The Print Petticoat

by Lucilla Andrews

‘Oh no, Nurth Anthony! I’m certain you were thuper!’ We had passed the collection of men and were almost at the Nursery door.

  ‘I don’t know about super,’ Martin called after us. ‘Didn’t you know, Nurse Dursley, that Nurse Anthony was known as the Ripper of Gregory’s in her pupil days? The unfortunate S.O.H.P. had to get up to stitch every one of her cases!’

  Miss Muir, who was having great fun that morning as a Tyrant and Down-Treader of young nurses, leapt out of the Nursery at that moment and said what was all that hideous noise about and really, Nurse Anthony and Mr Herrith, at least she had thought better of us!

  Chapter Five

  I Take Martin’s Advice

  After lunch I found out what was wrong with the Nursery Sister. She had been asked by the Matron of St Gregory’s Hospital, London, to leave Elmhall and go back there in charge of the new wing to the Maternity Block that was shortly being opened. It was good promotion, but the idea made her completely miserable. She loved her babies and with her babies she felt safe. In London it would be very different; she would have more official standing, but little or no privacy as regards her work ‒ and no babies.

  ‘Nothing but mums, mums, mums. Organizing teaching rounds and the endless rota of clerks and pupils. Can I stand it, Anthony?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Of course, it’s a compliment.’

  ‘I know it is. But do I want it?’

  ‘I’ll hate you’re going,’ I said, ‘they’ll never get anyone as good as you in here again.’

  She said that was nonsense, but it was not.

  ‘When do you go, Sister, if you do go?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be going all right. I’ve accepted. One must progress. God knows why, but one must. I saw the Matron up at Gregory’s this week-end. She wants me to fix things up here by the end of the month if possible.’

  ‘That’s moving fast. Who’s coming down here?’

  ‘No one,’ she said, ‘you can carry on as Acting Sister till the end of your six months. After that I gather they’ll offer the job officially to you. Grayson will come back when I go. That’s why she’s pushed off on nights. She’ll probably be your staff-nurse later, if you decide to stay on.’

  I thought if she was right I would jump at the job. I liked Elmhall, the babies, and our cottage. Then I remembered Richard ‒ for the first time that morning ‒ and changed my mind.

  I kept on changing my mind at least twice a day for the next few weeks. Miss Bascombe, the Matron at Elmhall, announced officially that Miss Muir was leaving, and sounded me on the prospect of my being Nursery Sister. She explained the honour it would be to me and the chances of promotion that lay ahead. In fact she talked to me very much as I talked to Miss Muir.

  ‘And you are still very young, Nurse. Imagine being a St Gregory’s Sister at twenty-five.’

  I did not feel all that young myself, but I both liked and respected Miss Bascombe, so I said, ‘Yes, Matron. Thank you very much, Matron,’ but did not commit myself until I heard from London.

  The month had nearly ended before the Matron of Gregory’s wrote asking me to come and see her. In the interview that followed she repeated what Miss Bascombe had said. My mind, which had been vacillating so much, suddenly made itself up. I heard myself thanking her politely, but saying that I thought it was time I went back to general nursing, which I honestly preferred to midwifery. Even that lighter side of midder which is found in the Nursery.

  To my surprise, slight pleasure, and extreme embarrassment the Matron offered me a Ward Sister’s job on one of the Men’s Surgical Wards at Stevenswood. My subconscious, which was having a field-day, realized that, much as I would like to be so near Richard, it was about the last thing I should do. For the second time within half an hour I said thank you, no, to the Matron of Gregory’s ‒ and knew that by doing so I had probably closed the door of Gregory’s permanently behind me.

  In the train back to Albion I wondered if I was a complete fool, decided I was, but that there was nothing now I could do about it. The relief that suddenly overwhelmed me as I worked this out was so immense that there seemed no point in thinking any more about it.

  My interview had been at half-past nine in the morning. I had caught the first train back after leaving the hospital, as I was on duty that afternoon. I cycled back to Elmhall, round the side of the house, and arrived on the terrace as the off-duty staff were settling down to their elevenses on the stone steps. Sandy, as ever, held a large coffee-pot. It was a lovely morning, and the clerks had carried out the ping-pong table. Beth and Marcus Ormorod were playing a very high-class singles. I was pleased to see no sign of Miss Bascombe. I had had enough of disapproving Matrons for one morning.

