"In London it's all slush and mud. They don't suspect what we've got
here. A suburb is a wonderful place!"
After a wet and muddy day in London I've seen the trains pull into
Charing Cross with snow piled on the roofs of the carriages, and felt a
foot taller for joy that I was one of those fortunates who might step
into a train and go down into a white countryside.
It is the same excitement to wake up early to an overnight fall and see
down the Dover Road for miles no foot of man printed, but only the
birds' feet. Considering the Dover Road has been a highway since the
Romans, it really is a fine moment when you realize its surface has
suddenly become untrodden and unexplored as any jungle.
Alas, the amount of snow that has set me writing!... two bucketfuls in
the whole garden!
When a Medical Officer goes sick, or, in other words, when an M.O. is
warded, a very special and almost cynical expression settles on his
face. Also the bedside manner of the Visiting Officer is discarded as he
reaches the bed of the sick M.O.
"My knees are very painful," says the sick M.O., but it is a despondent
statement, not a plea for aid.
The Visiting Officer nods, but he does not suggest that they will soon
be better.
They look at each other as weak human beings look, and:
"We might try...?" says the Visiting Officer questioningly.
The M.O. agrees without conviction, and settles back on his pillows. Not
for him the comfortable trust in the divine knowledge of specialists. He
can endure like a dog, but without its faith in its master.
The particular M.O. whose knees are painful is, as a matter of fact,
better now. He got up yesterday.
Mooning about the ward in a dressing-gown, he stared first out of one
window into the fog and then out of another.
Finally, just before he got back into bed, he made an epigram.
"Nurse," he said, "the difference between being in bed and getting up is
that in bed you do nothing, but when you get up there's nothing to
do...."
I tucked him up and put the cradle over his knees, and he added, "One
gets accustomed to everything," and settled back happily with his
reading-lamp, his French novel, and his dictionary.
The fog developed all day yesterday, piling up white and motionless
against the window-panes. As night fell a little air of excitement ran
here and there amongst the V.A.D.'s.
"How shall we get home...?" "Are the buses running?" "Oh no, the last
one is stuck against the railings outside!" "My torch has run out...."
By seven o'clock even the long corridor was as dim as the alley outside.
No one thought of shutting the windows--I doubt whether they will shut
... and the fog rolled over the sill in banks and round the open glass
doors, till even the white cap of a Sister could hardly be seen as she
passed.
I am pleased with any atmospheric exaggeration; the adventure of going
home was before me....
At eight I felt my way down over the steps into the alley; the torch,
held low on the ground, lighted but a small, pale circle round my shoes.
Outside it was black and solid and strangely quiet.
In the yard a man here and there raised his voice in a shout; feet
strayed near mine and edged away.
At the cross-roads I came on a lantern standing upon the ground, and by
it drooped the nose of a benighted horse; the spurt of a match lit the
face of its owner.
Up the hill, the torch held low against the kerbstone, the sudden
looming of a black giant made me start back as I nearly ran my head into
a telegraph-post....
I was at the bottom of the sea; fathoms and fathoms of fog must stand
above my head.
Suddenly a dozen lights showed about me, then the whole sky alight with
stars, and naked trees with the rime on them, bristling; the long road
ran up the hill its accustomed steel colour, the post office was there
with its red window, the lean old lamp-post with its broken arm....