Читать книгу: «Rosie Dixon's Complete Confessions», страница 4

Penny nods her head as if tossing a nose bag in the air to get the last ounce of hay. “Every time I hear his voice I practically have to put on a new pair of knicks. Nudity doesn’t worry you, does it?”

I don’t have a chance to say either way before she starts peeling off her clothes. She really has a very attractive body. Small but beautifully marked, as I once heard someone say to Geoffrey. I don’t know what they were talking about.

“What time have we got to be somewhere?” asks Penny.

“Eighteen hundred hours in lecture room B.”

“I can’t expect him to wear a nosebag, can I?” Penny has both hands under her breasts and is pushing them up in the air as she divides her attention between the mirror and my own front bumpers. “You make me feel flat-chested,” she complains.

“I suppose there’s always coypu interrupted,” I say. I mean, I want to show her that I am not hopelessly inexperienced when it comes to the art of love. I have read my share of articles in the Sunday Mirror.

“What?”

“Coypu interrupted,” I say, pleased that I know about something she doesn’t. “It’s when the man pulls out his thing just before—”

“Oh! You mean coitus interruptus? I thought you were talking about those big things like otters that make holes in river banks.”

“Oh no. Not them!” What is she talking about? I wish I had never started all this.

“No I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” says my room mate. “Mark’s never pulled up before a jump yet.”

“Spiffing,” I say.

Penny abandons her breasts and starts to pull on a sweater. “I suppose there’ll be some awful jaw and then we’ll be told to turn in with a mug of Horlicks. Well, I’m getting out. There must be a window open somewhere. If not I’ll give G.B.H. the glad eye until he lets me out.”

“G.B.H.?”

“Grievous Bodily Harm. That’s what they call him. He’s halfway to the knackers yard, isn’t he?”

“You mean Mr Greaves?”

“Exactly. Mr Greaves. It’s good to know that he’s sleeping in the same building, isn’t it? Makes one feel more secure somehow. Should Oliver Reed attempt to break in, help is at hand.”

She breezes off to spend a penny and I find that she has taken all the top drawers and most of the wardrobe. She is like Natalie with refinement. Fancy me thinking that she had probably been here for years. The upper classes are like that. They always make you feel that they own everything. Of course, most of them do.

I manage to stow most of my things away and when Penny comes back we join the progression of anxious looking girls that is beginning to drift towards the ground floor.

“What made you want to be a nurse?” I ask.

“Nothing on earth. It was my father’s idea. I had to agree, to make him pay for my last abortion.”

“Oh.” Penny is very good at stopping you in your tracks.

“What about you?”

This is not an easy one. There are so many different reasons and I don’t want Penny to get the wrong impression about me. In fact, I don’t know what impression of me I do want her to get. “It seemed a good idea at the time,” I say.

“Like my abortion,” agrees Penny.

“That was Mark, was it?” I say, my romantic mind imagining the distress it must have caused them both.

“You never know, these days, do you?” says my new friend. “It could have been at the Dublin Horse Show. It wasn’t all pelting each other with bridge rolls, you know.”

I nod understandingly. You never think the upper classes are capable, do you? But they are obviously at it like knives the minute they have had their teeth braces removed.

“Isn’t your father worried about sending you away from home?” I ask.

“He wouldn’t care if I shacked up with the Harlem Globetrotters as long as I didn’t do it on the doorstep. He also thinks I’m going to see the light and turn over a new leaf once I get a starched apron on. Daddy is awfully silly like that.”

Just like my Dad, I think to myself.

Our trip to the lecture room has three main purposes. Firstly, to meet Sister Tutor—her real identity is masked like that of an all-in wrestler—secondly, to learn how to put on our uniform, and thirdly, to be introduced to the mysteries of bed-making.

Sister Tutor gives an opening address which makes John Wayne haranguing a bunch of marines before they go over the top sound like Sooty reminding Big Ears to save milk bottle tops. She is a tall, thin woman with a kind of blotchy skin you usually find stretched over a rice pudding. I do not think she smiles once the whole time she talks to us. The uniform is straightforward with starched cap, collar, and cuffs that clip on like handcuffs and are removed when we get down to work. The minute we have finished—on go the cuffs. “They’re to remind us that the place is a bloody prison,” whispers Penny. Apparently, walking round the hospital without your cuffs is only slightly less frowned on than getting into bed with the patients.

