The Print Petticoat

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘I wonder if there are any more fleas about?’

  She looked worried. ‘I just remembered, Joa. The boys said the place was stiff with bugs. I quite forgot.’

  ‘Bugs or fleas?’

  ‘Fleas, I expect. It doesn’t smell like bugs.’

  I sniffed, then agreed. We had both been trained as midwives in a peculiarly poor area, and we knew the smell a bug gives to a house. It’s not a smell you forget.

  ‘They never did any proper cleaning,’ she went on; ‘anyway,’ she glanced round, ‘it looks as if it has never seen the light of day ‒ or soap and water.’

  We made some tea, then started in on the cleaning that evening.

  There was no way of getting any D.D.T. until the shops opened next morning, so we hoped we could drown those we could not gas. The furniture was good, strong, old-fashioned stuff, that had successfully withstood the treatment of relays of medical students during the past eight years. Mathew had said we could do what we wished with the furniture.

  ‘Only don’t sell it ‒ or use it for firewood, girls!’

  We moved everything around, even when it looked better in its original place. We enjoyed doing that. It was having a place of our own.

  There was an alcove in the studio, at the opposite end to the gallery. The fireplace was in the alcove, a large open fireplace, on either side of which were built-in shelves. Over the fireplace was a Victorian marble mantelpiece and over the marble mantelpiece was a large reproduction of a Varga girl. I rubbed layer after layer of spilt beer from the mantelpiece and wondered what to do about that picture. Leave it where it was and heigho for La Vie Bohème, or put it in the gallery to give our visitors a kick or a clothes-horse, depending on their sex. As I was thinking about this Beth, followed by another girl, came into the room.

  ‘Joanna,’ said Beth, ‘do you know if Marcus Ormorod is back at Gregory’s yet?’

  The other girl smiled faintly at me. She gave the impression of being very upset about something.

  ‘Hallo,’ I said, putting down my rag and bottle of detergent. ‘I’m filthy. Marcus? I think he should be, but I’m not sure.’

  The girl smiled again, more happily. She was a very pretty girl.

  ‘I feel terrible breaking in on you this way,’ she said. ‘You see, I thought the men were still here.’

  She glanced round vaguely as if she expected to find a couple of medical students hidden in the alcove.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better introduce myself,’ she added. ‘I’m Jill Grant.’

  It was then that I noticed she was carrying a suit-case. I was being very dumb, but my mind was on the spring-cleaning. Beth caught my eye and I guessed that she was thinking what I had now got around to thinking. Beth turned into a competent hostess, said who we were, and offered cigarettes. We all sat down. I warned her about the fleas. From the way she smiled I gathered she knew more about the fleas than we did. It suddenly dawned on me without any specific reason that she had probably lived with Marcus at some not far-distant time. Not that she looked the type, but no-one ever does look the type these days; yet it’s an extremely common occurrence. I am always being amazed at quite how commonplace these situations have become. On the whole they are rarities in a nurses’ training school. Even with modern improved hours, there simply is no time for a life of sin, and anyway all nurses’ feet hurt too much.

  I then decided my imagination was going libellously haywire, and she probably carried nothing more damning than text-books in her week-end case. Also I was sorry for her if she had taken Marcus seriously. He was fun and charming, but good for amusement only.

  She told us she was just back from two months’ holiday in Switzerland.

  ‘Literally just back. My luggage is still at Victoria. I hated the thought of my empty flat, so I thought I would just drop in on the boys to cheer myself up before rushing off to Notting Hill Gate.’ She said her flat was off Crichtonside Gardens. It was not a proper flat, just the usual one room and use of bath.

  Her parents lived in Switzerland, which was why she could afford eight weeks’ holiday. Her job was in London. She didn’t say what her work was, but we did not ask her as it was obvious we were shortly going to hear all. It was equally obvious that she was very upset indeed at not finding Marcus.

  We ran out of small talk. Beth broke the silence that followed by telling her again about Bolivar and the fleas. Afterwards, Beth said, ‘I know I was repeating myself, but anything was better than waiting for the poor girl to burst into tears. Besides, I always enjoy myself as a dumb blonde!’

