Читать книгу Our Country Nurse: Can East End Nurse Sarah find a new life caring for babies in the country? - Sarah Beeson, Amy Beeson - Страница 12

Tuesday afternoon I was back in my broom cupboard before Totley baby clinic. Thanks to Flo I’d opened up with a new set of keys and Mrs Martha Bunyard was none the wiser.

Mrs King appeared. ‘Hello, I popped in to see how you are, Miss Hill.’

‘They haven’t brought anyone through to see me yet.’

‘Oh, I see. What are you going to do?’

I noticed one intrepid mum with beautifully waved long auburn hair, who wore a flowing maxi maternity dress in a striped pattern of burnt orange and toffee with a pair of smartly turned-out little girls clutching each of her hands, make her way up to Mrs Martha Bunyard’s coven.

‘I’d like to see the health visitor please,’ she requested politely but firmly.

‘You don’t really want to pester the new health visitor before she knows what’s what. She’s terribly busy. Tell me, what’s niggling you?’

I was almost on the verge of saying quite rudely that it was no trouble at all and I’d like to be a hundred times busier when Mrs King stepped in with cheerful calm and said to the pregnant mum, ‘Ah, Mrs Bourne. This is Miss Hill, your new health visitor – aren’t you lucky?’ before slipping away again.

‘Follow me, Mrs Bourne,’ I said calmly but I felt as green as grass. ‘Let’s find a quiet corner to talk in.’

Mrs Bourne sighed with relief. I turned round the table I’d spotted the day before and put chairs on either side and found a few toys for her children to play with from the toy box to allow us a few minutes of uninterrupted conversation.

After chatting about potty training for about 15 minutes the elegant Mrs Bourne left the clinic with a mutually agreed approach. I’d suggested we catch up in two weeks to see how things were going. Mrs Bourne already had a really good idea of what to do and needed only a few more suggestions and reassurance she was on the right track. It made my blood boil to think that mothers had been turned away from getting a service they had a right to by busybody ladies of the parish. What if they’d had a serious problem, what if it was a matter of life and death? With no medical background who were they to decide who got a service and who didn’t? Never mind waiting, I threw caution to the wind and decided with youthful vigour that it was going to be my way or the highway.

Having seen my first client of the afternoon I felt emboldened that she was not going to be the last and returned to Mrs Martha Bunyard and her tea party. I heard her friend Mrs Doris Bowyer muttering, ‘Who does think she is? She’s just a slip of a girl. I’ve been lending a helping hand at this clinic for the last 20 years. If it’s good enough …’ her voiced trailed away as the third volunteer, Miss Elena Moon, shushed her as they saw me approaching.

‘Ladies, I wanted to say thank you so much for giving up your time to help at clinic today and for showing me the ropes last week.’ Miss Moon muttered ‘You’re welcome’ but the rest remained tight-lipped. ‘Mrs Bunyard,’ I continued, locking eyes with this woman who must have only been in her late fifties but to me seemed like Methuselah. ‘I think you would be the perfect person to greet and welcome the mothers when they arrive and locate their records for them to give to me.’

‘What, trust mothers with their own records?’ she said in horror.

‘Yes, they can keep hold of them and give in their card when they get their baby weighed, or to me when we do checks and then return it to you before they leave,’ I told her.

‘Well, I never …’

‘You must know practically every mother and baby in the village,’ I suggested.

‘I certainly do,’ confirmed Mrs Martha Bunyard.

‘You will be the face of Totley Clinic – the first point of contact. I would like every mother who comes through these doors to get a warm welcome.’

‘Well, I’m sure I can rise to the task, Nurse,’ she snapped.

‘Perfect,’ I enthused. ‘Please do ask every mother if they would like to see me. Clinic is much more than getting a baby weighed, don’t you think?’

I knew she didn’t think that in the slightest but, who knows, in time maybe even Methuselah would come round. I was going to keep a careful eye on Mrs Martha Bunyard and her friends to see how they spoke to the mothers. It was our clients who were the most important people at clinic, not the health visitor and not the ladies who volunteered.

