Читать книгу Confessions of a Doctor - Stanley Feldman - Страница 6
ОглавлениеI used to think I was born at the age of nine. I have only a very hazy recollection of anything that happened to me before that age. It is as if in 1939, just as I was reaching my tenth birthday, fear about the approaching war cast a fog over my childhood memories.
Looking at a photograph of myself as a youngster in the second row of pupils at the Burdett-Coutts primary school in Westminster, a stone’s throw from the Abbey, brings back fleeting memories of my schooldays. I can vaguely recall St George’s Day being celebrated, when the flag of St George was flown from the flagpole and a schoolmistress played ‘An English Country Garden’ on an old upright piano as we marched around the playground.
Perhaps the grudging smile on my face in the picture is recognition of life’s paradoxes. There we were, solemnly saluting the flag in that small, dark, barren concrete yard surrounded by a high brick wall in the centre of London, singing at the tops of our voices about the joys of the flowers in an English country garden – although few of the children had ever ventured further than their home on the local Peabody Estate, and most were totally ignorant of any of the pleasures of a country garden.
Reflecting on those days and the years that followed, it is the odd events, the funny things that happened during my life that ensued, that I can most readily recall. Anxieties, that appeared disastrous at the time, have become unimportant, even amusing when viewed through the wrong end of the telescope of time.
AN EVACUEE
In the summer of 1939, I was coming up for ten when war broke out. It may well have been the psychological trauma and worry about the inevitability of the impending conflict that jogged my memory into existence at that time. Even today, I can re-live the increasing anxiety and gloom that accompanied the build-up to war – the men filling sandbags; the family gathering around the wireless anxious to hear every news bulletin; the preparation for mobilisation; the ARP (Air Raid Protection) posters; the issuing of gasmasks and the gas drills. And then the culmination in that broadcast announcement by Neville Chamberlain on 3 September that, ‘Today we are at war’.
There were the whispered conversations about ‘evacuation’. With them came the realisation that our lives were about to be abruptly changed, our family was to be split up, and my sister and I were to be separated from Mum and Dad. We were entering a new era, one of uncertainty and loss. After many anguished discussions, our parents decided that it would be better if both of us were evacuated together. Like most schools at that time, ours were single sex institutions which meant that my sister and I attended different neighbourhood schools and we were quite likely to be evacuated to different parts of the country. This would have caused enormous logistical problems for our parents in trying to make regular visits to both of us, and it was decided that the solution was for us both to be registered at the same school. So it was that I became a temporary girl, a member of the rather snooty Grey Coat Hospital School for Girls. To my great relief I was not the only male in the school; there were two other boys several years older.
It was on a sad September day that, clutching our one bag per child and a cardboard box containing our gasmask, we set off as evacuees from Victoria Station on a journey into the unknown. No one knew our destination, or those that did weren’t telling. I remember arriving at our new school later that day and seeing the imposing building surrounded by trees and rolling green lawns. This was our ‘safe haven’ – the famous Roedean girls’ public school near Brighton on the Sussex coast.
It obviously came as a shock to our hosts to find that in addition to the large influx of girl evacuees, there were three young persons wearing trousers. It fell to them to look after all of us until homes could be found in neighbouring communities, but it was not an easy job to persuade apprehensive local families to take in unknown children from the capital as, generally speaking, London children had an undeserved reputation for being difficult, dirty urchins. However, with the promise of extra ration books, volunteers slowly come forward to meet the challenge. This did not solve the school’s other problem – how to accommodate the ugly ducklings – three boys – in a girls’ school.
I can remember the confusion as the three of us were segregated, given supper and put to bed in a small room off the main hall; I think it was probably the sanatorium. It was one of the older boys who found the notice over our beds that proved to be the cause of our fall from grace. It read, ‘If in the night you need a mistress press this bell’. As very much the youngest of the trio it was only many years later that I came to understand why the other boys found ringing the bell, well into the night, to be the cause of so much amusement.
The next day we were moved out of Roedean School. It was to be the start of a peripatetic school career. At first I was sent to a local council school but, when that was considered to be too far away from our temporary accommodation, another rather posh school, where Latin was de rigueur, was found for me. Unfortunately, I did not stay long enough to master the elements of this subject, a lapse I was to come to regret in later life.
It was not long before the German bombers found the English coast and the sound of anti-aircraft guns kept us awake at nights. So, from Brighton we were moved to Dunstable in Bedfordshire; from Dunstable back to London; from London to South Wales and then to Luton. It seemed that whenever I settled down in a new school, someone in Hitler’s high command would know and off would go the bombers, prompting another move, yet one more new school. Eventually, completely fed up with the disruption to my schooling, my parents decided that it was time to return to London; it was time for the chaps in the German high command to get busy once again; it was the time of the buzz bombs and V2 rockets. It was 1944-45.
SCHOOLS AT WAR
Towards the end of the war, those schools that remained operational in London were kept open by a makeshift staff of retired teachers and part-time volunteers. My school, the Sloane School in Chelsea, had a very restricted range of teachers, none of whom taught mathematics or science. As my interest lay in science I found it necessary to pursue the greater part of my studies at Chelsea Polytechnic evening classes.
At the age of 16, I found myself spending four nights every week, from 6.00pm until 9.00pm, at the polytechnic as well as attending regular day school. While far from ideal, Chelsea Polytechnic introduced me to an academic environment and to true scholarship. Many of the teachers were recruited from other colleges in the University of London that had been bombed and were no longer operational. Most of the students were mature and many held down working jobs during the day. At that time Chelsea was very much an art college and was associated with its famous Chelsea Arts Club and the New Year’s Eve Ball, but it also had good departments in biological sciences and physics. It was to be my initiation into a grown-up world.
It was while I was at the Chelsea Polytechnic that I became interested in research, in knowing why and how the systems that keep living things alive worked. I set about solving some of nature’s puzzles, such as how bivalves and molluscs – like the oyster and mussel – keep the two halves of their shell tightly closed, defying brute force and the advantage of leverage when one attempts to open them; and how fish manage to obtain sufficient oxygen to meet their needs from the little that is present in water. So it was that at the age of 20, I had my first communication to a scientific journal published, in a letter to Nature.
As a result of the enthusiasm I had displayed in these studies I was co-opted as the note-taker for a small committee that was formed towards the end of the war to investigate the weevil infestation of flour. The committee came to the considered view that it would be inadvisable to remove the weevil contamination as, at that time, it constituted a significant contribution to the protein intake in the diet of the population. Although the protein ration per person had been carefully calculated by the rationing authorities, no allowance had been made for the British sacrificing their precious rations to keep their army of pets well nourished. The decision of the committee was kept a secret from the public lest they stopped eating bread!
Once I obtained my degree it was suggested that I carried on doing research for a PhD degree. I was flattered and eager to start on my thesis but my enthusiasm was deflated by the subject that was chosen: the nitrogen metabolism of the woodlouse! How did the animal build up its bodily protein if it lived in an environment devoid of nitrogen and composed entirely of cellulose? My adolescent visions of Nobel Prize ceremonies, of saving lives, of public lectures and honours all seemed a long way off from the protein metabolism of the woodlouse. If I was to win fame and fortune, if I was to become a new Pasteur or Curie, I had to try a different tack. Inspired by the hero of A J Cronin’s book The Citadel I decided I would become a doctor.
