Rosie Dixon's Complete Confessions

My farewell to Mum, Dad and Natalie is spared from becoming too emotional an occasion by the discovery of Mum’s rhubarb on top of the kitchen cupboard shortly before I leave. In the five weeks that it has been there it has undergone some interesting changes and I doubt if Queen Adelaide’s has many less pleasant sights in store for me.

In typical fashion Natalie blames me and in typical fashion I tell her what she can do with the rhubarb. Dad sides with her and Mum says it is both our faults, which is true. What really makes me choked is the way that I have behaved in exactly the same forgetful fashion that I would expect from Mum. I always feel slightly superior to her when she gets dithery and yet I have to go and do a thing like that.

“At least you won’t have to heat it up,” I say. “That fur will keep it warm, no trouble.”

Natalie pretends to be disgusted and it is all I can do to stop myself from giving her a slap. That girl would take the salute at a march past of flashers without batting an eyelid so she has nothing to act up about.

All in all—and nearly free for all—I am glad when the taxi comes. Dad reckons that this is sheer extravagance but I tell him that I want to arrive at the hospital as a student nurse, not a patient. Lugging a heavy suitcase from one end of London to another is not my idea of gentle exercise.

Despite the fact that I tell Dad that he is a mean old sod I watch the meter like a hawk. I don’t think I look out of the window once. I will traffic lights to turn green and make little jerking movements to help ease us through the traffic. The driver is the young chatty type and I should be warned.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you going in for?” he says, drumming his fingers on the side of the cab.

“I’m going to be a nurse.” As it turns out I should have said rabies.

“Oh.” Immediately he sounds much more cheerful. “Wonderful bunch of girls, nurses. I think they do a fantastic job.”

“Yes,” I say. The meter has now clocked up 85p. Since the journey started the value of the pound has probably passed it travelling in the opposite direction.

“I’ve been out with quite a few nurses. They always like a bit of fun. Know what I mean?”

“Yes.” Honestly, it is ridiculous the way this meter goes on. The digits on a petrol pump travel slower.

“I expect you’re just the same?”

“Yes.” And what are all those extras? This bloke would obviously charge you 3p for your hand bag.

“A bit of slap and tickle never did anyone any harm. That’s what I say. I mean, you’re a mug if you think different these days, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” I break my concentration to dart a quick glance out of the window. We must be nearly there now. Yes, that’s the park.

“Do you fancy a bit of a giggle this evening?”

One pound 25p! I could have gone to Brighton for the day with that.

“I said do you fancy coming out with me?”

“Yes—I mean, what did you say?”

“Gordon Bennett! Your ears don’t see very far, do they?”

At last the cab has stopped but the meter is still running.

“How much is that?” I say hurriedly.

The driver opens his door, swears at the bloke he nearly knocks off a bicycle, and slowly walks round to where my cases are strapped.

“Nothing, if you’re a good girl,” he says. Before I can say “turn the meter off” he has opened the door and is pushing me back into my seat. “How about a ride for a ride?”

“Do you mind!” I say forcefully. “Let me out of this cab. And turn that meter off! We’re not going anywhere.”

“We can soon change that.” Without further ado the horrible herbert hoists his horny hand up my skirt. How unpleasant. And totally uncalled for. With my luck I could have had this experience on the tube for a fraction of the money.

“How dare you!” Mary Peters could not fail to be impressed by the speed and grace with which I jab my elbow in the direction of Ben Hur’s action man kit.

“What’s the matter, darling? Why are you suddenly playing hard to get?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go!” This time my aim is better and I am rewarded with a gold medal groan as my excitable fellow passenger cops a bunch of fives in the nether regions. From the noise he is making it sounds as if I have made them the “never” regions.

I do not hang around to see if I can put on a spring but escape onto the pavement, fast.

I am struggling with my cases when a huge, roly-poly bear of a man with a beard and an untidy mane of black hair appears at my side.

“Is this driver free?” he asks.

“Very,” I snap.

“Where is he?” The man has a deep voice that sounds like Clement Freud selling dog food or the Liberal Party but I have left my portable tape recorder at home.

“He’s sitting in the back—correction, lying in the back,” I say.

“How very odd.” The man looks from me to the driver and then back to me again. “Is he all right?”

