At the Coalface: The memoir of a pit nurse. Veronica Clark

head back inside and closed her bedroom window.

      From then on I became known as the joker of the house.

      A few days later, Sister stopped me on the stairs.

      ‘Nurse Smith,’ she called. I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to face her, wondering what on earth I’d done wrong.

      ‘I always know when you’re on cleaning duties,’ she sighed, tapping her foot against the step.

      My mind raced. Maybe my idea of cleanliness wasn’t up to her high standards?

      I cleared my throat and spoke. ‘Why, Sister?’

      ‘Because you always make a clatter, dropping the hand brush down the stairs whenever you do it!’ A smirk spread across her face and I watched as she turned and continued down the stairs. I could still hear her giggling away to herself as she walked into her bedroom and closed the door. I laughed too because I knew it was true – I loved the idea of being a nurse but sometimes I tried so hard that it made me clumsy.

      I didn’t want to go home at weekends because I didn’t want to see Elsie, and Dad didn’t rent a telephone then so I couldn’t even call him. Instead, I went back to friends’ houses. My pal Glenys lived close to the moor near Castle Hill, just outside Huddersfield. Glenys’s father was a slaughterhouse man so they were poor and working class, just like me. However, her father also had the broadest Yorkshire accent I’d ever heard in my life. By the end of the weekend, as I gathered my things to leave, he mumbled something I didn’t understand.

      ‘Aht bahn ame,’ he said gruffly.

      I shook my head. I didn’t have a clue what he was saying, so I looked to Glenys for translation.

      ‘He asked when you were going home,’ she explained.

      I looked at him and shook my head. ‘Oh no, I can’t afford it,’ I replied.

      Glenys’s dad shook his head; now it was his turn to look confused.

      Only one girl left the nursing college. She was a sweet enough lass, but she couldn’t keep up. Nursing was such a hands-on job that you had to be physically up to it, as well as mentally. But it did have its perks, namely the respect you got from members of the general public. As a trainee nurse in Huddersfield, I never had to pay a single bus fare. Instead, I was allowed to travel free, and often others would step aside in the queue to let me on the bus first. I valued both my occupation and outdoor uniform – a blue Mackintosh, cornflower-blue dress and black shoes – which I wore with immense pride.

      After a year in training, and with only half a day per week working in the hospital, it was time for us to be let loose on the wards. At first the building had felt massive, but in reality it was just a regular-size town hospital. One of the first wards I worked on was the Ear, Nose and Throat, where children would come in to have their tonsils removed. As soon as they arrived we’d ply them with ice cream because it not only helped ease their sore throats, it also numbed the area. It was a pretty routine op and afterwards the hospital porter would collect the young patient from theatre, carrying them over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift to prevent them from choking on their own blood. The children would usually stay in overnight. It was my job to care for them because I worked the night shift. Many of them were still young, only seven or eight years old, and, in some cases, it’d be their first night away from home, so I tried my best to comfort them throughout the night.

      A month or so later, I was transferred to the casualty department where, because of the proximity of the hospital to the Pennines and the harsh winters there, lots of youngsters suffering from chest infections were admitted. Back in those days, no one had central heating; besides, these were the toughened children of farmers and land workers, so more often than not they’d be admitted wearing a ‘liberty bodice’. The bodices were made out of a thick cotton material with a fleece liner. They would be permanently stitched around the children’s bodies to help them survive the bleak, long winter. Underneath, their skin would be smeared with goose fat to create a disgusting type of body insulation. Most of my time in casualty was spent cutting poorly children out of these liberty bodices so that we could treat them, but inevitably, when the wrappers came off, they stunk to high heaven.

      ‘All right?’ I asked one little boy as I sliced some sharpened scissors through his outer bodice.

      He nodded, his big, wide eyes looking straight up at me. I thought I’d been well prepared, but as soon as I removed the cloth the smell was so bad that it caught at the back of my throat, choking me. I held my breath to stop myself being sick. Soap, it seemed, only reached so far and didn’t cut through goose fat.

      Now we were working on the wards, my fellow student nurses and I had transferred from the college house to the nurses’ home, where we slept in between shifts. The nurses’ home was situated inside the hospital grounds, a stone’s throw from the police college. It was down the road and housed lots of nice trainee police officers. Our official curfew time was 10 p.m., but we often broke the rule, returning an hour or two later. To get around this, I made friends with nurses who had a bedroom on the ground floor. As a group, we’d plan whose turn it was to leave their window open so that we could sneak back in through it. However, on one occasion it was so dark outside that all the windows looked exactly the same. I climbed in and fell on a poor unsuspecting nurse slumbering soundly in her bed. She screamed so loud that she woke up the entire block. Thankfully I was lithe and fast on my feet, so I was able to run to my room before anyone realised I was the intruder.

      The casualty department was where I first fell in love. Shy and inexperienced, I became smitten with a male nurse called Stanley. He was almost ten years older than me, in his late twenties, but to me, a girl of 17, he was the height of male sophistication. Tall and with smouldering film-star looks, Stanley was so kind to me, and when he bought me flowers one day I was so thrilled I thought I would burst with joy. Afterwards, every time I cut my finger or felt a fishbone stick slightly inside my throat, I ran straight to the casualty department to seek immediate medical attention from the lovely Stanley. There was only one fly in the ointment: Stanley was homosexual. But I was young and naïve, and I’d never heard of a man being homosexual, so I was totally stumped as to why he didn’t consider me in the same way. It was down to the lovely Sister le Fleur to set me straight and let me down gently. She quietly informed me that, sadly, Stanley’s intentions were entirely honourable, and I had mistaken his friendship for love.

      ‘You’re just not his type, Nurse Smith,’ she sighed, patting me kindly on the shoulder.

      ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, hurt and a little confused.

      ‘It’s Stanley. He doesn’t go for girls. He’s homosexual, so I’m afraid you are wasting your time.’

      The news hit me like a sharp slap across the face. I was heartbroken, but I realised that, even with all the will in the world, Stanley and I would never be more than just good friends.

      Stanley and the other male nurses were very protective of us young female nurses. One evening, I’d worked a particularly long and gruelling night shift when I was overcome with exhaustion.

      ‘Why don’t you go and have a kip?’ another nurse, called David, suggested.

      ‘But where?’ I sighed. I was terrified Matron would catch me sleeping on the job.

      ‘There’s a side room, just down the corridor,’ he said, pointing over to it. ‘There’s a bed in it. Go on, I’ll wake you up in an hour if we get busy.’

      I was so tired from standing on my feet for hours on end that I did as he said. I shut the door behind me, pulled back the covers and climbed into bed, where I fell into a deep sleep. I’d only been snoozing for a matter of minutes when David came bursting back in through the door.

      ‘Joan, Joan, wake up!’ His voice sounded panicked and urgent.

      Bleary eyed, I sat up and stretched my arms above my head.

      ‘Has it been an hour already?’ I yawned.

      ‘No!’ David gasped as he proceeded to unceremoniously