‘Mrs Bowyer,’ I began, ‘Perhaps you could run a little refreshment station for me,’ I asked. ‘I’m sure you must have lots of catering experience. Keeping our hard-working volunteers, mothers and their little ones hydrated is vital, don’t you think?’

‘Certainly, Nurse. I’ll ask Mrs Farthing if I can use the kitchen.’

‘What a good suggestion, thank you.’

And she too scuttled off to take up her new role with a few mutterings and sly glances in my direction.

‘Now, Miss Moon, would you mind setting up a play area for me, to help keep the toddlers amused?’

‘I will, Nurse,’ she replied gently. ‘I know exactly where the toy box and the play mats are. I often help my niece at Mums and Toddlers on a Wednesday.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, beaming. ‘I’d like the mothers to have the opportunity to sit down for a rest and a chat with each other as much as anything – it is after all their baby clinic. And please do encourage the mums to come and talk to me about anything. Nothing is too much trouble. I won’t be in the consulting room from now on – I’ll be at my table over there, so any parent can see me if they want to,’ I told them.

Ten minutes later the ladies of the parish were all busy with their new roles. I noticed the timid little lady who was employed to sell the tins of baby milk doing a steady trade with barely a word spoken. Now, then, how to tackle the volunteers who weighed the babies? With my usual gusto I charged over to wrestle with my next problem.

‘Hello, I’m Sarah Hill. Mrs Kettel, isn’t it? How’s the weighing going today?’

‘Very well, thank you, Nurse. I’ve weighed half a dozen babies already.’

‘That’s great. I wanted to ask your opinion on something.’

‘Go ahead, Nurse. I’ve been weighing babies at this clinic for the last eight years. I’m a dabster at it,’ said Mrs Kettel proudly.

‘Goodness me, what a long time. Do you think the clothes on the baby enable you to note down the most accurate weight?’

‘It depends, Nurse. In the winter the woollens certainly weigh more,’ said Mrs Kettel thoughtfully. ‘Not to mention when they do their business in their nappies.’

‘Yes, I imagine that makes quite a difference,’ I said.

‘I should cocoa,’ said Mrs Kettel with a chuckle.

‘What do you think we can do to get the most accurate weight?’ I asked.

‘Not much you can do, Nurse, except weigh them burr,’ Mrs Kettel said warily.

‘Burr?’ I enquired.

‘Starkers, Nurse. In the all-together,’ mocked Mrs Kettel.

‘Ah, well, we understand each other perfectly then,’ I replied. ‘Please, set up three or four changing tables with a few of those plastic bowls for the babies’ clothes to go in when they’re burr,’ I suggested with a glint in my eye, pointing to the unused equipment.

‘Are you taking the mickey, Nurse?’ asked Mrs Kettel with raised eyebrows.

‘How else can we ensure we get the most accurate weight?’

‘But what if they widdle or worse in the scales?’ she enquired.

‘It’s not the end of the world if they do. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of experience with that sort of thing. It’s not something that would put you off your stride, is it?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Kettel. ‘I’ve seen it all, Nurse.’

‘Perfect. Keep some cleaning things near to hand so you can clean up easily. We wouldn’t want the mothers to be embarrassed, would we?’

‘Oh no. Most natural thing in the world, Nurse. You leave it to us,’ she assured me.

‘Excellent, thank you.’

I was determined to say hello to every parent who came to clinic at the very least. When I wasn’t chatting to a mother I was on my feet to greet them as they came past Mrs Martha Bunyard and co. But to my surprise the ladies seemed to have taken to their new roles. If appearances were anything to go by then they were having a jolly time greeting mothers, peeking at the babies and getting a little bit of village gossip.

‘How’s it going?’ I breezily asked Mrs Martha Bunyard.

‘Very well, Nurse,’ answered Miss Elena Moon before she could get a word in. ‘We think it’s much better this way, don’t we, Doris?’