“I hope not,” I say.

It is not in my nature to be unkind to anyone but with everyone else making stands I feel that I might as well make one too. Black beard stares at me thoughtfully and opens the cab door.

“Aren’t you going to help the lady?”

“Aaaaaaaargh!” says the driver.

“He’s already tried,” I say tartly. “Excuse me.” I tug my skirt into shape and trudge off with my cases. Thank goodness this unsavoury incident took place outside the nurses home and not the main hospital. I wonder who the man with the beard was. He had very piercing eyes.

It is not until I hear the taxi pulling away that I realise I have not paid any fare. Oh dear. Still, I expect I will be able to live with myself.

Inside the entrance to the nurses home is an office and inside the office is a small man wearing a brown house coat. He is smoking a brown cigarette which looks as if it grows out of his brown mouth.

“Yes?” he says when I have cleared my throat a couple of times.

“My name is Dixon. I’m a new nurse.”

“Oh yeah.” The man drags himself out of his chair and rises slowly to his feet in a series of harrowing wheezes. “My back,” he explains.

“You should see a doctor,” I say sunnily.

The man winces. “I seen enough bleeding doctors in this job, don’t you worry. Now, what did you say your name was? Nixon?”

“Dixon.”

“That’s right.” The man rocks on his feet as a long shudder passes through his body. When you look at him you feel that he must have bought up most of the stomach powders in South West London—brought up quite a few of them too.

“Dixon R. You’re sharing with Green P. in 5C.”

“Thanks very M,” I say. “I hope we don’t land in the soup.”

“Yerwhat?”

“Green Pea,” I say merrily. “It’s a kind of soup, isn’t it?”

The man looks at me as if I am round the bend. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Nothing at all,” I say wearily. “Which floor is 5C on?”

“The fifth. The lift is out of order and you’ll have to carry your own bags up. I can’t risk my back. I’ve done too much of it.” He could only be referring to carrying bags.

“You’re the porter are you, Mr—?”

“Greaves.”

“Spelt G-R-I-E-V-E-S?”

“E-A,” says Mr G warily. “You’re not trying to be funny, are you?”

I shake my head and begin to drag my bags towards the stairs. Greaves watches me as if he thinks I am going to start snapping off lengths of bannister rail and hide them in my knickers.

There is a telephone in the hall and a small, dark girl is twisting the flex into knots as I go past. I cannot help overhearing what she is saying because she has a loud voice and I am listening very hard.

“Oh yes, darling. Yes please, I’d love it, love it, love it.” I wonder if the flex was coiled before she started the call.

“Oh God, I wish you would be here now. I crave you. Capital K: Crave!” Something tells me she is not talking to her local rent assessment officer—still, you never know these days. “All right snooky-pooky, until this evening. Give my love to the Red Baron.” I wonder who the red baron could be? Of course it might be—no, it couldn’t. I have been living with Natalie too long. I must try and stop thinking about things like that.

The voice dies away with the first bend in the stairs and I day dream about how nice it will be when I too have been here a few months and settled down with a nice boyfriend. I know that my first weeks are going to be spent with a Sister Tutor but after that I will go on one of the wards as a junior. Provided I like it of course. It is very sensible of them to give you the option to leave after a month. As Matron said, I expect that there are a lot of girls who are not really suited to the life.

By the time I get to the fifth floor I am exhausted. I don’t know it then but it is the best introduction to being a nurse that I could possibly have had. It is not tender, compassionate hands that keep a hospital functioning but the nurses’ feet driving round the wards at a rate that would make the average marathon runner trade in his gym shoes.

5A, 5B, 5C. It would have to be right at the end of the corridor. I knock on the door. No answer. I adjust my ‘pleased to meet you’ smile, just in case, and turn the knob. The room has not featured in any of the Homes And Gardens I have leafed through at the dentist but it looks comfortable enough with two single beds, a large cupboard and a dressing table-cum-chest-of-drawers. The bed nearest the window has two expensive looking cases on it—you know, genuine imitation pigskin—and one of them carries a label saying Penelope Green. I hope this bird is not going to be hopelessly toffee-nosed and tweedy. I would have fancied someone a bit more with-it myself.

