The Print Petticoat

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘That’s the way, m’dear ‒ doing fine. A boy. Just the job. A boy!’

  ‘Oh Doctor,’ she gasped. ‘Thank God. Is he all right? All complete?’

  Martin was standing up now.

  ‘’E’s fine, my dear. Perfect.’

  In nearly every delivery the first thing the mother asks is, ‘Is it all right? All complete?’ The fear of giving birth to something abnormal is very real, particularly with women having their first child. When I was a pupil the Senior Sister-midwife insisted constantly that you should never say a baby was physically perfect until you had seen the whole child. Externally perfect, that is, with the right number of fingers and toes.

  ‘And if there is ever anything wrong, Nurses, for God’s sake tell the mother there and then. It’s too cruel to spring it on her later. At that moment the mother can just about take anything ‒ she just has to. Women get a strength in labour that runs out later. So break it at once ‒ when they are still close to the Almighty ‒ and have the superhuman courage to accept tragedy.’

  I remembered that Sister-midwife then as Martin delivered the rest of the child by extension; the whole little back became visible to us all, the baby began to cry.

  Automatically I took the baby from him and held the little creature gently, face downward, as Martin tied the cord. The sweat poured down Martin’s forehead. His mask clung to his face.

  All our eyes were riveted to the tiny bag of transparent membrane which hung like a golf-ball from the base of the baby’s spine.

  There was only one sound, the whimper of the boy child. Then Mrs Garrard spoke.

  ‘Is it all over, Doctor?’

  Martin said, ‘Give me the baby, Nurse.’ Then he added quietly. ‘This is my baby.’ There was no humour in his words or in any of our minds.

  ‘Nurse Durant,’ he called over the screen, ‘can you finish off here for me?’

  Beth moved round, her eyebrows disappearing into her cap in her curiosity. She and Mrs Garrard alone had not yet seen what we had. She looked at the child and her eyes darkened to violet.

  Martin walked heavily round the white cotton screen.

  ‘Mrs Garrard,’ he said, ‘you have got to be brave. I have bad news for you.’

  We heard her quiet voice. ‘Doctor ‒ is he ‒ dead? I thought I heard him cry.’

  ‘You did hear him cry, my dear. He is alive all right. But he’s not quite all right, as I thought. I spoke too soon. I’m sorry. Desperately sorry. Look, my dear ‒’

  He showed her the incomplete little back. I noticed suddenly how in his concern he had forgotten his accent.

  ‘He may be all right later, Mrs Garrard. I can’t say yet. You’ll have to go on being brave, dear. He can’t come down to you ‒ Nurse will have to keep him quietly in his cot in the Nursery. But as soon as you are up you can spend as much time as you like with him. Later we’ll see about getting him into St Gregory’s. That back will have to be operated on.’

  I carried the baby back to the Nursery. Miss Muir helped me dress the open back. We covered the bag of membrane with a small enamel dish, then bandaged over the whole thing. This at least would be some protection against blows. He was a perfect little baby in every other way. He had a mass of straight black hair, and a beautiful, clear-cut face.

  Mrs Garrard had superb courage. She never let go. Her dour, north-country husband arrived from London that evening. Martin had sent for him. He was not young ‒ nearer fifty than forty. They had been married five years and passionately wanted the baby.

  He sat in the ward holding her hand all evening. His lined, haggard face set in a pathetically cheerful expression. Miss Muir went down to the ward and brought him up to the Nursery to see the baby. She said he stood looking down at the cot as silent as he had been down in the ward. She said, ‘He’s a beautiful-looking child, Mr Garrard.’

  ‘Ay,’ was all he answered. Then she saw he was crying. Before he left he stood in the middle of the Nursery and gazed slowly round at the thirty-nine healthy, normal babies who lay, some asleep, some awake and quietly sucking. It was after 6 p.m. feed, and contentment was in the Nursery air. More to himself than aloud, he murmured, ‘And maybe some of them aren’t wanted.’ He nodded to Sister, turned back for a last look at his son, then went quickly out of the room and downstairs.

