The Pull of the Stars Read online

  Very good.

  —but he let out one great cough and…Nurse Cavanagh gestured at the blood all over her with widespread, tacky fingers.

  I could smell it, harsh and metallic. Oh, my dear. Has he been triaged yet?

  But when I followed her eyes to the draped stretcher on the floor behind her, I guessed he was past that point, beyond our reach. Whoever had brought a stretcher into the road and helped Nurse Cavanagh carry him into the hospital must have abandoned the two of them here.

  I crouched now to put my hand under the sheet and check the man’s neck for a pulse. Nothing.

  This weird malady. It took months for the flu to defeat some patients, sneaking up on them by way of pneumoniac complications, battling for every inch of territory. Others succumbed to it in a matter of hours. Had this poor fellow been a stoic who’d denied his aches, fever, and cough until he’d found all at once, out in the street, that he couldn’t walk, couldn’t speak, could only whoop out his lifeblood all over Nurse Cavanagh? Or had he felt all right this morning even as the storm had been gathering inside him?

  The other day an ambulance driver told me an awful story: He and his team had motored off in response to a phone call from a young woman (in perfect health herself, she said, but one of her fellow lodgers seemed very ill and the other two not well), and when the ambulance arrived, they found four bodies.

  I realised that Nurse Cavanagh hadn’t felt able to leave this passage outside Admitting even to fetch help in case someone tripped over the corpse. I remembered being a junior, the paralysing fear that by following one rule, you’d break another.

  I’ll find some orderlies to carry him down to the mortuary, I promised her. Go and get yourself a cup of tea.

  Nurse Cavanagh managed to nod. She asked, Shouldn’t you have a mask on?

  I went down with flu last month.

  So did I, but…

  Well, then. (I tried to sound kind rather than irritated.) One can’t catch it twice.

  Nurse Cavanagh only blinked uncertainly, a rabbit frozen on a railway line.

  I went down the corridor and put my head into the orderlies’ room.

  A knot of smokers in crumpled round caps and in white to the knees, like butchers. The waft made me long for a Woodbine. (Matron broke all her nurses of the filthy habit, but once in a while I relapsed.)

  Excuse me, there’s a dead man at Admitting.

  The one with the metal half-face snorted wetly. Come to the wrong place, then, hasn’t he?

  Nichols, that’s who the orderly was—Noseless Nichols. (A ghastly phrase, but such tricks helped me remember names.) The copper mask that covered what had been his nose and left cheek was thin, enamelled, unnervingly lifelike, with the bluish tint of a shaved jaw and a real moustache soldered on.

  The man beside him, the one with the trembling hands, was O’Shea—Shaky O’Shea.

  The third man, Groyne, sighed. Another soul gone to his account!

  These three had all been stretcher-bearers. They’d enlisted together, the story went, but only O’Shea and Nichols had been sent up the line. Equipment shortages at the front were so awful that when bearers ran out of stretchers, they had to drag the wounded along on coats or even webs of wire. Groyne had been lucky enough to be posted to a military hospital and was never sent within earshot of the cannon; he’d come back quite unmarked, a letter returned to sender. They were all mates still, but Groyne was the one of the threesome I couldn’t help but dislike.

  Anonymous at Admitting, we’ll call him, Groyne intoned. Gone beyond the veil. Off to join the great majority.

  The orderly had a bottomless supply of clever euphemisms for the great leveller. Turned up her toes, Groyne might say when a patient died, or hopped the twig, or counting worms.

  Something else I held against him was that he fancied himself a singer. Goodbye-ee, he crooned lugubriously now, goodbye-ee…

  Nichols’s nasal, echoey voice joined in on the second line: Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee.

  I set my teeth. Despite the fact that we nurses had years of training—a theory diploma from the technical school as well as a practical one from the hospital and a third in an area of specialty—the orderlies liked to talk down to us, as if feminine weakness made us need their help. But it always paid to be civil, so I asked, Could two of you possibly bring Anonymous below when you have a moment?

  O’Shea told me, Anything for you, Nurse Power.

  Groyne reached towards the overflowing brass ashtray, stubbed out his fag, and put it in his breast pocket for later, singing on.

