I raced downstairs and filled up as many bowls of hot water as I could.
In the kitchen Mr. Barclay glanced at me over the top of his paper and nodded stiffly.
By the time I got back in the room, the doctor had scrubbed up, slipped a sterile sheet under Mrs. Barclay’s buttocks, and was examining her. Mrs. Barclay, meanwhile, wasn’t waiting for anyone and was pushing with all her might, a vein on the side of her head throbbing as she bore down and grunted with the effort.
“Delivery imminent,” said the doctor with a sigh, probably still thinking of the half-eaten steak and kidney pie growing cold on his kitchen table.
In a split second, the atmosphere in the room changed from one of panic to absolute focused calm.
Mrs. Barclay had stopped screaming and had almost seemed to turn in on herself, perhaps preserving every drop of energy for the arduous task ahead.
“Little pushes,” said the doctor as he crouched down and gently maneuvered her onto her side. “That’s it, nice and slowly. Breathe deeply.”
Suddenly, the room fell under a magical spell and time seemed to freeze.
The baby’s head was crowning.
“Not too fast,” said the doctor. “Pant, don’t push—this baby is going to be a big one.”
I could see it. I could actually see it. With the next contraction the head started to push through.
“Oh,” I breathed, wide-eyed with wonder. “She’s coming.”
Suddenly, the head slithered out and I gasped. What on earth?
“Oh, you’re lucky,” squealed the maternity nurse. “She’s born in a caul.”
I’d only ever heard of babies born in their amniotic sac, and I had heard a child born this way was said to be possessed of remarkable luck or intuitive powers. Who knew whether it was simply an old wives’ tale? But it was fascinating to observe.
As the rest of the baby’s body slid out effortlessly onto the sheet I was stunned to see she was entirely encased in a bluey-white transparent bag. We could just make out her little face gazing out bewildered from inside her veil.
“Boy, girl?” cried Mrs. Barclay.
“It’s a healthy girl,” said the doctor. “And she’ll be fine.”
Working quickly, the doctor deftly made a small incision in the membrane by the baby’s nostrils so she could breathe and then gently peeled back the rest of the sac from her skin.
I stood rooted to the spot, utterly spellbound. It was like watching the most precious present of all being tenderly unwrapped.
And what a gift! Now that the sac had gone I could see a wriggling little pink bundle. She was perfect, from her chubby little clenched fists to her curled-up toes. She was now a separate being.
I had just witnessed birth, in all its brutal splendor.
“It’s a miracle, Mrs. Barclay,” I breathed.
I felt my eyes begin to mist over. “Towel,” barked the less sentimental doctor.
Minutes later the cord was clamped and the maternity nurse weighed her.
“Ooh, she’s a big one,” she said with a smile, “nearly eleven pounds.”
With that Mrs. Barclay went as white as flour and collapsed back against her pillow. The effort of delivering an eleven-pound baby born in a caul seemed to entirely swamp her.
The nurse wrapped the baby in a towel and, seeming to sense that Mrs. Barclay needed peace as the doctor delivered the placenta, handed her to me instead.
Holding the precious bundle like it was the most fragile lace, I breathed in that incredible musky smell that all newborn babies seem to have and sighed in wonder.
Walking with her over to the window, I gently peeled back the towel so I could get a better look.
Her little face may have been covered in blood and mucous but quite honestly she was the loveliest thing I had ever clapped eyes on.
Just then she made a slight snuffling sound and her deep blue eyes opened just a fraction for the first time. A tingle ran the length of my body as I realized I was the first person in the world she had set eyes upon.
“Welcome to the world, sweetheart.” I smiled. “You’re a big girl, aren’t you.”
Her blue eyes gazed curiously at me and for a split second I felt an instinctive understanding run between us.
“I’m your nanny,” I whispered, softly stroking her furrowed little brow with my finger.
Her skin was as soft as satin.
Not since David’s birth all those years before had holding a baby affected me quite so profoundly. I had witnessed the miracle of her birth and had the honor of holding her just minutes after she was unpeeled from her caul. It was a moment I shall treasure always.
Seconds later she let rip a ferocious and indignant cry.
“Nothing wrong with baby’s lungs, then.” The maternity nurse chuckled.
Baby Pippa and I formed a strong bond created in those powerful minutes after the birth. Little Pippa and I were as close as close can be. For eight blissful years she was my be-all and end-all.
As Pippa and the rest of her fellow baby boomers grew up and took their first unsteady steps, the world was a rapidly changing place.
On July 5, 1948, nine months after her birth, the National Health Service Act was passed and the NHS was formed, pledging free health care for all. It was a momentous achievement and everybody wanted the new service to work.
We may have still been war-weary, accustomed to austerity, and had rationing still in place, but it was a sign of good things to come. Prior to this law only people who could afford expensive private health insurance—mainly men—could be guaranteed health care.
In those days we were happy with the simple things in life. There was no television set at the Barclays’, so we contented ourselves with plenty of walks in the fresh air or listening to plays on the radio. Life was certainly a lot less complicated, competitive, and fast-moving, and all the better for it, if you ask me.
Foreign travel was out of the reach of most people, so the British seaside and Butlin’s camps became magnets for pleasure seekers.
After the carnage of war, life was looking up. Britain and the Western world were recovering.
Father’s business, while not exactly booming, was at least surviving, and now Christopher helped him out. Michael was starting to train for a career in the theater; and Basil was working abroad for a timber firm.
Mother, still at a loss after her beloved evacuees left, had bought herself a dog, a delightful little whippet she called Bambi, to fuss over and care for.
The baby boom was keeping midwife Kathleen rushed off her feet, and she seemed to spend all of her time delivering babies in Surrey.
