The Print Petticoat

by Lucilla Andrews

  Beth began throwing off her uniform. She had a beautiful figure; she was small and slight. Her waist was so narrow that, cut in half by her navy-blue staff-nurse’s belt, she seemed in danger of breaking in two. She pulled on some tennis-shorts. Her back was towards me as she wriggled with the zip-fastener at her hip.

  ‘Maybe it’s because of Richard that he’s decided to let you know that he’s serious.’

  I smiled again, more at myself than at what I was saying.

  ‘Letting me know his intentions are honourable?’

  ‘Why not?’ Beth swung round sharply. ‘He really is an awfully nice man, Joanna.’

  I suddenly realized among other things why Beth was so keen that I should share her high opinion of Allan. Well, well, I thought, what a mess. Then I thought it was probably only a passing infatuation spurred along by the idea that I was considered pretty inaccessible by the Gregory’s men because of Richard. All the same I was sorry for Beth. I wasn’t sorry for Allan. Young men don’t have to go around proposing matrimony.

  I sat down in front of the dressing-table and undid my hair when Beth had gone out to her tennis. As far as looks went we were both dead opposites. Her hair was of the fair cloudy variety which in certain moods and lights was like spun glass, and always had the pale, newly washed appearance of a spring flower. Beth’s skin was of the same delicate type; even her character was in keeping. Everything about Beth Durant was gentle and pristine. Everything, excluding her passion for sport. She represented the hospital in tennis, lacrosse, and hockey, and would certainly have boxed for Gregory’s had Gregory’s had a female boxing team.

  I am dark. My hair is long and straight. I wear it parted down the middle and rolled up in a bun on my neck. This is an extremely useful hair-style to have if you are a nurse. It’s a tremendous asset. It invariably predisposes Matrons and Sisters in your favour. A bun is synonymous in the mind of female authority with stability of character and a lack of sex appeal. Personally I do my hair that way because that’s the way it suits me best. Fortunately no one has yet realized this, so I am known as a Good-Steady-Young-Woman-With-No-Nonsense by the powers at Gregory’s. Time was when love and I, if not well acquainted, certainly walked hand-in-hand, and then my virginal appearance had an almost paralysing effect on keeping the party clean. No young man dared tell me an even moderately improper story. Consequently, I had to watch my own language in order that I might not shock them. Then happily I met Richard, who saw through my out-of-this-world line, and we got along beautifully. Allan was the first man to break through the Richard barrier in years.

  Thinking about this now, I was not at all sure that I was pleased. A proposal of marriage may always be a compliment; certainly it always makes a girl take stock of things. I was not at all keen about taking stock of my position with Richard. To avoid doing this I did up my hair and went out for a walk.

  There was a small wood on the other side of the lane, but you had to walk a quarter of a mile down the lane from our cottage before you reached the stile that led into the wood. There were plenty of gaps in the hedgerow; the gaps had been so well filled in by the Army during the war years that although the barbed-wire was now rusty and rotting there was still too much of it about to risk your nylons. A little wire hung round the stile; most of it had been cut away by local inhabitants. I crossed the stile carefully and sauntered along the path to the wood. The path was overhung and overgrown, but fairly easy walking. At the end of the path was a second stile which led directly into the wood.

  There were a good many primroses in the wood. They pushed their flat little faces up to the sunlight that the new green on the trees almost obscured. Where the sun got through, the light sparkled with moisture; thousands of tiny insects climbed up the shafts, sliding two up and one down, persistent in their intention of getting somewhere, some time.

  The ground was thick with leaves left over from last autumn, leaves which crackled as I walked and seemed out of place in the spring, although they were nice to walk on.

