No Time For Romance

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘First I ring for the nearest G.P. Then I ring the factory to say I’m sorry I won’t be in first-aid that night.’

  There was a silence. I thought the job lost.

  ‘Fair enough. Now …’ Showing me out later, ‘Think you’d had it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. I’ve done this job long enough to know good liars and bad mothers make equally lousy employees.’

  The first-aid department of the pie-factory was on the ground floor at the back of the packing hall. The department consisted of a small outer office, a large surgical dressing-room equipped as a first-class Casualty Department, and two tiny clinical rooms fitted with examination couches. The only entrance was from the packing hall into the office, and throughout were concealed emergency bells. On my first night the night manager showed me each bell. ‘Not that I’m expecting you’ll have any trouble, Sister. We’ve got a very decent type of man on our regular night shift – roughly hundred-and-fifty regulars – but we do have to take on casuals as unskilled workers on the belts. I expect you saw some lads waiting outside the gates to be taken on for the night on your way in.’

  ‘Yes. I wondered why they were there.’

  ‘A night’s pay comes in handy for more than a few round these parts, Sister. What with prices the way they are, this austerity, not all that many jobs going. Bread rationing too – I dunno. Managed without that in the war, but now we’ve got it along with all the other rationed foods. When’s it going to end, eh? As I was saying – these bells. Better safe than sorry. You are the only woman in the factory at night, on your own here and – well – you’ll not mind my saying, not very old, are you? Just remember, first hint of trouble, or if you’re only a mite anxious, you touch one of these bells. All ring in my office and all the night foreman’s offices and we’ll all be down, pronto!’

  That night, between nine and midnight, every few minutes the door from the packing hall was pushed open by some man scattering a fine haze of flour whilst gingerly rubbing stomach, forehead, back, or demonstrating the cough that had kept him awake all day. ‘Just a drop of peppermint water … just a couple of APCs … just a drop of linctus, please, Sister. Ta.’

  At midnight my night meal was sent down from the canteen. I ate in the outer office, never in the canteen, an all-male preserve at night. About twenty minutes after the canteen worker removed my tray, the night manager raced in and held open the door. ‘Nasty accident down the butchers’ shop coming in now, Sister. Lad cut his own leg accidentally.’

  The injured butcher was carried in by three of his colleagues with his foreman as escort. All five were soaked in bright arterial blood as the injured man had inadvertently stabbed his right femoral artery. The little I had to do before sending the man to hospital took very few minutes. The factory had an arrangement with the nearest general hospital that allowed the night-shift Sister to send in patients without first calling a doctor. In half an hour an ambulance had removed the injured man and he was in hospital. When I had cleaned the bloodstains from the couch, floor and myself, the night manager and foreman butcher returned with the official forms the three of us had to fill in immediately in each other’s presence.

  The night manager explained the procedure. ‘I’ve got to ask this question, Sister. You are sure he was wearing his proper protective leather apron?’

  ‘Quite sure, Mr X. I took it off him and handed it to the foreman.’

  ‘That’s right, Mr X. That’s what the Sister did. Not that I’d let one of my lads pick up a knife in my shop without his protective…’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t, Mr Y, but I have to ask this.’

  Mr Y, the foreman Master Butcher in his shop of all qualified butchers, was the exception in build. All the other butchers were gigantic men. Mr Y was a neat little man with the face of a weary poet. Now a distraught poet. ‘You got to get used to lads nicking themselves a bit in the butchering trade, Sister, but I never had anything like this in any shop of mine before. Gone in deep, had he?’

  ‘Quite, but cleanly. He hadn’t severed the artery. Just opened it. He told me his knife missed the protective apron, went in just below and he was using too much strength to stop in time.’

  Both men made notes. Mr Y said some of his young lads didn’t know their own strength and when a young lad stood six foot two and weighed fourteen stone he’d got some strength, he had. ‘Not but what you got to use your strength when rinding pork as he was, Sister.’ He demonstrated with movements graceful as a ballet dancer’s. ‘You take a hold, and you bring your knife up then you bring it sweeping down like, towards you. Not but what the lads don’t get enough practice. Cut up six thousand pounds of pork of an average night we do. How do you reckon he’ll do?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor, Mr Y, but I’d say, very well. I think they’ll stitch him in the theatre tonight under an anaesthetic and doubt he’ll be warded more than a few days or off work more than two or three weeks. He looked a very healthy young man and from his colour, pulse and blood-pressure, he hadn’t lost much blood.’ (This forecast proved correct.)

