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She
had pitied him to her soul, but pity wasn’t a scrap of good to anybody; she could see that now. She was in nursing for better, for worse, and she’d have to get over her
squeamishness.
    ‘I’m going to be just like her,’ she announced. ‘I’m going to dedicate my life to looking after the patients, and I shall think it a privilege.’
    ‘I hope you won’t be like her,’ said Armstrong, picking up her plate to join them at their table. ‘Dunkley’s as hard as the hobs of hell. When I was on
women’s surgical she came to relieve once when we were short-handed, and I was with her when she did a dressing on a sixteen-year-old who’d had a breast abscess lanced. She jabbed that
ribbon gauze into the cavity with the sinus forceps until we nearly had to scrape the poor little thing off the ceiling. It made my toes curl, and I asked her afterwards what she thought she was
doing. “Serves her right,” she said. “Unmarried mothers!” – and I thought, you bloody bitch. She reported me for insubordination into the bargain.’
    ‘Armstrong!’ Sally exclaimed, ‘I’ve never heard you swear before.’
    ‘I don’t, usually. Dunkley might be an efficient nurse, but she’s not a very humane one. She’s here to find a husband, and not much else, so I’ve heard,’ said
Armstrong. ‘She’s got her hooks into Dr Campbell, by all accounts. They’ve been seen out together, anyway.’
    ‘Ah, so that’s it,’ Sally murmured. She’d had a feeling Dunkley hadn’t liked him joking with her about her sprint to the sluice.
    ‘I’ll tell you something funny about him, though,’ Armstrong grinned, lowering her voice and leaning confidentially towards them. ‘We had this old body on the ward at
about the same time. A notorious old . . . well, she’d made her living down on the Quayside, and she must have been sixty if she was a day, and in the last stages of syphilis. Well past being
infectious.’
    ‘Ugh!’ said Sally, with a shudder.
    ‘But you know from the lectures what havoc it wreaks with the body; we’ve all been well warned about that since the start of the war. Anyway, she had general paralysis of the insane
as well as everything else – mad as a hatter, like they are when they get to that stage, all sense of decency gone. I used to hate bathing her, she’d ask us to do all sorts of filthy
things with her, and she loved it if she could embarrass us. Oh my word, a repulsive old woman! She tried to drag every man that came into the ward into bed with her, acting as if she was still
seventeen and a raving beauty. Anyway, you know what Dr Campbell’s like, fancies himself no end, and he was always giving the good-looking nurses the glad eye. Never gave me a second glance,
of course, and you can see why . . .’
    ‘Sure, and I can’t see anything of the sort. There’s nothing wrong with you!’ protested Curran.
    ‘Let’s face it, Curran, I’m plain and poor, and not up to Dr Campbell’s exacting standards by a long stretch. Still, I am human, and he was always so off-hand with me, I
began to feel a bit annoyed. So when Sister was at supper one evening and he was taking the chance to show off to a couple of lovely young probationers in the office along with another houseman,
and just me and my ugly mug left on the ward to do all the work while they had their cosy little gathering, I don’t know what got into me, but I thought, “I’ll take him down a
peg.” So I walked into the office, with my face absolutely straight, and I looked him in the eye, and quite serious, I said: “Oh, Dr Campbell, you’ve got a big admirer on the
ward, and she says she’ll die if you don’t go and give her a kiss before you leave!” You ought to have seen him,’ Armstrong laughed. ‘Swelling with conceit, absolutely
thrilled to bits with himself! So they’re all looking at me, and he bats his eyes and simpers a bit and he says: “Well! Who is it?” “Rosie Ramsden!” I said, and I