The Print Petticoat

by Lucilla Andrews

  The weather grew so bad that even I was not allowed out. The snow piled high on the long ward windows, covered the glass skylights in the roof, filling the ward with a strange white light.

  Frankie Spence, the Medical Registrar, had taken me over from John Fernie. The Professor came down from town to see me about once a month. There was no R.M.O. at the moment at Stevenswood; the present R.M.O. was away ill with malaria. Frankie Spence acted R.M.O. but had not officially been promoted. He was more than capable of filling that position. He was the one inspired doctor whose name I could remember that evening in the Park, long ago, when Allan had asked me whom I had known at Gregory’s who was a true idealist over medicine. Frankie Spence was apparently an ordinary young man, of medium height, at present chubby; later he would undoubtedly be fat. He had brilliant red hair, a round face, moon-spectacles, and girlish blue eyes. He was fascinated by medicine, passed his examinations with an ease that would have been disgraceful in a less charming person; above all he clearly loved work and inspired absolute confidence. Even as a houseman he was the same. When other housemen came into Casualty, it was just another C.O. coming in. When Frankie Spence waddled in swinging his stethoscope, patients and nurses relaxed. A doctor had come in.

  That was why I was always quite happy to do what Frankie told me. If anyone else had said I must stay in the Ward, I would have raised hell and run a temperature. Instead, I merely did a lot of embroidery and listened to Frankie examining his patients.

  The lady next to me, a Mrs Price, had been a stretcher patient from London. She suffered from a query renal colic.

  Frankie sat down on the locker-seat between our two beds and asked her what the trouble was.

  ‘Well, I can’t say as how it’s really a trouble, Doctor.’

  Mrs Price spoke with an air of grieved respectability.

  ‘I see.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll put it this way. What are you complaining of, Mrs Price?’

  ‘Me?’ Mrs Price was really upset. ‘I’m not complaining of anything, Doctor, I’m sure. I’m not one to moan!’

  Frankie began again, gently. ‘I quite understand. Tell, me,’ he said confidentially, ‘how long have you not been feeling well?’

  ‘Oh, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I never feel well. Not for years. First it was my stomach ‒ it was gastric, you see, Doctor’ ‒ she ticked her stomach off on her fingers ‒ ‘then I had a back ‒ and, of course, I’ve always had blood-pressure.’

  Frankie clung in desperation to her backache.

  ‘How bad is the pain in your back, Mrs Price?’

  She looked at him, resignation stamped all over her. ‘Agony, Doctor,’ she said simply, ‘sheer agony.’

  ‘I see.’ He wrote busily. If she really had renal colic she was probably right. It was short and sharp, but it was agony all right.

  ‘How long have you had the pain?’

  ‘Only twelve years, Doctor,’ she said cheerfully.

  Frankie wrote on, unmoved. ‘Twelve years.’ He looked up. ‘Where did you first notice the pain?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Price thoughtfully. ‘Well ‒ I think it must have been in St Leonards, Doctor. Such a refined place for a holiday.’

  Frankie said he was sure it was but where was the pain, high or low. Mrs Price had him there. She said it was in the middle.

  Frankie’s baby stare gazed patiently round the ward. He caught my eye at his elbow and winked. ‘Can you see a nurse, Joanna?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to worry Sister, but I want a chaperon. I can’t get much further without an examination.’

  Sister looked up from the desk at that moment. ‘Do you want someone, Dr Spence?’

  Frankie stood up. ‘Please, Sister. Don’t you move, just tell me where I can find a nurse.’

  Sister glided down the ward, her navy-blue petticoat floating behind her.

  ‘If you will get the screens, Dr Spence, I’ll gather a probationer from the mackintosh room.’

  Frankie slid a screen between Mrs Price’s bed and my own. He came round to my side for a moment.

  ‘Some stone this,’ he whispered, ‘roving about in St Leonards for twelve years! This’ll teach me not to ask silly questions!’

  Beth came down for a week-end at the beginning of March. She brought me a small library of books and an assortment of embroidery silks. Embroidery has always been my hobby; now that I was allowed to sit up and do as I liked I was turning out tablecloths almost weekly.

