Final Year Read online

  The Final Year

  Claire Rayner

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-048-6

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  This revised edition, complete with new introduction, first published in Great Britain 1993 by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of 35 Manor Road, Wallington, Surrey SM6 0BW.

  Originally published 1962 in paperback format only by Transworld Publishers Ltd under the pseudonym of Sheila Brandon.

  First published in the U.S.A. 1993 by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS INC of 475 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Copyright © 1962, 1993 by Claire Rayner.

  Introduction © 1993 by Claire Rayner.

  All rights reserved. The moral rights of the author to be identified as author of this work have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Rayner, Claire

  Final Year

  I. Title

  823.914 [F]

  ISBN 0-7278-4436-9

  INTRODUCTION

  By Claire Rayner

  Twenty-five or more years ago, I was a young would-be writer, trying to learn how to make my way in the world of books. I was writing for magazines and newspapers and I’d produced a couple of non-fiction books, but story-telling … that was a mystery to me. I knew I liked stories, of course; I’ve been an avid reader since before I was four years old and to this day I’m a pushover for a well-told tale. But how to tell a tale - that was the mystery.

  So much so that it simply did not occur to me that I might be able to write fiction. But I was persuaded to try my hand. And because I knew that it is a basic rule of the learner writer always to write what you know, I opted to write about hospital life. After twelve years of sweat, starch, tears and bedpans as a nurse and then a sister in a series of London hospitals, I had an intimate knowledge of how such establishments work. I also knew that a great many people love peering behind closed doors into worlds they don’t usually get the chance to experience.

  So, I had a go. I started to tell myself stories of hospital life - rather romantic, but none the worse for that - only instead of keeping them in my own head as I had when I’d been a day-dreaming youngster, I struggled to put them on paper. And to my surprise and delight I found that publishers were willing to have a go, and gamble on me. They put my words into books - and I was delighted.

  But also a bit embarrassed. I know it isn’t an attractive trait to admit to, but there it is - I was a bit of a snob in those days. Not a social snob, you understand, but an intellectual snob. I had the notion that stories like these were a bit ‘ordinary’, that what really mattered was Literature with a capital ‘L’ and I knew perfectly well I wasn’t writing that! So instead of using my own name on my first published attempts at story-telling, I borrowed my sister’s first name and a surname from elsewhere in my family. And Sheila Brandon was born.

  Now I am no longer a literary snob. I know that any storytelling that gives pleasure and interest to readers is nothing to be ashamed of and has a right to exist. It may not be Literature, but then what is? Dickens was just a story-teller in his own time, the equivalent of the writers of ‘Eastenders’ and ‘Coronation Street’. Today he is revered as a Classic. Well, these stories of mine are never going to be classics, but I don’t think, now I re-read them, that I need blush too much for them. So, here they are, the first efforts of my young writing years, under my own name at last. I hope you enjoy them. Let me know, either way!

  CHAPTER ONE

  One of the nicest things about nights is coming off duty in the morning. We all trail over from the hospital to the Home, after giving the night report to the day Sisters, and collapse in the big armchairs in the sitting room.

  We must look a sorry lot, sometimes. The aprons that were so crisp and clean when we went to breakfast crumple up as we loll in our chairs, and our caps lie on the floor beside us, together with our stiff belts. Those belts are the first thing we take off - they’re so tight, and they cut into your ribs quite painfully when you sit in a low chair. And we all look so pale, our eyes smudged with lack of sleep. Even Chick’s round and cheerful face looks drawn, on night duty.

  It’s one of our traditions that we never talk medical shop in the sitting room in the mornings. We discuss the doctors, and who is going out with who, and the various Sisters’ shortcomings, but anyone who tries to talk about a particular patient get short shrift. We save medical shop for meal times - probably because it’s against the rules to discuss patients in the dining room.

