At the Coalface: The memoir of a pit nurse. Veronica Clark

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СКАЧАТЬ back to Huddersfield. The rain pattered softly against the glass of the window, mirroring how I felt inside – both tearful and miserable. I stared at my reflection, trying my best not to cry. The bus slowly wound its way out of Doncaster, leaving my home far behind, and I returned to college where I threw myself into my studies. If I couldn’t afford to go home then I’d use my time wisely and try to become the best nurse I could. Thankfully, my housemates were a joy to live with, and slowly, as each month passed, we learned the basics of nursing. One day, we decided we needed to get fit so we got up extra early, donned our shorts and went for a brisk run around the park. Feeling totally invigorated, we decided to run another circuit, and then another, until we’d jogged around constantly for two hours. We returned to the house en masse, where we washed, ate breakfast and got ready for our day’s lectures. But we were so shattered by the run that we promptly fell asleep in the first lecture. The teacher was puzzled and asked why her class were so sleepy.

      ‘We were trying to get fit, Miss,’ a voice called from the back of the room.

      The teacher looked across a dozen sets of bleary eyes as we began to yawn in unison.

      ‘Well, it didn’t seem to work, girls, did it?’

      The following morning, I ached so much that I thought I’d broken something. My legs were too stiff at the knee to bend. I spent the rest of the day walking around like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. After that, I decided that if I wanted to get fit then I’d have to do it in moderation, not all at once.

      Our year-long pre-nursing studies were essentially split into an introduction course and three blocks of learning: three months in the hospital kitchen learning how to cook and prepare ‘invalid food’; three in the laundry, washing the dirty and bloodied sheets; and the final three with Home Sister, learning how to thoroughly clean the house to her incredibly high standards. Looking back, it sounds extreme, but it served a purpose, because by the time we’d finished we all had the same impeccably high standards. But it wasn’t all work – far from it. It was also lots of fun. One day, we were kicking our heels after lectures when I decided to play a practical joke on the Sister in charge who, despite the house being huge, slept in a bedroom on the ground floor next to the main entrance. This was to ensure her young trainee nurses didn’t leave or return at ‘inappropriate hours’. There was a medical skeleton in the classroom, so I removed the skull, looped a piece of string around a bolt fastened on the top, unravelled the string and dangled it out of my bedroom window, which was situated directly above Sister’s. I carefully lowered the skull until it was in line with her window. My friends stifled a giggle as I began to swing it to and fro like a pendulum. When it had gained enough momentum I swung it forward so that it tapped lightly against her windowpane.

      TAP. TAP. TAP.

      By now my mates were killing themselves laughing, so much so that they had tears streaming down their faces. Moments later, the sash window scraped open as Sister popped her head out and came face to face with the dangling skull. But she didn’t scream; instead she craned her neck upwards and caught me holding onto the other end of the string.

      ‘Hello, Sister.’ I smiled weakly before pulling the skull up as fast as I could.

      Thankfully she had a great sense of humour.

      ‘Nurse Smith, you will be the death of me, I swear!’ she said, laughing, as she popped her head back inside and closed her bedroom window.

      From then on I became known as the joker of the house.

      A few days later, Sister stopped me on the stairs.

      ‘Nurse Smith,’ she called. I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to face her, wondering what on earth I’d done wrong.

      ‘I always know when you’re on cleaning duties,’ she sighed, tapping her foot against the step.

      My mind raced. Maybe my idea of cleanliness wasn’t up to her high standards?

      I cleared my throat and spoke. ‘Why, Sister?’

      ‘Because you always make a clatter, dropping the hand brush down the stairs whenever you do it!’ A smirk spread across her face and I watched as she turned and continued down the stairs. I could still hear her giggling away to herself as she walked into her bedroom and closed the door. I laughed too because I knew it was true – I loved the idea of being a nurse but sometimes I tried so hard that it made me clumsy.

      I didn’t want to go home at weekends because I didn’t want to see Elsie, and Dad didn’t rent a telephone then so I couldn’t even call him. Instead, I went back to friends’ houses. My pal Glenys lived close to the moor near Castle Hill, just outside Huddersfield. Glenys’s father was a slaughterhouse man so they were poor and working class, just like me. However, her father also had the broadest Yorkshire accent I’d ever heard in my life. By the end of the weekend, as I gathered my things to leave, he mumbled something I didn’t understand.

      ‘Aht bahn ame,’ he said gruffly.

      I shook my head. I didn’t have a clue what he was saying, so I looked to Glenys for translation.

      ‘He asked when you were going home,’ she explained.

      I looked at him and shook my head. ‘Oh no, I can’t afford it,’ I replied.

      Glenys’s dad shook his head; now it was his turn to look confused.

      Only one girl left the nursing college. She was a sweet enough lass, but she couldn’t keep up. Nursing was such a hands-on job that you had to be physically up to it, as well as mentally. But it did have its perks, namely the respect you got from members of the general public. As a trainee nurse in Huddersfield, I never had to pay a single bus fare. Instead, I was allowed to travel free, and often others would step aside in the queue to let me on the bus first. I valued both my occupation and outdoor uniform – a blue Mackintosh, cornflower-blue dress and black shoes – which I wore with immense pride.

      After a year in training, and with only half a day per week working in the hospital, it was time for us to be let loose on the wards. At first the building had felt massive, but in reality it was just a regular-size town hospital. One of the first wards I worked on was the Ear, Nose and Throat, where children would come in to have their tonsils removed. As soon as they arrived we’d ply them with ice cream because it not only helped ease their sore throats, it also numbed the area. It was a pretty routine op and afterwards the hospital porter would collect the young patient from theatre, carrying them over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift to prevent them from choking on their own blood. The children would usually stay in overnight. It was my job to care for them because I worked the night shift. Many of them were still young, only seven or eight years old, and, in some cases, it’d be their first night away from home, so I tried my best to comfort them throughout the night.

      A month or so later, I was transferred to the casualty department where, because of the proximity of the hospital to the Pennines and the harsh winters there, lots of youngsters suffering from chest infections were admitted. Back in those days, no one had central heating; besides, these were the toughened children of farmers and land workers, so more often than not they’d be admitted wearing a ‘liberty bodice’. The bodices were made out of a thick cotton material with a fleece liner. They would be permanently stitched around the children’s bodies to help them survive the bleak, long winter. Underneath, their skin would be smeared with goose fat to create a disgusting type of body insulation. Most of my time in casualty was spent cutting poorly children out of these liberty bodices so that we could treat them, but inevitably, when the wrappers came off, they stunk to high heaven.

      ‘All СКАЧАТЬ