by Mary Hazard
One night we were really late back, and Kathleen had gone to bed, unable or unwilling to stay up for us any later. Hell, how were we going to get in now? We were all a bit tiddly, and it was decided, in a drunken moment, that the best way in was through a top part of a barred window that was open next to the front door of our nurses’ home. It was a little top window that opened, and was actually in the downstairs toilet, next to the front door. This plan was not thought through at all, but seemed a good idea in a moment of drunken logic and sheer panic, about how to get in at this late hour. It was a mad solution to the problem of us all ending up being out all night roaming on the Common, and then carpeted by Matron in the morning. Anyway, for some unknown reason it was decided that I was the one to be hoisted through the window, perhaps because I’d climbed trees in Ireland, I don’t remember why exactly. I probably volunteered, knowing me.
So Jenny and Hanse gave me a boost up either side, with me standing on their hands. The high top part of the window was open; it was pitch black inside, and I got half-way through. And then I got stuck. The problem was my boobs. I had large bosoms and once I was half-way through I got completely unable to go either backwards or forwards. Sweet Jesus, there I was wriggling and wrestling, with my top half squeezed into the building and my rear end hanging outside, with Hanse and Jenny trying to push me through, absolutely pissing themselves with laughter. And then I smelt something. It was horrible. A really nasty pooey smell. And then I heard groaning and moaning and the light flashed on and I tried to squeeze myself through the rest of the window, but was still stuck, when I looked down and saw, to my horror, that the on-call surgeon, a Mr Thurlow, was sitting on the toilet, beneath my hanging breasts, with his pyjama bottoms pooled round his ankles. He looked up at me, in complete shock, as I looked down at him, in utter horror. I turned my head to signal to the girls to stop pushing me, as I was only inches from the top of his head, but they didn’t see what was going on inside, so they continued to push my rear end, so my breasts were bobbing up and down, just above his balding pate. ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Mr Thurlow, who slept downstairs in the nurses’ home when he was on call. He looked up, and on seeing my boobs and head, quickly wiped himself and pulled up his pyjamas. ‘What the hell …?’ The stench was terrible and he looked at me fiercely and just said, ‘Bloody diarrhoea … got the runs.’ Before I could say anything he disappeared out the door, and then I could feel three pairs of hands dragging at my legs and then suddenly I was back on the floor outside, in a heap, with Jenny, Hanse and Mr Thurlow, all laughing their heads off helplessly. Mr Thurlow tried to straighten his face, but he was a good sport. ‘You know it’s one in the morning,’ he whispered sternly. ‘Get back inside before I report you.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ we all chorused together in hoarse whispers, and then staggered up to our rooms trying hard to tippy toe. I never looked at Mr Thurlow in quite the same way again.
In the summer we’d also go out to the Roehampton Lido, which was a fantastic open-air swimming pool nearby (unheated, of course). We’d meet off-duty policemen there and spend all day, on a Sunday, chatting, flirting and sun-bathing. It was all very innocent, all very boy-meets-girl. It felt nice, as I felt free, and not under anyone’s critical gaze, for a change. I also met loads of American GIs at the pool (there were a lot of them around back then), and we’d sit under the fountain and giggle together. There was one I particularly fancied, who was full of American chatter and charm. He would bring me stockings and chocolates, and seemed to have an endless supply of gin. He invited me to a party down in South London one day, and came and got me on his huge motorbike. I had dressed up in my best little lemon two-piece suit I had bought from Richards, and also my wonderful red shoes from Saxones, and I felt like the bees knees. I’d never been on the back of a motorbike before and I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to do. I got on the back, gingerly, and then he set off at a pace, so I clung on to him from behind like a little monkey as we whizzed and wove our way through the streets. Sweet Jesus, my heart was in my mouth, but it was an exciting ride all right. There were no crash helmets then, and I just clung on to him for dear life. When we got to the party I got off the bike and realised I’d put my lovely red shoes on the exhaust pipe, and the heat had blasted a huge hole through the sole. I had been so frozen on the bike I hadn’t even noticed! I cried over those shoes, which my GI couldn’t really understand, so he plied me with gin, and hoped, I think, to have his way with me. He spent most of the evening chatting to his GI mates, while I sat on the sofa and wanted to go home … it was not an auspicious event. I spent months saving up to get my shoes mended after that, but had to put it all down to experience. I only had myself to blame, after all. At least I kept my virtue intact – and I’d been on the back of a real motorbike with a real man, finally. Men were always on the prowl with us nurses, and I suppose I just thought men were men, and I guess they thought us nurses were on the make and take, as well, and that we were fair game. I had to keep my wits about me, though, and I did get into some scrapes.
