The Print Petticoat

by Lucilla Andrews

  He laughed and sat down beside me.

  ‘I must say mountaineering suits you, Joanna,’ he said. ‘We might turn loose all the other tubercles and see how they make out.’

  ‘Turn ’em loose on the other side of the hill,’ I said unsociably. ‘I like my solitude.’

  ‘Do you?’ asked Frankie, eternally clinically interested. ‘Why? You shouldn’t. Not after being in bed all this time.’ Then he said, out of the blue, ‘What’s happened between you and Marcus Ormorod?’

  I was surprised chiefly that Frankie should have linked Marcus and me seriously together. I wasn’t surprised at his knowing about Marcus, or even that we had had a row. Everyone in a hospital knows everyone else’s business. I was surprised that Frankie should consider Marcus as serious. I would have thought no one but Mary Dursley or Jill Grant could really be taken in by him. Frankie was a wise young man. That was why he was such a good doctor. An unpleasant thought pushed its way into my mind. Had I taken Marcus too lightly? Had he meant a little, a very little of what he said? Then I remembered Richard and Allan. I had had enough of eternal fidelity. As far as I could see it led straight to buying some other girl an engagement-ring.

  All the same, perhaps I had been wrong about him. His anger was honest enough.

  Frankie was an easy person to talk to. I told him what was worrying me. I left out Richard and Allan.

  ‘I don’t as a rule like interfering in other people’s affairs. Still, you are my patient, so maybe I’m justified ‒ it’s material to your recovery.’

  He was talking to himself. I let him chat it out. If Frankie the Big Doctor was going into my problems for me they would have a far better chance of solution than if I discussed them with my amiable contemporary Frankie Spence.

  ‘Are you in love with Marcus, Joanna?’ he said suddenly.

  I hesitated. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then why did you hesitate? Why do you only think you are not?’

  ‘To be honest,’ I said, ‘because I’ve never thought of Marcus in that connexion.’

  ‘Why not?’ he said sharply, ‘he’s all right. He’s a nice chap.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know. But ‒ does he mean what he says?’

  ‘I expect so,’ said Frankie slowly, ‘mad types like Marcus generally do. It’s the still waters that are supposed to run deep but are only still because there is nothing in them that comes out with the empty promises.’

  That’s true, I thought. That’s true.

  ‘I’ll tell you something, Joanna,’ he said, ‘maybe I shouldn’t, probably divulging a confidence, but I think I’ll tell you all the same.’

  ‘What?’ I was curious.

  ‘You haven’t seen Marcus Ormorod for quite a while, have you? You don’t know how he’s getting along? Even if he’s still up at Gregory’s?’

  I shook my head. ‘I haven’t seen him since the end of March.’

  ‘Well, he knows all about you,’ said Frankie almost gloomily.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Rings me up. About three or four times a week. Just says how are you? Are you up? Temperature staying down? Bugs? Usual things. At first I thought this was going a bit far. Said so.’ He smiled faintly. ‘So he asked me what bloody business it was of mine why he rang up. I said it was none of my bloody business why, but it was my bloody business what I said. Ormorod said he thought he’d probably come down and see me and we could chat of this and that.’

  Frankie stopped and looked as if he expected me to speak. I said nothing and he went on.

  ‘He came down on that motor-bike of his one night. A Tuesday, I think it was. He went and had a look at you ‒ said you were asleep. I wasn’t there. Anyway, he explained why he wanted to know how you were and why he didn’t want you to know. Told me about your row. That you were fed up and all that. He said that as you could hardly remove yourself from his unwelcome visits the least he could do was push off himself.’

  He lit a cigarette. I still had nothing to say.

  ‘He was very upset about that row. I told him I didn’t think you were, you hadn’t had a rise in temperature. I’ve never known a tubercle yet who did not shoot a temperature when genuinely upset, and I told him so. Didn’t do any good, Ormorod kept on with the point that if you wanted to see him you would have written. He said you had him on a string and you knew it. He said the funny thing was he didn’t mind who else knew it. He said love was a great thing and I ought to try it some time.’

  I smiled; I could hear Marcus as Frankie spoke. Then I grew serious again.

