by Nina Stibbe
It was a good-quality journal, with a beautiful marbled cover, sewn-in pages and narrow lines. She had taken the liberty of writing Dentistry for Beginners by Lizzie Vogel–1980 on the title page, and a letter had been inserted.
Dearest Lizzie,
Please write this journal as you learn the ropes. Things learned each day (or week, depending how dull or disgusting it all is), the tips and tricks, the rumours, the gossip, and funny vignettes about the patients–and your associated feelings and musings.
Later you might publish it to great acclaim. People are all for ‘hearing it from the maid’ these days. But remember, they are not sympathetic toward dentists and will not want to read much about teeth, especially rotten or broken ones. Skirt around as much as possible to make it readable.
I shan’t miss you since I plan to visit you often.
Your loving mother,
Elizabeth Vogel-Benson-Holt
PS Please look out for a letter addressed to me.
At that time my mother most often signed her name ‘Elizabeth Benson-Holt’, but sometimes she included Vogel too, either to remind her children that they were bound together, in recognition of the long and winding road they’d been on, or perhaps just out of habit, a slip of the pen. The order of the names varied; it depended how she was feeling.
I read the note twice. I had no special desire to publish a book, especially not one on dentistry.
‘Tell her I’d have preferred that spoon,’ I said.
And it was on that sulky note that Mr Holt left and I was alone in my new flat. I put the journal on the shelf under the coffee table, picked up a copy of Woman’s Own and read a perceptive short story by Penelope Lively about a schoolboy.
I had a wander about downstairs where I found piles of magazines stacked up in the utility room–more copies of Woman’s Own, Woman, Titbits and others–and took a few upstairs with me. I was pleasantly surprised by these over the next few days and really took to them, even going as far as to imagine how nice it must be to write for a magazine like that. I wondered where you might learn all the womanly knowledge necessary to fill it week after week. It occurred to me that the best journalists must go about looking for women, to share their wisdom and anecdotes and use a tiny cassette to record them. I laughed at the idea of coming across one like my mother who might talk of her love of trampolining in her younger days, before her pelvic muscles had given out–the strange elation of airborne propulsion and the knowledge that one foot wrong and you could lose a front tooth or land in a heap of humiliation. In other words, it was a sex substitute–like having beauty treatments and doing macramé. Or they might phone Buckingham Palace and ask a royal receptionist how the Queen keeps her figure, and the receptionist might simply say that she counts calories, jogs on the spot, and spits out the walnuts off her Walnut Whips. A clever journalist would ask leading questions on the subject of dietary fibre and later tip off a colleague in the adverts department who might ring up Kellogg’s and ask them to take out an advert for All Bran.
The surgery was closed that day but later Tammy Gammon came in to show me how the storage heaters worked, and how to light the grill on the cooker. ‘If you forget to hold the red button down, you’ll gas yourself, like I almost did when I lived up here,’ she said, ‘and we’ll find you dead in the morning.’
She showed me the Hoover Aristocrat washer and dryer, and told me not to have them going at the same time because of overloading the adapter, and then she warned me that having one’s own washing machine and tumble dryer was a mixed blessing. On the one hand you have your own facilities, but on the other, you end up with a constant stream of friends and neighbours appearing with bags of laundry expecting to put a wash through, in which case, you have to be firm and say something like, ‘If you’re just coming round here to use my washer and dryer then do me a favour and go to the launderette on Sparkenhoe Street.’ Which she’d had to do with Rhona, Bill Turner’s nurse from up the road, who’d kept appearing with a load of dirty laundry pretending she wanted to be pals.
She also reminded me that as a tenant I’d be permanently on-call to go down into the cellar to switch off the generator–should it ever accidentally be left on after practice hours, which was the main reason for the cheapness of the rent.
‘Also, JP will need to use your toilet in the mornings,’ she said, with a tiny grimace.
‘What? Why?’
‘He often gets the urge after his mid-morning coffee, and he obviously can’t use the general toilet on the first floor.’
