was aximatic that any nurse who could stand the first six weeks would last the whole course and I was interested to watch her lips growing tighter and tighter as this critical period wore on, while she was discovering it was far less important to save a patient's life than to drop a plate of pudding, and to break a thermometer was a feminine crime just short of persistent shoplifting.
By glances, shy smiles, and putting myself in proximity to her in the ward as much as I dared, I managed to indicate my interest. One morning I was in the sluice-room halfheartedly performing the routine chemical tests on my patients' excreta when she came in and resignedly began to clean out the sink. Sister had sent her there obviously not knowing of my presence; the door shut us off from the ward; we were alone; so I took a chance.
'I say,' I said.
She looked up from the sink.
'I say,' I repeated, 'number six looks much better to-day, doesn't he? The Chief did a good job on him all right. You should have seen the way he got hold of the splenic artery when a clip came off! I've never seen so much blood in my life.'
'Please!' she said, holding her stomach. 'You're making me feel sick.'
'Oh, I'm awfully sorry,' I apologized quickly. 'I just thought you'd be interested.'
'I'm not,' she said. 'The sight of blood makes me sick. In fact, the whole damn place makes me sick. I thought I was going to put my cool hands on the fevered brows of grateful young men, and all I do is clean the floors and give out bedpans to bad-tempered old daddies who smell.'
'If you don't like it,' I suggested, shocked by her confession, 'why did you take it up at all? Why don't you leave?'
'The hell I won't! My mother was a nurse and she's been ramming it down my throat for nineteen years. If she could take it I damn well can!'
'Would you like to come out to the pictures?' I asked. I thought it best to cut out her complaints and reach my object without further skirmishing. Our privacy might be broken at any moment.
'You bet!' she said without hesitation. 'Anything to get out of this place! I'm off at six. Meet me in the tube station. I must get back to the ward or the old woman will tear me to bits.'
Feeling demurely pleased with myself, I went down to the King George to tell someone about this swift conquest': I found Tony Benskin and Grimsdyke sitting at the bar, energetically talking about racing with the Padre.
'I've just dated up that little pro on the ward,' I told them nonchalantly. 'I'm taking her out to-night.'
Benskin was horrified. He had an obsession that he might one day be trapped into matrimony by a nurse and walked round the hospital as warily as a winning punter passing the men with the three-card trick.
'It's the thin end of the wedge, my boy!' he exclaimed. 'You watch your steps or you'll end up as aisle-fodder before you know where you are. They're vixens, the lot of them.'
'And good luck to them,' Grimsdyke added emphatically. 'After all, that's what they come to the hospital for-to find a husband. They wouldn't admit it, but it's buried in the subconscious of all of them somewhere.'
'I thought nursing was supposed to be a vocation and a calling,' I said defensively.
'No more than our own job, my dear old boy. Why have we all taken up medicine? I've got a good reason, that I'm paid to do it. You've got a doctor as a father and a leaning towards medicine in your case is simply a hereditary defect. Tony here took it up because he couldn't think of anything better that would allow him to play rugger three times a week. How many of our colleagues entered the noble profession through motives of humanity?' Grimsdyke screwed his monocle hard in his eye. 'Damn, few, I bet. Humanitarian feelings draw more young fellows annually into the London Fire Brigade. It's the same with the girls-nursing offers one of the few remaining respectable excuses to leave home. Let them marry the chaps, I say. They're strong, healthy girls who know how to cook. To my mind the most important function of the St. Swithin's nursing school is that it provides competent wives to help in general practice anywhere in the world.'
'Three beers please, Padre,' I said, interrupting him. 'Don't you think Grimsdyke's being unfair?'
'You've got to watch your step, sir, you can take it from me,' he said sombrely. 'I've seen more of you young gentlemen caught into marriage when you haven't a ha'penny to your name than I'd like to think about. Children soon, too, sir. Houses, gas bills, vacuum cleaners, and all the other little trappings of matrimony. It's an expensive hobby, take my word, sir, for young Tellers before they're settled in practice.'
