A place for the unexpected.

An extract from A little Naked Music, a novel, copyright: Alan McMurtrie, 2012.

1941, the Narrator is Ida, Swiss common-law wife of a Royal Marine (Bandsman Gerry Powell) left lonely & stranded by War. (See also: A little Naked Music under LONGER READ.)

Sitting in the evening in Brenda’s kitchen, was all very good, but what shall I do with the Day? What do I know except clothes & Konzerts? Well, there is something I was once good for.

I bike down to the big hospital in Plymouth, & can I help? I explain I made a Year & a Half of my Training for a nursing Sister in Zurich before I wed. I didn’t say I shall have given it up anyway, because I do give things up. It is my big failing. I let her think my to be married is the Ground for giving up.

I wait. She shakes the Head.

“No, dear, you’re not fully trained, & you’re a foreign lady, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Thought as much. Listen, tell you what. Try the Lockyer Street Hospital. Nearer the Docks. Get more cuts & Abrasions than we do. Might use you for First aid. Worth a try, dear.”

Lockyer Street is not easy to find. And once found, the Klinik not easy to understand. It is an older building & Matron’s Bureau is down a puzzle of dark corridors. I knock.

“Come!”

She is a big, korsetted woman & so much a dragon, I almost forget to say ‘Good Morning’. I do forget the English don’t offer the Hand, & one feels stupid with the Hand stuck out & nobody takes it. Also she stares me in Silence. I want to turn & go. ‘Nein, Ida, nein, mein Kind! Be brave! Be not a Frog.’ And I quickly, Ja, too quickly explain, one & a half Years Nurse.. But I nearly not finish my Phrase. I doubt this Matron’s face, & I have seen she does not like me. The other was unwilling, but kind. This one, hard, like the Bones of her Korsett, nudging through the dark-blue Frock.

“I don’t engage untrained Personal in my Wards, & does that Ring tell me you are married?

“Ja.”

“You know the Rule. In a time of such unemployment? You should know better.”

“But there’s a War on!”

“Indeed! And still a Million unemployed.'“

“Actually, not asking for to be paid. Just somehow I can help.”

“O, you’re a volunteer! You should have said. Can you read?”

(This is too much. My Nerve gives way to lipbitten Anger. So, I have lost, but I will loose with Worth!)

“Read? Ja, we Swiss are taught to read! By the foreign church Missionaries, you know.”

She hasn’t seen my Nerves. She don’t now see my Ironie either.

“I mean, can you read English?”

“Ja, I am now reading ‘Gone with the Wind’.”

(I don’t tell how slow.)

“You are lucky you have the time. Nurse! (What’s your Name?) Nurse, Mrs Powell is going to read to the Lungs. Take her down. And say she may participate in the Staff Tea-brake.”

Despite all, I feel pleased to be wanted. But reading aloud to the Lungs sounds like an ugly Prospekt. Large jars in a Doctor Museum? with brown pickled Things wanting to be read to? I had no time to imagine it, for the truth was if anything worse.

There stood on legs with wheels these three Machines. In shape like the Boiler of a small steam Lokomotiv, except painted sky-blue, what was meant I think to tame them. Over two Meter long, with tiny windows. And poking from one End out, three little heads. Over each head, a Mirror Glass, so they can something see. And what you saw first is the head doppled in the Mirror Glass, as if the child has two faces.

Unbearable, the six heads smile at you. These, the Sister explains, are victims of the Poliomyelitis. Thankfully, only three of them - so far. Annie, age 8. “Hullo, Annie.” (Annie slowly closes & opens her green eyes in Welcome.) Philly, age 9. “Hullo.” And Tommy, 6.

Nurse Roper takes me behind the Machines & whispers me (tho I find it hard to listen) that the iron Lungs deflate & inflate a pressure inside, like a giant Blowbag beside a wood Fire, the child inside the Blowbag, & so make the paralysierte Lungs to breathe, & keep the Kids alive. With Luck, lots of Luck, one Day their bodies will heal & be better.

I find a place where all can hear me, & for 6 or 10 Weeks on End, I discover an English childhood. Page after page, I stammer through “The Wind in the Willows” & “Alice through the Looking-Glass”, but my Favorit and their Favorit is what Nurse Roper calls “Winnie Churchill, the Pooh”. It seems a very old Wit by now, but never fails. After all, Winnie Pooh & Winston Churchill are much the same Form, round head & more rounder belly.

In time, I learn to do Piglet noises, & Eeyoore noises, & to bounce on my chair like Tigger. For whole hours on End, I forget Bandsman Powell. It seems a guilty Thing to have forgotten him, as if to keep him safe, I must hold him in my mind. But sitting in my Room or walking alone on the Hills only with Gerry to think of, I shall have gone mad.

