Dear Mr Bigelow

by Frances Woodsford

  Very sincere and affectionate greetings,

  Frances W.

  1954

  June 12th (p. 177), 'To wish you dear Commodore,

  your happiest birthday yet.'

  BOURNEMOUTH

  January 16th 1954

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  Alas, here we are once more on our annual pilgrimage to the dentist, losing weight by the pound and sleep by the night. Usually, my 'twice yearly visit' is so dragged out that I turn up each time just as the mimosa tree outside the surgery window is puffed up with yellow flowers. This year, instead of waiting until about May before I plucked up courage, the keen North wind coming suddenly into an open mouth sent me helter-skelter for a telephone and an appointment.

  So I arrived at Mr Samson's on Thursday in my usual state of shivers and shakes, and was furious to see a large bowl of mimosa on a marble column in an embrasure in the surgery. I said, indignantly, 'Oh! And I was sure I was early in my visit this year!' and Mr Samson looked so smug I confess I thought he'd had the blossom picked and put there to come fully out in the indoor warmth, just to make me feel the usual cowardly worm I do feel. I felt that way more than ever when the examination was over, and I found that the drilling in one large back tooth was but a preliminary. Now I have to go and see the junior partner on Monday morning ('and be sure and tell him you're to have an injection,' which bodes ill) and have some more drilling on the tooth. Then, on the following Thursday I see Mr S. once more and he'll decide whether or not he can avoid taking out this bad tooth. Three visits for one tooth! I shudder – especially at the idea of, perhaps, finding it hopeless on Monday and taking it out forthwith, for my first-aid exam is Monday evening and an aching jaw is no help at all as an aidemémoire . . .

  We read in the papers that you have been having appalling weather lately: I hope you have stayed snug and warm indoors, and not decided to see just how warm the Mercury can remain in below-zero weather. We had a pelting hailstorm, with thunder and lightning and all the stage effects thrown in, two days ago, but since then it has been warm and muggy, though a bit ghusty. I sat and considered that last bit of spelling for some time before I noticed what was wrong with it. Don't you agree with me that a 'ghust' sounds much more windy than a plain 'gust'. After all, the aspirate sounds like a blow: let's reform spelling, shall us? . . .

  Last Sunday morning the police telephoned my brother, and the upshot of it was that he had to collect two children from their home, and find them a foster-parent. As it is always awkward moving children and driving the car at the same time, he asked me if I would accompany him. The sudden necessity for moving the children had arisen because on the Saturday night their mother had eloped with the man next door. This left the deserted father with three children to look after (the baby was collected Saturday night, as it was too young for the father to cope with) and the deserted mother next door also with a family – she had four. A total of nine lives upset, and in many instances, changed and made unhappy, because of the selfishness of two adults. Ah well, I am not in a position to judge, and I must say when I met the deserted father I thought him an awful weed . . .

  Now I must get this posted. I hope your cold is now quite a memory, and that your recent bad weather has not affected you except by keeping you snugly indoors with the dogs and the cat and The Tin-Opener, Television, and Telephone to keep you in touch with the outside world.

  Very sincerely,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  January 23rd 1954

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  The Event of the Week, apart from two trips to the dentist at which he drilled merrily through to my left eardrum on Monday, and my Adam's Apple on Thursday, has been, of course, the First Aid Examination. Listen, and you shall hear about it.

  The first-aid lectures – and the examination – are held in a large old house in Bournemouth, sparsely furnished with stretchers, broken-down wooden chairs which fold up unexpectedly, a telephone switchboard and piles of red and grey blankets and grey bandages. These last were once pure snowy white, but have been subjected to long use and misuse by generations of students.

  We were herded into what passes normally for the 'staff room'. Here was a small wooden table, a tin trunk, and about six leather-covered seats removed from old motor cars. Not even an out of date copy of Punch to make us feel we were at home, in the dentist's waiting room. Make all except me feel at home, that is, for as you know, the dentist's waiting room is never, never homelike to me. Anyway, we nearly all arrived, as per instructions, at seven o'clock, burping our hastily eaten dinners and biting our fingernails. At twenty past seven an untidy, lumpy figure was seen going down the hall – this was the examining doctor, at the sight of whom sundry groans went up from girls who had met him before. He is apparently one of the school doctors who examine all the children in our free schools (your public schools).

