A Spoonful of Sugar

by Brenda Ashford

  “W-what—the whole eight months?” I squeaked.

  She nodded, as if she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her.

  I felt as if I were drowning.

  “No,” I cried. “But he can’t have been.”

  The betrayal hit me like a punch in the chest. I thought it couldn’t get worse but then …

  “Apparently this girl found out about you and when she heard he’d been to visit your parents, she threatened to sue him for breach of promise. It’s the talk of the village.”

  I felt like I was going to throw up. He was promised to someone else all along. All the while we were courting, he was stringing us both along.

  What a silly, silly fool I’d been.

  I thought of this other girl. I had no idea he was engaged to someone else, someone who probably didn’t even live that far from Little Cranford. Poor girl. She had been saving herself for heartless Henry, just like me.

  Her threat to sue him for breach of promise sheds a little light on the repressed times we were living in. In the cities people may have been indulging in all sorts of wild behavior, but here in the country, saving oneself for the right man meant everything.

  Henry’s promise to marry this lady could be considered a legally binding contract; and he obviously took her threat to sue him seriously, given that he returned to her when she made it. Perhaps she had already given up her virginity to him and, horrified to find out about me, was concerned with the damage to her reputation and loss of status.

  Changing social mores have all but led to the collapse of this kind of action, but back then in Little Cranford, breach of promise was taken seriously. Henry had been playing a dangerous game.

  I slumped back in my chair, utterly defeated.

  For the first time in months I saw what everyone else had seen. Mrs. Worboys, her ladyship, my own parents. They all saw through him. They knew his cocky attitude was a front for his breathtaking deceit.

  He was nothing but a scoundrel.

  “Oh I’m such a fool,” I wept. “I was prepared to give it all up for him.”

  Susan placed her arms around me and stroked my hair. “No, you’re not,” she insisted. “You loved him, he betrayed you, and he fooled us all, Brenda.”

  But her kind words did nothing to ease my agony. I was heartbroken.

  “I thought he was the cat’s whiskers,” I sobbed.

  My first brush with romance had been a disaster.

  As I sat in Susan’s kitchen, wallowing in misery, the chairman of the Norland was sending out a newsletter to celebrate the institute’s fiftieth anniversary.

  “In a world wholly different from that in which Mrs. Walter Ward was inspired to found the institute, we can celebrate its fiftieth anniversary confident that it, at least, is the same,” wrote Hester Laird Wilson.

  But the world around me was no longer the same. Far from it; my heart had been broken, a little piece of my soul bruised forever.

  Lying in Susan’s spare bed that night I stared into the dark and wondered what would become of me. If not a farmer’s wife, then what? It seemed that the nursery was my calling, after all. I felt so cruelly let down by love that I didn’t see how I could ever risk it again.

  Little did I know it, but the peace and quiet of the nursery as I knew it was to be shattered forever. Coming my way was a riot of noise, dirt, disease, illegitimate babies, adultery, deserters, and scandal all set against a backdrop of some of the most lethal warfare the country had ever seen.

  Oh yes. Life was about to get interesting.

  TESTIMONIAL

  Nurse Brenda Ashford has been here since March 9, 1942. She has been nurse in charge of a small residential war nursery in our house consisting of evacuated children and one refugee child, ages about two years to five years. The numbers have varied from two to five children and for about the last six months, five children. Some help given. She is essentially a well brought up girl from a good home who desires to do what is true and right and to work conscientiously. She has had very good experience here. She is active, industrious, and capable. She takes an interest in the children’s health and is watchful to notice if they are not well. She is helpful and obliging and does not mind what she does. She much likes children, especially I think, the tiny ones. She leaves entirely of her own wish, as she wants to work in a day nursery near her own home. Nurse Brenda has got on very well indeed with household staff and has been pleasant with them.

