Mike Kelly was sitting in an armchair by the fire, frowning into a yellow-covered book on fevers. He carefully put his finger on his place before speaking.
'You might try the theatre sister from number six,' he suggested faintly.
'Oh, she's no use,' John said with authority. 'Registrars only in that department. She's the sort of girl who'd hardly look at a houseman, let alone a poor bloody student.'
'There's that little blonde staff nurse just come on Loftus's ward,' Mike continued helpfully. 'She looks as if she'd be worth making advances to,'
'Hopeless!' John said. 'She suffers badly from tinnitus-ringing in the ears, and they're wedding bells.'
'How about Rigor Mortis?' Tony suggested, suddenly looking pleased with himself.
'Old Rigor…that's more like it!' John agreed.
'She's always ready for a tumble with anybody.'
'The nursery slopes for our friend,' remarked Mike warmly.
'Rigor Mortis?' I asked dubiously.
'Oh, that's not her real name of course,' Tony explained. 'It's Ada something or other. Haven't you come across her?'
'I don't think so.'
'She's not a great beauty,' he went on, 'so perhaps that's why you haven't noticed her. But she has the kindest heart imaginable. She's the staff nurse on Loftus's male ward. I knew her well, old man. I'll introduce you. The more I think of it the more certain I am that she's what you need. She expects the minimum of entertainment and it is hardly necessary to do more than hold her hand and look plaintive. Capital! You shall meet her to-morrow.'
Tony took me to meet Rigor Mortis the following afternoon, when the ward sister was off duty. I immediately agreed that she wasn't much to look at. She had dull black hair which she pushed into her starched cap like the stuffing in a cushion, a chin like a boxer's, and eyebrows that met in the middle.
She was about six feet tall and had a bosom as shapeless as a plate of scrambled eggs. But all these blemishes melted before my eyes, which were fired with Benskin's firm recommendation that she had a kind heart.
After a minute's cheery conversation Tony explained that I had been bursting to make her acquaintance for some months. He asked her if she was doing anything on her next night off; all I had to do was mumble an invitation to the pictures, which she briskly accepted. I arranged to meet her outside Swap and Edgar's at six and we parted.
'There you are, old man,' Tony said as we left the ward. 'Meet her at six, whip her into a flick, take her back to the flat for a drink-that'll be about nine-thirty. You'll have two solid hours to do your stuff.'
I arranged for the seduction with considerable care. I stayed away from the afternoon lecture and spent the time cleaning up the sitting-room, putting the books away, straightening the cover on the divan, and arranging the reading light so the glow fell romantically in the corner. I set out a new packet of cigarettes and invested in half a bottle of gin. There were two glasses in the kitchen that happened to be the same pattern, and these I carefully washed, dried, and placed on the mantelpiece. It was only five, so I sat down and read the evening paper. I was nervous and worried, as though I was going to the dentist. I began to wish I hadn't introduced the idea at all. But I could no longer back out. I must be victorious by eleven or sink in the opinions of my friends. I took a nip of the gin and set out.
For a few minutes I hoped she wouldn't turn up, but she lumbered out of the Underground right enough. She looked a little better in civilian clothes, but I still thought her as unattractive as an old sofa. I suggested the New Gallery, and she agreed. She seemed fairly friendly, but I soon discovered that she was disinclined to take the initiative in conversation. If I spoke she replied; if I remained silent she appeared to be concentrating heavily on thoughts of her own. I had therefore to keep up a run of inane patter, every sentence on a different subject, until the film released us into merciful mutual silence.
About half-way through the picture I abruptly recalled the object of my expedition. Should I give just the faintest hint of what was to come, I wondered, and hold her hand? It 'would be the herald's call to the approaching tussle. Would she rebuff this forwardness so early, for I had hardly known her an hour? I gave a sly glance through the darkness and seized her rough palm. She gripped mine without thinking, without an indication that her mind was distracted a hairsbreadth from the screen.
The two of us stood outside in Regent Street. I asked casually if she would care to come home for a drink, and meet the boys. She assented with the same air as she accepted my hand in the cinema. We went to Oxford Circus tube station and I bought a couple of tickets. I held her arm as we walked down the road to the flat and up the steps. The stairs…opening the door…my surprise that no one was there. She sat down on the divan without a word, and I lit the gas-fire. She took a drink in an off hand way. We sat in the glow of the gas and the dim light of my romantic bulb.
I finished a cigarette and gave her another drink. Surely, I thought, this would have some effect? She had two or three more, but sat looking absently at the fire, dully returning a sentence for each one of mine, unanimated, unresponsive, unworried.
I nervously looked at my watch and saw with alarm that it was past ten-thirty. I had to get a move on. I felt like a man going out to start an old car on a cold morning.
I held her hand tighter. She didn't object. I drew closer. She moved neither away nor nearer. I put my arm round her and started stroking her off-side ear. She remained passive, like a cow with its mind on other things.
The seconds ticked away from my wrist, faster and faster. At least, I thought, I have gone this far without rebuff. I kissed her on the cheek. She still sat pleasantly there, saying nothing. Carefully setting down my glass, I stroked her blouse firmly. I might just as well have been brushing her coat. I threw myself at her and she rolled back on the divan like a skittle. With great energy I continued her erotic stimulation. Any moment now, I thought excitedly, and the object of the evening would be achieved. She lay wholly unconcerned. Suddenly she moved. With one hand she picked up the evening paper I had left on the divan. She read the headlines.
'Oh look!' she exclaimed with sympathy, 'there's been an awful train crash at Chelmsford. Seventeen killed!'
'So you had no luck?' Tony asked at midnight.
'None. None at all.'
'That's tough. Cheer up…other fish, you know.'
I decided to do my fishing in future in more turbulent waters, even if I had no catch.
9
In order to teach the students midwifery St. Swithin's supervised the reproductive activities of the few thousand people who lived in the overcrowded area surrounding the hospital. In return, they co-operated by refusing to water down the demands of Nature with the less pressing requests of the Family Planning Association.
The midwifery course is of more value to the student than a piece of instruction on delivering babies. It takes him out of the hospital, where everything is clean and convenient and rolled up on sterile trollies, to the environment he will be working in when he goes into practice-a place of dirty floors, bed-bugs, no hot water, and lights in the most inconvenient places; somewhere without nurses but with bands of inquisitive children and morbid relatives; a world of broken stairs, unfindable addresses, and cups of tea in the kitchen afterwards.
It was fortunate that I was plunged into the practice of midwifery shortly after my unfruitful love life, for it is a subject which usually produces a sharp reactionary attack of misogyny in its students. Tony Benskin, Grimsdyke, and myself started 'on the district' together. We had to live in the hospital while we were midwifery clerks, in rooms the size of isolation cubicles on the top floor of the resident doctors' quarters. My predecessor, a tall, fair-haired, romantic-looking man called Lamont had been so moved by his experiences he was on the point of beaking off his engagement.
'The frightful women!' he said heatedly, as he tried to cram a pile of text-books into his case. 'I can't
