Seven Dials

It really was remarkable how often it rained on the second Friday in the months of October, January, March and July, Billy Brocklesby thought. He peered out of the big double doors of the hospital into Endell Street at the chattering gutters and gleaming slate-grey pavements as people went splashing by with expressions of long-suffering martyrdom on their faces and shook his head disapprovingly at the dull sky. It really was too bad of the elements to show so little respect for that august body, the Board of Governors of Queen Eleanor’s Hospital. On the four days a year when they foregathered London should at least be dry, if not actually sunny, but there, what could you expect these days? Ever since the War had started everything had been out of kilter; before 1939, Billy Brocklesby told himself as he hooked back the great doors to show the world that Nellie’s was, as always, ready to do business with the halt, the sick and the maimed, before the War everything had been different. Plenty to eat and drink, sensible people running the country and sunshine every day. Now, in spite of the fact that peace had broken out over a year ago, you couldn’t get so much as a packet of fags to bless yourself with, let alone any decent scoff. And it always rained on the Guv’nors’ Day.

‘Bloody Government,’ he muttered under his breath as the first bewildered patient of the day came splashing into his newly washed front hall, dripping water all over the shining black and white terrazzo squares. ‘Bloody Government’ - and then, loudly, ‘Round the side, missus. First left and then left again for Outpatients - and mind where yer putting yer feet - just been washed, this place ’as, and got the Guv’nors comin’ any minute -’ And he sent her hurrying on her way, his brass buttons glittering imperiously as he ushered her out.

There was no doubt that he looked the part of Nellie’s Head
Porter most satisfactorily, in spite of the fact that he limped so badly and that his blue serge uniform was so thin and shiny, and his spirits lifted perceptibly, despite the rain, as the woman shot a scared glance over her shoulder at him and went scuttling away. That was better; a bit of respect, something else that was in short supply in this brave new peaceful world. They’d done more than throw out Churchill in last year’s disastrous election, Billy Brockesby was fond of saying to anyone who would listen to his dyed-in-the-wool conservative views. They’d thrown out decency and tradition and good old fashioned respect for your betters as well.

There was another flurry at the door and he turned back from his little lodge, where he had been about to settle himself with the
Daily Sketch
and his first cup of tea of the day, his face scowling in readiness to send another venturesome patient round to the rear entrance where she belonged, but at the sight of the new arrival his expression at once became ingratiating in the extreme.

‘Morning, Dr Lackland, sir,’ he said, beaming widely. ‘Nasty morning, sir, very nasty – let me take your coat, sir, very wet it is – I’ll see to it that it’s dried nice and ready for you when the meeting’s over, sir – ’

‘I can manage, thank you, Brocklesby, I can manage perfectly well – ’ Max Lackland tried not to let his irascibility show in his voice, but he wasn’t too successful, and Brocklesby stepped back, his face blank now, and said woodenly, ‘Yes, sir, as you wish, sir’, and watched him go hurrying up the wide curved staircase, his damp coat tails flapping. Not the man he was at all, he thought, not the man he was by a long chalk, and getting nasty with it. You had to make allowances, of course you did, losing his wife like that and them as close as a pair of pigs in mud, but all the same, no call to go biting a man’s head off when all he wanted to do was be helpful, was there?

No, Brocklesby told himself, no call at all, and went limping back to his lodge and his rapidly cooling tea. Dr High-and-Mighty Lackland wasn’t the only one to lose people to them bloody doodlebugs. Hadn’t his own old girl got hers two years ago this very month when three of the buggers had dropped down at Croydon? Not that she was all that much of a loss, to tell the truth, wicked tongue that she’d always had on
her, but all the same, he’d lost her and had to look after himself these days, in consequence, and did he go around biting people’s heads off over it? He did not, he told himself righteously, as he folded the
Daily Sketch
into an even smaller wodge and peered at the results of last night’s dog races. He did not, bearing his losses with dignity, not like some he could mention; and still muttering under his breath he checked off the names of the winners – and he hadn’t napped a bleedin’ one of ’em – and sipped his tea noisily and tried not to care about Max Lackland’s bad temper.

Max himself, standing in front of the window in the big Governors’ Room at the top of the stairs and staring sightlessly out at the rain, was thinking much the same about himself that Brocklesby was. There had been no need to be so unpleasant, damn it; the man had meant well and probably couldn’t help his oleaginous manner. They had been lucky to have had a Head Porter at all during the difficult war years when every able-bodied man there was had had better things to do than guard a hospital’s main entrance. To have found Brocklesby, with his left leg torn to tatters by World War One shrapnel, so making him useless for World War Two, had been Nellie’s good fortune and he, as a senior member of Nellie’s staff, should be able to tolerate the man’s less than pleasing personality better than he had this morning.