  —LADY SMYTHE-VILLIERS

  Nanny’s Wisdom

  FIND THE FUN …

  Little Gretel was a child for the most part alone in her misery, until I found a way to unlock her private world by having fun. All children adore fun, even the painfully shy, lonely, and reserved ones. You don’t need to have money to enjoy life. So many parents nowadays equate fun with spending a fortune. They don’t need to take their children on all-inclusive vacations or to the cinema/bowling alley/shopping mall in order for them to enjoy themselves. Of course it’s great, if you can afford that; but if not, a child will have just as much fun doing any of the following: damming streams, having piggyback races, searching for bugs, racing snails, playing hide-and-seek in a wood, making a mud pie, skimming stones, climbing a tree, hunting for frog spawn, picking fruit straight from a bush, playing conkers, running through leaves, burying an adult in the snow or sand, jumping in muddy puddles, rolling down a hill, searching for monsters, playing soccer in a field, collecting leaves and flowers, paddling in streams with a net, or dancing in the rain. Best of all? They are all absolutely free. Father took us to a smart Italian restaurant called Frascati once a year as a treat and I always enjoyed it, but to be honest, I enjoyed it much more when we all played make-believe games in the fresh air.

  THE WAY TO A MAN’S HEART …

  I have never had much luck with the opposite sex, but they say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. From my experience, all men love puddings, the stickier and sweeter the better. Try this recipe for spotted dick. Serve steaming hot and smothered in warm custard and watch him melt. Serves four to six people.

  ¼ cup butter

  2¼ cups all-purpose flour

  3 teaspoons baking powder

  5 ounces shredded suet

  7 tablespoons caster sugar

  ¾ cup dried currants

  Finely grated zest and juice of 2 lemons

  ⅓ cup milk

  ⅓ cup heavy cream

  Custard or clotted cream, to serve

  Soften half the butter and use to grease a 1¼-quart pudding basin.

  Combine the flour, baking powder, suet, sugar, and currants in a large bowl. Mix well. Melt the remaining butter and stir into the flour mixture.

  Stir in the lemon zest and juice.

  In a separate bowl, combine the milk and cream. Slowly stir enough into the flour mixture to bring it to a dropping consistency.

  Pour the dough into the pudding basin. Cover with a double layer of wax paper, tied in place with string. Place the basin in a steamer basket set over boiling water. Cover and steam for about 1 to 1½ hours until cooked.

  CHAPTER 9

  WAR NURSERY

  REDBOURN DAY NURSERY

  REDBOURN, HERTFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

  [1943, AGE TWENTY-TWO]

  There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

  She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.

  —NURSERY RHYME

  Schedule

  7:45 AM: Arrived at the nursery; lit the fires and opened the blackout curtains.

  8:00 AM: Nursery opened and children started to arrive.

  8:30 AM: Once all children arrived, all were bathed and changed into nursery overalls.

  8:45 AM: Breakfast of full-fat milk, bread, jam, and orange juice.

  9:30 AM: Administered dose of cod-liver oil to all children and combed their hair for lice.

  10:00 AM: Gave sick children medicine or applied creams for skin conditions.

  10:30 AM: Playtime outside for
nursery school children and walks out in prams for babies.

  11:00 AM: Oversaw boil washing of nappies and dirty clothes and helped where needed with preparation of bottles.

  11:30 AM: Walked round the nursery and ensured everyone playing happily.

  12:00 PM: Administration duties, ordered food, and managed rations.

  12:30 PM: Lunch for all.

  1:30 PM: Nap time for younger children and quiet reading for older children.

  2:30 PM: More administration.

  3:30 PM: Visit from Nurse Trudgett to discuss sick children and funding.

  4:00 PM: Issue means-tested invoices and paid nursery bills.

  4:30 PM: Teatime.

  5:00 PM: Story time.

  5:30 PM: Changed children into going home clothes and oversaw home time. Talked to parents and answered questions.

  6:00 PM: Nursery officially closed (although there were frequently latecomers). Helped staff to scrub down nursery and tidy up.

  6:30 PM: Drew blackout curtains and got bus home.

