The Print Petticoat

by Lucilla Andrews

  Richard clicked the ophthalmoscope and sat back on his heels again. ‘Had quite a good view. That’s all right. No trouble there.’

  Allan said what about treatment, and Richard asked what we were doing already. Allan explained, and Richard said that should be all right and what was all the panic about anyway?

  ‘I think Nurse Anthony thinks I’m too heavy-handed for this game,’ explained Marcus.

  Richard looked down at the student’s hands.

  ‘Could be,’ he said, then he stood up, informed the Nursery at large that he would be back at eight, and went out with Allan.

  The pupils came back from their tea, and an orgy of napkin-changing commenced while I put young Peters back in his cot and had a look at his cord-dressing. Ormorod asked me what I was doing.

  ‘The cord shrinks sometimes and needs a fresh ligature. We always check up on cords when giving the infants their first baths. He won’t be having a bath today, so I’m going to put an extra tie on now to be on the safe side.’

  ‘I still don’t follow what all the panic’s about,’ he said, ‘nor do I know who that man with the tough, terse technique is. Can you elucidate?’

  ‘Allan Kinnoch is afraid the infant will get ‒ or has got ‒ meningitis,’ I said. ‘They can quite easily,’ I added.

  ‘And did he call in the big doctor?’

  ‘No,’ I hesitated, ‘he didn’t.’

  ‘Then who?’ he began.

  ‘I did,’ I said quickly, ‘unofficially.’ Allan might be a nuisance going round proposing marriage at inconvenient times, but I had neither the right nor the desire to cast a shade on his position as Resident Obstetrician on duty that week-end before one of his students.

  ‘He’s not a physician, anyway,’ I went on. ‘His name is Richard Everley, and he’s Illesly Martin’s Registrar at Stevenswood.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him. Why’s he over here?’ asked Marcus.

  I had finished the dressing and went into one of the converted bathrooms off the Nursery. I washed my hands in a baby-bath.

  ‘Paying a social call,’ I said over my shoulder.

  ‘To whom?’ He came and washed his hands beside me.

  ‘Me,’ I said.

  ‘I see.’ His eyes smiled. ‘I had no idea when I came down to Elmhall that I would find it agog with romance.’

  ‘We have our moments Mr Ormorod,’ I said, picking up a clean pile of napkins. ‘We have our moments.’

  Richard was waiting for me in the sitting-room when I was off-duty at half-past eight. He put down the British Medical Journal as I came in and stood up. ‘Good,’ he said, smiling. As always my bones turned to water. He came over and kissed me quickly before the door opened and Beth and Ellen Grayson pushed in the tea-trolley.

  The sitting-room at Elmhall was a communal one. In a few moments the place was full of pupils, students, a couple of Sister-midwives, with Sandy pouring out cups of tea. Richard took my elbow and edged me out of the room.

  ‘Come along, Joanna.’ He looked round for Beth. ‘Want a lift down?’ he asked her.

  Beth said no, that she was feeling sociable and going to play bridge with some of the midder boys after tea.

  It was quite light outside. His car stood in the yard, and as we got into it Marcus came out of the garage. Life was like that at Elmhall. You met everyone, everywhere, all the time. The miracle was that people so seldom got on each other’s nerves. It may have been the fact that being such a small community we simply had to tolerate each other or go mad that helped, or because we were generally so busy that there was no time for introspection and blood feuds. Whatever it was, we were on the whole one Big Happy Family, and with a few lapses our hearts beat as one.

  Richard drove down the main drive along White Rose Lane to the cottage.

  ‘I’ll wait out here,’ he said as we drew up. ‘You’d better change quickly; we’re on the late side.’

  ‘Are we going somewhere special?’ I was surprised. We generally went for a drive and a drink on the evenings that I worked late. Richard grinned.

  ‘We are going to both drink and drive on a big scale. There’s a House party on at Stevenswood.’

  He leant across and opened the door. ‘So if I might suggest it, darling, hop out.’

  I changed as quickly as I could, but that was not particularly fast. I was tired and not in a partyish frame of mind. The House was the name of the Doctors’ Mess at Stevenswood. The House parties were generally good, always rowdy, and usually went on all night. What with one thing and another it had been quite a day.

  Mrs Hicks appeared at the front door to wave us off as I closed the car door. Richard looked at his watch.