  I sat sideways on the second stile, leant back against the hedge, which was wet and prickly, lit a cigarette, and began to feel a lot happier. I decided I was rather pleased by Allan’s proposal even though I had no intention of accepting it. There had been no time to tell him that this morning. Martin Herrith had bounded into the main corridor and swept Allan off to do a round of the downstairs wards before I had time to take in what he had said. I would have to answer him some time, probably in the Nursery. That was not such a bad idea, as in the Nursery my face would be hidden behind a mask. Thinking of the Nursery, I remembered that baby Peters. I hoped I was not taking him too lightly. I had been pretty worried before breakfast. I thought about the baby and began to feel glum. There was a small piece of may sticking into my right ear. I tried to break it off gently so as to keep the blossom intact. My hand jolted and my lap was covered with white petals. I picked another bit more carefully and pinned it on to the lapel of my jacket. One thing about midwifery is that you always have plenty of safety-pins handy, even in mufti.

  Allan appeared suddenly, smiling, on the path in front of me. His smile was gentle and rather shy. I could see what Beth meant. He did look such a nice young man. He was also quite outrageously good-looking; his eyebrows, nose, and jaw were geometrically perfect. He was apparently unaware of his physical attraction.

  ‘Mrs Hicks told me I’d find you here, Joanna,’ he explained in greeting.

  Mrs Hicks always knew everything about everybody at Elmhall and she was always right.

  ‘She said you had gone out alone,’ went on Allan, ‘as Dr Everley wasn’t off till this afternoon and wasn’t it a pity. I said that was my good luck and left her thinking you were the hell of a girl.’

  I laughed, and he climbed up on the stile beside me. ‘You oughtn’t to wear may, it’s unlucky.’

  I fingered my spray. ‘I thought it was only unlucky if you took it indoors.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t wear it. It’s fatal. Not but what it doesn’t look very nice.’

  He smiled at me again, then said quietly, ‘What about it, Joanna?’

  So much for my discreet scene in the Nursery.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said politely, ‘but no.’

  ‘But why?’ he asked calmly.

  I opened my eyes wide. It’s a mannerism I use when I want time to think.

  ‘I’m not in love with you, Allan,’ I said conversationally.

  ‘Aren’t you?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I’m sure you could be if you gave yourself a chance. I love you so much that I don’t see how you could fail to love me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid I don’t.’

  He flushed, but his voice was equable.

  ‘You aren’t bothering about Richard Everley, are you? Come now, Joa ‒ be your age.’

  I did not answer. I could not have spoken if I had wanted to. All my energy was taken up by a boiling cloud of anger that had blown around me. Allan went on stoking my fire with his words.

  ‘Of course, I know you’ve been running around with him for some time,’ he said, ‘but everyone has to run around with someone. Everley’s all right, I don’t doubt ‒ but ‒ well, he’s hardly the marrying kind.’

  No end of unladylike sensations ‒ black rage ‒ murder ‒ were in my heart. Civilisation is a wonderful thing. All I said was that it did not really matter as the point was that I was not going to marry Allan, and now could we please talk of something else?

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Allan happily, ‘maybe I’ll get you to change your mind.’

  ‘What are you doing, anyway, wandering in the woods at this time of the morning?’ I said.

  ‘I asked Martin to stand in for an hour when I realized you were off.’ He said Martin had promised to keep an eye on the new baby, and that he had sent Marcus Ormorod up to the Nursery to help Ellen Grayson feed the bottle-fed babies.

  ‘I thought I might as well finish off his impression of life as an
accoucheur,’ he chuckled.

  I went to the early lunch that day and was back in the Nursery by one o’clock. It was Nurse Grayson’s half-day. On Saturdays everyone possible had a half-day off duty ‒ it was one of the Matron’s brighter ideas. No one minded working extra hard in order that this scheme could work, as the next week-end one was free oneself.

  Marcus Ormorod was sitting on a nursing-chair in front of the electric fire feeding one of the three-hourly babies with a bottle of dried milk. The babies fed every three hours were those whose weight was under six pounds. He wore an inevitable face-mask and had tied a green nursery apron round his waist. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, his jacket off.

  ‘Hallo,’ I said, ‘you look very efficient!’ I looked round for a nurse. ‘Where’s Nurse Grayson?’

  He stood up slowly. ‘Is she t’lass fro’ Lancashire? If so, she’s vanished to the basement with a couple of buckets of dirty napkins.’ His eyes smiled down at me. ‘And I am Nannie.’

  It was the first time I had seen him standing. ‘How tall are you?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘if I’m too big, but I just growed. Six, six.’

