The Print Petticoat

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘The poor nurses,’ we would quite often hear her tell the amicably grunting Hicks. ‘Ever such lovely girls! Seems a shame!’

  I was off at 9.30 that morning. I handed over the Nursery to the senior pupil, a North Country girl named Ellen Grayson, who was a trainee of a famous Lancashire hospital. She wore a very attractive dark-green uniform. We all wore our own parent hospital’s uniform at Elmhall, which made things rather confusing for the patients and doctors at first, but was a refreshing change for everyone in the long run after years of looking at identically dressed young women.

  Ellen Grayson was a fresh-faced girl with tidy little rows of curls. Her skin had a faint sun-tan even this early in the year. She was an ardent youth hosteler, and she spent her days off walking innumerable miles round England. She knew every famous and infamous beauty spot in the country before she had been a month at Elmhall.

  We looked at the new baby, whose cry was quieter now. The baby’s surname was Peters. I said I had to give him a drink of saline.

  ‘Did he take it?’ she asked.

  ‘Some. A good deal got spat out at me.’

  I told her about the phenobarbitone and not lifting him out of his cot. She nodded; this was all routine.

  ‘Who delivered him, Nurse Anthony?’

  I had been checking up. ‘New one on me. Mr Ormorod.’

  She chuckled. ‘That one! Eee! God’s gift t’ pupil-midwives, that lad.’

  ‘Is he?’ I was interested, her description fitted few young men in St Gregory’s Hospital Medical School.

  ‘He is,’ Grayson was firm. ‘Wow!’ she added as an afterthought, tying on a green towelling nursery apron over her own white linen one.

  ‘I say, Nurse Anthony ‒’

  I stopped in the doorway, held the mask I had just taken off over my face, and turned round. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Has that chap Peters been baptized?’

  ‘No.’ I thought, as I had often thought before, what a reliable person Grayson was, she was invariably a couple of mental steps ahead in her work.

  ‘No,’ I said again, still holding the mask like a yashmak. ‘I don’t think there’s any immediate worry, but if there is you know the form.’

  ‘Aye,’ she nodded, ‘boy ‒ John, girl Mary.’

  ‘That’s it, and he’s a boy. Have a nice morning.’

  ‘Thanks, Nurse Anthony. You too.’ She vanished into the milk cupboard. The milk cupboard had once been a large built-in wardrobe. On the inside of each door was a long mirror. Nurse Grayson was built on the chubby side. I saw three large green bustles jiggling busily as she mixed up the dried milk powder. Then I opened the Nursery door, and folding my mask, put it into my pocket.

  Beth Durant came out into the corridor from the labour ward as the Nursery door closed behind me. She was labour ward staff-nurse. She still wore her mask, over which her eyes were smiling.

  ‘Joa ‒ have you seen the new boys?’

  ‘I’ve seen the handiwork of one of them. The poor infant’s black and blue, and Allan had to get up and patch a third degree on the mum.’

  She looked serious for a moment, then took off her mask and smiled properly. ‘I know. But Night Sister said he couldn’t help it ‒ and the mum is fine.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘How’s Junior?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s got a hellish high-pitched cry. I wish Muir was here.’

  Something was niggling in my mind about that baby, just as I had felt it had in Allan’s mind. He did not seem to know what it was, and I did not either. I just knew I was not happy, but was not sure what, if anything. I could do about it.

  Miss Muir was the Nursery Sister who was away for the week-end. I was generally quite pleased to be on my own for a couple of days, but whenever something odd came out I wished her back. Babies, new-born babies, are tricky things at the best of times, and when things go wrong with them they go wrong very quickly. Miss Muir had an extra sense where the babies were concerned. She was the best baby-doctor I have ever met in my life, and I was not alone in my high professional opinion of her. For twelve years she had specialized in babies, and she certainly had no equal on the medical or nursing staffs of Gregory’s. As a Nursery Sister she was, as I have said, admirable. I wished she had not gone away that morning.