  ‘You’ve been the hell of a time,’ he grumbled, and started the car. Ten yards away round the corner of White Rose Lane he stopped it, put his arm round my shoulder and pulled me against him. He kissed me a few times then drew away.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said quietly. ‘If you do keep me waiting the result is always worth it.’

  Chapter Three

  Martin Herrith Gives Some Good Advice

  On Monday morning I still had a hangover from the House party. One of the Medical Registrars at Stevenswood had passed the examination for Membership of the Royal College of Physicians, and the party was given in his honour. He had celebrated by being drunk the whole week-end. He fell all over the place that night and cannoned into Richard and me as we danced, and nearly had us down on the floor with him.

  I said I was a bit bored with drunks.

  ‘Don’t be such a prig, Joanna,’ said Richard. ‘Why shouldn’t he get drunk? A man who gets his Membership deserves to be drunk for a week.’

  ‘You weren’t drunk for a week when you passed Fellowship,’ I protested.

  He rubbed his cheek against mine without answering. I glanced up and smiled. ‘You’re different?’ He smiled back at me, but he did not disagree.

  I had long since given up wondering why I loved Richard. It was certainly not for his looks. His build was average, his face plain but strengthened by his too-heavy jaw line. He had a wonderful speaking-voice, but I don’t even think it was that. It was just that we suited each other ‒ or rather that we had always suited each other in the past, until this business of exams and ambition had become the present and not something to be faced in the dim future. Richard was both brilliant at examinations and ambitious, and I was neither, although I was more than content to be the wife of a brilliant and ambitious man if that man was Richard Everley. So far there appeared small likelihood of my ever achieving that contentment.

  Marriage, as a subject, we eschewed. If the mention of matrimony in any circumstances was unavoidable, Richard merely took the opportunity to point out the appalling drawback it had proved to old so-and-so, and cravenly I agreed with him.

  A senior member of the hospital staff had been at that party. He was the senior cardiologist to the hospital and his name was Dr Homer. The party was well under way by the time we arrived from Elmhall, and Dr Homer was in terrific form. It was obvious that smooth-haired brunettes were very much to his liking. Richard introduced us, using my real name, only adding that I was direct from the Windmill Theatre.

  ‘C-come now,’ stuttered Dr Homer. ‘Not r-r-really the Windmill?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. ‘I have the week-end off.’

  Richard was enchanted with his little joke.

  ‘Come to think of it, Joa, with your legs you’d have done very nicely in the front row of the chorus.’

  ‘I have my attributes,’ I said smugly.

  He laughed. ‘You have, my dear, you have.’

  I danced several times with Dr Homer that night. He was a young middle-aged man, certainly young to hold such a senior position. Slightly drunk as he was, he was rather charming. Until that time I had never seen him, sober or drunk; odd as that may sound, that is perfectly possible in a hospital the size of Gregory’s. He eventually bored Richard by his constant cutting in on us as we danced.

/>   ‘Shall I shatter his dream by telling him you are a simple Gregorian, after all, Joa?’

  It was 3 a.m. before I was back in the cottage in White Rose Lane. The next day, which was Sunday, was a nightmare of a day, such as only a maternity unit can produce. Seven babies were born in Elmhall that Sunday. The Labour Ward was turning over like a factory belt. The staircase was constantly full of students groaning in the fourth stage of labour, the Nursery overcrowded with a long row of damp canvas folding-cots; in the cots lay the still more damp, finger-sucking, shouting, blinking, new-born babies awaiting their first baths.

  It was past ten o’clock on Sunday night before I was off duty for the first time that day. Ellen Grayson and I staggered into the sitting-room for a cup of cold tea from the still unused tea-trolley. We dropped into arm-chairs swinging our weary feet over the arms.

  Two midwifery-clerks lay stretched at opposite ends of the sofa. One of the clerks was Marcus Ormorod. He threw across a cigarette packet. Ellen caught it neatly. ‘God,’ he said, ‘do you often have days like this?’ Too exhausted to talk, we drank our cold tea and nodded.

  ‘Amazing.’ He sighed. ‘Why do these women do it?’

  His partner, a little man called Noel Barnes, came out of a coma.