  The apron round his middle looked like a pocket handkerchief. The baby in his arms objected to his sudden change of position and brought up most of its food and a good deal of wind all over his clean shirt. I took the baby from him as he dabbed himself with a feeding-bib. He said:

  ‘I shall now smell of cheese. Won’t that be nice.’

  I patted the infant, looked at its face to see which one it was, and put it back in its cot.

  He followed me round the room. ‘How can you tell which one is which?’

  ‘By their faces ‒ they are all different.’

  He looked about him. ‘Nonsense, Nurse, they are absolutely identical! Like peas in a pod.’

  ‘Not when you’re used to them.’

  He untied his apron. ‘How long have you done this job?’

  ‘In the Nursery? Two months. I’ve another four to go.’

  ‘Babies, babies everywhere,’ he said, ‘and none to call your own. Why don’t you stop looking after other people’s and raise some yourself? You ought to try it some time.’

  I had had enough romance for one day from Allan.

  ‘Mr Ormorod,’ I said dryly, ‘I never knew you cared.’ His eyes danced now, above the mask.

  ‘Dear Nurse ‒ it came over me at the breakfast table, and if I didn’t think Allan Kinnoch would have me up every night if I so much as made a pass at you, I would take the greatest pleasure in making several. Alas, I know I am a mere student man, and no match for a big doctor, and incidentally, I’ve had a stern warning. But seriously,’ he added curiously, ‘how does all this affect you young women? Does it put you off production for life?’

  I knew the answer to that one. Like most ex-pupil-midwives I had thought it over whilst I was training. ‘At first,’ I said slowly, ‘it does. It appals. Childbirth is hardly the most aesthetic of pastimes. After a while you get used to it, then you see a bit more of the babies and begin to think there might be something in it, and eventually you swing right over and decide to have half a dozen.’

  He laughed. ‘Is that the number you’ve fixed on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘God help you!’ He went towards the door. ‘Maybe it’s just as well Allan Kinnoch gave me that stern warning.’

  ‘If you don’t go down to lunch,’ I said, ‘Sandy will give you an equally stern warning. The bell has rung twice.’

  He shut the door quietly behind him, then opened it again.

  ‘You certainly don’t want to waste your time here if you’re aiming that high.’

  I waved him away. ‘Get out, Mr Ormorod ‒ or put on a mask.’

  He smiled, blew me a kiss, and vanished.

  Ellen Grayson came in panting after the run upstairs from the basement. She dumped the empty buckets in the bathroom.

  ‘Eee ‒ what a morning, Nurse! That new lad!’ she chuckled happily, then grew sensible and gave me a proper report.

  Elmhall and the ‘Spinsters’ stood in an unofficial millionaire’s mile three miles outside Albion. Albion was a small country town that had grown up solely on its virtue as a railway junction. The service to London was magnificent. Twenty-five minutes non-stop and never more than three-quarters of an hour even when the train took a conducted tour round the county. The railway service was one of the factors that had caused the Governors of St Gregory’s Hospital to keep the Maternity Unit down at Albion after the War. Another was the nearness of Elmhall to St Gregory’s Hospital in the country at Stevenswood, which lay four miles away from Albion.

  The hospital in the country had originally been the refuge of St Gregory’s, London, when all the upstairs wards of the town building had been put out of action back at the beginning of the War. The real War, that is, in ’41. Stevenswood had once been used by a Dominions Division, and consisted of an assortment of Nissen huts and a water-supply. To this collection of tin and mud had come two-thirds of the hospital nursing and medical staffs, the whole of the Medical School, the Nurses’ Preliminary Training School, and all the first-year probationers. The mud was drained and paved; bricks replaced most of the tin; roses were trained to grow round every available door; hospital red-tape, etiquette, and tradition flourished, so that in a very few years the place looked like an Ideal Home Holiday Camp, with every modern convenience, backed by rising woods of pine-trees, the whole thing standing several hundred feet above sea-level.

