by Pam Weaver
It took a while to convince me but she was adamant. She had met the gentleman on the dance floor and enjoyed his company. He’d asked to take her home and told her he would meet her in the Rolls by the entrance. Nobody could have been more surprised than she when sure enough, there was a Rolls-Royce waiting by the kerb with the gentleman in question at the wheel. He had taken her for supper (a sure winner) and had asked to see her again.
‘My friends are never going to believe this,’ she told him.
‘Then come to my house on Sunday,’ he said, ‘and bring your friends too.’
When she gave us the invitation, that’s when we knew she was serious. The next Sunday, Letitia and another friend, Stella, and I set off for the New Forest and his house. It turned out to be three farm cottages, which had been knocked into one dwelling. The furnishings were plain but expensive. He had a cook housekeeper, who had prepared us a meal but we were disappointed when, instead of the lavish cuisine we had been dreaming of all week, she cooked shepherd’s pie, with lemon meringue pudding afterwards. It was nicely cooked but we had expected a lot more.
It turned out that Letitia’s friend had won the football pools some ten years ago. He’d used the money to buy a string of garages and then made another pile by selling them on. He was hardly love’s young dream. An East Ender, with a full-blown Cockney accent, he particularly enjoyed farting. Letitia was keen to foster a good relationship with him but she had a rival in the form of a local farm girl, who had already set her sights on him. After our day out, Letitia used her week’s holiday to be with him on the farm while they got in the harvest but her rival had already seduced him with her charms and she came back a disappointed woman.
It makes me shudder to think about it now but I used to hitchhike everywhere. I never felt in any real danger but of course I was taking one hell of a risk every time I did it. I met some interesting people, including the impresario who ran the aqua-swimming team in Bournemouth. They did two shows a day in a swimming pool built next to the pier and attracted holidaymakers and locals by the score. Mum and I had been to see the show several times and we loved it. The girls wore pretty bathing costumes and they’d swim in formation while coloured lights danced across the water. Think synchronised swimming in the Olympics and you have some idea how entertaining it was. There was a stage at each end of the pool and in between the shows, magicians and acrobats would perform variety acts. The impresario was keen for me to audition for the show but considering I couldn’t swim a stroke, I never went for it.
On one of my spells of night duty there was an ‘incident’. We were very short of nappies on the unit so at about two in the morning, Sister sent me to the labour ward to ask if they had some to spare. Sister Garfield, who was in charge, was in her office. I asked for some nappies and she told me to help myself from the labour ward cupboard. I was just on my way out when a bell sounded. Sister Garfield looked up and her face paled.
‘That’s the antenatal bathroom,’ she said. ‘Who is likely to be having a bath at this time of night?’
I shrugged. It was certainly very odd because the toilets were in another area entirely. It wasn’t as if someone could have made a mistake. Sister glanced at the pinboard. ‘There’s nobody down there,’ she frowned.
The antenatal beds were kept for patients who had to be on complete bed rest until their babies were born. Anyone else was upstairs with us.
‘Come with me,’ said Sister, taking her torch.
My heart was in my mouth as I followed her torch beam down the stairs and along the dimly-lit corridor towards the antenatal ward. The place was in darkness and the two two-bedroom units were empty, with their doors wide open. Yet further down the corridor there was a light on in the bathroom.
Sister Garfield flung the door open and cried out. There, standing in the bath, was a naked man! He had an unkempt beard and wild-looking grey hair. He was drying himself with the bath mat. Clearly, he’d come in for a bath (there was little security in those days) and he must have touched the emergency bell with his bottom as he stood up to dry himself. I’m not sure which one of the three of us was the most shocked. The fellow obviously meant no harm because he apologised and held the mat in front of him to cover his modesty.
‘You’d better get dressed again,’ said Sister tartly. ‘I’ve already rung for a porter to escort you off the premises.’