  ‘What beats me,’ said Noel Barnes, ‘is why their husbands do it! Saving your presence, Nurses, I’d scream for help if I woke up and found one of these ladies in bed with me. Never have I seen such a collection of harpies. Good-natured, God-fearing, and kindly, no doubt ‒ but hideous enough to put the fear of God and impotence into a man.’

  ‘What I meant,’ said Marcus, ‘was why do the Sister-midwives do it. What a job! But I take your point, Noel.’

  ‘It’s love,’ said Ellen seriously, ‘that’s what, young man. Love.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Noel. Then he noticed her obvious wink at me and laughed weakly.

  ‘You’re dead wrong there, Nurse.’ Marcus was equally serious. ‘Dead wrong,’ he repeated. ‘There was a lady in the antenatal clinic at Gregory’s last week. I was examining her, and she struck me as much married, much married indeed, so I asked her how many children she had had. “I’m not married, Doctor,” she said primly. I said politely that that wasn’t the question I had asked her, and she replied that she had four kids. I was happy to tell her she was going to have five shortly. She took my glad tidings calmly and told me they all had the same father. I asked her why she didn’t marry the man. She was really shocked. “I couldn’t do that, Doctor!” I asked her why not. She shook her head sadly. “I just don’t love ’im, Doctor,” she said.’

  That night in bed I decided I never wanted to see a baby or a glass of gin again. I slept heavily and woke far too soon to find it was half-past six. I dressed silently, as Beth had the morning off and was still asleep. I rushed up the hill to swallow a cup of tepid tea and some bread and margarine and Marmite. The 7 a.m. News was bellowing from one of the downstairs wards as I closed the Nursery door behind me.

  Monday was as bad as Sunday, and, as I have said, I still had my hangover. There was some kind of panic going on outside the Nursery that morning. Every now and then a pupil-midwife tore in to the room, said My God, why some bloody men had to have so much fuss made of them they didn’t know, and vanished again.

  Ellen Grayson returned from the dirty-linen room where she had been sluicing napkins. She dumped her buckets in the room and came round to the peaceful corner where I was feeding glucose-water to the new babies.

  ‘Eee ‒ a to-do and all!’

  ‘What’s it all about?’

  ‘Some chap come to check up on Mrs Hayes,’ said Ellen. ‘Talk about fuss!’

  ‘Who is it?’

  Ellen did not know. ‘Some pundit,’ was all she could offer. I stood up from my babies.

  ‘Time for the nine o’clocks. I’ll start ’em. Join me when you are clean.’

  I picked up two babies, tucked one under each arm, and shot downstairs to the Dining-room Ward. In the main hall I ran into Matron, a Sister Midwife, Martin Herrith, Allan, a bevy of students and pupil-midwives lined up as a reception committee. In the open front doorway stood a medium-sized, youngish man in a neat black jacket, and correct pin-striped trousers. My mask had slipped and was round my neck, even so I recognized Dr Homer first. Unthinkingly I smiled. His jaw dropped and stayed open.

  ‘G-G-good G-G-God,’ he said. Then he too grinned as I nipped my babies and self out of Matron’s range into the nearest ward. If I had used my brains I would have realized it would have been Dr Homer who was coming, as Mrs Hayes was an advanced case of mitral stenosis, not a thing to be when one is about to bear one’s first child. Dr Homer was chief cardiologist at Gregory’s in addition to being Senior Physician.

  Martin Herrith and Allan came up to the Nursery after he had gone.

  ‘What’s going on between you and old ’Omer?’ demanded Martin.

  I told him about the ‘Windmill’ episode. Matron heard their laughter as she was walking past the Nursery door a few moments later. Matron was a small, neat-boned Scotswoman with a weakness for men in general, and Allan ‒ as a fellow Scot ‒ in particular.

  Martin retold my story with embellishments. He had a strong cockney accent at that period of his life. Martin was that by no means rare thing amongst young doctors then, an inverted snob. Each of the seven years he had spent in Gregory’s, he had become more and more consciously Elephant and Castle. He had reached the stage of completely ignoring aspirates. It was only a question of time before he started putting them in the wrong places. As Martin was such a kind person, gentle in both his work and his manner, no one bothered about his idiosyncrasies. The patients to a woman called him ‘that lovely Australian doctor.’

  ‘Never ’eard anything like it in me life, Matron! Shockink stite of affairs. Senior members of the ’ospital staff getting their legs pulled an’ all!’