  Allan offered me his seat on the steps and hurried off to get me a cup of coffee. He came back and asked how I had got on. I told him what I had done.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He fiddled with his coffee spoon. ‘But if you are doing what you want, Joa, then, I’m glad. In any case,’ he added more quietly, ‘it doesn’t make much difference as far as I’m concerned. Wherever you are I’ll find and follow you, eventually. You’ll not get away from me that easily.’ Allan’s words took a few minutes to sink in. Did he, could he, seriously think I was doing this for him? Apparently he did. He looked round quickly to see if anyone was watching, then put his hand on my arm and told me I must not let him come between me and my work.

  ‘I do appreciate it, Joa. I know how marvellous ‒ but how upsetting it would be for both of us, going on here working together. In fact,’ he said triumphantly, ‘it bears out what I have always said about you, my dear. You’re one in a million!’

  Any minute now, I thought, and he’ll tell me I’m different. That’s what he likes about me.

  Beth came up, slightly breathless, ethereal as ever, having won her game. ‘Well?’ she asked.

  I told her. The coffee had made me braver, so I next told Sandy, which was equal to putting it in the local paper and on the Nine-o’clock News.

  Marcus Ormorod came into the Nursery that evening as I was writing the day report.

  ‘Any babies to feed, Nurse?’

  ‘Young Key, if you will, Mr Ormorod. Thanks.’

  He pulled a nursing-chair up to the electric fire and sat down and fed the baby quietly as I went on with my writing. I looked up once to find him watching me in the pleasantly comatose fashion in which you do watch things when feeding a slow-sucking baby.

  ‘I hear you are giving Gregory’s the air, Nurse Anthony.’

  I had stopped writing and was ruling red lines under the weights.

  ‘Yes. I think it’s probably the right thing for me to do.’

  ‘I think it probably is, too,’ he said slowly, ‘but I’d like to hear why you do.’

  I sat back in my chair.

  ‘I’ve been at Gregory’s nearly six years. That’s quite a slice out of a girl’s life. Particularly when it’s the years between nineteen and twenty-five. I’m in a rut. I think a change will be a good thing. Also …’ I thought a moment, then went on, ‘nice as is the idea of being a Sister at Stevenswood ‒ or here ‒ I’m terrified of turning into a typical Sister. Worthy women ‒ but not quite human.’

  I left my own principal reason, Richard. All the same there was an element of truth in what I said.

  He laughed, then broke up my little bubble of pretence.

  ‘What about Allan Kinnoch and Mr Everley? I take it they are getting the air too, as you are shedding them with Gregory’s.’

  There was no point in lying, but as I was not convinced myself, I saw no reason in being unduly definite.

  ‘I don’t know quite how they fit in, but I feel I’ll be able to tell a bit better when I’m not so very much involved in both work and play.’

  Young Key hiccuped. Marcus sat him upright and rubbed his back before answering.

  ‘Who are you running away from, Nurse? Yourself or the boys?’

  I felt I had had enough of psycho-analysis for one day, and I said so.
He laughed. ‘How come you know all about the ego or the id?’

  ‘Mr Ormorod,’ I said, ‘I go to the movies.’

  ‘By God, you are right, Nurse!’ he said, and we both laughed. ‘Never mind,’ he added, ‘I expect you’ll do very nicely when you set out into the big world in your print petticoat.’

  The next day but one was Miss Muir’s last day at Elmhall. All the spare pupils and clerks in the place arrived in the Nursery that evening. While Sister was at tea, we dressed Noel Barnes, who was as small as Marcus was big, as a baby. He fitted quite neatly into the largest iron cot we possessed. Martin Herrith fixed him up, covering the cot with the largest oxygen-tent. He draped the tent with shawls and nearly asphyxiated Noel, since he forgot to turn the oxygen on. Then everyone ‒ excluding Mary Dursley and myself ‒ hid behind the screens sheltering the premature babies, and we waited for Sister to get back from tea.

  I told her a new prem had been admitted during the past half-hour.