Where Sister Tutor really comes into her own is in the matter of making beds. Her eyes glisten like those of a Seventh Day Adventist who has just had the door shut on his foot and phrases like “mitred corners” and “draw sheets” drop from her lips coated in drool. A bed and bedding have been provided on the stage of the lecture room, and Sister Tutor puts us all through our paces before we are allowed to go back to our rooms with the suggestion that we should do some more practising on our own beds.

“I didn’t find that too exhausting,” says Penny.

“Not surprising considering you volunteered to be the patient,” I tell her. Honestly, this girl is going to take some watching.

“It was wonderful practice,” murmurs Penny. “All that bottom raising while they whipped the draw sheets in and out.”

“You’re not still thinking of going out, are you?” I say. “It’s half past nine already.”

“I don’t care if it’s two o’clock in the morning. I need a good—”

“Nurse Green?” G.B.H. stops us at the foot of the stairs. “There was a telephone message for you. It’s the last I’ll ever take. I’m not an answering service, you know.”

“Stand sideways.” Penny pretends to survey G.B.H. critically. “No, you’re not, are you? It must have been the light.”

“Young man said he was sorry but he had to go on guard duty at Buck House and couldn’t make it tonight.”

“Oh FFFFFFarthingales! How absolutely sick making.”

“That was Mark, was it?” I ask.

“Yes. Off to look after Big L and Philip.” She reads my perplexed expression. “Oft to Buckingham P. to look after the Queen of E. and Pip the Greek. Mark is in the Cold-streams.”

I feel a bit uncomfortable when she talks about the royal family like that but I am impressed. Standing in front of one of those sentry boxes with a corgi pointing out my trouser seam to the tourists would not be my cup of tea but there is no doubt that it carries a lot of responsibility.

“Oh dear. You’ll have to help me with my mitred corners.”

“No way! I’m not going to stay here the whole evening. Let’s go and have a drink.”

“I lock the door at eleven,” says G.B.H. cheerfully.

“Ridiculous!” sniffs Penny. “My needs were better catered for at my boarding school. I had this exotic French mistress who had the most enormous crush on me. She used to invite me into her room and give me creme de menthe out of her tooth mug. She got the sack because matron sneaked on her. Matron was in love with me too. Have you ever thought about becoming a lesbian, Rosie?”

G.B.H. is awaiting my answer with interest so I give a gay little laugh—maybe gay is the wrong word—and shake my head vigorously. “No. Never.”

“Me neither. Of course I used to stroke Mademoiselle Cheyssial’s feet when she asked me to but that was only for the booze. We never got down to something you’d read about in the Sunday Times.”

“No,” I say uneasily. G.B.H. is staring at Penny as if she had just come in through the skylight and said “take me to your leader.” I find that the look in his eyes makes me feel uncomfortable. “Maybe it would be a good idea to get a breath of fresh air,” I say.

Half an hour later I am beginning to think that it was the worst idea I ever had. I hardly ever go into pubs and in the area around Queen Adelaide’s they don’t serve a lot of cucumber sandwiches, I can tell you. Penny rabbits on in her upper class voice and we get some very old fashioned glances.

“Don’t you think we should have gone in the saloon bar?” I murmur.

“Good Heavens, no. It’ll be full of ghastly middle class people drinking port and lemon. I like it here with the pools of ale and the whippets.”

I can’t see any whippets and the man next to me is sipping a Babycham but I don’t say anything.

“Daddy says working class people are the salt of the earth,” says Penny, polishing off her second double scotch of the evening. “It’s the middle class who cause all the trouble. God, I need a man.”

If only she didn’t have such a loud voice! Even the old bloke in the corner drops his double six as he chokes over his beer.

“We’d better be getting back, hadn’t we?” I say nervously. Penny rapes an Irish navvy with her eyes and shakes her head.

“What’s the hurry? There’s certain to be a window we can climb through. I think this place could warm up in a minute.” She sticks a cigarette in her mouth and looks around hopefully.

Another twenty minutes and I am talking about The Black and White Minstrel Show to the Irish navvy’s mate who is talking to me about taking a little stroll: “Just a breath of fresh air to bring some colour to the cheeks of your arse,” he husks whimsically. Penny and the fellow with McAlpine stamped across his donkey jacket have been outside for fifteen minutes now.

“I think we must be going in a minute,” I say, primly removing the Paddy’s friendly hand from my thigh.