  Jill smiled at Bolivar, and reached for her case.

  ‘I’ve got a present, for Bolivar.’

  She took out a small packet. The packet was full of D.D.T. bombs. Beth and I had never seen D.D.T. other than as a powder or lotion.

  ‘Is it safe?’ asked Beth.

  ‘Perfectly ‒ at least, so they told me in Paris. They are American Army surplus ‒ I expect black-market. The Customs had heard of them! Anyway, the man in Paris said they were all right. He let one off for me. He said it was “formidable”.’

  It was. We had decided to start de-fleaing at once, so we shut all the windows and started on Bolivar. He appeared to enjoy being sprayed with the vapour, which hissed fiercely from the tiny bombs. The bombs were small enough to conceal in the palm of the hand. After Bolivar, we sprayed the rest of the flat, finishing up on ourselves, in case we were being used as a flea-refuge. The vapour had a cloying scent, and after we were done we all felt giddy. According to the labels on the bombs, this was all wrong. Positively No Aroma. But there was. It was wonderful to get the windows open again and let the wind from the river blow through the flat. The evening air was cold as it often is in an English June. The flat smelt pleasantly of salt and a trace of tar.

  Jill Grant said, ‘I had better be off. It’s nearly eight, and I’ve got to collect my things from Victoria.’

  Beth said, ‘Of course you can’t go without having supper, after giving us all your D.D.T.’

  Jill hesitated. She did not seem to know what to say, which was stupid as it did not much matter what she did now that she knew Marcus was not living here any longer. Unless my idea had been right and she had expected to spend the night in Water Street. In which case why hadn’t he let her know? And how about Switzerland, the luggage, and Notting Hill Gate? Taken purely at its face value, she did seem to be making a Russian drama over her missing young man, who might quite legitimately be held up in the operating-theatre, or be on a major-week* and unable to contact her even had he expected her, which seemed unlikely. Or had he known, but done nothing about it as a way of showing that they had reached the end of a beautiful friendship? Whatever it was, she was making heavy going of our invitation to supper. She walked away from us and stood looking out of the window. *(A major-week clerk, or dresser, is one of the four students who reside in Gregory’s each week and is general dogsbody. Every student eventually does this.)

  It was a large window, a bay. There were gulls flying about outside, their wings flapping impatiently as if they were not sure that they could keep on flying. From that window you could see down to the river end of Water Street, over the river, where the sun still shone, and across to the already dusty green of Battersea Park. Jill Grant did not see any of this; she was crying. Beth and I exchanged another of our mutual glances. We seemed to have done little else for the past hour.

  I said, ‘Would you like to spend the night here? We’ve got the spare bed as you know. And there are plenty of blankets.’

  My words sounded quite absurd, addressed as they were to her heaving back. But I was really sorry for the poor girl, even if she was such a fool.

  ‘Do stay,’ urged Beth. ‘You can organize things tomorrow; London’s hell on a summer evening.’

  Beth told me later she nearly added, ‘When you are alone,’ but decided not just in time. ‘It would certainly have produced a fresh spasm, Joa, and personally I had had enough emotion for one night.’


  Jill Grant accepted our invitation. We were quite glad we had asked her when she found a store of tins that the men had left behind in the kitchen cupboard. We ate baked-beans on toast and drank coffee. Jill made the toast, I made coffee, while Beth fluttered about laying the table, clucking like a good-natured hen. Despite the de-fleaing we all scratched.

  After supper Jill told us all. It was embarrassing as we knew it without being told. We also knew about Marcus and Mary Dursley. Jill had only known Marcus for six months, not including the two she had spent in Switzerland. She thought him all heaven. He probably was, for a time.

  She said she had never lived with anyone else. That of course he had never actually mentioned their getting married, but she knew he wanted to, it was just that he was not qualified, so, of course, she had not worried.

  With Richard still smarting in my mind, I wanted to tell her that the thought was always there in a girl’s mind, but never in the man’s. That the only time to stop worrying was on the way back from the church. I did not say anything. This was hardly the moment.