  That night I could not sleep. Every time I dropped off I woke from a nightmare about babies, thousands of babies, all born incomplete. Some time during the night a pain arrived from nowhere and began nagging in my left shoulder.

  In the morning I decided two things. That I had rheumatism; that I must give up this night life with Richard as I was getting too tired. After breakfast I took some aspirin from the medicine cupboard to deal with the rheumatics. I shelved the problem of Richard for the time being.

  That day Miss Muir suggested tentatively to Mrs Garrard that perhaps her baby should be baptized by the chaplain. Mrs Garrard, as brave and sensible as ever, said she thought it was a lovely idea, and that if the young doctor did not mind, hubby and she had talked it over and would like to call the baby Martin.

  ‘Eh, Sister, he was that upset ‒ the poor lad. I told hubby ‒ there were tears in his eyes ‒ the poor young man!’

  Martin Herrith was delighted when he heard. He cheered up for the first time in twenty-four hours, then rushed off to the Dining-room Ward to ask Mrs Garrard if he could be an extra godfather.

  Mrs Garrard said that would be grand. We were all grand. She and her man were that grateful.

  Martin came up to the Nursery that evening. The babies were all asleep. As he came in I was showing a very young and slightly indignant Ordinary-Seaman the way back to the ward, after introducing him to his daughter. Martin held the door open for us.

  ‘Ta ever so, Nurse,’ said the sailor. ‘I guess you’re right, but really ‒ I’m sure I don’t know how she’s going to manage an’ all.’

  ‘What was the matter with ’im?’ Martin jerked his head towards the door I had closed behind me, when I got back to the Nursery. ‘Didn’t ’e know the facts of life?’

  ‘No.’ I sat down beside him at the table. ‘He was a bit upset to find his infant had no teeth ‒ and was not going to grow a set during the next fortnight. I explained that milk-teeth were not provided by the Health Service, but he wasn’t much impressed. Thought it a rum carry-on, he did.’

  Martin laughed. ‘’Ow’s my nipper?’

  He walked over to where Martin Garrard, carefully padded, lay asleep in his cot. His little face, with the odd egg-shaped head of a breech baby, was tilted to one side. Martin bent over and stroked the child’s cheek.

  ‘I’ve just been on the ’phone to the R.S.O. at Stevenswood. ’E said ’e would come over tomorrow and ’ave a look. Probably admit ’im in a week or so.’ He looked across to me. ‘The R.S.O. said ’e thought Richard Everley would oblige with a lift any time.’

  The R.S.O. was the Resident Surgical Officer at Stevenswood, Richard’s direct superior, and the man responsible for all the surgical admissions in the hospital.

  I said I was glad about the first part of his news. I said nothing about the end bit. Martin sat down on one of the low nursing-chairs and stretched his legs. I picked up the Report Book and began the Day Report. I wrote for a few minutes, while Martin sat quietly. Then he broke the quietness by asking how long I was going to go on running around with Richard Everley.

  ‘Now don’t get all worked up, me girl,’ he said quickly as I opened my mouth. ‘I know you’re going to say what the ’ell is it to do with me. All right! I’ve said it. I’ll tell you. This is just brotherly interest, Joanna. You’re a good girl; but you aren’t my type and I’m not yours, and we both know it. Seeing that I’ve no axe to grind, you might as well listen.’

  I put down my pen and smiled faintly behind my mask.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘if you must be brotherly, Martin, be brotherly.’

  Martin took a breath. ‘Now don’t throw anything, Joa. How much longer are you
going to go on wasting your time with Richard Everley ‒ or let him waste it for you, which comes to the same thing?’

  As always when serious, he dropped the Cockney. He went on. ‘You don’t want to carry on hanging round hospitals ‒ being a Sister ‒ now do you? You want to get married ‒ have a home ‒ some of these chaps.’ He gesticulated round the room. ‘Not forty ‒ say half a dozen.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. There wasn’t much else to say. Once Martin was in the lecturing mood, the only thing to do was to let him get it out of his system.