  Usually, when the others start talking about the various romances that start among the staff, I emulate Brer Rabbit, and lay low and say nuffin’. I’ve been Dickon Bartlett’s “steady” for so long now, people take it for granted. Which is just as well, because otherwise, they’d keep asking me for the common room gossip I hear from Dickon, and he’d hate me to pass on anything I’d got from him. He never tells the men anything I might let slip, I know. So I just listen, and leave it at that. That was how I heard about Peter Chester for the first time.

  “He’s the youngest Registrar we’ve ever had at the Royal,” Barbara Simpson told us importantly. She had been the only one to see him the night before, his first one on duty. He’d finished his rounds everywhere else before the night staff came on, except for E.N.T., where Barbara spent her nights in a perpetual flap.

  “He’s gorgeous” she went on. “One of those sleek blond types. But I’ll bet he’s a stinker when he’s really mad about something. He seemed rather put out because I kept him waiting for a sphyg. - I couldn’t find the blasted thing anywhere.”

  Chick laughed. “Barbara, honey, you never can find anything. You’ve got about as much method as a flea in a fit,” she said in her soft drawl. “The first night you don’t send your junior to theatre to borrow something, because you’ve mislaid it, I shall fall down and salaam three times, so help me I will.”

  Barbara grinned. “It’s awful, isn’t it?” she agreed good-naturedly. “I shouldn’t have been a nurse at all, really. David swears he’ll have to do all the housework after we’re married. Isn’t it nice he’s so sensible? Imagine if he was as scatty as I am!”

  “Imagine!” said Chick. “You’d starve together, probably. It’s just as well your David isn’t a doctor. Only a stockbroker could afford all the household help you’re obviously going to need.”

  Jenny stretched, cat-like, from the pile of cushions she had arranged for herself on the hearthrug.

  “Much as I like sleek blond types,” she said, yawning hugely, “I’m just not up to even thinking about one right now. I should like to stay here and quietly die.”

  “I shouldn’t do that,” Chick said judiciously. “Home Sister would be a bit put out, I should think - ‘specially when your corpse began to get a bit high.”

  The senior from the Children’s Medical ward got up from her chair on the far side of the hearth. “Nurse McLean,” she said stiffly, “you are revolting.” She gathered her writing things together and made for the door. “All you people ever do is gossip, or complain, or make sickening remarks. I’m going to my room. At least I won’t have to listen to you there.”

  Barbara stuck her tongue out at the retreating back. “It’s all right for her. If she was on E.N.T., she’d complain too. All those bloody noses! Nothing ever happens on Kid’s Med.”

  Chris stretched wearily. “She ought to try my shop. Finals staring us in the
face, and I have to do my senior nights on theatre! I haven’t a hope in hell of swotting there. I shall fail in a cloud of ignominious misery. The Pawn will tell me I’m a blot on the Royal’s escutcheon - “

  “The Pawn always does,” Jane Mellows spoke up from the window seat overlooking the Nurses’ garden. “Just ask Joanna - she’s heard it all a hundred times, poor kid.”

  I looked round hastily, but Joanna wasn’t there - and I remembered she had nights off. I was glad, in a way. Jo would have been embarrassed by Jane’s thoughtless reference to her difficulties with her written work. But Jane was still talking.

  “Tell you what, Chick. Turn on your Canadian charm, and tell the old bag you can’t help it - that you’re just a poor little foreigner and you don’t speeka da language. Maybe she’ll take pity on you then.”

  “If I wasn’t so worn out, you English Rose you, I’d take you on one side and explain to you about the Commonwealth and my status as a Canadian citizen. As it is, you’ll have to stew in your own pathetic ignorance,” Chick said without rancour. “As for Sister Chessman - well, I suppose a Sister Tutor has to vent her spleen somehow. No doctors to bully.”

  “You’ve always got a good word for everyone, Chick,” Barbara said suddenly. “Even the Pawn has an excuse for her nastiness, when you’re around. Nice old Chick.”