However, I did get sorely tempted one night. I met a wonderful Czech guy, called Joe, who was so handsome he looked like Tony Curtis. He was slick and fascinating, and persuaded me to go ‘up town’ with him to a party one evening. He was my first proper boyfriend, and I found out he was a male nurse, something that was very rare then, working in a local mental hospital. I really fell for him and we went out a few times; I think I was always a sucker for good looks, and he was really a looker. Anyway, one night we went out to a bar he knew. He told me that he used to be a barman in a particular bar, so he took me to this sleazy dive which was full of American airmen. We went dancing that night at the Locarno in Streatham, and then ended up in Victoria, where he had digs in a shared house. It was the first time I’d ever been back to a man’s place, and I’d drunk quite a bit. In the back of my mind I was wondering how on earth I was going to get back to Putney from Victoria, as the last Tube had gone – it was already way past midnight and I was half-panicking about getting back home.
I could tell, however, that Joe was expecting great things from me. We were in his room, kissing, when suddenly he stripped off, babe naked, and hopped into bed. I was frozen to the spot with fear. Of course, I’d seen plenty of male patients naked by then, and was used to dealing with bodies in the raw, but being alone with someone in their bedroom, in a romantic context, and, well, this was totally different. So I sat on the side of the bed, fully dressed, and prim. We had kissed and cuddled, and all that, but now I was suddenly sober. Joe reached out and grabbed me, but I resisted. I wouldn’t take my clothes off. It was a mortal sin. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t prepared. To my surprise, Joe got very frustrated. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you in my bloody life,’ he said, very disgruntled. He stopped being romantic and turned nasty instead. Well, I didn’t know what to do. All my life I’d had it drummed into me not to have impure thoughts, or do immodest deeds. I would go to hell. Pure and simple. I remembered the nuns getting me to put my tongue out so they could see the big black stain on it, proving I was a sinner, through and through. I could feel myself standing in the corner at school, and remember the sting of Sister Margaret’s pencil on my earlobes, or her large, heavy hand slapping the back of my legs. These strictures were deeply buried in me, and it was hard to leave them behind. I couldn’t just jump into bed with Joe, no matter how much I fancied him (which was a lot). I couldn’t do that, and I couldn’t jump off Big Ben and fly, either.
Joe lay there, his bare back to me, and didn’t or wouldn’t understand. ‘Please, Joe, don’t be like that,’ I implored. ‘It just doesn’t feel right – I’m just not that kind of girl.’ Joe was implacable, and his back remained firmly turned towards me. I believed in marriage, and also that sex should really be in a loving relationship – well, for me anyway – and I felt Joe was expecting something from me that I really was not in a position to give. If Joe had mentioned marriage, or we’d been engaged, it might have been different. But even then I would have stru
ggled with the morality of it all. This was way before the Pill came in, and way before ‘Women’s Lib’ had hit our female consciousnesses and raised them. I was absolutely paralysed with fear. He lay there, starkers under the sheets, angry with me, and I sat on the edge of the bed, trembling with fear and humiliation. It was a mess. I had no way of getting home, either, and Joe clearly was not going to be a ‘gentleman’ and help me in any way at all. Amazingly, he just turned his face to the wall and said rudely, ‘Go, then.’ Just like that. I was horrified. I was heartbroken. I was summarily dismissed. In tears I picked up my handbag and coat, and tiptoed downstairs in this big, old creaky house. I went past the toilet on the landing and was worried that someone might come out and find me creeping about in my state of moral turpitude. Clearly, I was in a state of physical, moral and mortal turmoil. Even being there, in a man’s room, after midnight, seemed enough sin somehow to send me straight to hell. I’d been told so many times that God was ‘all-seeing’ that I surely believed it. He could see me now, as I crept downstairs, my heart in my mouth. I eventually got out onto the street, blubbering with shame and grief. Somehow I stumbled on a bus stop and found a night bus to get me home, where I collapsed into bed just about in time to get up and start the day shift.