  ‘Beth,’ I said, ‘it is nice to see you. Sit down if you can stand the elements.’

  She sat down carefully on the end of my bed. She was looking very attractive. She wore one of those stocking-caps; it was a vivid blue. The ride from the station had flushed her wild-rose complexion. I thought I had never seen Beth look so beautiful. There was a translucence about her, as if someone had turned a light on inside her.

  ‘Beth,’ I said, ‘you are looking nice!’

  ‘Am I?’ She was picking her words. ‘Look, Joanna,’ she went on, ‘there’s something I think I ought to tell you.’

  It was probably her calling me Joanna. That and her glowing appearance. Whatever it was I knew what she was going to say and said it for her.

  ‘You are going to marry Allan?’

  ‘Oh ‒ Joa ‒’ Her words rushed out. ‘Do you mind? I feel such a double-crosser ‒ yet you did turn him down.’

  ‘Beth,’ I said again, ‘Beth ‒ you are a mug! Of course I don’t mind. I’m awfully glad. He only had a thing for me ‒ he wasn’t even properly in love with me. He’s just your type. He’s a honey. And’ ‒ I could not resist this ‒ ‘and ‒ he’s an awfully nice young man.’

  Beth flushed, then beamed with relief.

  ‘Joa ‒ you dear. Darling. Now I know you don’t mind.’ She leaned forward as if she was going to kiss me.

  ‘Keep off for God’s sake, Beth.’ I pushed her back. ‘Really, Gregory’s is full of bloody fools longing to catch tubercle.’

  She recognized my description of Marcus.

  ‘I saw him in Casualty yesterday. He told me he was down on Saturday.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘he gets down about once a fortnight on his week-ends off. He keeps me up to date with Gregory’s gossip.’

  ‘Was that how you knew Allan and I had fixed things up?’

  ‘Partly ‒ that and the fact that you look like a young pearl that’s just discovered its oyster.’

  Richard came along the ramp at tea-time and asked Beth to have dinner with him in the doctor’s house that evening. She went back to London on Sunday night. I thought it very kind of her to spend a whole week-end with me at that particular period. I knew how she had always felt about Allan. I couldn’t understand it, but I did know.

  The announcement of their engagement came out in The Times a few days later. The next week-end Marcus drove his motor-cycle up to my bedside on Saturday afternoon. He was wearing an ex-German paratrooper’s flying-kit, which a patient had given him. In the monstrous, padded grey garment he looked like a Martian. He stepped stiffly from his motor-bike.

  ‘Where are your antennae, Marcus?’

  ‘Antennae nothing! I’m Karloff as the monster in Frankenstein! And by God, I feel like it. My blood turned to ice hours ago on the Great West Road. All that makes me go is machine-oil and alcohol. How are you, Joa, my precious one?’

  I said I was fine and how was he.

  He lowered himself on to my locker-seat.

  ‘I’m weary, Joanna. Dead weary. I’ve had a surfeit of the bright lights. Marcus the gay will go no more a-roving! At least not for another couple of days. I thought I’d borrow a couple of blankets and a wheel-chair and sit beside you and talk of this and that.’

  ‘When do you have to be back?’

  ‘Not till Monday morning. I got an exemption from old John. Noel Barnes is going to do my night round tomorrow night.’

  ‘Marcus,’ I said, ‘I’m glad. What fun!’

  I really was. I had got to looking forward to his alternate
Saturday visits. He always made me laugh, and for all his many little ways Marcus had been oddly dependable as far as I was concerned.

  He took off his leather driving-glove and patted my face.

  ‘Isn’t it good, darling?’

  Richard came out of the theatre at that moment.

  ‘Having fun? Hallo, Ormorod. Joining the Yanks in their trip to the moon?’

  ‘The trouble with you people,’ said Marcus severely, ‘is that you don’t recognize suitable clothes when you see them. Everyone ought to dress like this in this weather. Sensible people, the Germans! Think of the way they kept losing wars and kidding us that it wasn’t their fault at all ‒ they didn’t know what their nasty bad leaders were doing! Take a subtle brain to get away with that ‒ or invent these clothes.’

