Nurse Kitty: After the War

by Maggie Campbell

Genres: Sagas; Family Life

Synopsis

It is 1950 and Kitty Longthorne is now a Sister at Manchester's Park Hospital, and as busy as ever. With dizzying numbers of children with polio being admitted to the children's ward, a sharp uptick of major trauma from road accidents and growing political and racial conflict affecting her patients and staff, there's no shortage of drama at the hospital. But Kitty is determined that everyone is treated with respect.

Outside of the hospital, Kitty is finally ready to marry her fiancé, Dr James Williams. But with the growing Cold War tensions, Kitty and James come under scrutiny because of two people close to their hearts. With any suspicious activity grounds for treason, their happily ever after is suddenly on shaky ground... will they ever be able to set a date for the wedding?

Inspired by the brave nurses and doctors from the first NHS hospital, the Trafford General, which opened after the end of World War II. Perfect for fans of Call the Midwife and The Nightingale Girls.

Release date: January 25, 2024

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 288

Sample

‘Come on, get a move on!’ Kitty said beneath her breath. Frowning, she looked down the aisle of the bus, wishing she could get a glimpse of the driver in his cab to see what on earth was keeping him from pulling away from the stop. Kitty checked the wristwatch James had given her as a birthday present and balked. ‘Quarter of an hour, I’ve been sat here like Piffy on a rock bun,’ she said to the woman on the opposite side of the aisle. ‘I’m going to be late for work.’

‘It’s not on, is it, love?’ the woman said, clutching her shopping bag on her knee. ‘My bacon’s going to go off if I don’t get it in the larder soon.’

Outside, Manchester had been enshrouded not just in the early evening gloom, but also in thick fog – the pea-soup kind that reduced the city to nothing more than fuzzy shapes and the suggestion of life.

Kitty turned around to see if other passengers shared her irritation and spotted the bus conductor, standing on the edge of the rear platform, where the lower deck was open to the elements. He clung to the pole, hanging at an awkward angle off the back of the bus, clearly trying to get a good look at what was going on, further down the street.

‘Lovey,’ she called out. ‘Are you there?’

The conductor righted himself, but he was still craning his neck, his attention clearly on the street and not her. He put his index finger to his lips, signalling the need for hush.

Kitty frowned at the conductor’s perplexing behaviour. ‘What’s going on? Can you tell us why we’re stuck here? Only I’m a nursing sister at Park Hospital, and my shift started three minutes ago.’ She tapped the face of her watch insistently. Having finally been promoted to Sister, the last thing she wanted was for Matron to think her a poor time-keeper.

The conductor opened his mouth to answer, but his response was drowned out by a din of raised voices, disturbing the foggy stillness. Suddenly, the front half of the bus was surrounded by men, who hammered on the windows with their fists – two rival groups, jeering at each other from opposite sides, with Kitty and the other passengers as terrified go-betweens.

When Kitty noticed that several of the men on one side were wielding the red standard of the fascist Union Movement, featuring the unmistakeable white lightning bolt in a blue circle, her heart beat a frenzied tattoo inside her chest. ‘Missus! Get into the aisle!’ Kitty shouted at an elderly woman who had been snoozing against a window.

The old lady shuffled across her seat just as two brawling men hurtled into the side of the bus. All Kitty could make out was a jumble of flailing fists. Then a crow bar came into view, there was a loud bang, and the window where the lady had been sitting only moments before cracked.

‘Flipping Nora! It’s a full-on riot!’ Kitty yelled. She got to her feet, ran to the front of the bus and thumped on the partition that separated the passengers from the cab. ‘Driver! Get going!’

But the engine was still merely idling.

Glancing back at the bewildered-looking conductor, Kitty balked as a young man leaped onto the platform, barrelling into the conductor. The dark-haired man looked a little like Kitty’s fiancé, James, though this was no doctor. Dressed in shabby grey slacks and a red boiled-wool jumper, he looked more like a student from the university. His face was a picture of terror.

