‘Charmian,’ said Godfrey, ‘you are over-exciting yourself.’ And true enough, she was tremulously crying.
NINE
Partly because of a reorganization of the Maud Long Ward and partly because of Tempest Sidebottome’s death, Sister Burstead was transferred to another ward.
She had been a protegee of Tempest’s, and this had mostly accounted for the management committee’s resistance to any previous suggestion that the sister could not cope with the old people’s ward. The committee, though largely composed of recently empowered professional men and women, had been in many ways afraid of Tempest. Or rather, afraid to lose her lest they should get someone worse.
It was necessary for them to tolerate at least one or two remnants of the old-type committee people until they should die out. And they chiefly feared, in fact, that if Tempest should take offence and resign, she would be replaced by some more formidable, more subtle private welfare-worker and busybody. And whereas Tempest had many dramatic things to say in committee, whereas she was imperious with the matron, an opponent on principle of all occasions of expenditure, scornful in the extreme of physiotherapists and psychiatrists (everything beginning ‘psycho-’ or ‘physio-’ Tempest lumped together, believed to be the same thing, and dismissed) — although she was in reaction against the committee’s ideals, she was so to the point of parody, and it was for precisely this reason, because she so much demonstrated the errors of her system, that she was retained, was propitiated from time to time, and allowed to have her way in such minor matters as that of Sister Burstead. Not that the committee were not afraid of Tempest for other, less evident reasons; but these were matters of instinct and not openly admitted. Her voice in committee had been strangely terrifying to many an eminent though small-boned specialist, even the bossy young heavily-qualified women had sometimes failed to outstare the little pale pebble-eyes of the great unself-questioning matriarch, Mrs Sidebottome. ‘Terrible woman, ‘everyone always agreed when she had left.
‘After the fifties are over,’ said the chairman, who was himself a man of seventy-three, ‘everything will be easier. This transition period … the old brigade don’t like change. They don’t like loss of authority. By the middle- sixties everything will be easier. We will have things in working order.’ Whereupon the committee surrendered themselves to putting up with Tempest, a rock of unchanging, until the middle-sixties of the century should arrive.
However, she had died, leaving behind her on the committee a Tempest-shaped vacuum which they immediately attempted, but had not yet been able to fill.
In the meantime, as if tempting Providence to send them another, avenging, Tempest, they transferred Sister Burstead, on the first of January, to another ward. That the old people’s ward was being reorganized provided a reasonable excuse, and Sister Burstead made no further protest.
News of the transfer reached the grannies before the news of the reorganization.
‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said Granny Barnacle.
She saw it before that week-end. A new ward sister, fat and forceful with a huge untroubled faceful of flesh and brisk legs, was installed. ‘That’s how I like them,’ said Granny Barnacle. ‘Sister Bastard was too skinny.’
The new sister, when she caught Granny Green absentmindedly scooping the scrambled egg off her plate into her locker, put her hands on her slab-like hips and said, ‘What the hell do you think
‘That’s how I like them,’ said Granny Barnacle. She closed her eyes on her pillow with contentment. She declared herself to feel safe for the first time for months. She declared herself ready to die now that she had seen the removal of Sister Bastard. She sprang up again from her pillow and with outstretched arm and pointing finger prophesied that the whole ward would now see the winter through.
Miss Valvona, who was always much affected by Miss Barnacle’s feelings, consulted the stars: ‘Granny Barnacle — Sagittarius.
‘Ho!’ said Granny Barnacle. ‘Originality today, I’ll wear me britches back to front.’
The nurses came on their daily round of washing, changing, combing and prettifying the patients before the matron’s inspection. They observed Granny Barnacle’s excitement and decided to leave her to the last. She was usually excitable throughout this performance in any case. During Sister Burstead’s term of office, especially, Granny Barnacle would screech when turned over for her back to be dusted with powder, or helped out of bed to sit on her chair.
‘Nurse, I’ll be covered with bruises,’ she would shout.
‘If you don’t move, Gran, you’ll be covered with bedsores.’
She would scream to God that the nurses were pulling her arms from their sockets, she would swear by the Almighty that she wasn’t fit to be sat up. She moaned, whenever the physiotherapist made her move her fingers and toes, and declared that her joints would crack.
‘Kill me off,’ she would command, ‘and be done with it.’
‘Come on, Gran, you’ve got to get exercise.’
‘Crack! Can’t you hear the bones crack? Kill me off and —’
‘Let’s rub your legs, Gran. My, you’ve got beautiful legs.’
‘Help, she’s killing me.’
But at the best of times Granny Barnacle really liked an excuse for a bit of noise, it livened her up. In a sense, she gave vent to the whole ward’s will to shout, so that the others did not make nearly so much noise as they might otherwise have done. It was true some of the other grannies were loud in complaints, but this was mostly for a few seconds when their hair was being combed. Granny Green would never fail to tell the nurses after her hair was done.
‘I had a lovely head of hair till you cut it off,’ although in reality there had been very little to cut off.
‘It’s hygiene, Granny. It would hurt far more when we combed it if your hair was long.’
‘I had a lovely head…’
‘Me, too,’ Granny Barnacle would declare, especially if Sister Burstead had been within hearing. ‘You should have seen my head before they cut it off.’
