‘But my God, am I learning a lot, and fast! During the past four months, I’ve done twenty-six appendectomies, nine varicose vein operations, three haemorrhoidectomies and an umbilical hernia repair. Oh, and two above-the-knee amputations.’
As chat-up lines went, it wasn’t exactly polished but Alice sat entranced.
She had enjoyed midwifery throughout her time at St Thomas’, and one of her proudest moments was when, after assisting at a difficult birth, she was accorded the honour of having the baby named after her.
‘But I didn’t do much,’ she said, settling the mother finally back into bed, handing her the baby to nurse.
‘Yes, you did,’ the girl said, smiling wearily at her. ‘You made me feel I might just survive.’
Above all, Alice loved the drama of the operating theatre. She was entirely unfazed by the gore, or the surgeons barking out orders, the more temperamental ones literally hurling instruments across the room if they were not what they’d asked for. The surgeons were the most arrogant and the most revered among the honoraries, holding as they did literally life or death in their hands. But Alice also never failed to marvel that even they had to defer to Sister on their ward rounds.
Alice and Philip became a couple of sorts. They enjoyed the same things: going to the cinema, walking across Hampstead Heath, listening to traditional jazz on the gramophone, and dancing to it occasionally at Humphrey Lyttelton’s club at 100 Oxford Street. Such outings were rare; mostly they were confined to snatched hours in the hospital, long conversations over meals in the canteen, much of it about his work – rarely hers – and rather intense occasional snogging sessions in the junior doctors’ rooms. Alice didn’t mind. She was completely in love and very, very happy.
She was in her third year now, and a qualification as a state registered nurse was in sight; but she had decided to do a fourth and get her Nightingale badge, prized and recognised everywhere in the world.
Alice loved nursing as much as she had instinctively known she would. She loved its order, its sense of purpose; she saw it as charting a course across difficult terrain, taking intense pleasure as her patients recovered, while slowly learning to remain philosophical when they did not. The first few deaths had upset her, of course, but the probationers were well prepared for them; although the death of a baby or a child shook her dreadfully. The very first one, a baby, born dead with the cord round its neck, was completely incredible as well as shocking, so great was Alice’s faith in her profession and its powers. She fled to the sluice and stood leaning on the sink, sobbing and shaking, not merely at the death but the mother’s grief. It was Sister who found her, and was oddly gentle with her, explaining that acceptance of their limitations to prevent such things was important, and should only serve to reinforce a pride in what they could do. Alice took that philosophy with her for the rest of her working life. The comradeship of the other nurses was also a huge help; people who had gone through it too, experienced the pain, the grief. She learned from Philip that the banter, as he called it, the cheerful comradeship of the other doctors, the acceptance of death as a fact of life, was essential.
She was frustrated, of course, by what could not be done. There was no known treatment for so many things, the worst it seemed to her being heart disease and of course, childhood leukaemia and the worst excesses of polio. They were at the most famous and respected hospital in the country, or so they had been told, and knew that no one, and no other hospital, could do more. That gave her confidence too.
As a less serious by-product they knew of course that they were, as Nightingales, the most socially superior. Indeed, the junior doctors and students had a saying: ‘Barts for tarts, Guy’s for flirts, Thomas’ for young ladies.’ It might not have been relevant to their nursing skills, but it was something to enjoy. Besides, behind her wide blue eyes, her apparent unremitting sweetness, there was a steeliness to Alice; her seniors recognised it, and appreciated that it was very much part of her armoury in becoming not just a good nurse but an excellent one.
So, successful and happy in her work as she was, she was also, at the age of nearly twenty-two, still a virgin. Hardly a unique state of affairs; the spectre of pregnancy hovered over every unmarried liaison. She had never been remotely tempted to risk such a horror: had never loved or even fancied anyone enough. She had had boyfriends all her life, from the tennis club days onwards. It wasn’t just her prettiness; she was sparkly and fun, and possessed of great energy. She had been very fond of some of the boys, had wished herself, and even at times fancied herself, in love. And she enjoyed what limited sexual experience she had had. But the fact remained that in her world, girls remained virgins until they were at the very least engaged, and for most of them, married.
Philip Jordan, however, had plans to change all that.
Wendelien Bellinger had a new friend, Blanche Ellis Brown, a fashion editor on Style magazine, a fashion glossy recently launched which its backers hoped would in the fullness of time rival Vogue. Blanche had been poached from Vogue, and was a rising star in the magazine firmament. Sharply chic herself and ferociously ambitious, she also had an eye for the new look in fashion and fashion photography, which she transferred with considerable style to her pages.
And there was very much a new look; largely due to the fact that a different breed of camera, small and portable such as those made by Rolleiflex and Leica, were replacing the cumbersome variety, which had confined fashion shots to the studios. Suddenly models were being photographed on beaches and boats, on the streets and at the wheels of cars. The great and inventive photographers, most notably the Americans Richard Avedon, Toni Frissell and Irving Penn, were creating the most exciting images.
Blanche was loving her new job, and the circulation of Style was climbing slowly but steadily northwards.
‘But what I need now, above all,’ she said to Wendelien as they lunched at the Connaught one day, ‘are some new faces. There just aren’t enough models. Good ones, that is. Many of them will only work for Vogue anyway – ridiculously loyal.’