at what might be about to happen, and getting each other nervous, plus my overactive imagination was working away, as usual. I didn’t really know what I was in for until the mortician, a Mr Tayler, a lofty, serious-faced consultant, pulled back the shroud and there was a stark naked middle-aged man, the colour of putty: stone cold dead. I could feel my knees going immediately, so I crossed my arms and wrapped my fingers tight round my elbows to try to keep myself from falling over. There were lots of shiny, ordinary-looking surgical implements laid out, like a chisel, a carving knife, and then I espied something like a garden saw. Surely he wasn’t going to use those? I closed my eyes and swallowed.
When I opened them again, the mortician picked the saw up cheerfully and without further ado deftly hacked through the top of the man’s head. I stood there open-mouthed, and was amazed to see his brain fluid, like a grey, wrinkled, deflated football, which he scooped neatly in a silver bowl, explaining all the while about the nature of brain matter. Four of the assembled nurses went down immediately, like skittles, and one ran out, holding her hand over her mouth. Completely unperturbed, Mr Tayler continued his butchery, talking coolly all the while. I couldn’t really concentrate and could feel my gorge rising, but I was determined to see it through, so dug my fingers into my arms even harder. Then Mr Tayler got his scalpel and cut the poor man’s body from the neck to his pubes and suddenly all his guts were tumbling out, like miles and miles of grey sausages into a great silver tray alongside the slab … that was it, I was done for: I felt my knees buckle as the room spun round and I was sick as a dog on the floor.
When I came round I was outside on a chair, along with five other white-faced nurses, most of whom were bent double, holding their heads in their hands, and groaning. We were all told, in no uncertain terms, by a tough staff nurse, that we had to pull ourselves together straight away and get back in there. We were wasting valuable time, and this was part of our training – we were here to learn and we’d better get used to it. So after a few more woozy minutes and a sip of water we all had to troop back in and carry on watching as Mr Tayler cheerfully continued his controlled carnage, whether we liked it or not.
After a tough experience like my first injection, or the nauseating post-mortems, we took refuge in each other’s rooms at night to put the world to rights and, literally, let our hair down. I had begun to make some firm friends in those first few months: Rosie, Hanse, Magdelena, Christe and Susan, who would keep me sane over the next three years one way or another. We would all club together and nip out to the local pub and get us a couple of bottles of Merrydown cider, our favourite tipple, and a couple of packs of Woodbines (often from Bert the porter). This was standard fare for a good nattery debrief. We’d pile into my room (nearly always mine for some reason), and we’d be on my bed, cackling, gassing, recounting the horrors of the day until lights out, and beyond.
One night I drank a bit too much (as was my wont), and I was desperate for a pee. We had the windows open to waft the smoke out (smoking was totally forbidden, of course), and I realised I was too far gone to get up and find the lavatories at the end of the corridor. Being clumsy, I would probably alert Home Sister Matthews by staggering about, and then we’d all be for it. So, we closed the windows, giggling, and I decided I would pee in the sink to save time. This increased the suppressed laughter ten-fold, especially as I tried to hitch up my skirt and bum onto the tiny hand-basin and position myself to pee properly without flooding the floor. ‘Oh, Mary, be careful,’ Susan was just saying when there was an almighty ‘craa-aack’ and the sink came away from the wall, tipping me onto the floor, with my pants round my knees in a pool of water. The four witnesses fell off the bed in complete hysterics, and we all lay helplessly on the wooden floor for about five minutes until we heard Home Sister’s footsteps begin to clip down the corridor. ‘Sssshhhh,’ I said, and everyone mimicked, ‘Sssshhhh!’ and we all lay there, panting and trying to suppress our mounting hysteria, waiting for Sister to barge in with a torch. Luckily, we heard her feet pause, then begin to retreat, thankfully, once we managed to shut up.
