Huts8

The Huts’ bases were built with facing brick with cheap plastic vents, like black bin bags, built into the walls for under floor ventilation. I’d seen the fox before, peeking its snout of the wall of Lilac Ward, but I’d never seen its cubs. They were difficult to count as they curlicued in the long grass, biting and snarling and tumbling into each other. Dragonflies hung in the air. I heard the warning honking sound of the vixen, before the Flymo, brought with it, through the ward window, the promise of early summer in the smell of freshly cut grass.

The blades on the Flymo were set spacer by spacer high, so the machine hovered, but not as high as Archie Cairney who dwarfed it, making it look like a children’s toy. He was extremely quick over the ground moving his strong wrists in a sinuous and easy manner, with his head cocked, as if he was listening to the beat of the two-stroke engine. Archie seemed to have a feel for the weight of a mechanical part and an eye for were it went, or were it went wrong.

The most memorable thing about Archie Cairney was how ordinary he looked. He’d a side shed haircut, with enough greyish hair to hide his eyes behind. He didn’t really make eye contact, but sometimes he did. I was used to one or the other, but not both. It was as if he was shy. I could see that the way that his arms folded inwards towards themselves as he hid his lit fag. He always had fags because he was a worker. Archie Cairney was maybe a wee bit younger than Wullie the Pole, but not by much.

Archie Cairney was the first name I’d put on my list. James Munn, our student supervisor, asked us to write down all the names of the patients that were on our ward. We’d taken turns bobbing up and down like a Jack in the box and saying a little about ourselves. Our first class was in the outhouse of the old maternity ward, in the old bit of the hospital. James Munn had stood at the front with Barry Ferguson beside him. Barry, like me, didn’t say much and never seemed to finish a sentence. Despite this, or maybe because of this, everybody in the village, that knew him, which was pretty much everybody, had a soft spot for Barry. On the stroke of nine a.m. James Munn pushed his hands down as if we students were creating some kind of world record roar, but little could be heard other the sound of his squeaky clean black shoes as he moved, like a showman, about the front of the mini coliseum of desks.

James Munn introduced himself. As he wasn’t wearing his tasselled mortarboard and gown he reminded us that he had been to Cambridge by referring to one of his lecturers who barred the doors to latecomers and lectured to an empty auditorium to show…I wasn’t sure. I didn’t catch anybody’s eyes as his voice droned on, a continuous hum, like air conditioning, but, for me, listening to shite was better than getting covered in shite on Ailsa ward.

An Auxiliary nurses has to be re-assigned to Ailsa Ward to cover my absence. Most of the other students had been given the two hours off, before nine a.m. to attend Nursery School as the auxilliaries called it. But Wullie the Pole had kept me on ward until 8.45am. I had to rush up the hill through blue bell woods.

One thing James Munn said didn’t make us laugh, but did make most of us smile. He referred to us as a new elite, replacing the outdated practices and qualifications of enrolled nurses. I immediately thought of Wullie the Pole. I’d be better qualified than him when I finished my training.

I’d two or three names on my sheet. Archie was easy to remember because he had a full schedule. He fixed all Glendevon Hospitals agricultural machinery and even had an account with Agricar Machinery Parts and he fixed doctor and some of the administrative staff’s cars. Some days when he should have been pushing a Flymo he was under the hood of Dr Fleming’s E-type Jaguar. Archie knew all the local farmers. They used to come down and see him when they had a problem. Archie might scoot away on a tractor or a trailer and not return until bedtime, knocking on the ward door as if it was some kind of working man’s hostel. No one knew how much Archie had but there were rumours that he had a few bank accounts.

Eddie Dochery. I’d seen him that morning. I put his name on my sheet. Somebody had given him a half smoked lit Capstan Full Strenght fag and walked away. The smell of Eddie’s lips burning was the first indication that something was wrong. It was a pain. I had to write a wee bit in his case notes. The thing about Archie Cairney was he didn’t seem to have any case notes.

I’d looked for them. My mum would have said that my nose was too big for my face. I was nosey. It just gave me something to do, to flick through the typed pages and then the written scroll, in different inks and handwriting, of day to day life, like a cheap novel. Only for most of the residents there were years were nothing changed. Edward burned his lips. Previous entry. Edward burned his lips Edward burned his lips. Previous entry. Edward burned his lips. It was a case of echolalia wrote large, stretching over decades in Eddie’s case.

I couldn’t really think. I knew patient’s names, but I just couldn’t remember their proper Sunday names. And I didn’t want to put on the sheet their nickname. Archie Cairney loved cars. Archie Cairney wanted to own a car that much that it bled into every conversation. That was his life. I didn’t need to have a full or formal conversation to know these things, or to know his full Sunday name. That’s what seemed to make Archie different. That’s why I could remember his name. Apart from those higher up nobody much in Glendevon Hospital owned a car. In fact, there was only one car in my street and I couldn’t have told you what type it was. Archie could. But he couldn’t have a car because he was a patient and he couldn’t drive, although, of course he could. Wullie the Pole had told him that. I’d told him that. Everybody had told him that. But he didn’t seem to listen.

The one thing about Archie I didn’t really understand was that he’d been in Glendevon Hospital so long, but hadn’t settled down, in any one ward. He’d been moved to our ward from the ward next door, Beattie Ward, and Brendan Hillhouse, the albino-I remembered his name- had gone in the different direction. It didn’t make sense moving one patient from one ward to another. I could have understood it more if Archie Cairney moved to the geriatric ward, because he was about fifty, but I couldn’t understand why he’d come to us.

I’d a paltry eight names on my list. Noreen Killean was the only female whose full name I could remember. The only female name I wanted to remember. I sat biting the top of my pencil hoping that James Munn wasn’t going to collect in the sheets any time soon.

I knew most of the other nursing students from Glendevon High school. I sneaked a look at the girl from Birmingham that I'd met in our local pub. I couldn't remember her name. I think it begun with an A, but it might have been a M. Nobody said anything, but Robert Snodgrass, who was sitting across from me, shook his head. I noticed right away, he was going bald, which served him right for getting all the girlfriends at school. Even he pulled out a rubber and rubbed something out. It was as if he was attempting a Higher Physics exam.

I gave up just as James Munn signalled that it was time for a tea break. I felt that I’d failed my first exam. I didn’t think that I could go back to being an auxiliary nurse, even although I’d never been a auxiliary.