  Chick tipped her cap over her eyes. “Well, polish my halo and call me a saint,” she said weakly. “Too much night duty, Bar, that’s your trouble.”

  Jane got up. “Here, Avril,” she said to me. “Let’s leave this rarefied atmosphere of virtue and have some coffee in the canteen. I’m flush this month, and I owe you some.”

  I shook my head. “I’m going over to the school,” I said unthinkingly.

  “For the love of Mike!” Jane exploded. “You’re not swotting again, are you? You already know more than the rest of the set put together! Don’t you ever stop?”

  I felt a hot flush rising in my cheeks. “I - “

  “Like hell she’s swotting,” Chick’s soft voice rescued me from Jane’s sharp tongue. “I left my surgery notes there yesterday, and good old Avril knows I’m too fat and lazy to get ‘em myself. And the Pawn will have my guts for garters if she spots them lying around.” She flapped a languid hand in my general direction. “See you in your room, hon. Bless you for getting them for me.”

  I escaped gratefully. Dear Chick. She knew quite well that I was going to study - as certainly as she knew she hadn’t left her surgery notes in the classroom. And she knew why, too, and how much the others in our set resented the way I worked at theory.

  Chick had been my best friend ever since that first day in the preliminary training school, more than two and a half years ago, when she had suddenly been very sick all over my new black shoes and stockings.

  “Sorry,” she’d gasped. “Air sick. My plane only got in this morning, and I’m all shook up.”

  I’d given her a drink of water, and mopped her up, and been enchanted by her casual friendliness. Yes, Chick understood me.

  As I went over to the school, hugging my cape around me, I thought again about some of the things she’d said over the years.

  “Look, honey, I know your sisters are pretty smart cookies. I know you want to show ‘em you’re just as smart. But do you have to swot so hard? A nurse is more than just an exam queen. She’s a person who works with people, not books. Claire and Susan may be great shakes as archaeologists or whatever, but you’re doing something much more worthwhile - “

  But it made no difference. Ever since I’d been a child, I’d been trying to show Susan and Claire that I was just as good as they were. They’d both come down from their University with Firsts, and though nursing wasn’t as academic as reading for a Ph.D. or an M.A., still, I was training at one of London’s best hospitals, and the Royal’s Gold Medal must surely impress them -

  That was something even Chick didn’t know. Just how badly I wanted to be the Gold Medallist was my secret. If the others knew they’d be disgusted, I thought wryly, as I let myself into the classroom, smelling the familiar scents of chalk and formaldehyde. No one’s as unpopular as the nurse who’s bucking for academic glory.

  There was no one in the big quiet classroom. The desks stood in ordered rows, and Jimmy, the skeleton, dangled quietly from his little hook. I slid into a desk in the back row, and settled down to work, slipping easily into a frame of mind that made me able to concentrate. The classroom always had that effect on me - that was why I went there to study. However tired I was, I could always work in that atmosphere of books and specimens in glass jars, of past lectures and examinations.

  An hour passed quickly. I stretched my stiff back and yawned. I’d just make a few notes from the reference books in the library, and then I’d go to bed, I promised my aching bones. I found the books I wanted, and turned to the page I wanted. But then I swore softly. I’d left my scrap notebook in the sitting room. I turned up the edge of my apron, and started to make brief jottings on it. I could easily copy the notes into my book on the way to bed.

  “Nurse Gardner!” I jumped guiltily. Sister Tutor stood behind me, her long white hands folded grimly against the front of her navy blue dress.

  “Nurse Gardner” - she was angry - “I am surprised at you. Do you know how difficult it is for the laundry to get ink out of aprons? Have you any idea how much it costs to replace the aprons you girls ruin with your thoughtlessness? I will not have you using your uniforms as notebooks - uniforms that you should treat with respect - “

  She went on and on. I just stood there, letting the tirade flow over me, swaying a little with fatigue and lack of sleep. The Pawn had never liked me much, and now I had given her a first-rate opportunity to really let herself go. She stopped at last, and looked closely at me.

