Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [55]
The Parkers had even had the gall to suggest that the wedding should be kept low key because of the war, but Vi had put her foot down on that idea.
‘Oh, no, Mrs Parker, I don’t think so,’ had been her saccharine response. ‘I’m sure that everyone will be grateful to have something to cheer them up a bit. Really, Edwin feels that it’s our duty to carry on as though the war hasn’t been announced.’
‘But with so many families having seen their young men go off into the services, and Mr Parker being on the council, eyebrows might be raised.’
Vi had been delighted to be able to point out smugly, ‘Well, with our own son already in uniform, and my Edwin so involved with the Ministry, I doubt that any eyebrows will be raised in our direction, Mrs Parker.’
Not, of course, that that she wanted to fall out with Bella’s mother-in-law-to-be, but she had seen the way Mrs Parker’s cronies had looked at her that first WVS meeting after the engagement had been announced.
‘I expect you’ll be seeing Alan tonight, will you, Bella? After all, you haven’t seen him all week.’
‘I can’t, Mummy. There’s so much to do still for the wedding. I thought you and I and Daddy might go and have another look at the house tonight. I’d really like to get that front room repapered before we move in, and you said you thought it needed a new stove for the kitchen, if Daddy does buy it for us. I do hope that he will, Mummy. I couldn’t bear to have to live with Alan’s parents.’
Of course she would really have rather gone out to see a film with Alan, or at least she would have done if he wasn’t being so beastly and unkind to her. And, anyway, it was for his sake really that she was being a good fiancée and organising things for their new home, not that her father had actually said yet that the would buy it for them, but Bella knew that he would.
Grace was exhausted. The first day of their training had passed in a blur of information and her own anxious fear that she wouldn’t remember any of what she had been told, or worse, that she would do something so dreadful that she would receive one of the ignominous warnings from Sister Tutor that several of the other girls in her set had had during the course of the day.
Watching and listening whilst Sister Tutor and Home Sister had shown them the correct procedure for making up a hospital bed had told Grace just how much she had to learn. Who could have imagined that such a simple procedure could sound so complicated whilst looking so easy. The sheets must be pulled tight and not have a single wrinkle because that could cause a patient to develop bed sores. They must not be shaken vigorously because that could spread dust and infection.
Their day had started with fifteen minutes of morning prayers led by the principal sister tutor, after which they all had to don their starched aprons and follow the pinned-up rota of cleaning chores, which included the lavatories and the floors, overseen by the stern eye of the sister tutors. Everything had, they were told very firmly indeed, to be spotlessly clean, and everything had to be done in a strictly regimented and fixed fashion, and woe betide anyone who did not adhere to that routine.
Their first day’s true lessons had been of the chalk-and-talk variety, although at first few of them had even been able to take their eyes off the life-size male torso, bereft of limbs and, of course, private parts, positioned close to the blackboard. This torso showed the male anatomy from head to groin in what they had all agreed later was truly gruesome detail.
And then there had been Mrs Jones, the dummy on which they would have to practise various procedures. Mrs Jones lived in the Practical Room, which also contained hospital beds, stainless-steel trolleys, rubber tubes, face-mask jars and shining instrument cupboards filled with frightening-looking equipment, sterilisers and bandaging, and shudder-inducing Skelly the skeleton, so that they could memorise each part of the body.
‘Phew, thank goodness there aren’t any more lessons today,