  IT WAS 7:45 ON A MONDAY MORNING at the Redbourn Day Nursery in Hertfordshire and all was quiet. The sickly sweet smell of cod-liver oil hung in the air, and as I shrugged off my coat it caught me right in the back of my throat.

  Working quickly, I bustled round the room, drawing the blackout curtains and throwing open the windows. A stream of spring sunshine flooded in and gratefully I gulped the fresh air. Closing my eyes, I savored the sound of silence. I loved this time of the morning. The nursery was all mine and I could gather my wits about me and brace myself for the onslaught.

  There was just time for my daily inspection. Rows and rows of children’s pegs lined the wall. Each little peg had a boat or a gollywog emblem. I strode along, making sure that each also had the requisite little white cotton overall that I’d hand stitched, a towel, and a flannel.

  Then, humming and smoothing down my Norland uniform, I threw open the door to the kitchen and lit the flame under the huge coal-serviced copper. As it began to groan and creak into life I heard the clanking of bottles outside. I smiled. Martin Webb, the local milkman, had arrived in his old blue Morris van.

  Martin and his two boys, Ray and Geoff, were part of the fabric of this community. The Webbs had been serving fresh milk from a seventeen-gallon churn for more than a hundred years, first on a handcart, then by horse and cart, and now by van. The business had been handed down from generation to generation. The Webbs came from hardworking country stock and were typical of the village characters that Redbourn seemed to breed.

  Situated between St. Albans and Dunstable, the village used to be a stopping point for horses drawing Royal Mail coaches en route to and from London. It was a sleepy little place where everyone knew everyone else. Even though I’d only been working here for four months, I was already feeling at home in the close-knit community.

  The job couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I needed a new focus, and the distraction of so many children to lavish my love on was most welcome. There was still a sharp stab of pain in my stomach every time I thought of Henry’s betrayal, but I forced myself not to wallow in things. And mostly I simply didn’t have time. My day started early, since it took me forty minutes on the bus to get here from where I now lived with Mother, Father, and our remaining evacuee, Sally. And once here, I immersed myself in the tasks at hand.

  That life still centered around the common, where chickens and geese roamed. The village cricket team gathered there to while away lazy summer afternoons with the soft thud of leather on willow. Saturdays saw local boys and evacuees pitting their skills against one another in boisterous games of football. Come winter, these same boys would be helpless with laughter as they slid along the icy paths that cut across the open space, often landing in a scrummage of flailing arms and legs.

  The common was lined with rows of pretty terraced cottages; and the high street, which was the hub of the community, ran off from one side. The narrow road was lined with businesses that had been in the same families for generations, among them a grocer’s, a butcher’s, a baker’s, and a tailor’s. It was just a stone’s throw from the nursery, and I could easily wander over to top up provisions. The high street was always full of hustle and bustle and I loved chatting to the village characters.

  The smell of the silver-haired baker’s freshly baked cottage loaves and sugary doughnuts drifted up the street, competing with the sound of the fruiterer, John, shouting out the quality of his wares.

  “Come and getcha lovely pears. Nice an sorft an’ juicy,” he’d bellow.

  His lungs were so powerful, I was sure villagers from neighboring communities could hear him.

  Redbourn even had its own resident cobbler’s shop, run by a smiley, dumpy man by the name of Arthur. Arthur was as deaf as a doorpost. What he lacked in auditory ability he made up for with superb craftsmanship, and everyone in the village took everything from leather shoes to footballs and horse harnesses to him to restitch.

  In the middle of the high street was Bill the blacksmith’s forge. His warm workshop seemed to shelter many a man hiding out from the wife, and the sinewy old blacksmith was always ready to trade gossip.

  There were pubs, of course. When I walked past the Jolly Gardeners and the Cricketers, they seemed to house many an old boy, permanently nursing a pint of ale with a cigarette clamped between nicotine-stained teeth. Not that I went into these establishments myself. There was never time, and I couldn’t bear the smell of beer, either.

  Centuries of unchanged tradition had been observed and celebrated by the townspeople, from May Day through to Michaelmas.

  The friendliest was always the milkman, though.