Anyway, after that humiliating night, that was it with my beloved Joe. He cut me dead. I was outraged, but I was besotted, so I still wanted him to want me, even though I knew that he’d behaved abysmally. I guess I was very infatuated at the time. I saw him in the Putney Hospital grounds a couple of weeks later, as he worked in a nearby mental hospital, but he just looked the other way – he didn’t want to know me at all, which broke my heart. I thought he was gorgeous still (more fool me), and I was very miserable about it, but he didn’t want to see me after that awkward night in his room. I was so confused, and of course I knew I should have been angry, and I should have thought he was a cad, but I was simply nuts about him and couldn’t get over it. I never told my nurse friends about that night, either, as I felt so naïve. I knew Jenny would have rolled her eyes and said, ‘Mary, really, for goodness’ sake! Enjoy!’ But I knew she’d had some bad experiences and I didn’t want to repeat them myself. She and some of my other friends didn’t seem to have the same level of conscience that I did, so I just had to suffer in silence about it all. It was just that, for me, sex before marriage was a sin, with a giant, illuminated, capital ‘S’.
9
Tragic Love Story
It took me a long time to get over Joe’s snubbing of me for not being a loose woman enough. I so wanted to be with him, but I couldn’t do what he wanted me to do as it just went entirely against the grain. I was in torment, but, being stubborn, I stuck to my guns. My background went in deep and, as they say, ‘You can take the girl out of the convent, but you can’t take the convent out of the girl.’ I was living proof. The ‘S’ word, sex, was totally entwined with the ‘S’ word, sin, as far as I was concerned. My upbringing had drummed into me over and over and over that carnal thoughts were evil, and that I had to control these thoughts – and, of course, actions – at all cost, to save my soul. It wasn’t that I was a religious zealot, far from it; it was more that I was utterly terrified of the consequences. Also, what I had seen of the failed abortions in the sluice had chilled me to the bone, and I hated the idea of disposing little bits of babies down the sink, as if they were some simple ‘by-products of reproduction’ (as they were called). I hated the idea of all that, and I had been deeply shocked by what I had seen on the women’s surgical wards. So, despite letting my hair down a little, and the odd kiss and cuddle on Saturday nights after a gin and orange or two, I was chaste, even into my late teens and early twenties. The spectre of my mother and the nuns breathing down my neck and pointing the finger accusingly never left me, and made me especially cautious. I was amazed (and even a little envious) at some of the attitudes of my fellow trainees, like Jenny, and in a way I secretly admired their ability to live in the moment and enjoy life, including all the carnal pleasures, despite the risks. But for me, I was much more wary and kept myself intact, as it were. And experiences, such as with my handsome Czech, Joe, only confirmed how important it was for me to keep myself to myself, despite the heartbreak that it entailed.
I was also incredibly unworldly at this stage of my life. In the early 1950s it was shocking to think of people having sexual intercourse outside of marriage (shocking and also downright dangerous before the Pill came along in the mid-1960s, which gave women more sexual freedom). However, I had never come across anything at all in my life to do with homosexual love, and had no idea that lesbians, gay men or bisexuals existed (they weren’t called that openly then, obviously). I guess I had some vague idea about some people, men in particular, being a bit ‘peculiar’ or ‘pervy’, or even ‘queer’, but I had never actually met a homosexual (well, knowingly anyway), and back home we would never have talked about it openly. We might have hinted or whispered if we thought someone was a bit different, but the fear of God was always hovering overhead, and I would never have thought someone was interested in being in love or even having sex with someone of the same sex, as it just would not occur to me. Call me naïve, but that’s exactly how I was: an innocent abroad.