  The men exchanged nods and glances. The manager asked, ‘Do much nursing in the war, Sister?’ At my answer he smiled faintly, ‘No wonder it didn’t give you a turn to see a bit of blood spilled.’

  At six that morning he returned alone. ‘Never got round to asking – meal suit you? Coffee hot? Good.’ He glanced through the log book in which were entered the names, occupations, ailments, treatments and times given of every man I had attended in the night. ‘Forty to midnight. Kept you busy.’

  ‘Is that a typical number, Mr X?’

  ‘Varies.’ He pushed his glasses to the top of his head and smiled more to himself than to me. ‘Numbers’ll depend on the weather, how near it is to pay night, Thursdays – always less on pay night – and well, when we’ve got a new young Sister down here, human nature isn’t it to want a look-see. No trouble, I take it?’

  ‘None, thank you.’

  Neither then nor ever during my time in that factory. (My only regret here was that it prevented my seeing the night manager and all the night foremen descending on first-aid, pronto.) Beneath the butchers’ blue coats, trousers, striped aprons, ‘protectives’ and straw boaters; the cooks’ dapper white jerkins, cravats, white trousers and chefs or baseball caps; the maintenance staff’s boiler-suits; the long-distance van drivers’ old service greatcoats, thick scarves, cloth caps; the casuals’ dungarees and flapping floury aprons, were men identical with those I had nursed from N.D.K. in 1940 to Casualty in 1945. A very few were ill and needed to be referred to the firm’s medical officer; even fewer were malingerers. The vast majority had genuine minor ailments or injuries and wasted neither the firm’s, their own, nor my time. Within minutes of swallowing anti-acid mixture, linctus, the peppermint water particularly beloved by the pastry cooks, the APCs beloved by all, or having their nicks dressed, splinters removed, sprains soothed, black eyes camouflaged, all rushed back to their floors leaving me rushing round removing flour with a damp duster.

  Every night factory life reminded me more of hospital life. There was the same hierarchical ladder with the same clearly defined rungs and tribal customs. On the top rung were the butchers (consultants) who fraternized only with each other, and talked to the night manager (Matron) and myself (Night Sister in both). The pastry cooks (senior residents) laughed heartily at the butchers’ jokes, fraternized cheerfully amongst themselves and with dignity, with the meat cooks (registrars and housemen), and all chatted to the night manager and myself. The maintenance men (medical administrators) kept themselves to themselves. The van drivers (post graduates) were the most individualistic group and ready to exchange yawns with all but the casuals. The casuals (medical students) appeared universally regarded as silent audiences to be endured but neither approved nor encouraged. ‘If you ask me, Sister, casuals aren’t what they were … can’t be bothered to learn a trade I reckon … now, when I was an apprentice …’

  One of the butcher
s’ customs gave me a peculiar pleasure. For some reason I never risked querying for fear of committing a solecism, when moving around the factory to and from work or canteen, they walked in single file headed by their foreman with his towering, young chargehand immediately behind. When the file and myself passed each other, invariably first the foreman raised his straw hat ‘’Evening, Sister!’ and one by one the file echoed action and words.

  The factory was in a reputedly tough area of London that was as bomb-damaged as Lambeth. In 1950, with the country struggling through the years of post-war austerity, much of London was still burn-out, jagged, roofless and filthy. Every night after leaving my nearest bus stop I had a ten-minute walk down side streets and alleys and passed little groups of men standing aimlessly at corners, in door-ways, against alley walls. I walked alone and as safely as in Lambeth in the blackout. Most nights, particularly on Thursdays, larger groups of men waited outside the closed main gates of the van-lined factory yard in the hope of casual work. The nightly number of casuals taken on depended on the number of orders for the following day, and on Thursdays, for Fridays and Saturdays. When the manager’s appearance at the gates coincided with my arrival I rushed in as I dreaded seeing the disappointment in the faces lined and prematurely aged by pre-war poverty, when the younger and stronger were picked out. ‘You, you, you, you, you … that’s all for tonight lads. Sorry. No more wanted. No use hanging about.’ It was the first time I had seen the sad, ugly sight of men standing waiting for work. It gave me a new, very-belated insight into the term ‘unemployed’. I never asked any of the men in the factory their pay but several casuals volunteered the information that they could earn 27s. 6d. for a full night.