  ‘Take a damned subtle brain to know with which zip to start unzipping yourself,’ said Richard. He turned to me. ‘You having a tea-party today, Joa? If I can borrow the sheepskin rug from the theatre, am I invited?’

  Marcus was staying in the doctor’s house and after tea they both went off together for a drink while the nurses wheeled me into Margaret Ward for my evening wash.

  There was a shelter at the top of the ramp away from all the wards. My bed was pushed up into the shelter at night. The shelter had a roof and three wooden walls. The fourth side was open to the air. I had a wicker table beside me, which held my wireless and drinking water. The water, like the thermometer-jar water, was always frozen by morning.

  As I settled to sleep that night I wondered how Richard and Marcus were getting along together when I heard a step on the ramp outside. Richard appeared in the opening.

  ‘Asleep, Joanna?’ He spoke softly.

  He came in, sat on my bed, and smoked. We talked quietly for a while. We talked rather well. We were nearer the old days than we had been for months. He asked me if I knew when Beth and Allan were getting married.

  ‘I’m not certain,’ I said, ‘but I expect fairly soon. There’s nothing to keep them. They have both got jobs and Beth’s got the flat. Mona Chappell, the girl who’s taken my room at the moment, always agreed to clear out if we wanted it back. No. I don’t suppose they’ll wait. Why should they?’

  ‘U’m’m,’ said Richard. Then he said slowly, ‘I think they are wise. Actually ‒ Joanna ‒ I’m thinking of doing something in that line myself.’

  I had told myself that it was all over. That I did not care. Not care, hell. I held my breath and listened to Richard saying that he was going to marry Angela Martin.

  Angela Martin was the daughter of Illesly Martin. She was a physiotherapist at Gregory’s. She was younger than I, dark, and she was the possessor of a very nice new drop-head coupé.

  Well, well, I thought. One thing, I can’t say the boys never warned me.

  I had to do something after saying that I wished him happiness, so I yawned.

  Richard patted my hand, said I was his poor dear Joanna, and of course he mustn’t keep me up late. The relief in his voice that he had escaped without a scene was obvious.

  That night for the first time since I had been admitted I let go and had a grand weeping jag. Next morning my temperature was still normal ‒ in fact it was never abnormal again.

  Next morning, however, I was in a filthy temper. When Marcus came out on the ramp after breakfast I asked him if he knew previously about Richard’s engagement.

  ‘Did you come to hold my hand again?’

  I took him by surprise. I knew by his expression that I was right. My temper exploded.

  ‘God Almighty! Damn!’ I said. ‘It was bad enough over Allan and Beth. But not Richard as well. What have you got, Marcus?’ I sat upright in bed in my fury. ‘What do you think there is about you that you have only to offer your manly shoulder for everything in the garden to be lovely? Hasn’t it dawned on you yet? You just aren’t my type. And haven’t you realized that when I’m down I don’t want a bloody audience?’

  If I had not been so angry I should have been interested in the effect I was having on his vaso-motor system. His colour was alternating red, white, red, white.

  ‘Joanna!’ He had to shout in a whisper. It was Sunday morning, and the whole hospital walked round us on its way to the chapel.

  ‘Joanna,’ he hissed, ‘be quiet. Listen, woman! If you weren’t in bed I’d shake you. Don’t you really know why I came down?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I snapped. ‘I know quite well. You decided my illness had cost me enough. Allan, Richard. Even the flat. So big-hearted Marcus came down to even things up.’

  ‘Suppose,’ he said coldly, ‘you stop dramatizing yourself, Joanna, and listen to me.

  ‘Your illness may have cost you a lot ‒ but it’s cost none of the things you’ve mentioned. Richard Everley’ ‒ he almost spat the name ‒ ‘Richard Everley never was yours. You would have lost him if you had never caught tubercle. Allan you never wanted! You don’t lose what you chuck away. The flat ‒ well, Beth’s a good girl ‒ when you are up, she’ll fix up something that’s fair. There are other flats. It’s not a major tragedy. So don’t you bloody well think it is! All you do all day is lie here and feel bloody sorry for yourself and how badly everyone’s treated you. Absolute rubbish.’

