London Transports Read Free Page B

They’ll be in with the screens for modesty, the examination, and the premed. They go mad if you’re not in bed. Of course that stupid Paddy of a nurse didn’t tell you, they expect you to be inspired.”
    Hell was right. In five minutes, the nurse and Mr. White came in. A younger nurse carried a screen. Hell was examined first, then May, for blood pressure and temperature, and that kind of thing. Mr. White was charming. He called her Miss O’Connor, as if he had known her all his life.
    He patted her shoulder and told her she didn’t have anything to worry about. The Irish nurse gave her an unsmiling injection which was going to make her drowsy. It didn’t immediately.
    Hell was doing her nails.
    “You were really here last year?” asked May in disbelief.
    “Yeah, there’s nothing to it. I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”
    “Why didn’t you take the Pill?” May asked.
    “Why didn’t you?” countered Hell.
    “Well, I did for a bit, but I thought it was making me fat, and then anyway, you know, I thought I’d escaped for so long before I started the Pill that it would be all right. I was wrong.”
    “I know.” Hell was sympathetic. “I can’t take it. I’ve got varicose veins already and I don’t really understand all those things they give you in the family planning clinics, jellies, and rubber things, and diaphragms. It’s worse than working out income tax. Anyway, you never have time to set up a scene like that before going to bed with someone, do you? It’s like preparing for a battle.”
    May laughed.
    “It’s going to be fine, love,” said Hell. “Look, I know, I’ve been here before. Some of my friends have had it done four or five times. I promise you, it’s only the people who don’t know who worry. This afternoon you’ll wonder what you were thinking about to look so white. Now if it had been terrible, would I be here again?”
    “But your varicose veins?” said May, feeling a little sleepy.
    “Go to sleep, kid,” said Hell. “We’ll have a chat when it’s all over.”
    Then she was getting onto a trolley, half asleep, and going down corridors with lovely prints on the walls to a room with a lot of light, and transferring onto another table. She felt as if she could sleep forever and she hadn’t even had the anaesthetic yet. Mr. White stood there in a coat brighter than his name. Someone was dressing him up the way they do in films.
    She thought about Andy. “I love you,” she said suddenly.
    “Of course you do,” said Mr. White, coming over and patting her kindly without a trace of embarrassment.
    Then she was being moved again, she thought they hadn’t got her right on the operating table, but it wasn’t that, it was back into her own bed and more sleep.
    There was a tinkle of china. Hell called over from the window.
    “Come on, they’ve brought us some nice soup. Broth they call it.”
    May blinked.
    “Come on, May. I was done after you and I’m wide awake. Now didn’t I tell you there was nothing to it?”
    May sat up. No pain, no tearing feeling in her insides. No sickness.
    “Are you sure they did me?” she asked.
    They both laughed.
    They had what the nursing-home called a light lunch. Then they got a menu so that they could choose dinner.
    “There are some things that England does really well, and this is one of them,” Hell said approvingly, trying to decide between the delights that were offered. “They even give us a small carafe of wine. If you want more you have to pay for it. But they kind of disapprove of us getting pissed.”
    Hell’s friend Charlie was coming in at six when he finished work. Would May be having a friend, too, she wondered? No. Celia wouldn’t come.
    “I don’t mean Celia,” said Hell. “I mean the bloke.”
    “He doesn’t know, he’s in Dublin, and he’s married,” said May.
    “Well, Charlie’s married, but he bloody knows, and he’d know if he were on the moon.”
    “It’s different.”
    “No, it’s not