  Matron smiled, then said to get back to business and that she had come in to say that Mrs Garrard was going to have her baby induced that afternoon, so would I mind changing my off-duty to help in the Labour Ward, as the baby was a breech delivery? ‘Nurse Durant will have her hands full arranging the new students,’ she added.

  Matron’s request, although nicely put, was law. I said I would be glad to change my off-duty and that I would explain to Miss Muir when she came in.

  Miss Muir came back from her week-end off-duty at lunchtime. I handed the Nursery over to her, told her about the new babies; that young baby Peters had not got meningitis; explained which of the old babies had lost weight and which had gained. I finished up with a bit of a gossip about Elmhall. ‘We have a new collection of midder-clerks, they changed on Friday.’

  ‘Any good?’ Sister’s eyes twinkled over her mask.

  ‘One of them appears rather fun ‒ if a bit larger than life. Nurse Grayson goes for him in a big way.’

  Sister laughed, then turned to Ellen, who was jiggling in the milk cupboard. ‘Have you, Nurse?’

  Ellen said happily that she always liked a big lad and went on with her jiggling.

  Miss Muir watched Ellen in silence for a few moments, then turned back to the Weights Book. The brown eyes behind her spectacles lit up. She was another small woman, but with an over-large bust that threw her figure out of proportion. This was hard on her, since the rest of her was excellent, particularly her legs and ankles. She was young, probably still in her early thirties. Most hospital sisters are young these days. But there was something wrong with Miss Muir. She was more like a caricature of herself than a real person. As a Nursery Sister she could not have been improved upon; it was off-duty that she struck the false patches. I found it difficult to like her, as I was never certain who she was. The more I saw of her, the more changeable she became, and infinitely more pathetic. I don’t think it ever dawned on her for one moment that anything about her was sad. It was. She was constantly eager, on the look-out for something she seemed to miss. Probably life itself. She lived on an artificial level and on
ly descended to normal among the babies. The babies were pleasant little souls, but there were other things in life besides babies.

  The main point of our Elmhall babies was that, no matter how enchanting they were individually, they did not belong to us nurses. That’s an important point if you are a young woman and have not yet got any children of your own. This was one point Miss Muir refused to face. ‘It’s no good, Anthony ‒ I can’t bear to lose them. I always pretend they are here for good.’ No, if there were other things in life beside the Nursery, Miss Muir never looked for them. She dared not. I told her now that I had to join in the Labour Ward party after lunch. I met her on the stairs later as I was going back with Beth. ‘Bye-bye, Anthony,’ said Sister archly. ‘Have fun!’ We did not have fun. Mrs Garrard was a woman in the early forties who was having what was likely to be her first and last baby, and that being born the wrong way up. As it was certainly going to be a difficult delivery Martin was taking the case, using the opportunity to demonstrate a breech to the eight students and six pupil-midwives, who gathered, masked and gowned, in a half-circle behind him. The Labour Ward was very quiet. Beth stood at the top of the table, beside Mrs Garrard’s head. I went over to her.

  ‘Hallo, Mrs Garrard,’ I said. ‘I’m here to look after Junior when Dr Herrith hands him over. I’ll bring him across to you as soon as I can.’

  Martin looked up. ‘Going to be a boy, eh, Nurse Anthony?’

  I smiled down on Mrs Garrard. ‘That suit you, Mrs Garrard?’

  ‘Ay, Nurse,’ she beamed, ‘either one’ll do fine. Just fine!’

  ‘That’s grand,’ said Martin. ‘See what I can do for you!’ Mrs Garrard lay on her back. A large white cotton hollowed-out screen was placed across her body, obscuring Martin and the silent audience behind him.

  When a breech baby is born, the birth is quick. The final performance does not take longer than ten minutes. It can’t take longer than ten minutes if the child is to be born alive, as the baby starts breathing as a general rule as soon as the air touches any part of its skin. There are occasional exceptions, but this is roughly the agreed form. Consequently, as the head is the last part to be born in a breech, you have to move fast. Martin Herrith did. He was a good midwife. His fingers, strong, gentle, hooked round the little legs. He kept up a quiet running commentary to the students, with occasional encouraging shouts over the screen to Mrs Garrard. When half the baby was born he called over to her: