The others had disappeared by the time Kitty entered the door herself, and she found herself in a dismal reception area two floors high with a black and grey tiled floor and walls painted a colour she couldn’t put a name to, a mixture of putty and green, which she later discovered was referred to as ‘eau de sick’. Although everywhere was very quiet and the only person in sight was a tired-looking young woman in a white shirt and navy-blue tie who was sitting behind a desk, nevertheless the building had an air of occupancy, and Kitty was conscious of the fact that there were perhaps hundreds of people there. At that moment, two nurses came hurrying in and ran quickly up the stairs, their dark cloaks flowing, and she wondered if she would be given a cloak to wear.
The young woman smiled as Kitty approached. ‘Can I help you, love?’
‘I’m looking for Staff Nurse Bellamy.’
‘She’s in the basement, that’s through the door in the corner over there. Turn right when you reach the
bottom
of the stairs and you’ll find her office at the far end of the corridor.’
‘Ta.’
The basement was dimly lit by low-powered electric bulbs. Bottle-green iron doors, all firmly shut, lined the narrow corridor. The final door was open, and in a windowless room more like a prison cell than an office, a frowning nurse wearing a white lawn veil on the back of her head and a pale grey dress which had a little scarlet-trimmed shoulder cape was bending over a desk containing a large chart on which she was writing.
‘Staff Nurse Bellamy?’
The woman looked up, frowning even more deeply. She looked more like a farmer’s wife than a nurse, with a shiny face, red apple cheeks and a little round chin, which all contrasted rather oddly with her cool, regal dress. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded in a loud voice.
‘Kitty Quigley. I’m the new auxiliary nurse.’
‘That’s right, so you are. Well, if you’d like to go in the room next door and find yourself a uniform, I’ll put you to work.’
Kitty struggled for ages with the handle of the door trying to get it open, until an impatient voice shouted, ‘You turn the handle up, not down.’
Once inside the dark room, Kitty groped the walls but was unable to find the light switch. She was close to despair – Nurse Bellamy would think her dead stupid – when something knocked against her forehead, a cord with a knob on the end. She pulled the knob with a trembling hand, praying it wouldn’t bring something down on top of her, and the light came on.
There were uniforms, stacks of them in several different colours on the shelves lining the room. Kitty sorted through a heap of well-starched pale grey frocks until she found one that looked about her size. She hung her coat behind the door, removed her own frock and was buttoning up the grey uniform when an amused
voice
said, ‘You’re only supposed to collect your uniform here, not change into it. And if Staff sees you in that get-up she’ll bust a gut.’
A woman of about fifty was standing in the doorway. She was thin to the point of emaciation, with a deeply lined humorous face. Her brown eyes danced with amusement behind her rimless glasses.
‘I thought I was supposed to wear one the same as hers,’ Kitty stammered.
The woman laughed. ‘Did you now! Here five minutes and you’re already a State Registered Nurse. No, dear, it’s green and white stripes for the likes of you. They’re over there.’ She nodded towards a shelf behind Kitty. ‘The aprons are on the shelf below, along with the caps. Mind you, it wouldn’t have hurt Staff to let you know what you were supposed to wear. She seems to expect everyone to read her mind, then blows her top if we read it wrongly. That said, Bellamy’s okay deep down at heart. Her bark’s ten times worse than her bite.’ She smiled briskly. ‘Here, give me that dress and I’ll fold it whilst you put your own clothes back on. After you’ve collected your serf’s uniform, I’ll show you where to change.’
‘Me serf’s uniform?’
‘You’ll feel like a serf after you’ve been here a while. This hospital is run on a strictly hierarchical system. Right at the top there’s God and the Apostles, in other words, the Chief Medical Officer and his various assistants. Then there’s Red Cross nurses, Queen Alexandra nurses, plain ordinary nurses, SBAs, non-medical staff – mainly Wrens. Right at the very bottom of the shitheap, there’s us, the auxiliaries.’
It was only then Kitty noticed the woman was wearing a green and white striped coarse cotton dress, a long white apron and a white cap consisting of a stiff band with a soft gathered crown over her short, greying-brown hair. She looked quite good-tempered whilst she
spoke
, as if she wasn’t particularly bothered at being regarded as a serf.
‘I’m Harriet, by the way. Harriet Mansell, spinster of this parish. You’re Kathleen Quigley, so I’m told.’
‘Everyone calls me Kitty.’
