Chapter Text
Nurse Crane was sat, one leg crossed over the other, in a high backed armchair in the living room of Nonnatus house, eyes on her knitting. It was not a random choice of seat, for nothing Phyllis Crane did was ever random. Her hands were busy in her lap, long plastic needles passing over one another in accordance with a creased knitting pattern balanced on her knee. The years had made her short sighted, and a pair of spectacles were balanced on the tip of her nose so that she might peer down at the handwritten notes added to the plan; “a standard pattern is of little use to a child with thalidomide-altered limbs” she had explained to young nurse Busby. Her distance vision however was as sharp as ever, and from this carefully selected corner seat, Phyllis could survey all over the rim of her lenses, which was just the way she liked it.
On a low pouffe alongside her was Sister Monica Joan, sat as close to the wireless as the low wooden table it was resting on would allow her. The nine o’clock evening news could just be heard, she had the volume turned so low. Several weeks of observation and the look on Sister Monica’s wrinkled face had led Phyllis to believe that she listened more for the dulcet tones of the newsreader than she did for the education of the house about the world’s events.
Phyllis started a new row of pastel yellow and shifted slightly in her chair to allow her peripheral vision to take in her other companions. It was a Sunday evening, and the rest of the nuns had retired to their rooms for private reflections, whilst Monica Joan paid worship to the wireless. It was therefore a room of rather tired midwives, plus Miss Busby, who by now, Phyllis mused, did not feel like an addition but a firm member of this slightly unusual household. The nurse in question was sitting at the table, her profile warmed by the glow of the living room fire, the doors thrown open so that the dining room and sitting room might feel like the same space. Nurse Patsy Mount sat across from her, cigarette in hand, and an exhausted looking Barbara Gilbert sat between them, explaining something with a slightly glazed look upon her face. Something about the whole scene was familiar, but Phyllis couldn’t place what or why, perhaps she was simply settled in at last. A trail of smoke wafted skywards from Nurse Mount’s fingers to mingle with a second trail courtesy of Miss Franklin, who was leaning, or rather lounging in the doorway in the way only Trixie Franklin could, with an ear cocked for the telephone. With three unexpectedly early deliveries, Sister Mary Cynthia away, and Sister Winifred suspended from calls by a horrendously heavy cold, it had been a very long week for those left to pick up the slack. Dark circles were visible on the eyes of everyone bar Miss Franklin, who Nurse Crane had no doubt could powder the dark circles off a panda bear.
The fire crackled and Phyllis checked her pattern once again before the phone rang from the corridor. ‘Duty calls,’ Nurse Franklin commented wearily, ducking into the room to stub out her cigarette before trotting to answer the familiar summons. ‘That better be Mrs Hemsworth or I may well leave them to it!’ Mrs Hemsworth had been the one of six scheduled births for that week, but she had shown no signs of labour so far, whilst unexpected labours had been calling Nonnatus house all weekend, most of which had required a second midwife or Dr Turner to be called. Nurse Gilbert’s delivery this afternoon had been the worst, a seven hour labour with an infant who had then not breathed for the first four tense minutes of life. The dark circles were well-earned. Nurse Franklin’s harried heels were heard again in the corridor, and the slam of the front door a few moments later confirmed that she was heading out on call.
Phyllis’s own week had not been easy, though she preferred to recover in her own time and privacy, rather than discuss and process in the way that her younger colleagues often did, usually with Horlicks or something stronger in hand. She did admire them, the four young women with whom she shared her newest home. She admired that after everything they went through each day that they still had the strength to offer support to one another. They offered it to her too, along with a Horlicks or a something stronger, and several reminders to use their first names. Phyllis usually politely declined the support, these experiences were newer for them, more raw. After so many years in so many service roles there was very little Phyllis Crane hadn’t seen, whether it be personal or medical, joyful or painful.
She had seen that strangest affliction many times, she thought, letting her gaze drift slyly back to the table, keeping her head facing her needlework. That most joyful and painful affliction of all, she had seen in all forms, though each young couple thinks they have invented it anew. She watched Nurse Mount light another cigarette and sigh, her own gaze never leaving the face of Nurse Busby, who returned it with equally unbroken attention. Nurse Gilbert - sorry, Barbara, seemed oblivious, addressing her explanations at the space between them, in the vague direction of the living room. The couple sat, unable to close that short distance between them, but the unspoken comfort that they gave each other across it was almost palpable. When they at last broke their gaze to murmur quiet understandings to their friend, Phyllis couldn’t help but sigh in sympathy, and at the stirring of a long-forgotten feeling that quivered in her chest.
