Connie’s Courage (28 page)

The family had had a simple service at the same church where Mavis and Frank had been married. Amongst the effects sent back to the family there
had been, Mavis had told Connie between her sobs, the wedding photograph which she herself had sent to him.

Connie had forced herself to attend the service, steeling herself for her first meeting with Rosa, but Harry's widow had not been there. Mavis had told her that Rosa's grief was such that her cousin Phyllis had insisted on taking Rosa to live with her, so that she could recover in surroundings that would not constantly remind her of her lost husband.

‘It's official now, Connie, I leave at the end of the week.

‘Are you sure you re doing the right thing?

Both of them, in common with virtually everyone else working at the hospital, were wearing the black armband that indicated a loved one lost to the War.

‘Connie, I don't have any choice, Mavis answered her almost sharply. ‘My poor mother has been so greatly affected by losing Harry. There is that house to run and Great Aunt Martha to be taken care of. There is Sophie as well, and even though Frank has only lost a hand whilst others have been far more badly injured, he is no longer able to work as a police officer.

‘The simplest answer to our problems is for me to give up nursing and for Frank and I to move into the New Brighton house. He can take over and easily manage all the outside work including the garden, whilst I shall be able to relieve Mother and take over nursing Great Aunt Martha.

Connie looked away from her, unable to say what she was truly feeling, which was how alone, and despairing, and even abandoned, she herself felt at the thought of losing her friend.

The pain was, in its own way, as sharp as any she had known. Losing Mavis was like losing her anchor in life. And not just that. She was also Connie's closest link to Harry and her memories of him.

As the misery churned inside her, she felt a resurgence of the old Connie and had a childlike need to beg Mavis not to leave her.

‘It won't change anything for us, Connie,' Mavis told her gently, as though she had guessed what she was thinking. ‘We shall still remain friends.'

‘But you will be in New Brighton, and busy with your new life, whilst I shall be here.'

‘I don't have any choice. Surely you can see that? I have my mother to think of and Sophie and Frank.'

Connie could hear the impatience in Mavis's voice, and suddenly she badly wanted to cry. She had already lost so much, too much, and now she was losing Mavis as well. ‘Couldn't Rosa help your mother, and then you and Frank could move in with his mother …'

Mavis exhaled tiredly, and shook her head. ‘Rosa could not possibly cope, and anyway, as I have just told you, she is living with her cousin. And as for Frank's mother, she has decided to live with her widowed sister. We shall see one another, Connie.

You can come to New Brighton on your days off and you know you will always be welcome.

‘Yes, Connie agreed in a thin, empty voice. ‘But it won't be the same.

‘Nothing can be the same for any of us any more, Connie, Mavis replied bleakly. ‘This War had changed so much. Taken so much!

She felt as desolate as a deserted child, Connie recognised miserably. What was it about her that caused all those she loved to abandon her? Her mother; Ellie her sister; Kieron – even if she had loved him more out of foolish youthful folly than any real emotion or understanding of what love was; Harry. Her heart started to thud painfully, Harry, who she had lost not just once but twice over, and now Mavis.

A dull numbing bleakness filled her. Was she to spend the rest of her life never being truly loved? Truly wanted?

‘Aw for Gawd's sake, why doesn't someone shut him up? Yer mad Jinx, do you know that yer sitting there all bloody day rocking like that, and pretendin' to be a bloody machine gun!'

Connie paused halfway down her ward and frowned at the soldier who had just spoken.

Normally they tried to keep those soldiers who had been mentally affected by what they had experienced, separate from those who had suffered physical injuries. But when Jinx, as the poor man sitting cross-legged on the bed rocking to and fro, was known as, had been admitted, the only free bed they had, had been in her ward. Besides he had suffered a nasty bayonet wound in his back which had still not healed.

Although they were normally a good-natured bunch, it was obvious that some of the men were uncomfortable around Jinx, and none more so than the burly sergeant who was in the next bed.

