Chapter Four

A&E Turned Maternity

I worked tirelessly in the A&E department and was given more responsibility than I ever thought possible. One young woman came in pregnant and started telling me her symptoms and what she wanted me to do for her, not realizing that I was only a caring male nurse and not a doctor. I looked around for someone to help but before I could find anyone, the patient was lying back on the bed and there was nothing more I could do but assist with the birth.. A little boy came out to greet me from the womb and I cut the cord. All was well and there were no difficulties, but I dreaded to think what the Matron would say if she found out and I looked around for Nurses Vickery and Moore but they had gone on a tea break and when they did come back, the lady who had just given birth congratulated me on my actions and told the nurses that I was wasted in the A&E department and should be moved to the maternity.

Day passed day and the prisoners of war from the Home were told that there would be a good chance that they would be allowed back into Germany very soon as a new government was meeting in Berlin, but strange though it may seem, I wasn’t interested in returning to Germany and in my mind I hoped to remain at work in St. Bernard’s hospital and make another visit to 56 Billington Crescent... as soon as possible...

When another of my half days off from the hospital came in about three weeks after my last one, as I had hardly left the hospital on the last couple of free days I had, I decided to go into Inverness again and hope that perhaps a certain lady would be in the café where I last saw her and sure enough, she was. Whether that was a chance meeting of fate or just something that I should recognise and accept as something from heaven, I will never know, but my approach was a little different on this occasion. I saw her sitting at the same table where I had seen her last and I hoped she might look across, but she kept looking into the pram and talking to her baby. I looked again until she changed her manner and in a second, I knew I had caught her eye.

She smiled, which surprised me and I smiled back and then I moved nearer to where she was sitting and started to look into the pram to tell her how lovely I thought the little baby to be and this gave her more pleasure as I felt it might. After which I thought it might be a good idea to ask her if she would like to come with me for a walk, as I thought the countryside outside Inverness was rather beautiful and reminded me very much of my own country Germany where we had such lovely forest, very much like Inverness. Happily, Anna thought that might be a good idea and I offered to push the pram which brought another broad smile to her face.

We walked for some time in silence and I was hoping for something to say when she took the issue and started to tell me how happy she had been on her wedding day as her then husband, Frank had been so attentive and told her how lovely she looked in her beautiful white wedding dress with her magnificent bouquet of white roses, but then she stopped and pulled a face, telling me that she could not understand how happy she could be one minute and utterly miserable the next... all because of the way her husband had treated her.

“He came home to dinner one day and told me that he was leaving me as he didn’t want us to have a baby together and that he was in love with someone else.”, she said in a sombre voice and I squeezed her hand gently and told her how sorry I was for her.

She then told me that it was really no surprise that he should say something like that as she had been suspicious for some time that there was another woman in his life as several times when she answered the telephone a woman started to speak and then cut off suddenly. It happened so many times that on one occasion she asked the lady who she was and was surprised at the answer she received. “My name is Holly, but who are you?”

It was at this point, she realized that her husband had never told this woman that he was married, but he was an idiot to have given her his telephone number... unless of course, she was the type of woman who would go to any length to get what information she wanted on a man that she thought was in love with her.

Anna and I talked together for quite some time, discussing the weather and how the wind had suddenly blown up and that we should soon be getting back to the café and Anna asked about the prison camp. I told her it was a typical male Home where every man wished he was with his wife or his sweetheart except for the very few who thought they would be happiest with another male companion..

Anna smiled at this and we stopped talking and stood still for a little while.

It was at this point that Anna invited me home to her house for tea and I could have walked on air as we set off for 56 Billington Crescent.

I met Anna Scot many times in the next few months whenever I was free from hospital duties and in that time, I knew that we were getting closer as time went by and most of the German prisoners who were with me in the Home had gone back to Germany and I presumed had been able to restart their lives again with family commitments. Only Joshua, an old mate of mine from my army days did not want to return to Germany and his reason was also divorce. He had been married for fourteen years and had two children and yet his wife had written to him to tell him that she was leaving him FOR ANOTHER WOMAN... and Josh cried on my shoulder for hours... I had hopes of staying In Inverness with Anna as my wife and with the possibility of having a family together and with this thought at the back of my mind, I decided I would go back to Billington Crescent and make my proposal, feeling that the future would be secure for both of us but particularly for Anna.