I have just taken my jacket off when the door bursts open and the girl who was on the telephone in the hall rockets into the room.

“Christ,” she says. “Those bloody stairs could give you a miscarriage before you fell. I’m Green P. What super boobs you’ve got.”

The words come out like an explosion in a sugar puff factory and I almost duck.

“Um—Rosie Dixon,” I say. “We’re sharing a room, aren’t we?”

“If that dwarf genitaled bronchitic in reception is to be believed we are. My name is Penelope but most people call me Penny, or ‘you’, or something like that. I say, you don’t have a dutch cap, do you? I think mine has perished.”

“I’m on the pill,” I stammer. Of course this is only a precautionary measure. Just think how awful it would have been being raped by those three greasers if there had been a danger of getting in the family way?

“It doesn’t matter,” says Penny breezily. “It would probably have been too big anyway.” Before I can thank her for the compliment she continues. “You’re so lucky being on the pill. I’m not brainy enough. I keep getting the days mixed up or losing them. I had a boyfriend once who took half a dozen to cure a headache.”

Penny speaks in this posh voice but she is certainly not stuck-up—well, you know what I mean. I nod weakly and wish I did not feel so inadequate.

“It’s my first night in London for months,” sighs Penny. “I have this boyfriend who is absolutely out of this world. I met him at the Badminton Horse Trials. My God, but I envied his mount every inch of that cross-country course.”

“Yes,” I say thinking that this girl makes sister Natalie seem like an apprentice nun.

“I couldn’t take my thighs off him. Do you know what I mean?”

I nod weakly. “We’re not going to be allowed out on our first night, are we?” I say.

“Oh Jodhpurs! They can stuff that for a start. They haven’t built the nurses home yet that can hold Penny Green. Nothing is going to keep me from Mark’s comely withers this eve.”

Full marks for persistence, I think to myself. “That was him on the telephone, was it?”

Penny nods her head as if tossing a nose bag in the air to get the last ounce of hay. “Every time I hear his voice I practically have to put on a new pair of knicks. Nudity doesn’t worry you, does it?”

I don’t have a chance to say either way before she starts peeling off her clothes. She really has a very attractive body. Small but beautifully marked, as I once heard someone say to Geoffrey. I don’t know what they were talking about.

“What time have we got to be somewhere?” asks Penny.

“Eighteen hundred hours in lecture room B.”

“I can’t expect him to wear a nosebag, can I?” Penny has both hands under her breasts and is pushing them up in the air as she divides her attention between the mirror and my own front bumpers. “You make me feel flat-chested,” she complains.

“I suppose there’s always coypu interrupted,” I say. I mean, I want to show her that I am not hopelessly inexperienced when it comes to the art of love. I have read my share of articles in the Sunday Mirror.

“What?”

“Coypu interrupted,” I say, pleased that I know about something she doesn’t. “It’s when the man pulls out his thing just before—”

“Oh! You mean coitus interruptus? I thought you were talking about those big things like otters that make holes in river banks.”

“Oh no. Not them!” What is she talking about? I wish I had never started all this.

“No I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” says my room mate. “Mark’s never pulled up before a jump yet.”

“Spiffing,” I say.

Penny abandons her breasts and starts to pull on a sweater. “I suppose there’ll be some awful jaw and then we’ll be told to turn in with a mug of Horlicks. Well, I’m getting out. There must be a window open somewhere. If not I’ll give G.B.H. the glad eye until he lets me out.”

“G.B.H.?”

“Grievous Bodily Harm. That’s what they call him. He’s halfway to the knackers yard, isn’t he?”

“You mean Mr Greaves?”

“Exactly. Mr Greaves. It’s good to know that he’s sleeping in the same building, isn’t it? Makes one feel more secure somehow. Should Oliver Reed attempt to break in, help is at hand.”

She breezes off to spend a penny and I find that she has taken all the top drawers and most of the wardrobe. She is like Natalie with refinement. Fancy me thinking that she had probably been here for years. The upper classes are like that. They always make you feel that they own everything. Of course, most of them do.

I manage to stow most of my things away and when Penny comes back we join the progression of anxious looking girls that is beginning to drift towards the ground floor.

“What made you want to be a nurse?” I ask.

“Nothing on earth. It was my father’s idea. I had to agree, to make him pay for my last abortion.”

