Doctor in the House

8

The Nurses' Home at St. Swithin's was known, with a fair degree of accuracy, as the Virgins' Retreat. Virginity and nursing certainly seem to go together, and the Matron of St. Swithin's put her Ursulian duties first. Her regulations for the nurses' conduct suggested she was convinced they went through their waking and sleeping life at the hospital in unremitting danger of rape. It is true that a student or two occasionally entertained sinful thoughts towards one of her charges; like any other bunch of young men they were romantic souls, and the fact that young ladies took off their clothes for them in the wards did not deter them from trying for the same result in their lodgings. But, taking the nurses as a whole, their Matron's book of rules was nothing more than a blatant piece of flattery.

Intercourse between the nurses and students had to be but social to attract the Matron's displeasure. If a nurse was seen talking to a student in the hospital, apart from a brief necessary exchange of medical matters in the ward, she was dismissed unquestioned. For her to meet a student in her off duty time-to go to the pictures or a concert, for instance-was automatically reckoned, if discovered, as the equivalent of a week-end in Brighton. And if a nurse was found in the students' quarters or a man of any sort discovered in the Nurses' Home it was an event apparently unmeasurable in terms of human horror.

In order to reduce the possibility of these alarming situations overtaking the nurse the opportunities she could present for them were heavily reduced. All first-year nurses had to be in by ten every night. The senior girls were allowed out once a week until eleven,' and staff nurses were permitted in comparison a life of uninhibited lechery by being able to claim two weekly passes until twelve.

Nurses, when in the hospital, were authoritatively stripped of their sexual characteristics as far as was possible without operative interference. Make-up of any sort was looked upon by the ward sisters as the prerogative of women of the streets, and hair was supposed to be tightly tucked inside a starched uniform cap designed to be worn just over the eyebrows. The nurse's figure was de-contoured beneath uniform made out of a material similar to sailcloth, and the skirt was raised only far enough from the floor to let the poor girl walk without breaking her neck.

These regulations were naturally broken, as efficiently and as subtly as the lock on a medieval chastity belt. There were plenty of quiet corners about the hospital where a date could be arranged between student and nurse, and the couple had the whole of London to meet in. A thin, skilful brush with a lipstick could bring even from Sister Virtue nothing worse than suspicion and powder was almost invisible. As the cap had to be folded out of a linen square, with a little practice a girl could reduce it sufficiently in size so that it stuck attractively on the back of her head. As for the uniform, a nurse with any feelings of femininity in her veins immediately took her new outfit to a dressmaker to be shortened.

Shyness and the restrictions surrounding the nurses' social contacts kept me clear of my helpmeets in the ward, apart from the small amount of professional chat I dared to exchange with them. At the same time, the nurses took very little notice of me. With the senior students it was different: for them was the favour of a quick smile behind Sister's back, or a giggle in the sluice-room when no one was in earshot. The house-surgeons, who were doctors and therefore safe matrimonial investments, got cups of coffee when Sister was off duty and had their socks mended; and the registrar could quicken wildly any heart behind a starched apron bodice with a brief smile.

During my stay on Sir Lancelot's firm I began to gain a little confidence in myself in defiance of my surroundings. There was one nurse on the ward who seemed different from the rest. She was a slight little probationer downtrodden by the ward staff as heavily as I, which immediately spun a fine strand of sympathy between us. I felt sorry for her; and I thought, when I was being competently reduced to nothingness by Sister for using Sir Lancelot's special soap at the washbasin, that she was silently commiserating with me.

She was a snub-nosed brunette with grey eyes and a small mouth which she kept firmly closed in the ward. Her experience of St. Swithin's was even less than mine, for she had arrived at the hospital only a fortnight previously. It was aximatic that any nurse who could stand the first six weeks would last the whole course and I was interested to watch her lips growing tighter and tighter as this critical period wore on, while she was discovering it was far less important to save a patient's life than to drop a plate of pudding, and to break a thermometer was a feminine crime just short of persistent shoplifting.

By glances, shy smiles, and putting myself in proximity to her in the ward as much as I dared, I managed to indicate my interest. One morning I was in the sluice-room halfheartedly performing the routine chemical tests on my patients' excreta when she came in and resignedly began to clean out the sink. Sister had sent her there obviously not knowing of my presence; the door shut us off from the ward; we were alone; so I took a chance.

