The Print Petticoat

by Lucilla Andrews

  In the fast-shut nurses’ sitting-room, over one of our inevitable cups of tea, Nurse Haddy showed an admirable absence of malice, and merely said she hoped I would be satisfied now I had her work to do.

  Nurse Shanahan said Honest to God she did not know how I got away with it, not at all, she didn’t! I told her I had asked Uncle Tom ‒ only I called him by his proper title ‒ to put in a word for me.

  I left them wondering if this was true or not, and Nurse Shanahan saying ‘not at all’.

  A day or two later the Polish Jew I had inherited, still my only patient, left The Havenne. Patients were never discharged by Beth’s Uncle Tom. It was all a very social occasion with a great many handshakes, tips, and mutual congratulations. When Mr Kosmalski and I shook hands for the final farewell, his palm felt cold. When he let go, I looked down to find three pound notes in my hand. He was rather cross when I returned them to him.

  ‘But my dear young lady ‒ why else are you here if you will not accept these little gifts? I assure you, in these circumstances one expects to give. Do you then prefer to exist on your salary? The nurse last year ‒ she made no such objection.’

  He had been in the nursing-home the previous year with the stomach-ache.

  Foolishly I tried to explain. I was paid for what I did, and for what I did I was paid.

  He listened politely, then burst another of my little bubbles.

  ‘If I had given you a big box of chocolates ‒ or some nylons ‒ you would accept that ‒ yes? Where is the difference? The money is offered with respect. And beyond doubt you would buy candies or nylons.’

  I said ruefully that he was probably quite right, all the same I would rather not accept money, thank you very much. Mr Kosmalski took back his three pounds, thanked me again in his strange Franco-American accent, and I got off my somewhat rickety mental soap-box. For the rest of the day the whole business niggled in my mind.

  On the way home that night I told Allan about Mr Kosmalski and his tip.

  ‘The sooner you are out of that place, Joanna, the better,’ he said. ‘All the same, I wish some of my gynae-ladies would slip me a couple of quid every now and then. What with the rising cost of living and the promise of back-pay which we never get, I could afford to take you out to dinner properly more than once a week if tips were fashionable at Gregory’s.’

  The next Saturday was my first decent off-duty. The Charge Nurse had previously given me Tuesday, an unpleasant day to have, only slightly better than Monday, the bottom. Beth, who had the week-end off from Gregory’s, had gone up to Leicester to visit her parents, and I had the flat to myself. I woke early. It was a lovely morning, and there were gulls flying in the sunlight outside my window. The wind from the river blew a wisp of smoke over the skyline. I watched it lazily as I lay luxuriating in the prospect of not having to get up. I thought smugly of the usual mad rush down Water Street to the bus stop outside the Palace, the bus where the standing passengers stood as heavily on my feet as my gulped breakfast sat in my stomach. Then I remembered Richard. I took a grip. I concentrated on coffee for breakfast, on the rolls waiting to be put in the oven; a breakfast in bed and cigarettes at leisure; on the whole wonderful empty day ahead to be spent as I pleased ‒ if only I would not think of Richard.

  I got up, went into the kitchen, and made some coffee. I had a bath whilst the percolator got working, and was back in my bedroom brushing out my hair when someone knocked on the front door. The bell had broken a few days back. The knocks became frantic. I told myself to remember to put up a notice about the bell and shouted that I would be along in a minute. I stopped to get some change out of my bag; it was almost certainly the milkman wanting to be paid.

  It was not the milkman. It was Marcus Ormorod and another man. We all stared with equal astonishment for a moment, then I said, ‘Good morning, Mr Ormorod. Were you wanting something?’

  He went on staring, his mouth open. When he shut it the snap was almost audible. ‘Good God! Nurse Anthony! I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you for a minute, with your hair down’ ‒ he hesitated, looked beyond me down the corridor, half turned to the man beside him, and said slowly, ‘I’m sorry ‒ but are any of the chaps in?’

  I was slow. I had still not had any breakfast. ‘What chaps?’ I asked, then realized that he could not have known we had taken over the flat from the boys. It had all been arranged long after he left Elmhall. Gregory’s is a big place; as you move round in a hospital that size you lose complete touch of everything and everyone but your immediate colleagues. I also realized Beth and I had much maligned him over the affair of Jill Grant.

  ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Come in, both of you, and have some coffee. The boys have gone.’

  I explained about the change-over as I led the way to the living-room.

  The other man was a cousin of Marcus. He was in the Navy. His name was Jeremy Ormorod and he was on leave. He was smaller, finer than Marcus, but in many ways they seemed as alike as brothers. Then I remembered that Marcus had been in the Navy during the War and that was probably what it was that gave them so much in common. It is an atmosphere the British Navy carries with it. A very smooth atmosphere with an accent on good manners.

  Marcus bent down and picked up Bolivar, who had followed me in with the coffee.

  ‘Bolivar! Fat ‒ and is it possible ‒ de-bugged? How did you do it?’

  I caught his eye as I said that a girl called Jill Grant had given us some D.D.T.

  ‘I think you knew her?’

  His eyes danced. ‘Jill Grant. So help me. Is nothing sacred?’

  ‘She brought the D.D.T. in bomb form,’ was all I said.

  Jeremy Ormorod said he knew the thing, absolutely. He had seen them used when he was Acting Liaison-Officer in the U.S.S. Benjamin G. Warre during the War.

  ‘Not that the Yanks had any fleas. Fearfully hygienic. Absolutely. We let the things off for fun. Great stuff!’

  Marcus explained why they had come round.

  ‘We came early to catch the chaps before they disappeared to the cricket fields for the day. Jeremy wanted a cheap weekend. I thought they’d probably fix him up in the gallery or the bathroom.’

  They only stayed a short time. Marcus was due back at Gregory’s for the R.M.O.’s teaching round, which was booked to start at a quarter-past nine that morning. Jeremy said he would go back in the car with him.

  ‘May as well use my wealthy cousin ‒ saves taxi fares. Also I’ll leave my suitcase at your hospital. It’s a nice accessible spot, and I’ll pick it up later in the day when I’ve cadged a cheap bed somewhere.’

  Marcus said was he broke as all that.

  Jeremy said no but he meant to spend what money he had on pleasure. Absolutely.

  ‘I’m sorry to have burst in on your day off,’ said Marcus. ‘All the same I’m glad we did. Now I know where to find you.’

  ‘Didn’t Allan tell you?’ I asked without thinking.

  ‘Nurse Anthony,’ smiled Marcus, ‘‒ or may I be a devil and call you Joanna? My impertinence knows no bounds. As I was saying, dear Nurse Anthony ‒ you need not trail your scalps at me. Do I not know that the gynaecological house physician eats out of your hand? That you are the toast of the senior surgical registrar? Do you honestly think I, a lowly student man, would have access to your address?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know that you need it,’ I said seriously. ‘After all, you can’t have much room left in your little blue book.’

  Marcus grinned. ‘My dear girl ‒ I have a prodigious memory. I don’t need a book.’

  He had a very deep voice. I heard him rumbling cheerfully to his cousin all the way down the five flights of stairs.

  Allan took me to a movie that night. The film was a mistake. It was one I had seen years ago with Richard. With Richard before he started passing high-powered examinations and became inaccessible. After the movie we went out to dinner, and whilst we dined the orchestra played a medley from Oklahoma! I had seen that also with Richard. 1947 had been
one of my red-letter years. I could not get away from Richard that evening. Memory swamped my mind, and I gave up. I don’t know how much later it was that I noticed the wretchedness in Allan’s eyes. He said nothing. He knew quite well where I had been and that there he could never follow me.

  I smiled in an effort to break the emotion that was there at the dinner-table between us.

  ‘The food and music have sent me into a coma!’ I said. He still said nothing. He did not return my smile. He shook his head slightly. I left off pretending, and we sat miserably over our coffee.

  ‘I’m sorry, Allan,’ I said at last. ‘I’m sorry. Truly. I’ll have to give up using you as a stand-in. It isn’t fair. It hurts you too much.’

  It was probably the first time Allan had admitted to himself that I really loved Richard.

  ‘Are you always seeing ghosts, Joanna?’

  ‘Nearly always.’ This was Truth’s Night Out, and small talk had gone out of the window.

  ‘What went wrong?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Me, I suppose,’ I said. ‘After a strong start he changed his mind. Or I didn’t come up to scratch. Whatever it was, he doesn’t love me any more.’

