Excerpt from Burning Roses, the 29th in the Morland Dynasty series

To help the War Effort, Jessie volunteers as an auxiliary nurse

            On her first day she was directed to Maitland Ward, one of the old wards in the main hospital block which had been given over to wounded soldiers. The uniform which she had bought the day before - or acquired, really, since Uncle Teddy said she needn’t pay for it - in the section of Makepeace’s dedicated to servants’ uniforms and the like, felt stiff and strange, and the high, hard collar made her hold her head up in an unnatural manner. But she felt proud of it, feeling that it made her belong in a way she never had when reading to convalescent officers.

            She stepped in through the swing doors, and at the sight of those twenty-four beds, each with an unknown man lying in it, the realisation struck her of what she had undertaken and exactly why her family had thought she ought not to. Many eyes turned to look at her with interest, and entirely without deference. She felt exposed to them, at their mercy. They were strangers to her, and to them she was not Mrs Morland of Morland Place, but an unknown female to whom they might be impertinent without fear of reprisal. Furthermore, seeing the stripes of pyjama cotton above the folded down sheet of the nearest bed, she became suddenly, violently aware of their bodies - male bodies, which any moment she might have to look at or touch. Accidentally she met the eyes of the nearest owner of pyjamas. He grinned at her, and she felt a blush run violently up her face from under her tight collar, and hastily averted her gaze.

            A small, white, definitely female figure came click-clicking rapidly up the centre of the ward towards her. Jessie fixed her eyes gratefully on it, and smiled in relief. It was a woman in her forties, small and wiry, with sandy, frizzy hair under her starched cap, pale green, protuberant eyes, and parched-looking skin. She did not return, Jessie’s smile - indeed, seem incensed by it.

            ‘What do you want, nurse? Don’t stand there grinning like an ape. Even if you haven’t work to do, we have more than enough on this ward! I suppose you’ve brought a message. Deliver it, then, and get back to your own ward at once.’

            Jessie, while thrilled to have been mistaken for a real nurse, was disconcerted to be spoken to so harshly. She had thought to be welcomed with open arms.

            ‘I was told to report to Sister Morgan,’ she said.

            ‘I am Sister Morgan. And who are you?’ She spoke rapidly, with a faint Welsh accent, which seemed to make all her words sharper along the edges than a Yorkshire person could have made them.

            ‘I’m Jessie Morland,’ said Jessie. ‘Matron sent me to help.’

            ‘Help?’ The pale eyes doubted it as they looked Jessie up and down. ‘VAD, are you?’

            ‘No. I’m to be an auxiliary nurse.’

            ‘Sister. You address me as Sister. And what use do you think you’ll be? Have you got any experience?’

            ‘No, but I can learn,’ Jessie said, and hastily added, in response to the raised eyebrows, ‘sister. I have my First Aid and Home Nursing certificates.’

            Sister Morgan rolled her eyes. ‘God help us! And Matron sent you, did she? Two weeks in the place and she wants to turn us all upside down. I haven’t got time to run about after ladies!’ She invested the word with infinite scorn. ‘We’ve got badly wounded men here, in case you hadn’t noticed. They don’t need reading to, or their hands held, they need nursing.’

            ‘You won’t have to run after me, sister,’ Jessie said stiffly. ‘I didn’t expect to hold the men’s hands. I’m here to help. I want to be useful. I’ll do whatever you want me to.’

            ‘On my ward,’ sister said sharply, ‘you’ll do as you’re told, like everybody else.’

            ‘Yes, sister,’ Jessie said, and managed to stop herself saying, ‘of course.’

            Sister Morgan stared at her a moment, her mind evidently working. ‘So, you want to be useful do you?’

            ‘Yes, sister.’

            ‘And you’ll do whatever jobs I give you?’

            ‘Yes, sister.’

            ‘Because I won’t have argument. Anyone who works on my ward does exactly what I say, and no answering back.’

            ‘I understand, sister. It’s what I expected.’