'I say,' I said.

She looked up from the sink.

'I say,' I repeated, 'number six looks much better to-day, doesn't he? The Chief did a good job on him all right. You should have seen the way he got hold of the splenic artery when a clip came off! I've never seen so much blood in my life.'

'Please!' she said, holding her stomach. 'You're making me feel sick.'

'Oh, I'm awfully sorry,' I apologized quickly. 'I just thought you'd be interested.'

'I'm not,' she said. 'The sight of blood makes me sick. In fact, the whole damn place makes me sick. I thought I was going to put my cool hands on the fevered brows of grateful young men, and all I do is clean the floors and give out bedpans to bad-tempered old daddies who smell.'

'If you don't like it,' I suggested, shocked by her confession, 'why did you take it up at all? Why don't you leave?'

'The hell I won't! My mother was a nurse and she's been ramming it down my throat for nineteen years. If she could take it I damn well can!'

'Would you like to come out to the pictures?' I asked. I thought it best to cut out her complaints and reach my object without further skirmishing. Our privacy might be broken at any moment.

'You bet!' she said without hesitation. 'Anything to get out of this place! I'm off at six. Meet me in the tube station. I must get back to the ward or the old woman will tear me to bits.'

Feeling demurely pleased with myself, I went down to the King George to tell someone about this swift conquest': I found Tony Benskin and Grimsdyke sitting at the bar, energetically talking about racing with the Padre.

'I've just dated up that little pro on the ward,' I told them nonchalantly. 'I'm taking her out to-night.'

Benskin was horrified. He had an obsession that he might one day be trapped into matrimony by a nurse and walked round the hospital as warily as a winning punter passing the men with the three-card trick.

'It's the thin end of the wedge, my boy!' he exclaimed. 'You watch your steps or you'll end up as aisle-fodder before you know where you are. They're vixens, the lot of them.'

'And good luck to them,' Grimsdyke added emphatically. 'After all, that's what they come to the hospital for-to find a husband. They wouldn't admit it, but it's buried in the subconscious of all of them somewhere.'

'I thought nursing was supposed to be a vocation and a calling,' I said defensively.

'No more than our own job, my dear old boy. Why have we all taken up medicine? I've got a good reason, that I'm paid to do it. You've got a doctor as a father and a leaning towards medicine in your case is simply a hereditary defect. Tony here took it up because he couldn't think of anything better that would allow him to play rugger three times a week. How many of our colleagues entered the noble profession through motives of humanity?' Grimsdyke screwed his monocle hard in his eye. 'Damn, few, I bet. Humanitarian feelings draw more young fellows annually into the London Fire Brigade. It's the same with the girls-nursing offers one of the few remaining respectable excuses to leave home. Let them marry the chaps, I say. They're strong, healthy girls who know how to cook. To my mind the most important function of the St. Swithin's nursing school is that it provides competent wives to help in general practice anywhere in the world.'

'Three beers please, Padre,' I said, interrupting him. 'Don't you think Grimsdyke's being unfair?'

'You've got to watch your step, sir, you can take it from me,' he said sombrely. 'I've seen more of you young gentlemen caught into marriage when you haven't a ha'penny to your name than I'd like to think about. Children soon, too, sir. Houses, gas bills, vacuum cleaners, and all the other little trappings of matrimony. It's an expensive hobby, take my word, sir, for young Tellers before they're settled in practice.'

'Damn it,' I said, 'I've only asked the girl to the pictures. If I don't like her I won't see her again.'

'Easier said than done, sir. Ask Mr. Grimsdyke about that young lady last Christmas.'

Grimsdyke laughed. 'Ah, yes, Padre! I've still got it on me, I think.' He pulled out his wallet and rummaged through the papers it contained. 'Most tiresome woman-tried everything to get rid of her for a fortnight. Then I received that one morning, handed to me by a hospital porter, if you please.'

He gave the a note in angry feminine handwriting. _'If you do not send an answer to this by midday,' it said curtly, 'I shall hurl myself of the roof of the Nurses' Home.'_

'What on earth did you say?' I asked, horrified.

'What could I say?' Grimsdyke demanded. 'Except "No reply."'

'Did she throw herself off?'

'I really don't know,' he said, replacing the letter. 'I never troubled to find out.'