She made a sign to me behind her back and I raced back to her office to tell them to do just that. We couldn’t leave Sister on her own with him so Staff Nurse came back with me, but she was still outside the door and the man was in the bathroom, dressing himself. His clothes were most likely louse ridden and remembering poor Eddie and Richard, the brothers who had come to the nursery in the middle of the night, I couldn’t help wondering what was the point of having a bath if he had to put the same unwashed clothes back on again. The porter came and the man was escorted away.
‘Shut that bathroom door and put a notice on it,’ said Sister when he’d gone. ‘I don’t want any of our mums going in there until it’s been thoroughly cleaned.’
We were halfway back to the labour ward when the porter returned to check that we were all right. ‘I heard this was the antenatal ward,’ he chuckled, ‘but I didn’t think you went that far back!’
You would have thought that security would have been tightened up after that but we were far more trusting back then. The whole incident was treated as a ‘one-off’ and nothing more was said or done.
I never have liked night duty much but there were a few things which made up for having to do it. If we got down to the canteen before 12.30, the cook would do us fresh fried egg and chips. Believe me, they are much more delicious at that time of night than any other time. Outsiders would turn up in the canteen as well. Usually they were policemen, who were patrolling the quiet streets around the hospital. The girls in the accident department were always getting the beat policemen dropping in for a cup of tea. One night, one of the nurses had some cream cakes. It was her birthday and they were all looking forward to a slack time when they could enjoy them together. They had invited the policemen to join them but that particular night, their sergeant turned up too. He had had a report of some of his men hanging around and making a nuisance of themselves with the nurses. The cops managed to keep out of sight until he was on his way again and then they hurried out, but not before one of them was seen stuffing his cream cake under his helmet as he left. Funnily enough, although the hospital had an open door principle, we never felt vulnerable and I never heard of anyone being physically attacked by a member of the public. There was a kind of admiration and respect for doctors and nurses.
Mrs Wallace was looking forward to having her twins. It was her first pregnancy and she and her husband couldn’t wait. They’d bought two of everything and they’d gone for yellow and white so that it wouldn’t matter if they had two of the same sex. The labour was protracted but it went without a hitch. At 3 a.m. Mrs Wallace was delivered of a baby boy. He was small, but he had a lusty cry. About ten minutes later a little girl came along. Mrs Wallace was delighted. Her family was completed, all in one go. Her husband had elected to wait outside rather than going home to wait for a phone call so now that it was all over, she asked the nurse to call him in. His wife had another contraction as he walked in the door.
‘Oh,’ said the midwife, examining her again, ‘there’s another baby.’
There was a loud crash and Mr Wallace landed in a heap on the labour room floor. Nobody had time to worry about him and he wasn’t bleeding so they left him there while they dealt with a second little girl.
The Wallace triplets were a sensation in the premature baby ward. Everyone was thrilled to have them around and I for one couldn’t wait to have a turn at feeding them. They were sturdy babies and made it to their going-home weight without a problem. Their mum looked especially radiant in the pictures of the family which appeared in the local paper. The other nursery nurses and I crowded around to look and grinned.<
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‘It was such a shock,’ she’d told the reporter. ‘We thought we were only going to have twins.’
Her husband was nowhere to be seen. He had made himself scarce as soon as we knew the press photographer was on his way. He’d decided to stay in the background and who could blame him? He was still sporting such a large black eye!
Mavis McGowan had always wanted to get married but somehow it had never happened. She’d watched her friends become wives, mothers and grandmothers but now in her early forties, she was still single. Then she joined a dating agency and met a kind, gentle man about her age. He had devoted his whole life to his career but now that he too was in his mid-forties, he was lonely and wanted a wife. They had a cosy courtship and were married.
After a year of marriage, Mavis discovered she was pregnant. There couldn’t have been a happier couple in the county. Mavis enjoyed her pregnancy, showing off her bump in a way which scandalised some of their more strait-laced neighbours.
‘Disgusting,’ they said. ‘Flaunting herself like that! The woman should wear a proper smock.’