  The staff dining-room was in what had been built as a small conservatory. It made an ideal eating-place. In summer the glass walls folded back, and we seemed to be dining on the lawn; in winter the steam-heating from the radiators transformed it into the hothouse it really was. There was something both strange and pleasant about sitting warmly at breakfast in a rainstorm, or lunching with the snow lying snugly overhead like so much cotton-wool. At Elmhall the nursing and medical staffs ate together. There was a strong element of the coeducational campus about the whole unit; if the young men did not offer to carry our books they certainly queued at the serving-table for our meals while we sat smugly and rested our two feet. There was very little etiquette and no formality at all observed by the Maternity Unit. The staff was too small, the Matron too sensible; the harassed, hard-worked housemen at first too worried by their responsibilities, and, later, too well fed by Sandy to be capable of asserting themselves. They would have had little success if they had. The God Almighty complex from which some of the medical profession is inclined to suffer was not encouraged at St Gregory’s Hospital, London.

  Mrs Sandford was pouring out coffee as Beth and I came in. She looked over to us and grimaced. ‘Why is it that you staff-nurses can never be punctual for your meals?’

  Beth picked up two coffee-cups. ‘Because, Sandy, darling, we like to take advantage of your heart of gold.’

  Sandy told us grimly to get along with us, and handed us each a double portion of omelette.

  Three midder clerks were loitering over empty cups and cigarettes. The clerks ate with the nurses at nine o’clock. One of them looked across at Beth and me as we sat down. He had a heavy lock of pale-brown hair hanging rather affectedly over his forehead. His eyes were light. I could not tell what colour, just that they were light. He leant back in his chair and showed the largest pair of shoulders I had ever seen, even after watching inter-hospital rugger matches for eight years.

  ‘Which one of you ladies is the Nursery?’ he asked, and yawned.

  I said I was.

  ‘How’s my infant? I gather from Kinnoch I was a trifle heavy-handed.’

  Ellen Grayson had said he was God’s gift to the pupil-midwives. Just at the moment it was difficult to see how she had reached that conclusion.

  ‘Do you mean young Peters?’

  ‘That’s his name?’ His voice was casual. ‘Chap I produced in the small hours.’

  I looked down at his hands before I answered. He had hands in keeping with his shoulders. His build was perfect for orthopaedic work but hardly ideal for obstetrics.

  ‘He’s a bit beaten up,’ I said slowly. ‘He looks as if you had a sharp hand-to-hand struggle with him. You want to save that for some one nearer your weight.’

  The others laughed.

  ‘My good young woman,’ he said equably, ‘I’m in no mood for persiflage. I am a wreck of my former self. A very shadow. It’s a wonder my hair isn’t white.’

  Sandy’s bulk shook. I saw Beth watching her with the surprise I felt. Sandy was a good judge of the boys. If she was laughing it meant she liked him. Sandy was the human iceberg where she disapproved.

  ‘What happened, Mr Ormorod?’ she asked now.

  ‘What happened?’ He turned towards her at the head of the table. ‘What happened?’ His voice rose. ‘My dear madam. First I’m thrown out of bed in short order by Martin Herrith. I creep across the yard in my pyjamas and overcoat ‒ I, the young, almost-qualified doctor ‒ all ready to aid suffering womanhood. I promptly fall over a small army of bicycles. A night nurse appears and curses me to hell and says must I make all that noise. I say I must, and she is not at all pleased. I expect her to lead me to Night Sister
and cups of tea. Not at all. She says kindly, “Sister is in the Labour Ward.” I go up. I come down again ‒ Sister having told me smartly to go back and put some clothes on and come back properly dressed. I go back. I cross the yard. I fall over the bicycles. Nurse curses me again. I get up to my room ‒ did I say my room? Herrith curses me. I tiptoe down the stairs. Kinnoch is hating my guts aloud. All right. I deliver Junior. He pushes. I push. Mum pushes. All hell is let loose. Hurrah, it’s a boy. Boost for Ormorod.’

  He stopped to stub his cigarette and glare round the table.

