Our Country Nurse: Can East End Nurse Sarah find a new life caring for babies in the country?

‘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.’