“It’s not taking after your friend you are, I’m thinking,” he says, disappointment and stout drowning his voice. “You haven’t touched a drop of your Guinness.”

“I’m certain my friend will drink it when she comes back,” I say glancing nervously at my watch. Ten to eleven! We are going to be locked out unless she gets her skates on. I finish picking another beer mat to pieces and glance towards the door. Thank God! There she is, her slim boyish figure dwarfed by the giant hulk of the Irish navvy following her. The mick stumbles as he comes through the door. I notice that his eyes are glassy and that he is feeling his way towards the table along the backs of chairs. Too much to drink, I suppose.

“Did you find one that was open?” I say as he slumps down opposite me. They went out to look for a fish and chip shop. For a moment the man looks puzzled, and then he gives an understanding nod. “No, they were all closed.” He stretches out a shaking hand for the Guinness but Penny gets there first.

“Hands off, Patrick,” she says. “That was thirsty work.”

She tilts back the glass until only a few sad riverlets of froth are left running down its empty sides.

“I don’t know where she puts it all,” I say.

The big mick laughs hollowly. “Sure, and you can say that again,” he says. “Twenty years I’ve been handling a pneumatic drill and I’ve never known anything like it.”

I don’t know what he is talking about so I smile politely and look at Penny. “We really ought to be going. It’s nearly eleven, you know.”

Penny waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t keep on about it. It’s so boring. I’m starving anyway. I want to go and eat. Patrick’s going to take us to a fab little café he knows, aren’t you, Paddy?”

“But Penny, it’s our first night,” I squeak.

“Jesus!” says Patrick.

The trouble with Penny is that once she has got an idea into her head, there is nothing you can do to shift it. She is also very good at making you feel wet if you disagree with her. All this means that the party moves on to the Green Clover Café where Patrick falls asleep with his head on the table and my mick goes off to help Penny mend the lock on the toilet door. It must have been stiff because he is sweating like a pig when he comes back.

“Penny! We’ve got to go,” I hiss.

Penny considers my bloke who seems on the point of drifting off alongside his mate and nods. “Yes, these two have had it, haven’t they? I wonder if there’s any chance of getting into Buck House. I feel like—”

“No!” I yelp, feeling it is time I put my foot down. “We’ve got to get back.”

“All right, all right, you don’t have to shout. I hope you’re not always such a stick in the mud.” She waves at the balding man behind the counter who is cleaning his nails with a fork. “Waiter, can you call us a taxi.”

“You’re a taxi, madam,” he says.

“That joke’s as bad as the food and only slightly older,” snaps Penny.

“Hoity-toity,” says the café owner.

“Up yours!” shouts Penny.

“Do you think we ought to leave something for the meal?” I say hurriedly indicating the sleeping micks.

“A ton of bicarbonate of soda would be preferable,” sniffs Penny. “No, I think they would be most offended. Let’s leave them to their dreams.”

I unclamp Patrick’s sleeping hand from my thigh and stand up.

“I hope we see you again, duchess,” says the owner as he opens the door with a flourish.

“I think it’s very likely,” says Penny. “I’m a public health inspector and if I survive the meal I’ll be back to take samples.”

I am sorry to have to report that a few very unfortunate things are said after that but, luckily, I am so busy scouring the streets for a taxi that I don’t hear most of them. When a cab shows up it is only because the driver lives in the next street and it requires all Penny’s powers of persuasion and another ten minutes before he agrees to take us back to the nurses home. What they were haggling about in that doorway I will never know. I am only grateful that it is not the dreadful sex maniac who brought me to the hospital in the first place. Every time I see a taxi I expect the driver to leap out and demand one pound forty.

“Is he going to take us?” I ask as Penny sinks into the seat beside me.

“Yes and no.” Penny straightens her skirt as the driver staggers into the cab. What does she mean? I wish she would make herself clearer.

“How are we going to get in?” I ask her once the cab starts moving.

“Ring the front door bell and say we got stuck in a traffic jam.”

“They don’t have traffic jams at one o’clock in the morning.”

“Oh, all right, fuss pot. We’ll climb in. I suppose it will remind me of the pantie raids back at the dear old coll.”

“The boys used to raid you, did they?” I ask.

“Silly girl! We used to raid them. I had a tuck box full of Y-fronts. Some of them put up a pretty good fight though.” Her eyes glint with relish. It certainly seems a lot different to Park Road Comprehensive. What exciting lives some people lead.