  Summer arrived early with a heat-wave and into first-aid arrived double the usual number of casuals. The majority were young Irishmen newly over from Ulster or Eire who had spent their days sleeping in the London parks. I used pints of calamine lotion on their shoulders, backs, foreheads and noses.

  ‘How long were you asleep in the sun today?’

  ‘It’s no idea I have of that at all, Sister, but there was I waking to the terrible stiffness and the great burning.’

  ‘Haven’t you lodgings? Even a bed somewhere?’

  ‘Sister, now this’ll be the way of it – and haven’t the three of us the one bed and isn’t it the grand scheme with Mickeen and myself working nights and Paddy the days and himself having the bed the morn and myself the noon – but what does himself do but get himself a woman? And it’s a grand woman she is, says himself, and she’s not the woman at all to be – she’s not the woman at all to be—’

  ‘She needs the bed?’

  ‘Sure to God, Sister, and isn’t that a fact? So it’s out to the park you’ll be going, says himself, and it’s out to the park I’m going and thanking the Blessed Saints for putting in a fine word for myself with the sun shining and the grand smell of the warm grass – and then waking to the terrible stiffness and the great burning – and isn’t it a grand cooling you’re giving my backside, Sister, and it’s a grand woman you are yourself and may the Holy Angels bless you …’

  In the heat-wave early morning, London, from the top of a bus, turned into a country village. There were women with spotted handkerchiefs over their heads, legs bare and brown, sturdy arms folded, chatting to each other from open doorways; newspaper sellers in collarless shirts with sleeve high, caps over eyes, whistling amicably between their teeth as they laid out their stacks or caught them from cruising vans; barrow boys spruce, neatly shaven, lovingly arranging and grading their fruit, turning blemishes from the light, snuggling overripe pears in purple tissue paper; flower-women shaking dew from their skirts, shouting to each other across the fast-filling streets as if over country lanes. The voices were clear in the clean, young air that later thickened with exhaust, petrol fumes and the sickening smell of overheated tyres. The early sun sparked on pavements, streets, and transformed to black diamonds the tar that before noon had started bubbling up between the flags and was still steaming when I left for work at night. I watched from the top of buses as if I had never seen London before. It was some time before I realized what I was beginning to see again was life through the slowly opening anxiety-shutters. Not all were opening. When my bus ran along the Fulham Road I never looked at the Brompton Chest Hospital. When pushing Vee along Chelsea Embankment I never looked across the river towards Lambeth.

  First-aid, as all Casualty Departments, had its regulars. One of my regular casuals told me he was a poet and his muse (sic) was inspired by nocturnal work on the belts. ‘I see all those dear little pies rolling by, and as I brush the spare flour off their dear little faces, I think very beautiful thoughts, Sister.’

  His floor foreman told me he was a good worker. ‘Stands there all night with his little brush happy as larry brushing every pie like he fancies each one but he’ll never buy a “second” seeing he’s a vegetarian.’

  After each batch of pies was cooked and checked, any flawed were removed and sold to the staff at a discount as ‘seconds’. One morning I bought a ‘second’. Vee and I had it for lunch. It was the best pork-pie I had eaten and Vee regarded it as ambrosia. That night one butcher cut his finger deeply and as I stitched and dressed the wound I told him about my ‘second’.

  ‘Didn’t know you’d a nipper, Sister.’ With his free hand he produced a snap of his two small sons. I showed him one of Vee. After we had congratulated each other, he looked woodenly at his feet. ‘I – er – heard as your hubby’s poorly.’