  ‘Is that the end? By no means. Kinnoch materializes, and only your sex prevents my telling you what he calls me. He dwells unfavourably on the subject of my hands, the hands that Nurse here has just been giving such dirty looks. Kinnoch stitches, Sister threads needles, I stitch. They both curse me again. The mother is happily anaesthetized or doubtless she would have joined in. Junior yells blue murder in his cot. We finish our darning. But is that the end for Ormorod! No, no. Kinnoch starts murmuring something about a fourth stage.’

  He stopped speaking again, and it was just as well, since we were all laughing too much to hear him had he gone on longer.

  ‘I see you all know about the fourth stage.’ He sighed, ‘Well, we dumped the mama, and Sister says sweetly, “Now for the mopping, Mr Ormorod.” I’m just about to say I left the Navy five years ago and am now a medical student when she hands me a bucket of bloody sheets and tells me to get on with it. So I get on with it. Only she means wash ’em. I finish, and she smiles nicely and says, “How about the swabbing?” By now I’ve given up. Sister hands me a dirty great mop and I start in on the floor. The Labour Ward now looks as clean as a quarter-deck. Sister is playing around with the placenta in the sink. She smiles again and I’m hamstrung. What next? Sister says she must introduce me to Jimmy and then trips away railing softly over her shoulder that I’ll want some newspaper.

  ‘It is now nearly five o’clock and I can stand anything. I am Ormorod, one of the original hearts of oak. I’m all for social calls on Jimmy at dawn even if it appears that Jimmy lives in the basement. I’m just about to ask Sister what Jimmy is doing among all the girls when I find we are in the cellar. There are a good many cockroaches in the cellar, too. They move over to make room for me. Sister wisely stays in the doorway. She hands me a nasty-looking kidney-dish and tells me to just pop the placenta into my newspaper and shove it in Jimmy. So there I am burning placentas to greet the dawn, and you ask me, Mrs Sandford, what happened?’ He rested his head on his hands, his elbows propped on the table, then he looked up and smiled. ‘I tell you what happened. I went into the orchard and found a swing.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Beth comfortably. ‘Wait till you have to stoke Jimmy. He’s a swine.’

  ‘Should I have done that as well?’ he said calmly.

  ‘The night nurses do it ‒ but they like help.’

  He smoothed his suede waistcoat. ‘And you think I have a heart of gold, too? Thank you.’

  Allan stood in the doorway, small and square; very erect, very good-looking.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Joanna.’ He came over to our table. ‘Martin is up in the Nursery now.’

  I went on with my breakfast. ‘Nurse Grayson is on,’ I said. ‘She’s a good girl. She’ll do.’

  I could not think why Allan was going quietly mad this morning. He knew nursing etiquette as well as I did. If I went back I would upset Grayson badly and needlessly. She was perfectly competent.

  Allan still hovered. ‘You aren’t really worried about him, then?’

  I thought before I answered. Now that I had had some food I felt a lot happier about young Peters. That was the only serious fault I found with Elmhall. Working in the mornings for two hours before breakfast.

  ‘He is cerebral,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think he sounds as if much damage has been done. I doubt that he’s torn. He should settle down. And, anyway,’ I concluded rather lamely, ‘there’s nothing to be done but wait and see.’

  ‘You’ll not bath him yet?’ asked Allan.

  ‘No ‒ if you think not!’ I nearly added, ‘You’re the doctor, not me!’

  Ormorod was following what we said. ‘Does this concern me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes ‒ it’s your baby,’ I said. Then, having finished my breakfast, I excused myself to Sandy, and went out of the dining-room with Allan.

  ‘Look, Allan,’ I said. ‘Are you really worried?’

  He smiled. ‘Not about him. It’s just that I want to have a talk with you, and this place is so damnably matey that I never get a chance to see you alone.’

  We were standing in the middle of the downstairs corridor. The ward-nurses were rushing backward and forward around us carrying covered surgical-trays and uncovered bed-pans. One of the less attractive sides of midwifery is the fact that owing to the dangers of cross-infection bed-pan covers are forbidden. Ten o’clock in the morning is the rush-hour of wash-downs and dressings.