I had been assured by the Matron and hospital management at St. Bernard’s that I would be able to take up more responsibility for my work which was still regarded as a ‘Nursing Orderley’ and return to my university studies in medicine in Scotland.

I knocked on the door at 56 Billington Crescent with my large bunch of red roses only to be met by Anna’s mother who stood with one foot in the doorway as if she didn’t want me to enter.

“May I speak to Anna please?” I asked but my request was met with a scowl.

“She doesn’t live here anymore and why do you want to see her?”

I was rather surprised at the attitude of Anna’s mother as she had met me before and her attitude then was quite amiable, but before I could say another word, she snapped at me again .

“I don’t know what you want, but I think you have been here before, haven’t you?”

Again I was taken by surprise and asked again if I could see Anna, but her mother tightened her lips before she told me that if I wanted to see Anna, I would have to go Glasgow as she had moved to an area in that place, “You must realize that she does not want to be pestered by any young man as she has been married before and that never worked out, so will you please go away and leave us alone.”

I was about to speak again when she slammed the door in my face, but within a second she appeared again.

“You have an accent, haven’t you? Where do you come from?” she shouted and when I told her I was a German, she looked shocked .

“Oh my God,“ she screamed and slammed the door again.

When I returned to the hospital, I met Nurse Vickery and I asked her if she knew anything of Anna’s move to Glasgow, but she shook her head and continued to chew her gum. Nurse Moor was the same. Nobody knew anything and I knew I would have to return to Billington Crescent and brave the battle that I knew would go on there, but I had to know where Anna was living in Glasgow and if necessary I would go to visit here there.

When I did arrive at Billingon Crescent, again I could see a face looking at me from the bedroom window upstairs and after a few seconds the curtains dropped and a voice screamed at me from inside the front door. “Clear off... We don’t want no bleedin’ Germans here.”

I hung my had as if in shame for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I was a German from birth and I could never ever change that now. I returned to the hospital in defeat and thought there was never a chance that I would ever see Anna Scot again and I had decided a few years later that I was wasting my time in waiting when the task was impossible and I decided I would be best to return to Germany, but I had already done a full year’s revision course at the university in Inverness. Life was becoming so complicated and I felt I would be a ‘nursing orderley’ all my life and that becoming a doctor was an impossible dream, when one day in 1927 when I was buying a medical book from a bookshop in town. I bumped into Nurse Moore. She told me that she had hoped to be married by this time but that the bridegroom had vanished into thin air and she was fortunate that at least she wasn’t like Anna Scot who became pregnant BEFORE THE EVENT...

I took Hannah Moore for a coffee and explained to her the importance of such a café in which we were sitting and she laughed, but she had recently bought an old Austin car, thinking it would be suitable if she was going on a honeymoon but now with her disappointment, she suggested I should take the car if I could do what she couldn’t now do and I was pleased even if I did not know how to drive.

Hannah Moore suggested I could learn and insisted in giving me the car; a present as a possible “wedding present” assuming I was still anxious to be with Anna Scot, I still had hopes, but they were very far way.

“So you are still living in hopes,” she said and giggled as she spoke, “So there’s no chance for little old me then,” she went on and it was my chance to giggle when I told her there was not a chance in hell... I am afraid... She shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows before she spoke again.

“You are living in yesterday’s world... Haven’t you heard or even seen Anna Scot lately when she is living right here in Inverness.”

I gulped my coffee and nearly choked.

“What do you mean, have you seen Anna lately... here in Inverness?” I screamed and Hannah Moore laughed again.

“She is in Inverness, you silly boy. I saw her only last Friday, but she had bad news, I am afraid.”

I sat in silence for a moment thinking that perhaps Ann Scott had met someone in Glasgow and the marriage problem had hit her again, but Hannah Moore put her hand on my knee.

“She has lost her little baby boy. He died of jaundice a little while ago and that is why she has come back to Inverness. “He was only two or three years of age, I think.”

In that moment, I panicked and asked Moore if Anna had returned to her address with her mother and sister in Billington Crescent and she nodded. “I suppose so as there would be no place else to go, would there.” I immediately, if somewhat rudely jumped from the coffee table and ran out into the street and within half an hour I was banging at the front door of 56 Billington and demanding to see Anna, but all I could hear was a loud voice telling me to clear off as no Germans were welcome at that address, but as soon as the voice had spoken, the door opened and I was face to face with the woman I loved do much.