  Don’t cry-ee, don’t sigh-ee,

  There’s a silver lining in the sky-ee.

  Bonsoir, old thing, cheerio, chin chin,

  Napoo, toodle-oo, goodbye-ee.

  I said, Thanks ever so, gentlemen.

  Heading for the stairs, I found I was a little dizzy; I hadn’t eaten anything yet today.

  Down into the basement, then, not right towards the mortuary but left to the temporary canteen that had been set up off the kitchen. Our ground-floor dining rooms had been commandeered as flu wards, so now staff meals were dished up in a windowless square that smelled of furniture polish, porridge, anxiety.

  Even with doctors and nurses having to muddle in together in this ad hoc canteen, there were so few of us still on our feet and reporting for duty that the breakfast queue was short. People leaned against the walls, wolfing down something egg-coloured with an obscure kind of sausage. Roughly half were wearing masks, I noticed, the ones who hadn’t had the grippe yet or (like Nurse Cavanagh) who were too rattled to do without the sense of protection offered by that fragile layer of gauze.

  Twenty hours’ work on four hours’ sleep!

  That from a girlish voice behind me. I recognised her as one of this year’s crop of probies; being new to full-time ward work, probationers lacked our stamina.

  They’re bedding patients down on the floor now, a doctor grumbled. I call that unhygienic.

  His friend said, Better than turning them away, I suppose.

  I glanced around, and it struck me that we were a botched lot. Several of these doctors were distinctly elderly, but the hospital needed them to stay on till the end of the war, filling in for younger ones who’d enlisted. I saw doctors and nurses who’d been sent home from the front with some harm done but not enough for a full service pension, so here they were again despite their limps and scars, asthma, migraines, colitis, malarial episodes, or TB; one nurse from Children’s Surgical struggled with a chronic conviction that insects were crawling all over her.

  I was two from the head of the line now. My stomach rumbled.

  Julia!

  I smiled at Gladys Horgan, squeezing towards me through the knot of bodies at the food table. We’d been great pals during training almost a decade ago, though we’d seen less of each other once I went into midwifery and she into eye and ear. Some of our class had ended up working in private hospitals or nursing homes; between those who’d left to marry or who’d quit due to painful feet or nerve strain, there weren’t many of us still around. Gladys lived in at the hospital with a gang of other nurses, and I lodged with Tim, which was another thing that had divided us, I suppose; when I went off shift, my first thought was always for my brother.

  Gladys scolded: Shouldn’t you be on leave?

  Nixed at the eleventh hour.

  Ah, of course it would be. Well, soldier on.

  You too, Gladys.

  Must rush, she said. Oh, there’s instant coffee.

  I made a face.

  Have you tried it?

  Once, for the novelty, but it’s nasty stuff.

  Whatever keeps me going…Gladys drained her cup, smacked her lips, and left the mug on the dirty-dishes table.

  I didn’t want to stay without anyone to talk to, so I collected some watery cocoa and a slice of war bread, which was always dark but varied in its adulterations—barley, oats, and rye, certainly, but one might find soya in there too, beans
, sago, even the odd chip of wood.

  To make up some of the time I’d lost finding orderlies to bring Anonymous down to the mortuary, I ate and drank as I climbed the stairs. Matron (currently in Women’s Fever) would have been appalled by the lapse in manners. As Tim would have said—if he were able to say anything these days—everything was entirely arsewise.

  Full day had broken without my noticing; the late October light stabbed in the east-facing windows.

  I put the last of the bread in my mouth as I went through the door that bore a handwritten label: Maternity/Fever. Not a proper ward, just a supply room converted last month when it became clear to our superiors that not only were expectant women catching this grippe in alarmingly high numbers, but it was particularly hazardous to them and their babies.

  The ward sister was a lay nurse like myself. Sister Finnigan had overseen my diploma in midwifery, and I’d been flattered last week when she’d chosen me to staff this tiny room with her. Patients admitted with the flu who were well on in pregnancy got sent here, and Maternity, up on the second floor, transferred down any women who had fevers, body aches, or a cough.

