A Nurse's Duty Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dave?’ Kezia asked her one Sunday afternoon after Chapel. ‘Goodness knows, he asks you often enough. You should get out more, Karen, and going for a walk with a chap doesn’t mean you have to marry him.’ Though in Kezia’s case, it had meant that which made Karen smile. They were standing with Rachel by the back gate for a few moments, enjoying a chat in the summer sunshine before Kezia went on to her own house with Luke.
    Karen went pink. ‘Don’t be daft, our Kezia,’ she said, keeping her voice low, for Dave was still standing on the opposite side of the road with his friends. But she looked sideways at him as he laughed at something his friend said. He was so tall and handsome in his Sunday suit and highly polished boots and with his sandy hair glinting golden in the August sun. As she watched he detached himself from the group and came over to ask her to walk with him as he had done so many times before, or so she thought, as she got ready to say no yet again.
    ‘Hello, Mrs Knight,’ said Dave, nodding to the girls, and went whistling off down the row.
    ‘He’s fed up with asking, Karen,’ said Kezia after a moment.
    ‘A good thing too,’ she snapped, opening the gate and starting up the yard. ‘I was sick of him asking an’ all.’ Rachel and Kezia looked at one another and smiled, both knowing that Dave was trying a new approach.
    ‘Dave Mitchell was in the queue for the Eden Theatre with a lass,’ commented Joe the following Saturday evening as he sat down to supper. He had just returned from Auckland where he had spent the afternoon and early evening. Karen didn’t falter as she placed a plate of baked cow heel and onions before him and cut him a round of bread. Joe glanced up at her.
    ‘I said –’
    ‘I know what you said, Joe,’ she said quickly. ‘It matters nothing to me what Dave Mitchell does. Anyroad, what were you doing in the queue for the music hall? You’ll catch it from Da if he finds out.’
    ‘Aw, we didn’t go in,’ said Joe easily. ‘We were just looking at the posters outside.’
    Karen gave him a sceptical glance but she said no more. Instead she poured herself a cup of tea and sat down at the table beside her brother, sighing. For some reason she felt restless and dissatisfied with her life and she couldn’t imagine why. Well, she thought wearily, tomorrow was her turn to work even though it was a Sunday and she had better go to bed or she would never get up in time for the walk in to Bishop Auckland. Saying goodnight, she went up the narrow, ladder-like stairs to bed. Only one more week before the results came out.
    But thoughts of her examination results were driven from her head as she walked back through the fields the following afternoon, for as she drew near to Morton Main she could hear the mournful sound of the colliery hooter. Karen broke into a run, her heart pounding and her throat dry. Oh, how she hated the sound, so different from the one which signalled the start of a new shift in the mine. This one was only blown when something had happened in the pit. Her steps slowed to a walk as she realized this was Sunday. How could there have been an accident when it was Sunday and the pit was idle? Only maintenance men went down the pit on Sundays.
    As she rounded the corner of the row she saw that the usual knots of boys and girls loitering outside the Chapel were missing. Only a few housewives stood at their gates, talking quietly to each other.
    ‘What’s it? What’s happened?’ she asked breathlessly as she went in the house. There was only her mother there, sitting before the fire in spite of the heat of the day.
    ‘I don’t know what it is,’ answered Rachel. ‘Your father and Joe have gone to the pit yard to see if there’s anything they can do. It has to be a maintenance man, there’s nobody else in today.’
    The women got the full story when the men returned. Both Da and Joe looked grim and tired. Michael Mitchell, a maintenance man and