  Allan smiled at me again. I was nearly as tall as he was. With my cap on we must have looked the same height.

  ‘This is hardly the place,’ he said. ‘When can I see you?’ I thought he most probably wanted to talk about next weekend again, and I had hoped he would let the thing drop. House-physicians and house-surgeons generally have a yen for staff-nurses ‒ it’s all part of the curriculum. As I was already involved with my own particular house-surgeon, I did not feel like complicating matters even slightly with Allan Kinnoch. I was just going to say that all my week-ends were irrevocably booked when he dodged out of the way of a pupil carrying a tray-load of Dettol-filled jugs and said, ‘The reason I want to talk to you, Joanna, is that I want to ask you to marry me. Will you, please?’

  Chapter Two

  Three Men in the Nursery

  When I went back into the dining-room to look for Beth she was not there. She had gone on ahead to our cottage, so I walked down the garden alone. At the bottom of the garden was the orchard with the swing; in a corner behind the apple-trees was the wire-netting of the chicken-run. Inside the wire I could see the small dungareed figure of Sammy, the head-gardener’s son, chasing and being chased, without malice, by vaguely clucking hens. Beyond the chicken-run was the hedge and White Rose Lane. In the lane alongside the back gate of Elmhall stood our cottage.

  Mrs Hicks was standing outside the front door shaking a duster. She saw me, smiled, and waved the bit of chamois leather amicably. Her hair was tied up in a blue-and-white spotted scarf and she wore a smock. She was not pregnant. I think it was just that at Elmhall a smock was de rigueur for non-nursing ladies and Mrs Hicks would have felt out of things in an ordinary apron. She invited me to join her in a cupper. She said Nurse Durant was upstairs and had just had one. I thought if Beth could drink tea after all that coffee I could as well. I needed something to help me get over the shock of Allan’s little speech among the bed-pans, so I thanked Mrs Hicks for her cup of black tea; agreed with her that it was a lovely day; said that Sammy had grown since I had last seen him, which was yesterday; and once more endorsed her view that he was the dead spit of his dad; then I went up the one short flight of stairs to our bedroom.

  Beth had her feet up on the bed. Her cap and shoes were off. She was smoking and offered me a cigarette.

  ‘What do you think of him?’ she asked.

  My mind was on Allan. I sat down slowly. ‘All right ‒ but I really couldn’t marry him.’

  ‘Good God, Joa ‒ you’re a bit sudden, aren’t you? Who are you talking about?’

  Beth and I had been friends since we first started as lowly probationers at Gregory’s five years before. There was very little about each other that we did not know. I thought this would surprise her as much as it had me.

  ‘Allan Kinnoch,’ I said. ‘He’s just asked me to marry him.’

  Beth said nothing for a few moments; she looked at me in silence, and then, oddly, her face went scarlet.

  ‘He’s an awfully nice man, you know, Joa.’

&
nbsp; ‘I know he is.’ I was a little impatient. ‘But, hell ‒ Beth! Things have come to a pretty pass when one can’t go to a movie with a man without him up and proposing first thing in the morning. It’s hardly decent.’

  She laughed, and her laugh sounded rather strained.

  ‘You are a fool. No,’ she picked her words, ‘I’m not really surprised. I’ve seen him looking at you.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, putting down my tea-cup as I stood up to unpin my apron, ‘don’t tell me it’s been that obvious? Why haven’t I noticed? I’m not generally backward with the boys? Besides the man’s mad. He must know about Richard. The whole ruddy hospital knows about Richard. We are an institution. People point us out as specimens of a beautiful friendship. There go Richard Everley and Joanna Anthony! Five years’ steady going and never a ring in sight.’ I smiled, although we both knew that this was something I did not find particularly funny. I could give myself a great many specious reasons why Richard and I were not engaged, but I myself was not at all impressed. I knew that I was a perfect little Ruth where Richard was concerned. Wherever he goeth I would go, allowing for a slight alteration in the sex of the Biblical original.