  We’d had no actual deliveries yet, which Sister Finnigan said was a sign of divine mercy, given that our facilities were so primitive. There was a line from our training manual that always stuck in my head: For a woman with child, the surroundings should be such as will promote serenity. Well, this makeshift ward was more conducive to irritation; it was cramped, with battery-powered lamps on each bedside cupboard instead of electric night-lights. At least we had a sink and a window for air, but there was no fireplace, so we had to keep our patients warm by bundling them up.

  We’d had only two metal cots at first, but we’d crammed in a third so we wouldn’t have to turn away Eileen Devine. My eyes went straight to her bed, in the middle, between Ita Noonan, who was snoring, and Delia Garrett, who (in a dressing jacket, a wrap, and a scarf) was reading. But the middle cot was empty, with fresh bedding pulled tight.

  The crust of bread turned to a pebble in my throat. The barrow woman was too ill to have been discharged, surely?

  From over her magazine, Delia Garrett gave me an angry stare.

  The night nurse heaved herself off the chair. Nurse Power, she said.

  Sister Luke.

  The Church considered it immodest for nuns to serve in lying-in wards, but given the shortage of midwives, Matron—who happened to be from the same religious order as Sister Luke—had managed to persuade their higher-ups to lend this experienced general nurse to Maternity/Fever. For the duration, as everyone said.

  I found I couldn’t control my voice enough to ask about Eileen Devine. I drained the cocoa that now tasted like bile and rinsed the cup at the sink. Is Sister Finnigan not in yet?

  The nun pointed one finger at the ceiling and said, Called to Maternity.

  It had the ring of one of Groyne’s playful synonyms for death.

  Sister Luke adjusted the elastic band of her eye patch, a puppet pulling its own strings. Like quite a few nuns, she’d volunteered at the front, and shrapnel had sent her home with one eye gone. Between her veil and her white mask, the only skin showing was the hinterland around the other eye.

  She came over to me now and nodded at the stripped cot. Poor Mrs. Devine slipped into a coma around two a.m. and expired at half past five, requiescat in pace.

  She sketched a cross on the stiff, snow-white guimpe that covered her broad chest.

  My heart squeezed for Eileen Devine. The bone man was making fools of us all. That was what we kids called death in my part of the country—the bone man, that skeletal rider who kept his grinning skull tucked under one arm as he rode from one victim’s house to the next.

  I hung up my cape and coat without a word and swapped my rain-soaked straw hat for a white cap. I unfolded an apron from my bag and bound it on over my green uniform.

  Words burst out of Delia Garrett: I woke up to see men toting her away with a sheet over her head!

  I walked over to her. How upsetting, Mrs. Garrett. I promise you, we did our utmost for Mrs. Devine, but the grippe had lodged in her lungs, and in the end it stopped her heart.

  Delia Garrett sniffed shakily and pushed back a smooth curl. I shouldn’t be in hospital at all—my doctor said this is only a mild dose.

  That had been her constant refrain since arriving yesterday from her gracious Protestant nursing home where the two midwives on staff had been knocked out by the flu. Delia Garrett had walked in here wearing a ribboned hat and gloves rather than the old shawl typical of our patients; she was twenty years old, with a genteel South Dublin accent and that sleek air of prosperity.

  Sister Luke tugged off her mackintosh sleeves and took her voluminous black cape from the peg. Mrs. Garrett’s passed a comfortable night, she told me.

  Comfortable! The word made Delia Garrett cough into the back of her hand. In this poky cubby on a backbreaking camp bed with people dying left and right?

  Sister only means your flu symptoms are no worse.

  I tucked a thermometer as well as my silver watch, attached by its fob chain, into the bib of my apron. I checked my belt, my buttons. Everything had to fasten at the side so as not to scratch a patient.

  Delia Garrett said: So send me home today, why won’t you?

  The nun warned me that her pulse force—an indication of blood pressure—was still bounding.

  Sister Finnigan and I hadn’t been able to decide if Delia Garrett’s flu was to blame for this hypertension; we often found the pulse force surged after the fifth month of pregnancy. Whatever the cause, there was no treatment but rest and calm.

