Susan French

Memories of Work

My mother always said I had ‘working hands;’ capable, broad and strong. I began my first paid job when I was ten, working at the local vicarage. For a shilling a week I washed all the Friday night and Saturday morning dishes. Later I cleaned all the shoes as well for a sixpence a week pay rise. I saved sixpence a week in a Post Office Savings stamp book. When each was full, I transferred the balance to a savings account.
I am the second of eight children so we had little money for anything. My school uniform grant blazer was far too tight by the time I left school, but I had to wear it to my second interview for the job of a filing clerk at Henley’s Wessex, a garage in Salisbury. The first was a disaster, since the careers’ office had sent me to Woolworth’s to apply for a salesgirl’s position. I had protested that my arithmetic skills were zilch, that it was pointless sending me there; I would be unable to do the mental arithmetic required. It was worse than the time my navy knickers had fallen down in assembly. The manageress gave us a test. Horrors! A customer buys two yards of ribbon at nine pence halfpenny a yard, two boxes of hairpins at four pence three farthings each, six combs at eleven pence halfpenny… What change would you give from a five pound note? There were twenty sums to do. In ten minutes she was back. All but two of us had finished. I stood up to escape, but was motioned to sit down again. I blushed crimson, wishing I’d never been born.
‘I don’t know what they teach children at school these days. You cannot add up, child,’ she announced, in front of everyone. For once, nobody sniggered – it was too important to make a good impression. I fled. I now know that I have dyscalculia; the numerical equivalent of dyslexia. Then I felt plain stupid.

To my surprise, I got the job as a clerk. At my interview I admitted I was ‘slow with numbers.’ It didn’t matter; I was filing things all day, franking envelopes and putting invoices into them. I had only two things smart enough to wear, which was awful among the smartly dressed young women in the offices.
I had to run the gauntlet of the garage mechanics every day. I was responsible for filling up the ingredients in the coffee machine and cleaning it every day. Their wolf whistles were as threatening to me as sub machine gun fire.
It was dead boring, but I was paid four pounds a week for it. The only cash I had to deal with was the stamp money. This gave me nightmares, for, careful though I was. I could never make it balance. Often I put the missing money back in the box myself. The one day, I asked Judith, the other girl in my office to add it up for me. She totalled it, wrote in half a dozen make believe names and postage amounts, and passed it back.
‘Done. No problem,’ Judith grinned.
This was awful; I didn’t sleep a wink all that night. The next morning I went to the accounts manager and confessed my problem, expecting to be given the sack straight away. To my amazement, nothing of the sort happened. I went back to my desk and began my work with shaking fingers and a pounding headache. My in tray landed with a crash on the floor as the accounts manager called Judith to his office. I felt sick, but set off for the post office with a batch of post and to buy stamps. When I came back, Judith was gone.
After a year, I left Henley’s to start work at the Old Manor Hospital as a Cadet Nurse. Bliss! I was in uniform again and there was no need to worry about what to wear. I loved working on the wards, feeding the geriatric patients, making beds and running errands.
Besides my meals and uniform, I was earning twenty pounds a month, half of which I gave to my mother. For the first time in my life, I bought new clothes for myself.
Matron was a formidable corseted figure – six feet tall, severe bosom on which a tray could have been placed. Her light grey uniform was tightly belted in the middle with a white starched collar at the neck. It was the hat that fixed my gaze like a magnet. It was twelve inches of starched lace and cotton with a long piece trailing down her back like a mini bridal train.
I was happily singing, whilst cleaning lockers in the ward one day. when Matron appeared behind me. ‘Nurse, what is that noise you are making?’
I jumped out of my skin, ‘S-singing, Matron.’
‘A ward is not a place in which to sing, nurse.’
‘Yes, Matron.’
Another day, we had just finished making all sixty-two beds with clean sheets and brand new yellow bedspreads. Matron sailed into the ward as we stood to attention. Matron ripped all the beds back with surprising energy.
‘The bedspreads are upside down. Make all the beds again.’
We seethed. There was sluice work, toileting, dressings and baths to be done, and we hadn’t enough nurses on duty as usual. What a waste of time! But we did it.
It wasn’t long before I was in Nurse training school and having passed the exam, I began studying for my RMN. The lecture that sits in my memory most is the one on the life cycle of intestinal parasites, delivered with relish and diagrams by our tutor just before lunch…