  Allan’s patent disbelief was soothing to my pride. But it could not touch my heart.

  ‘And you still love him, Joa?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And I love you.’

  I nodded again. ‘Yes,’ I said at last. ‘You do.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Allan. ‘To use your favourite expression, Joa ‒ well, well, indeed.’

  We smoked in silence for a while. But it was friendly silence now. Softer. Not hard and strained as before.

  ‘I expect,’ he said, ‘that’s what gives you your air of detachment. I always feel that if I don’t make a tremendous impression you won’t notice I’m there at all. You are always somewhere else mentally. With Richard.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Speaking academically,’ said Allan thoughtfully. ‘I wonder why he doesn’t want to marry you. You’d make a good doctor’s wife. You know the form. And if you’ll excuse the pun ‒ you certainly have it.’

  ‘I’m all right for a G.P.,’ I said bitterly, ‘but looks aren’t much help for the climb up the ladder to Harley Street. I’ve no money and no influence. Not even a second cousin once removed on the staff.’

  The band was playing The Surrey with the Fringe on Top. Allan smiled faintly. ‘I do take your point.’ He nodded unconsciously to the music as he thought things over. He fingered the ash-tray, then sat, very straight and still, his almost classic face non-committal, his eyes carefully watching me, testing his words.

  ‘Maybe things’ll work out. I’m all set for General Practice eventually, I don’t doubt. Let’s just leave it there. As to your using me as a stand-in, I’ve no objection to standing-in. I’ve no objection to anything at all, provided I’m with you.’ He smiled properly, and his smile was extraordinarily sweet. ‘I have long since realized I’ve got all my eggs in one basket. If one of these days you find you are going to drop the wretched basket, my darling ‒ well, I won’t like it, but I’ll stand the shock. I don’t doubt that either.

  ‘It isn’t your fault. It isn’t mine. It probably isn’t even Richard Everley’s. But at the risk of being hackneyed, Joa,’ he went on, his voice low, almost a whisper, ‘I do love you very much. Oh, very much,’ he repeated. ‘And I want you badly!’

  The next day I found a Sultan occupying my suite in The Havenne. He was a pale chocolate-coloured Sultan, with curly grey hair, three coal-black male attendants, a bodyguard which was composed of four pseudo-American thugs who spoke the purest Cockney, and a beautiful cream-coloured Sultana.

  I had nothing whatsoever to do for him in the way of nursing since he was not at all ill. His menservants did all the bed-making and meal-carrying that would normally have been my job. The Sultan, who always talked in French, explained that every now and then he liked to take ‘the cure’.

  ‘To rest the nerves, mademoiselle.’ Fortunately, my own French is fairly good as I spent two years in a French convent in Italy. My Italian, which the nuns forbade us to speak, is incidentally much better.

  Miss Hannay met me on the Floor corridor. ‘Thou’ll be able t’natter with t’lad, Nurse Anthony.’

  I had never met a Sultan before. I found His Highness of Bouldahapore delightfully mannered, easy-going, and a lot of fun. Whenever he wanted anything done, he clapped his hands and motioned to his three boys, and they got busy, whilst I stood decorative, but useless, beside his bed. At first his attendants were inclined to be suspicious of me and insisted on tasting the orange-juice or milk that I brought as His Highness’s extra fluids before the Sultan risked his life. Since no one-dropped dead we all became great friends.

  It is the custom when nursing private patients anywhere to write a detailed daily individual report on each patient. At The Havenne each patient’s book was conventionally kept on a special table outside every room, or, as the case was, every suite. The Sultan of Bouldahapore and his retinue thought highly of these reports. So highly that each time I went out of the suite, I was stopped by a breathless little black man who offered me the report book, an open fountain-pen, and the request, ‘Please, miss, to write!’ Obediently, I wrote that His Highness had drunk his hot milk; had sat in an armchair for ten minutes while having his bed made; had been shaved; had not been shaved; or whatever else had or had not occurred during the past half-hour. I wrote in that report book at least a dozen times a day.

  Sister caught me at it on various occasions. ‘Writing ruddy book, eh, lass? Makes a change from Gregory’s!’

  I said it did, and smiled. I didn’t want to sound too grim. I liked Miss Hannay, and was enjoying my Sultan.

