It was the winter of 1962-63, and the entire country was blanketed in snow and shivering in record cold temperatures. I was 22 and studying medicine in London when, due to an epidemic of flu, I was farmed out to the Western General hospital in Sussex to help out covering for absent staff.
Even though I wasn't fully qualified I was accorded the courtesy title Doctor, but my entire time there I was terrified of making a mistake. I was terrified too of the nurses, a cheeky lot who clearly twigged early on that I was still a virgin and teased the life out of me. (I did have a girlfriend but she was a good Catholic and back then nice girls didn't do 'that sort of thing' before the wedding ring was on their finger.) The ward staff nurse was a comfort regarding the first problem at least: she discreetly watched over me, gently correcting my occasional mistakes before I did any harm without making me feel like a total dick.
Staff, as we all called her, was around twice my age, tall, slim and elegant, with short neatly permed brown hair, arched eyebrows, striking blue eyes, a thin but rather long nose, a wide thin-lipped mouth and a receding chin. She had a posh Home Counties accent and rather reminded me somewhat of a popular actress of the era, Joyce Grenfell. On her left hand she wore both a diamond engagement ring and a gold wedding band. The nurses clocked the way she looked after me and started ragging me about being the sun she'd never had. I was just profoundly grateful to her, and gave her a nice box of chocolates for Christmas, which got me even more ribbing from the nurses.
It was a few days after Christmas, and we'd had a burst of new admissions with flu, injuries from slipping on ice, car accidents and all sorts. I was on a 15-hour shift, having done one the previous day with only about four hours sleep in between. That was becoming a regular pattern for me, and at about 1am, as I let go a jaw-cracking yawn, the ward sister, a formidable Jamaican lady, ordered me to go and get a couple of hours rest. We had a couple of store cupboards which had been converted into sleeping spaces for staff with a bed and a light -- we called them cells. I gratefully dragged myself into one of them. Kicking off my shoes but still wearing my scrubs I slipped under the bedcovers and probably fell asleep even before my hear hit the pillow.
I think not more than a few minutes had passed when I was woken by the light switching on. Shielding my eyes with one hand I saw a female figure at the door, and after a few seconds I realised it was Staff. I assumed she was there to tell me I was needed back on the ward, but as I started to swing my legs out from the bed she said, "It's all right, all quiet on the Western Front, you stay where you are."
I was confused as to why she was there then, to my astonishment she slipped off her shoes, reached up under her dress and pulled down her suspender girdle with her black stockings still attached, revealing slim but shapely calves and ankles. She must have heard my gasp because she turned round and said, "The other sleep cell's already doubled up and I'm not laddering another bloody pair. Come on, shift up." The she slipped off the white apron covering her uniform dress.