Chapter Two

More Information about Sister Kilbride

That information should have surprised me but it didn’t when I remembered how Sister Kilbride had seemingly ignored me all the time we were in her ward.

The Matron looked intently into my face as she lent forward in her chair, but I had nothing more to say and then she suggested that I should go to the A&E ward the following Thursday as they were short of nurses there and she thought as I had done ‘a little medical work’ in university that I might know something of what was going on with the patients who came in there with accidents, etc. and I was about to leave her office when she called after me.

“Can you tell the other nurses not to expect Sister Kilbride for some time to come as she is pregnant.” That news did surprise me and I started to think of the German who thought she was too much to handle when I wished I could have swallowed my thoughts and allowed them to die as the Matron continued with her observations...

“Sister Kilbride is getting a divorce as her husband doesn’t want children. Close the door as you leave please...” I was stunned by that latest news and felt very sorry for Sister Kilbride, however, I had no intention of giving that information to any of the nurse I had met on the Male ward of St. Bernard’s where I had strange feelings of personal sorrow for the unhappy Sister and found it hard to dismiss her problems from my mind. I had never had a ‘girlfriend’ in Germany and had been too busy in university to have time for romance, but Sister Kilbride would not leave my mind. The women I had met in my war experiences were either very butch type who were more interested in guns and bullets and I felt no man could be truly attracted to that type, but then again, I suppose it takes all types, but I was left very cold and probably too interested in my medical knowledge at the university to think of romance. With Sister Kilbride, I don’t think it was ‘love thoughts’ or anything at all romantic. It was just one human being having understanding for the plight of another and I know all the thoughts I had of her when she was in charge of the Male Ward, were anything but ‘human understanding’ but it all seemed so different now. It was as though I had personally lost something or someone in my life that had meant more to me than I had previously imagined. Nurse Moore had visited the A&E ward several times when I was working there and I think she had some idea that WE might become friends... or more, but I had no feelings for Hannah Moore. She was a nice girl and a good nurse, but she could never have replaced Sister Kilbride... It was some time later in June of 1921 when I was in my twenty-sixth year and I had been working in the A&E ward at Bernard’s where I had been able to show something of my university training where I had sutured quite a few cuts and gashes that the nurses were either afraid or nervous to do, but it was what I had to do during the war years with the German troops and we prisoners from Germany were being allowed to move more freely in the town of Inverness as time went on... One afternoon whilst visiting a nearby café with a few of my prisoner mates... I bumped into Sister Kilbride. Well, I didn’t actually BUMP into her but she was sitting at a table in the same café as I was and I could not believe my eyes that it was the lady I had worked with for such a time. I was reminded of her distant attitude when I tried to be friendly and I wondered if she had changed.

My friends who were drinking coffee in the same café started to whistle when they saw me staring at my female friend and assumed I must have had some close relationship with this lady, but she rose from where she was sitting at the table and walked past me pushing a pram and I was sure it was she as she past so near to where I was sitting. I jumped up and walked towards her and she stopped walking.

“It is so lovely to see you again,” I said for something better in which to reintroduce myself as I did not want her to know of the Matron’s conversation with me, but she looked ahead as if she did not recognise me and I put my hand on the pram, “Sister Kilbride,” I called out but in a quiet voice and she looked at me in a strange way.

“I think you have made a mistake young man,” she said, “If you don’t mind I would like to move away and for you to remove your dirty hands from my pram,” but I was SURE that the lady I had seen was indeed Sister Kilbride and I called out her name so that she would know that I knew her, but again she looked at me blankly.

“You have made a mistake,” she said and looked at me angrily, “My name is not Kilbride. Why don’t you go back to your own country where you belong?”

I was totally taken aback and could only apologies as I stood aside and let her move on with her pram as I went back to join my friends from the Home, but they kept on whistling and making rude remarks, suggesting that she was a lovely bit of skirt and other similar suggestions, but I sat in silence, afraid that I had made a very serious mistake which baffled me. I watched the lady with the pram until she had gone from my sight, but I was totally confused. There was nothing more I could do and there was no way that I could ever prove to myself or to anyone else that I had spoken to Sister Kilbride. All I could ask myself softly was HOW DID SHE KNOW I WAS FROM GERMANY as I had lost most of my German accent for one thing and for another, if she had never met me before and was convinced I had made a mistake, how could she be so sure that it was I who had made a mistake?

Two of my friends asked me to introduce them to her but I had gone deaf to their requests, as another guest started to swear and tell us that all women were bastards and that they used men to get what they wanted, Bloody cows, the lot of them... he screamed and banged the table but I shook my head and simply just wanted to get back to the Home and get my head down.

I might as well have said goodbye to sleep that evening as I lay awake thinking all the time... of the lady who did not know her name and I had a vision of my brother Eric, telling me to grab her by the... what seemed to be horns in my mind, but I knew that ladies did not have horns.