‘Steady on, lad! What do you think you’re doing?’ the conductor said, adjusting his hat.

The conductor reached out to take a fistful of the man’s red jumper just as a fascist leaped aboard the bus. The fascist shouted a shocking slur at the man, wrapped a meaty arm around his waist and dragged him back into the street.

Gripping the handrail of the seat in front, Kitty couldn’t believe the melee that they were caught up in. Mercifully though, the fog seemed to claim the fracas back and the bus thrummed properly into life. The conductor rang the bell, and they pulled away at some speed.

Safe in her makeshift office on the ward, with trembling fingers Kitty tried to fasten a fresh apron around her waist but found she couldn’t tie the knot.

Grace put down the file she had been leafing through. ‘You’re shaking like jelly,’ she said. She enveloped Kitty in a warm hug. ‘There, there. Tell me what’s the matter.’

Kitty exhaled long and hard, drinking in the comforting smell of the coconut oil that her soon-to-be sister-in-law used to smooth the tight curls of her hair into a neat bun. ‘Oh, you’re a good’un, our Grace.’ She broke free of the embrace, patted Grace on the arm and wiped away a tear that had taken her by surprise. ‘Thanks. I needed that.’ She sat behind her desk, which, even in this brave new decade, was still just a table-top that had been put over a freestanding bath in her ‘office’ – an office that doubled as the ward’s bathroom. ‘Where do I start?’

‘At the beginning?’ Grace leaned against shelving that held stacks of snowy white, clean towels. She folded her arms and smiled encouragingly.

Kitty shook her head. ‘Well, I was coming back from Mam’s. One minute, I’m on the bus, wondering why we haven’t left the stop in ages. Next, there’s this … riot comes out of the fog, and we’re caught right in the middle of it.’

‘A riot?’

Nodding ruefully, Kitty exhaled hard. ‘Blackshirts. Well, I say Blackshirts, but actually it’s not the ones that were marching on the streets when I was a little girl, wearing black uniforms like military men. Oswald Mosley’s still behind their antics, but these are new’uns, waving flags with a lightning bolt on them. Conductor said they’d been blocking the road, holding some sort of protest.’

‘Over people like me? Immigrants. That’s what fascists normally get riled up about.’

Kitty bit the inside of her cheek. She fingered the nurse’s watch on the crisp starched bib of her uniform. ‘I’m really embarrassed this is the welcome you’ve been given, after leaving behind everything and everyone you love in beautiful Barbados.’

A wistful look passed over Grace’s face, but she waved her hand dismissively. ‘It’s not so bad. Manchester weather’s growing on me.’

‘Ha. Fungus would grow on you before the weather did.’ Kitty grinned. ‘Heaven knows, it’s damp and drizzly enough! It might be 1950, but I don’t think better weather in the north-west comes as standard with a new atomic age.’

‘Well, at least I’m managing to send a little bit of money home,’ Grace said, tidying some towels that had been left on a trolley by a junior nurse. ‘I’m making a name for myself in the new National Health Service and I’ve got the man I love right here.’ She looked down at her modest engagement ring.

‘Our Ned!’ Kitty said quietly, thinking about her wayward brother who would soon be tying the knot with Grace. She rolled her eyes. ‘By heck, he’s no Montgomery Clift, that’s for sure. You’ve got your work cut out for you there, Grace, or my name’s not Kitty Longthorne.’

‘You’ll be Mrs James Williams soon.’ Grace winked and retrieved the file she’d been leafing through. ‘A doctor’s wife, no less.’ She curtseyed dramatically. ‘Will you still speak to me and Ned, when you swap a single bed in the nurses’ home for a fancy house in Cheshire, living it up with Manchester’s finest plastic surgeon?’

Kitty laughed. ‘Give over, you daft beggar.’ She got to her feet and now deftly knotted her apron. ‘Listen, I understand we’ve got a new arrival in from Casualty. Let’s see what they’ve sent us.’