  ‘Yes. Keep that finger dry, Mr Z.’

  ‘I’ll do that, Sister. Much obliged.’

  Between three and four that morning in his tea-break he reappeared looking sheepish and clutching a packet wrapped in greaseproof paper. ‘They’d to make a special order of fancies (miniature pies) upstairs tonight, Sister. My nippers get real made up when I fetch ’em home fancies and as they always go quick as “seconds” I got a couple extra as – er – well – er – I reckoned as maybe your nipper might fancy ’em – oh, no Sister! Ta very much, but oh, no! They been paid for.’

  First-aid was quiet for some little time after he left. In that time I sat at the desk in the outer office and looked at the wrapped packet beside the blotter. At that time of the night all human defences were low. Mine collapsed. I thought of that butcher’s love for his two little sons, I thought of Father, I thought of Vee missing all her life the love of a good father, I thought of J missing all his life the love of his child. I thought of the man he had been and I had loved. The pain of those thoughts kept me as numbed and unblinking in my chair as I had seen the pain keep numbed and unblinking patients having coronary thromboses. Whilst the pain ripped through me and I sat and stared at two carefully wrapped tiny pork-pies, the distant clanking of the machinery that went on all night and the revving of the vans about to start their pre-dawn journeys all over southern England and the Midlands sounded louder and more intolerable than the loudest and most intolerable artillery barrage.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, Sister –’ a van driver charged in unwinding his muffler – ‘just a drop of linctus to get her on the road, please! Ta. Lovely!’

  It became an unusual night that ended without a wrapped packet on my desk. ‘Just thought as the nipper might fancy ’em, Sister …’ Not one man would accept repayment of the discount price. All those pies were as good as the first, and made, as I saw, with skill and hygiene.

  It was one of my occasional jobs to pay unannounced visits to the various floors, to look inside the pastry-mixing machines that when empty looked like spotless, shining builders’ cement-mixers, to watch the butchers butchering, the cooks cooking, the casuals standing working at the long, moving belts, the lines of pies baking slowly on the rollers rolling slowly through the great open-mouthed, open-ended ovens. When each night started the men looked reasonably fresh; as the night unwound the colour left their faces until even the park sleepers’ tans turned yellowish. ‘Can’t wonder, Sister? Takes it out of
you, working nights. The women on days – always carrying on they are about wanting to work the nightshift – but I ask you, Sister, how could any woman stand up to regular night work?’

  In the following twenty-five months, I spent twenty-one on full-time night-duty in the Buchanan Hospital, St Leonards. The Buchanan was one of the Hastings Group of Hospitals, part of the nursing training school run throughout the Group and a few minutes’ walk downhill from mother’s flat. I was employed as a Senior Staff Nurse and occasionally acting-Night Sister. Most nights I was in charge of the former private floor, a rambling assembly of eleven rooms, some single, some double, some treble-bedded. The floor still admitted a few private patients, as well as N.H.S. Amenity patients and General Ward Emergencies. The G.W.E.s were either overspills from the general wards, or in the continuing absence of Intensive Care Units, patients requiring maximum quiet and often on the D.I.L.

  The N.H.S. was very slowly improving nurses’ working hours and pay. On night-duty in the Buchanan, the whole night staff worked a repeated two-week rota, with the student nurses changing every three months, the Night Superintendent, Night Sister and any night Staff Nurses as myself, remaining on permanently. In the rota, for the first week, four nights were worked, two off; in the second (8-day week), six on, two off. Night hours were 8.30 p.m. to 8 a.m. and as these were longer than the law then allowed, every night nurse had to have one free hour during the night aside from the night meal-break. Night meals were no longer allowed to be eaten in ward kitchens and duty-rooms at odd moments but were served at fixed times in the staff dining-room. My pay as a Staff Nurse in the top grade was £28 per month (take-home pay approximately £24).

  ‘Let’s see how you manage for a month,’ said the Matron when I asked her for an interview and advice in late August 1950. ‘We’ll have another chat at the end of September.’

  At the end of September, ‘All well with the little one? No disturbed nights? Grandmother enjoying baby-sitting? Splendid! How about you? Getting enough sleep?’