            Sister Morgan grinned then, there was no mirth in it. ‘Oh it was, was it? Well then „Ÿ ’

            She turned towards a nurse who was scurrying past carrying a small tower of large metal objects. ‘Nurse Dicks! Give those to Nurse Morland. She’s the auxiliary nurse. Show her where the sluice is, tell her what to do. She can empty and scour them. Hurry up, nurse, you haven’t got all day.’

            ‘Yes, sister,’ the nurse gasped, hesitated a moment, and passed the tower to Jessie. ‘This way.’ She scurried off, and Jessie followed as fast as she could while balancing the tower. A terrible smell was assailing her nostrils, and she knew, now, what these objects were. She had never seen them in Heworth Park (the officers would conquer nature rather than send for a bedpan when there was a lady present), but she knew of their existence.

            The little nurse turned to her in a doorway. ‘This is the sluice. You empty them there, and then scrub them at the sink there. There’s the brushes and the disinfectant. Then stack them over there. And leave everything tidy. Sister checks everything, and she goes mad if anything’s out o’ place.’ She was small, dark, rather thin, had a very young-looking face, and a York accent. She was obviously poised to dash off again, but Jessie stopped her.

            ‘Wait! What’s your name?’

            ‘Dicks. I’m the junior nurse.’

            ‘What’s your first name?’

            She made a grimace. ‘We don’t use first names here. Lord, you’re green! VAD, are you?’

            ‘No.’

            ‘Lucky for you. Sister hates VADs like poison. Well, if you’re auxiliary that makes you junior to me, so I reckon t’bedpan’s’ll be all yours from now on. Suits me!’ She swung round. ‘I’ve got to get on.’

            Jessie managed to get in one more question. ‘Does everyone always move as fast as this?’

            Dicks rolled her eyes. ‘Fast? This is a quiet time. You wait!’ And she was gone.

            Jessie faced her unpleasant task alone. There was no use beefing about it - everyone had warned her, and it was obvious that as the least experienced person on the ward she would be bound to be given the most menial tasks. She had wanted to be useful, and if this was the only way she could be useful at the moment, so be it. It was probably a test. When the sceptical sister saw she did the horrid jobs without complaining, she would be given more interesting things to do. She held her breath and began. Cleaning up excreta was not what she’d had in mind when she had argued to be allowed to nurse, and a couple of times her throat rippled at the smell and sight of it; but she told herself firmly that it was no different from mucking out a loose box, and she had done that before, many times. Human droppings smelled much worse than horses’, of course, and there was the embarrassing social aspect to it. But if she could do this for horses, how could she refuse to do it for wounded heroes? She should be proud to serve them. She tried to feel proud, and breathed through her mouth.

            She had just about finished when another nurse stuck her head round the door - a taller, fair girl in her mid-twenties. She surveyed Jessie with cold eyes. ‘Are you Morland? Lord, haven’t you finished yet?’

            ‘Yes, I’ve finished now. May I know your name?’

            ‘”May I know your name?”’ she mimicked. ‘Posh, aren’t we? It’s Cameron - much good may it do you! You’re to go and make the men’s drinks and take them round.’

            ‘Where „Ÿ ?’ Jessie began.

            ‘Kitchen, o’course. Dicks’ll help you. Well, hurry up, then! You haven’t got all day.’

            She hurried. In the kitchen Dicks was fretting over a stove on which she was heating a giant kettle and a saucepan of milk simultaneously. There was a list of the bed numbers and the men’s beverage preferences, but no names. She wondered if they called them by their number. There was tea, cocoa, hot milk, cold milk and Bovril. She tried to help but she simply didn’t move quickly enough for Dicks and was always in her way. ‘We’ll never get done in time,’ Dicks wailed, almost in tears.

            ‘Why such a hurry?’ Jessie asked helplessly.

            ‘Because if we’re late wi’ drinks, the men’ll still be at ‘em when Cameron and Clarke do the temperatures, and then there’ll be trouble. The readin’s’ll be wrong.’

            ‘Oh dear, I see. Well, you can say it’s my fault, that I slowed you down.’

            Dicks gave her a strange look. ‘Aye, I will an’ all, don’t you worry!’ she said brusquely. 

            If Jessie had hoped for any esprit de corps among nurses, she was finding a harsher truth. "