Mary Westmacott - Giant's Bread

On the following Wednesday, Nell did her first round with the District Nurse, a little bustling woman very much overworked. At the end of the day, she patted Nell kindly on the shoulder.

‘I’m glad to see you have a head on your shoulders, my dear. Really some of the girls who come seem to me half-witted – they do indeed. And such fine ladies – you wouldn’t believe! Not by birth – I don’t mean that. But half-educated girls who think nursing is all smoothing a pillow and feeding the patient with grapes. You’ll know your way about in no time.’

Heartened by this, Nell presented herself at the Out Patient Department at the given time without too much trepidation. She was received by a tall gaunt Sister with a malevolent eye.

‘Another raw beginner,’ she grumbled. ‘Mrs Curtis sent you, I suppose? I’m sick of that woman. Takes me more time and trouble teaching silly girls who think they know everything than it would to do everything myself.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Nell meekly.

‘Get a couple of certificates, attend a dozen lectures and think you know everything,’ said Sister Margaret bitterly. ‘Here they come. Don’t get in my way more than you can help.’

A typical batch of patients were assembled. A young boy with legs riddled with ulcers, a child with scalded legs from an overturned kettle, a girl with a needle in her finger, various sufferers with ‘bad ears’, ‘bad legs’, ‘bad arms’.

Sister Margaret said sharply to Nell:

‘Know how to syringe an ear? I thought not. Watch me.’

Nell watched.

‘You can do it next time,’ said Sister Margaret. ‘Get the bandage off that boy’s finger, and let him soak it in hot boracic and water till I’m ready for him.’

Nell felt nervous and clumsy. Sister Margaret was paralysing her. Almost immediately, it seemed, Sister was by her side.

‘We haven’t got all day here to do things in,’ she remarked. ‘There, leave it to me. You seem to be all thumbs. Soak the bandages off that kid’s legs. Tepid water.’

Nell got a basin of tepid water and knelt down before the child, a mere mite of three. She was badly burnt, and the bandages had stuck to the tiny legs. Nell sponged and soaked very gently, but the baby screamed. It was a loud long-drawn yell of terror and agony, and it defeated Nell utterly.

She felt suddenly sick and faint. She couldn’t do this work – she simply couldn’t do it. She drew back, and as she did so she glanced up to find Sister Margaret watching her, a gleam of malicious pleasure showing in her eye.

‘I thought you couldn’t stick it,’ that eye said.

It rallied Nell as nothing else would have done. She bent her head, and setting her teeth, went on with her job, trying to avert her mind from the child’s shrieks. It was done at last, and Nell stood up, white and trembling and feeling deathly sick.

Sister Margaret came along. She seemed disappointed.

‘Oh, you’ve done it,’ she said. She spoke to the child’s mother. ‘I’d be a bit more careful how you let the child get at the kettle in future, Mrs Somers,’ she said.

Mrs Somers complained that you couldn’t be everywhere at once.

Nell was ordered off to foment a poisoned finger. Next, she assisted Sister to syringe the ulcerated leg, and after that stood by while a young doctor extracted the needle from the girl’s finger. As he probed and cut, the girl winced and shrank and he spoke to her sharply.

‘Keep quiet, can’t you?’

Nell thought: ‘One never sees this side of things. One is only used to a doctor with a bedside manner. “ I’m afraid this will hurt a little. Be as still as you can .”’

The young doctor proceeded to extract a couple of teeth, flinging them carelessly on the floor, then he treated a smashed hand that had just come in from an accident.

It was not, Nell reflected, that he was unskilful. It was the absence of manner that was so disturbing to one’s preconceived ideas. Whatever he did, Sister Margaret accompanied him, tittering in a sycophantic manner at any jokes he was pleased to make. Of Nell he took no notice.

At last the hour was over. Nell was thankful. She said goodbye timidly to Sister Margaret.

‘Like it?’ asked Sister with a demoniac grin.

‘I’m afraid I’m very stupid,’ said Nell.

‘How can you be anything else?’ said Sister Margaret. ‘A lot of amateurs like you Red Cross people. And thinking you know everything on earth. Well, perhaps, you’ll be a little less clumsy next time!’

Such was Nell’s encouraging début at the hospital.

It grew less terrible as time went on, however. Sister Margaret softened, and relaxed her attitude of fierce defensiveness. She even permitted herself to answer questions.

‘You’re not so stuck up as most,’ she allowed graciously.

Nell, in her turn, was impressed by the enormous amount of competent work Sister Margaret managed to put in in a very short time. And she understood a little her soreness on the subject of amateurs.

What struck Nell most was the enormous number of ‘bad legs’ and their prototypes, most of them evidently old friends. She asked Sister Margaret timidly about them.

‘Nothing much to be done about it,’ Sister Margaret replied. ‘Hereditary, most of them. Bad blood. You can’t cure it.’

Another thing that impressed Nell was the uncomplaining heroism of the poor. They came and were treated, suffered great pain, and went off to walk several miles home without a thought.

She saw it too in their homes. She and Mary Cardner had taken over a certain amount of the District Nurse’s round. They washed bedridden old women, tended ‘bad legs’, occasionally washed and tended babies whose mothers were too ill to do anything. The cottages were small, the windows usually hermetically sealed, and the place littered with treasures dear to the hearts of the owners. The stuffiness was often unbearable.

The worst shock was about two weeks after beginning work, when they found a bedridden old man dead in his bed and had to lay him out. But for Mary Cardner’s matter-of-fact cheerfulness, Nell felt she could not have done it.

The District Nurse praised them.

‘You’re good girls. And you’re being a real help.’ They went home glowing with satisfaction. Never in her life had Nell so appreciated a hot bath and a lavish allowance of bath salts.

She had had two postcards from Vernon. Mere scrawls saying he was all right and everything was splendid. She wrote to him every day describing her adventures, trying to make them sound as amusing as possible. He wrote back:

‘Somewhere in France.

‘Darling Nell,

‘I’m all right. Feeling splendidly fit. It’s all a great adventure, but I do long to see you. I do wish you wouldn’t go into these beastly cottages and places and mess about with diseased people. I’m sure you’ll catch something. Why you want to, I can’t think. I’m sure it isn’t necessary. Do give it up.

‘We think mostly about our food out here, and the Tommies think of nothing but their tea. They’ll risk being blown to bits any time for a cup of hot tea. I have to censor their letters. One man always ends “Yours till Hell freezes,” so I’ll say the same. ‘Yours Vernon.’

One morning Nell received a telephone call from Mrs Curtis.

‘There is a vacancy for a ward maid, Mrs Deyre. Afternoon duty. Be at the hospital at two-thirty.’

The Town Hall of Wiltsbury had been turned into a hospital. It was a big new building standing in the cathedral square and overshadowed by the tall spire of the cathedral. A handsome being in uniform with a game leg and medals received her kindly at the front entrance.

‘You’ve come to the wrong door, Missie. Staff through the quartermaster’s stores. Here, the scout will show you the way.’