When we get back to the nurses home there is less action than at a geriatrics’ jitterbugging contest and I begin to get really worried. There are no lights and the place looks like Dartmoor during a power cut. To add to our problems there is an argument about the fare and I leave Penny to deal with it while I try to find a window we can climb in by. I came back just as she is getting out of the back of the taxi and smoothing down her skirt.

“Did you get it straightened out?” I ask her.

“Eventually,” she says. “I hope we’re going to find it easier to get in than some people I can think of.”

I don’t know what she is talking about so I say goodnight to the driver, who seems to have passed out on the back seat, and lead the way round the side of the building. Most of the windows have bars but there is one that is unprotected and open.

“Fancy having to climb in to this crummy place,” sniffs Penny. “It’s like weevils having to crawl back into a cheese. Give me a leg up.”

With a neat display of the Olga Korbuts, she pulls herself onto the window ledge and flips open the catch. “I’ll get in and help you up.”

I acknowledge her whisper and look around me in the darkness. What a way to spend my first night at Queen Adelaide’s. If we do get to our room without being discovered we will have to be up in a few hours’ time.

“Hurry up. It’s somebody’s bedroom.” Penny is leaning out of the window and I take her hand and scramble up the wall, laddering my tights. If I am honest with myself I have to admit that I have not enjoyed this evening very much. I would have been much better off staying at home and practising mitreing my corners.

“Are you O.K.? Good. Let’s get out of here.” Penny turns to refasten the window and I make tracks for the door. My fingers have just closed around the handle when I glance towards the bed. There is not much light in the room but just enough to see—oh my God!—G.B.H. turns in his sleep and suddenly opens his eyes. I tear open the door.

“Oy! You!”

I shoot into the corridor and automatically close the door behind me as I come face to face with one of my fellow student nurses wearing a dressing gown. I see her eyes widen as they examine my dishevelled person and then pass on to the sign on the door behind me: “Mr Greaves—Porter”.

I hope she does not think—no, she couldn’t. Still, some people are very good at jumping to conclusions. It would be so unfair if there was any unjustified scandal about me. I would hate my nursing career to start under a cloud.

“I was just complaining about a leaking tap,” I explain. “It was awful. I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

“Yes,” says the girl looking at me strangely.

I walk beside her to the foot of the stairs and let myself into the lift. I have been there for three minutes before I remember that it does not work. There is no sign of Penny and I imagine that she is explaining to G.B.H. what happened. Maybe I had better go and back her up. I let myself out of the lift and walk back down the corridor. I can hear no sound of voices from outside the Porter’s door and only a rhythmic creaking of what sounds like bed springs. Good. G.B.H. must have gone back to bed—if he ever bothered to leave it—and Penny must have gone upstairs while I was in the lift. Poor girl, she must be as ready for bed as I am.

CHAPTER 5

Penny is not in the room when I get upstairs and I imagine that she must have gone to the toilet. I want to find out what G.B.H. said but I am so exhausted that I fall asleep the moment I tumble into bed. The next thing I know, the alarm clock is scrambling my brains and I discover that it is six o’clock. Penny’s fingers are still clutching at air on the bedside table.

“Cancel this morning, will you?” she groans. “I am feeling distinctly fragile. That fourth pint of Guinness was definitely a mistake.”

“What happened with G.B.H.?” I ask. “Is he going to report us?”

“I think I have more grounds for reporting him,” yawns Penny.

“Why? What did he do?” I can imagine G.B.H. waking up, thinking that he is faced with a couple of burglars and—

“Virtually nothing. Snivelling little gnat-testicled creep. He couldn’t satisfy an over-sexed elf who went off like a tin of pre-war snoek.”

“Penny! You didn’t—he didn’t—”

“Oh, don’t be so wet. It was the only way of shutting him up, wasn’t it? I didn’t notice you hanging around to explain that we were collecting for the Salvation Army.”

“I came back,” I say indignantly.

“It’s more than he did,” sniffs Penny. “He makes love like someone rubbing a pencil mark off a sheet of tissue paper.”

