Dad is still gazing thunderstruck at the garden. “Where are all the flowers?” he says.
“The milkman’s horse got up on the pavement, Dad.”
“He got it out of retirement, did he? He’s had a van for five years.”
“Vandals,” I say. “There’s been an awful lot of trouble while you’ve been away. Look what they did to Mrs Wilson’s lawn.”
“Blimey. I thought it was an open cast coal mine. You told the police, have you?”
“They know all about it,” says Natalie truthfully. “What was the weather like, Dad?”
Dad carries the suitcases into the house. “Diabolical. The worst we’ve ever had there—the worst we will ever have there. I’m not going back. Holiday? It was more like six days in a prisoner of war camp.”
“Where’s my coat?” says Mum, looking at the hallstand.
I am just thinking that it must have been nicked and wondering what to say when the telephone rings. I know instinctively who it must be, but before I can move Dad picks up the receiver.
“Hello? Oh, hello Mrs Wilson.” He puts his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s Mrs Wilson. Stupid old bag. What on earth can she want?”
“I’m going upstairs,” says Mum.
Ten minutes later Natalie and I are in the front room with Dad who now knows what Mrs Wilson wanted. He has turned a strange blue colour and his hands are shaking. “Now listen, you two,” he says. “I’m going to—”
At that moment Mum comes in. She, too, is looking strained and holding something in her hand. “I was doing the unpacking and I noticed these stuffed down the end of our bed,” she says. “Whose are they?”
She is dangling a pair of bright yellow men’s underpants which, with a shiver of distaste, I remember covering Flash’s vulgarly large private parts. Natalie bursts into tears.
“Were people using our bedroom?” snarls Dad.
“Oh Rosie, why did I ever listen to you?” sobs my deceitful little sister.
“Right. You go outside with your mother. I want to speak to Rosie.” They are hardly out of the room before Dad lets fly. “What you’ve done is a bloody disgrace! You’ve disobeyed your mother and you’ve blackened our name amongst the neighbours—I understand you’ve even had the police round here. The house is like a pigsty and I shudder to think what went on.”
“Dad—”
“Shut up! When I want your interruptions I’ll ask for them.
“What I am most disturbed about is the effect your behaviour is having on your sister. She is at a very formative age and the kind of carryings on you go in for could be a blooming disaster as far as her moral standards are concerned.”
“Dad—!”
“Shut up!!! You must realise that, being older than her, you have to set some kind of example. Supposing she starts imitating your behaviour?”
“It’s not fair, Dad. I always get the blame for everything. Just because she’s younger than I am you seem to think that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Well, I’ve got news for you—”
“And I’ve got news for you, my girl. I want you out of this house just as soon as you can find a job to support you. I think you’re a bad influence on your sister and it’s much better if the two of you are kept apart.”
For ten seconds after he had finished speaking I am on the point of telling my father a few home truths about my sweet little sister; and then my mind soars up to a higher plane. I see Doctor Eradlik walking down a long white corridor, a look of stoical self-sacrifice etched across his beautiful features. I see Jennifer Jones approaching Rock Hudson’s bed. I have arrived at a decision.
“Very well, Dad,” I say calmly. “I can tell you what I’m going to do, now. I’m going to be a nurse.”
Three and a half weeks later I have been summoned to an interview with the matron of Queen Adelaide’s and Dad and the family are just beginning to understand that I meant what I said.
Dad, particularly, finds it difficult to believe that any hospital would be prepared to consider me. He has an idea that nurses are somewhat like nuns and unlikely to be accepted if they have so much as caught a glimpse of an unpeeled banana. He also reckons that you have to be of noble birth and watch BBC 2 as well as have it.
“You’re not going to tell me that all those black nurses are princesses,” says Mum.
“I don’t know so much,” says Dad. “A lot of those blackies you see on the telly are better dressed than white people.”
“You don’t watch those,’ says Natalie. “You watch the ones with the bare titties doing the conga.”
“Natalie! Watch your language, please!” Mum looks horrified.
“We all know where she gets that from, don’t we?” Dad fixes me with his beady eye and I would like to bash him over the nut with Natalie.
Raquel Welchlet is the one who continued to be most surprised by the way I stick to my resolve.
“I never reckoned you were serious,” she says. “I thought you were just doing it for effect. Like when you read that book about air hostesses.”
“Air stewardesses,” I hiss. “Hostesses are people who work in nightclubs.”
“Those stewardesses spent all their time in night clubs if that book was anything to go by.”
“Well, nurses don’t spend all their time in night clubs so you needn’t start fretting about my eyesight.”
“I don’t think you’ll be able to stick it even if they do accept you. They work terribly hard, you know.”
“But it must be rewarding, mustn’t it?”
“The pay’s lousy from what I can make out.”
“I didn’t mean that.” Natalie is about as sensitive as a clay tuning fork. “I meant that it must be satisfying to nurse people back to health.”
Natalie sniffs and shakes her head. “I don’t like sick people.”
“It’s people like you that give being healthy a bad name,” I tell her.
Mum is merely realistic. “Do what you like, dear, but make sure you don’t catch anything.”
Queen Adelaide’s is a big disappointment after Mount Vista on the Doctor Eradlik show. It is a huge hospital but it looks as if it was carved out of charcoal and then had a giant vacuum cleaner bag emptied over it. What I at first imagine to be its grounds turn out to be the public park next door. As I go through the swing doors two nurses are coming out. They are wearing red cloaks with blue linings and talking in upper class voices.
“Stupid little bitch thought your sternum was what you sat on,” says the first.
“Oh no!” The second one’s voice screeches into the air like a rocket. Dad would love them.
Just inside the door is a pigeon hole behind which sits a pigeon wearing glasses. She coos softly to herself when I say that I have an appointment with matron and shuffles through a pile of papers.
“Rose Dixon?” She rises up slightly and leans forward as if she is wishing to confirm that I have brought the lower half of my body with me. Apparently satisfied, she sinks back and gives me totally unmemorable directions of which I can recall no more than that I have to go to the third floor. I am frightened to ask her to say it all again unless I immediately give the impression of being hopelessly stupid—just like the girl the two nurses were talking about. Who knows? The directions might be part of some cunning test to check on my memory.
I