‘Oh, yes,’ added Mrs Doris Bowyer. ‘Helps the shy ones come out of themselves a bit. Sometimes you could barely get a hello out of some of the girls and now they’re right jawsy.’

‘Yes, I don’t know why we didn’t do it like this before,’ finished Miss Moon.

Mrs Martha Bunyard scowled at her friends’ new-found enthusiasm.

‘That’s very good.’ I grinned. ‘So, let’s check. You greet them, especially taking a bit of time with newcomers to explain they can come and get the baby weighed and talk to me about anything.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, Nurse. We’ve been sending you over a steady stream, haven’t we?’ barked Mrs Martha Bunyard.

‘Yes. Very well organised,’ I praised. ‘And you are recording all the names in the book as they arrive, giving out the clinic cards and adding in any missing information like date of birth or their address?’

‘All in hand, Nurse. You leave it to us,’ Mrs Martha Bunyard said firmly.

‘Excellent, thank you,’ I acknowledged before returning to see how the new system for weighing was progressing.

‘It really is much better like this, Martha,’ I heard Miss Moon whisper. ‘I don’t know why we didn’t do it like this years ago.’

By Friday morning I’d completed my second week in Totley and lived to tell the tale. In the last 10 days I’d done two baby clinics, 10 primary visits, four follow-up visits, one elderly referral, three call-outs, 15 hearing tests, one school visit complete with extracting a child’s head from the school railings and assisted in what I hoped would be my last ever labour. Hermione had told me they were breaking me in gently. It was with great enthusiasm that I now knocked on the peeling red front door of a crumbling cottage to make the primary visit to Mrs Susan Bunyard, whose baby I’d helped deliver not two weeks before. The house stood in the middle of a row of 10 workers’ houses opposite the brewery. When the door opened I felt a wave of disappointment when the crabby clinic volunteer Mrs Martha Bunyard, the dreaded mother-in-law no doubt, opened the front door.

‘She’s using the outdoor convenience, Nurse,’ she told me. ‘Come through. My daughter and my husband’s elder sister have come to have a hold of baby Sharon. I ask you, what sort of name is Sharon? First-born girls in the Bunyard family have always been called Constance, isn’t that right?’

The visitors nodded in agreement – I later discovered they were both called Constance. The in-laws were seated on a squat battered brown sofa facing the small open fireplace in front of which was a zinc bathtub. The room was absolutely stifling with a roaring fire lit to heat up the bathwater for when Alan Bunyard returned after a day’s graft at the brewery. Baby Sharon looked helpless in the enormous lap of her great-aunt Constance, the poor child making a low continual whimpering noise that they all ignored. I could see through to a small kitchen with an old sink, a single cupboard and an ancient stove. There was no preparation space except for a minuscule flap-down storage unit and a rickety wooden table pushed up against the kitchen wall.

The back door opened and in walked Susan Bunyard. She went directly to the kitchen sink; the plumbing loudly whined into life as she turned on the single tap and washed her hands in a thundering, spluttering stream of cold water with a bar of Camay soap and splashed her face. Hearing her baby’s cries she marched into the cramped front room with a face like thunder and snatched back her child as tea cups were being passed over the infant’s head. Baby Sharon, clearly relieved to be returned to her mother, who had after all only popped to the outside lavatory, instantly stopped crying and buried her face in her mum’s neck. Mrs Bunyard noticed me standing uncomfortably in the corner.

‘Oh my, I didn’t see you there, Nurse. Nice to see you again,’ she greeted me warmly.

‘The baby is a right moaning Minnie,’ Great-aunt Constance informed her loudly. ‘You’re spoiling her. She’s full of windgines. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times already, girl. If they are cranky, you take a red-hot poker from the fire and put it in a bottle full of water. Then they drink the cinder water, and throw up all the nasty stuff. Cleans them right out; I’ve done it with all mine, never did them any harm,’ she informed the company with all the overbearing confidence of the depressingly ignorant.

‘Well, she’s not having a bottle yet, she’s on the breast,’ Susan Bunyard diplomatically informed this interfering old biddy.

