‘What is all this racket?’ demanded Sister coming out of her office, report book, in which she had been recording the happenings of the day, in hand. Her voice was so thunderous even Mrs Turner was cowed and peace reigned for a while.
Katie was too exhausted to eat much supper. In any case she had promised Billy she would pop out to see him if she got the chance. Billy Wright was staying in Middlesbrough over the Christmas holiday. He was staying with his aunt and uncle who had left the coal
pits
of South-West Durham to manage an iron mine at Eston.
Of course, his real reason for being there was so he could be near Katie for Billy was in love with her; couldn’t remember a time when he was not. She knew that, but now that Katie had achieved her ambition of being accepted for nursing training, she was not about to give it all up to become a housewife. Maybe in three years’ time when she had finished her training. Or better still, five years when she would be a qualified midwife with a bit of luck. Or even something higher? A ward sister? But usually her imagination gave up when she thought of that, a ward sister was altogether too exalted a position for a lass from Winton Colliery.
Katie exchanged her white nurse’s cap for the outdoor regulation one and wrapped her cloak close around her before closing the door of her tiny room in the Nurses’ Home and leaving the building. She hurried along the side path to the imposing iron gates at the entrance.
‘Evening nurse,’ the porter’s voice came from inside the lodge where he sat muffled against the cold. ‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Merry Christmas,’ Katie echoed, ‘I’m just popping out for a breath of air.’ She hurried along the damp pavement to the corner for it was strictly forbidden to have followers hanging round the hospital gates. Around her, mist from the river rose and curled as the tide ran in from Teesport. In the distance a ship’s fog horn blew eerily.
Billy was there, stamping his feet against the cold and rubbing his hands together. Katie hurried up to him.
‘I’m not very late, am I? Only Sister keeps finding something else for me to do—’
‘Merry Christmas, Katie Benfield.’ He interrupted her explanation by taking hold of her by both arms and kissing her quickly on the lips.
‘Oh! Merry Christmas,’ said Katie, rather breathlessly. She could still feel the soft but firm touch of his lips against her own and they tingled, confusing her. ‘I – I can’t stay long mind.’
‘I thought we could go into the Station Hotel and have a drink though,’ said Billy.
‘I’m in uniform, I can’t go for a drink.’
‘Well, we can have a cup of coffee in the lounge, there’s nothing to take exception to in that, is there?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
So long as no one saw her, she thought. That was the trouble with meeting him so late in the evening. There were no tea shops open. Sitting in a deep, plush armchair in a corner of the lounge, half-hidden from the few other customers by an enormous Christmas tree, she felt a little safer. It was warm, and the coffee hot and milky though it still tasted bitter to Katie. She felt she would never get used to drinking coffee.
Billy felt in his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, square package and gave it to her. Katie looked at it, her heart sinking a little.
‘What is it?’
‘Why don’t you open it and see?’
Slowly, Katie undid the wrapping and looked at the jewel-box. It was a deep blue and bore the inscription, ‘
Northern
Goldsmiths’. Inside there was an engagement ring, three diamonds set in gold.
‘I—’
‘Don’t say anything for a minute, please,’ said Billy. ‘I want you to know how much I love you. I’m a surveyor now, I’m doing well, Katie. We could be married, I’d get an official’s house, they have bathrooms and everything. We could even buy our own house—’
‘Billy, it’s a lovely ring. But I have to finish my training. You know that’s what I want. I can’t marry you for years and years and it’s not fair keeping you waiting.’ She held the ring out to him.
‘Katie, don’t turn me down. I will wait, I don’t want to but I will. Look, keep the ring, I’ll get you a gold chain so that you can wear it around your neck, under your uniform. Please, Katie.’
Katie looked at him. By, she thought he was such a lovely lad. He deserved a nice girl, one who would be happy to stay at home and have bairns. His children would be good-looking like him, handsome and clever too, just as he was. For a moment, but only a moment she found her resolve weakening. But it was no good.
‘I’ll have to go back in a minute, Billy,’ she said.
‘Katie!’
She couldn’t bear to see the hurt in his eyes. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I will keep it. But it’s not binding, mind. Not for you. If you should meet someone else—’
‘I won’t,’ said Billy. He picked up her cloak and put it around her shoulders. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you to the
corner
.’ He felt he had to get her back before she changed her mind about the ring.
Curfew was at half past ten and they just made it to the gates. The porter, as he so often did, turned a blind eye as Billy kissed her good night then coughed discreetly as they lingered for another moment. ‘Half past ten, Nurse,’ he called hoarsely. ‘Home Sister will be on the warpath, mind!’
‘Thank you for the ring, thank you for everything,’ Katie whispered then ran up the drive towards the Nurse’s Home. Sister Jameson was sitting at a table by the door ready to record the times the latecomers came in. More than ten minutes late and you would be up before Matron in the morning.
In her own cubby-hole of a room she sat on the bed and gazed at the engagement ring. The overhead light made it sparkle and shoot off tiny shafts of colour, green and red. It was beautiful and she was an ungrateful bitch not to have shown more appreciation. It must have cost a fortune, maybe even twenty pounds. But she wasn’t ready to give up her dream of a career, maybe she never would be.