‘Why not?’
‘He just can’t–a patient might see him coming out and a dentist needs total privacy. He’s fastidious cleanliness-wise, if that’s your beef–and I should know, it used to be my toilet, remember?’
‘I wish I’d known this before,’ I muttered.
Tammy ignored this and told me I was welcome to the cactus on the ledge and then showed me a tiny under-stairs cupboard that should by rights come with the flat but if I didn’t mind she’d like to keep it.
‘For personal bits and bobs and things I don’t want His Nibs to see–you know,’ she said. ‘Got to maintain the feminine mystique.’
After Tammy had gone, I strolled down into town and looked around the shops where I bought a curl-encourager hairbrush, some lemons (for show) and a coat. I hadn’t set out for a coat but let me tell you briefly here about it. It was in the January sales and was only still in stock because it had been returned with a slight mark on one lapel. That dab of lipstick was of no interest to me. If it had been food or blood, I might have been put off, but lipstick was fine. The coat was a floppy tweedy material, wool but thin and very supple; the shoulders were slouchy and there was a seam running along each and right down the sleeve. All perfect, but the main thing was the herringbone pattern in the weave. Herringbone was like music and art to me, and science actually, and it felt so strong and so soothing. It was floors and bricks and teeth and bones. I can’t state strongly enough how much I loved this pattern–more than a pattern, it was a system, a scheme.
Also, the colours, a gingery brown and a greyish cream, made the colour neutral. As for the lining, you won’t believe it but it was bronze silk with tiny yellow dots that would flash whenever the coat opened, which would be often since I never buttoned coats, ever, unless I was in Alaska, and I never was. And anyway, it had no buttons, only a great belt with no buckle. And though it was a designated size (eight as it happens) it would fit anyone with narrow shoulders who wasn’t unusually tall or incredibly broad. This was a coat that anyone would want, but it was available to me now because some woman had worn it at least once and smudged red lipstick on it, and had then rejected it (because of the smudge?) and returned it for an exchange–maybe a smart mac for the forecast wet spring, or a coat with buttons as not everyone would countenance a buttonless coat.
Or maybe she’d just got the money back, and not had another coat but the cash alternative. Perhaps she would have loved the coat but needed the money. I knew of this, the time my granny Benson bought me a swingy jersey skirt and matching bat-wing top in petrol blue and black stripes that made me look like Kiki Dee, but I saw on the tag that it had cost £25 for the two pieces and felt I needed the money more than I needed to look like Kiki Dee. So I returned it and got a credit voucher which I sold to my mother for £20 and she got some cowboy jeans so low on the hips you could almost see her pants.
The original cost of the coat had been immense. You could read the price on the tag before the two reductions. Now it was £7.50, which was cheap even by my standards and it was worth so much more. I thought it was going to change my life.
I took it to the cashier who folded it in an expert way, wrapped it in tissue and was about to slide it into a carrier bag so ridiculously, embarrassingly big that I said, ‘Actually, I’ll just carry it.’
3. The First Impressions
My first day as a dental nurse was patient-free training. I didn’t even have to change into my white dress, wh
ich was a disappointment. I was greeted again by Tammy Gammon. This time her apricot hair was fixed by assorted slides and clips into a tight, headache-inducing ponytail. I noticed she had the same low, untidy hairline as Elizabeth Taylor. And a fine blonde moustache.
The surgery and waiting room were quite plainly decorated. All the better to show off Tammy’s Christmas cactuses which were crammed in dustily by a console and trailed over the deep sill of a square casement window. They were in abundant flower then, it being midwinter, and the cascading flowers (fuchsia pink) hung from crocodile-like stems. Tammy frowned seriously as she explained the watering technique. ‘Always rainwater, never tap,’ she said, pausing to check I was taking it in. ‘Always room temperature, never cold.’ And finally, ‘Always drip, drip, never gush, gush.’
