I nodded and Nelly did too.
‘Go on then,’ Matron said. ‘Off to the wards please, Nurse Malone and Nurse Watson.’
*
I worked on a women’s ward. It was meant to be a surgical ward, but all bets were off now we were a casualty clearing station and part of the Emergency Medical Service. We were already double the capacity we’d been before the war, and they’d put up huts in the grounds too that were going to be used as more wards. The children’s ward was now where the dining room had once been, and the staff canteen, which had been in the basement was – as Matron had said – now the operating theatre. It had taken some getting used to, and things were still changing. I kept thinking that these nightly raids couldn’t last much longer, but the Luftwaffe didn’t seem like they were giving up. And I was fairly sure the powers that be wouldn’t have made so many changes to the hospital if they were expecting the bombs to stop. That thought made me shiver every time something new was built, or more alterations were made.
‘This war has made them do more for this hospital in ten months than they’d done in the previous ten years,’ Matron was fond of remarking, pointing out the new equipment we had, and the extra staff. Though the fancy new bits and pieces weren’t much use when the electricity went out in a raid and we had to sterilise equipment in a saucepan of water heated on a Primus stove.
It was dark outside already and the windows were covered. I cast an experienced eye around the ward. We had three empty beds, which was unusual.
‘Calm before the storm,’ said another nurse, Phyllis, coming to stand by my shoulder.
And she was right. It wasn’t long before the siren was wailing and we knew our steady evening routine, giving the patients their medication and settling them down for the night, would soon come to an end.
We didn’t move the patients when the siren went. We didn’t have enough room to transfer them all downstairs to the basement – and even if we had, some of them were so poorly they wouldn’t have lasted the trip. Anyone who was able went to the hospital shelter, but our patients were normally too weak. So we just kept going. When the siren went we pushed the beds into the centre of the room, away from the windows even though they were boarded up, just to be on the safe side.
‘Hats please, nurses,’ Matron called, handing out tin helmets just like the ones the ARP wardens wore. Feeling faintly ridiculous, I strapped mine on, making a face at Phyllis as I did so. She grinned back, rapping her knuckles on the top of her head.
The planes were overhead now, and I could sense everyone holding their breath, while we pretended to be normal. Phyllis and I were giving one of our patients a bed bath, and changing her sheets, so we carried on our jovial conversation.
‘I reckon a couple more days and you’ll be back home, Mrs Marsden,’ Phyllis said, raising her voice over the sound of the anti-aircraft guns. ‘What do you reckon, Nurse Watson?’
I reckoned poor Mrs Marsden wasn’t actually a missus, for one thing. She’d got a nasty infection from a backstreet abortion and the ring she wore on her left hand had gone green underneath. But that was none of my business, so I smiled at Phyllis and then at Mrs Marsden.
‘You’ll be up and about in no …’ I breathed in sharply as I heard the whistle of a bomb falling. ‘In no time.’
Mrs Marsden winced as something crashed nearby. ‘You think?’
‘I know,’ I said, gently sponging her face. ‘The infection’s gone.’
She gave me a small smile. ‘That’s good. I like your helmets.’
‘I think they make us look like ARP wardens.’
She chuckled. ‘That’s right.’
Another huge rumble made us all shriek. We were on the ground floor, but the boards beneath our feet shook with the impact.
‘Lord, that was close,’ Phyllis said. ‘Must be aiming for the railway line.’
‘If it’s this bad here, think how it must be in the East End. I can see the smoke hovering over the docks from my bedroom window each morning.’
‘My sister lives in Oxfordshire and she says they can see Coventry burning,’ Mrs Marsden said. ‘It’s miles away but they can see the flames every night.’
‘You should go and stay with her,’ Phyllis told her. ‘Sit up and I’ll do your pillows. Much safer than here.’
‘I think I might,’ Mrs Marsden agreed. She twiddled the ring on her green-tinged finger. ‘Not much point in staying round here.’
In the nurses’ station at the end of the ward, the phone rang and Phyllis and I exchanged a look. We knew that meant more casualties were on the way. Sure enough, Matron called: ‘Nurse Watson? Can you go and meet the ambulance please. Only one for us at the moment.’
‘Will do.’
I left Phyllis looking after Mrs Marsden, and walked down the ward and out into the corridor. The main entrance of the hospital was already in chaos. There were people everywhere in the corridors. Doctors and nurses dashing from ward to ward. Injured people on chairs, looking dazed. Someone crying. And more patients about to arrive. I had no idea where we’d put everyone.
Bracing myself I pushed open the door to the outside and went out into the chilly evening air.
It was pitch-black, of course, but the darkness felt heavy with smoke. Every now and then the sky was lighting up with flashes as bombs exploded in the distance, and there was a redglow to the night air in front of me that I knew meant something, somewhere was burning. There were tall trees around the perimeter of the hospital grounds, and as the sky brightened with the explosions they appeared, silhouetted against the light, and then disappeared.
