‘Nice young man,’ Caroline Southcott said, as Diana walked into the small morning room where she was embroidering some rompers for the baby. ‘Rather more socially – what shall I say – confident than I would have expected.’
‘Mummy, you are such a snob!’ said Diana. ‘Why shouldn’t he be? He’s working for a solicitor, his wife’s a teacher, and the war has done away with all that, anyway. I thought he was very interesting.’
‘Yes, I could tell that,’ said Caroline slightly tartly. ‘A little too interesting, Diana, if you don’t mind my saying so. I hope you won’t be going to visit him or anything silly like that.’
‘Of course I won’t,’ said Diana irritably. ‘Although I don’t see why you should consider it silly.’
‘Well, actually, I’m not sure that I believe you,’ said Caroline. ‘Diana, please don’t, if you have any sense. Johnathan wouldn’t like it, and I could see you were unsettling Tom Knelston as well. Now, would you like an omelette for your supper? We have plenty of eggs at least—’
‘I’m very tired of omelettes,’ said Diana, standing up, her face cold. ‘I’ll just have a sandwich in my room, and go to bed early – I’m awfully tired. Send Nurse Blake up when she gets here, please, to take Jamie. And don’t make judgements about what Johnathan would and wouldn’t like, Mummy. I know him a little better than you do. Goodnight.’
She went up to her room, and sat for a long time, staring out at the darkness, holding the baby close to her, angry with her mother for reading her so well, and reflecting that rather than she unsettling Tom Knelston, it was he who had unsettled her.
Chapter 12
1947
Alice could hardly believe that here she was. Her very first day as a probationer, actually at St Thomas’ Hospital. She’d done her thirteen weeks at the training school in Godalming and that had been both fun and incredibly interesting; she’d made lots of friends, and it had confirmed what she’d always known, that nursing was for her. And she was for nursing.
She hadn’t been able to start immediately after the war ended, as she’d hoped; you had to be nineteen. She’d completed her Higher and got lots of distinctions, and then, because she was still only eighteen, had had to find something else to do; her parents wanted her to go to some terrible finishing school in Paris, but she’d absolutely refused and finally agreed to do a secretarial course. ‘Nursing may not work out for you, Alice, or one day you may be married and you may want a part-time job while your children are small. Believe me, you can always get a job as a secretary.’
Alice felt sure she could always get a job as a nurse as well, and one she would enjoy a great deal more than typing some stupid man’s letters, but she had learned not to argue with her mother on the subject. It really was a complete waste of time and energy.
She had been interviewed at the hospital, of course, but it hadn’t exactly been gruelling. She had travelled with her mother to the great building, on the River Thames right next to Westminster Bridge and facing the Houses of Parliament, and had sat in the office of a lady called Miss Smyth; as far as she could see the only purpose of the interview was to see that she had nice manners, and had had a basic education. Later she was to discover that you had to be recognisably a Thomas’ type – you needed to be highly intelligent, not merely well-educated, to display a certain self-confidence and outgoingness and above all to ‘speak proper’, as she confided, giggling on the phone to Jillie, after she had got through her first week at the training school,
‘No common voices at St Thomas’, I can tell you,’ she said. ‘All terribly well spoken, we are. Anyway, I love it. I’m just so happy, I don’t know what to do.’
Jillie was now studying medicine, which sounded rather more impressive than Alice’s ambitions, but Alice saw nursing as being in no way inferior to Jillie’s calling. That was what she had for so long wanted to do and at last she was doing it, and she was perfectly happy.
There were thirty girls at the Godalming training school, divided into three houses; Alice was put into the Clock House.
The first piece of medical equipment she was given was a duster: a nurse’s first duty, they were told, was to make sure everything was as tidy and clean as it could possibly be; and her first morning at St Thomas’ reinforced this.
They had to be on the ward by seven thirty when the night staff went off duty. There were three of them, Alice, Hazel and Suzanne, in their new purple-and-white striped probationer uniforms, all trembling, even Alice, the most self-confident of them. They stood in the doorway and looked at the new world which they would now inhabit: at a vast room, very light and airy, with thirty beds, fifteen on each side, with their curtains pulled back; at the patients being washed and tidied; at gas fires mounted on pillars, and an area in the middle where stood a large and impressive boiler and sinks.
A steely-eyed, rather forbidding personage walked up to them and announced, ‘I’m Staff Nurse and in charge of you at this moment at least. Welcome to Clement. You address me as Staff. Sister, as of course you’ll know, is Sister Clement. Let’s get you making yourselves useful. Plenty to do. We divide the ward into three – Dayside, Nightside and Thirds. You, nurse –’ she pointed at Alice – ‘you go onto Dayside. Which means you work on the left side of the ward and your first duties every day are hot dusting. Take your duster –’ she pointed at the boiler area – ‘wring it out in hot water from one of the sinks, and do all the surfaces. Along the rails of the beds, the legs and then the lockers, any brass pieces you can see, and of course the wheelchairs. Put a clean pinny on whenever you come onto the ward – don’t want you getting your uniforms dirty unnecessarily – you’ll find them in the linen cupboard. Now, there’s no time to be lost. At eight, you’ll hear Big Ben strike – Sister will be in for prayers and by then everything has to be in order.’
At eight o’clock, Big Ben did indeed strike and as predictably and promptly, Sister did come in, proceeded to her desk, knelt and said prayers. Looking anxiously at the others for guidance, Alice saw that some of the nurses stood through this, some knelt. For this at least there was no rule.