'Damn it,' I said, 'I've only asked the girl to the pictures. If I don't like her I won't see her again.'
'Easier said than done, sir. Ask Mr. Grimsdyke about that young lady last Christmas.'
Grimsdyke laughed. 'Ah, yes, Padre! I've still got it on me, I think.' He pulled out his wallet and rummaged through the papers it contained. 'Most tiresome woman-tried everything to get rid of her for a fortnight. Then I received that one morning, handed to me by a hospital porter, if you please.'
He gave the a note in angry feminine handwriting. _'If you do not send an answer to this by midday,' it said curtly, 'I shall hurl myself of the roof of the Nurses' Home.'_
'What on earth did you say?' I asked, horrified.
'What could I say?' Grimsdyke demanded. 'Except 'No reply.''
'Did she throw herself off?'
'I really don't know,' he said, replacing the letter. 'I never troubled to find out.'
I met my little nurse at six. We passed an innocuous evening and arranged a rendezvous for the next week. But the appointment was never kept. The following day she was transferred to Sister Virtue's ward, where she cracked up. One afternoon she threw a pink blancmange at Sister and went out and got a job as a bus conductress.
This incident temporarily cooled my enthusiasm for nurses. After a few weeks I attempted to kindle an affection for a fat blonde girl in the out-patient department, but after we had spent a few evenings together she began to drift away from me, almost imperceptibly at first, like a big ship leaving dock. It was then that I started to worry about myself. Was it that I had no attraction for women? I never enjoyed success with my consorts while my friends apparently had no difficulty in committing fornication with theirs. I slunk into the library and looked up the psychology books: horror overcame me as I turned the pages. In my first few weeks in the wards I had been convinced that I was suffering from such complaints as tuberculosis, rheumatic heart, cancer of the throat, and pernicious anaemia, all of which successfully cleared up in a few days, but now I faced the terrible possibility of harbouring a mother fixation, oral eroticism, and a subnormal libido. I mentioned these fears to my friends that evening after supper.
'The trouble with you, my lad,' said John Bottle, without taking his eye from the microscope he was studying, 'is that you are suffering from that well recognized clinical condition _orchitis amorosa acuta,_ or lover's nuts.'
'Well,' I said sadly, 'I would willingly surrender my virginity if I could find someone to co-operate with me in the matter.'
'Can't you wait for a week?' Kelly asked testily. 'My path. exam is too near to let me go out for a night.'
His objection to my making an immediate start in my love life reflected the most serious menace to harmony in the flat.
We all agreed that it was important we should be able to ask our girl-friends to our home, and with the privacy without which the invitation would be pointless. As accommodation was limited it was equally important that the other three should not be obliged to tramp the streets angrily during the entire evening, or go to bed. Archie and Vera had been no problem because they kept to their own room, but some arrangement had to be made among the rest of us. We decided that each should have one evening a fortnight in which the sitting-room was to be his. A code was arranged: if the girl was brought in and presented to the others it required her host only to mention that it looked like rain for his friends to rise and troop out into the night like a well-drilled squad of infantry. (If he remarked that the weather was turning warmer they did an equally important service by sticking by him.) Then it was up to the man himself. But he had not the entire evening to fritter away in light amours. As the pubs shut at eleven he knew he could only count on the period until then as his own. His comrades would heartlessly return, considering they had left him time enough for a brisk seduction. If he failed to achieve his object in the time, that was his look-out. This probably had bad effects on our psychology, but it made us very persuasive.
'What about that girl from the out-patient department you were taking out?' Tony Benskin asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. 'No good.'
'Won't play?' John Bottle asked with interest. 'I thought as much…you want to take my tip and lay off the probationers. Altogether too young and unappreciative. They can still remember the games' mistress said it would ruin their hockey.'