I met my little nurse at six. We passed an innocuous evening and arranged a rendezvous for the next week. But the appointment was never kept. The following day she was transferred to Sister Virtue's ward, where she cracked up. One afternoon she threw a pink blancmange at Sister and went out and got a job as a bus conductress.

This incident temporarily cooled my enthusiasm for nurses. After a few weeks I attempted to kindle an affection for a fat blonde girl in the out-patient department, but after we had spent a few evenings together she began to drift away from me, almost imperceptibly at first, like a big ship leaving dock. It was then that I started to worry about myself. Was it that I had no attraction for women? I never enjoyed success with my consorts while my friends apparently had no difficulty in committing fornication with theirs. I slunk into the library and looked up the psychology books: horror overcame me as I turned the pages. In my first few weeks in the wards I had been convinced that I was suffering from such complaints as tuberculosis, rheumatic heart, cancer of the throat, and pernicious anaemia, all of which successfully cleared up in a few days, but now I faced the terrible possibility of harbouring a mother fixation, oral eroticism, and a subnormal libido. I mentioned these fears to my friends that evening after supper.

'The trouble with you, my lad,' said John Bottle, without taking his eye from the microscope he was studying, 'is that you are suffering from that well recognized clinical condition _orchitis amorosa acuta,_ or lover's nuts.'

'Well,' I said sadly, 'I would willingly surrender my virginity if I could find someone to co-operate with me in the matter.'

'Can't you wait for a week?' Kelly asked testily. 'My path. exam is too near to let me go out for a night.'

His objection to my making an immediate start in my love life reflected the most serious menace to harmony in the flat.

We all agreed that it was important we should be able to ask our girl-friends to our home, and with the privacy without which the invitation would be pointless. As accommodation was limited it was equally important that the other three should not be obliged to tramp the streets angrily during the entire evening, or go to bed. Archie and Vera had been no problem because they kept to their own room, but some arrangement had to be made among the rest of us. We decided that each should have one evening a fortnight in which the sitting-room was to be his. A code was arranged: if the girl was brought in and presented to the others it required her host only to mention that it looked like rain for his friends to rise and troop out into the night like a well-drilled squad of infantry. (If he remarked that the weather was turning warmer they did an equally important service by sticking by him.) Then it was up to the man himself. But he had not the entire evening to fritter away in light amours. As the pubs shut at eleven he knew he could only count on the period until then as his own. His comrades would heartlessly return, considering they had left him time enough for a brisk seduction. If he failed to achieve his object in the time, that was his look-out. This probably had bad effects on our psychology, but it made us very persuasive.

'What about that girl from the out-patient department you were taking out?' Tony Benskin asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. 'No good.'

'Won't play?' John Bottle asked with interest. 'I thought as much…you want to take my tip and lay off the probationers. Altogether too young and unappreciative. They can still remember the games' mistress said it would ruin their hockey.'

Mike Kelly was sitting in an armchair by the fire, frowning into a yellow-covered book on fevers. He carefully put his finger on his place before speaking.

'You might try the theatre sister from number six,' he suggested faintly.

'Oh, she's no use,' John said with authority. 'Registrars only in that department. She's the sort of girl who'd hardly look at a houseman, let alone a poor bloody student.'

'There's that little blonde staff nurse just come on Loftus's ward,' Mike continued helpfully. 'She looks as if she'd be worth making advances to,'

'Hopeless!' John said. 'She suffers badly from tinnitus-ringing in the ears, and they're wedding bells.'

'How about Rigor Mortis?' Tony suggested, suddenly looking pleased with himself.

'Old Rigor…that's more like it!' John agreed.

'She's always ready for a tumble with anybody.'

'The nursery slopes for our friend,' remarked Mike warmly.

'Rigor Mortis?' I asked dubiously.

'Oh, that's not her real name of course,' Tony explained. 'It's Ada something or other. Haven't you come across her?'

'I don't think so.'

'She's not a great beauty,' he went on, 'so perhaps that's why you haven't noticed her. But she has the kindest heart imaginable. She's the staff nurse on Loftus's male ward. I knew her well, old man. I'll introduce you. The more I think of it the more certain I am that she's what you need. She expects the minimum of entertainment and it is hardly necessary to do more than hold her hand and look plaintive. Capital! You shall meet her to-morrow.'