Back in the 1960s people didn’t even mention the ‘p’ word. When it was obvious a woman was having a baby, it was whispered that she was ‘in the family way’ or ‘expecting’ because that encroached less on people’s sensitivities. Pregnant women were almost non-existent in the media as well. They were not often shown on advertisements and if they were, they were with their husbands and their bump was concealed by a loose dress. The A-line dress was at the forefront of maternity fashion (such as it was) because it hung from the shoulders, flaring straight out to the hem. Because it completely ignored the waist and hips, the pregnant woman could conceal her condition.
Mavis’ pregnancy was flawless until the actual birth. There were complications and it was deemed necessary for her to have a caesarean birth. Her baby, a little girl, had what we now call Down’s Syndrome, though the term in the 1960s was much more abrupt and unsympathetic: ‘mongol’. When she was told, although Mavis was devastated, she handled it fairly well at first but then the baby had to be rushed to a specialist hospital because she had a severe heart condition. Her father went with her in the ambulance and Mavis was left to rest in her room, with the nursing staff keeping a close eye on her.
Normally after a woman has a caesarean birth, she is reluctant to move. Just to make small movements, such as shifting up the bed, means she will probably need something or someone to hold onto. Also, it will hurt to cough or laugh – after all, a caesarean is major surgery. But during that night, Mrs McGowan found the strength of ten men. She began by getting out of bed and ringing for the police on what she didn’t realise was an internal telephone. When a midwife came to see what was happening, she verbally abused her. I was in the premature baby unit and the sound of her voice carried to where we were looking after the babies. Our Sister from the unit went to see what was going on. The next minute, someone came rushing in to tell us to get the duty doctor.
All the babies were fed so after I’d rung for the doctor, I went outside into the corridor, where the shouting had reached an alarming level. Mavis McGowan was still in the corridor, fighting the staff who was trying to get her back into her room and into bed. Sister was knocked out cold on the floor – Mavis had thumped her so hard she’d banged her head on the wall. Another nurse was attending to her. Somehow or other they got Mavis back into her room but by now a great many of the other mums were gathering in the corridor and becoming very upset by what was going on. I took it upon myself to reassure them and send them back to their beds.
The doctor came to sedate Mavis but she was determined not to go to sleep without a fight.
‘You’ll all burn in hell for what you did to my baby!’ she was screaming.
Staff tried to reassure her that everything possible was being done for her child but in her confusion, she seemed to think that the baby’s condition was their fault. ‘Call yourself a doctor? Look at you! There are five of you around this bed and you still can’t hold me down.’
When Sister recovered, she rang for Mavis’s husband and by the time he came, Mavis was back in her room but still agitated and upset.
‘I can’t give her any more,’ the doctor said. ‘She’s had enough to knock out a horse.’
The drugs seemed to have little effect but the effect her husband had on her was electric.
‘Now, now, my dear,’ he said soothingly as he walked through the door. ‘What’s going on here?’
She quietened down immediately and sobbed in his arms. Everyone was shell-shocked by the whole thing. Fortunately, Sister made a full recovery, as did one of the doctors who had been kicked in the chest. Of course in the morning they arranged for psychiatric help for Mavis and several months later we heard that she had made a good recovery. Despite the way she had treated the people who were caring for her, we were all desperately sad for Mavis and her husband when their baby daughter died. It is a well-known fact that older mothers are at greater risk of having a Down’s Syndrome baby but perhaps this was never fully explained to Mavis during her antenatal visits. These clinics weren’t as informative as they are today and the midwives could do little more than check the baby’s and the mother’s health. It would take a further revolution in healthcare to bring them up to today’s standard, where dads are included in the process as well!
Christmas on the wards was wonderful. We spent our off duty in the days running up to Christmas painting Disney characters all over the glass in the baby unit. As in the nurseries, with a picture to copy we had everybody from Cinderella to Bambi smiling down at the babies. Someone got the decorations out and although they were a little tired, they brightened the place up no end.
