But Matron, scandalised, sent the kitchen helper to call them in to tidy up before supper, because the nurses were coming next day.
Every term a group of Community Nurses in training came once or twice to visit the Refuge. The old ladies were pleased: they liked visitors and every event gave them something to talk about. Many of the girls were cheerful and laughed and joked to buck them up. A few even returned on private visits when they were in the neighbourhood or if, after finishing their first training, they went on to do midwifery at Pumwani just round the corner. These, though, were the strong-stomached. Many of the old ones seized on the opportunity to relate in clinical detail their own and their daughters’ confinements, and most of the nurses felt that enough was enough. But the old ladies also benefited by having the place spruced up for visitors and more fervently inspected to see if their clothes and bedding needed renewal. One time the girls had brought them packets of dried milk.
‘She is very weak,’ frowned one of the nurses examining Rahel. ‘Don’t you think she would be better in hospital?’
‘No,’ said Wairimu firmly. ‘She likes the company of people she knows. She is better here with us. What more can you do for her in hospital than we do here? She’s not going to start riding a bicycle, now, is she?’
‘But isn’t it depressing for the rest of you?’
‘She got worse last time they took her to hospital,’ put in Sophia. ‘And it’s not depressing to have her here. What would be depressing is to think that we would be kicked out if we got like her.’
The others nodded assent. Just then Matron appeared in the doorway.
‘Ladies, I hope you aren’t hindering the girls in their work.’
‘Discussing things with them is our work,’ the nurse insisted bravely. She found the very name of Matron alarming. ‘I thought this one could be moved to hospital, but they are reluctant to let her go.’
‘I believe they are right.’
You never knew with Matron. To your face she would never admit that you understood anything, but eventually she would allow some respect for your experience.
‘The community has a strength of its own. Some of them have not much else left to live for. Rahel’s leg was healed, as far as it can be, in hospital, but you do not have a cure for her years and her losses.’
The nurse swallowed.
‘All right, I won’t report this to Sister Tutor, then. But if she complains, I hope you’ll stand up for me.’
‘Don’t worry. The hospital is so overcrowded I’m sure they will be grateful to any of us who can look after our own patients. When shall we see you again?’
‘You won’t, officially speaking. We’re going back to classes next week and the new lot of girls will be starting as soon as they’ve had their short leave.’
Mary was one of those looking forward to joining the public health section: she was still on ward duties, with tests and leave to come before they changed over. She hummed as she walked briskly down the long corridor to collect the day’s issue of medicines from the dispensary. This was the first time she was doing it alone. She still delighted in her crisp uniform, though the belt was uncomfortably tight and it took long minutes of wrestling to pin the cap straight on her long, springy hair. The watch on her left wrist was also a pleasure to her. It was one of the most expensive items on the list of pre-training requirements and her eldest brother had bought it for her to reduce the strain on her parents. She remembered him every time she studied the second hand to register the rate of pulse or the gradual suffusion of temperature.
The corridor was by now familiar, the doubts of the first training days long overcome. She could not, of course, remember being wheeled along it as a newborn or again after she had broken an arm in standard five. In fact the place had grown grubby over the years. Some of the light shades were broken and the repeated pressure of bodies at visiting time had left lines of grease along the wall, but she was hardly aware of this. Though some people criticised, your hospital, like your school, was not exchangeable. Its very ordinariness made a claim on your loyalty.
It was just where the passage branched off to the dispensary that she met the student doctor. He did not appear to be gliding round with his hands full of important papers like the seniors. He was just standing by the intersection looking about him, empty-handed, his white coat gleaming as though very new over his expensive-looking shirt and slacks, a striking light brown face, loose, curly hair, an exploratory look in her direction. She almost stopped, then lowered her eyes and tried to even her pace. After all, she had seen medical students before. Everybody warned you about them. It would be foolish to let them get you flustered. But something about this one was different. When she walked back with her loaded tray he was still there, in conversation with one of the specialists who attended her ward. She was not at all surprised when he appeared there later in the day.
Suddenly one morning Rahel woke up and asked what time it was.
‘Half past seven,’ Priscilla told her, careful to express no surprise. Bessie and Mama Chungu helped to prop Rahel up against the pillows. She insisted that she would get up, but soon found that she could not stand and submitted to their ministrations.
‘Well, where have you been?’ Wairimu demanded, after they had fussed over her, fed her, prepared clean clothes and found some pretext on which Matron could call in before breakfast to observe the change.
‘I’ve been trying to sleep: haven’t we all?’ retorted Rahel. ‘What with bugles blowing and crates crashing about. I almost thought my leg was gone again.’
‘Well, you take care of what you’ve got left after all the time it took them to patch you up. See, here’s your leg, a bit stiff but you can walk on it when you’re stronger. Not that you’d better go climbing trees, now.’
‘I never did, you know. And I never even touched the special tree. But it was a noisy night, wasn’t it? I seemed to be ages getting to sleep.’
‘You’ve been ages waking up,’ said Matron gently. ‘You’ve been quite ill, you know, so you’d better take things quietly. Let’s put you in the wheelchair while we make the bed up again. It’s only in your head you were hearing bugles.’
‘And people have been asking for you,’ added Sophia. ‘The Community Nurses – perhaps even the soldier.’
‘Well of course,’ Rahel began, making up for time lost to speech and heedless whether they had heard it all before, ‘soldiering is in the blood, as my man used to say, and I can’t just ignore it.’ Sounds of the past kept on reverberating, that was what she meant to say. But her tongue still felt clumsy, prodding in an exploratory way at the Swahili words, whistling over the sibilants, whispering the final vowels, jes’i,