  “Quite apart from anything else, Nurse, you should be in bed. How you night nurses expect to be able to work properly when you don’t get enough sleep is beyond me. Go to bed at once - and remember. Treat your uniform with respect in future. I shall be extremely angry if I ever see you looking anything but completely neat and tidy in your uniform. Good morning!”

  After that, I could have done with a quiet night when I went on duty, especially as I slept badly. But the ward seemed as though there was a lot going on when I arrived on duty at eight.

  The men were huddled in their beds, or talking quietly in little groups round the radiators. But the first bed was screened and I could see two pairs of male feet, and Sister’s sensible black shoes under it. There was a soft bubbling that meant oxygen was being given, and above the screen I could see a bottle of blood gleaming ruby red on a drip stand. I sighed, and straightened my cuffs.

  “No peace tonight, Barlow,” I murmured to my junior. “You’d better get the milk on for the drinks, and lay a back trolley. I’ll join in the flap.”

  She scuttled off to the kitchen like a scared little rabbit and the young convalescent appendix from Bed Seven lounged after her. I smiled. Barlow would need some help, and if one of the patients was rather more attached to her than any patient had the right to be, who was I to spoil her fun? Juniors got little enough, Heaven knows.

  Dickon winked at me over the head of the R.S.O. as I slipped behind the screens. Sister caught the wink and stiffened, so I smoothed my face into a professional expression, and stood quietly waiting.

  “Ye Gods,” the R.S.O. smiled at me as he straightened up. “Night staff already? I haven’t even had my lunch yet! No wonder I’m hungry - “

  Sister softened visibly. “There’s some tea in the kitchen, Mr James,” she said. “And I dare say I could find an egg or two. I’ll give the report to Nurse Gardner first. I won’t be long.”

  “Bless you.” Jimmy checked the pulse at the temple of the man lying quietly in the bed. “I think he’ll do - “

  Sister gave me the report rapidly. Two empty beds, a list of preps for the next morning’s operations, and the man in Bed One.

  “He had an argument with a
bus, Nurse,” she told me crisply. “No bones broken, but a perforated gut. He’s had a resection, and there’s another pint of blood in the fridge. After that’s run in, you can discontinue the drip. You can stop the oxygen too, unless he seems to need it. Half hourly pulse and blood pressure, and hourly aspiration of stomach contents, please - there’s a Ryle’s tube in situ. His wife is in the side ward - she’s staying the night, so keep an eye on her. Sorry to load you like that, but he’s pretty ill, poor man. And keep an eye on your junior, please. The sluice was a disgrace this morning.”

  She rustled off to the kitchen, shutting the door firmly behind her. I blessed the boy from Bed Seven. Without his help with the drinks, Barlow would still have been in the kitchen, and Sister would have been livid if anyone other than herself had spent more than a minute tête-à-tête with Mr James. Barlow knew this, and pushed her trolley of hot cocoa around the ward with obvious relief.

  It was after ten before we had all the men settled, and all the night drugs given. The emergency ops from the day before had both finished with their intravenous drips, so apart from Mr Bright, the man in Bed One, it looked as though the night wouldn’t be too bad after all. Barlow put out the last of the big lights, leaving the ward to dimness and quiet. Already some of the men had started to snore softly, and I stood at the door for a moment looking down the two long rows of beds humped with sleeping figures, before settling down at the desk to write the first report for Matron’s office. Barlow disappeared into the sluice to clean the dressing bowls and receivers the day staff had left out for her ministrations. The night was well under way, I thought. With a bit of luck, we wouldn’t have any emergency admissions, and I would have time to study a little.

  I looked at my cuffs, gleaming whitely under the shaded desk light, and for a moment, I tried to imagine my sleeves above them as dark blue, instead of lilac striped. But I couldn’t.

  “One day,” I promised myself under my breath, “you’ll be the youngest Sister the Royal ever had - if you get that medal - “