  ‘Oh no, Anthony ‒ don’t,’ she wailed. ‘I can’t bear to leave you with a new prem.’

  ‘You’d better have a look at him, Sister. He was very blue a few minutes ago.’

  By the time Noel was out of the cot he was scarlet and near to heat-stroke.

  ‘My God!’ He shed blankets all round the Nursery. ‘Who’d be a baby? How the poor little devils stand that heat I can’t think.’

  We had a riotous evening. The mothers were all as sorry as we were that Miss Muir was leaving. She came back from her final round of the wards, looked round the Nursery, said, ‘You’ll have to finish, Anthony! I can’t stand it,’ and rushed off to the East Wing.

  Martin came in a few minutes later. He seemed very upset about something.

  ‘The R.S.O. from Stevenswood was on the ’phone just now, Joa. My nipper’s dead.’

  ‘Martin Garrard?’

  He nodded, then sat down at the table. ‘Why didn’t I keep my big mouth shut, Joa? Why didn’t I?’

  I gave him some of the prems’ brandy. There did not seem to be anything else to be done.

  Chapter Six

  The Flat in Water Street

  The flat was on the fifth floor. There were a good many stairs in those five flights. The taxi-driver and I stopped for breath half-way up and leant against the iron balustrade. The man balanced my hold-all against his knee.

  ‘Gawd! Bit ’ot for this ‒ ain’t it, miss?’

  I agreed and said that it was most awfully good of him and I was ever so grateful and did not know what I would have done without him and weren’t men wonderful and taxi-drivers in particular the way they carried things for helpless little women. I had said this three times already, but he appeared to enjoy repetition, as he took another of my suit-cases from me and loaded it on to his over-burdened person for the last lap.

  Beth, hearing us on the stairs, appeared on the top landing, took my remaining bundles from me, and led the way into the studio. The man put the things down carefully. ‘This do you, miss?’

  I gave him half-a-crown, said my little piece again; he took off his cap, flung out his chest, said he was always ready to oblige he was sure, and clattered out of the flat and down the stone staircase.

  Beth and I looked at each other, said ‘Well’ simultaneously, and began to talk.

  Things had moved fast after I had mentally shaken the dust of Gregory’s off myself that morning when I was interviewed by the Matron in London.

  Miss Muir had left, and Baby Garrard died before the day was out, as I have said. Marcus Ormorod and Noel Barnes with their six colleagues, had moved back to London at the end of that week to continue their midder-circuit in the district.

  Our last two months at Elmhall had been almost unnaturally quiet. Babies had been born with a regularity that went far towards unnerving Miss Bascombe herself. There is nothing that a midwife suspects so much as a calm. The storm is invariably on its way. Even the weather was abnormal. The April sunshine was dimmed only by the brilliance of a cloudless May. The Nursery ran itself without interruption from premature arrivals, philandering students, or prudish pupil-midwives. Ellen Grayson came back and took over from Mary Dursley, who, to Beth’s horror, was sent to the Labour Ward. With the removal of Marcus from Elmhall she became increasingly normal. In fact, we felt if only she was kept clear of the boys for a year or so she might be taught how to pronounce her ‘w’s.

  It was during this halcyon two months that something had cropped up to make me decide what to do with myself in the immediate future. What happened was this. One of the midder-clerks in the set following on the Ormorod-Barnes lot had a cousin, Mathew Hope, in the Army, a newly-qualified Gregory’s man whom I knew slightly, and who was going overseas for two years, probably to Korea. This Mathew Hope owned a flat in Water Street, which he had shared through the years with various Gregory’s men until he himself had qualified and had to live in the hospital as a houseman. After that he had continued to let the flat to a series of Gregory’s students, while keeping an eye himself on things generally from the hospital. As he was going abroad he wanted to let it for a couple of years to someone he knew ‒ preferably not to hordes of students, but to a couple who would agree to give it up when he returned. He was leaving quite a lot of furniture in the place, and was prepared to rent it cheaply if he could get what he wanted.

  Mathew, like myself, was an orphan, only unlike myself he was well-off, which made things easier. The cousin, Basil Hope, talked a lot about this flat. It was the idea of the flat and the chance it gave of getting out of institutional life, if only for a year or so, that fixed things in my mind. I thought I might as well give Allan something to do beyond swearing eternal fidelity to me, and, as he also knew Mathew, I asked him to fix up the business side for me.