‘That’s another thing, Nurse,’ chipped in Mrs Martha Bunyard. ‘I’ve told her to put the baby on the National Dried, but she won’t have it. She’s crying because you’re not feeding her right, girl. She needs feeding up; you need to put her on the bottle before she wastes away. All my babies were right whackers.’

Oh, the horror of unwanted baby advice, I thought, digging my fingernails into the palm of my hand. I looked at Mrs Bunyard; there was no doubt in my mind she knew this was all total rubbish. The new mother’s eyes were narrowing, her cheeks getting pinker and pinker by the second. I didn’t know if she was going to scream or cry. She raised her eyes to the ceiling with a pleading look in my direction.

‘I need to check your tummy, Mrs Bunyard,’ I said clearly, picking up the desperate hint. ‘Is the bedroom upstairs?’

‘Follow me, Nurse,’ she told me, keeping the baby firmly clutched to her chest as she opened a small wooden door off the kitchen that led up a narrow twisted staircase to the two tiny rooms above.

‘You do that, Nurse,’ said Mrs Martha Bunyard, giving me her unnecessary assurance. ‘And take a look at baby Sharon’s belly button. I don’t trust that Nurse Higgins. I don’t believe she trained in a proper English hospital. She’s cut the cord all wrong and given the baby a sticky-out belly button; it looks black as your hat too.’

Don’t say anything, Sarah, just get upstairs, I told myself. My chest was tight, I was burning to tell these women how foolish and harmful their pestering was. Not now, not now, I had to repeat to myself.

‘You can’t trust ’em,’ agreed her daughter, Connie, returning to their disparagement of the lovely midwife. ‘I swear it’s some voodoo. She did it to all four of mine but I fixed it. Got a penny off one of them gypsies and bound it round the baba till it went back in again,’ she said proudly.

Susan Bunyard had already fled up the dilapidated staircase like lightning, eager to get away. As we closed the door on the three Bunyard matriarchs slurping their tea I heard Great-aunt Constance give the most dim-witted piece of baby advice I’d heard yet.

‘That baby probably has thrush. I’ve told her if you wipe their wet-cloth nappy on their tongue it clears up straight away. But she doesn’t take heed. She’s not a Kentish girl. She’s from Essex, so what do you expect? I don’t know what your Alan was thinking, Martha.’

I firmly shut the door on them. It would not be the last time I had to watch mothers taunted with ill-conceived baby advice that was sometimes well meant but other times was nasty, cruel and harmful.

Mrs Bunyard was on the bed feeding her lovely baby, propped up by pillows to shield her back from the uncomfortable brass bars of the headboard. Her wide square-necked peasant shirt was just the job for nursing. She’d pulled her long sandy-coloured hair into a messy bun and looked different to how she was only moments before. Relaxed and contented now she was alone with her baby, I could see what a strong bond they had already: it was beautiful.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked.

‘Not at all. You look like you’re doing a splendid job. How was last week?’

‘It was all right when it was just me and Sharon. But it’s hell when his lot are traipsing in and out of the place. Wanting cups of tea and giving me filthy looks if I offer them shop-bought cake. Where would I get the time to make bloody cake for the hordes that have been through here?’ she told me indignantly.

‘Could Mr Bunyard help keep some of the visitors at bay?’

‘He’s as much use as a wet tea towel, Nurse. He likes to play the doting daddy but it’s like having another kid to look after. He made a big show of changing Sharon’s nappy last night and stuck a pin in her!’ she told me, her eyes filled with exasperation.

‘But he does want to help?’ I asked tentatively.

‘What would help me out is a proper bathroom with an indoor toilet, hot and cold water, and a proper plumbed-in bath for Lord’s sake,’ she cried. ‘I’m not used to living like this – it’s like something out of a BBC olde-worlde drama. My parents’ house has all mod cons, thank you very much. My mother had a properly fitted kitchen – she never had to try and turn out a dinner on a clapped-out stove. He says he’ll get onto the brewery about updating the cottages but they’ve been promising to modernise since after the war apparently. I’ve said the men and him need to get organised, demand proper housing, but they couldn’t organise …’ her voice trailed away as she paused to change the baby’s nappy, spreading out the terry towelling on the bed and then washing her hands in a ceramic bowl and jug of water on a wash stand.