“Oh.” Penny is very good at stopping you in your tracks.

“What about you?”

This is not an easy one. There are so many different reasons and I don’t want Penny to get the wrong impression about me. In fact, I don’t know what impression of me I do want her to get. “It seemed a good idea at the time,” I say.

“Like my abortion,” agrees Penny.

“That was Mark, was it?” I say, my romantic mind imagining the distress it must have caused them both.

“You never know, these days, do you?” says my new friend. “It could have been at the Dublin Horse Show. It wasn’t all pelting each other with bridge rolls, you know.”

I nod understandingly. You never think the upper classes are capable, do you? But they are obviously at it like knives the minute they have had their teeth braces removed.

“Isn’t your father worried about sending you away from home?” I ask.

“He wouldn’t care if I shacked up with the Harlem Globetrotters as long as I didn’t do it on the doorstep. He also thinks I’m going to see the light and turn over a new leaf once I get a starched apron on. Daddy is awfully silly like that.”

Just like my Dad, I think to myself.

Our trip to the lecture room has three main purposes. Firstly, to meet Sister Tutor—her real identity is masked like that of an all-in wrestler—secondly, to learn how to put on our uniform, and thirdly, to be introduced to the mysteries of bed-making.

Sister Tutor gives an opening address which makes John Wayne haranguing a bunch of marines before they go over the top sound like Sooty reminding Big Ears to save milk bottle tops. She is a tall, thin woman with a kind of blotchy skin you usually find stretched over a rice pudding. I do not think she smiles once the whole time she talks to us. The uniform is straightforward with starched cap, collar, and cuffs that clip on like handcuffs and are removed when we get down to work. The minute we have finished—on go the cuffs. “They’re to remind us that the place is a bloody prison,” whispers Penny. Apparently, walking round the hospital without your cuffs is only slightly less frowned on than getting into bed with the patients.

Where Sister Tutor really comes into her own is in the matter of making beds. Her eyes glisten like those of a Seventh Day Adventist who has just had the door shut on his foot and phrases like “mitred corners” and “draw sheets” drop from her lips coated in drool. A bed and bedding have been provided on the stage of the lecture room, and Sister Tutor puts us all through our paces before we are allowed to go back to our rooms with the suggestion that we should do some more practising on our own beds.

“I didn’t find that too exhausting,” says Penny.

“Not surprising considering you volunteered to be the patient,” I tell her. Honestly, this girl is going to take some watching.

“It was wonderful practice,” murmurs Penny. “All that bottom raising while they whipped the draw sheets in and out.”

“You’re not still thinking of going out, are you?” I say. “It’s half past nine already.”

“I don’t care if it’s two o’clock in the morning. I need a good—”

“Nurse Green?” G.B.H. stops us at the foot of the stairs. “There was a telephone message for you. It’s the last I’ll ever take. I’m not an answering service, you know.”

“Stand sideways.” Penny pretends to survey G.B.H. critically. “No, you’re not, are you? It must have been the light.”

“Young man said he was sorry but he had to go on guard duty at Buck House and couldn’t make it tonight.”

“Oh FFFFFFarthingales! How absolutely sick making.”

“That was Mark, was it?” I ask.

“Yes. Off to look after Big L and Philip.” She reads my perplexed expression. “Oft to Buckingham P. to look after the Queen of E. and Pip the Greek. Mark is in the Cold-streams.”

I feel a bit uncomfortable when she talks about the royal family like that but I am impressed. Standing in front of one of those sentry boxes with a corgi pointing out my trouser seam to the tourists would not be my cup of tea but there is no doubt that it carries a lot of responsibility.

“Oh dear. You’ll have to help me with my mitred corners.”

“No way! I’m not going to stay here the whole evening. Let’s go and have a drink.”

“I lock the door at eleven,” says G.B.H. cheerfully.

“Ridiculous!” sniffs Penny. “My needs were better catered for at my boarding school. I had this exotic French mistress who had the most enormous crush on me. She used to invite me into her room and give me creme de menthe out of her tooth mug. She got the sack because matron sneaked on her. Matron was in love with me too. Have you ever thought about becoming a lesbian, Rosie?”

