A day or two at home would have been nice; on the other hand, if she went back on the next day and saved her days off, she would be finished before Christmas; she agreed to report for duty the following afternoon, and went to tell her mother, and that astute woman said not another word about Jake but for the rest of the evening discussed plans for Christmas and sent Britannia early to bed. ‘Father will drive you up,’ she said comfortably. ‘You can leave after breakfast and that will give you plenty of time.’
So Britannia retired to her room and unpacked and repacked a smaller case and went to bed, to lie awake and think of Jake and then force her thoughts to the future.
The geriatric wards of St Jude’s weren’t in the main hospital but five minutes’ walk away, down a narrow street made gloomy by the blank walls of warehouses. There wasn’t a tree in sight nor yet a blade of grass, and the annexe itself was an old workhouse, red brick and elaborate at that on the outside and a labyrinth of narrow passages, stone staircases and long wards into which the sun never seemed to shine. And yet the best had been made of a bad job; the walls were distempered in pastel colours, the counterpanes were gay patchwork, there were flowers here and there and sensible easy chairs grouped together round little tables so that those who were able could sit and gossip. To most of them, the place had been home for many months and probably would be for the rest of their lives, and Britannia, eyeing the female wards which were to be her especial care, supposed that it was probably a better home than the solitary bedsitter so many of them occupied. True, they hadn’t their independence any more, and most of them set great store by that, but they had regular food, warmth, company and a little money each week which they could spend when the shop lady came round with her trolley, and some of them, though regrettably few, had families who came to see them.
Britannia took the report from the agency nurse who had been called in to plug the gap and settled down at her desk to read the patients’ notes before she did a round. She had been a little surprised when she arrived at the hospital at lunch time to be asked if she would go on duty immediately, but she hadn’t minded. Having something to do would get through the days and if she had enough work she would be tired enough to sleep. She had been given her old room in the nurses’ home; she didn’t bother to unpack but got straight into uniform, donned her cloak against the cold, and hurried along the miserable little street to the annexe. Sitting at the desk, it seemed to her that she had never been away from the hospital and yet so much had been crowded into those few weeks, and the whole telescoped into the quick journey home again. She thanked heaven silently for understanding parents; a pity she wouldn’t be going home for her days off, but if she saved them up she would be able to leave two days sooner. Eight days, she told herself with false cheerfulness, and buried her pretty head in the pile of notes before her.
She went to see Joan when she got off duty that evening; a very excited Joan, her head full of plans for her wedding, but she paused presently to ask: ‘Why Geriatrics, ducky? Isn’t the ankle up to the rush and scurry of Men’s Surgical? And I had a letter from Mevrouw Veske saying that you would have some wonderful news for me.’ She paused to look at Britannia’s face. ‘But I can see that she’s wrong. Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No, not now, Joan. I’m only on Geriatrics for a week, then I’m leaving.’
‘You’re not getting…no, of course not. It’s that professor, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Now tell me more about your wedding…’
The geriatric wards might have been easy on her ankle, but their occupants made heavy demands on Britannia. They had taken to her at once and most of them saw in her a kind of daughter, there to fulfil their many and several wants; she was also Staff, someone who gave them their pills, saw that they had their treatments and got up in the morning and went to bed in the evening, ate their meals, and twice a day did a round of the wards, stopping to talk to each of them. The nursing was undemanding but heavy and Britannia had a staff of part-time nurses and auxiliaries, but still it was tiring and she was thankful for that; it meant that she slept for a good deal of the night. All the same, the first two days dragged even though she filled her off-duty with Christmas shopping, willing herself not to think of Jake at all. It didn’t work, of course. She thought of him all the time, he was there beside her, behind every door she opened, round every corner, beneath her eyelids when she closed them at night.
On the third morning she went on duty with a headache and the nasty empty feeling induced by too little sleep and too many meals missed, and when she had taken the night nurse’s report the Senior Nursing Officer telephoned to say that the part-time staff nurse who was to do the evening duty wouldn’t be able to come in, and would Britannia mind very much filling in for her. ‘You can save it up and leave half a day sooner,’ said the voice cheerfully, ‘and you should manage an hour’s quiet this afternoon during visiting.’
Britannia thought that very unlikely; visitors liked to talk to Sister, the patients who hadn’t anyone to see them tended to make little demands of her because they felt lonely and left out… She said she didn’t mind and heard the Senior Nursing Officer’s relieved sigh as she put down the receiver.
She realised as soon as she went into the first ward that the day had begun badly; for one thing, it was a grey, cold morning, and despite the gay counterpanes and bright walls, the grey had filtered in, making the patients morose and unwilling to stir from their nice warm beds. Britannia set about the patient task of cheering them up, an exercise which took a great deal of the morning. Luckily it was the consultant’s weekly round, one of the highlights in the old ladies’ week, and they had brightened up considerably by the time Doctor Payne and his houseman arrived. He was a good doctor, nearing retirement; Britannia had had her medical lectures from him when she was in training and he had always been pleasant to the nurses, even when those on night duty had fallen asleep under his very nose, or the brighter ones had asked obvious questions in order to show off. He remembered her at once and observed forthrightly: ‘Staff Nurse Smith—I thought you were a surgical girl. Been ill? You look under the weather.’
‘I’m fine, Doctor Payne, a bit tired, that’s all. I’m filling in a few days before I leave.’
‘Getting married?’ he wanted to know. ‘All the pretty girls get married just as they’re getting useful. Who’s the lucky man?’
‘There isn’t one. I—I just wanted a change of scene.’
Doctor Payne shot her a look, said ‘Um,’ and then: ‘Well, well,’ and coughed. ‘And how are my old ladies?’
She gave him a brief report and they started off. The round took some time, for although most of the patients had nothing dramatic wrong with them they had a variety of tiresome complaints and aches and pains, all of which had to be discussed and if necessary treated. It was time to serve dinners when Doctor Payne had at last finished and after that there were the old ladies to settle for their afternoon rest and then the medicines to give out. Britannia went to her own dinner rather late and ate tepid beef and potatoes and carrots and remembered all the delicious food she had eaten in Jake’s house, so that she rejected the milk pudding offered her and went with the other staff nurses at her table to drink the cup of tea they always managed to squeeze into their dinner break, however short. The talk was all of Christmas, so that she was able to parry the few questions she was asked about her trip to Holland and trail the red herring of Joan’s approaching wedding across her listeners’ path. They broke up presently to go back on duty and Britannia made her solitary way back to the annexe.