On Christmas Eve the nurses came through the wards singing carols. They had their red and black cloaks on and they carried torches and a lantern or two. Each little baby was given a special present, only a tin of talcum powder, but we put a little tinsel around it and the mums were so thrilled you would think it was the best Christmas present ever. On Christmas Day the Salvation Army band came onto the ward and played. Just for a lark, one of the nurses peeled a lemon as they blew into their instruments and the poor men left puddles of saliva behind on the floor. She thought it was hugely funny until Sister told her she should be the one to get the mop and bucket!
An empty room was set aside for the staff. When we took our meal breaks instead of going down to the canteen, we could go into this room and enjoy plenty of Christmas fare. There were nuts, crisps, sandwiches and cakes, even wine and beer although everyone was very cautious about how much we had!
Babies don’t know it’s Christmas and so we had several Christmas Day births. The first baby to be born was put into a special crib, which was covered in white lace and had a blue ribbon tied at the top. If the Christmas Day baby had been a girl, Sister would have tied a pink ribbon there. Once, the local press turned up to photograph the baby for the next issue and everything seemed very cosy. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the pressman had gone home when visiting time started. That’s when the lady’s husband and her boyfriend had a bundle in the corridor over the baby! It seems both of them thought he was the father.
I made friends with some great people and I was having the best time. Letitia and I were as different as chalk and cheese but we got on really well together. Most of the time, we went dancing. Letitia was always smartly dressed and she attracted men. She had a failed marriage behind her but she was a fun-loving girl. She met a sailor and after they’d had a bit of a fling, she was pregnant. When she was born, her little girl was beautiful.
Jemima was a laugh a minute. Ours was the sort of friendship that if we hadn’t seen each other for ages we could pick up where we left off. I liked that. She was an attractive girl with thick wavy hair and a strong West Country accent, which she would emphasise whenever she wanted to make people laugh. We used to go on camping holidays along with Stella, the girl who had come with Letitia and me to meet the footba
ll pools’ winner. Stella, who had a car, was well-groomed with a short, tidy hairstyle. She was business-like in her work and she smoked. She spoke slowly and deliberately and her witty understatements often had us in stitches. We were never really cut out for the outdoor life because the first time we went, we arrived at the campsite as it was getting dark and pitched the tent. When we woke up in the morning we discovered we’d pitched facing a drainage ditch and not only that but we’d somehow ended up with a bit of pole which didn’t seem to go anywhere. In the daylight we could see that it was part of the upright pole and our tent was three foot at the front and six foot at the back! Stella’s deadpan statement, ‘I don’t think we got that quite right …’ only added to the hilarity. Nobody could be bothered to alter it, so it stayed that way. We also gave the people on the campsite a bit of a laugh when we emerged to go out for the day. Everyone else was in slacks and tee-shirts. We came out in our glad rags, complete with high-heeled shoes and handbags, and then we had to push the car because it had got stuck in a rut.
On another occasion, Jem and I decided to go for a picnic in the New Forest. We met in Ringwood and went to a cake shop for more supplies. The queue was long and we were talking so Jem was a bit distracted as it came up for our turn.
‘Two Bum Rabas,’ she said. The assistant hesitated.
Jem was irritated. ‘Two Bum Rabas,’ she repeated.
‘I think you mean Rum Babas,’ I suggested, and we had the whole shop laughing.
When we arrived at our chosen picnic site, we got the food out.
‘Oh, that was a quarter of ham,’ said Jem, pulling two greasy-looking pieces of paper apart, ‘but I was feeling rather peckish last night.’ A bit later on she said, ‘Ah, now I did have two pork pies, but I got up too late for breakfast.’ Luckily there was more than enough in my bag to make up for her depleted supplies.
Another time we were in a pub. ‘A Drambuie and lemonade,’ said Jem.
The barman wrinkled his nose. ‘A Drambuie and lemonade?’
