happened with G.B.H.?” I ask. “Is he going to report us?”
“I think I have more grounds for reporting him,” yawns Penny.
“Why? What did he do?” I can imagine G.B.H. waking up, thinking that he is faced with a couple of burglars and—
“Virtually nothing. Snivelling little gnat-testicled creep. He couldn’t satisfy an over-sexed elf who went off like a tin of pre-war snoek.”
“Penny! You didn’t—he didn’t—”
“Oh, don’t be so wet. It was the only way of shutting him up, wasn’t it? I didn’t notice you hanging around to explain that we were collecting for the Salvation Army.”
“I came back,” I say indignantly.
“It’s more than he did,” sniffs Penny. “He makes love like someone rubbing a pencil mark off a sheet of tissue paper.”
The very thought of being touched by Mr Greaves makes me feel sick and I am relieved that he is not in his office when we go to breakfast. This meal is served in the main hospital dining room and it gives me a chance to survey some of the medical talent on display. There is only one real hunk of Eradlik material to be seen and I am not on the brink of tears when I notice him gazing at me moodily over the rim of his coffee mug. Not to be outdone, I return his piercing glance and slowly raise my own cup to my lips without taking my eyes away from his. Unfortunately, I have forgotten to remove my teaspoon. By the time my eye has stopped watering I find that Penny has moved in and is sitting down beside Doctor Dish and fluttering her eyelashes as if trying to pick up speed for take-off. She is certainly hot stuff with the fellows, this girl. In fact, once or twice during the previous evening I thought that her behaviour was a bit over-friendly. Still, I must not be too unkind. It is probably that I am not used to upper class high spirits.
The breakfast itself is not a great success, unless you like hunks of bread cut thicker than platform shoes and fish cakes that taste as if they have been made from whale blubber. Not that I am worrying about food too much. I am nervous about what the day has in store and dog tired. If I was at home I would still be in bed. I feel a mixture of home sickness and resentment that I ever had to leave.
Our first job after breakfast is to draw kit and and our second to satisfy Sister Tutor that we can wear it without looking like reject waitresses.
“It’s a cap, not a tiara, Dixon,” she snaps at me. “And you, Green. Yours looks as if it was put round a cake before it went in the oven.”
“Rotten old bag,” hisses Penny. “Obviously aching for a couple of yards of steaming tonk.” All the other nurses look round and I wish she had not addressed the remark to me. I see the girl who was outside G.B.H.’s room giving me an odd look and I smile sweetly. The girl turns away hurriedly. Oh, dear.
When I first put on my uniform I feel as self-conscious as a shaven armpit in a French convent but soon, looking round me, I feel almost comforted by the knowledge that most of the patients will not be able to tell the difference between me and a S.R.N. until I give them an enema. That day seems a long way away as Sister Tutor gives us a lecture on the structure of the hospital—everyone except the woman who dishes out library books is senior to us—and moves smartly on to the structure of the human body with the aid of a couple of skeletons. “Norman and Henry Bones, the boy detectives,” says Penny. “I’ve been out with Henry. He’s a disastrous poke as you can see.” I turn redder than Ted Heath being caught fiddling with his organ during choir practice every time Penny opens her mouth but she is certainly the liveliest of my fellow trainees. Further evidence of her speed off the mark is given to me when I lie flat on my bed after an exhausting day and watch her giving her eyes the full Mata Hari treatment—or matted houri as seems more appropriate in her case.
“Mark?” I ask.
“No. He deserves a period of rejection after standing me up for the Royal Family. I’m having a drink with Robert Fishlock, that dishy houseman we were both ogling this morning.”
“Great,” I say, spelling the g-r-a-t-e in my imagination.
“Where’s he taking you to?”
“His flat. Intimate, don’t you think?”
Quite possibly, I must. Still, I expect Penny can handle herself—as a last extreme.
When my flat-mate has gone out I settle down with one of the medical books I have been forced to buy but I am so tired that I can hardly look at photographs without falling asleep. Some of those bushmen are quite extraordinary, aren’t they? No wonder his wife is smiling.
Penny returns just as I am about to turn off the light.
“Did you have a nice time?” I hear myself saying.
Penny examines her neck in the mirror and shivers. “Out of this world,” she croons. “I believed that things like that only happened in dreams I was ashamed of thinking about when I woke up. I feel like a piano that’s just been played by Artur Rubinstein. All my keys are glowing.” She pops open the buttons of her blouse and touches her breasts as if bringing back memories. Crikey! I wonder if you can get Dr Fishlock on the National Health.
“Did you er-um?” I murmur tactfully.
“You mean, did he introduce his love truncheon to my spasm chasm?” says Penny cheerfully. “You bet he did. You don’t have to help this stallion to clap hooves under a mare’s belly.”
“How nice,” I say, patting my hair nervously. She is so outspoken, isn’t she?
“‘Nice’ is too small a word for what happened in that flat,” snorts Penny. “We tore up the Kama Sutra and wrote a new book. Suddenly The Perfumed Garden seemed like A Guide to Compost Growing.”
I try to control my excitement. Penny Green sounds like a girl who has been around a bit in her time and if she reckons that Dr Fishlock is sexy then I am very interested. Not of course that I want to get involved in any sexual shenanigans. It is just that I would like to be able to resist someone who was supposed to be very attractive. You have to stick your big toe in before you know whether the bath water is cold. I also feel slightly choked that Penny got to Doctor Dish before me. He did make eyes at me first and if I had not had my accident with the spoon—who knows? It would probably have been me resisting his passionate advances.
Penny is still rambling on when I fall asleep and it is just as well that I do get some shuteye because the following day we are introduced to life on the wards.
“Everard Hornbeam, and don’t get in everybody’s way,” says Sister Tutor looking me up and down as if she expects to find that my uniform is on back to front. All the wards in the hospital have names like that and seem to be called after famous surgeons or benefactors who gave money after the hospital had disposed of a troublesome mother in law.
When I get to Everard Hornbeam, Sister Bradley nods at me briskly and passes me on to Staff Nurse Wood who steers me towards Nurse Wilson who smiles fleetingly and gives me into the charge of Junior Martin who I later find has been on the ward for three weeks. Nurse Martin hands me a bed pan and directs me to the sluice.
In the hours that follow I get to know the sluice pretty well and I begin to suspect that the patients’ cornflakes were laced with syrup of figs in expectation of my arrival. I also discover that I have about as much status as a pork chop at a bar mitzvah. So much for my illusions about being on the same footing as the rest of the nurses once I was wearing a uniform. Nobody is fooled for an instant. I am on a men’s ward and I can see the patients nudging each other and winking as they make remarks about me. It is all very embarrassing and I suddenly become very conscious of my body. Every time I bend down my breasts and bottom seem to be lunging out all over the place and I can hardly walk down the ward without tripping over my feet.
All the other nurses move around as if programmed by computer and when not bearing full bedpans and bottles in one direction and empty ones in another I hover by their sides like a humming bird waiting its turn at a flower. In all respects I am totally useless and