The mixed ward was full and thrummed with the chatter of the new nursing recruits, Lakshmi and Tasmia, from India and Malay, handing out dinner to the patients.

‘Here you go, Mrs Baxter,’ Lakshmi said. ‘Tripe and onions today.’

‘You what? Say that again,’ one of the elderly patients shouted, holding her cupped hand to her ear and eyeing the Indian nurse with undisguised disdain.

‘Tripe and onions, Mrs Baxter. Here, let me get you some fresh water.’ Lakshmi kept smiling, despite the old lady’s unfriendly behaviour. She set the steaming plate onto the patient’s wheeled table and picked up her empty jug.

Mrs Baxter turned to the woman in the next bed. ‘Can you understand what she’s saying, Fanny? Because I haven’t got a clue.’

Fanny shook her head. ‘No, I can’t understand any of them.’

Watching the scene unfold, Kitty marched up to the bed. ‘Everything all right here, Nurse Argawal?’

‘Yes, Sister.’ Lakshmi smiled and nodded, though the tightness around her eyes made it clear she was feeling uncomfortable.

Kitty took the jug from Lakshmi’s hands and poured Mrs Baxter a glass of water. She held the glass to her lips.

‘Ta, love,’ the old lady said, sipping gratefully. She nodded her head towards Lakshmi. ‘Can’t you get an English nurse to look after me? Only when this one talks, all I can hear is gobbledegook.’

Setting the jug down, Kitty leaned in and spoke softly to the patient. ‘I think your ears must be blocked with wax, Mrs Baxter, because I can understand Nurse Argawal perfectly.’ She patted the old woman’s hand. ‘Shall we get your ears syringed? Or can this lovely nurse do her job and look after you?’

Mrs Baxter glared at Kitty, but Kitty smiled and held her gaze long enough for the anger to leach from the old woman’s wizened features.

‘I suppose I could eat some tripe and onions,’ she said, turning her attention to the plate of grey food. Then, she tap-tap-tapped the table with her index finger. ‘But what I want to know is when are we going to get something decent to eat? A lovely lamb chop. Real eggs.’

Fanny, the woman in the next bed, started to nod enthusiastically. ‘Aye. She’s right, Sister. We’re sick and tired of all this rationing nonsense, aren’t we, Mabel? The war ended five years ago, and we’re still eating sweepings-up and sawdust.’

‘I voted Labour in the last general election, but maybe I’ll think twice in the next,’ Mrs. Baxter said.

Fanny folded her arms tightly, her mouth downturned at the corners. ‘The communists can whistle for my vote if all we’ve got to look forward to is rusk sausage and—’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, you silly old bat!’ A man’s raised voice sliced through the hubbub on the ward.

Kitty got to her feet and turned to find the voice’s owner was her latest admission. She strode to the other side of the ward and picked up the notes, hanging from the end of the man’s iron bed frame. ‘Mr Tom Stockwell?’ She eyed his arm, encased in plaster, and his right leg, similarly in a solid cast, raised by a winch above the bed. His face was battered and bruised, his lip split and swollen to double its normal size, and his torso was encased in wrappings. ‘Seems you’ve had quite a time,’ she said. ‘Broken arm, broken leg, two cracked ribs, not to mention the state of your face. Have you been ten rounds with Bruce Woodcock? Or did you call a lady from the Barbary Coast a silly old bat too?’

The cackle of laughter could be heard from the patients in the surrounding beds.

‘The likes of him has probably never set foot in Salford docks,’ one of the other male patients said. ‘Flipping commie.’

Kitty briefly wondered at how her mother had lived in Salford’s notorious ‘Barbary Coast’ for a couple of years, quite happily. Only Kitty’s father’s recent death had motivated her dear old mam to up sticks and move to the lovely council housing estate in the recently created area of Wythenshawe. At least this time, James had borrowed a van to move her few belongings. Her mam’s days of moving house on a handcart were over, mercifully.