  We cheered her by saying the letter ‒ any letter ‒ must have gone astray. That probably there was a letter from Marcus chasing her round Europe. We were Girl Scouts ready to help a pal even if it meant perjury. It certainly made her a lot happier, and we all went to bed.

  Beth came in while I was in the bath.

  She sat down on the edge of the bath and turned up the hot tap. The noise of the water was enough to cover our voices. I lay back. ‘Well, well,’ I said, ‘we do see life.’

  Beth grimaced. ‘That man Ormorod! But why does he go in for such congenital idiots?’

  ‘It is odd,’ I agreed. ‘Marcus is amusing and intelligent. How can he bear their conversation for ten minutes?’

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t converse,’ she said.

  ‘Beth,’ I said, reaching for the sponge. ‘He surely can’t neck all the time.’

  ‘Maybe he can. He must. He couldn’t possibly listen to their chatter.’

  I remembered something. ‘I meant to tell you, Allan told me he had a new young woman ‒ Angela Hardy ‒ Staff in Adams Ward. So this poor kid is two back, did she but know it.’

  Beth watched her cigarette-smoke thoughtfully. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ she said slowly, ‘how about Allan? Have you decided?’

  ‘I have not. All the will-power I possess is concentrated on dropping Richard. Allan will have to wait. I know he’s full of honourable ideas, but I can’t help that. And in any case, it wouldn’t work. He’ll have to get over it.’ I turned on the hot tap again.

  ‘I know, Beth, I know,’ I added as I saw she was about to say something. ‘I know he is an awfully nice young man, but if awfully nice young men go round proposing to people, then they are old enough to take the consequences. So Allan can go on being awfully nice, but not for me.’

  Beth relaxed. I very nearly told her not to worry, that I was on her side. Great friends though we were, I thought it wouldn’t do.

  ‘Do you mind a lot about Richard?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do. I mind like hell.’

  ‘Poor Joa.’ We sat in silence. ‘Joa ‒ perhaps you are wrong. Perhaps Richard really does want to marry you.’

  The bath-water was still hot, but I shivered.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘he doesn’t. What Richard wants, Richard gets. I’ve not known him for six years without being certain of that. All that Richard now wants is a nice sharp scalpel and a share of the limelight ‒ metaphorically and literally. I think I would rather deal with a rake like Marcus. At least he’s human. I tell you, Beth’ ‒ I was getting worked up ‒ ‘there is warmer blood sitting in the blood-bank ’fridge in the basement of Gregory’s than in Richard.’

  I stood up, wrapped myself in a towel, and sat down beside her on the edge of the bath, my feet still in the water.

  ‘I know I’m talking like the bitter, frustrated woman that all nurses are supposed to end as ‒ well, so-help-me I’m bitter and I’m bloody frustrated ‒ even if I am only twenty-five. Five and a half years I’ve loved Richard ‒ I still do ‒ but that doesn’t stop me clearing out. God knows it isn’t for lack of hints from my nearest and dearest.

  ‘I thought like that girl in there,’ I jerked my head, ‘that I was safe. That he loved me. The only difference between her and me is that I’ve never slept with Richard. Not my virtue, that. He never asked me. And I’m damned if I know what my answer would have been if he had. Probably no ‒ but I wouldn’t like to say,’ I finished gloomily, and took a cigarette from her packet.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Beth ‒ I’d like to have had my time all over again with an income of five hundred a year of my own. I would have been Mrs Richard Everley these past three years.’

  By the time I was into my nightdress and dressing-gown I was so cold that I said I would need a hot-water bottle.

  ‘I might as well have one, too,’ said Beth, and went off to put on the kettle.

  Once in bed, I thought about Jill Grant lying in the gallery and pining for Marcus, who was doubtless accommodating himself with someone else. At least I was spared missing Richard during the night. The waking up to face the day without him was quite bad enough. Then I wondered how often virtue went hand-in-hand with lack of opportunity. It was a disheartening thought. Beth interrupted it by putting her head round the door to ask if I was still awake, because she had caught another flea. She was fully dressed.

  ‘Aren’t you ever going to bed?’ I said.

  ‘Not just yet. There are a couple of bread-and-butter letters I simply had to write.’