‘Mansell, Quigley,’ a voice bellowed. ‘What’s going on in there?’
‘Quigley’s just finding a uniform to fit, Staff,’ the woman called back.
‘This is a hospital, not a mannequin parade.’
‘Coming, Staff.’ Harriet Mansell turned to Kitty, who was putting her coat back on. ‘Ready?’
Kitty nodded and was about to leave, when Harriet said, grinning broadly, ‘You’ve forgotten your uniform, which was the whole point of this rather elaborate and useless exercise!’
Nurse Bellamy was still studying her chart when they went in. ‘Has Peterson turned up yet?’ she enquired without looking up.
‘I think I saw her upstairs, Staff,’ Harriet Mansell replied.
‘Really?’ the Staff Nurse said sarcastically. ‘In that case, she’s forgotten to report in.’
‘I’ll remind her when I see her.’
‘You do that, Mansell. Well, you know where to start; the corridors, the sluice room, then the wards. Show Quigley here what to do. She’s taken over from Caldicott.’
‘Rightio, Staff. I’ll keep an eye on her. Come on, Kitty.’
Once they were outside in the corridor, the older woman said, ‘We’ll collect the buckets now, rather than come all the way down again when you’ve changed.’ She led Kitty back along the corridor to a room where there was a large brown earthenware sink at floor level. Two women were already there, each filling a metal pail with water.
‘Morning, ladies,’ Harriet said cheerfully.
‘Morning,’ one replied. The other looked half asleep and didn’t answer. As soon as the pails were nearly full of soapy water, they each collected a mop and shuffled out, yawning.
Harriet put three pails in the sink and sprinkled suds in each. ‘I’ll take two buckets with me, one for Lucy. She’s late again. Staff’s already noticed she’s not here. Poor Lucy has a terrible job getting out in the mornings. Find three decent mops, there’s a good girl. Some are so badly worn they’re useless.’
Kitty sorted through a row of mops which were standing upside down against the wall and selected the best three. Although she said nothing, she felt more than a little dismayed at the idea she was expected to do cleaning. She’d thought she’d be tending to sick and injured sailors by now, though in what way, she wasn’t quite sure.
They struggled up two flights of stairs. Water sloshed over the top of Kitty’s bucket, soaking her leg, so she changed the bucket to her other hand and nearly dropped her cap in. She glanced surreptitiously at her companion to see if she’d noticed, but Harriet was slightly ahead and unaware of the fact the new auxiliary couldn’t even carry a bucket of water without spilling it. When they reached the first floor, Harriet stopped outside a door.
‘This is the auxiliaries’ rest room. Change your clothes and I’ll start on the floors.’
‘You’re not going far, are you?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be right here.’
The rest room was scarcely bigger than a cupboard, a miserable place with a small table underneath the tiny barred window and wooden chairs pushed against the walls. There were several bags on the chairs and a pile of coats hung behind the door.
Kitty quickly got changed, wishing there was a mirror
so
she could see what she looked like in the green and white striped dress and apron. Although she pulled her cap down as far as it would go, it sprang off her wild curly hair immediately she let go. She hung up her coat, rolled her clothes into a ball and left them with her bag on a chair, then went out to find Harriet, who was cleaning the floor outside and hooted when she appeared.
‘That cap looks like a pimple on an elephant’s arse! You’ll never get it to stay on without a hairclip. Have you got one with you?’
Kitty shook her head numbly. She’d scarcely been there a quarter of an hour and so far had done everything wrong. She squirmed with embarrassment, imagining Staff’s reaction if she’d turned up in the wrong uniform. Merely thinking about it seemed to sap every bit of confidence she might have had.
‘I’ll lend you one of mine, but I’d like it back, please. Hairclips are like gold dust these days.’ Harriet removed one of the clips from her cap. ‘We serfs must stick together, eh? On no account must we let the bastards get us down.’
Kitty wasn’t entirely sure if she liked Harriet Mansell, although she was undoubtedly friendly and very helpful. She’d never known a woman swear before, apart from mild words like ‘bloody’ and ‘bugger’ which almost everyone used. She even came out with the occasional ‘damn’ herself, but it seemed odd to hear proper swearwords coming from a respectable middle-aged woman, particularly one who spoke so well, not posh, like Miss Ellis, but in a nice cultured, well-modulated voice. In fact, she wondered what someone so clearly well-educated was doing cleaning hospital floors.