  Most of all I enjoyed the bodyguard, two of whom were always on duty, night and day. They sat correctly, their chairs placed carefully on either side of the entrance to the suite. The bodyguard must have had four faces and eight arms and legs, but they appeared to be identical quadruplets. I saw them every day, and I could never tell one from another. They wore suits in bright colours. The backs of their jackets had cunning little pleats and belts. They invariably wore their hats indoors.

  As one of a generation raised on the American crime movies ‒ I even saw Paul Muni in Scarface during my early childhood ‒ I felt quite at home. Their hats never bothered me, in fact I would have been upset and lost confidence in them had they removed them.

  They were a very polite bodyguard. They always moved their legs and pushed back their hat-brims when I passed, and said ‘Morning, Sister!’

  These gentlemanly gestures they omitted when the real Sister or even the Matron herself appeared. One day in curiosity I asked why.

  ‘Gregory’s ‒ course!’ they explained. ‘Now that there ’orspital. S’olright. See!’

  After the episode concerning Mr Kosmalski, my friends were anxious to hear just what the Sultan offered on his discharge. Beth, crude as all nurses, suggested a place in his harem; Allan was determined on jewelled roc’s eggs; Marcus, who had taken to dropping round to the flat in the evenings, said all I would get was a signed photograph of His Highness.

  ‘I heard about him when I was in India during the War ‒ the chap’s notoriously tight-fisted,’ he said. They were all wrong. My Sultan wrote me a charming letter in which I was his dear mademoiselle; he begged me to accept with his gratitude the enclosed gift. The gift was three pairs of plum-coloured satin double-bed sheets.

  Chapter Nine

  Nurses Are Always Young

  The end of my first month in the private nursing-home world came, and I went down to the Matron’s office and formally handed in my notice. The Matron was very civil, so civil that I felt sorry to have disturbed her, and nearly took back my notice. Then I remembered that I had not done a single stroke of nursing since I had been in her establishment. There seemed little likelihood of my doing any if I remained. I am a nurse who likes her patients ill. It’s a form of self-ind
ulgence, I know, but I enjoy fussing over my pneumonias and cardiacs. So I did not change tactics.

  The Matron kindly gave me a week to think things over. ‘But if you are determined to go, Nurse Anthony, then you may finish at the end of the month.’

  On the way back to the Floor I was joined by Miss Hannay in the lift. She swept out when we arrived on the Floor, along the corridor, pushed me firmly into the duty room, and shut the door behind us. I could hardly wait for her to produce the gin. Instead she offered me a cup of tea.

  ‘Sit down, lass,’ she said kindly. ‘Sit down and listen. Tha’ll have t’watch out for tha’self. There’s nobbut else’ll do it for thee. Tha’ wants to get on. And not here. Only be reet careful tha’ knows what’s what! I’d say tha’s a bit airy-fairy. Daft as a brush! Dreamy-like! So take thy time, lass. Don’t rush off into a new job till tha’s thought what’s doing. And don’t let tha’ principles grow too big for thy boots! Now. Drink that tea.’

  When Sister was concerned, her speech grew so broad that I had difficulty in following her until I had thought over what she had said. Her genuine concern was obvious, and I was grateful.

  I seemed to be mentally and physically uncertain these days where I was going and why. I was glad to have a little calm common sense pumped into me.

  I went down to lunch, full of tea and gloomy foreboding. I queued dispassionately for the fish pie, which looked even less attractive close to than from the back of the queue. There was a new Sister in charge of the dining-room. As she handed me my plate I noticed she wore a Gregory’s badge. We smiled at each other.

  ‘It isn’t as bad as it looks, Nurse,’ she whispered as I was about to pass on. ‘The fish is quite tasty. How long have you been here?’ she added, as she refilled the jug of white sauce.

  She joined me in the nurses’ communal sitting-room as we sat drinking our after-lunch cup of tea. She was considerably older than I ‒ twenty-four years, in fact ‒ so there were naturally few names at Gregory’s that meant anything to both of us, excluding that of the present Matron of the hospital, who had been in her own set. We had a pleasant time libellously discussing our colleagues on the nursing staff of The Havenne. We said the girls all had hearts of gold. We shuddered in delightful concord over their nursing and agreed that only St Gregory’s Hospital, London, could produce nurses that were nurses.