‘An accident, you say?’
Gwen nodded, having replaced the telephone receiver with some care. ‘That’s what they said.’ She met the superintendent’s steady gaze.
‘Is there any reason to doubt it?’ Fiona asked.
‘On the face of it, no.’ Gwen drummed her fingers on the back of the chair, where she stood to one side of Fiona’s big desk, allowing the superintendent to come back into her office and deposit yet another armful of files onto the desk’s surface. ‘It’s just something in the way they phrased it – well, you’ll remember …’
Fiona pursed her lips. Both women were aware that some accidents were nothing of the kind. She had overheard enough of Gwen’s side of the phone call to become suspicious.
Suicide, or attempted suicide, was one of the great unmentioned topics, and she automatically shifted a little further from the open window, while Gwen, without prompting, went to close the office door. It was all too easy for anyone passing in the corridor to overhear.
They had encountered the problem once or twice just after the Blitz, but the news had never got out. On those occasions it had featured servicemen returning home with their own firearms. For whatever reasons – and it was not within the nurses’ remit to question why – that handful of young men had ended up turning the weapons on themselves. Rumours briefly flew – a love affair gone wrong, or the loss of everyone left at home, or sheer terror at returning to active duty – but those had been firmly quashed. It would be terrible for general morale if the incidents became widely known. Nobody involved was to talk about it.
Fiona was generally inclined to tell the truth and deal with the consequences, but she had understood the need for stern measures. As long as she didn’t have to lie directly, she had agreed to remain silent. Only Gwen knew, as she had had to be party to some of the paperwork.
Now it looked as if they had another instance. What few details they had pointed to a self-inflicted wound and somehow they would have to ensure the news travelled no further. Officially, it was a case of a weapon misfiring and causing a shot to go wide. The young man in question had missed his heart by great good luck – or possibly not, depending on his current mental state.
‘Who shall we assign to this?’ Gwen wondered. ‘Would it be better if I attended this patient myself?’
Fiona sighed and for a moment was tempted. There was no better nurse than her deputy: technically perfect, up to date on every aspect that could possibly be relevant, least likely to gossip. ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘The very fact of you going to a patient would attract attention and that’s the very thing we do not want. In so many ways you would be the obvious choice but it cannot be. All it would take is one over-zealous neighbour to ask why and the cat would be out of the bag. They’ve worked hard to keep the details quiet while the young man was in hospital, but now he’s been transferred home there’s a risk that news will leak out.’
Gwen sighed in her turn. She loved the practical side of the job, not just the administration, or managing the team of nurses in their charge. She also knew how to keep her mouth shut. ‘Sometimes I feel I’ve turned into nothing but a pen-pusher,’ she breathed, safe in the knowledge that Fiona would not repeat such heresy. ‘Such a complex case, we can’t hand it over to just anybody. I begin to believe my skills are wasted. Sorry,’ she said as she caught sight of her colleague’s face, ‘but you know what I mean.’
Fiona stacked and restacked the top pages of the pile of paper before her. ‘That’s as may be,’ she said, ‘but you know I’m right.’
Gwen shrugged, and sat on the chair she’d been leaning against. ‘I can see your point,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘It’s such a shame though. That poor young man, and his family too – has he family?’
‘I understand that he does. All the more reason for us to proceed with caution. Everyone will be on edge.’ Fiona sat back, her arms behind her head, and gazed at the ceiling. A mark was beginning to appear in the corner, just under the pipes which led to the attic floor bathroom. She’d have to find a plumber somehow – but it would have to wait.
‘We need to approach one of the nurses and quickly. We can’t allow the patient’s condition to worsen.’
‘Very well. Who?’ Gwen sat forward, clasping her hands together on the desktop. ‘Of the younger ones, Ruby’s proved that she’s capable of discretion – look at the case of Pauline and Larry’s mother.’
‘That’s true.’ Fiona acknowledged it with a dip of her chin. ‘Yet this might call for more … more life experience than she currently has. I don’t doubt that her medical expertise is up to scratch, it’s the emotional burden of it – the patient and those around him. It’s not to be underestimated.’
‘Alice?’ Gwen had long admired the steadiness of this nurse.
‘She’s up to her neck in extra work with the school. I don’t want to interrupt that. The poor woman has to sleep sometimes.’
‘You don’t,’ Gwen remarked shortly.
‘I’m paid not to. It comes with the territory,’ Fiona responded briskly. ‘Right, now let’s see what you make of my suggestion. We don’t know her as well as the others, but from our relatively brief acquaintance I would say that Nurse Hawke is well-qualified in every respect for this case. She will have had to handle every aspect of the job and on her own too, in her previous post. What do you say?’