  Allan having long since decided, with no assistance from me, that I was his future wife and that this was a temporary girlish whim, arranged everything, lease, latch-key, and banker’s order for the rent. All that remained for me to do was to ask Beth if she would like to share it with me, and to move in. There was then the question of a job for myself. Beth provided the means to that.

  An uncle of hers ran a nursing-home in the West End. This nursing-home, like all similar establishments, was short of staff. The Matron, a Miss Haslar, in my interview with her, camouflaged this shortage.

  ‘We are lacking the Right Type of Nurse, Miss Anthony.’ She followed her words by asking, as I had known she would, ‘And when would you be free to join us, Miss Anthony?’

  There is magic in the name of Gregory’s ‒ besides the evidence of my purity of soul shown by my hair-style.

  Beth was going back to St Gregory’s, London. She had the job of staff-nurse in Casualty Hall. This was a departmental post that allowed her to live out conveniently, if she wanted to. Like myself, she wanted it above all things.

  ‘And if I have enough of Gregory’s, Joa, I can always join Uncle and you at The Havenne.’ The Havenne was the name of the nursing-home.

  Richard had taken my leaving Gregory’s very calmly. This upset me a good deal, even though it underlined the point that our beautiful friendship was wearing out. I had seen very little of him lately. There were endless excuses I could use: the babies, fixing up things with Mathew Hope; finally the business of packing and moving in.

  My Aunt Monica was still abroad, so I did not bother to take a holiday before we moved as there was nowhere specific to go, and I did not want to throw away money on hotels at that moment. Mrs Everley wrote and asked me to stay, and Allan was longing to pack me off to Argyllshire as a daughter-in-law elect. I said thank you, no, to both, had my final week-end of duty down at Elmhall, and moved up to London and the flat in Water Street on the Sunday evening.

  Beth and I revived ourselves with cigarettes.

  ‘Let’s look round, Joa.’

  It was a fairly large flat, and very cheap at the three guineas a week Mathew was charging us. There were two bedrooms, a bathroom, and kitchen on one side of the corridor. The livin
g-room, which had at some former time been used as a studio, stretched down the entire opposite side. At one end of the studio, was a gallery. At the moment the only way of reaching this was by a rope-ladder. How it was meant to be got at I don’t know. There were no signs of steps or where steps might have been. The gallery was strong and fairly wide. There was room for a chair and single bed up there. The boys had used it as a spare room, and we intended to do the same. The ornate iron balustrade would prevent anyone pitching over in the dark. Mathew had put in a reading-lamp. It was rather like the upper-berth of a cabin.

  The flat was in a dreadful mess and perfectly filthy. The last students had gone that morning.

  ‘They moved out as I moved in,’ said Beth. She had picked up a marmalade kitten from somewhere and was stroking it. It was a very thin kitten, but it seemed quite pleased with life. It was purring loudly.

  Beth gently scratched behind its ears, rubbed her cheek against its orange back, then screamed and smartly put it down on the floor.

  ‘Joa! It’s alive with fleas!’

  We edged weakly away, but the kitten would have none of this. It was a very matey kitten.

  Beth wriggled her shoulders. ‘I’m sure I’ve caught ’em.’

  I scratched in sympathy. ‘I expect you have. I can feel them walking all over me.’

  ‘What’ll we do? We can’t turn it out. Anyway, I don’t want to. It’s a nice cat ‒ if only it was clean,’ she added regretfully.

  ‘Maybe we can get rid of them.’ I knelt down. ‘Come here, cat.’ It nuzzled up to my hand like a minute horse.

  ‘What’s its name, Beth? Orlando? Did it belong to the boys?’

  ‘Yes. No. I mean its name isn’t Orlando. It’s Bolivar. Yes. It did belong to the boys.’

  I sat back on my heels.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t call a cat Bolivar!’

  ‘Well, they have.’ She was definite. ‘Look. It knows. Come here, Bolivar. Hey! Bolivar!’

  Whether it was because it liked the clucking noise she made, or did recognize its name, I don’t know, but it went to her.