  ‘Seriously, Joanna,’ he stood up. ‘Chuck the fellow. Richard’s aiming for big things and he’ll get them all right. Only he’s not going to waste time with a little woman at home, a brace of kids, nappies all over the kitchen, and a baby-sitter one night a week so that he can take you to the movies. Richard thinks in terms of surgery and money. You don’t hit the high spots early unless you are prepared to drop a few things on the way. And when the time comes that you are superfluous, one of the things he’ll drop will be you. And now throw that book at me if you like!’

  I sat and looked at him. I had felt successively too angry, too humiliated, and, finally, too much like crying, to speak. He came over to the table, placed both his hands flat, and, leaning over, looked down at me.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, Joanna ‒ made you cross. I’ve thought for some time that someone ought to take a hand in your affairs. Allan ‒ out of the question; Beth wouldn’t, not with one thing and another; so Uncle Martin thought it had better be himself.’

  I raised my eyes to his face.

  ‘I thought you were being fraternal, Martin, not avuncular,’ I said, and went on writing my report.

  Allan came into the Nursery as I was reporting to the night nurse.

  ‘Telephone, Joa ‒ Nurse Anthony.’

  It was Richard from Stevenswood.

  ‘I’m off early, Joanna ‒ the list was a short one. I could be over by nine if you’d care for a run.’

  Before I thought what I wanted to do I heard my voice say that I was very tired and thought I would go to bed early for a change.

  Richard was concerned. ‘Darling ‒ are you all right?’

  ‘Fine. Life’s been a bit over-hectic here lately ‒ and I still have not recovered from the House party.’

  Richard chuckled. ‘It was a damn’ good show, wasn’t it? Never mind,’ he added, ‘sleep well. I’ll ring tomorrow.’ The upstairs external telephone stood in the room which was used by the Matron’s secretary as an office. It was actually a converted cupboard, with a window knocked through the outside wall for light. I sat down at her table and looked out of that window after I had finished with the telephone. There was not much of a view. The yard, and across the yard, the garage. In the open space under the men’s flat stood Beth Durant and one of the pupils. They were taking dressing-tins out of the silver autoclave. I watched them carefully, not seeing them at all.

  We did our own sterilizing at Elmhall in our own little autoclave. An autoclave is a machine that sterilizes by subjecting the things to be sterilized to intense heat. The heat is raised by pressure. I can work an autoclave. All the staff at Elmhall could, but I cannot explain how I did it. At crucial moments our own particular autoclave, an American one, was liable to unnerve you by whistling violently. This had a marked effect on the more highly-strung midder-clerks. At other times the autoclave would smoke feverishly. If anything, this upset the students more. They would rush down their staircase, gasp their way through the fumes into the fresh air on the other side of the yard, and be restrained with difficulty from ringing the Albion Fire Brigade.

  The autoclave started smoking as I watched. Marcus Ormorod’s face appeared at one of the windows of the flat. He saw Beth in the yard.

  ‘Are we on fire, Nurse Durant, or is this all part of the system?’

  Beth, red in the face from turning on the taps marked A, B, and C, and turning off D, E, and F, all of which were stiff and awkward, called up shortly that it was all part of the system.

  I laughed and found that I felt better. But as I did not feel like facing Martin or Allan again that night, I called in at the Nursery for my cloak, skipped tea, and avoiding the sitting-room windows, walked across the lawn to the path which led down to our cottage. The path skirted the terraces, ignored the Japanese garden, and meandered through the orchard and kitchen garden.

  In the orchard I heard steps following me. I hurried my own slightly. The footsteps were not Beth’s. They were too fast to belong to any nurse after a day’s work. I damned the house-physicians. I had sacrificed my cup of tea to avoid them. I felt I had had a surfeit of what I should do about Richard. Then a voice called ‘Nurse Anthony,’ and I turned round. I knew it was neither of the men I had expected. Martin and Allan invariably called me ‘Joanna’ off-duty and generally on if no-one else was by.

  In a few seconds Marcus Ormorod caught up with me.

  ‘You walk remarkably quickly ‒ where were you off to so fast?’

  ‘Bed,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  He looked round the darkening orchard.

  ‘Are there then other things besides fairies at the bottom of our garden?’

  I smiled and explained about our cottage. I moved on down the path. He asked what was the hurry.