Sister Monica Joan broke the sleepy atmosphere by switching off the wireless with a sudden click. ‘I must go, for there is much to be done in the advent of a new week,’ she declared to the room in general, hands clasped together at her chest. The clock bonged half past nine as she hurried from the room, though oddly in the direction of the kitchen rather than her quarters... Barbara too pushed back her chair, ‘I think I’m going to go to bed too, I just want to sleep this whole week off.’ She placed a hand on Patsy’s shoulder as she rose and smiled wearily at her companions, ‘Thank you for listening to me witter on, both of you.’ Patsy smiled up at her, giving the woman’s hand a squeeze with her own cigarette-free hand, ‘Witter on all you like Barbara, it’s good to talk it through.’ Nurse Crane saw Miss Bubsy, sorry, Delia, raise an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Goodnight Barbara,’ the young Welsh woman added, ‘I think I’ll wait up to hear from Trixie.’
‘Goodnight Nurse Gilbert,’ Phyllis called, as her roommate left, her gaze back on her knitting. It was nearly done now, the body of it anyway. She would add two short capped sleeves to the smaller than usual arm holes she had created so far, but when she had a little more energy. For now she would just tidy these ends up and enjoy the warmth of the fire for a few more minutes while she did so, and steady these sudden nerves of hers. A quick glance over the rim of her glasses took in the two women at the table, talking very quietly across the intense space between them. Their postures were almost mirrored, heads slightly angled, one dark, one red. They each had a tense hand on the table, no more than six inches apart, or no closer than six, perhaps. What would they do if she were not here, Phyllis wondered, as her needles clicked softly together, and the fire spat a little too close to her nylons. Probably nothing, in fear that someone would return down to fetch a glass of water, or Sister Monica Joan from her cake hunt, and their lives and careers be blown apart by someone witnessing a moment of much needed tenderness between them.
Phyllis pressed her lips together as a carefully suppressed emotion stirred uncomfortably in her chest. She had known that intense love once, she thought to herself. She had known loving in fear too; when the war had threatened to take everything from you at any moment, there was no other kind. She had been in her mid-thirties when she had joined the Womens’ Land Army just before the outbreak of the second war, but age and background quickly became irrelevant as the country and the world was plunged into the strange chaos that war brings. Intense friendships and even romances had been forged under the desperate uncertainty and horror of the years that followed.
Nurse Crane set her knitting down suddenly on the side table, not stopping to put it away properly, and rose a little unsteadily to her feet as emotion rose in her chest. She looked at the two women at the table who looked back at her with concern in their faces, ‘Phyllis? Are you quite alright-‘ Nurse Busby – Delia – started but the older nurse waved away her concern. ‘I’ll leave you – good - good night girls.’ she stuttered a little as she left the room, feeling two pairs of eyes on her as she closed the door as softly as she could behind her. She felt the blood rush to her head and tears spring to her eyes as she paused at the bottom of the stairs.
Phyllis had long been certain that she too could have been drawn into a romance with a man or a woman had the right one come along. Several of both kinds had certainly offered, but the right one had always been and always would be that young man, lost in France in the last days before ceasefire of the first war. Phyllis steadied herself with a hand on the cool wood of the banister and tried to ground herself as memories, clear and technicolour, thrust themselves uncomfortably into the forefront of her mind. So many nights sat up with exhausted land girls in the forties, waiting for news after daunting but inconclusive telegrams about husbands, brothers, loves. Letters full of intense emotions sent long distances to those dears ones abroad. Memories of long ago, those last painful days of the first war, waiting for news, when the rest of the country was celebrating the declaration of peace. Waiting for any word of her young man, those short miles across the channel feeling vast and with uncertainty, that distance growing wider with each day of silence. The eventual pain when confirmation came, so stark against the joy of all those around her.
With a sharp intake of breath Phyllis Crane centered herself back in the present; she was not a mourning teenager now, nor was she a middle-aged landgirl of the 1940s, she was here in Nonnatus house in 1962, stronger, wiser, most certainly older. Love was a younger woman’s game now, and no one else should have to do that in fear. Not again. Phyllis Crane would be damned if she let it happen.