Gwen unclasped her hands and dropped them into her lap. She cocked her head to one side as if in thought. ‘That’s a good idea,’ she said decisively, after a moment. ‘I sense that Iris is made of stern stuff. Shall I call her in?’
‘Yes, no time like the present,’ declared Fiona, swinging herself to her feet. For the new nurse to be described in such a way was praise indeed from her strict deputy.
The end-of-terrace house backed on to the railway lines leading to Liverpool Street, and was no more than a ten-minute walk from the nurses’ home. Iris approached with trepidation, aware of what awaited her, and equally aware that she was not meant to know what was thought to have happened. In some ways it was not her business. The young man in question had a wound and, no matter how he had come by it, it needed treatment.
However, in other ways it was very much her business. Iris knew that some medical experts held the view that bodies were bodies and minds were minds, and what went on in one need not affect the other. She strongly disagreed. She might not have submitted learned papers to the doctors’ journals but years of experience had reinforced her belief that mind and body were linked. Here was the most extreme case; but she knew that if the patient still harboured thoughts of suicide, his recovery would be slow, if he recovered at all.
It could go either way, she reasoned, noting the tidy front of the house: clean windows, curtains tied back, a pot of marigolds by the doorstep. He might feel resentful that he had not succeeded, and look upon her as being in league with those who had saved him. Or he might be relieved to have won another chance at life. The strong likelihood was that she would not discover which was true today, as he was probably still under heavy sedation. All the same, she must make acquaintance with his family.
Taking a deep breath, she knocked at the door with one hand, the other grasping the handle of her Gladstone bag.
A woman of perhaps fifty opened the door, and Iris’s first thought was how respectable she looked: pale rose twinset, modest necklace of small, dark purple beads matching her clip earrings, her greying hair tidily combed back. Then she saw that the woman’s face was almost as grey, with deep lines across her brow and heavy smudges under her eyes. ‘Hello,’ Iris said as cheerfully as she could, ‘Mrs Chalmers? I’m Nurse Hawke.’
The woman looked at her, almost gazing straight through her. Then she seemed to come back to her senses. ‘This way,’ she said abruptly, and climbed the stairs, fitted with a well-brushed cherry-red carpet held in place with gleaming brass rods. Iris followed, noticing the framed portraits on the wall: a couple smiling rigidly for the camera, the same people with a baby held between them, a young boy in a romper suit, the boy in school uniform and then in that of the RAF. She realised that the woman in the pictures was the younger version of the careworn person in front of her. Iris took in a sharp breath at the contrast between the figure proudly holding her baby and how she was now.
‘In here,’ the woman said in a low voice, and pushed open a white-painted door to what must be the second bedroom. It held a double bed, in front of an old-fashioned tiled fireplace, and Iris detected the presence of a woman by the jars of cosmetics on top of the oak chest of drawers, the little pots of cold cream and a dish for jewellery.
The mother caught her looking. ‘Connie’s. My daughter-in-law’s,’ she said briefly, then indicated the bed. ‘Here he is,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘This is Eddie. He won’t speak. The doctor gave him something to make him sleep.’
‘I see.’ Iris moved around to the side of the bed, catching a glimpse of the train lines through the sparkling clean window. She bent down a little. The young man was deathly pale, made all the more startling by his jet-black hair. His eyes were shut, his breathing laboured. The sheet had been thrown back to reveal his tightly bandaged chest and shoulder.
Iris wondered if he would not have been better off remaining in hospital, but that was not her decision to make. ‘Do you know when his dressing was last changed?’ she asked.
The mother rubbed her forehead as if she had no energy to think about the answer.
‘They brought him home earlier this morning,’ she said at last. ‘I think they did it just before he left the hospital. We wanted him home, you see. Got to keep a close eye on him. That’s where we went wrong before,’ she added bitterly, looking away.
Iris bent a little closer, all senses on full alert for a trace of a rotten smell, anything to indicate the wound was unclean. If the dressing was recent she would be better off leaving it in place and returning later. She would do her best to take his TPR, though. Gently, she adjusted the sheet and reached for his wrist.
The mother shot her a look then vanished through the bedroom door, and Iris could hear the muffled footsteps as she went back downstairs. In a way it was simpler; she could go about her business more freely if she wasn’t being watched. This would be a preliminary visit and the real work would begin when the young man regained consciousness. She felt his forehead for signs of fever and was relieved to find none. She took his temperature by placing the thermometer under his armpit, the chilly glass barely disturbing him. He was, as she had expected, heavily sedated.
As she was packing away her equipment, the door opened again and a younger woman came in. Iris supposed this must be the owner of the items on the chest of drawers. ‘Hello,’ she began.