‘Can we all just pipe down about politics?’ she said, looking round at her patients. ‘What is it with you lot today?’ She turned back to her new arrival, and it struck her then that he was familiar somehow. It was his hair. It was the same shade as James’s, in exactly the same Brylcreemed short-back-and-sides style. She caught sight of a red boiled wool jumper, folded on the man’s nightstand. ‘I know you!’ she said. ‘You were the lad who tried to get on my bus, on my way to the hospital. You were one of the rioters that kept me from starting my shift on time. Some Union Movement thug dragged you back onto the street.’

Even though his skin was cut and bruised, it was clear that Tom Stockwell was blushing. ‘That was me, all right. I gave him as good as I got.’

‘Is that right, Mr Fisticuffs? Maybe that fascist was taken to the Infirmary, then, eh, because I can’t see him in here. But I can hear you’re well spoken. Are you a student at the university?’

‘Guilty as charged,’ Tom said.

‘Well, if you’re so clever, why on earth did you get involved in that nonsense?’ Kitty asked. ‘Haven’t you heard there’s war brewing in Korea? A war to stop the communists! Mark my words, British lads will get pulled into fighting by the end of the year, if the commies won’t back down. That’s what I’ve heard.’

‘How else are we going to stop Moseley and his new lot of fascists?’ Tom said. ‘You saw all those hoodlums – Blackshirts in everything but name. They take it upon themselves to march in our streets, spouting vile things about anyone who isn’t true blue British. Waving flags like they’re going to war. We may not have the brave 43 Group in Manchester, but there’s still a good number of us willing to take a stand against an army of ignorant thugs!’

The middle-aged man in the adjacent bed caught Kitty’s eye as he swung his legs out of bed, got to his feet and staggered over to Tom. ‘Ignorant thugs, are we? I’ll give you thug, you commie toerag.’

Before Kitty could react, the patient yanked at the winch that held Tom’s plastered leg aloft and sent it crashing down onto the mattress.

Tom yelped in agony.

‘That’s quite enough of that!’ Kitty bellowed, using the tone that she’d heard Matron use so many times with wayward patients. ‘Get back to your bed, sir! I will not have patients assaulting each other on my ward. Get in bed, now, or I’ll telephone the police myself.’

She called for Grace, who left the bedside of the patient she was tending to.

‘Yes, Sister Longthorne?’

‘Can you tend to this poor chap’s broken leg, please, Nurse? Our appendectomy patient in the neighbouring bed seems to think the mixed ward of Park Hospital is an appropriate place to start a brawl.’

Kitty strode to the fascist’s bed and checked his notes. ‘You’re due for discharge tomorrow, Mr Collins. Good job, I’d say. You mind you keep a civil tongue in your head until then, please.’

Mr Collins, however, was not listening. He began hurling insults at Grace, so biting, that Kitty watched in dismay as her sister-in-law righted Tom’s leg and then fled the ward in tears.

When her shift ended and the morning staff began to arrive, Kitty made her way over to her fiancé’s clinic, where she knew he’d be reading notes, ahead of his consultations.

‘James!’ she said.

He greeted her with a dazzling smile. ‘Kitty, my darling. Good morning. How was your—?’

Kitty was in no mood for chit-chat, however. ‘James, we’ve got to talk.’

‘I need you to speak to the board about the way patients – and some of the staff – talk to the new recruits from the colonies,’ Kitty said, marching up to his desk and placing her hands territorially on the polished oak desktop. ‘It’s gone beyond a joke. I’ve just had to referee a ding-dong between a communist and a Union Movement fascist. Some of the language coming out of the Mosleyite …! It could have stripped paint. Poor Grace ran off in floods.’ She looked into James’ warm brown eyes. ‘It’s happening too often, and it’s got to stop.’