Tony took me to meet Rigor Mortis the following afternoon, when the ward sister was off duty. I immediately agreed that she wasn't much to look at. She had dull black hair which she pushed into her starched cap like the stuffing in a cushion, a chin like a boxer's, and eyebrows that met in the middle.

She was about six feet tall and had a bosom as shapeless as a plate of scrambled eggs. But all these blemishes melted before my eyes, which were fired with Benskin's firm recommendation that she had a kind heart.

After a minute's cheery conversation Tony explained that I had been bursting to make her acquaintance for some months. He asked her if she was doing anything on her next night off; all I had to do was mumble an invitation to the pictures, which she briskly accepted. I arranged to meet her outside Swap and Edgar's at six and we parted.

'There you are, old man,' Tony said as we left the ward. 'Meet her at six, whip her into a flick, take her back to the flat for a drink-that'll be about nine-thirty. You'll have two solid hours to do your stuff.'

I arranged for the seduction with considerable care. I stayed away from the afternoon lecture and spent the time cleaning up the sitting-room, putting the books away, straightening the cover on the divan, and arranging the reading light so the glow fell romantically in the corner. I set out a new packet of cigarettes and invested in half a bottle of gin. There were two glasses in the kitchen that happened to be the same pattern, and these I carefully washed, dried, and placed on the mantelpiece. It was only five, so I sat down and read the evening paper. I was nervous and worried, as though I was going to the dentist. I began to wish I hadn't introduced the idea at all. But I could no longer back out. I must be victorious by eleven or sink in the opinions of my friends. I took a nip of the gin and set out.

For a few minutes I hoped she wouldn't turn up, but she lumbered out of the Underground right enough. She looked a little better in civilian clothes, but I still thought her as unattractive as an old sofa. I suggested the New Gallery, and she agreed. She seemed fairly friendly, but I soon discovered that she was disinclined to take the initiative in conversation. If I spoke she replied; if I remained silent she appeared to be concentrating heavily on thoughts of her own. I had therefore to keep up a run of inane patter, every sentence on a different subject, until the film released us into merciful mutual silence.

About half-way through the picture I abruptly recalled the object of my expedition. Should I give just the faintest hint of what was to come, I wondered, and hold her hand? It 'would be the herald's call to the approaching tussle. Would she rebuff this forwardness so early, for I had hardly known her an hour? I gave a sly glance through the darkness and seized her rough palm. She gripped mine without thinking, without an indication that her mind was distracted a hairsbreadth from the screen.

The two of us stood outside in Regent Street. I asked casually if she would care to come home for a drink, and meet the boys. She assented with the same air as she accepted my hand in the cinema. We went to Oxford Circus tube station and I bought a couple of tickets. I held her arm as we walked down the road to the flat and up the steps. The stairs…opening the door…my surprise that no one was there. She sat down on the divan without a word, and I lit the gas-fire. She took a drink in an off hand way. We sat in the glow of the gas and the dim light of my romantic bulb.

I finished a cigarette and gave her another drink. Surely, I thought, this would have some effect? She had two or three more, but sat looking absently at the fire, dully returning a sentence for each one of mine, unanimated, unresponsive, unworried.

I nervously looked at my watch and saw with alarm that it was past ten-thirty. I had to get a move on. I felt like a man going out to start an old car on a cold morning.

I held her hand tighter. She didn't object. I drew closer. She moved neither away nor nearer. I put my arm round her and started stroking her off-side ear. She remained passive, like a cow with its mind on other things.

The seconds ticked away from my wrist, faster and faster. At least, I thought, I have gone this far without rebuff. I kissed her on the cheek. She still sat pleasantly there, saying nothing. Carefully setting down my glass, I stroked her blouse firmly. I might just as well have been brushing her coat. I threw myself at her and she rolled back on the divan like a skittle. With great energy I continued her erotic stimulation. Any moment now, I thought excitedly, and the object of the evening would be achieved. She lay wholly unconcerned. Suddenly she moved. With one hand she picked up the evening paper I had left on the divan. She read the headlines.

'Oh look!' she exclaimed with sympathy, 'there's been an awful train crash at Chelmsford. Seventeen killed!'

'So you had no luck?' Tony asked at midnight.

'None. None at all.'

'That's tough. Cheer up…other fish, you know.'

I decided to do my fishing in future in more turbulent waters, even if I had no catch.