  ‘I didn’t know, Frankie,’ I said, ‘how could I? He was always fooling. If you hadn’t told me all this, I would never have believed it from anyone else.’ I turned to face him. ‘It is true? You aren’t just boosting my morale?’

  To my relief he did not pretend to be shocked. He answered my question. ‘It’s all right, Joanna!’ he said simply. Then, ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I’ll have to think.’

  ‘All right,’ he said cheerfully. He stood up and held out his hand. ‘Now I’ll walk down the hill with you.’

  I thought it over that night in bed. The more I thought, the less I knew what to do. If Marcus really was in love with me ‒ and Frankie seemed to think he was ‒ then how about it? How did I feel? I could not answer that one. I knew I had missed him dreadfully, that I still did. But love him?

  A couple of evenings later as I made my usual slightly breathless way up the winding path to the seat, I saw that there was someone there. I still had to concentrate when going uphill so I did nothing but curse unsociably and keep on climbing. When I reached the plateau the man on the seat stood up and I saw it was Marcus.

  We stood there and looked at each other. My heart always thumped after the climb. It was taking longer than usual to die down. Then suddenly I was in his arms and he was kissing my eyes, my lips, my hair, and I lost my breath altogether. It came back in a gasp of laughter as I realized his heart was making a worse noise than mine. I managed to get my head back. I looked up at his face.

  ‘Marcus,’ I said, ‘you’re a fraud. You’ve done no hill-climbing. You’re more breathless than I.’

  He smiled but said nothing. He picked me up in his arms and carried me to the stone seat. I had never seen any man look at me as he was doing now. I realized wildly and irrationally that I was very happy. I knew there were all kinds of problems: my health, whether I was really in love or just happy at being loved after all these years on my own. Above all I had an overwhelming sensation of security. Something I could never remember in my life before. I was thinking all this while Marcus sat, strangely silent for him, his arms tight around me.

  ‘Dearest. Dearest Joanna,’ he said quietly at last. ‘Dearest. Thank God I’ve got you. I’ll never let you go.’ He grinned. ‘Devil! Hell-hound! How dared you give me the air like that!’

  I sat back on his knee. ‘Like hell I sent you off! You told me not to dramatize myself; that you had stopped loving me; that it was all bloody funny!’

  ‘Bloody funny,’ said Marcus, and kissed me again.

  I began to get worried about my bugs and said so.

  ‘To hell with your bugs,’ said Marcus, and went on kissing me.

  ‘Look, darling,’ I said, ‘this isn’t a good thing, and it isn’t getting us anywhere.’

  ‘I don’t know where you want to get, Joa,’ he said, and his voice was slightly breathless. ‘Personally, I think it’s a very good thing, and I’m getting along fine.’

  After that, I let things slide. They slid pretty fast that night. Before I went to bed, we had got engaged, decided what kind of ring I was to have, fixed a date to see the Professor and ask how soon I could get married; agreed to have four children as soon as the Professor said it would be safe for me; and Marcus said he would bribe Beth and Allan to let us have the flat, and he would then write to Matthew and see if we could spin out the lease.

  ‘Marcus,’ I said
, ‘this is all going to cost money. Have you got any?’

  ‘Of course I have, darling. What the hell do you think I’m risking my life on a motor-bike for? I hoped I’d need some money for something like this, so that was why I sold the car.’

  ‘Marcus,’ I said, ‘I never knew you were so crafty.’

  ‘Machiavelli and I,’ he said, ‘are blood-brothers.’

  He had to get back to London that night. He only had the evening off.

  ‘But I’ll be down next week-end, my darling ‒ or murder dear brother-in-law John.’

  I walked with him to the hospital gates. On the way I went into Margaret Ward, told Sister Margaret I was engaged, and got her blessing so that I could be up late for one night.

  ‘I was so worried, Miss Anthony ‒ but I am so glad. Splendid,’ she beamed.