I passed exams, and was given more responsibility, although it was no joke to be on night duty alone in a locked ward of fifty psychiatric patients. There was a ghostly figure that appeared among the trees outside that used to give me the creeps until I realised it was one of the psychiatrists off duty…Playing football among the trees.
One of the spookiest jobs was accompanying a body to the morgue – we always went in twos to do this, one male porter and one female nurse. One night we lost our body on a slight slope – we were opening one of the many locked doors and had forgotten to keep a steadying hand on the trolley. Worse, our charge emitted an eerie groan as she hit the ground.
The porter muttered nervously ‘Air in the lungs,’ as we lifted her carefully back onto the trolley.
The hospital was strictly divided between Male and female sections, run parallel, like two separate hospitals on one site. There was an amiable running battle between the Male Nurses’ Home and the Female’s two homes. There were frequent raids when apple pie beds were made, the male nurses’ trousers stitched together at the bottoms, or disgusting mixtures of golden syrup, tea leaves and oat meal applied to doorknobs. It was indeed unfortunate when Matron arrived to lock the front door and to check we were all in our rooms by curfew when a particularly glutinous mess using black molasses had been applied to the house door handle.

There were many Irish nurses at the Hospital, which meant that St Patrick’s night was a lively affair. It was odd how a very large brassiere and hat appeared on the statue in the fountain that night. Also, a hawser appeared across the Wilton Road between a lamppost and a telegraph pole on the first of April. All was well until a red double decker Wilts and Dorset bus tried to get under it. The traffic came to a standstill. My lips are sealed, although I know who the culprit was.
It was my job to collect all the false teeth when I was on duty in the geriatric ward. It was a horrible job. The night in question, I was feeling light-headed, with a slight stomach ache and thought my period must be due. I missed my step and fell into the sluice, scattering false teeth everywhere. Sister Wentworth stood in the doorway, hands on hips.
‘What on earth will you do next, nurse?’
‘I don’t know, Sister.’
‘Go home before you do any more damage, nurse.’
What I did next was to run a temperature and lie curled up in bed all day with a terrible stomach ache. The doctor sent for the ambulance, and I had my appendix taken out at just after midnight.
I don’t think anyone except Mrs Hyde, whose name was imprinted on hers, ever got the right teeth back.
I left the hospital when I was expecting my first child, but that was not the end of my working career. As soon as my children were old enough, I would take them with me while I did home help work. Some of my charges were wonderful – I continued working for one long after I had a full time job at the then Spastics Society.

One, Dr. X, was terribly clean, and spent ages in the bath every day. His poor wife had to wipe everything, dust clean and vacuum everything every day. She was in her seventies, and I’d been called in when she broke her wrist and couldn’t keep up the pace. Another, a retired Squadron Leader, regarded me as one of the troops, and would bark orders at me from the kitchen door. Each week I went in to find all the dishes from the whole week piled up to be washed. He never rinsed anything, nor did he wipe up milk that boiled over on the stove. I was three quarters through the backlog when he barked ‘Make the beds now!’
I said, ‘When I’ve finished this, sir!’
‘You’ll do as you’re damn well told, woman!’
‘Oh, will I?’ I said.
‘Yes. You make the beds. Now.’
I dried my hands and walked out without my wages. He was still yelling at me as I started my motor bike and roared away.
My time at the Centre for profoundly and multiply handicapped young people was one of the best times of my life, though one of the most demanding jobs anyone can take on. At first, I was a part time domestic assistant, and then when my children were at secondary school, I took a full time Assistant Residential Social Worker (ARSW) post, caring for the clients, who had cerebral palsy and learning difficulties. Some had other problems as well, such as epilepsy and blindness. The shifts were long and hard; but there was a sense of mutual support and companionship among the staff which was exceptional. I progressed, being promoted to RSW, then acting Senior RSW.

During this time I had been studying with the OU for a social work degree. Then I had an accident at work which meant my days of heavy lifting were over, and my husband was diagnosed with MS. So I gave up full time work and we moved into a bungalow. The stairs in the cottage were far too steep for him to manage. I began doing voluntary work, as secretary to the local Link scheme, as a parish councillor and with the local MS group
But then I began the loneliest work I have ever done; besides my caring duties, I started to write seriously, short stories, novels and poems. For five long years I wrote and rewrote my novel, entered short story and poetry competitions without success. I started a writing group in Salisbury; the mutual support is marvellous. At last, my novel was published in 2004; the next in July this year. I am now writing my third. I donate my royalties to MS research.
It’s not completely true that the devil finds work for idle hands. Work has given me a sense of purpose, value, achievement, and identity. Perhaps mother was right, my hands are calloused, red, wrinkled, and, wonderfully, still working.