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Show THE ZEPHYR/FEBRUARY-MARCH 2007 1942 and I wanted to get away from home and see the bright lights of London. No matter that London was deep in blackout and getting bombed every night---I forged my father’s name was Guy Burgess, which meant nothing to me until much later when he was exposed as one of the infamous Cambridge spies. signature to my enrollment form and set forth on my career as a nurse. How I came to be recommended to another of their group has never been clear to me but I was saving up to go on holiday with another nurse and I had started doing housework in my time off. Somehow I landed up at the house of Donald Maclean, and while I was cleaning the bath, his wife, Melinda, came in to speak to me. She wanted to know why if I preferred a cleaning job to nursing, that I did not come and work for them fulltime and give up my hospital job. That remark floored me. I knew they were Communist My first impression of my new home in London was one of acute disappointment---I had imagined St. Stephen’s Hospital to be a grand white building with a statue of the Saint on top of it. It turned out to be a decrepit old blackened building which was said to be an almshouse in the time of Queen Victoria but it had quite a history (rumour had it that an illegitimate child of the Duke of Clarence had been born there---he was suspected in some quarters of being the real Jack the Ripper and the mother of the child was one of the street women he favoured. I had joined a Socialist group at the hospital but as the war dragged on, most of the members dropped out---they were too busy having a good time with the Yanks and collecting nylon stockings, chocolate, cigarettes etc. So I continued with my affiliation to the Anti-Franco cause and joined demonstrations to Downing Street etc. sympathizers like myself but I had come from a very poor background and these were people who had never known what poverty was like. The idea that someone in my situation had to work at two jobs to save money did not even occur to her. My way to get ahead was to succeed in obtaining a professional status as a trained nurse; I could not afford a university education and had no wealthy relations, so if they were Communist sympathizers, why did she not understand that I was down on my knees cleaning her bath for the money? ...the whole one shilling and sixpence an hour of it! I had these ideas that Communists came from the same origins as myself---I could not understand why people from affluent, upper-class backgrounds were interested in socialist movements and what I gathered from Burgess and the Macleans was that they had nothing but contempt for the working-class. My next attempt to earn extra money in my spare time saw me applying for a job as a Anyway, the war had also done a fair amount of damage to the building, fortunately for me, before my arrival. Land mines had destroyed every other section of the hospital which meant that Block 1, Block 3, Block 5 and Block 7 were standing, the even number Blocks were rubble and there had been large loss of life which included the entire children’s wards and many doctors, nurses and other staff. There were rats running through the rubble which came to my attention forcibly when I soon went down with a bad case of dysentery - the rats had got to the sacks of porridge. I had chosen a London County Council Hospital because student nurses were paid a wage of two pounds a month plus board and lodging---I had come from a very poor working-class background and could expect no help from my family. The major hospitals in London like Guys and Barts regarded teaching student nurses as a privilege; their staff was largely made up of doctors’ daughters etc. from a more affluent background and they were given pocket-money from the hospitals of about five shillings a month. London County Council Hospital nurses also were given a morale boost in the form of waitress; somehow in Piccadilly. I had would take anyone ward and clumsy, I managed to get myself employed at the Senior R. A. F. Officers Club no previous experience but they were desperately short of staff and who applied. At eighteen I weighed twelve stone and was very awkI had very big feet and wore comfortable, clod-hopper shoes---three strides would take me clear across the room. As we were strictly forbidden to take any work outside our hospital duties (on pain of being sacked), I gave the manager a false new modern uniforms designed by Norman Hartnell, couturier to the Queen, so no more aprons, starched collars and cuffs. However, the food for the student nurses was appalling, even for war-time. We had porridge for breakfast, usually a kind of thin sliced sausage-meat (ironically called German sausage) and cold boiled potatoes for other meals, and once our small ration of butter had run out, there was a horrible new item called margarine which was coloured a vivid yellow and smelt and tasted disgusting. People have often remarked that in wartime Beeiead all the classes were equal and we all suffered from the same stringent conditions. This was definitely not true and after seeing how the doctors and senior staff fared, I decided to lead a deputation to the matron to demand better food. I exhorted my little band of followers and although we were all petrified of facing our very domineering and unapproachable matron, off we set one morning to beard the dragon. I knocked loudly on