  Four men – chosen to be the 'patients' for following students – went to our lecture room. The next four, of which I was one, waited. And waited. And waited. By half past eight our shattered nerves were lying all over the place – you never saw such a sight – and it was almost a relief to get our call. Not, I may say, for very long.

  The doctor was, at a guess, Austrian. Rather flabby fleshed, with sparse pale hair turning grey, and thick fat hands to match his thick fat lips, I thought him most unprepossessing. He sorted us out alphabetically, and as I am a 'W', I knew I'd be the last to be examined. But there we were: doctor, table, four students in a row, and behind us lying about on mats and rugs and things, the four male 'patients'. In one corner a St John's Ambulance Brigade lady – our practical instructor – sat rolling up triangular bandages and smiling to herself. No doubt to keep up her spirits.

  The first question, mouthed in an effort to make the accent (and the question) completely clear, was, 'Vot are de zigns and zymptoms of a fragture of de loombar region of de zpine?' The first student hadn't the remotest idea. Helped, prodded, hinted and cajoled by the doctor, she decided that the patient would be in great pain and unable to move his head! More than this she could not say. When the doctor, trying hard, said 'Vot abart his legz?' she merely said 'they'd be painful', which was not really meeting the poor man halfway, was it? She had three other questions she answered just about as well. Not altogether giving up hope, the examiner then told her to go and do a 'collar and tie', and a bandage for a broken upper arm. She did the first, and part of the second, but unfortunately she did them both on the same patient. 'Ah well!' said the doctor philosophically, 'I suppose it was my fault – I didn't tell you to use two patients.' So she slunk out of the room, I imagine, though we were so terrified by then we none of us could have turned our heads if Christian Dior himself had been waving free frocks at us from behind our chairs.

  Patiently the doctor started on No. 2. Her first question was 'You (you must imagine the accent, I can't keep it up) are going along a road and you come across a man lying in the road, unconscious, and bleeding from the left ear. What do you suspect has happened?' The girl said brightly, 'Oh, I'd suspect he'd had a blow.' A passing carthorse, no doubt – a specially trained carthorse that could kick sideways. Passing rather rapidly – well, after about five minutes hard prodding and equally hard resistance – to the next question, the doctor asked what she would do if she found a man with a broken leg lying unconscious in a room full of gas. She would give artificial respiration. Obviously very pleased with herself.

  By this time it had penetrated even through my thick skull that the doctor was a man who wanted first things first. The first thing he want-ed in that question was – 'Get the patient out of the gassy room.' I took heart and resolved to get my answers in their right order. After all, the doctor went out of his way to make us give correct answers: he was extremely kind in that way. Student No. 3 fared no better – she was beginning to get the end of the doctor's tether, and no wonder. He asked her what she would do if she came across somebody, perhaps in a war, who had had their arm blown off
at the elbow. Shades of me and the Civil Defence exercise, I thought, and wished I'd had that question, knowing its answer from hard experience. Quite correctly she told him about a rubber bandage. 'And then what?' She racked her brains – you could distinctly hear them racking and said, 'Oh, I'd feel the pulse.' The doctor counted up to a few dozens or so, and I wondered whether he'd say 'Where would the pulse be, in the next building?' but he didn't, he merely sighed and said sadly, 'You would be wrong, young lady. For your future information, there should be no pulse beyond a tourniquet if you put it on correctly.' No. 3 passed out of my ken to do a bandage. That left me, shivering.

  'What is shock?' was my first question, and a horrid one to answer, too. I described the zigns und zymptomz, and chattered merrily about 'primary' and 'secondary' shock, 'surgical shock' and so on. (Afterwards I looked it up and found that surgical and secondary are the same thing.) Gently prodded, I found myself bringing out a bit about the causes of shock, and suddenly the doctor and I were merrily engaged in arguing about whether or not it was possible to get into a state of shock when you didn't know what hit you. He gave me a little lecture, and I was (I hope) suitably grateful.