On two occasions now, she had found Jinx lying on the floor beside his bed, confused and badly
bruised, and on both occasions she had been told he had fallen there himself, but Connie had her suspicions as to how his injuries had been caused.

She felt sorry for Jinx who was a gentle soul, and who she sometimes heard reciting poetry in between bouts of imitating machine-gun fire and the screams of the injured and dying.

For his own sake, it would be better if he was moved to the old mental asylum ward, but as Connie knew it was already full with other men like Jinx – and worse – for whom the War was a torment that would never end.

‘Bloody coward, Connie heard the Sergeant muttering, as she walked past. ‘He's orf his ‘ead. Should have been shot for desertion, not given a bed amongst real soldiers.

‘He's an injured man, Sergeant Bailey, just like you and the other men on this ward, Connie stopped him sharply.

‘No ‘e bloody ain't – anyone can see as how ‘e's got it in his back – and we all know what that means, even if you don t, Sister, the Sergeant answered her angrily.

Connie repressed a sigh. The Sergeant was a brave man, no one could doubt or question that. He had, after all, single-handedly dragged three of his injured comrades one by one through no man's land, rather than leave them there to be picked up by a stretcher party. The other men in the ward tended naturally to follow his lead, but the ward was not the Army, she was in charge
here. And she already had more than enough work to do.

She went over to the Sergeant's bed and looked down at him. ‘I shouldn't really be telling you this, Sergeant,' she said quietly. ‘But I think for both your own, and Jinx's sake, I have to. He received his wound in his back when he threw himself on top of an injured comrade who had already fallen, so that he might protect him. The machine guns he imitates are our own British guns, which he lay listening to for three nights before a stretcher party found them. And the cries and the screams of the dying are those he had to listen to of the men around them, as they waited for help.'

A dull red tide of colour had crept under the Sergeant's skin. ‘If that's the Gawd's ‘onest truth, Sister.'

‘It is,' Connie told him crisply, tensing as she saw the way the Sergeant had turned his head to look at her black armband.

‘Ah, Sister!' she heard Mr Clegg, the senior consultant, addressing her, causing her to turn away from the Sergeant, and automatically hold herself straighter. She cast an admonishing look at the wan-faced junior whose scrubbing brush was not moving as rhythmically and efficiently as it might.

‘We have a new patient.'

Connie frowned. They had new patients every day.

‘One who Mr Raw has had sent especially to us for care.'

Immediately Connie's frown disappeared. Mr Nathan Raw, the Medical Superintendant, was now in charge of a mobile hospital unit at the Front which dealt with those cases deemed too serious to be moved. The whole hospital was intensely proud of the unit and their connection with it.

This would not be the first time that Mr Raw had sent one of his mobile hospital patients on to them and Connie, as befitted a surgical nurse, was immediately curious to know what manner of injuries this one might have sustained. Mere amputations were no longer considered serious enough to merit special treatment, and those suffering from gas poisoning were not sent to the surgical ward.

‘The patient has lost one eye, and the wound has become badly infected, Mr Clegg told her, as though he had read her mind. ‘Captain Forbes's father is a close friend of one of our Governors, and for that reason he has requested that his son be nursed here. Oh, and the family have requested a private room. There was a certain woodenness to Mr Clegg's expression.

Connie was frowning again, and forgot herself so far as to repeat questioningly, ‘A private room? before subsiding into pink-cheeked silence as Mr Clegg looked at her.

‘I know that we don't normally give our patients private rooms, Sister, but I am instructed that we are to treat the Captain as a special case, in view of his family connection with the hospital. Matron has kindly agreed that the Captain might be placed
in the small linen room off your ward. I think we might consider changing his bandages, and getting a closer look at his wound.

‘I ll scrub up immediately, sir, Connie answered him briskly, even though she had just been on the point of leaving the ward for her already delayed evening meal.

The small linen room was used to store bandages and was barely big enough to hold a bed, but somehow Connie managed to position one in it so that there was room for the Second Year to bring in a trolley, and for Connie to stand close enough to Mr Clegg to hand him whatever he might need.