  In the lane outside the hospital, Marcus drew me into the side, put his hands gently on my shoulders and smiled down at me. His heavy light-brown hair fell forward over his face. I put up a hand and pushed it carefully back.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to do that,’ I said, ‘even when you were irritating me.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ve seen you looking at it, darling. I know you thought it bloody affected. But it just growed. I remember you looking at me that first morning at Elmhall. Your face is a pretty good give-away. And I remember looking at you and thinking, “that’s it.” Then I noticed Allan Kinnoch forming a queue and heard about Richard so I thought I would push off. Only I couldn’t make it.’

  ‘So here we are.’ I was too happy to mind being obvious. Then I remembered the thoughts I had had on the bench. My face must have changed.

  ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘what is it?’

  ‘Marcus, I’m worried. Suppose I don’t really love you.’ And I told him.

  He drew me down on the grass bank at the side of the lane.

  ‘Listen, darling,’ he said, ‘I’ve thought about that too.

  ‘You’ll have to take a chance on loving me. I know it’s the real thing with me, but with you ‒ it might be different. You’ve had a raw deal, being ill, that bastard Everley, one thing and another. It comes to this’ ‒ he held out a hand ‒ ‘I offer you everything I’ve got. Will you accept me, my darling? After all, Joa’ ‒ he grinned ‒ ‘I can cook!’

  I could not help it. ‘How about your wild oats?’ I kept my voice serious.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ said Marcus, ‘do they worry you?’

  He looked so genuinely concerned that I could not keep it up. I laughed. ‘Not at all!’ I said.

  ‘Honest to God,’ said Marcus, ‘you had me worried, Joa.’ I watched the evening sun glint on the chromium of his motor-cycle as he drove down the hill towards the by-pass. I caught glimpses of him as the sun flashed the machine silver as it sparkled across the countryside.

  In bed in my shelter I listened to the night sounds of the hospital. I heard the hiss of the theatre autoclave as the sterilizing was finished for another day. All the ward doors and French windows stood open. The faint green of the night-lights illuminated the swirling petticoats of the nurses’ dresses as they flitted amongst the beds. It was like a theatrical back-drop. Any moment now, I thought, the curtain will go up. I thought about my life and decided my own curtain was going up. Or dropping on my career as a nurse and patient.

  Then I gave up thinking complicated and high-powered thoughts and thought about Marcus and what fun it was all going to be. I fell asleep smiling. When I woke next morning the sun was on my face.

  One Night in London by Lucilla Andrews

  If you enjoyed The Print Petticoat, you will also want to read One Night in London by Lucilla Andrews. This moving and gripping novel recounts one night in a busy London teaching hospital during the Second World War, as bombs and rockets rain down on the city.

  Chapter One

  The Thames was the colour of blood that night. Venous blood, Nurse Carter registered absently, and emptied her bucket of wet sheets into the damp-laundry bin on the ward balcony. On the opposite embankment the uneven frieze of jagged black shadows and the great gaps that even in the blackout stood out like missing teeth, were splashed with pink, and the face Big Ben turned to the river had a rosy glow. The colour came from the arclights of the rescue squads digging for the people buried by a V2 rocket sometime that afternoon. The diggers had to work slowly. No one knew for sure exactly where all the bodies were or how many of the bodies were still alive.

  Nurse Carter glanced at the lights across the river, then turned her head and didn’t look back. She was now twenty-two and before she had been out of her teens she had learnt that she needed both physical and mental effort when she wanted to suspend thought and imagination. Earlier in the war she had only managed to practise this technique consciously, but as the war dragged on and particularly after the last two months, it had become one of her conditioned reflexes. It was two months to the night since she had been transferred from the sprawling conglomeration of Nissen huts sixty miles from London that was the evacuated home of her parent hospital, to work in what remained of St Martha’s Hospital, London. During that time, though fewer V1 flying bombs were reaching London, the V2 rocket attacks had started. Very occasionally she wondered what the V3s would be like, but never for more than a few seconds as that involved thinking of the future. By that night in October 1944 she had long learnt never to think of the future. Today was enough, unless one happened to be a night nurse, and if so, tonight.

  She had to go back into the ward, but paused before opening the heavily-battened balcony doors and gulped in the clean cold night air, like a swimmer about to dive under water. Once inside, with the doors quickly closed behind her, she wondered once again how Wally’s patients endured, slept, and more often than not survived in the ward air.