  I said, I do sympathise, Mrs. Garrett, but it’s best if we keep an eye on you till you’re quite well.

  I scrubbed my hands at the sink now, almost relishing the sting of the carbolic soap; if it didn’t hurt a little, I wouldn’t trust it.

  I looked over at the sleeper in the cot on the left. And how’s Mrs. Noonan been, Sister?

  Much the same.

  The nun meant Ita Noonan was still away with the fairies. Since yesterday, the woman had been so dazed, she wouldn’t have noticed if the pope had come from Rome to pay her a visit. The only mercy was that her delirium was of the low type, not the high kind that could make sufferers chase, whack, or spit at us.

  The night nurse added, I poulticed her just before she dropped off, so that’ll need changing by eleven.

  I made myself nod. The messy rigmarole of preparing hot, moist linseed and plastering it on the chests of congested patients was the bane of my life. The older nurses swore by poulticing, but I couldn’t see that it achieved any more than a hot-water bottle.

  I asked, When will Sister Finnigan be in?

  Oh, I’m afraid you’re on your own, Nurse Power. She pointed at the ceiling. Sister Finnigan’s in charge of Maternity today—four deliveries on the go at once up there, and only Dr. Prendergast left.

  Physicians were as rare as four-leaf clovers. Five of ours had enlisted and were serving in Belgium or France; one (caught up in the rebel cause) was in a Belfast prison; six were off sick.

  Dry-mouthed, I asked: So I’m acting ward sister?

  A shrug from Sister Luke. At a moment like this, ours not to reason why.

  Our superiors might be making unwise decisions, did the nun mean? Or was she just saying that I shouldn’t baulk at any new burden laid on my shoulders?

  She added, Nurse Geoghan’s missing in action too.

  I sighed. Marie-Louise Geoghan would have been a great help. She was skilled at patient care, even if she still knew little of midwifery; in the current crisis, she’d been allowed to get her nursing certificate early. I said, I presume I’ll be sent a junior, or a probie as a runner?

  I’d presume nothing, Nurse Power.

  The nun straightened her wimple and hooked her black cape at the throat, ready to depart.

  A volunteer, at the very least? Another pair of hands?

  I’ll have a word with Staff on my
way out, see what I can do for you.

  I forced myself to thank Sister Luke.

  As the door closed behind her, I was already rolling my sleeves up past my elbows despite the chill in the room. I buttoned on a pair of long starched cuffs. In sole charge, I told myself. Needs must. No time for whining.

  More light, first. I went over to the small, high window and tilted the green slats towards me. I spotted a blimp hovering high over Dublin Port, watching for German submarines.

  I’d been taught that each patient should have one thousand cubic feet, which meant a ten-by-ten-foot space per bed. In this improvised ward, it was more like ten by three. I wound the handle and angled the window half open at the top to let more air in.

  Delia Garrett complained: As if there weren’t already a draught.

  Ventilation’s crucial to recovery, Mrs. Garrett. Shall I get you another blanket?

  Oh, don’t fuss.

  She went back to her magazine.

  The tight-sheeted cot between her and Ita Noonan was a reproach, a tomb blocking my path. I called up Eileen Devine’s drooping face; she’d kept her dentures in a glass by her bed. (Every baby seemed to cost these inner-city women a handful of teeth.) How she’d loved the hot bath I’d drawn her two days ago—the first she’d ever had, she’d told me in a whisper. Luxury!

  I wished I could wheel Eileen Devine’s empty cot out onto the landing to make a bit of room, but people would only bump into it. Also, I had no doubt we’d be getting another pregnant grippe case to fill it soon.

  Eileen Devine’s chart from the wall behind the bed was gone already, presumably tucked into the corner cabinet under October 31. (We filed by date of discharge, which sometimes meant death.) If I’d been the one to write the concluding line in the regulation tiny lettering that filled both sides of her sheet, I’d have been tempted to put Worn down to the bone. Mother of five by the age of twenty-four, an underfed daughter of underfed generations, white as paper, red-rimmed eyes, flat bosom, fallen arches, twig limbs with veins that were tangles of blue twine. Eileen Devine had walked along a cliff edge all her adult life, and this flu had only tipped her over.