by Jane Yeadon
My head was beginning to spin at the same speed as the doll’s, except it didn’t have a body to worry about. I’d my stomach to consider. Surely a cancelled lunchtime wasn’t on the cards. My mind drifted off to Seonaid and wandered back in time to catch Miss Harvey’s winding-up lecture.
‘I’ve assured the Professor that you won’t be credited with witnessing that last delivery and that’s helped a bit. Certainly seemed to cheer him up.’ She gave a grim smile. ‘So hopefully, and in a little while, he’ll have calmed down and will come and give his lecture. Otherwise we’ll all be wasting each other’s time. I happen to value mine so whilst you’re having lunch, think what you should profitably do with yours.’
8
A NIGHT ON THE TOWN
‘Well, anyway, that’s our first day over and we haven’t killed anybody,’ I said, ‘but you should have let me speak up for you. I wouldn’t have minded and I’m sure Miss Harvey’d have believed me. She might have been glad that at least one of us wasn’t a liar.’
Marie only clutched her record book as if it might be snatched from her. ‘Miss Harvey must think we’re awful. What a way to start. We’ll be lucky if we’re not kicked out.’
As we got out of the lift I determined to be cheerful. ‘Just look on the bright side. See how you’ve forgotten your vertigo; here we are, right on top of the world; and think of all the lovely views from your room and how lucky you are to have the best one.’
Our corridor was as warm and welcoming as the maternity’s wasn’t with nurses in rollers sprawled over chairs in chatty groups. Untrammelled by parenthood cares, they were discussing ways to avoid them with dancing all night at Maxims’ as good a way as any.
‘And tonight should be great craic with the Showband there,’ someone said, making me want to join the conversation. But I was with Marie and she was still set on a martyr’s course.
‘I wouldn’t have wanted you getting into more trouble. Miss Harvey would just have said my principles should have made me speak up there and then.’ Marie gnawed her knuckle and blinked hard. ‘I’m such a coward. I shouldn’t have been frightened to speak to the Professor.’
‘And when you were squashed flat, given a posthumous medal for bravery? No! I suspect Miss Harvey would really have understood why you didn’t say anything at the actual time.’
Marie looked doubtful and turned the key in her lock. ‘Ah, Jane, much as you’re trying now, you’re not making me feel any better.’ She considered the middle distance. ‘But confession now, that might – and there’s a church nearby.’
‘Confession? Confession! You’ve only been here five minutes and already you’re a beacon of hope in a class of sinners.’
‘No I’m not. I’m a sinner too.’ She was determined on suffering.
‘How come?’
She looked around very carefully, then drawing her head near mine, whispered, ‘I’ve said flip three times.’ She searched my face, obviously waiting for shock to register, then as the silence between us stretched, added, ‘So now you must see why I need to go.’
‘By Jove, yes,’ I said, thinking, one up to you, God. Your little angel might faint if suggesting the Showband might be a better fix as well as helping us celebrate Seonaid’s visit to Mr Murphy.
She’d returned when we’d been having lunch, breathless but triumphant.
‘Just a dawdle,’ she’d reported. ‘I was cool as a breeze with the da. I think he was more stressed out about having his mother-in-law helping than hanging out nappies in his garden where he’d gone to escape. When I told him the Doc. needed to see him he asked why, so I said I didn’t rightly know but maybe he should think about knot tying one way or another. He gave the washing line a good jiggle and said there was nothing wrong with it, and then Father Murphy arrived so I had to be quick.’ Seonaid mimicked the trouser-hitching part of ‘The Sailor’s Hornpipe’ then clapped her hands. ‘He got that message alright.’
Marie gazed at her, round-eyed.
‘You don’t mean he should,’ she dropped her gaze to her lap then faltered, ‘get done.’
‘A first for Belfast, I imagine,’ I said dryly. ‘Now you know why the Scots wear sporrans, Marie.’
‘Ach! Would you stop your teasing, Jane?’ Seonaid rebuked. ‘At least Mr Murphy got something other than the washing to think about. Father O’Patrick tried for a word but I told him we mustn’t mess with Dr O’Reilly’s time, and if Mr Murphy came now I could get him in by the back entrance so’s it’d be quicker.’
