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

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Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Sarah Beeson (#litres_trial_promo)

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About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

About Sarah Beeson (#u959107b8-efc0-5076-8968-f3d8b15b50c2)

In 1969 17-year-old Sarah Beeson – then Sarah Hill – arrived in Hackney in the East End of London to begin her nursing career. Six years later she went into health visiting, practising for over 35 years in Kent and Staffordshire, building up a lifetime’s expertise and stories through working with babies and families.

In 1998 Sarah received the Queen’s Institute for Nursing Award. In 2006 she was awarded an MBE for Services to Children and Families by Queen Elizabeth II.

She later married and became Sarah Beeson. Now she divides her time between Staffordshire and London.

About Amy Beeson (#u959107b8-efc0-5076-8968-f3d8b15b50c2)

Amy Beeson spent her childhood in rural Staffordshire. She is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, a scriptwriter and copywriter, and runs Wordsby, a branding and communications business. Amy studied English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, followed by an MA in Writing and Performance for Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York. She has won prizes for poetry, has had several plays performed and was a young playwright at the Birmingham Rep where she met her husband, writer Takbir Uddin. They now live in London with their daughter, Ava.

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The early autumn sun made my eyelids flutter as my brand new green Mini sped round a sharp bend at which was yet another signpost promising that the village of Totley lay a short distance ahead of me. It seemed complicit with every twist and turn of the Kent countryside to keep the hilltop village from my eagerly searching eyes. It teased me, revealing woods, then a flash of a farm at the end of a long muddy road, and the odd white weather-boarded cottage tucked away in the brambles at the edge of a copse. I was starting to feel like the place I was searching for didn’t really exist; adding to my apprehension that the whole thing was a misunderstanding and when I arrived they’d tell me there had been an error and I hadn’t got the job at all. After all who’d want a twenty-something health visitor straight out of training?

The road was never straight for more than a minute. I’d driven all the way from my parents’ new townhouse in Staffordshire and I was desperate to be in my first home – just me, no brothers and sisters or flatmates – just me for the very first time in my life. To my great relief the raw countryside eventually gave way to high wooden gates that exposed only the numerous chimneys belonging to the big houses of the county set. And at long last a sign which read ‘Welcome to Totley’. I sighed; it was beautiful and quiet and so different from the streets of Hackney – it was like arriving in another world, as my eyes delighted in the beautiful stone walls nestling cottages with bow windows and front doors separated from the pavement by only narrow porches. I felt my spirits lift and drummed along to the beat of ‘Higher and Higher’ by Jackie Wilson on the car radio.

The steeple of St Agatha’s Church peeked out almost reticently from behind aged yew trees. As I cruised past the church a cacophony of bells rang out proudly from the belfry giving my arrival in the village a dreamlike feel. The heavy oak doors opened and wedding guests poured into the churchyard, idly nestling amongst the neglected gravestones having a quick solitary smoke or chatting in clusters of acquaintances. I looked on and smiled as the bride and groom surrounded by their closest family and friends were photographed by a man in a grey flannel suit with long sandy hair, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he forced elderly aunts in floral A-line dresses elbow to elbow with young groomsmen in stripy ill-fitting suits with yellow carnations in their buttonholes. The bride was radiant in a wide-brimmed floppy white hat and an empire-line scooped neck gown. Her dress billowed out in the breeze as she tightly held onto a small bouquet of indistinguishable pink flowers. Her bridesmaids enthusiastically tossed confetti over the happy couple, their shallow long-handled wicker baskets hung over their arms like handbags filled with yellow carnations.

I came to a crossroads and glanced down at the directions I’d scribbled when the superintendent health visitor telephoned to offer me the job:

Ivy Cottage Clinic, Main Road.

Ask Mrs Florence Farthing for keys. Next door at Primrose Cottage.

Main Road appeared to be the road I was on. I continued ahead and found myself in the epicentre of Totley. A row of cream cottages with brightly painted front doors faced the Village Hall and Totley Garage amongst a parade of small shops and businesses. A pair of black boots stuck out from under a Rover at the garage and multi-coloured bunting fluttered in the wind at the Village Hall, which was no doubt the venue for the wedding reception. I pulled up on the street outside the pale-blue door of Ivy Cottage at the end of the terrace. A shiny plaque told me unmistakably that it was ‘Totley Clinic’ – I was finally home.

I turned off the engine and jumped out of my newly acquired Mini, issued to me by ‘the County’ as one of the perks of the job. I’d stuffed my little car to the gunnels with the bric-à-brac and kitchenware I’d acquired during my time as a nurse in a shared flat on Balls Pond Road in London’s East End; it was tilting precariously to one side. I was rather looking forward to having my own kitchen and not having to do someone else’s washing-up before I could start preparing my own meal. I frowned at my school trunk which had been inexpertly strapped to the roof of my Mini by my younger brother Stephen – it was looking more dilapidated than ever. My initials ‘SH’ were very faded and scratched – maybe this wasn’t the best first impression to give the village of their new health visitor. You must try and look older and more respectable, I scolded myself, now regretting wearing a pair of denim shorts and a white peasant blouse with delicately embroidered blue flowers to drive down in, but it was such a warm day.