The very thought of being touched by Mr Greaves makes me feel sick and I am relieved that he is not in his office when we go to breakfast. This meal is served in the main hospital dining room and it gives me a chance to survey some of the medical talent on display. There is only one real hunk of Eradlik material to be seen and I am not on the brink of tears when I notice him gazing at me moodily over the rim of his coffee mug. Not to be outdone, I return his piercing glance and slowly raise my own cup to my lips without taking my eyes away from his. Unfortunately, I have forgotten to remove my teaspoon. By the time my eye has stopped watering I find that Penny has moved in and is sitting down beside Doctor Dish and fluttering her eyelashes as if trying to pick up speed for take-off. She is certainly hot stuff with the fellows, this girl. In fact, once or twice during the previous evening I thought that her behaviour was a bit over-friendly. Still, I must not be too unkind. It is probably that I am not used to upper class high spirits.

The breakfast itself is not a great success, unless you like hunks of bread cut thicker than platform shoes and fish cakes that taste as if they have been made from whale blubber. Not that I am worrying about food too much. I am nervous about what the day has in store and dog tired. If I was at home I would still be in bed. I feel a mixture of home sickness and resentment that I ever had to leave.

Our first job after breakfast is to draw kit and and our second to satisfy Sister Tutor that we can wear it without looking like reject waitresses.

“It’s a cap, not a tiara, Dixon,” she snaps at me. “And you, Green. Yours looks as if it was put round a cake before it went in the oven.”

“Rotten old bag,” hisses Penny. “Obviously aching for a couple of yards of steaming tonk.” All the other nurses look round and I wish she had not addressed the remark to me. I see the girl who was outside G.B.H.’s room giving me an odd look and I smile sweetly. The girl turns away hurriedly. Oh, dear.

When I first put on my uniform I feel as self-conscious as a shaven armpit in a French convent but soon, looking round me, I feel almost comforted by the knowledge that most of the patients will not be able to tell the difference between me and a S.R.N. until I give them an enema. That day seems a long way away as Sister Tutor gives us a lecture on the structure of the hospital—everyone except the woman who dishes out library books is senior to us—and moves smartly on to the structure of the human body with the aid of a couple of skeletons. “Norman and Henry Bones, the boy detectives,” says Penny. “I’ve been out with Henry. He’s a disastrous poke as you can see.” I turn redder than Ted Heath being caught fiddling with his organ during choir practice every time Penny opens her mouth but she is certainly the liveliest of my fellow trainees. Further evidence of her speed off the mark is given to me when I lie flat on my bed after an exhausting day and watch her giving her eyes the full Mata Hari treatment—or matted houri as seems more appropriate in her case.

“Mark?” I ask.

“No. He deserves a period of rejection after standing me up for the Royal Family. I’m having a drink with Robert Fishlock, that dishy houseman we were both ogling this morning.”

“Great,” I say, spelling the g-r-a-t-e in my imagination.

“Where’s he taking you to?”

“His flat. Intimate, don’t you think?”

Quite possibly, I must. Still, I expect Penny can handle herself—as a last extreme.

When my flat-mate has gone out I settle down with one of the medical books I have been forced to buy but I am so tired that I can hardly look at photographs without falling asleep. Some of those bushmen are quite extraordinary, aren’t they? No wonder his wife is smiling.

Penny returns just as I am about to turn off the light.

“Did you have a nice time?” I hear myself saying.

Penny examines her neck in the mirror and shivers. “Out of this world,” she croons. “I believed that things like that only happened in dreams I was ashamed of thinking about when I woke up. I feel like a piano that’s just been played by Artur Rubinstein. All my keys are glowing.” She pops open the buttons of her blouse and touches her breasts as if bringing back memories. Crikey! I wonder if you can get Dr Fishlock on the National Health.

“Did you er-um?” I murmur tactfully.

“You mean, did he introduce his love truncheon to my spasm chasm?” says Penny cheerfully. “You bet he did. You don’t have to help this stallion to clap hooves under a mare’s belly.”

“How nice,” I say, patting my hair nervously. She is so outspoken, isn’t she?

“‘Nice’ is too small a word for what happened in that flat,” snorts Penny. “We tore up the Kama Sutra and wrote a new book. Suddenly The Perfumed Garden seemed like A Guide to Compost Growing.”

I try to control my excitement. Penny Green sounds like a girl who has been around a bit in her time and if she reckons that Dr Fishlock is sexy then I am very interested. Not of course that I want to get involved in any sexual shenanigans. It is just that I would like to be able to resist someone who was supposed to be very attractive. You have to stick your big toe in before you know whether the bath water is cold. I also feel slightly choked that Penny got to Doctor Dish before me. He did make eyes at me first and if I had not had my accident with the spoon—who knows? It would probably have been me resisting his passionate advances.

