Bath Times and Nursery Rhymes: The memoirs of a nursery nurse in the 1960s

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Footnote (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract from Better Days Will Come (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Pam Weaver (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1

‘After you’ve had your supper, wake the night nurse, and then come to the main hall. The person on “Lates” does the mending.’

Miss Carter, the small ginger-haired nursery warden, barked her instructions at me and left the room. I was doing my first ‘Lates’ duty in a children’s residential nursery run by Surrey County Council. The year was 1961. Yuri Gagarin had become the first man to go into outer space, The Beatles were at the start of their phenomenal success, you could buy a house for two thousand pounds and I was just sixteen.

I had arrived from my village home in Dorset a week before; my only possession, a small brown suitcase and my one ambition, to get aqualification with letters after my name. Adopted at birth, I had grown up as the daughter of my natural mother’s best friend in a small village on the Hampshire-Dorset border. My father had been an American GI, who came to this country for the D-Day landings in France and most likely perished there. He was obviously a person of colour because I have an olive skin and at that time, tight curly hair. I had left school in July and began my working life in Woolworths on the broken biscuit counter. I had no real idea of what I wanted in life but it certainly didn’t include broken biscuits or a promotion to the ladies’ personal items counter, which was on offer as soon as I’d done three months’ probation. Selling ‘bunnies’ (the name we gave sanitary towels because of the loop at each end which you fastened to the belt) didn’t really do it for me. The trouble was, there were few other opportunities in my part of rural Dorset. Max Factor had a large factory near Poole and paid well but that was about it. They laid on a bus to collect their workers from round our way so, because I would have no problem in getting to work, my dad was keen for me to join them. I hated the idea of working in a factory even more than selling bunnies.

‘Not good enough for you?’ he challenged. Dad and I were always at loggerheads.

‘No, it isn’t that,’ I said confidently. ‘I don’t want to be stuck indoors all day and besides, I want a training. I want to make something of my life.’

He harrumphed and made it plain that I couldn’t manage that so of course I had to prove him wrong. I was determined to find something which would give me a certificate and a qualification at the end of it. The only problem was, what? As soon as I could, I spent my lunch hour with the careers officer in the little market town of Ringwood where I worked, and collected a sheaf of brochures.

I could join the Navy – I quite fancied that. I spent the next few evenings browsing through and drooling over the pictures of all those handsome young sailors … but as yet I was far too young (I had to be eighteen) and besides, they said you had parade ground duties and the thought of all that marching put me off a bit. What if I became a secretary? But the thought of hours and hours sitting in a typing pool and not being allowed to talk was a complete no-no. My ambition even reached as far as becoming a barrister but that was only because I loved the idea of wearing a wig and gown and arguing in court (thanks to Dad, I was an expert when it came to arguing). But when I looked into it, I didn’t have the right education. There was no chance of going to university because Dad was a bricklayer and my Mum cleaned people’s houses for 2s 6d an hour. Whatever I did, I had to pay my own way. I toyed with the thought of nursing but there are certain things in life which have no appeal at all and dealing with brimming bedpans was one of them. I had worked my way through the whole pile of brochures when I came across a leaflet on being a nursery nurse. It fitted the bill beautifully. What’s more, Surrey County Council offered to train a girl in exchange for a commitment to work an extra year in a nursery when she had passed the NNEB, the initials given to the certificate issued by the National Nursery Examination Board. I sent off the forms and to my absolute delight, got an interview. Mum and I travelled to Kingston upon Thames together and went to County Hall. By the end of the day, I’d been told I was accepted by the person conducting the interview, Miss Fox-Talbot, who was supervisor for children’s residential homes and senior child care officer for the county. A week later I received a letter confirming my appointment. It laid out the terms of my training contract, and my pay. I was to be paid £194 a year, in accordance with the statutory agreement with Whitley Council of the Health Service, less £101 a year for my board and lodging. This equated to £1.79 a week in today’s money, however all was not lost. After a year’s service my wage would increase, giving me an extra £11 per annum! The letter included a list of clothing I would need to bring with me. Despite having a grammar school education and leaving with three GCEs, I had to report to Guildford and take an entrance exam to ascertain my level of education and I also had to arrange to have a chest X-ray. It was very exciting because once all that was done, I was at last taking the first steps towards my career.

Now that I was actually employed in a nursery, I had to make it work. Because I was a minor, Dad had been asked to sign a contract as my guarantor, which committed him to paying back any expenses the council had incurred, should I give up before the end of my training. Because of that, I was more than anxious to please people. It didn’t take me long to work out that if someone in authority said you should do something, you didn’t argue, you just did it.

Because I was on ‘Lates’, I had to have my supper half an hour before the other girls. Alone in the staff room for the first time since I had arrived a week before, I ate my supper – lukewarm tin tomatoes on soggy toast – and gulped down a mug of scalding dark brown tea. I cleared away the dirty crockery and reset my place for someone else. I looked at the clock. It was almost seven p.m. so I went into the hall, where the other members of staff had gathered before going off duty. No one spoke to me. The bell went for supper and once again I was left alone.

The first thing I had to do was check on the children. They were all in bed of course and hopefully already asleep. The dormitory rooms were dimly lit but I checked that they were still covered by their blankets and made sure they had their special toy in the bed with them. One or two were still awake so I tousled a head here and there or gave them a goodnight kiss.