her door, and then turned around only to find that my co-conspirators had disappeared---I was the sole voice of dissent. I think I made a good case, but I can still remember the way that woman wiped the floor with me, ending by identifying me as an aggressive, trouble-maker and declaring that a description of this incident would be on all my future records and I would not get a reference from her when and if I finished my training. There was an election coming and I worked for the Labour Party, putting forms in envelopes, licking stamps etc. A lot of my fellow student nurses came from the south of Ireland and they were obliged to vote. As they had no interest in who governed the United Kingdom, I took it upon myself to go with them to the polling booths (strictly illegal of course) and I showed them where the Labour Party required their mark. I had joined a Socialist group at the hospital but as the war dragged on, most of the members dropped out---they were too busy having a good time with the Yanks and collecting nylon stockings, chocolate, cigarettes etc. So 1 continued with my affiliation to the Anti-Franco cause and joined demonstrations to Downing Street etc. About this time I met a Welshman who worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) - he invited me to his home which was close to the hospital and I became a frequent visitor and friend of the family. He was also aligned to the Anti-Franco cause and I met some very interesting people at his house. I remember one meal in particular---there was a very charming Spanish gentleman sitting opposite me and our hostess had served us a salad in the Spanish style, dressed with olive oil. This was more than my unaccustomed stomach could take so I did my best to hide the way I was trying to wipe the oil off my tomato with my napkin. The man sitting next to me did not interest me until he started being extremely rude and abusive about the uneducated way I spoke, and especially about my horrible Cardiff accent---the way I dragged my vowels etc. Admittedly, he was drunk at the time but I had never before met someone who took an absolute delight in hurting and humiliating another person. I noticed that although he was very well dressed, his finger-nails were dirty, he needed a shave and his hair was greasy and unkempt. He also made obscene remarks about women in general and that confused me because this was the first time I had ever been in contact with a homosexual and I had no idea of how to handle the situation. The other men at the table passed his remarks off as just his “little ways” and it seemed the done thing to laugh. Afterwards, I was told the man’s My favourite job was to go into work on Sunday morning and feed the rabbits and guinea-pigs. I hated to see the doctors stick big needles into their abdomens and inject them with substances, so I made a fuss of them when it was my turn to do the Sunday feeds---also it got me out of Mass. I could have been exempted from National Service inn this job but I was i8yrs old in i Ellen Clifford (left, of course) with fellow nurses in London. name as I knew the hospital Matron had an airman friend and often dined at the club. So “Daphne” started work---the only trouble was that when the manager and maitre d’ wanted to call my attention, I had forgotten my assumed name so “Daphne” went sailing past them, blithely oblivious that I was being summoned. _ Most of the clients were very senior officers, and one night I found myself having to serve Air Marshal Lord Tedder who ordered his meal in French which left me in a blind - panic---I had no idea what he wanted so I went down to the kitchen and burst into tears! Fortunately, I had a good friend in one of the chefs who came from Port Talbot in South Wales and he said, “never mind, I know what he likes” and the great man was served to his satisfaction. Another night, I had a narrow escape when I noticed that my hospital Matron was in the club, but I managed to get out of that situation by pleading that I was incapable of working in the “silver service” section owing to my clumsiness. One night, however, I was serving a table of very young junior officers when I overheard one of them say, “the Irish - they breed like rabbits” Somehow, the full bow] of very hot tomato soup I was carrying “accidently” fell straight into his lap, and that incident put an end to my not very promising career as a waitress to the rich and powerful. I was not sorry to go but I regretted saying farewell to my Welsh friend in the kitchen who always made sure I had a good feed before I went home The food in the officers dining rooms was excellent, war-time or not, and there was no short- age of good French wine either. I never felt afraid that I was going to be killed in an air-raid but I was quite sure that I was going to die of starvation---my life revolved around getting enough to eat. My best friend was a waitress in a Greek restaurant in Soho and some nights I would go there to wait for her to finish work. Having no money to order a meal, I would sit at the end table and look pathetic, and eventually the large hairy Greek head-waiter would puta bowl of spaghetti and meat-balls in front of me. The meat-balls were probably horse-meat but they were well seasoned and I was in no position to be fussy, I ate every scrap. EDITOR'S NOTE: Look for Ellen Clifford's account of her aborted trip to the United States in 1954, during the McCarthy Era, in a future issue. |