‘It’s like I’m in a bloody episode of Upstairs, Downstairs,’ she said with a grim laugh. ‘Only you imagine you’ll be one of ladies in fancy dresses, not living like a charwoman.’

I nipped down to the kitchen to fetch her a glass of water. When I returned, baby Sharon was feeding steadily on the other side.

‘I’ve brought you some cake,’ I said as I put a tray on the bedside table with a jug of water and a big slice of Victoria sponge cake on it.

‘Thank you, Nurse. You shouldn’t have,’ she said, drinking down her water in almost one go.

‘Yes, I should. You need to rest and get plenty to eat and drink if you’re going to keep on doing such a fabulous job feeding little Sharon.’

‘You don’t think she’s underweight? Honestly she doesn’t cry that much.’

As the baby came off the breast all satisfied and sleepy I had a quick hold, while Mrs Bunyard ate her cake. I took the opportunity to give her a full MOT, discreetly checking everything was as it should be – she was perfect.

‘She seems just right to me.’

‘I know what his lot think, that I’m no good. That I should give the baby to them. Well, no one is taking this baby off me; I’d die first than let them take her away. They won’t take her away, will they, Nurse?’

‘No one is going to take your baby away – please don’t worry about that.’

‘They try and make out that she never stops crying but it’s not true. I think she cries sometimes because she wants her mum, or because everything is a bit new and she wants a bit of comfort – I know how she feels.’

‘That sounds right to me. You know your baby best, Mrs Bunyard. You really are doing a splendid job.’

Susan Bunyard grinned and took the baby to a large wicker crib and popped her daughter down for a nap.

‘She’s kept me up a lot in the night, though. Are you sure she’s getting enough milk?’

‘Are you getting lots of wet and dirty nappies?’ I asked.

‘There’s an endless stream,’ she laughed. ‘Her poo’s all yellow, though.’

‘Yes, that’s how it should be. How she’s sleeping during the day?’

‘She’s an angel in the day. When will you come back, Nurse?’

‘End of next week if it suits you?’

‘Yes, that would be great. And hopefully the Wicked Witch of the West won’t be here,’ she whispered.

‘Do you want to lie down flat and I’ll take a look at your tummy?’ I asked her.

As I pressed down on her belly she gazed up at the cracks in the low ceiling above the marital bed and said in a whisper almost more to herself than to me, ‘I’d never change having Sharon. But I’m not sure if I did the right thing marrying Aly.’

‘It’s normal to feel worried and a bit overwhelmed at times,’ I tried to reassure her.

There was a long pause. ‘Nurse, if I tell you something, will you keep it a secret?’ she asked.

‘Absolutely,’ I replied.

She opened her mouth but no words came out. I waited.

‘It’s about Aly, he doesn’t …’ But before she could finish telling me the door to the narrow staircase opened and Alan Bunyard called up.

‘I took an early lunch break. I couldn’t wait to see my girls,’ he cried as he bound up the rickety stairs.

Mrs Bunyard instantly brightened and rushed to her makeshift dressing table to brush her hair back into place.

‘Don’t mind me, Nurse. I’m being silly,’ she told me as her husband reached the top but she didn’t look me in the eye again.

Mr Bunyard rushed in and picked up the slumbering baby without a thought of how long she may have been sleeping – not long at all as it happened. I packed up my things; the visit was now over. We all have secrets, that’s normal, and Mrs Bunyard wasn’t under any obligation to tell her secret but since I first laid eyes on this young woman, who was only 19, I couldn’t help but notice she didn’t have the bloom of a new bride and mother. She was troubled; something was not what it seemed. ‘I can’t put my finger on it,’ I mused as I left the Bunyard household.