G.B.H. is awaiting my answer with interest so I give a gay little laugh—maybe gay is the wrong word—and shake my head vigorously. “No. Never.”

“Me neither. Of course I used to stroke Mademoiselle Cheyssial’s feet when she asked me to but that was only for the booze. We never got down to something you’d read about in the Sunday Times.”

“No,” I say uneasily. G.B.H. is staring at Penny as if she had just come in through the skylight and said “take me to your leader.” I find that the look in his eyes makes me feel uncomfortable. “Maybe it would be a good idea to get a breath of fresh air,” I say.

Half an hour later I am beginning to think that it was the worst idea I ever had. I hardly ever go into pubs and in the area around Queen Adelaide’s they don’t serve a lot of cucumber sandwiches, I can tell you. Penny rabbits on in her upper class voice and we get some very old fashioned glances.

“Don’t you think we should have gone in the saloon bar?” I murmur.

“Good Heavens, no. It’ll be full of ghastly middle class people drinking port and lemon. I like it here with the pools of ale and the whippets.”

I can’t see any whippets and the man next to me is sipping a Babycham but I don’t say anything.

“Daddy says working class people are the salt of the earth,” says Penny, polishing off her second double scotch of the evening. “It’s the middle class who cause all the trouble. God, I need a man.”

If only she didn’t have such a loud voice! Even the old bloke in the corner drops his double six as he chokes over his beer.

“We’d better be getting back, hadn’t we?” I say nervously. Penny rapes an Irish navvy with her eyes and shakes her head.

“What’s the hurry? There’s certain to be a window we can climb through. I think this place could warm up in a minute.” She sticks a cigarette in her mouth and looks around hopefully.

Another twenty minutes and I am talking about The Black and White Minstrel Show to the Irish navvy’s mate who is talking to me about taking a little stroll: “Just a breath of fresh air to bring some colour to the cheeks of your arse,” he husks whimsically. Penny and the fellow with McAlpine stamped across his donkey jacket have been outside for fifteen minutes now.

“I think we must be going in a minute,” I say, primly removing the Paddy’s friendly hand from my thigh.

“It’s not taking after your friend you are, I’m thinking,” he says, disappointment and stout drowning his voice. “You haven’t touched a drop of your Guinness.”

“I’m certain my friend will drink it when she comes back,” I say glancing nervously at my watch. Ten to eleven! We are going to be locked out unless she gets her skates on. I finish picking another beer mat to pieces and glance towards the door. Thank God! There she is, her slim boyish figure dwarfed by the giant hulk of the Irish navvy following her. The mick stumbles as he comes through the door. I notice that his eyes are glassy and that he is feeling his way towards the table along the backs of chairs. Too much to drink, I suppose.

“Did you find one that was open?” I say as he slumps down opposite me. They went out to look for a fish and chip shop. For a moment the man looks puzzled, and then he gives an understanding nod. “No, they were all closed.” He stretches out a shaking hand for the Guinness but Penny gets there first.

“Hands off, Patrick,” she says. “That was thirsty work.”

She tilts back the glass until only a few sad riverlets of froth are left running down its empty sides.

“I don’t know where she puts it all,” I say.

The big mick laughs hollowly. “Sure, and you can say that again,” he says. “Twenty years I’ve been handling a pneumatic drill and I’ve never known anything like it.”

I don’t know what he is talking about so I smile politely and look at Penny. “We really ought to be going. It’s nearly eleven, you know.”

Penny waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t keep on about it. It’s so boring. I’m starving anyway. I want to go and eat. Patrick’s going to take us to a fab little café he knows, aren’t you, Paddy?”

“But Penny, it’s our first night,” I squeak.

“Jesus!” says Patrick.

The trouble with Penny is that once she has got an idea into her head, there is nothing you can do to shift it. She is also very good at making you feel wet if you disagree with her. All this means that the party moves on to the Green Clover Café where Patrick falls asleep with his head on the table and my mick goes off to help Penny mend the lock on the toilet door. It must have been stiff because he is sweating like a pig when he comes back.

“Penny! We’ve got to go,” I hiss.

Penny considers my bloke who seems on the point of drifting off alongside his mate and nods. “Yes, these two have had it, haven’t they? I wonder if there’s any chance of getting into Buck House. I feel like—”