Anyway, there was one night in the nurses’ home that three of us, Jenny, Hanse and I, had drunk far too much Merrydown, and giggled ourselves into exhausted oblivion. We all fell asleep in my bed, and when the maid woke us up at six thirty the next morning we were all still fully dressed, so there was a mad scramble for those two to get back to their rooms, to get ready for the day. We all thought it was a total laugh and thought nothing further about it. However, Matron got wind of it, somehow (we guessed the maid had gossiped about it), and all three of us were carpeted. I remember standing there, my hands behind my back (yet again), looking down at the carpet, with Hanse on my left and Jenny on my right, like three naughty little schoolgirls all in a row (it was like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan), as Matron told us, in no uncertain terms, that our behaviour was outrageous and unbefitting to our noble profession. ‘Three in a bed! What on earth is going on with you?’ she snipped. ‘Do you not know the hazard of sleeping with women?’ I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. What was the ‘hazard of sleeping with women’ when it was at home? What on earth did she mean? Of course, I couldn’t ask her, or talk back, and Hanse, Jenny and I could hardly contain ourselves, and could barely keep our faces straight, as we mumbled ‘Yes, Matron,’ and ‘No, Matron,’ under our breath. When we were released out into the corridor, we padded along to the toilet block, and then collapsed in a total heap of helpless mirth. For months afterwards we would mimic Matron, saying ‘the hazard of sleeping with women’ as a catchphrase, with absolutely no idea of what she had meant by it. It just sounded so rib-achingly funny.
However, my eyes were soon to be opened in my second year, albeit with tragic consequences. There were two trainee nurses, a lovely Hungarian girl, called Suzan, with shoulder-length dark hair, and an English girl, called Brenda, with a short, brown cut, who were best friends. They did everything together, and were always eating in the canteen, working in the sluice, or folding sheets, with each other; they were inseparable. I took them completely at face value, being me. I had my good friend, Jenny, and also Hanse, and I was used to having sisters at home, with whom I was very close, so it made no odds to me to see women together all the time. I was used to home, the convent and now the hospital. Then one day, Jenny, who was very knowing, whispered to me, ‘There’s something up with those two, I’m sure there is,’ as I watched Suzan and Brenda walking down the corridor, very close, almost hand-in-hand, and chatting animatedly to each other – I really wondered what on earth she meant. ‘I’m sure they fancy each other,’ Jenny went on. ‘What do you mean, they fancy each other?’ I couldn’t understand what Jenny was getting at. ‘What?’ ‘How?’ I’d never heard such a ridiculous idea. ‘You know, like that,’ Jenny hinted, nudging me. ‘Just like a man and w
oman, but they are two girls.’ ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ I said, and started laughing. ‘I’ve never heard such a stupid thing in all my life. They’re just friends – close friends.’ ‘You mark my words,’ said Jenny, not to be put off from pressing her point. ‘You just watch them, they are not normal.’ So I did.
I began to notice little things: like I heard Brenda say to Suzan one day, ‘I’ve put a nice hot water bottle in your bed,’ as they passed in the corridor. I thought, ‘That’s nice. I’d do that for my sisters,’ but I had to admit I noticed a sweet little knowing grin pass between them that looked like more than just friendship. I noticed they always walked along very closely, heads almost touching. When they ate at the table they sat closely side by side. It was like they were joined at the hip. Even so, that didn’t prove anything. ‘They sleep together, you know,’ Jenny whispered in my ear one day, in the canteen. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked naïvely. ‘I sleep with my sisters back home sometimes, especially when it’s cold.’ ‘No, not like that,’ said Jenny, losing patience with me finally. ‘You are silly, Mary. It’s not like you and your sisters, it’s sex, you know?’ I didn’t know. Not at all. What was she getting at? ‘Sex? With women? How?’ I couldn’t get my head round it at all. How on earth would that work? Sweet Jesus, I thought to myself, I had only just really got to grips with understanding heterosexual love-making, and seeing erect penises, although I hadn’t ‘done it’ myself yet. But homosexual love, now this was a completely different thing. And women? ‘But what do they do?’ I could see that I was driving Jenny totally mad as she rolled her eyes heavenward, in her usual exasperated fashion. So she leant across the table and started whispering fervently in my ear. My eyes widened, and then nearly popped out, as I had my first graphic lesson in lesbian love-making. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’ I gasped. ‘No, true as I am sitting here,’ said Jenny, proudly. I was astounded. Surely women didn’t do that to each other? And now I looked again carefully at Suzan and Brenda, I could see that they were always linking arms, putting their arms round each other’s shoulders, and were looking at each other lovingly and cuddling up, all the time. In a way, it all looked natural, but now I looked at it differently I could see that it was real love, not just friendship. I could now see that they adored each other, and found each other irresistible, just like I had fancied Joe.