  “Morning, Brenda,” said Martin now, beaming. “Lots of lovely milk and butter for the children today.”

  He unloaded vast pats of glistening unsalted butter and jugs of full-fat unpasteurized milk, collected just hours earlier straight from Fish Street Farm a few fields away. It wasn’t until a few years after the war that legislation was passed to ensure that all milk was pasteurized. Back then, the milk was as fresh as it comes; and it was the milkman’s job to collect it, bottle it, deliver it, and wash up the bottles afterward. The milk tasted just heavenly and it had a head of cream on it four inches thick. The poor people of the village used to buy skimmed milk for a penny a pint.

  “That’ll keep ’em nice and ’ealthy,” Martin said with a grin. I was sure he threw in extra for the children, as there always seemed to be so much.

  “Wish my evacuee boy would eat better,” he said, shaking his head and mopping his brow. “He seems to survive off bread spread with brown sauce. I don’t reckon he’s ever eaten with a knife and fork before.”

  Martin and his wife, Lily, had two evacuees billeted with them at their farm, Walter and Billy. Walter was from the East End and Martin was forever telling me how utterly bemused the boy was in his new surroundings. “I don’t think he’s even seen the moon afore, you know,” he whispered one morning. “He seems terrified of it.”

  I could have stayed trading stories with this lovable old milkman all morning, but there were jobs to be done. Glancing at my watch I realized it was 8:00 AM.

  Outside, the babble of voices grew steadily louder … and louder … until it seemed to reach a fever pitch of noise.

  The morning stampede had begun.

  Suddenly, the door burst open and a stream of little folk and their mothers, brothers, sisters, or grandparents—whoever happened to be dropping them off—came pouring through in a great tidal wave of human life.

  “ ’Ello, Brenda love, ’ows yerself?” called out one evacuee’s mother as she pushed her little son Johnnie through the door. “I fink ’e’s got nits again.”

  Little Johnnie stood scratching his head with filthy fingernails as a steady stream of snot trickled from his nose.

  “Go on, yer li’l bleeder,” she said, shoving Johnnie through the door. “Ta ra all.”

  I groaned inwardly. Not again. We’d only just go
t rid of the last infestation. There wouldn’t be a child in the nursery that didn’t have them by lunchtime.

  A village local, an elderly man in his eighties, dropped off his grandson. The mother was already hard at work on the early shift, assembling war machines at a nearby factory.

  “His mother’ll collect,” he said, giving me a grin. “Just doing my bit.”

  One by one they streamed in. Bleary-eyed mothers clutching bewildered babies and grubby-faced toddlers, exhausted staff, volunteers, and excitable children.

  It was a riot of snot-filled, nit-laden noise and chaos.

  We would be flat out for the next ten hours until the nursery closed at 6:00 PM. Breaks would have to be taken whenever and wherever they could. It was all hands to the pump in this place.

  I had never in all my life worked anywhere like this day nursery.

  Every morning most of the children had to be bathed, dressed in their nursery overalls, and fed breakfast or at least milk—and that was before the day had even begun.

  While bathing one child, it would inevitably be necessary to rescue a would-be escapee or fend off another child’s curious exploration of someone’s face. Some little tyke, still slippery from the soap bubbles, would make a desperate, nude dash for the door.

  I’m like the little old lady who lived in a shoe, I’d think, giggling helplessly to myself.

  At times it was simply too chaotic and I despaired of the workload. How would we ever make it through to teatime? I’d wonder. But somehow we always did. It was exhausting, though, and my head was always spinning by the time it hit the pillow. But as the weeks whizzed past I realized I didn’t care. I was loving every smelly, chaotic second!

  It might have come a year or two too late but finally the government had recognized the need for war nurseries to be formed up and down the country.

  “If anything good has come of this war, it is the fact that at last the need and the value of day nurseries has been forced upon the nation. A woman cannot be expected to pull her weight in a factory if she is worrying about her children all day,” said Lady Reading, chairman of the National Society of Day Nurseries.