They had seen all manner of wounds since the start of the War, and the Captain's looked by no means as severe as some had been.

He was an extremely good-looking young man, Connie had to admit, as he lay rigid on the bed, refusing to betray any sign of discomfort as she worked to remove the bandages, as quickly and as carefully as she could.

As she did so though, Connie had to clench her stomach muscles against the now familiar stench of rotting flesh. Behind her she heard the nauseous retch of the second-year nurse, who was supposed to be assisting her. The wound was certainly very badly infected.

Whoever had sewn up the Captain's wound was not very good with his needle. Her sister Ellie would have been shocked to see such uneven ugly stitches, Connie reflected, deliberately conjuring
up the safety of such a mundane image as she worked on.

Ten minutes later when Mr Clegg had finished his examination, he motioned to Connie to follow him back onto the ward.

‘The Captain has already lost an eye, Sister, and we shall have to work very hard if we are to ensure that he does not lose his life as well,' he pronounced seriously.

Connie folded her hands across her apron. They were very proud of the fact that here in the hospital they lost so very few patients to septicaemia, unlike some hospitals, but that was when the patient had been operated on here and when they observed very strict cleanliness procedures, as laid down by Florence Nightingale. Those sorts of procedures were a luxury for those working in field hospitals. Connie did not need Mr Clegg to tell her that septicaemia was far easier to prevent than to cure.

‘Have the Captain prepared for the operating theatre, please, Sister. I don't want to lose any time in cleaning out that eye socket. How soon can you have him ready?'

‘As soon as you wish,' Connie answered him calmly.

So much for her supper, and her rest period.

Connie stood in the middle of the ward listening to the various sounds of breathing from her sleeping
patients, interspersed here and there with the more raucous sound of someone snoring.

So far as Connie was concerned, a sleeping ward was a sign of a well-run, orderly ward, where patients had been tended to the best of a nurse's ability, and were not lying awake in their beds, in either pain or distress.

Slowly she walked down the ward. Even their newest patient, a boy of sixteen who had cried piteously for his mother after he had discovered they had had to amputate his feet, was peacefully asleep.

She had reached the end of the ward now, and she hesitated for a second before walking past the door to the Captain's room. It was just over a week since he had arrived, and Mr Clegg believed they had won the battle to stop the infection from his wound spreading.

He was certainly an extremely brave man – off the battle field as well as on it, Connie acknowledged, and a charming one according to everyone who had any dealings with him. Yet for all of that there was something about him that made her feel on edge and wary. Something about the way she had caught him looking at her when he had thought her unaware, a blatant, brutal kind of male scrutiny that raised memories and fears she had thought safely buried. And thanks to her own folly, the Captain knew of her fear.

She had just finished cleaning his wound this morning – a twice-daily ritual that Mr Clegg
trusted only to her – when, before she could move away from his bed, he had reached out and taken hold of her wrist. His thumb caressed her bare flesh with bold intimacy, as he said softly, ‘Your pulse is racing, Sister. Why? Surely you aren't afraid of me?

And as her gaze had been jerked to meet his like that of a puppet on a string, she had known, oh, how she had known, that secretly he was exulting in the thought of her fear. His grip on her wrist had tightened past imprisonment to pain, and then he had slowly let his gaze move insolently over her body making her recoil from its lecherous intent.

It had been the sound of Jinx and his machine-gun fire outside in the ward that had broken his concentration, causing him to swear savagely, and allowing her to pull away.

Whilst the other men practically worshipped Captain Forbes, Jinx was petrified of him. Could only a poor deranged, damaged man, and a woman like her, sense that vile darkness about him; that dangerousness and evil intent?

Certainly the other nurses didn't share her feelings. They were always giggling about how handsome he was, and how gentlemanly his compliments.

Connie couldn't wait for the day when he would be well enough to leave. She had thought she had all but forgotten the horrors of her past; that they were buried deeply and safely out of reach, but now she had started having night terrors in which
Bill Connolly and the Captain were trying to hunt her down.