  'You find an unconscious person in the road. What do you do?' Well, the book-answer says to start at the head and look for causes of insensibility, and then work your way down the body, both sides. So I started on the head, and five minutes later we were still on that bloomin' head, looking for causes. We had done five different types of fractures on the skull (I knew them, so if you think I didn't let the doctor know I knew them, then you too need your head examined, Mr Bigelow) and eyes and haemorrhage and blood in the skin tissues. In a hurry, I mentioned possible asphyxiation (which should have been first, to be sure, and there I was doing what I had despised the others for doing) and the doctor said sternly, 'You've done First Aid before! Where?' I murmured something about doing a little in my job . . . Now this, Mr B., was a major error in tactics on my part. From there onwards, when-ever I hesitated for a second, he snapped 'Come, come, now – the Matron of the Baths must know!' until I wished I'd said I was a washer-up or a time-watcher or something; anything but what I was . . .

  And so thankfully I crept out. I shall pass, I'm quite sure of that, if only out of sheer relief on the doctor's part. I would dearly love to know if all the class gave as stupid a performance as my three fellow sufferers, but really don't think such a thing would be possible. Of the three, two were very young girls who had missed three lectures, which was an excuse for them. And the first was a middle-aged woman who knew everything, at the time of the lectures. Just goes to show – I must remember to emphasise my ignorance in future!

  I rushed home intending to have a large brandy to steady what were left of my shattered nerves, and to tell my family, no doubt all agog to hear, what had transpired. The family were playing Scrabble, as to Mother and Mac, and upside down on the sofa asleep, as to Freckleface.

  Nobody was a bit interested in my needs for brandy or for an audience. I almost went straight back to the office and wrote you on the spot. Only sheer laziness, and the knowledge that, if I did, I would be left high and dry today with nothing to write about, stopped me. However, now, if you feel yourself going unconscious at any time, just drop me a postcard. I rather hope to be fully qualified to discover the cause . . .

  Very sincerely,

  Frances Woodsford

  BOURNEMOUTH

  January 30th 1954

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  . . . My boss is away ill, and so are three of my staff, so perhaps it's just as well the weather is bad, otherwise goodness knows what I should be doing. When Mrs Bond telephoned me to say her husband was ill, I remarked crisply, 'If you don't mind my saying so, Mrs Bond, Sir is an idiot!' When asked why, I told her the silly creature spent 40 minutes out-side the Baths in the snowstorm cleaning his car. When he came in he was, of course, soaking wet (especially his shoes, for as you probably know, the English don't wear rubbers for some unknown reason) and when I attempted to whisk him down with a towel, he exploded. So I left him to go wetly back to his job, and eventually home, where he deservedly caught a bad chill and is now sitting up in bed with his usual little basin, which he fills as regularly as his wife gives him anything to drink – even water, at such times, makes the poor man sick. Men!

  Talking of men, I'll tell you about my brother this week, too. Now MacPherson is, let us face it, somewhat spoiled. He had to be indulged in every whim, when he was ill with rheumatic fever as a child, and we've never been able to break him of the habit since. Anyway, one of his habits which infuriates his punctual sister is his inability to be ready on time. Also, his own fury if anybody happens to keep him waiting so much as ten seconds. He isn't the one to do the waiting; on the contrary, everything, and everybody, waits for him. Well, on Thursday the roads were ice, and we sagely decided not to practise skating with the help of Hesperus, and both went out to go by bus to work. I was busy filling the coal scuttles and sweeping the paths, and was a bit pushed for time, so Mother said crossly to my brother to go out to the bus stop and see that it waited for me. I tore out; no bus, no brother either. He had walked the other way to buy some cigarettes. He turned up, and walked beyond the bus stop and down to our garage. Up came the bus, and in we all piled. I dawdled as much as I could, until the bus conductor asked if I was, after all, intending to catch that bus or the next one. On the platform, I caught a glimpse of Mac's face as we went past the end of the driveway to the garage . . . . . . a wonderful mixture of astonishment and fury! The bus wouldn't wait!!! Did the bus know for whom it was supposed to wait? Of course, he was born lucky; he ran to the next bus stop. Normally the bus would have left that point long before the fastest runner would have reached it, but this morning there were so many people there waiting to get on, that Mac arrived before the end of the queue had climbed aboard. Again, any ordinary person running on those icy pavements would have broken at least their spine and seven ribs; but not Mac who, as I said before, was born lucky . . .