  I had never seen Marcus even vaguely annoyed. I was so fascinated that I forgot to go on being angry. This made him crosser than ever.

  ‘Don’t you dare go all soft on me now, Joanna. I’m sick and tired of giving in to your girlish whims. I came down here because I thought I wanted to see you. I say thought. The tense is past. I also thought I loved you. I have for some time.’

  He stood over me. ‘Bloody funny,’ he ended slowly.

  I noticed his hand, which held an unlit cigarette, was shaking.

  ‘Bloody funny,’ he said again in an odd voice, then he turned and walked away down the ramp.

  About ten minutes later I heard a motor-bike engine revving up, then the roar as it started out of the hospital, dying away in the Sunday morning quiet as he drove across country to the by-pass.

  Well, well, I thought. Well, well.

  All of which was why spring seemed to be a long time in coming that year, and when it did arrive, the staff-nurse in Margaret Ward was the person who brought me my first bunch of daffodils.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Sun on My Face

  For the first few days after my row with Marcus my only reaction was one of amusement. Ordinary rows always do make me laugh in retrospect. Extraordinary ones make me, like everyone else, squirm. As Marcus and I were alike in so many ways, I was sure that in a week or so he would roar up the ramp on his motor-cycle and we would both have a good laugh over it all. I neither saw nor heard anything of Marcus and his motor-cycle for several weeks. By the time May had arrived I found I was missing him horribly ‒ was very sorry we had had that Sunday-morning scene. I did not know what to do about it, so I pushed it to the back of my mind and did nothing. I concentrated on taking an interest in my fellow patients and getting well myself.

  The former was rather difficult. My bed now lived permanently in the shelter at the top of the ramp and even for a visit from the Professor was never pushed back into Margaret Ward. Sister Margaret was quite naturally not at all keen to have me in her Ward, breathing out my own bugs ‒ or inhaling bigger and better ones from the rest of the bed-patients. My own bugs were harmless and negative. I had not had a positive result for months. Still, Sister Margaret was not taking any chances, and she could hardly be blamed. The nurses and myself were sorry about this. Nurses can always use extra help. The rare occasion when there is a trained nurse in the ward as an up-patient seemed too good to miss. I would have enjoyed a little gentle bed-making and tray-carrying. Now that I was allowed up for a while each day I found time moved incredibly slowly. Though I would never have admitted it, I was generally very glad to get back to bed.

  There was a hill behind the hospital. It was on this hill that the pine-trees grew. The hill was called Lucks Hill. From th
e top of the hill you were supposed to be able to see five counties.

  I had been up to the top a good many times when I was doing my training down there. I now had the idea that when I was able to get up to the top without being short of breath I should be cured, whatever the Professor, Frankie Spence, the pathologist, or the radiologist might say to the contrary.

  The hill was very steep. The path wound its way gently upward, and at first the going was fairly easy. The path ended in a small jutting plateau which was situated two-thirds of the way up the hill. There was a low stone seat on that plateau, built by some man as a memorial to his sister. There was also a notice that said from the seat you could see three of the five counties, the other two had to wait till you got to the peak of the hill. The last hundred and fifty yards to the top of the hill steepened, the gradient was round two in three, and it was impossible to get along without using your hands unless you wore climbing boots.

  As I was not officially supposed to exert myself I practised that hill on the quiet. I went a little farther up the path every other day for the first fortnight and then every day. It took me six weeks to reach the seat on the plateau. As I had only ordinary crepe-soled walking-shoes and one usable lung, I waited a few days before starting on the last lap.

  I came nearer to Bruce’s spider on that wretched piece of ground than ever before or since. The spider won hands down. It took a great many more than seven goes for me to reach the top.

  Frankie Spence found me sitting up on the stone seat one evening in June. He asked me if I had gone mad. I explained this was not my first time up. ‘And look how I’m putting on weight, Frankie! And I’ve been negative for ages!’