My parents were initially amused by my decision to join the police force. They already had two children satisfactorily married; if their stroppy middle child wanted to try her hand at something unusual, then so be it. As my mother told the neighbours, frequently within my hearing, ‘Where better to find an available husband?’
‘Cop or crim?’ I’d once asked.
‘Either—or perhaps a criminal—it pays better!’ Mum and the neighbour had cackled.
I certainly didn’t look the part of a female officer, with my damp brown eyes and serviceable chestnut waves that should have carried a warning: Frizzes When Wet. My childlike overbite made me appear harmless, if not a little dim. Soft as I may seem, I’ve been told I’ve a tongue like a razor strop. And I can walk for twenty miles on nothing but a cup of tea, and frequently have cause to do so.
My parents Noel and Wilma had been progressive enough to ensure that my older sister Martha and I completed our School Certificate, leaving me with more job options than most career-minded young women. Still, none of the available professions struck me as being sufficiently significant or unique. I wanted to do something exceptional. I’ve a fiercely competitive nature that Mum claims is my cross to bear. Which seems hypocritical, coming from a dedicated midwife. Possibly she’s jaded because her career was pulled out from underneath her. My father used to joke that he and Wilma fought for space at the sink of a night to wash the blood off their hands (no cause for alarm, Dad’s a butcher).
The main obstacle to my ambitions, other than being of the fairer sex, was my lack of any singular ability. I was competent over consummate, doomed to come in second place. My childhood brass bedhead was decked with red ribbons, the runner-up’s blushing shade. Martha, having promptly produced three offspring for her dentist husband, assured me children would quench the desire for recognition, replace it with a deeper satisfaction: the creation of life; nurturing whelps into able citizens. I remain unconvinced, particularly as Martha has a desultory hands-off approach to my nieces and nephew, and conversely complains that parenting is a yawn.
Mother considered nursing to be the obvious choice. I was reluctantly inclined to agree. I’m diligent and obstinate, no pushover for exploitative doctors or belligerent patients. Yet six months’ training confirmed my reservations. I had no yen for emptying bedpans or lancing boils. By that stage I’d seen Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, the top-billing Saturday matinee at the Theatre Royal. I instantly fancied myself as a fast-talking career gal. I ditched nursing to try my hand at secretarial college, happening to miss by a year the commencement of the war, where, as a nurse, I might have met with more dramatic ailments. I soon decided typing was the pits. I abandoned the course, relinquishing the dream that it would somehow open a door into journalism…
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