Having only just taken the uncomfortable thing off, Nell looked abashed and quickly redonned her tin helmet, asking politely as the man travelled past, ‘How long are we likely to be?’ With the leadenness of her abdomen putting a great strain on her neck and shoulders, all she yearned to do was in get home.
‘I don’t know!’ His expression called her a bloody idiot. ‘When it goes off or gets fixed, one or the other!’ And he continued on his way down the track alongside their train, reminding everyone, ‘Tin hats on!’
‘Nurse, stop trifling!’ At Sister’s shout Nell jerked her head in, and hurried about tending her patients.
‘Nurse, Nurse!’ They all seemed to want a part of her, pulling her this way and that, and there was scarcely any room for a normal-sized person to squeeze a passage between the bunks, never mind someone of her girth. Fit to drop, Nell took a moment to flex the aching tendons of her neck and shoulders that were stretched beyond endurance by the tonnage of her belly.
‘It’s raining in, nurse!’ warbled an elderly voice.
Pulling herself together, Nell edged her way to the complainant, and found that the patient on the uppermost bunk was incontinent, and his urine was dribbling onto the man below. Clapping her hands to her cheeks, she stood there feeling helpless, trying to concentrate on what to do, whilst overwhelmed by her own exhaustion and worry, and the heavy burden of the child.
‘It’s raining in, Nurse,’ came the woeful cry again.
Finally coming to her senses, acting only on instinct, Nell took hold of the old fellow’s hand and gripped it reassuringly. ‘We’ll soon get you sorted out, Mr …’ she quickly read the old man’s label, ‘Mr Oak – but I’ll just have to see to the chap above you first as he’s copping most of the bad weather!’
With this, she summoned Avril Joyson from along the wagon. ‘Joy, could you help me change these patients’ sheets please?’
Joyson squeezed herself grumbling between the bunks. ‘What, both of them? You should’ve fetched them a bottle!’
‘Sorry!’ whined the elderly culprit, like a little child.
‘That’s all right, it’s certainly not your fault,’ Nell reassured him in a kind voice. Then she hissed under her breath at Joyson, appalled that a nurse could show such a lack of compassion. ‘It’s only the poor chap on the upper bunk who’s incontinent – and we wouldn’t have had to change two lots of bedding if someone had thought to catheterise him! Now are you going to help me or not?’
Joy became all hoity-toity, clicking her tongue and demanding, ‘What did your last slave die of?’ – though partly out of conscience, and partly because Sister had come into earshot, she was forced to help her colleague struggle to exchange sodden linen for dry. At the end of this ordeal, though, she was quick to slip away, leaving Nell to dispose of the wet sheets alone.
‘Are you comfortable now, Mr Oak?’ Nell hoped she projected sincerity when feeling so abominable herself. ‘I don’t think it should rain in again now we’ve closed the window.’ Then, having settled the two old men, it was off to tend someone else.
Hour upon hour they waited on the track for the bomb disposal team to arrive and for the detonator to be made safe, elderly patients having constantly to be nursed in the meantime, pulses to be taken, medicines to be handed out, charts to be filled in, bedpans and bottles to empty. Finally, at six o’clock in the morning, the train jerked into motion, and the exhausted crew thanked heaven to be on their way.
By now, the debilitating gravity of Nell’s abdomen seemed to have crept all the way down her limbs and into her feet, making them feel as if encased in boots of lead. Her ankles were bloated to the size of Beata’s, and further tortured by pins and needles. Unable to bend and get at them over her fecund dome in its iron corset, she held on to one of the poles that supported the stretchers and, amidst all the jerking of the wagon, tried to balance on one leg. Moving her other foot in a circle, she worked to improve her circulation, and whilst thus involved was to ponder on the way she had snapped at her friend. The mere thought procured a blush. She would have to eat humble pie when she saw Beata again … perhaps own up about the baby. The latter was unusually quiet at the moment, which was one small mercy, for even now she had no time to rest, but was at another patient’s beck and call. Not to mention Sister’s.
‘They shouldn’t have to call.’ her superior came up to deliver in hushed tone, though this was only out of consideration for the patients, and there was reproof in her eyes for Nell. ‘Forethought, Nurse Spottiswood, forethought, how many times do you have to be told? Anticipate the patient’s every need …’
‘Yes Sister, sorry Sister!’ And off Nell went again, every cell of her pregnant body screaming for a bed, yet forced to endure this for many an hour to come.
It was ten thirty in the morning when she finally staggered home. She had been on her feet for well over twenty-four hours. ‘Don’t wake me,’ she begged her mother in piteous tones, ‘not even for food. I just want to sleep.’ And she had only the energy to wash down a few bites of toast with a gulp of tea, and to undress for bed, before oblivion claimed her.
She was to sleep for all of that day, only rising in order to eat some supper, then it was back to bed again for the rest of the night.
‘You deserve the rest,’ agreed her mother.
This was quite some indulgence. Unfortunately, others were to be less so, for when Nell arrived for work a day later, it was to an impeachment. In this she was not alone, in fact all of those involved in the evacuation process had shared a similar supposition that they had given of their best and would be forgiven for catching up on their sleep. Now, they were assembled in Matron’s office, to be roundly disabused of this notion by a representative of the Ministry of Health.
‘Dereliction of duty! There is no other term for it,’ lectured the woman, who paraded judiciously before them in her hoary tweed suit and severe bun, her tone and expression relaying that they could at any moment be taken out and shot. ‘What if our soldiers should say, ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered to fire my gun today, I’ve done my bit now, I think I’ll go and have a nap?’ Where would the country be then?’
How unfair, thought Nell, after we slaved – though neither she nor any of the nurses dared protest that it was hardly the same, but were to stand there meekly and accept every criticism.
‘What would have been the plight of those needing instant evacuation?’ continued the official. ‘Would they have been left to their fate whilst their dilatory so-called nurses caught up on their beauty sleep? A shambles, a complete shambles! You should be thoroughly ashamed!’ Having worked herself into a froth, the tyrant then began to prowl up and down and to eye them one by one. Nell shrank expectantly, but it was Nurse Green the elder who attracted the first bullet. ‘How old is this nurse, Matron?’ the frowning official spun around to enquire.
Retaining her ladylike demeanour, Matron Lennox had been quietly seated at her desk throughout, and seemed hesitant to reply for the moment, for she had in fact been covering up for certain members of staff. Eventually, though, the birdlike face above the erect starched collar was to state with immense diplomacy, ‘Mrs Green is perfectly competent.’
‘I did not ask that!’ The woman snapped her attention back to Mrs Green. ‘How old are you?’
Mrs Green muttered the answer into her ample bosom.
‘Speak up, woman!’
The white-haired one snatched an uneasy glance over the top of her horn-rimmed glasses, finally to admit, ‘I’m sixty-seven.’
‘Good grief! No wonder you failed to turn up on time. It’s quite obvious you achieved this post under false pretences. Were you not aware when you applied that there is a maximum