However, next day I had to explain precisely why my sink was hanging off my wall at such a crazy angle. Home Sister fixed me with her beady eye. ‘So, nurse, you were saying about opening the windows?’ ‘Ah, yes, Sister,’ I went on, innocently. ‘Well, it was like this: I put my foot on the sink to get up to open the window as it was stuffy and, well, the sink just gave way …’ Sister peered at me critically for a moment. ‘It’s a considerable amount of weight to put on such a small sink,’ she said, pointedly. ‘Yes, Sister,’ I said, thinking, ‘Sweet Jesus, I’m for it, now.’ After another long pause she said, without looking up, ‘Well, kindly stop using your room as a climbing frame from now on, nurse.’ And that was it. She had bought my story, I think, particularly as I had a reputation for being a bit of a clumsy twit. This scene with Sister was recounted to my friends, over yet more Woodbines and Merrydown, and to the accompaniment of yet more giggles, gasps and ‘Oh, Mary’s’ later that night.
1952, the year I hit Putney, was also the year that the first espresso coffee machine came to London. It became ‘cool’ to frequent coffee bars, which were thought to be almost illicit dens of iniquity and heinous vice. In Putney there was a wonderful coffee house called Zeta’s, which was a large shop on the corner, where we would all go on our day off. There was also Mario’s, a lovely old Italian place, that did huge knickerbocker glories, which I thought were marvellous. We would sit there, nursing a coffee in a Pyrex glass cup and saucer, and someone would put music on the Wurlitzer, and it all seemed very sophisticated and grown up to be out alone, spending my own meagre earnings on coffee, Woodbines, cake, ice cream and music. We were always hungry, always thirsty, but we had to live within our means, which were very tight, so there was no other way.
Of course, I loved shopping. Window shopping, mainly, as I had little money and none to spend on clothes. Putney High Street was a broad, posh, leafy road, with lovely shops, and I liked nothing better than to stroll up and down it, lusting after goods. I remember longing for a pair of red stilettos in Saxone’s that cost £3.00 and wondering how long it would take me to save for them. I knew I would have to save for weeks, even months, as, in those days, if you didn’t have the money, you simply didn’t have something you wanted. You had to ‘save up’ and that could take ages and ages. I thought ‘I’m going to have those’ and, eventually, after weeks of saving hard, I did.
I liked fashion a great deal. Back home I had been used to my mother being able to run up anything. She made my fabulous pale strapless green evening dress, which I wore at sixteen to my first grown-up dance in Clonmel, which doubled as my leaving ‘do’. In those days you had one good frock, and one good pair of strappy evening shoes, and they lasted you for years, too. I brought the green dress with me to Putney, in the hope I’d have occasion to wear it one day, and I was always amending it: putting some ribbon on it here, or a corsage or bow, or a little flourish, there. It’s what we did in those ‘make-do-and-mend’ post-war years.
I also bought my first proper two-piece suit in Richard Shops: it was pale grey with a pleated skirt. It was all the rage to have big skirts with net under-petticoats, and to wear gypsy-style blouses on top. Everything was waisted and girly, and I knew I looked good as I had a tiny waist back then. It would all be topped by having a ‘shampoo and set’ at a new, modern hair salon on the High Street, which had those dome hairdryers we sat under in rollers (although this would only happen on very special occasions). I would have to save for a cut and set, and would have one maybe every two or three months or so. Meanwhile, I would snip my fringe myself and, being me, it was usually lop-sided once I’d finished hacking at it in the bathroom mirror.
During these first few months of settling in, I would write dutiful letters home, making my London life sound busy and meaningful, and would make my job sound important (which it was to me). I certainly didn’t tell of the men I saw naked, or the cigarettes and booze, or even what I had encountered on the wards. My mother would write back, telling of local and family news, but would ask almost nothing of my life in England or as a trainee nurse. She simply didn’t want to know. This hurt me, but I knew how proud and stubborn my mother was. So I had to rely on my sisters for the real news from back home. I felt very nostalgic thinking of the lovely rural countryside, the orchards, and my dear sisters, brother and father, and the dogs, but I didn’t miss either my mother, really, or the nuns. And of course, I never asked for money. I certainly