  Beth always developed a social conscience after midnight. Later that night she woke me, switching off her light. I looked at my watch. It was half-past two.

  Chapter Seven

  Ethics on a Park Bench

  Jill Grant left us after that one night. We were sorry for her, but it was quite a relief to see her go. Later we had a letter from her, thanking us for what we had done. She said she was chucking up her job, which was an Assistant Hospital Almoner, and going back to her parents. For some time.

  ‘I expect to get a job in a sanatorium near home,’ she wrote. ‘I speak French and German pretty well.’

  She never mentioned Marcus Ormorod and we never heard which hospital she had worked in, or what was happening to the flat at Notting Hill Gate ‒ if it ever existed.

  We were pretty busy with our own affairs, and by the end of our first week in Water Street had forgotten all about her. We gave ourselves seven days to get the flat straight. The following Monday morning Beth went back to Gregory’s and I started work in The Havenne.

  I had to leave the flat at a quarter-past seven in the morning to cross London by bus, changing at Hyde Park Corner. It would have been quicker to do the journey by Underground from Sloane Square, but it was much more pleasant above ground. It was summer and riding on top of a London bus was fascinating. There were people and things about that were gone later in the day. The West End was a village. There were women with handkerchiefs over their heads, their legs bare and brown; collarless men in cloth caps whistled cheerfully between their teeth, their shirt-sleeves rolled up. The barrow boys, astonishingly neat and smooth-shaven, arranged their stalls lovingly, grading the fruit, turning blemishes from the light, snuggling over-ripe pears in purple tissue-paper; the flower-women shook the country dew from their skirts, dew that had fallen from the leaves and petals of their flowers; they called to each other across the road, and their voices were clear in the morning air. The sunshine was fresh, the pavements sparkled where later in the day they would steam hotly. A heatwave had come to London the way it sometimes does in mid-June. The days grew hotter and hotter. Indoors, during the afternoon, the heat became intolerable, and in The Havenne we opened all the windows and tried to ignore the smell of exhaust and hot rubber which rose from the traffic in the street below. I was glad I never had to travel during the afternoon. My hours on duty were from 8 a.m. to
6 p.m., with one day off in a week that included Sunday. After the long hours of midwifery I thought these were very good indeed.

  Beth walked with me up to the bus stop in King’s Road, then went in the opposite direction to Gregory’s. We wore our outdoor State Registered Nurses’ uniform for convenience and prayed we would never meet anyone we knew. If we had done so the chances were they would never have recognized us, so really it came to the same thing. The S.R.N. uniform, though respectable and respected, resembles nothing so much as a cross between a modern French schoolgirl and an old-fashioned British orphan. Singularly unattractive though it is, it has a staggering effect on the Great British Public. The G.B.P. is kind to dogs and nurses. Consequently we were allowed first on buses, no matter how full the bus or how long the queue. It may even be the air of expectancy produced by the little black bag. (Mine generally had shopping, knitting, and my smalls to wash in the nurses’ home during my lunch hour!)

  I was invariably offered a seat and sympathy. ‘The poor nurse! Up all night by the look of her!’

  As damning a testimony to one’s appearance as any I know, but worth it for the seat.

  At first I carried Boswell’s London Journal around to read on those bus rides when I got bored with the scenery. This was not much of an idea. At first I was too interested watching London, and later, when I was used to the view, the early mornings were the only times I could get to myself, and I had a lot of things to think over by then. Allan Kinnoch had taken to meeting me at The Havenne as soon as I was off duty in the evenings. I had, however, plenty of spare time for reading during my first week in The Havenne. I finished Boswell by the end of the fourth day. There was nothing else for me to do.

  The Floor Sister was away on holiday. My first morning on duty I reported to the Charge Nurse of the floor to which I had been sent by the Matron’s office. The Havenne only employed trained nurses, so every nurse in the place was a staff-nurse. The Charge Nurse who was acting Floor Sister looked up vaguely from the morning paper she was reading, said well she didn’t know what I could do she was sure, but perhaps Nurse Haddy would let me help her with her patient and I could run along now.