James got to his feet and walked around to meet her. This early in the morning, he looked pristine and smelled of the TCP he gargled with as well as Brylcreem. He put his arms around her. ‘I love it when you’re all hot under the collar. Sister Kitty, my warrior queen. You’re quite formidable when you want to be. Do you know that?’

Irritated that he didn’t seem to be taking her seriously, Kitty pushed him away. ‘Aren’t you listening to me? I’ve got old ladies making fun of the new nurses’ accents. It’s beyond the pale.’

Sighing, James perched on the edge of his desk and glanced at the clock on the wall that showed it was approaching half past seven in the morning. He locked eyes with Kitty. ‘Darling, we’re dealing with a polio epidemic. Have you seen the numbers of children being admitted? It’s dizzying – three times the number of children with polio we saw in 1948.’ He ran a hand through his dark hair and thumbed his freshly shaven chin. ‘We barely have enough iron lungs to accommodate them all.’ He held his hands up as if in surrender. ‘That’s the main worry for the board at the moment.’

‘Oh, come off it, James! Matron’s told me what goes on in those board meetings. You have agendas and that. There’s no way you only discuss one topic.’ She grabbed his forearm, savouring the feel of his starched shirtsleeves when she felt so unkempt after a full shift on a busy ward. ‘You can be the champion of Park Hospital’s new nurses from the colonies. They’ve come to help build our National Health Service, but what are we giving them? Lower wages than advertised, longer hours. Most of them are the equivalent of State Registered Nurses, but we’ve relegated them to washing out bedpans and changing sheets. The least we owe them is the right to be treated as equals on the wards.’

James took Kitty’s face in his warm hands and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead. ‘You’re right, my love. No patient or staff member should be making someone like Grace flee the ward in tears, just because of where she’s from.’ He looked up to a corner of the high ceiling, his eyebrows bunching together. ‘I tell you what, I’ll ask Professor Baird-Murray if you can sit in on the board meeting so you can give a first-hand account of what you’ve seen. How does that sound?’

Nodding, Kitty tried to visualise sitting in on the meeting at that huge table, surrounded by all the senior medical men in the hospital. ‘I’d better let Matron know. She won’t want me treading on her toes.’

‘She’s retiring in a couple of weeks – I doubt she’ll give a fig. Just you make sure you turn up in time for the meeting at five.’

As Kitty made her way over to the nurses’ home, her feet stinging and her back aching from having another full shift under her belt, she wondered if, now that she was a Sister, the likes of Professor Baird-Murray would deign to listen to what she had to say about how Park Hospital was being run. Somehow, she doubted it.

When the alarm went off on her clock, Kitty rose and dressed quickly. Her head was still heavy with fatigue since she’d cut her sleep somewhat short. No matter though. The anticipation of sitting in on a board meeting was enough to get her going.

Downstairs, she found Matron sitting in her office – not at her desk, though, where she would normally be, if she wasn’t walking the floors of the hospital, inspecting the nurses’ work and keeping the doctors in check. That afternoon, Matron was sitting in her armchair with her feet up, reading a book.

‘Knock, knock,’ Kitty said, standing hesitantly in the doorway. She stifled a yawn.

Matron turned to face her and smiled. ‘Kitty, my dear. Do come in.’

‘I’m surprised to find you here, actually. I thought you’d be on the wards.’

Putting a bookmark between the pages of her book and setting it down on the side table by her armchair, Matron motioned Kitty to sit in the visitor’s chair. ‘I’m gathering my strength – the calm before the storm.’ She chuckled to herself. ‘A new matron means the outgoing matron has an awful lot of affairs to set in order in a very short space of time.’

‘When does the new matron start?’ Kitty asked, realising that her beloved mentor suddenly looked old. It was as if the stresses of overseeing Park Hospital’s evolution from a brand-new hospital that served the people of Davyhulme to a military hospital, during the war years, and then to the first NHS hospital in the country, had finally permeated her tough exterior.