Harriet was regarding her critically. ‘I think you’ll do. At least the cap won’t fall off. Now, we really must get on with some work. We’re already miles behind.’
Just then, a young girl in an auxiliary’s uniform came skidding around the corner, carrying a coat over her arm. She opened the door of the rest room and chucked the coat inside.
‘Harriet, you’ve brought me a bucket! You’re a dead good sort,’ she panted. ‘I felt sure Staff would nab me before I could get upstairs.’
‘Don’t worry, I covered for you. I said I’d already seen you around.’
The newcomer seized a mop, dipped it in a bucket and began to clean the tiled floor where Harriet had left off. She was a plain girl, almost ugly, with an unnaturally narrow face and odd eyes – one seemed to be set at a slightly different angle from the other. There was a yellowing bruise on her right cheek.
‘Me dad came home pissed as a lord last night,’ she explained. ‘I knew there was no way he’d get our Hazel and Benny off to work. I virtually had to drag the pair of them out of bed, else they’d have still been there by midday.’ She suddenly became aware of Kitty’s presence. ‘Oh, hello,’ she smiled. ‘You’re new, aren’t you? I’m Lucy Peterson, the worst nurse in the world.’
‘I’m Kitty Quigley. You won’t be the worst nurse now I’ve started. I’ve done nothing right so far.’ Kitty wet her mop and began to dab at the floor, and Harriet did the same as they talked.
‘Well, this isn’t exactly an efficient use of labour, three of us cleaning the same little bit of floor,’ Harriet said crisply. ‘You stay here, Kitty, Lucy, you take the far end, and I’ll do the corridors leading to the wards.’
‘Do we have to do the whole hospital?’ asked Kitty. If so, they’d be cleaning for hours.
‘No, just this floor. There’s four auxiliaries on each level. Watkins, the fourth, is helping with the breakfasts.’
The hospital was gradually coming to life. As Kitty mopped and dried the floor, more nurses appeared, most
of
whom totally ignored her and left footprints all over the wet tiles which meant she had to do them again. She could hear dishes rattling and the smell of food being prepared. A young man in a short white coat came walking towards her, whom she assumed must be a doctor.
‘I hope you don’t mind if I spoil your nice clean floor, but I have to go downstairs,’ he said jovially.
Kitty wondered what his reaction would be if she said she did mind. ‘Of course not,’ she mumbled.
‘Are you new here?’
‘I only started this morning.’
‘Finding it all a bit strange, I suppose.’
‘A bit,’ Kitty whispered.
‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ he assured her.
Will I, wondered Kitty after he’d gone and she wiped away the marks left on the tiles. I hate the building, for one thing, it’s every bit as horrible inside as it is out, dead gloomy. The bare red-painted bulbs in the high ceiling cast a ghostly light over the sickly-coloured walls. A weak sun was beginning to glimmer around the edges of the black blinds on the narrow windows. A nurse, scarcely out of her teens, emerged from a room further along the corridor and said irritably, ‘Why on earth don’t you pull the blinds up?’
‘I didn’t know I was supposed to,’ Kitty stammered.
‘For God’s sake, girl, if you see anything that needs doing, just do it!’
Kitty abandoned the floor and began to struggle with the blinds, feeling as if she’d never get the hang of things. Why hadn’t she asked Miss Ellis if she could work in a factory? Eileen Costello had really enjoyed working at Dunnings in Melling, and Kitty would like to bet she’d never felt like a serf.
She’d only managed to pull one blind up, with some difficulty, and was trying to untangle the cord of the second, when Harriet Mansell appeared with her bucket
and
mop. ‘You’ve done a lot,’ she said sarcastically. ‘You’re scarcely any further than when I left.’
‘People kept walking on it and I had to clean it again, then I was told to pull the blinds up and I’ve got this cord in a ravel.’ Kitty was close to tears. To think she’d been longing to work for years, yet at that moment, she would have given anything to be home with her dad.
Harriet, though, looked entirely unperturbed. ‘As long as you clean yesterday’s dirt, it doesn’t matter about today’s. You’d be cleaning the floor till kingdom come if you worried about fresh marks. As to the blinds, leave them, that’s the porter’s job. He’s the only one who can do them without getting the cords all tangled up. You help Lucy in the sluice room, and I’ll finish the floor.’
As Kitty picked up her bucket and began to hurry away, Harriet said, ‘Before you go, don’t you think it might be a good idea if I told you where the sluice room is?’