  Stevenswood was the name of the nearest village to the hospital, and from there it took its postal address. It was a tidy place, spotlessly clean, and always a little unreal. During the War it was a restful change for the eyes after London, although to the nursing staff it proved the reverse to the nerves. Barriers, centuries old, were down in St Gregory’s, London, during the Blitz. It was even possible then, so I’ve been told, under certain circumstances, to address a Sister with your cuffs off. With peace these exigencies of war-time nursing are unknown. It was at Stevenswood that tradition was fostered, kept intact, and finally handed back to London for the benefit of my own contemporaries, the post-war student nurses. Stevenswood also kept three hundred and forty beds for our London patients throughout the War. When peace came it was first thought that the place would close down, but as the hospital in London was swamped with patients and struggling in the throes of rebuilding, Stevenswood remained in use, became more neatly picturesque, grew more roses, and broke out in rows of potted geraniums along the covered ramp that ran between the wards. Richard Everley was one of the Surgical Registrars at Stevenswood. A registrar is, on paper, only one rank senior to a houseman, but has in fact considerably more standing than this would show. There are twenty-eight housemen on the Gregory’s staff, but only six registrars.

  Richard and I had trained at the same time. We had both taken our finals in the same year ‒ 1948. He had been a house-surgeon in London when I came to Elmhall fourteen months before as a pupil-midwife. He had been moved down to Stevenswood as a Surgical Registrar two weeks before I returned to the Nursery as a staff-nurse. Richard was clever. As a student he had been called a coming man; as an H.S. he was considered a bright lad; now a Registrar and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, it was generally agreed he was going places fast and nothing would stop him. He was twenty-seven. His next step, I knew, was the examination for Master of Surgery and a promotive place on the teaching staff of the hospital.

  Richard Everley drove over to Elmhall from Stevenswood that afternoon and came up to the Nursery. I was glad to see him for several reasons. One of these reasons was that I wanted someone besides an obstetrician to look at the new baby.

  He dropped down on his knees beside the cot and gently felt the bruised little face with his long, spatulated fingers. The peculiar moulding of birth was fading. The baby’s head was rounding now, less like the pointed egg it had resembled earlier. Richard looked up.

  ‘Got an ophthalmoscope hand
y, Joa? I’d like to have a look in his eyes if we can manage it without disturbing him. I don’t want to upset the chap.’

  I fetched the nursery ophthalmoscope. Richard sat back on his heels and put the instrument together.

  ‘He’ll probably be happier on my lap,’ I said doubtfully. ‘Either way I don’t think he’s going to like it.’

  Allan came in as I was unwrapping the cot blankets. I caught Richard’s eye quickly; his mask hid his mouth, but I could see by the movement of his cheek muscles that he was grinning. He said nothing and left me to pacify Allan over this breach of medical etiquette.

  ‘He’s only making a social call,’ I said, ‘but the man’s a glutton for medicine even though he’s a surgeon. You don’t mind ‒ do you, Allan?’

  ‘God, no!’ Allan sounded genuinely relieved. ‘I’m no doctor. Just a poor wretched midwife, that’s me. You take a good look, Everley, tell me if you see anything, and I’ll put it in my notes and the Chief will think I’m the hell of a lad.’

  ‘Well, if it’s all right with you,’ said Richard slowly, still screwing the ophthalmoscope. He nodded towards me. ‘Pick him up, will you, Joanna?’

  The Nursery door opened, and Marcus Ormorod loomed high over us all.

  ‘Party going on?’ he asked cheerfully.

  Richard looked over his shoulder, suddenly impatient ‘Hell! Is this Piccadilly Circus?’

  Marcus had forgotten to put on a mask. He looked politely amused. Like an adult at a children’s party when the children are beginning to get out of hand.

  Allan, inevitably thoughtful, handed him a mask. ‘You’ll want this.’ He jerked his head at Marcus and explained to Richard that this was Ormorod’s first baby.

  Richard’s brows shot up. ‘Congratulations,’ he said dryly.

  I sat down on a chair, and the three men knelt beside me. Suddenly, with unintentional irreverence, I remembered the orthodox scene of the Magi and thought we must look like an atomic age Christmas card.

  Marcus Ormorod had the same idea. He leant towards me and whispered, ‘I was the man with the myrrh.’