  ‘Mr Ormorod,’ I said, ‘I’m just plain tired.’

  I had no energy left for a polite lie. He bent slightly, looked at my face, then to my surprise he took my arm, gently turned me round, and together we walked on.

  ‘You look tired, poor girl,’ was all he said.

  I had no energy to move away, so I left my arm where it was. I was having quite a time with the boys lately, I thought.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ he asked.

  As I did not mind how he took it, I told him.

  He laughed. ‘Then I may as well hang on while the going is good.’

  ‘You’ll shock Mrs Hicks if she sees you. She thinks a girl should be faithful to Her Own True Love.’

  ‘Mr Whatsit from Stevenswood?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He gripped my arm now.

  ‘Dear Nurse Anthony, tell me, why are you telling me these things? Am I the Father Confessor type ‒ or do you want to save me from wasting away with unrequited love like Allan Kinnoch?’

  We had reached the kitchen garden and the back entrance of the cottage.

  ‘Neither, Mr Ormorod,’ I hoped I looked coy. I felt it.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he took both my hands in his, ‘don’t tell me you think I’m a wolf?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, Mr Ormorod. Just an honest lecher.’

  When I opened the back door of the cottage I looked back to see if he had gone. He was still standing on the path where I had left him. He waved and I waved back, then I went in and shut the door.

  Chapter Four

  Changes in the Nursery

  Ellen Grayson came bouncing into the Nursery next morning, her face was glowing with pleasure at the bad news she was bringing us.

  ‘Such a carry-on, Nurse Anthony. That Mrs Grant’s got eclampsia ‒ I’m to special her in isolation.’

  I was bathing a baby. I had not yet had breakfast, so I only registered the first part of her remark.

  ‘She hasn’t had the infant yet ‒ or has she?’

  ‘Coming off in Labour Ward now, Matron says. That’s how I know.’

  Then the last part of her news sunk in.

  ‘My God,’ I said, horrified. ‘They aren’t leaving us pupilless?’

  She had picked up a baby and was bathing it now beside me. ‘You’re to have one of the night girls. Mary Dursley.’

  ‘Which one is she?’ There had been a change-over of pupils during the past month, and I had not yet caught up with the night nurses.

  ‘The pretty fair one. With a lisp.’

  I turned the baby on my lap over on to his stomach, where he lay contentedly sucking the towel as I turned round to look at Ellen. I had heard ab
out Mary Dursley.

  ‘Matron can’t do it,’ I said, aghast. ‘The girl’s hopeless. Night Sister says so.’

  Ellen’s eyes beamed at me over her mask. ‘Aye. That’s what they all say. And one of your own girls too.’

  I took the crack against Gregory’s. Every training school has its impossibles, who somehow manage to survive the training and are let loose on the unsuspecting world as State Registered Nurses.

  From all accounts Mary Dursley was one of these.

  ‘Sister will be pleased,’ I said grimly, ‘having just trained you, now you move off to eclampsia, and we have to start all over again. Particularly with a new set of clerks to help things on.’

  Miss Muir appeared at the bathroom door.

  ‘What am I going to be pleased about?’ she said, and Ellen told her.

  Miss Muir’s eyes nearly shot from her head.

  ‘Over my dead body ‒ you’ve only been here four weeks ‒ I should have you for another month at least. I’ll see Matron.’

  She vanished from the Nursery so quickly that in my early-morning coma I wondered whether she had ever been there at all.

  ‘She oughtn’t to get that excited,’ said Ellen cheerfully. ‘With those eyes she’ll want to watch out. Think she’s thyrotoxic, Nurse?’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ I said, then thought a bit. ‘She has a nasty goitre, of course, poor thing.’

  ‘I’ll say.’ Ellen was in revolting form. ‘Good for the figure, a little excess thyroid. Pity she’s so bosom-y; not that the lads don’t like it.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Nurse ‒ they do! Stands to reason.’

  ‘I suppose it does.’ I had finished my baby. As I carried her into the main Nursery I looked at my figure in the glass. Willowy ‒ perhaps. Thin, if you were feeling unkind. I picked up another baby and returned to the bathroom.