‘And what about Father O’Patrick?’
‘Left holding the babbies, or in his case the nappies.’
‘You’ve got a nerve,’ Margaret had said and not in total admiration. ‘And, Seonaid, are you not a Catholic? I’d have thought all this would be against your principles.’
‘Sure, not when a life’s at stake and I’m saving that oulde yoke Father O’Patrick’s conscience too. He’d feel guilty at some point – or should do. Anyway, Margaret, you’d better stay at home tonight and pray for my soul in your own way,’ said Seonaid, counting her out. ‘Would anybody else like to come to the Showband? I’ve two tickets.’
The rest of the group declined and, having qualified on the grounds of being a stranger in town and not totally impoverished by buying Matron’s book, I was in.
‘What should I wear?’
‘Tight and not tartan,’ she’d advised, and now that I was back in my room, she’d come to look at a wardrobe full of stout weatherproof gear.
She was critical. ‘I know we get a lot of rain, but you seem to be expecting a flood. What about this?’ She picked out a dress, so small it was surprising she noticed it. ‘That green’ll go great with your red hair.’
I’d bought the flimsy thing in a fit of optimism and now, more realistically , was wondering why.
‘It’ll be fine as long as I don’t breathe, and have you a shoe horn? I don’t think Belfast’s ready for so many curves in such a little space.’ I tried to grab it to put it back but Seonaid’s grip tightened. ‘Ah, for God’s sake! This is the Sixties, remember, it’s not as if you’re going to a parish meeting. You’ll be super.’ She rolled the ‘r’ in a mocking way.
‘You’ll be a wee while before you speak like a proper Scot, so you won’t,’ I jeered.
I thought I might bottle out if I looked in the mirror so, when dressed, I asked for Seonaid’s opinion instead.
She looked me over carelessly. ‘Grand now!’ She took a tailed comb from an enormous handbag and handed it over. ‘But you’ll need to do a bit of back-combing right at the top.’ She twiddled her finger above her head. ‘With your hair that flat, nobody’ll notice you.’
Tonight Miss MacCready hadn’t that problem. With her hair splendidly bouffant and with a dress so shockingly pink it could have brought on a migraine, she glissaded over the foyer floor to greet us.
‘Youse two planning to go out then?’
‘Yes,’ said Seonaid, taking my arm as if I needed special assistance. ‘Jane needs to see a bit of the town and its rich heritage.’
Miss MacCready cast a glance about her then whispered, ‘It wouldn’t be a blind date then?’
‘Good gracious no!’ I said, even if the idea had some appeal.
Miss MacCready looked doubtful. ‘I’m pleased to hear it. Ye see, I’d the same conversation with a wee nurse who’d just arrived here from the country. Lovely girl she was, so she was, and just like you she was going out and dressed much the same.’ Having made reproof as obvious as the draught swirling about my knees, she went on, ‘She told me someone from an agency had fixed her up with a date.’
A night porter wheezed into sight. Coldly, the receptionist watched as he hung his jacket over a hard chair before sitting down. ‘How are ye, Jo?’ she asked, not bothering for a reply but returning to her saga. ‘Well, off she went into the night saying, “That’s me off, Miss MacCready – and I’m so excited.”’ With a breath intake enough to resite the pink, she held up two fingers. ‘Two
days later she came back … and …’
At this rate we were going to miss all buses heading into town. Sneakily, I checked my watch but Miss MacCready didn’t notice – she was on a roll. ‘She didn’t know where she’d been nor,’ she paused for a moment, looked shiftily at Jo as if a man reading a newspaper constituted danger, then, bending low, she whispered, ‘who she’d been with!’
A kirby grip fell to the floor, the bouffant threatened to topple, then straightening and cranking up the volume she continued, crying in genuine horror, ‘Or how many!’
Jo shook his paper like someone reading something much more interesting whilst Miss MacCready righted herself, looked at her watch and sighed. ‘Anyway, I should be off duty. Jo here will let you in when and if you come back. Now hurry or you’ll miss that bus.’
‘We’ll be very careful,’ we reassured her and tramped out into a night where the most threatening of company was an evil little wind. It pounced on us as if lonely. Clamouring for attention it whooped and whined, tugging and plucking on clothes so lacking in tartan, hypothermia seemed inevitable. It wailed in a desolate way as we caught the bus and stepped into a fag-filled fug no wind could dissipate .
Clad in a frill mostly, Seonaid seemed impervious to the cold and sat glued to the window of our bus as it racketed down the Falls Road past its tenement houses, a news vender provocatively bawling ‘Protestant Cooorrier, sixpence only!’, small shops fluttering orange and green flags, pawn brokers and big churches. Finally, we arrived at the warmer flirty girl that was Belfast’s city centre.
There were glamorous clothes in brightly-lit shop windows. They promised sophistication likely to feature in the nearby hotels and restaurants and where a student midwife’s monthly pay could have gone on the first course. The more tangible prospect of fish ’n’ chips was on offer along busy streets where music spilt out from crowded bars.
‘Do you not have singing pubs then?’ asked Seonaid, fingers sliding over a pokeful of grease. We were standing in a queue of depressingly pretty girls all apparently heading for Seonaid’s promised evening of local culture.
‘No. Drinking in Scotland is considered a serious affair demanding single-minded attention, and if folk want to hear music they go home and listen to their trannies or records.’
‘They don’t sound like party people. Even if I haven’t a player at least I have a record. Herb Alpert. He’s great for parties.’ Seonaid emptied the bag into her mouth, tidying its corner with a delicate finger. ‘Anytime I get invited anywhere, I take my record with me so I get to hear it.’
‘Maybe you could get another, or be radical – go for a complete change and buy one from them, start a collection.’ I nodded at a Bedford bus parked nearby with the Showband’s name palsy-hand painted on its side and from which the band was now descending.
‘Sure, the one I’ve got’s plenty and it’s boring carrying too much stuff.’ She folded the bag tidily then popped it in my pocket. ‘Look, we’re moving.’
The queue streamed into a barn of a place where a Daisy lookalike exchanged our coats for a ticket before adding them to the pile on her desk.
‘And there’ll be no smoking,’ she adjured, which was surprising considering that once into the hall proper it was so smoke-filled we could just make out the band on a platform at the far end.
‘They’ll be the warm-ups, come on!’
I followed Seonaid as she pushed her way to the front to see a group in such bright gear they looked like a row of Wurlitzers. Despite the lead singer, cough mixture bottle in hand, pouring his heart into a song of betrayal in Belfast, the audience was unimpressed and felt particularly free to say so.
‘Can ye not think of another tune, we’re sick of hearing that oulde yoke,’ someone shouted whilst a penny landed on the stage.
Without missing a beat the guitarist picked it up and flung it back. ‘It’s a bad penny!’ he shouted, which was just enough to trigger a steady metal downpour and give a whole new meaning to the term ‘warming up’.
‘So come all you jolly young fellows,’ continued the singer, now unaccompanied on account of his team fully occupied returning fire, ‘a warning take by me.’
‘You’ve missed out a verse,’ shouted someone who must have thought it safe to shout from the back.
An argument broke out, followed by a scuffle, and soon the place was heaving with people firing pennies and shoving to get to the front. Valiantly the singer continued, determined to finish his set before his Friar’s Balsam ran out.
The band started to pocket the money and make way for the Showband, whilst running out of steam and ammunition, the audience started to settle down and chat as if this was an evening of genteel social interaction. Close by I glimpsed, deep in conversation with a leggy brunette, one of our medical students. In the conservative gear of a bank manager he looked like he was promoting the joy of saving to a spendthrift customer.
‘I see your man’s here.’ Seonaid had spotted his friend, sartorially clad in a flowery pink shirt and purple hipsters. His white patent leather belt looked like a bandage restraining a Guinness gut.
‘He’s not my man,’ I said. ‘And by the look of things the other one’s not hers either.’ The brunette had stomped off, presumably taking her overdraft with her whilst the bank manager wandered off, loosening his tie, as if suddenly unemployed.