I nodded gravely and reminded her that I was fresh from managing the largest show rockery in the UK and if anyone was going to remember how to handle the Schlumbergera (I used their official name), it was me. Her stiff little shoulders relaxed and she smiled.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’m very green-fingered.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, and then muttered, ‘Schlumbergera.’
‘Glebe Gardens stock a wide range of succulents,’ I said.
‘By the way, children sometimes climb up into the windowsill for fun, and the parents turn a blind eye, but if I catch them, I drag them out –’ Tammy looked stern–‘by the leg.’
‘Right.’
The walls featured a map of the mouth, a small Dr Seuss poster which read, ‘Only brush the teeth you want to keep,’ and a portrait of Henry D. Cogswell, an American dentist from the gold-rush years, a philanthropist and temperance man who donated cold-water fountains to the townsfolk to prevent them drinking alcohol. Apparently a distant relative of Tammy’s.
A central table with liquorice-twist legs displayed yet more piles of Woman’s Own magazine and some thin, stapled booklets that Tammy had produced, entitled Dalrymple, McWilliam & Wintergreen, containing out-of-date information about the practice and a few illustrations.
Next, Tammy introduced me to the appointments system, kept in a smart-looking book with a reusable leatherette cover in maroon. It displayed one week to two pages, with each weekday column divided into quarter-hours, and the months printed in gold. Tammy emphasized the crucial importance of booking patients in for their next six-monthly appointment.
‘You’ve got to understand, Lizzie, people don’t want to come here. It’s something I’ve had to come to terms with. It really doesn’t matter how nice I am as a person, how pretty the waiting room, how glorious the cactus–people would rather be anywhere but here.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand.’
‘And when we see them, we’re seeing them at their worst–weak, nervy, angry, in pain,’ she said. ‘So we have to be welcoming but firm.’
‘Right.’
‘If they say something like, “Can you tell Dr Wintergreen I’m really nervous?” you should say, “Dentists aren’t called Dr–it’s Mr Wintergreen,” and that can take their mind off it.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘and what if they ask me about fluoridation of the drinking water or the toxicity of mercury?’
‘Just fudge it and tell JP before you bring them through. He’ll take them down a peg or two–he can’t abide a know-it-all.’ Tammy laughed.
‘And if you don’t book them in straight away for their next six-monthly appointment,’ she continued, ‘they might leave it ten months or even a year before they remember they’re due for an inspection and that’s the equivalent of taking JP’s money and throwing it down the toilet.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll be rigorous about rebooking.’
Apparently, I’d see life fly by now that I was working with six-monthly advance appointments.
‘You’re saying goodbye to a family of four one minute and, in the blink of an eye, they’re trooping back in for their next check-up–with a squawking new baby and a change of address, and you’ve done nothing.’ Tammy chuckled. ‘And then, the next thing you know, the dad’s gone under a bus, the mother’s remarried and the baby’s clambering around knocking the blossoms off the cactuses.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Names should only ever be written softly in the book, in pencil, so that if a patient phones to change their appointment, we can erase them easily without spoiling the page.’
We continued with a whistle-stop tour of the surgery, which was an incredibly crowded room. The ‘treatment island’, including two dental drill arms, a tiny white porcelain spittoon and a round marble tray on an extending arm, took up most of the space. Tammy demonstrated how to adjust the lumpy headrest on the fat leatherette chair, and affix the dribble bib correctly, without constricting a patient’s throat. The treatment island sat on a disc of maroon rubber (the exact same colour as the appointments book) that tapered down to meet the grey carpet tiles; it reminded me of the grim black pond, in a horror film, which contained all the answers.
I noticed a dark patch where, I presumed, the spittoon must drip–or possibly droplets of mouthwash were slopped by shaky-handed patients. And a faded area, on the opposite side, where JP Wintergreen’s Mediclogs must shuffle about, hour after hour, as he looked into people’s mouths.
To the side, on a square metal trolley, sat the ultrasonic scaler. This was new, Tammy told me, and JP’s pride and joy. It had revolutionized the cleaning of his patients’ teeth and was also perfect for descaling the kettle and removing nail varnish.