  Walter Walters Ward, named after a dead and otherwise forgotten Martha’s physician, had for the past century been ‘Wally’s’ to patients and staff, with two present exceptions. One was the Senior Night Sister, who objected to all abbreviations on principle; the other was Wally’s present night senior, Nurse Dean. Nurse Dean was a staff nurse who had won the gold medal for her year when her training ended and had nothing against abbreviations in general, providing they were nice.

  Wally’s had initially been a men’s medical ward, but during the blitzes and again since the flying bombs started, in common with every other ward in Martha’s, London, Wally’s admitted surgical and medical patients. Technically, medicals were on the left, surgicals on the right, unless, as now happened regularly, the surgical overflow swamped both sides and emergency beds were put up down the middle. In normal circumstances Wally’s had forty beds, eighteen in line up each side, two set facing down the ward on both sides of the balcony doors. There was room for ten emergency beds in single file down the middle, but none were up that night and only one of the twenty-nine occupied beds held a medical patient. The long wide ward had once had a window between every bed, but shortly after the first blitz in September 1940, every window in the still usable parts of the hospital had been bricked-in. And every night Wally’s smelt as if it hadn’t been aired since 1940. The hot, stuffy atmosphere reeked of sweat, warm bed mackintoshes, pus, ether, iodiform, carbolic, tobacco, anaesthetics, and, when Nurse Carter came in from the balcony, especially of the sickly-sweet aroma of fresh-spilled blood. Half-an-hour ago one of the senior medical students up from the country hospital that day to start his week in residence as a Casualty dresser ‒ a job that currently trebled with that of unskilled porter and general messenger boy ‒ had heard his first rocket. It had fallen a good way off on either Fulham or Acton, and the vacolitre of whole blood in his hands had fallen onto the ward floor.

  ‘Jolly lucky it’s Group O,’ said Nurse Dean in a brisk murmur. ‘Cut yourself, Mr ‒ sorry, don’t know your name. No? Jolly good. Press on regardless back to the In-Patients’ Path. Lab. for a replacement ‒ where’s Carter? Oh, there you are. Carter, get weaving on this mess. Any minute now the theatre’ll ring to s
ay the Major’s ready to come up.’

  Only a few of the heavily sedated patients had been woken. The bedsprings creaked as neighbour leant towards neighbour. ‘If you ask me, mate, that young student don’t want us to feel out in the cold, seeing Jerry’s giving our side the miss tonight.’

  ‘Fair’s fair. We’d our turn last night.’

  ‘Too true. Oh well. Best get me head down again.’

  A row of small red night lights cast crimson patches on the ward ceiling and the lights from the shaded bedhead lamps filtered through the open red screens round beds 11, 29 and 31, and dappled in soft crimson the beds on either side. Bert Harper, propped into a sitting position in 27, saw the raised head of his neighbour in 28 outlined against the dividing screen. Bert Harper clutched his large, bandaged abdomen with both hands before leaning to his left. ‘Give you a bit of a start, mate? You don’t need to worry. Just one of the students, clumsy-like.’

  George Mercer in 28 was a tall, red-faced man in his late thirties, with the bone structure, colouring, and, until he was wounded in North Africa, the physique of his distant Viking ancestors. Yesterday, the farmer for whom he had worked since he left school at thirteen, up to his call-up in the Territorials in 1939, and who had given him back his old job earlier this year, had given him the day off to come to London to meet one of the mates he had made in the prison camp. It had been a good day even if it hadn’t ended rightly. All he could now remember of last night was waiting on the platform for the last train back to Kent. It had been midday when he discovered he was back in a hospital bed with his chest, shoulders and extended left arm and hand covered with bandages, and a bedcradle over his body from the waist down. The black-haired doctor with the Scotch voice had said he’d been in luck. ‘Flattened your artificial foot, laddie, but your stump and good leg are fine.’

  George Mercer turned his head towards the big, grey-haired man on his right. ‘Reckon he was having hisself a smashing time,’ he announced in his slow Weald voice.