‘In three days, would you believe it? And there’s a handover period that’s going to be rather frenetic, I think.’

‘If you need any assistance, you can count on me, Matron.’

Matron leaned forwards and patted Kitty’s hand. ‘I know that, Sister Longthorne. You are one of my biggest successes.’ She winked. ‘Not bad for a girl from Hulme, eh?’

Kitty blushed. ‘Actually, I’m glad I found you. I needed to get your permission to speak to the board about the shoddy treatment of the new nurses from the colonies by some of the other staff and the patients. I didn’t want to tread on your toes, seeing it’s normally you—’

‘You brought the new nurses here, Kitty.’

‘Not all of them, I didn’t. I only brought one!’

‘Well, you were our recruiting champion in the West Indies, travelling the high seas to bring foreign talent to Davyhulme. You got the ball rolling. It makes sense you should fight their corner at today’s meeting, if that’s what you’re minded to do.’ Matron grunted as she got to her feet. ‘Tea?’

Kitty looked at her watch. She had only five minutes before the meeting began. ‘No thanks, Matron. I’d best get going.’

Taking her leave from Matron and crossing the grounds of the hospital, Kitty was struck by a pang of sorrow. So much of her own story had come to pass in these hospital grounds, and so much of it had involved Matron.

Walking beneath the sturdy Art-Deco clock tower, she remembered how her estranged father had shown up at the nurses’ home in the middle of the night on VE Day, drunk and demanding to see Kitty … until Matron had locked him in a cupboard. Bert Longthorne, the errant father who had always taken, rarely giving anything more than sleepless nights and a bad reputation to the entire family, had been tamed only by Matron. And then there was James … Kitty remembered her fiancé sneaking around the nurses’ home in a bid to look after her when she’d been ill; always on the lookout for Matron, who patrolled the floors to check no nurse had a gentleman caller in her room.

As she entered the hospital and passed the casualty department, making for the stairs, she mused that the infamous, inimitable Bert Longthorne was dead, and Matron was leaving. Matron, who had supported her when her devious pal, Violet, had betrayed and belittled her; Matron, who had taught her how to be the best nurse she could be and rise above her poverty-stricken Hulme roots; Matron, who had turned Kitty the girl, into Kitty the woman.

‘By heck,’ Kitty muttered, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘Pull yourself together, Kitty Longthorne. There’s work to do.’

The board room was already full and almost foggy with the smoke from cigars, pipes and cigarettes when Kitty arrived. She looked for James among the consultants and spotted him sitting by the open window, with Mr Galbraith, the heart and lung surgeon, to his left, and an empty seat to his right.

James patted the place next to him, and Kitty filed past the board members, who continued to chat animatedly, barely batting an eye that a woman was in their midst.

One turned to Kitty, just as she was about to take her seat. ‘I say, Nurse. Fetch us some tea, there’s a good girl,’ he said.

Kitty recognised him as a general surgeon, who had removed many a gangrenous limb from wounded servicemen. She’d assisted him in theatre several times. Yet this surgeon obviously had no idea who she was. ‘Oh, I’m not here to serve the tea, Mr Latimer,’ Kitty said. ‘I’m here to talk to you all in my capacity as Ward Sister.’ She felt her cheeks burn but steeled herself to adopt the non-nonsense manner that she’d seen Matron so successfully deploy whenever the consultants tried to take liberties.

Taking her seat by James, Kitty sensed that Mr Latimer was staring at her, aghast, but she turned her focus to what she might say in front of these powerful men, who weren’t used to listening to women.

Professor Baird-Murray tapped his signet ring on his tumbler of whisky and the room fell silent. He put his burning cigar into a large cut-glass ashtray, positioned by his notes.

‘Gentlemen. Let us commence our meeting.’ He glanced back at his bespectacled secretary, who was sitting primly at a separate side table, taking shorthand notes in a pad. He gave her the nod.

At her side, James clear. . .