Housewife 1946 (London)


Mrs. Edward Thomas Scott-Brownlow had developed quite a 
reputation around the hospital wards of inner London. She'd 
been an official hospital visitor since the worst days of the 
blitz in 1941 -- one of the real troupers. Rain or shine, 
Hillary Scott-Brownlow visited the wards and did her duty.

No longer young but not yet old, Mrs. Scott-Brownlow had met 
many dead men. That was her duty. She walked the wards of men 
who were sick and dying. She was crisp, cheerful, well-
groomed, unsentimentally sympathetic, never maudlin, always 
practical. She was well-known. She brought good cheer.

In 1946 the war was over but men still died in the wards, 
succumbing to war injuries and illness, giving up their hopes 
for the new post-war order. Hillary had imagined she would 
have retired from ward duties to her Knightsbridge home to 
become again the excellent wife and hostess she had been 
before the war to a senior civil servant in the Home Office. 
But still men lay maimed in the wards, still they died, and 
still she was needed.

She knew what the men called her. Hillary Handjob. Never to 
her face, but she'd heard them talking. She didn't take the 
slightest offence. Why should she? It was what she did. 

She couldn't stop men dying. She had long, long ago run out of 
platitudes of empty comfort. She had learned, way back in 
1941, that the biggest comfort you could give a young man who 
was going to die was a handjob. Relief. She could give him a 
moment of bliss when all the pain magically went away.

At the age of 45, she was no longer freshly pretty enough to 
lift a man's heart with a sunny smile. She was regally 
handsome, beautifully mannered, and her hands were beautifully 
manicured, and subtle and sympathetic. After hundreds and 
hundreds of handjobs, she had acquired a talent for it.

She began hospital visits in 1941 as an inexperienced but 
well-meaning volunteer. Her job, she learned, was to be 
sympathetic without being maudlin, to shine a ray of sun into 
a bleak environment; to listen and not judge; to provide 
succour where it was in short supply.

She tried. The young men were, in the main, astonishingly and 
unnecessarily polite, but their eyes were dull, glazed, 
uninterested, hopeless. Soon she stopped saying she would seem 
them the next day, because frequently she didn't. On the next 
visit the bed would be occupied by another young man with 
terrible wounds and on the path to oblivion. There were 
mothers, wives and sweethearts, and sometimes children, but 
they cried and they made the young men cry.     

The turning point was a blunt, stocky, common soldier who had 
learned to obey orders but who had never learned to be polite.  

"Hello there," Hillary said, as brightly as she could manage. 
"I'm your official visitor for today. Lucky old you." 

"Fuck off, lady," he said sullenly.

She had been told to persevere, so she pulled in a chair and 
sat next to the bed.  "Is there anything I can do to help 
you?" she asked, trying to show proper concern.

He looked at her dubiously. "Got any strong liquor?" Then he 
laughed harshly. "No, I guess you don't."

"Are you in pain, poor chap?"

He looked at her with frank and sardonic amusement. "Lady, a 
big fucking shell blew my leg off and I have third degree 
burns to my hands and arms." He leaned towards her. "But you 
want to know what hurts most?"

She nodded. Yes, it was her job to know that. Listen, don't 
judge.

He thrust aside the bed sheet with a clumsy arm. "There," he 
said. "This hurts so much it's driving me nuts."

She had braced herself to see a bloody stump of a leg. Instead 
she found herself confronted by a stiff penis thrusting out of 
the flies of loose short pyjamas and lying flat on a hairy 
belly. 

Hillary was shocked to the roots of her hair, because she had 
seen only one other erect penis in all her life, and that of 
course belonged to Eddie Scott-Brownlow. And Eddie's was 
palely pink, polite and reserved, whereas this thing was 
rudely red, aggressive, and demanding.

"You want to help?" he asked bluntly. "Wank it for me, lady. I 
need it bad."

"Wank it?" She knew perfectly well what he was asking, but she 
was startled and confused. Heavens, he was so grossly hairy. 
She didn't know it was possible to have so much hair on one 
body. 

"Yes, with your ladylike hand," he said. "It's been up like 
that for three days and nights and my balls are in agony." He 
waved his bandaged hands in front of her face. "I'd do it 
myself if I could."