Nurse Roper warns me not to get attached to the Kids. Be kind & caring, but no more. And at first I keep a distance, like a schoolteacher. But also they want to talk to me, of course they do. And that is hard for them & worse for me. You see, they have no lung pressure of their own. They get out a few Words while the Inflation lasts, & then we all must wait while the Inhale happens & it’s time for a few more Words. So unfair to be impatient with them.

And you see, two or three times a Day must be changed their nappies. And also Massage. That is what the windows are for. All the only Hands their little bodies feel. And Nurse tells me go away & wait outside. But I can’t help but to see by the corner of the eye, & afterwards the Stink shall hang about.

It hurts me even to sit by & see them to have each the Teeth cleaned, & they cannot spit out, must swallow the Rest down. Such simple Things they cannot do. I imagine to be in this Iron Machine, unable to move a Muskel, or very little, one’s little neck ringed in a leather collar to hold the pressure. A 6-year old, what once was proud to be potty clean, now again in nappies. That once was strong to run about, & now must show his Anger with his eyes. I see now why Tigger is the Favorit of all.

Funny how a child gets through to you when you try not. It was Tommy really. He’d been evakuated from London. Probably with already the Polio. Though his voice was faint with no air, one could hear his London Akzent, & to make fun at all times.

He said to me, “Miss, you.. don’t arf.. talk funny.. Miss.”

I said, “Tommy, you don’t Half talk funny yourself.”

They can’t laugh, not really, because not air enough. But all 3 made a mouth of laughing. From then on, they had me like a Fisch on a string. It was all the Familie I had, & I could not help to love them. I wanted to love them, though I knew one Day it must bring me pain.

An extract from Anna’s Boy, a Search for Childhood, copyright: Alan McMurtrie, 2003. A memory of Marylebone Central Primary School, London, circa 1950.

The other event of that summer was more mysterious & infinitely more pleasurable. But to savour it, you need to understand the design of the kids' cloakrooms at Marylebone Central.

'Cloakroom' is here no euphemism. This was where we left our coats. Within the normal ceiling-height was an extra, wooden floor - so that, above & below, only a child could stand upright. It reminded me of a small double-decker bus because of the narrow, elbowing stairway, except the cloakroom had stairs both ends. The upper deck was sort of secret because teachers couldn't see in, & wouldn't easily manage the narrow climb.

On dry days, we kids had to play outside after lunch. But when it rained we could mooch around the school - & so one wet day it must have been that I came across a small queue of boys waiting patiently on the right-hand stairway of one of the cloakrooms. I asked the boy at the back what they were doing. But another boy motioned me to silence & whispered 'Sheila'.

Sheila (as I choose to call her, tho her real name stands clear in my memory) was different, for she alone in our class had the presence of a grown-up. She could only have been in her twelfth year, yet she looked & behaved much older & her breasts (which nothing could disguise) might have been the envy of many an elder sister.

I still was no wiser as to why I was queuing, but I guessed it might be worth it. Ours was a generation born into lean times, & we'd learnt that when you saw a queue you joined it first & asked questions after. Gradually, the queue shuffled higher, & boys joined up behind me, till finally I reached the top of the stair, & could tell what I was waiting for. Beyond a forest of pegs & some pessimist summer coats, at the far end of the cloakroom near the other stairway, Sheila was waiting to be kissed.

The lad in front of me hurried across the wooden floor & took Sheila in his arms, but she shook him off because he wasn't doing it 'properly'. You had to do it 'like in the pictures' - which meant bend her backwards. As he was a head shorter than she was, this wasn't easy, but finally he got it right. Then Sheila sent him off down the stairs & it was my turn to clomp across the cloakroom.

I'd never kissed a girl before, but I duly bent her over backwards as I now knew to do, & glued my lips to hers. It was all much wetter than I expected, but what I really enjoyed, perhaps more than the kissing was the wonderful softness of her breasts against my body. Sheila was like a cushion that breathed.

It was however Sheila that decided when your turn was over. I trotted down the stairs & scampered to join the tail of the lengthening queue.

I had two more goes of kissing Sheila before the dreadful bell rang the end of lunch-break - & it was still the cuddle of her body that meant most to me.

I've no idea whose first idea it was. I guess Sheila's. And who organised the queue, so that boys went up one stair & down the other? What I most marvel at now, was Sheila's acceptance of all-comers.

I think some lads got kissed longer than others, but no one was rejected: fat or skinny, handsome or ugly, we were all welcome, provided we did it 'properly'. And what was it like to be kissed by boy after boy after boy? I've often wondered what became of Sheila.

That summer term saw a further two or three wet lunch-times, & of course I lingered around every cloakroom I could find, alert for queues of boys on stairways. But without success. Sheila's soft favours were never again on offer.