  I also had a very charming letter this week from Mrs Dall. It was so kind of her to write, wasn't it. Full of praise for somebody she called 'Commodore'. Who on earth could she mean? . . .

  This morning, the sun is shining forcefully through my window and baking me as I sit at my typewriting desk. The snow – or rather, the ice – outside is still very conspicuous, but at least some of it melted in the sunshine yesterday. Freckleface was much happier this morning, for the snow on the coal-heap has melted and he was able to scratch on it instead of in the snow. When I left, he was lying upside down on my bed, with his forepaws up in the air and his rear end covered by a blanket, his flank supported by a hot-water bottle, and his little pink mouth slightly open. Ditto, one eye – that being all he feels is necessary. I called Mother and said, 'You can see where Frecks has been digging today, can't you?' He was, apparently, wearing black elbow-length gloves . . .

  Thanks for your letters, as always.

  Frances W.

  LEFT-END OF SOFA

  NEAREST THE FIRE

  WINTER

  February 9th 1954

  Sir,

  How dare you! Your letter was read to me yesterday in which you expressed surprise that I didn't like going out in the snow.

  My reason for not going out when it is cold and snowy is – I have a gorgeous tail, and if anything happened to it how could I tell the family of slaves who wait upon my every whim, when they displease me? Such logical self-preservation appears beyond a certain 'Angel Face'. How she dares to call herself so, I do not comprehend. Nobody has such an angelic face as your irate correspondent.

  Freckleface

  Plushbottom

  Beau Bully

  Woodsford

  BOURNEMOUTH

  March 6th 1954

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  . . . Well, to go from bad to worse. Cars. And brothers. And car-salesmen. And car-salesmen and brothers, in conjunction. I told you letters back, didn't I, that we were negotiating
for another car when Hesperus incontinently let us down by collapsing? Well, the other car was a very nice-looking little Standard and the deal was originally only stopped when I, being brought along so that this time I couldn't blame my brother if we bought another pup, said innocently that I personally wouldn't dream of buying a car without so much as hearing the engine run. This pulled everybody up somewhat – it turned out later, we were told, that the car was out of petrol . . .

  Isn't this situation – or series of situations – in Egypt comical? It would be, were it not tragic for so many, and serious for so many other nations. Monday everybody is denouncing Neguib* and saying how kind they were not to have him killed. Tuesday he is back, and Wednesday they are all photographed holding hands and smiling like tame gigolos into each other's eyes. Probably the hand-holding is to prevent each other using back-stabbers, but the smiles puzzle me. Unless, perhaps, they are so used to seeing crocodiles in the Nile the politicians automatically adopt the same facial expression . . . . . .

  * Editor's note: Mohammed Neguib, Egyptian leader, had deposed King Farouk in 1952, but was himself forced to resign in February 1954 when Colonel Abdel Nassar replaced him.

  What with us in Egypt, and you in Puerto Rico, we are having trouble, aren't we? Isn't it horrible to realise one is so unpopular, especially when one tries so hard to do what is best for the other bloke. Couldn't someone in your country suggest that Senator McCarthy (Macarthy, Mcarthy?) is looking the wrong way and should turn his eyes away from the Army for a bit, and down to the Caribbean . . .

  A miracle happened on Monday, Mr Bigelow. I was sitting reading the paper by the fire after dinner, and my brother, who was later home than me was eating his dinner, when suddenly he said, 'Norah.' I said 'Um?' and my astounded ears heard his voice saying, 'I realise it was entirely my fault, and I do appreciate your not throwing it in my face that I bought the Ford . . . . . . !!!!!' The upshot was, that he intends paying the difference between what (we hope) we get for the Ford and what another car costs, if I in turn will pay for the car tax and the insurance. As this would save me anything up to £12 or £15, you can imagine I was far from displeased! I am, however, woman-like, intrigued to discover where Mac has suddenly acquired all this money, because he was flat broke directly after Christmas and all through January, and his job certainly doesn't pay him all that much cash. However, no doubt if I sit tight and ask no questions, I shall hear in due course . . .