The woman looked as if she might cry, and then she jumped straight in with no social niceties. ‘What have they told you?’ she demanded, her voice shaky. ‘You don’t want to believe all of it, I can tell you.’
Iris wondered what had gone on downstairs while she had been tending her patient. ‘I understand that Eddie’s got a chest wound and has just been discharged from hospital, nothing more than that,’ she said reassuringly. It really would do her patient no good to have his wife breaking down in the same room, no matter how sedated he was.
‘Did they say why?’ The woman’s lower lip trembled and her eyes were red from crying. She dragged a lace-edged handkerchief from her dress pocket. ‘They blame me, don’t they?’
‘Not at all.’ Iris shut her Gladstone bag. She would rather have this conversation elsewhere, if she had to have it in the first place.
‘It’s lies,’ hissed the woman – not much older than a girl, Iris could now see. Twenty at the most. ‘They want to think the worst of me. All because I went out a few times while Eddie was away. I would never do anything to hurt him, never.’
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t.’ Iris held her bag as if ready to go, hoping the woman would get the hint. Then she registered the way the girl stood, the arm around her stomach. There was a curve there, an unmistakable telltale bulge. The girl saw where her gaze had fallen.
‘It’s Eddie’s,’ she insisted at once. ‘He came back on leave, only for one night but that was enough. He didn’t believe me when I told him, then his mother said I’d been going out. She never liked me. I wish we never lived with her, I wish I never set eyes on the old bag!’ She rammed the handkerchief against her mouth to stifle a sob. ‘I swear, it’s Eddie’s! Only she wants to think the worst of me and it’s not true.’
Iris sighed. So that was what lay behind this tragedy. Whatever the truth of it, the young man had taken his mother’s word over his wife’s. No wonder his mother looked so haggard and the young wife so distraught. What a mess.
‘How far along are you?’ Iris asked. The girl’s dress was loose so it was hard to tell.
‘I don’t know, by rights. He was home in the spring. That was the only time we were together and I never been with anyone else, I wouldn’t do that, I’m not that kind of girl. I don’t know why she’s so keen to believe it, and she had no right to tell Eddie. Now look what she’s done! I’d never do anything to hurt him, I love him.’
‘Shhh now.’ Iris knew that nothing would be gained by allowing this distress to continue. ‘We don’t want to wake him. He needs his sleep. That’s the best thing for him. He needs peace and quiet above everything else.’
The girl’s face showed naked fear. ‘He will be all right, won’t he? I got to tell him that he got it wrong. He’s got to be all right, for me and the baby. Otherwise … oh, it’s not worth thinking about.’
‘Then don’t think about it,’ said Iris firmly. ‘You have to be strong, for his sake, and for your baby’s. I shall come back later and check on him again.’
The girl’s expression grew slightly more hopeful. ‘You’ll see that he’s all right, won’t you?’ She reached forward and grasped Iris’s free hand with both of hers. ‘You got to help me. He’s got to be all right.’
Iris took a deep breath. She didn’t want to promise the impossible. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she assured her, ‘as long as you do yours. You must keep as calm as possible because panicking won’t help. Do you see? You must be firm with yourself. No more giving way to tears. There are more important things to think about now.’ She gently withdrew her hand. ‘I must go and write up my report so that the doctor knows how his patient is doing and I’ll be here twice a day until he tells me otherwise. But now, if you don’t mind, I must take my leave.’
After her late-afternoon return visit to the household, Iris wanted nothing more than to creep into her bed and sleep for a week. She had carefully soaked the morning’s dressing and removed it without causing any new bleeding, then managed to apply a new one without disturbing Eddie from his sedation – a feat for which she silently congratulated herself. He had groaned a little but not come round. She could now see the task she was up against; he must have been in hospital for longer than she’d thought, as the wound had begun to heal. That side of the case was a relief.
The hard work to come would be with his family. The atmosphere downstairs, where she’d gone to report on his progress, was thick with recriminations. Iris refused to get drawn in to the argument of any one side and kept matters as brief as possible, knowing she would be back here for many days to come. The mother and daughter-in-law could barely meet each other’s eyes, and the father sat silent in a corner, trying to hide behind his copy of the Daily Express.
Iris escaped as soon as she reasonably could and went to visit the doctor in question so that he could hear her news. She was beginning to have a great respect for Dr Patcham, who in other circumstances would surely have retired by now. His eyes twinkled as he asked if she had any goodies from the victory garden, and she was rather sad to report that she did not. He accepted her account of the patient’s wound and seemed happy that she would be the nurse in charge. ‘Glad to hear you’ve laid the groundwork there,’ he said. ‘The actual physical damage is going to be just the start, I’m afraid.’
