Free A Nurse's Duty by Maggie Hope Page B

Rigg. The journey down, by cart and then by train, seemed twice as long as it usually did for both Karen and her grandmother were lost in their own anxieties.
    ‘Mother! And our Karen an’ all. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’
    Rachel Knight looked up in surprise as they walked in through the open front door of number two Chapel Row. Karen’s heart lightened at the sight of her mother, obviously not having one of her turns. Rachel was standing by the table peeling vegetables and she looked fine. The dark shadows under her eyes had receded and her normally pale face was flushed. Whether it was from the heat of the fire or not, she looked well, better than the last time Karen saw her.
    ‘You’re not badly then? Do you mean to say I’ve come all this way and there’s nowt the matter with you?’ demanded Gran. Karen caught her mother’s eye and had to smile.
    ‘Oh, Gran, would you rather she was badly?’
    ‘No, I never said that,’ admitted Gran.
    Rachel wiped her hands on her apron and turned to lift the kettle on to the fire. ‘Have you been having a dream again, Mam?’ she asked.
    ‘Aye, I did, an’ it’s not usually wrong neither,’ snapped Jane, sitting down at the table and loosening her shawl.
    ‘It’s not wrong this time either, Mam, only it’s not me for a change.’ Rachel paused and sat down herself before continuing. ‘It’s our Kezia. She’s lost the bairn.’
    ‘Kezia? No!’ exclaimed Karen, that it should be Kezia had not occurred to either her or Gran. Kezia never had an illness in her life, why on earth should she lose her first baby?
    ‘I knew it. I knew there was something,’ said Gran. ‘Where is she then?’
    ‘She’s upstairs. She was here when it happened which is just as well, I could see to her. But sit down and have something to eat before you go up to see her. Kezia’s all right now, she’s got it over.’
    Rachel poured out tea and buttered teacakes, working swiftly and surely as Karen remembered her doing in the days before her heart trouble became apparent. Karen got to her feet. ‘I’ll just go up, Mam, I’d rather go now.’
    Opening the door of the bedroom she had shared with her brother and sisters – in those days there had been a rope slung across the room with blankets over it for a divider between the boy and the girls – Karen looked anxiously at the bed in the corner. ‘Kezia?’
    Lying in the middle of the bed, her sister turned to look at her. Her normally rosy face was pale and her eyes red with weeping. She looked strangely vulnerable as Karen walked hesitantly over to her.
    ‘I lost the bairn,’ Kezia said weakly, as though she was confessing to wrong-doing, and Karen rushed the last few steps and took her hand. It felt cold and limp and not at all like Kezia’s capable hand.
    ‘I know, pet.’
    There was a short silence. Karen stopped herself saying the obvious phrases like ‘You’ve time yet’ or ‘You’ll have another’. She was aware that for the moment Kezia couldn’t think like that. She was in mourning for the child she had just lost.
    ‘I’m that sorry.’
    Kezia blew her nose on a man’s handkerchief she drew from under the pillow. ‘I know I’m a fool, making such a fuss. And it’s too much for Mam to run up and down the stairs after me. I’m going to pull myself together and go back to my own house.’
    ‘Gran’s here,’ said Karen, ‘there’s no need for you to do anything. And Mam looks well, doesn’t she? Do you think she’s beginning to improve?’
    Kezia brightened for a minute. ‘She does look well, doesn’t she? She likes to be needed same as us all, I suppose. I just hope she doesn’t try doing over much. You know what she’s like, when she’s well. She thinks she’s better altogether, she thinks she’s had a miracle cure.’
    ‘Well, Gran’s here. She’ll keep us all straight.’
    The sisters smiled at each other, remembering other times when Gran had come to the house and