Mary Beard

Mary Beard

I cannot claim that it was my very best Christmas, but it was one of the most warmly memorable. It must have been 1961 or ’62, which would have made me six or seven. I was in the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton, to have some complicated but decidedly unglamorous engineering work performed inside my nose. And it had long been agreed that I should have this done over the school Christmas holidays.

The Royal no longer exists as a hospital, but it was one of those splendidly old-fashioned city-centre infirmaries founded in the mid-nineteenth century, slightly intimidating and complete with classical columns. No doubt ill-adapted to modern medicine, it closed in 1997. But the Royal certainly knew how to do Christmas in style. For some reason, I had been allocated to an adult ward, and there were few patients left over the holiday season and no children at all. This meant that I was spoiled something rotten and not only by my parents (who lived thirty miles away and could not be there the whole time). By Christmas Day itself, I was well enough to enjoy a special appearance from Santa Claus bearing many gifts, a bedside performance from carol singers and a jolly visit from the surgeon who had done the operation (a Mr Clarke, I recall) – who brought his own daughters along for a bedside party. Who could forget that, almost fifty years on?

But, in truth, it was not the Christmas jollities that meant the most, or that I remember most vividly. It was the tiny little kindnesses done to a child in hospital for a few weeks and often on her own. My ward – Harper Millar – was presided over by the impressive Sister Gaye, whose deep-blue uniform dress, gleaming white apron and perched white, frilly cap I can still picture. And it was she who thought that I might like to take my favourite toy to keep me company on my way down to the operating theatre. This was a cheap stuffed version of Walt Disney’s Goofy, and even now it is in my house somewhere. On the bottom of one of his flat feet, you can still just make out the words ‘Mary Beard Harper Millar’, which Sister Gaye insisted that we write, just to make sure that Goofy didn’t get lost.

Every time Goofy emerges and I see those words, I remember what I owe to the NHS and to those who cared for me (whose names I’ll never forget). Oh … and the nose? Well, the complicated engineering work was successful and I emerged as good as new, though – I admit – with a slightly blunted sense of smell!

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