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

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СКАЧАТЬ his big, wide eyes looking straight up at me. I thought I’d been well prepared, but as soon as I removed the cloth the smell was so bad that it caught at the back of my throat, choking me. I held my breath to stop myself being sick. Soap, it seemed, only reached so far and didn’t cut through goose fat.

      Now we were working on the wards, my fellow student nurses and I had transferred from the college house to the nurses’ home, where we slept in between shifts. The nurses’ home was situated inside the hospital grounds, a stone’s throw from the police college. It was down the road and housed lots of nice trainee police officers. Our official curfew time was 10 p.m., but we often broke the rule, returning an hour or two later. To get around this, I made friends with nurses who had a bedroom on the ground floor. As a group, we’d plan whose turn it was to leave their window open so that we could sneak back in through it. However, on one occasion it was so dark outside that all the windows looked exactly the same. I climbed in and fell on a poor unsuspecting nurse slumbering soundly in her bed. She screamed so loud that she woke up the entire block. Thankfully I was lithe and fast on my feet, so I was able to run to my room before anyone realised I was the intruder.

      The casualty department was where I first fell in love. Shy and inexperienced, I became smitten with a male nurse called Stanley. He was almost ten years older than me, in his late twenties, but to me, a girl of 17, he was the height of male sophistication. Tall and with smouldering film-star looks, Stanley was so kind to me, and when he bought me flowers one day I was so thrilled I thought I would burst with joy. Afterwards, every time I cut my finger or felt a fishbone stick slightly inside my throat, I ran straight to the casualty department to seek immediate medical attention from the lovely Stanley. There was only one fly in the ointment: Stanley was homosexual. But I was young and naïve, and I’d never heard of a man being homosexual, so I was totally stumped as to why he didn’t consider me in the same way. It was down to the lovely Sister le Fleur to set me straight and let me down gently. She quietly informed me that, sadly, Stanley’s intentions were entirely honourable, and I had mistaken his friendship for love.

      ‘You’re just not his type, Nurse Smith,’ she sighed, patting me kindly on the shoulder.

      ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, hurt and a little confused.

      ‘It’s Stanley. He doesn’t go for girls. He’s homosexual, so I’m afraid you are wasting your time.’

      The news hit me like a sharp slap across the face. I was heartbroken, but I realised that, even with all the will in the world, Stanley and I would never be more than just good friends.

      Stanley and the other male nurses were very protective of us young female nurses. One evening, I’d worked a particularly long and gruelling night shift when I was overcome with exhaustion.

      ‘Why don’t you go and have a kip?’ another nurse, called David, suggested.

      ‘But where?’ I sighed. I was terrified Matron would catch me sleeping on the job.

      ‘There’s a side room, just down the corridor,’ he said, pointing over to it. ‘There’s a bed in it. Go on, I’ll wake you up in an hour if we get busy.’

      I was so tired from standing on my feet for hours on end that I did as he said. I shut the door behind me, pulled back the covers and climbed into bed, where I fell into a deep sleep. I’d only been snoozing for a matter of minutes when David came bursting back in through the door.

      ‘Joan, Joan, wake up!’ His voice sounded panicked and urgent.

      Bleary eyed, I sat up and stretched my arms above my head.

      ‘Has it been an hour already?’ I yawned.

      ‘No!’ David gasped as he proceeded to unceremoniously drag me out of the room with my legs trailing along the floor behind me. I looked up at him because, for a split second, I thought he’d gone completely mad! I was about to protest when he plonked me down and ran back to close the door.

      ‘David, what on earth’s going on?’

      ‘It’s the room,’ he explained, trying to catch his breath. ‘It’s being fumigated. I’ve only just found out. They’re burning some cones in there, but you must’ve been so tired that you didn’t notice. As soon as I heard, I ran in to get you. Sorry, Joan, I didn’t know, otherwise I wouldn’t have told you to go in there.’

      It transpired that the fumes had been highly toxic, and if David hadn’t come to rescue me when he did I would have died in that bed. The whole episode shook me, and it made me think about my life, my family and my mum. I wondered what she looked like after all these years. Had she changed? Did she still have the same distinctive red hair? Would she even recognise me? Did she miss us or think of us as often as I thought of her? All these questions and many more burned inside me. They’d always been there, waiting, but now I was older I felt more able and prepared to meet with her to try to understand why she’d left us behind. I desperately wanted to make contact, but I was worried about Dad. I knew it’d hurt him because he’d see it as a betrayal. But then I thought of Elsie ruling the roost. In many ways I’d already lost him because I was unable to go back home. I felt rootless – as though I had no home. I wanted, no, I needed to see Mum, to know that I was still loved. I was fast approaching 18 years of age, and it’d been five long years since I’d last seen her.

      A week or so later, I picked up a pen and wrote directly to my Uncle Albert to ask if he had an address. He passed my letter on to a lady, who turned out to be Mum’s boyfriend’s mother. She in turn gave my note to Mum. Weeks passed, so I presumed my request had fallen on deaf ears. I felt quite emotional because I missed my family, but I couldn’t afford to hand over a month’s wages for a weekend visit and I hated Elsie with a passion, so I was beginning to feel pretty desperate. To my complete shock and surprise, Mum not only replied, she even invited me down to London. As I boarded the train I felt a little apprehensive, but also a little excited because I knew this journey would change my life. Although it’d been years, the time melted away as soon as I spotted her walking towards me through steam billowing from the train along the platform at King’s Cross station. She was still as petite as I remembered, and her hair was auburn, just like mine. In fact, standing there on the crowded platform, we could’ve been sisters.

      ‘Hello, Mum,’ I said as I instinctively held my arms out to greet her.

      ‘You’re the last person I expected to forgive me,’ she admitted, before falling into my arms. As soon as we embraced I knew that I’d done the right thing.

      We travelled back to her flat in Shepherd’s Bush, where I met her boyfriend, Bill, who was a London bus driver. I liked Bill immediately. He was a lovely bloke and totally the right man for my mother. Ironically, Mum worked at a hospital, but as a kitchen assistant, in Roehampton. She also cleaned houses for the ladies of society, and used her previous skills as a barmaid to help organise cocktail parties. Mum was beautiful, bubbly and popular with everyone. I stayed there for a week, and when she suggested that I move to London permanently, my mind was already made up. I wrote to the General Nursing Council and transferred from Huddersfield to Hammersmith Hospital in London. I was told I’d start at the beginning of the next training year, so I moved into the London nurses’ accommodation on New Year’s Eve, 1950. It was miserable spending New Year’s Eve alone but the hospital required that I sleep in the nurses’ quarters the night before my first shift. I didn’t mind because I knew it would be the beginning of a whole new life.

      My snap decision to move from one end of the country to the other had left my father devastated because he felt I’d chosen Mum over him, but it wasn’t that at all. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to explain, so I went to see him before I left Yorkshire to break the news to him СКАЧАТЬ