The Showband took the stage with the confidence of men who knew a thing or two about music and, in their spiv padded-shouldered suits, self defence. A quick nod amongst themselves, a trumpeted intro, then in perfect unison they blasted forth. Like a response to an activating switch, the hall became a hot, sweaty, throbbing vortex of flying heels and jiving moves.
‘Are ye dancin?’ The floor bounced, the music swung and Seonaid, with her asking partner, began to move at such gyroscopic speed their clothes blurred into a white to match his belt.
On account of my limited stride I had to settle for a stately saloon drive round the floor with a red-faced farmer up for a night in the city who found the noise and smoke so overwhelming he suggested a turn outside. Having learnt that Irish talk could mean different things, I declined.
‘Suit yourself,’ he shrugged, meaning ‘your loss’, and minutes later I saw him dancing with someone less restricted. Hours later and using a red lightly grease-garnished hanky to mop his brow, he was still apparently coping without farm-fresh air and staying for the last chord.
‘We’re getting a lift home from Raymond and Oliver,’ said Seonaid, throwing on her coat. ‘They’re going our way.’
‘You mean the likely lads?’
‘Uh-huh. They’ve got a van. It’s red. Raymond says it’s his, we can’t miss it and we should meet outside.’
Still miffed by the farmer I hoped he noticed us climbing aboard a tomato on wheels. It was fun if you relished a contortionist challenge of sitting in the back on the floor and didn’t mind your dress and knees hiked up to your neck. I was sitting on something hard. It was another ancient pelvis. The Belfast Midwifery School must be buying them in bulk.
‘I see you’ve brought the family heirloom,’ I said to Oliver, who was already installed in the front passenger seat.
‘Mind how you go with that – we need it for Prof. McQuaid’s lecture. If we don’t get the dreaded Mechanism lecture, we’re out.’
As he sat grim-faced, I could have suggested there were alternative careers, even if graduation from a charm school might prove difficult, but I didn’t fancy walking home, and Raymond with a carefree laugh was already throwing himself into the driver’s seat.
‘Welcome aboard, girls! I see you’ve met Oliver. You’ll have to forgive me friend. He’s got a broken heart. His girlfriend’s just gone and ditched him, so she has.’
‘I’ll get over it but not being thrown out of medicine so mind what you do with that pelvis.’ Oliver was sour.
‘Here! You look after it then. We’ve got our own.’ Seonaid thrust it at him. ‘Listen.’ She snapped elastic of a personal n
ature. ‘That’s me own pelvic girdle and at least ours are always with us.’
We collapsed in girlish mirth whilst Oliver emanated disapproval and Raymond shouting, ‘Gas!’ shot through red traffic lights managing to include a kerb or two.
I asked if Oliver’s relationship had been long-term. Bent on gloom, he nodded. ‘Four years.’
‘Crivvens! You must’ve been courting in short trousers.’
Raymond slapped the steering wheel in amusement. ‘It’s the way you say it! Courrtin’ in shorrrt trrousers!’ He managed to beat another set of lights before the exhaust pipe rattled and fell off.
Unconcerned, he said, ‘Ach, sure, at least they’ll hear us coming,’ and putting his foot down hard, hit the Falls Road fast.
In the watches of the night it looked even less inviting, with the churches in darkness and the smaller buildings cowering under them as if they’d been bullied into submission. We raced past small, shuttered shops, barred businesses and a closed cinema. It might have been a perfect setting for a horror movie but at least there was nobody around to complain about noise until we reached Bostock House and Jo came out to investigate.
‘Would ye be stopping that racket now,’ he said, peering into the car. ‘If the MacCready was here she’d have had you arrested.’
9
HARD LABOUR
Bar a day in the week under Miss Harvey’s governessy care, we were now getting experience in the hospital proper. I was in the Labour Suite and constantly worried about who was coming through those swing doors. Every patient admitted would need reassurance, an assessment, then constant vigilant care. Since everybody’s needs were different, the work was challenging.
