was at the other end of the hospital and up another flight of stairs.
So she had arrived late, to encounter Sister Spicer’s basilisk stare.
‘You’re late,’ she was told. ‘Why?’
‘I got lost,’ said Araminta.
‘A ridiculous excuse. Punctuality is something I insist upon on my ward. Have you done any nursing before coming here?’
Araminta explained about the children’s convalescent home, but decided against mentioning her work for the doctor.
Sister Spicer sighed. ‘You will have to catch up with the other students as best you can. I suppose Sister Tutor will do what she can with you. I have no time to mollycoddle you, so you had better learn pretty fast.’
Araminta nodded her head.
‘If you don’t you might as well leave.’
Once upon a time Sister Spicer had probably been a nice person, reflected Araminta. Perhaps she had been crossed in love. Although she could see little to love in the cold handsome face. Poor soul, thought Araminta, and then jumped at Sister Spicer’s voice. ‘Well, go and find staff nurse.’
The ward was in the oldest part of the hospital, long, and lighted by a row of windows along one side, with the beds facing each other down its length occupied by women of all ages. There were two nurses making beds, who took no notice of her. At the far end Staff Nurse, identified by her light blue uniform, was bending over a trolley with another nurse beside her.
She was greeted briefly, told to go and make beds with the nurse, and thrown, as it were, to the lions.
Araminta didn’t like remembering that rest of the morning. She had made beds, carried bedpans, handed round dinners and helped any number of patients in and out of bed, but never, it seemed, quite quickly enough.
‘New, are yer, ducks?’ one old lady had asked, with an alarming wheeze and a tendency to go purple in the face when she coughed. ‘Don’t you mind no one. Always in an ’urry and never no time ter tell yer anything.’
Her dinner hour had been a respite. She had sat at the table with Molly and the other students and they had been sympathetic.
‘It’s because you’re new and no one has had the time to tell you anything. You’re off at six o’clock, aren’t you? And you’ll come to the lectures this afternoon. Two o’clock, mind. Even Sister Spicer can’t stop you.’
She had enjoyed the lectures, although she’d discovered that there was a good deal of catching up to do.
‘You must borrow one of the other students’ books and copy out the lectures I’ve already given,’ Sister Tutor had said. This was an exercise which would take up several days off duty.
‘But it’s what I wanted,’ said Araminta to herself now.
She had to admit by the end of the week that things weren’t quite as she had expected them to be. According to Sister Spicer, she was lazy, slow and wasted far too much time with the patients. There was plenty of work, she had been told, without stopping to find their curlers and carry magazines to and fro, fill water jugs and pause to admire the photos sent from home of children and grandchildren. It was all rather unsatisfactory, and it seemed that she would be on Baxter’s ward for three months…
She longed for her days off, and when they came she was up early and out of the hospital, on her way home as quickly as she could manage. She scooted across the forecourt as fast as her legs could carry her, watched, if she had but known, by Dr van der Breugh, who had been called in early and was now enjoying a cup of coffee before he went back home.
The sight of her small scurrying figure sent the thought of her tumbling back into his head and he frowned. He had managed for almost a whole week to think of her only occasionally. Well, perhaps rather more than occasionally! She would be going home for her days off and he toyed with the idea of driving to Hambledon to find out if she had settled in. He squashed the idea and instead, when he encountered one of the medical consultants on his way out of the hospital, asked casually how the new student nurses were shaping.
‘I borrowed one of them for a few weeks and she’s been accepted late.’
‘Oh, yes, I remember hearing about that. They’re quite a good bunch, but of course she has to catch up. She’s on Baxter’s and Sister Spicer is a bit of a martinet. Don’t see much of the nurses, though, do we? If I remember she was being told off for getting the wrong patient out of bed when I saw her, something like that. Rather quiet, I thought, but Sister Spicer can take the stuffing out of anyone. Terrifies me occasionally.’
They both laughed and went on their way.
Araminta, home by mid-morning, found her cousin and Cherub to welcome her. Over coffee she made light of her first week at St Jules’.
‘Have you heard from your mother?’ asked Millicent. ‘She phoned, but they were still busy with some new Celtic finds. She said they might not be home yet…’
‘They’ll be back before Christmas, though?’
‘Oh, I’m sure they will! It’s still October. Will you get off for the holiday?’
Araminta shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, I’m very junior, but of course I’ll get my days off as near to Christmas Day as possible.’
‘You like it? You’re happy?’
Araminta assured her that she was.
The two days were soon over, but they had given her a respite, and she went back on the ward determined to make the week a better one than her first had been. It was a pity that Sister Spicer was bent on making that as difficult as possible.
Molly had told her that Sister Spicer, if she took a dislike to anyone, would go to great lengths to make life as unpleasant as possible for her. Araminta hadn’t quite believed that, but now she saw that it was true. Nothing she did was quite right; she was too slow, too clumsy, too careless. She tried not to let it worry her and took comfort from the patients, who liked her. Staff Nurse was kind, too, and the two senior student nurses, although the other student nurse who was in the same set as she now was, did nothing to make life easier for her.
Melanie was a small, pretty girl, always ready with the right answers during the lectures they both attended, and, since Sister Spicer liked her, the fact that she sometimes skimped her work and was careless of the patients’ comfort, went unnoticed. She was young, barely nineteen, and made it obvious that Araminta need not expect either her friendship or her help on the ward.
When once she came upon Araminta speaking to one of the house doctors she said spitefully, ‘Don’t you know better than to talk to the housemen? Is that why you’re here? To catch yourself a husband? Just you wait and see what happens to you if Sister Spicer catches you.’
Araminta looked at her in blank astonishment. ‘He was asking me the way to Outpatients; he’s new.’
Melanie giggled. ‘That’s as good an excuse as any, I suppose, but watch out.’
Thank heavens I’ve got days off tomorrow, Araminta thought. Since she was off duty at six o’clock that evening, she would be able to catch a train home. She hadn’t told her cousin, but she would be home by nine o’clock at the latest…
The afternoon was endless, but she went about getting patients in and out of bed, helping them, getting teas, bed pans, filling water jugs, but it was six o’clock at last and she went to the office, thankful that she could at last ask to go off duty.
Sister Spicer barley glanced up from the report she was writing.
‘Have you cleaned and made up the bed in the side ward? And the locker? It may be needed. You should have done it earlier. I told Nurse Jones to tell you. Well, it’s your own fault for not listening, Nurse. Go and do it now and then you may go off duty.’
‘I wasn’t told to do it, Sister,’