I felt as if I knew nothing. True, I didn’t know much, although on paper I was highly qualified, academically. Not much use in the real world, as I was finding out. It was this young lady, however, who told me I had to go to the doctor immediately when days previously I had burned the inside of my middle finger on the gas stove and soon had great red streaks going up my arm. It had been getting worse for days on end, but I had done nothing about it. My housemate was appalled. This was blood poisoning of some kind, she insisted, an infection which needed medical treatment. Really? My hand hurt and my arm felt hot to the touch, but was it necessary to go to a doctor? Yes, she reinforced, and the sooner the better. So off I went, coming back with prescribed antibiotics and a stern warning from the doctor to keep the wound clean and to make sure that the red streaks were receding.
I had made an appointment before to visit this doctor about my lack of menstruation for the last four or five months, ever since my arrival in the UK. Was this normal? Now that I was more settled, when would my periods recommence? Much to my surprise, the very morning of my appointment, I discovered that menstruation had begun again…. just like that! My life must be getting back to normal, I surmised, even though it didn’t feel like it. Well, at least that was one less thing to worry about. I cancelled my appointment. Just my arm and hand to sort out.
The other young lady, Heather, at 23, was a year younger than me. Very intelligent, elegant at times, with a penchant for beautiful clothes and exquisite objects, she had a much-loved ostrich plume winter hat which had cost a fortune but which she wore with panache. She kept it in a box under her bed, along with a tin of chocolate digestive biscuits on which she munched in secret. Heather had a great sense of humour, and, like our housemate, was competent, able to run house and home, and aware of the ways of the world. She was emotionally intelligent and funny, too. She could go from being superbly elegant and sophisticated one minute, to wickedly coarse and inappropriate the next, reducing everyone around to fits of giggles. She was and still is hilarious. We clicked immediately. We are still close friends, even today, more than fifty years later.
Heather had chosen to leave school at 16 to take up secretarial work. She was already the personal secretary of the Director of IBM, in the nearby town of Havant. She had a boyfriend, an engineer working for Plessey. He lived with two housemates in Southbourne, the next village along from Emsworth. Sometimes Heather disappeared to his place for the weekend, not returning on Sunday morning, say, when sometimes her mother phoned. My fellow housemate and I knew what we had to do to cover for Heather’s absence, since Heather had worked out the perfect alibi ahead of time. If the phone rang, the conversation went something like this: “You want to speak to Heather? No, I am afraid she isn’t here. She has just popped out to buy a newspaper, but she will be back soon. Shall I ask her to phone you back? Yes? OK, I will do that, for sure. She won’t be long. Bye!”
One of us would then call Heather at her boyfriend’s place, hoping like crazy that he would pick up the phone. “Hello! Heather’s Mum has just called. She thinks Heather has gone to buy a newspaper, so please tell Heather to call her mother back immediately!” Heather would do so, of course, pretending she was at home with us. There were no cell phones in those days, so no way of seeing where the call had originated. We laughed at our cleverness. With hindsight, and with the wisdom of old age, I sometimes wonder if Heather’s mother already knew what was going on, and that she was the one who was playing games with us!