Suddenly, I was worried about my appearance and took my compact out from my large brown leather handbag and inspected my face. I cleaned my black-rimmed glasses with a tissue and popped them back primly on the end of my pale-skinned nose. I bit my lips and pinched my cheeks to give myself a hint of colour and rapidly ran my fingers through my tangle of long dark hair. Futilely I attempted to pull at the edges of my shorts towards my bare knees and cast a withering look at my raffia platform sandals looking mockingly up at me.

Taking a deep breath I knocked on the bright-yellow door of Mrs Farthing at Primrose Cottage. There was no answer. I tried again and waited a few minutes but nothing. I tried my own front door but it was locked. I could feel panic rising within me – what if there really had been a mistake and no one was expecting me at all?

My anxiety was broken by the sound of a squeak and a clanging of metal, shortly followed by the appearance of an old man with a crinkled tanned face and salt and pepper hair making his wobbly way down the street on a boneshaker of a bicycle. He was whistling to himself, completely unperturbed by the inharmonious clatter and whining of his transportation. He was balancing metal buckets on each side of the handlebars and a ladder was resting lengthways across his lap. When he saw me dawdling on the pavement outside the row of cottages his face lit up and crumpled even further at the eyes and mouth.

‘Hello there, Nurse,’ he called cheerily. ‘She’ll be out the back. We couldn’t stand waiting indoors, not on such a beauty of a day.’

I smiled but didn’t know what to say. Was this Mr Farthing?

He hopped nimbly off his bicycle and opened the door to the side passage. ‘Follow me, Nurse,’ he instructed as he took the metal buckets filled with chicken feed with him down the narrow dark tunnel. Obediently I followed. As he emerged ahead of me into the sunlight he called, ‘Flo, the Nurse is here. She’s arrived!’

Flo Farthing had the same tanned skin as her husband, her greying dark hair swept neatly up into a bun. She was deftly picking tomatoes from a vine, standing completely at ease in a garden filled with bed upon bed of flowers, fruit and vegetables. It’s like Mr McGregor’s garden, I thought pleasantly – any minute now I will see a fat little brown rabbit popping out from a watering can. There were mature fruit trees at the back and I was sure there was a goat grazing on a stretch of pasture that ran along the end of the lane. Mrs Farthing was neat as a new pin and wore a white fitted knee-length shirt dress with green leaves and vines on it. She was diminutive and comfortingly plump, her arms and legs muscular and bronzed from a life lived outdoors. When she saw me her face lit up and she hurried towards us, hens half-flapping away at her feet, eager to get to the metal buckets of feed Mr Farthing was carrying.

I stretched out my hand and introduced myself, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Farthing. I’m Sarah Hill, the new health visitor.’

‘Well, I’m very pleased to meet you, Nurse,’ she gushed. ‘But we’ll have none of this Mr and Mrs Farthing business. I’m Flo and he’s Clem. You follow me – I’ll take you up to the flat and get the kettle on. As you know, Clem and I are the caretakers for the clinic. I keep it spick and span and look after you ladies, and Clem does any odd jobs that need doing. We’ve given your flat a good set-to this morning, haven’t we, Clem?’

Clem nodded in accordance with his wife and tossed a handful of feed to the clucking hens. ‘I’m going to check on Bessie.’

I looked enquiringly. ‘The pig,’ explained Flo. ‘An Essex we got from Joe Rudcliff at Treetops Farm for fattening. And right soft Clem is about it too. Calls it Queen Bess for crying out loud.’ Clem said nothing and hurried away to the pig sty at the back of their cottage garden. ‘You mark my words, Clement Farthing, come Easter that porker will do very nicely indeed.’ Flo’s words disappeared on the cool early autumn breeze. She rearranged her face from scolding to motherly and said encouragingly, ‘Follow me, dear. We’ll pop in through the back gate.’

‘You have a beautiful garden,’ I said admiringly.

She beamed with pride. ‘We’ve been here over 40 years. Since the day we were married.’

Flo expertly picked her way through poultry, garden produce and tools to the back lane, where the goat was thoughtfully chewing on someone else’s washing line. I thought of all my belongings left unattended on the street and felt uneasy. It seemed funny to be going in through the back door.

‘I think I better go back to my car and get the boxes to carry up to the flat first,’ I suggested weakly.

‘No need for that. Clem will do it. You don’t need to lift a finger. Give me your car keys, Nurse.’