Most of the food at CRX was eatable. One dumpy little nurse would say, ‘Wannit it all mashed up together?’ and I’d say, ‘Oh yes!’ I watched with fascination as she went to work. Even the crispest pie would be reduced to mortar under her hand. The taste was oddly improved by the steamrollering to mush (though I wouldn’t let her try with fish and chips). I suppose this was an underclass version of Mum’s genteel microcosmal forkfuls.
Ninday
One morning Sister Heel announced that we would be getting an extra day. Perhaps she didn’t mention this as a government decision, but that was my first thought. The government issued us with our toilet paper (horribly scratchy) and our orange juice (delicious, nothing ever as good after it was discontinued), why not an extra day? From then on my imagination got busy, going over and over it until the original information was entirely lost in the fanciful embroidery. I thought that the extra day would be added to every week, and asked what it was to be called. Sister Heel said, with only the slightest hesitation, ‘Nin-day, John. The new day will be called Ninday.’ Pleased with her quick thinking, she trotted off to her next round of duties.
I don’t even know what lay behind her original announcement. Perhaps it was a rather feeble April Fool. I suppose it might have been to do with Leap Year in either 1956 or 1960, though the dates don’t really marry up.
In my ignorance of the calendar and its pitfalls I became very excited and ran through the new list of days, calling out to Mary, ‘So it’ll be Monday (yuk!), Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday (yippee!), Ninday, Sunday …’ I couldn’t realistically expect every day to be Saturday, but doubling our quota of Saturdays was a good start.
‘That sounds lovely, John,’ said Mary, ‘but perhaps we’d better ask Sister when the new day will be.’
Everyone knew that calling out for staff attention was not a good idea, but in my excitement I forgot and shouted, ‘Sister! Sister!’ When she appeared she wasn’t best pleased, but without attempting to smooth her feathers in any way I asked, ‘When’s the new day going to be, Sister? I think it’s going to come between Saturday and Sunday.’
‘Oh no, John!’ said Sister Heel. ‘That would be a very bad idea. That would only make children lazy. The new eight-day week will help boys and girls work harder at school. The order will be Monday, Tuesday, Ninday, Wednesday, Thursday …’
My world went black. With six weekdays to cope with I knew I would be dead very soon. From my traumatised expression Sister Heel must have understood that her gruff style of teasing was not an indispensable qualification for the job of caring for sick children. She wasn’t cruel, but sensitivity wasn’t a quality much in vogue at the time. Perhaps she really thought she was doing me (or the ward) a favour in the long run by taking me down a peg. I didn’t feel as if I was doing much more than keeping my peg above water, but perhaps I was more bumptious than I knew.
A fault he cannot mend
There’s a certain amount of evidence about how I was regarded to be gleaned from my autograph book. Autograph books were a major preoccupation on the ward. Mine had a diamond-patterned cover and marbled end-papers. We children signed each other’s, though that didn’t really count as getting an autograph. It didn’t count towards your score.
Sarah Morrison signed mine:
When Johnny was a little boy
He had curls, curls, curls
But now he is older
It’s girls, girls, girls.
With best wishes. Get better quickly. Sarah.
Not verse directly inspired by my character, I don’t think, more a piece of ready-made doggerel. It’s odd, all the same, that a message from a girl on the same ward, with the same diagnosis, should be so concerned about my health. I don’t remember in what way I was ill.
Staff Nurse Hawes has written, ‘I cannot dance but I can show you a few steps’ — with a drawing of a ladder on a staircase. A. R. Putnam, whoever that was, has written:
I wish I was a wiggley Bear
With Fur upon my tummy
I’d crawl into a honey-Pot
and make my tummy, gummy,
with best wishes.
There were a couple of rather embarrassing entries, which I didn’t want Mum to see. One went:
Johnny had a little watch
He swallowed it one day
And now he’s taking Epsom Salts
To pass the time away.
I wished I could excise that from the book without damaging the whole, although I did get the giggles from another risqué contribution, written by a pre-nursing student called Janice:
A rabbit has a shiny nose
A fault he cannot mend
Because his little powder puff
Is on the other end.
Some entries are rather lugubrious, as if there were times I wasn’t expected to live much longer, which may very well have been the case. Nurse Fleming wrote in December 1957,
When your days on earth are ended
And your life is home-ward trod,
May your name in Gold be written
In the Autograph of God.
Of course that may just have been Nurse Fleming’s way.
Sister Heel appears on those pages with a joke of her own. She has written:
When in this page you look
When on this page you frown
Think of the nurse who spoilt it
By writing upside down.
Professor Bywaters did a creditable self-portrait in ink, using thick strokes of the pen to show a preoccupied man in waistcoat and bow tie, stethoscope in hand. He’s done well to capture his own alert slouch and fierce eyebrows. It was kind of him to spend time with me, considering that I was an extreme case but not a medically interesting one. I had nothing to offer an expert.
There was a competitive edge to all our hobbies, including our autograph books. Even writing to Decca for gramophone records was done with an eye to my standing on the ward. Another favourite project was raising money for charity, though here annoyingly it was Sarah Morrison who shone, for the same reason she was such good company. She charmed people without effort, she had them eating out of her hand. It wasn’t the same pure goodness as Mary’s, but I had to admit it worked. There was a toughness to her, linked to the charm, which I admired and envied.
It was always me saying to Sarah, when the Wendy gang became unbearable, I’m with you really, but I have to look as if I’m with them. I could be a terrible toady sometimes, faced with the dark forces of Wendy and Ivy. Sarah never had to make excuses to me. She might be ostracised by the girl gang, but she wouldn’t lower herself to be taken back into the group. I didn’t have the strength to go it alone, though I could see quite well that Sarah’s imperviousness worked in her favour. It was never long before she was accepted back, and she never grovelled or cringed. She actually raised her status by refusing to truckle, while I seemed to be a born truckler. I truckled with every breath I took, and that is not pranayama either.
A blessing and a leg-up
I remember one particular Friday afternoon with Mary in the hydrotherapy pool, when my interest in fund-raising had a short-lived renaissance. It was a couple of weeks before Easter, and there was a definite springy feeling in the air.
Mary and I had started talking in the pool, and we carried on while we were being dried off. She was trying to re-ignite my love affair with raffles. And suddenly we both got caught up in the idea of holding a bigger and better raffle than anyone at CRX had dreamed of before.