The Pull of the Stars(30)

Go on, you’ll do.

She sped off.

An odd creature, this Bridie Sweeney, but such a natural at ward work.

Silence spread.

My apron was stained and spattered with blood; I changed it for a new one. I smoothed it down over my flat belly, which let out a gurgle. The shift went on, and so did I.

Delia Garrett blinked, coming back to consciousness. She heaved onto her side—

I grabbed a basin and a cloth from the shelf and ran over in time to catch most of what dribbled out.

When she’d stopped retching, I wiped her mouth. That’s common after chloroform, Mrs. Garrett. You’re just cleaning yourself out.

I could see the memory hit her like a fist. Eyes roaming. Where’s she—what have you done with her?

Was she wishing she’d looked at her daughter’s face? I felt bad that I hadn’t urged it. But what if she’d been even more upset by the sight of those blackening lips?

I told her, She’s gone to the Angels’ Plot.

Hoarsely: What?

That’s what they call the special place in the cemetery.

(How to describe a mass grave?)

I improvised: It’s lovely. Grass and flowers.

Delia Garrett’s round cheeks were carved with salty lines. What am I going to tell Bill?

Someone will have phoned your husband and explained.

(As if such a thing admitted of explanation.)

I used the cloth to wipe up the spatters of sick. Let’s get you sitting up. Come on, now, Mrs. Garrett, it’s better for you.

I didn’t want to spell out that sitting up was necessary for her uterus to drain. I had to almost drag her up against the pillows.

Her heart rate and pulse force were down to normal; her blood was moving as it should now that her body had shed its small burden. I checked her pad; the bleeding was very light. All Delia Garrett had wrong with her was a cough and privates torn by her baby’s head. And no baby. Empty-handed.

I feared whiskey might be too hard on her stomach, so I made her a cup of tea, stronger than usual and with three sugars for the shock, and put two biscuits in the saucer.

Delia Garrett sipped the tea, tears running into the corners of her mouth.

I prompted her to eat.

Unseeing, she fumbled for a biscuit.

The ward was quite calm, like a subdued tea party where the conversation had died away.

In the left-hand cot, Ita Noonan kicked out her legs, making me jump. She sat up staring and smacked her lips, wrinkled her nose as if there were a foul smell. Delirium could do that—cause hallucinations of odour as well as of sound and sight.

Thirsty, Mrs. Noonan?

I held out her lidded cup but she didn’t seem to know what it was. When I put it to her lips, she turned her crimson face away. I tried wet cloths on her neck to cool her down; she threw them on the floor and dived down into the bedding. I reached for her wrist to check her pulse, but she withdrew her arm and hid it under her.

A clatter behind as Bridie walked through the door backwards with a loaded tray.

I rushed to clear her a space on the desk.

Two dishes of muddy stew with pale lumps like capsized boats. A mound of defeated cabbage and a mash that smelled like turnip. Marge spread on war bread. Two slices of pie I suspected was rabbit, and a bowl of prunes.

Bridie said, See, there’s even sliced chicken.

It looked jellylike to me, tinned.

Fried fish too!

Then Bridie’s face fell. Though one of the cooks was saying that’s how this flu might have got started.

Through…fish?

She nodded. Ones that ate dead soldiers.

That’s nonsense, Bridie.

Is it, for sure?

I’m one hundred per cent certain, I told her.

The young woman chuckled at that.

What?

You can’t be one hundred per cent certain. Because nobody actually knows where the sickness comes from, do they?

I said in exasperation, Ninety-five per cent, then.

There was a printed sheet underneath the plates, still smeary.

STAY CLEAN, WARM, AND WELL NOURISHED,

BUT FORBEAR TO

USE MORE THAN A FAIR SHARE

OF FUEL AND FOOD.

EARLY TO SLEEP AND KEEP WINDOWS WIDE,

WHILE TAKING CARE TO AVOID DRAUGHTS.

VENTILATION AND SANITATION

WILL BE OUR NATION’S SALVATION.



That paradoxical prescription made my mouth purse; it seemed intended to discomfit either way, whether one turned the gas a little up for health or a little down for economy. Already I felt ashamed every time I caught myself resenting small privations when others had it so much worse. Guilt was the sooty air we breathed these days.

But look at Bridie, on her feet, eating rabbit pie as appreciatively as if she were dining at the Ritz.

I made myself pick up a dish of stew. One spoonful. Another. The Ministry of Food claimed that levels of nutrition had actually improved since the war began because we were eating more vegetables, less sugar. But then I supposed they would say that.

I mentioned to Bridie that before this crisis, we nurses used to get an hour to ourselves in our own dining room.

She marvelled, The full hour?

We’d read the news aloud, knit, sing, even dance to the gramophone.

A hooley!

I said, Well, that’s overstating the case. No drink, and no cigarettes ever, even off shift.

Still, it sounds jolly.