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MY WORLD by Beverly Nichcols
THE messenger boy slid the box of orchids across the desk. "Room 117," he said. "O.K.?" He turned, and went through the swing doors, whistling one of Elvis Presley's numbers.
The receptionist put out her hands, and took the box towards her. For a moment she stared at it. Then she turned to a nurse who was standing by her side. "Beautiful, aren't they?"
They were indeed. In their crystal cage of cellophane they looked unreal, like flowers from another world.
They hardly seemed to be flowers at all . . . they were more like a flight of white butterflies, caught in a silver moment.
The nurse nodded. But the beauty of the flowers was not reflected in her face. She looked tired and drawn, as well she might, for she had been on duty all day. And owing to an emergency she could not yet be spared.
"Yes," she said, "they're beautiful." Then she added, with just a hint of bitterness: "That's the fifth box she's had like that since she came in this morning. To say nothing of all the others."
I did a rapid sum in my' head. A bunch of orchids of that quality would be cheap at seven guineas. Multiply by five . . . £36 15s. (about $103.27)?. Add 'all the others' . . . £40 (about $112.40)?. Which would be more than seven weeks' salary for a state-registered nurse living-in, after three years of training, and passing all her exams.
Wonderful women
That salary does not seem too much, to say the least. Particularly when we remember that, in spite of the pious hopes of the Ministry of Health, many nurses in older hospitals, some of which are badly understaffed, are still working as many as 96 hours a fort-night, . . plus the aforesaid 'emergencies.' And when we also remember that in the nurses' hands there may often lie the difference between life and death.
I have been a patient in rather more places of sickness than I care to remember.
I have lain in ordinary public wards, with a man next to me dying behind a screen.
I have been in a war-time frontier hospital, in company with a couple of murderers chained to their beds.
I have also been in de luxe establishments where the list of patients reads like a society gossip column, where every room is a bower of flowers, where the food is exquisitely served, and where even death, if it comes, seems to tread discreetly, on tiptoe, with a respectful tap on the door.
And always I have come away with a feeling of the deepest gratitude to these wonderful women who have helped me back to health . . . these women who never seem to complain, however squalid their tasks.
I often think that a nurse, like an actress, must have a sense of dedication; she must be fulfilling some deep instinct of woman- hood.
But it doesn't pay the rent, merely to be told you're wonderful. And though it's nice to be assured of the nation's gratitude, that doesn't buy a new gown. And if I were Chancellor of the Exchequer, I know who I'd put first on the list for a rise in pay.
Meanwhile, just to show that the nurses manage to keep smiling in spite of their meagre rewards, take a look at the picture above.
. On duty it's work and yet more work, but off duty there's time for a nurse to laugh, especially if singer Frankie Vaughan is there to share the joke !
Nature may be wonderful, but . . .
"BLOSSOM by blossom the spring begins." That simple line has always seemed to me one of the loveliest in poetry.
It always comes back to me when I walk through the garden at this time of year; every morning there is some new excitement.
That reminds me of a fierce argument I had with a woman friend yesterday afternoon. We were walking round the garden and she came out with the old chestnut about the colours of flowers never clashing. .
"Isn't nature wonderful?" she said. "You can mix any flowers together and the colours never fight."
Which is nonsense. I quite agree that nature is wonderful-but it is downright silly to credit nature with good taste.
To prove my point I picked a daffodil and set it against a pink geranium. It looked revolting.
Yellow and pink. . . no thank you. Last summer, when I was still a new- comer to eht garden, I found that the previous owner had planted a great mass of shocking pink phlox next to a border of orange marigolds.
Shocking pink and orange . . . it made me feel quite sick.
If you went to a party in a dress of shocking pink, with a scarf of orange tulle, you'd have about as much success as the young ladies in the deodorant advertisements, who seem to spend their lives in tubes with people giving them dirty looks.
And yet . . . I wonder. When I was a boy my mother, who had exquisite taste, always used to say that no lady . . . we talked about 'ladies' in those days . . . would ever mix red and mauve together. It was 'vulgar'.
It's all the rage
Now, of course, it is all the rage, in dozens of combinations--scarlet plus purple, fuchsia plus vermilion. I think it is very beautiful. And that master of design, Cecil Beaton, weaves all sorts of magic spells with these colours in Gigi; which is probably the prettiest film that has danced across the screen for several years.
. If anyone can work magic spells with colour it is Cecil Beaton, as you'll agree if you've seen the film Gigi !
(If you see it, and if you study the enchanting, impertinent, unpredictable features of Leslie Caron, you will be gazing upon the girl who. . . in the opinion of one person, who shall be nameless . . . has more sheer physical attraction than any other girl in the world, with one exception . . . who shall also be nameless.)
But even Leslie Caron, in orange and shocking pink. . . No.
MORE PAGES FROM BEVERLEY'S DAY-TO-DAY DIARY NEXT WEEK
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