In the corner, assorted in-trays, pen pots and papers sat on a desk. A calendar for 1980 featuring Cacti in the Wild hung on a pin to the side. January’s being The Original Prickly Pear of Kansas.
We took a break and Tammy made some coffee in a jug with hot milk and granules. She popped a sugar lump into her mouth and pressed a buzzer by the door. Soon JP Wintergreen appeared, and after a few sips, which left a great piece of milk-skin across his lips, he took a pack of cigarettes and a chunky lighter from his pocket and offered them to Tammy. She took one, lit it, and then instead of smoking it herself, held it to JP’s lips and fed him a puff. We drank our coffee and Tammy chattered, holding the cigarette and flicking it into a little glass ashtray, just as a smoker would, but never took a puff herself, only held it to JP’s lips every now and again. If she left it too long between puffs, he would stick his lips forward and make a kissing noise.
‘Are you a smoker, Lizzie?’ she asked.
I’d just around then decided to smoke only when I really, really wanted to, which turned out to be hardly ever. So I replied, ‘Not during the daytime,’ which sounded aloof so, to make up for it, I described my smoke rings, including my trademark ring-within-a-ring and the perfect smoke square I’d once blown but had never managed to recreate. Tammy was captivated.
‘Ooh, ooh, try now,’ she said, and thrust JP’s cigarette at me.
I had no choice but to take a drag and noticed that JP had wet the end. People do wet the end sometimes, I knew it happened, but this was sodden and seeing it (feeling it) I knew that nothing JP ever did in the future could make up for it. It was one of those things.
I tried to blow a smoke square but the unfavourable conditions (draught from the ill-fitting sash window), plus the pressure of being scrutinized by a new boss, meant I produced nothing more than an untidy puff.
‘Sorry, that was rubbish,’ I said.
‘Try again.’ Tammy popped another sugar lump.
I prepared for my second attempt by telling myself to ‘buck up or fuck up’, a thing my mother always shouted at herself in times of stress. I took another drag and blew out two perfect, quivering rings that hung in the air before dissipating, like a Hanna-Barbera tycoon’s cigar smoke. Tammy clapped and I tried for a square–but to no avail.
‘You shouldn’t have clapped,’ JP said to Tammy. ‘You disturbed the air. Try again, nurse.’
‘I can only really do squares in the mirror,’ I said. ‘I need to get my mouth right.’
JP and Tammy seemed let down.
‘Do you have any other tricks?’ asked JP.
And that was when I did my impression of Prince Charles. I had to hand the cigarette back because I needed both hands to push my ears forward. Tammy laughed so hard she fell sideways off her chair. It was hard to tell how impressed JP was because he had to help her up.
‘Oh, my goodness, that is amazing,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Do it again.’
JP left us then and Tammy ran the cigarette under the tap, still laughing and saying, ‘Oh, Lord.’ She scrubbed at her fingers with some Sqezy and a potato brush, and gabbled on about nothing in particular, presumably to distract me from the fact that JP had gone upstairs to use my bathroom.
I hoped I should never be called upon to feed JP his cigarette and wondered how the ritual had started.
‘We had complaints from patients about his fingers smelling of tobacco,’ said Tammy, reading my thoughts.
‘But he has no patients today.’
‘I know, but he enjoys being fed now, like a baby with his bottle. It’s soothing.’
‘Right,’ I said.
We went back down to the surgery. Tammy had suggested I listen in on any incoming phone calls, to get the hang of things, but the phone hadn’t rung all morning except when my mother called to ask if I’d moved her car keys and Tammy had had to remind her I’d left home four days ago. After the coffee break, though, there was a bona-fide call. I felt quite relieved; the real world was still out there, and this wasn’t some elaborate game.
Tammy answered and gestured for me to listen in. There followed an awkward conversation.
Caller: ‘I’d like to make an appointment to see the dentist for a check-up, please.’
Tammy: ‘Are you registered here?’