Before I went for my supper, I had been shown a small cloakroom and a box full of dirty shoes. I found the shoe polish and set to work. The shoes were all different colours so I polished all the red shoes first, then the blue ones, the brown and finally, the black ones. After that, I had to find the owner (the inside of the shoes were marked with the child’s name) and put the clean shoes on top of their pile of clothes ready for the morning. That done, I returned to the main hall and looked into the mending basket. There was a jacket with a button missing, a skirt with a torn hem, a coat with a ripped pocket and a pair of trousers with a broken zip. The zip looked far too complicated and surely I would need a sewing machine to do that, so all things considered, I reached for the button box and sat down.

It was taking a bit of getting used to but everybody used abbreviated names for our various duty times. ‘Lates’ meant that a girl (who had already been working since seven in the morning) would come off duty at six-thirty in the evening, eat a quick supper and then go back to work until nine o’clock, when the night nurse arrived. Sometimes, the night nurse would arrange with a friend to do a ‘Stand-in’. That meant the friend would come back on duty at nine and the night nurse could have an evening out before going on duty.

As it turned out, that evening Miss Carter was doing a ‘Stand-in’ for Nurse Adams. I carried on with the mending in between checking the children about every twenty minutes. The nursery was quiet. Everyone was asleep. Miss Carter came to relieve me at nine, assuming that her friend had already gone out with her boyfriend, and I went into the staff room to enjoy some TV.

There were three girls in the sitting room. One was writing a letter at the table, a second was cutting her toenails over a wastepaper basket. Only the third girl looked up when I walked in. Isolde worked in the Toddler room, a tall girl and, at nineteen, older than me, with very short fair hair and mischievous eyes, was more interested in travelling than working with children. A free spirit, she made no secret of the fact that she hated the discipline and routine in the nursery.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘How was your day?’

‘Fine,’ I lied.

‘Good for you,’ she murmured. ‘Personally, I can’t stick this bloody place. I’m jacking it in. Three months of this hell on earth is quite enough for me.’

I stood in the doorway, feeling a bit awkward. What should I say to that? I hated it too and I was homesick as well, which was something I certainly hadn’t bargained for. I had thought I might miss Mum and Dad and the dog a bit, but I had this gnawing ache in the pit of my stomach all the time. It made me feel ill and I couldn’t eat properly. I couldn’t admit defeat but already I was beginning to think anything would have been better than this, even the make-up factory or selling bunnies. The staff were so unfriendly, I was terrified of putting a foot wrong and the work was relentless and hard. I longed to be back in the little two-up, two-down cottage where I had grown up and already, the draughty little sitting room with its meagre coal fire had taken on a romantic, rosy hue. I swallowed hard. I mustn’t start crying again – they would all think I was a big baby. Surely things couldn’t get any worse?

‘Don’t just stand there,’ said the girl cutting her toenails. ‘For goodness sake put the wood in the hole. You’re creating a hell of a draught from where I’m sitting.’

I slunk in, closed the door and sat on the edge of the chair. It was Wednesday night and on the TV, the credits for Wagon Train were already rolling against a backdrop of the dashing Flint McCullough played by handsome Robert Horton. I sighed. Things had just got a whole lot worse. It was my favourite programme and I’d missed it.

All at once the door burst open and a furious-looking girl burst into the room. The door banged against the table behind it and an HP sauce bottle on the top fell over. The girl’s blonde hair was dishevelled and her eyes still red and puffy from sleep.

‘Who was on Lates?’ she blazed.

I gulped. That was me. Oh Lord, what had I done wrong? Think, I told my panicking brain. What did you forget? I went through everything I’d done in a split second. I’d done the mending (apart from the zip), I’d remembered to check the children every twenty minutes and when Miss Carter took over, everything was fine. I’d polished twenty-two pairs of shoes, hung up the nappies in the laundry, and put out the drinks tray ready for the morning. What else? Whatever it was, it was obvious who was to blame. Everyone else in the sitting room looked up at her in mild surprise. I was the only one who was beetroot red and already feeling utterly suicidal.

‘Me,’ I squeaked as I tried to make my voice sound as small as I could.

‘Why the hell didn’t you wake me?’ she bellowed.

‘Wake you?’

‘The person on Lates is supposed to wake the night nurse,’ she shouted.

‘Er … I’m sorry …’ I tried my best to ignore the fact that she was standing there, screaming at me with only her see-through nightie on. ‘Nobody told me.’

Actually, that was a lie. Miss Carter had told me but I had forgotten.

‘You stupid little fool!’ she ranted. ‘I was supposed to be meeting my boyfriend at eight!’

‘I’m sorry …’

‘What am I going to tell him? More importantly how am I going to tell him? I don’t even have his phone number!’ She was beginning to sound hysterical.

‘I’m sorry …’

‘You stupid idiot. You’ve ruined my whole life …’

‘I … I’m sorry …’

‘Didn’t Miss Carter tell you to wake me?’

I shook my head. ‘No.’

That was another lie and now I had a new dread. What if Miss Carter walked in right now and heard me saying she hadn’t told me to wake the night nurse? I looked anxiously over Nurse Adams’ shoulder.

‘I’m sorry …’

‘And stop saying you’re sorry, you silly cow!’

‘I … I’m …’

I froze. She was so angry I felt sure she was going to hit me. She glared for a few seconds and then swept out of the room and slammed the door. This time the glass in the window frame shook.

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Isolde rolled herself backwards on the sofa and kicked her feet in the air. ‘That was terrific. What a laugh!’