Penny is still rambling on when I fall asleep and it is just as well that I do get some shuteye because the following day we are introduced to life on the wards.

“Everard Hornbeam, and don’t get in everybody’s way,” says Sister Tutor looking me up and down as if she expects to find that my uniform is on back to front. All the wards in the hospital have names like that and seem to be called after famous surgeons or benefactors who gave money after the hospital had disposed of a troublesome mother in law.

When I get to Everard Hornbeam, Sister Bradley nods at me briskly and passes me on to Staff Nurse Wood who steers me towards Nurse Wilson who smiles fleetingly and gives me into the charge of Junior Martin who I later find has been on the ward for three weeks. Nurse Martin hands me a bed pan and directs me to the sluice.

In the hours that follow I get to know the sluice pretty well and I begin to suspect that the patients’ cornflakes were laced with syrup of figs in expectation of my arrival. I also discover that I have about as much status as a pork chop at a bar mitzvah. So much for my illusions about being on the same footing as the rest of the nurses once I was wearing a uniform. Nobody is fooled for an instant. I am on a men’s ward and I can see the patients nudging each other and winking as they make remarks about me. It is all very embarrassing and I suddenly become very conscious of my body. Every time I bend down my breasts and bottom seem to be lunging out all over the place and I can hardly walk down the ward without tripping over my feet.

All the other nurses move around as if programmed by computer and when not bearing full bedpans and bottles in one direction and empty ones in another I hover by their sides like a humming bird waiting its turn at a flower. In all respects I am totally useless and left in no doubt of this fact: “Nurse. Carry on with this dressing, will you? No, you can’t do that, can you?”—“Nurse. Test the diabetic specimens. Damn. You can’t do that, can you?” When Staff Wood comes up beside me and says “Come on, Nurse. Don’t hang about. Try and find something to do,” I nearly burst into tears.

Fortunately there are a number of tasks to be performed which require no medical knowledge and not all of them are directly connected with bowel movement. Preparing and taking round “elevenses” is one such job and it gives me my first real chance to get to know the patients. Their favourite tipple is marked up on a board in the kitchen and it is with a start of recognition that I see the name Arkwright. Could it be the famous Groper Arkwright who shared my lift when I came for my interview with Matron? I do remember an old man curled up asleep at the end of the ward.

In an even more worried state of mind I set off pushing my trolley and trying to smile sweetly. “Mr Evans? Cocoa, isn’t it? Would you like some sugar?”

“Yes please, Nurse. Three.”

My spoon is poised over the mug when Staff Wood snatches it away. “Mr Evans is not allowed sugar,” she says coldly. “Get a grip on yourself.”

I blush scarlet and wish I could get a grip on Staff Wood’s wind pipe. Why does everybody have to be so unpleasant? It soon becomes clear to me that most of the patients would be quite happy to kill themselves for a spoonful of sugar and that nearly all of them are treating themselves for their own versions of the ailments.

An exception to this rule is Mr Buchanan in the third bed down. He has already given up the ghost. When I approach him he beckons me closer and addresses me in a confidential whisper that can be heard four beds away. “Don’t bother with me, lass. You give your time to those it can still benefit. Just let me be and I’ll try not to be too much trouble. I’ve had a good innings and I can’t grumble.” He squeezes my hand and a tear glistens in his eye. It is all very affecting.

“Has he got a chance?” I whisper to Nurse Wilson as I push my trolley on to the next bed.

“Who? Mr Buchanan? He’s being discharged next week.”

How strange, I think. It was never like this on the Doctor Eradlik programme.

The next bed contains Mr Arkwright who still appears to be sleeping soundly. I have half a mind to tiptoe past but it occurs to me that I have got to come into contact with him sooner or later so it might as well be now. Taking the steaming mixture of malt, milk, eggs and added vitamins that I have been reading about on the tin I advance to the side of the bed. He probably won’t recognise me anyhow.

“Mr Arkwright,” I croon. “Wakey, wakey.”

Immediately, a scrawny arm shoots out and claw-like fingers sink into the soft flesh at the top of my thigh. “I want to play naughty nanas with you,” husks a familiar voice.

“Mr Arkwright! Please!”

“Come on, my little chickabee. Pull the screens round and hop aboard the love train.”

“Oops!” I don’t want to pour steaming Ovaltine all over the dirty old sod, but it is not surprising that I lose my balance when he tries to shove a couple of gnarled fingers up passion alley.