Cath Staincliffe - Trio

‘Maybe she was homesick?’

‘She never said anything. Do you think we could ask someone?’

Caroline shrugged. She didn’t fancy trying to talk to anyone about it. They’d bite your head off soon as look at you.

A new girl was allocated to take the room and still nothing was said.

In the end Victoria persuaded Caroline to join forces with her and approach Sister Mahr, one of the younger nurses who had a lot of contact with the new girls.

She led them into the nurses’ station and shut the door.

‘I’m afraid Doreen let herself and everybody down. She behaved improperly and found herself expecting.’

Caroline felt her face go cold, a prickle brushed across her neck and upper arms. She stared at the floor.

‘Instead of throwing herself on the mercy of the societies that are there to help, she…’

Caroline swallowed, remembered the corner in the garden, the feel of the shawl, the weight of the baby cradled in one arm.

‘… she tried to kill her baby.’

Victoria drew her breath in sharply, her hand flew to her mouth.

There had been no rumours, Caroline thought, not a whisper. If she’d collapsed in the hospital someone would have seen something, overheard enough to pass on.

‘She went to an abortionist.’ The word was shocking. Like a big, dark-red blood clot in the nurse’s mouth. ‘The police are involved.’

Caroline could feel heat blooming through her, replacing the shivers, pressure in her head. Oh, Doreen.

‘What will happen to her?’ Victoria asked.

‘Nothing now. She didn’t survive. They found her by the canal.’ Her voice was bitter.

‘Oh,’ Victoria said softly.

Doreen. Little Doreen with her bright eyes and her delicate features. Why hadn’t she gone to St Ann’s? How on earth did she know where to find a person who did that? What did they use? She imagined a knife, a grappling hook, balked at the pictures.

A ewe had haemorrhaged once up on Colby’s Farm. So much blood and the ewe had struggled until its wool was crimson and then it had jerked, spasms racking it until it lay still.

Doreen. Did her family know? Would she get a proper burial? Caroline couldn’t find the words to ask. Why had they come here? It would be better not to know, to imagine that Doreen had just gone home, fed up of the place.

‘I want you girls to promise me that you will not speak about this to anyone else. It is a tragic thing and it would never have happened if Doreen had remembered the importance of staying pure. You give me your word?’

They both did. Victoria’s voice shaky with emotion.

Caroline dreamt of Doreen that night. Doreen lay in her arms singing, a lovely ballad. She was wrapped in a shawl, sticky and dark with blood.

‘Nurse!’ The cry was like a bleat. The young man in the end bed. He’d been brought in that afternoon, his leg crushed by a forklift truck. He’d been in the Army doing National Service for the last eighteen months. A year younger and this would never have happened to him. They’d abolished it now. He’d been in the last batch, called up in 1960. She took a look at him, his lips taut with pain, tongue gripped between his teeth. Pearls of sweat sprinkled on his forehead.

‘I’ll get Sister.’ She hurried to the nurse’s station and alerted Sister Colne, who administered more medicine.

‘Sit with him a while,’ she told Caroline. ‘He’s spiking a temp so keep him cool and he can drink if he’s thirsty.’

Caroline took the cloth from his brow, dipped it in cold water, wrung it out and replaced it. He was hovering between sleep and waking, his eyelids fluttering up and down, his mouth working occasionally but no speech. The drugs would make him woozy. There was a rank smell from him, sour and unwashed. He wouldn’t be bathed until the doctors examined him again in the morning.

It was warm on the ward and quiet now save for the snoring from someone at the far end and an occasional murmur from the depths of a dream.

Caroline closed her eyes for a moment, felt herself settle in the chair. Her head was heavy and she felt sleep steal over her like a cloak, creeping up her spine and over her skull, enveloping her shoulders. When she jerked awake some time later he was looking at her, his eyes made dreamy by the medicine.

‘Hello,’ he said.

She smiled.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Caroline.’

‘Paul.’

‘The pain, has it helped?’

‘Yeah. Where are you from, Caroline? That’s not a Manchester accent.’

‘Bolton,’ she said.

‘Ah, Bolton,’ he mimicked her.

She smiled even though having the mickey taken was not particularly amusing.

‘Get that a lot?’ He surprised her.

She nodded. His hair was cut close, for the services of course. He had a strong face. She could imagine him as a man of action, no nonsense.

‘This leg, what'll they do? Nobody’s saying anything. Will they…?’ He faltered, looked away then back, his Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Can they save it?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It's only if there’s gangrene or complications.’

Relief shone damp in his eyes. Light-blue eyes. She saw his chest fall as he exhaled.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘The operation?’

Oh, you poor man. ‘They’ll put a pin in, a metal rod, where the bones are shattered. You’ll have a lump, scars.’

‘And a stick? Charlie Chaplin. No more drill, then.’ He spoke in a rush. Then gave a little hiccup. ‘Sorry.’

Mortified, Caroline realised he was crying. She wanted to crawl under the bed and hide. ‘Don’t worry, please,’ she said. ‘I’d better go.’

He nodded.

She drew the curtains round so, although the light sleepers might hear the broken breathing coming from the cubicle, no one would have to witness him losing control.

His plaster cast was off and his leg looked sick beneath it, the skin like uncooked fish, greyish-white and damp. A smell too, cheesy. The skin had healed in puckered lumps along the outside muscle and across the knee. As if a child had started to model a leg from white plasticine and left it rough and unfinished. She betrayed no reaction as she wiped it gently with clean water and antiseptic and began to prepare the bandages.

She was fed up, another black mood, a miserable day. Most days were. A knot of resentment inside. She felt hot tears pressing behind her eyes. No reason for them. No reason for any of it. She stirred more plaster of paris into the mix.

‘Are you courting?’ he said.

She looked sharply at him, two spots of red forming on her cheeks.

‘Sorry,’ he amended quickly. He watched her work, sneaking a look at her face now and then, large brown eyes, broad cheeks, her hair pulled back under the nurses hat. ‘What would you do if you weren’t a nurse?’

She shrugged. She didn’t want to chat.

‘What about when you were little then…’

Why wouldn’t he just give up and shut up?

‘… what did you want to be? I suppose it’s different for girls – you don’t have to be anything much once you get married – but boys it’s always engine drivers and pilots and footballers. Or soldiers.’

No more drill parade.

‘Farming,’ she said.

‘That’s a hard life for a woman.’

Try this.

‘What sort of farming?’

She thought of the ewe and of sick people, sick animals, mess. Grandma’s allotment. ‘Crops,’ she said. ‘Market gardening, a nursery.’

He raised his eyebrows.

And landscape gardening too. The chance to sculpt the earth, to plant it and make beautiful vistas, like they did in the grand old houses. Not the sort of thing a nurse from Bolton could aspire to.

She started to wind the bandages, feeling the plaster wet and cold and heavy on her hands. She wished he wouldn’t stare at her so much.