‘I know,’ Iris said with feeling, packing away her notes and preparing to get back on her bike once more.
At least it was only a short distance back to Victory Walk and she hoped to be able to stack the old bike in its place in the rack and make her way to her attic room unnoticed. However that was not to be. Through the big window into the common room she could see a crowd of nurses gathering around Mary. Ruby looked out into the yard at that moment and waved her inside. Pasting on a smile, Iris could not easily decline the invitation.
‘Look, Iris! Mary’s finally had a proper letter from Charles.’ Ruby and all the others were taking delight in Mary’s cause for celebration.
‘I have!’ Mary waved it at Iris.
‘Honestly, all that money his parents must have spent on his schooling, you’d have thought they’d have taught him decent handwriting,’ Belinda teased, leaning over her friend, who was ensconced on the biggest sofa.
‘Stop it.’ Mary batted her away. ‘The poor darling probably doesn’t have a decent light to see by. He’ll have done this after a hard day’s work, the poor lamb. He’s allowed to be a little untidy.’ Theatrically she held the sheets of paper to her chest. ‘He’s safe, he’s not been hurt, they’re taking ground all the time, he’ll be in Paris soon! What did I tell you!’
‘Of course,’ smiled Alice, forbearing to mention all Mary’s doubts and panics when the news appeared to suggest the Allied advance was not proceeding as fast as planned.
‘That’s lovely,’ said Iris, trying to summon enthusiasm.
Ruby caught the exhaustion in her voice and tapped the cushion of the seat next to her own. ‘Come and have a sit down, Iris. You’re back very late. What have you been up to?’
Iris kept her smile in place but inside her spirits fell. She must not tell anyone the details of her case, apart from Gwen, Fiona and the doctor. Yet now, in the sanctuary of the big, homely common room, with everyone in such good mood, she felt the temptation to confess all, to share the sadness of that uptight house where the tragedy had occurred. What a relief it would be to compare this with other similar cases her colleagues might have known. Beforehand she had not had this luxury of being part of the team. But at the very moment she needed it most, she was under strict orders to keep her problems to herself. She could not even confide in Alice, with whom she had shared her most personal sorrow.
‘Oh, I had to pop in to see Dr Patcham.’ She struggled to keep it light.
‘Oh, Dr Patcham, what a lovely man.’ Mary loved everyone this evening.
‘He’s an old sweetie,’ Belinda chimed in.
Ruby sat forward in her armchair. ‘I’ll never forget how kind he was to me that time I had to help out with an operation. You wouldn’t believe it, Iris, this little boy had to have his tonsils out on the dining-room table because the hospitals were full. I never thought I could do it, but the doctor helped me manage. And we had the rudest, most miserable anaesthetist possible. I reckon if I did that, I could do anything, and all thanks to him.’
‘Oh, that sounds hard.’ Iris wasn’t sure what to say. Where she’d come from, that was the norm. She’d held patients’ hands through numerous home surgeries.
‘He’s very good like that.’ Bridget joined in to sing the doctor’s praises. ‘Wish we could say the same for all of the others. Though we wouldn’t mind if his old locum came back, would we?’
‘Oh, he’d raise our spirits all right.’
‘Raise temperatures all round, he would.’
‘Pay them no mind, Iris, they always get carried away when they think of Dermot,’ Alice said hurriedly. ‘He’s my friend from back home in Liverpool; we trained at the same hospital.’
‘And he happens to be the best-looking doctor you’re ever likely to see,’ Bridget explained. ‘He could be in the films. A proper tonic, he is, and no mistake.’
‘Oh,’ said Iris, unsure of what to make of this. She found it hard to care one way or the other that there was such a doctor out there somewhere. It was of no immediate use to her, burdened as she was by the case she and Dr Patcham now shared.
‘Sorry, Iris, you’ve only just got in, and listen to us rabbiting on.’ Ruby realised her colleague was worn out. ‘Don’t mind us, you go on up and change.’
‘Well, I think I will.’ Iris rose with relief. ‘Glad you have had good news, Mary.’ She picked up her bag and headed off.
Mary watched her go, a frown troubling her face. ‘Bit of a killjoy, don’t you think?’
Alice tutted. ‘She’s tired, and who can blame her? Look at the time. And she doesn’t even know Charles. You can’t expect her to dance for joy, Mary, but don’t let it spoil the moment for you.’ She kept to herself the knowledge that Iris had suffered such a personal loss.
Mary hugged the precious sheets of paper even more tightly. ‘Oh, I shan’t. This is a cause for celebration. What a shame there’s no champagne. I might break out my special hot chocolate, though.’