Hillary tore her eyes away from the truncheon-like penis and 
looked wildly around the ward, which was nearly empty that 
day. The nearest patient was at least six beds away. A nurse? 
Was there a nurse? Better even, a doctor? Somebody? Anybody?

The 24-bed ward stretched tidily and unhelpfully away to the 
closed double doors. There was only her, the hairy man, and 
the outstretched, red-brown banana penis. This was visitor 
work? Was this what they expected her to do?

Well, it was not as if she hadn't ever done it. Before they 
were married, Eddie had insisted frequently. It had certainly 
been a while, but there was not that much to it. She could do 
it, but would she do it? Should she? Did she have to?

He was a common man, and uncouth, to be sure. But the poor 
chap had lost a leg. He was badly burned. He looked indeed in 
agony. He looked indeed in need. 

Suddenly Hillary made up her mind. If this wasn't succour, 
then she didn't know what succour was. For the first time 
since she started visiting the wards, she felt at least 
useful. She mentally rolled up her sleeves, and put on the 
smile she had been brought up to employ when unpleasant duties 
needed to be faced. She stood, pulled the curtains around the 
bed, and turned back to the task.

"Well," she said brightly. "I'd best get to it, shall I?"

He grinned at her and she wished he hadn't. The delicacy and 
sensitivity of the task was not enhanced by a man with no 
front teeth. She reached out gingerly, freshened up her smile, 
dropped her hand gently, and clasped her fingers around the 
middle of the erect shaft.

She pumped tentatively. He groaned and she looked up quickly. 
Had she hurt him? His eyes were closed and she could see the 
stress and tension on his face, but she didn't think he was in 
pain. She continued to stroke carefully.

"Christ, lady," he growled. "It's not a day-old chicken. Get a 
good hold of it and wank the damn thing."

It was hard work. Her right arm was becoming seriously 
strained, and she was thinking about switching to her left 
hand when his ejaculate burst forth without warning. It shot 
out in spurts over his stomach and all over her hand.

She withdrew her hand and looked at it. Messy. Hillary opened 
her handbag, extracted a fine lace handkerchief, and cleaned 
her hand dry. She'd forgotten how messy men could be. She 
reached out and dabbed the handkerchief over his body and used 
the last dry patch of it to wipe his peacefully sleeping 
penis. If she was going to do this again, she would need 
bigger handkerchiefs, and perhaps not so expensive.

He had his eyes open, and his smile was gentle and saintly. 
"Fuck me dead," he said. "Thanks, lady. You're a bloomin' 
angel."

She went home that day a lot more pleased than she really 
thought she ought to have been.

A door had opened, and Mrs. Scott-Brownlow found herself in a 
place she had not expected she would have had access to. It 
was like joining a men's club and having membership rights to 
the washrooms. It was seedy but nonetheless privileged, with 
some sort of honour badge, and most definitely restricted.  

It appeared to be a commonplace event that men lying on their 
backs in hospital beds had erections. In fact, as far as she 
could tell, it appeared to be universal, no matter how close 
they were to death. It also appeared they would give up house, 
home, the family jewels, the faithful dog, and anything else 
except a growing belief in the hereafter to have their 
erections wanked by a gentle lady.

She learned to see the signs. A hand on the thigh invariably 
provoked a startled reaction of hope. It was easy from there. 
With experience, she was able to read a man's need from his 
facial expressions. She would bend forward, close. Do you need 
some relief, dear?

The word got around, of course. New men in old beds looked up 
at her eagerly. Are you Hillary, they asked?  
   
The nurses knew it, too. She found nurses often wanked men in 
hospital beds, and that was why all men liked nurses. But they 
were desperately busy in the war years, and tired. Wanking was 
a low priority, and they were happy to have a volunteer take 
up the task.

Hillary wanked through the war and well into 1946. But the 
beds were emptying of soldiers, and she only wanked soldiers, 
or those who had been struck down in fields of war. It didn't 
seem right at all to wank mere sick civilians.

Then, in July 1946, things changed. Her husband, poor Eddie, 
had a stroke. It left much of his body paralysed, and he lost 
the power of speech. She had a new patient, and she had to 
stay at home to care for him.

On the first day back from the hospital, she helped Eddie into 
bed. When she checked on him an hour later, he was lying on 
his back, and he looked at her with a look on his face she 
knew only too well.

Poor Eddie. He needed relief.

ENDS