Important steps were being made in child health, and thanks to the Children Act of 1948 their welfare was being taken seriously.
I marveled at how lucky and privileged we were to suddenly have access to vaccines and medicine that before just simply weren’t available to the masses. Little Pippa and her sisters wouldn’t have to go through the pain of so many childhood illnesses like I had suffered. The pharmaceutical industry was creating a flood of new drugs. Penicillin, polio vaccine, better anesthetic agents, cortisone, drugs for the treatment of mental illness such as schizophrenia and depression, diuretics for heart failure, and antihistamines all became available.
The war had created a housing crisis—alongside postwar rebuilding of cities, the 1946 New Towns Act created major new centers of population that all needed health services.
Newly rebuilt towns had to put the family first and consider the welfare of schools, nurseries, and parents. And so it seemed that innovation could be born from times of crisis.
It was on one such visit to a new NHS baby clinic for a checkup for Pippa that I realized perhaps I was in danger of being viewed as an outdated relic, a prewar dinosaur.
I was sitting in the clinic, holding Pippa in my lap. She was dressed ever so smartly in her little wool coat and cap, I was in my Norland uniform, and the older girls were playing happily nearby pulling a little
wooden duck on wheels about. Jane and Penny were so good and on the whole were content to sit and paint pictures; do coloring in; or, as now, to play with whatever toys were available.
A mother sitting nearby looked at me and sniffed. “You one of those Norland nannies?” she asked.
“Yes, I am.” I smiled. “Have you heard of them then?”
“Oh, I’ve heard of ’em all right,” she said with a laugh. “Out of touch they are, with all their highfalutin ways.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling my cheeks flush at this sudden attack on my profession.
“What’s the good in having a Norland nanny?” she went on. “They don’t work—they don’t like to get their hands or their uniform dirty. I mean to say, it’s ridiculous. Who needs a nanny in a cape?”
I sat, gobsmacked, staring after the woman as she was called in to see the doctor.
Was that really how she saw me? How the world saw us? As work-shy snobs?
Furious, I took the girls, tucked them up in their coach pram, and marched home.
“I have never been lazy in my whole life,” I muttered as I strode down the road.
“What’s wrong, Nana?” asked Jane.
“Nothing, darling.” I smiled brightly.
But do you know what I did as soon as I got home?
I took off my uniform, folded it up, put it away, and then changed into a plain blue overall dress.
Rightly or wrongly, I didn’t want to be seen that way.
I am sure Mrs. Whitehead would have had a blue fit, but the world had changed so much since 1939.
As we entered the 1950s a nanny in a uniform seemed strangely outdated.
Society was changing, and I had to be seen to be changing with it.
I could get my hands dirty with the best of them, and there and then I made a vow. I could only truly call myself a proper nanny if I did everything that a mother would do.
In the case of the Barclays that meant getting my hands really dirty!
Mrs. Barclay went out to their small holding every day to ride her beloved horses and feed her animals.
I used to love taking the girls out to the farm to pick buttercups and make daisy chains.
But now I realized we could all do more. “Can I help with the animals?” I ventured one spring morning, after nearly four years on the farm.
“Well yes, Nurse Brenda, that would be lovely,” Mrs. Barclay said, handing me a pail. “You can start by milking Buttercup. The relief milker’s sick.”
Buttercup was what was known as a house cow. Half Guernsey and half shorthorn, she provided all the fresh milk for the household. Her delicious milk was used in Mrs. Barclay’s morning coffee and the children’s cereal, as well to make cream and cheese.
Buttercup was staring dolefully at me. I gulped.
A nanny who milks. Well, one has to be adaptable in these changing times.
The children giggled as I sat on the milking stool, took a deep breath, and gently prodded her swollen udders.
Two seconds later milk sprayed everywhere, and the children were in fits of giggles. “You’re supposed to get it in the bucket, Nana.” Jane laughed as it dripped off the end of my nose.
“Practice makes perfect,” I said, diving in again.
Poor Buttercup. She stared at me patiently with those big brown eyes as I wrestled with her udders.
By the time I’d finished I’d managed half a bucket and I was thrilled.
“Well done, Nana,” the children cried. After that we had the most magical day. We fed hay to the animals, helped muck out the horses, and then together we skimmed the cream off the milk to make butter.
Everyone helped out. Even their two dogs, an Alsatian called Beau and a whippet called Jester, worked as a double act.
Thanks to the new buildings nearby, hundreds of rats had been disturbed and decided to take shelter in the barn and outhouses.
Beau raced in and sniffed out the rats, and as they ran for the door, the whippet was waiting to catch them.
“Look,” I cried delightedly to the children. We watched them for hours until finally dusk sneaked in over the fields.
“Come on, children,” I said, taking their hands. “Time for tea.”
As we headed home across the fields, the light of the farmhouse spilling out across the countryside, I felt a warm flush of happiness.
Country life suited me. There was no time to feel regret at my lost loves or lament not having time to find a new man. My heart was fulfilled and I loved my job with a passion. Surely that was more important?
“I’ve had a lovely day, Nana,” three-year-old Pippa said with a smile, her little hand warm in mine.
“Me, too,” I trilled.
Sitting down in the kitchen, eating toast and jam at the end of the day spent with the children in the fresh air, I realized what a truly important lesson I was teaching them. A sense of responsibility and caring for others isn’t easily taught: it has to be demonstrated.
That night I tucked the children up in their beds, planted little kisses on their heads, and wrapped their feet up in soft blankets so their toes didn’t get cold, as my own mother had done all those years before.
“Sweet dreams, girls.” I smiled.
“I think you’re a super nana,” whispered Penny sleepily under her eiderdown.
Later I was snuggled up in my own bed. I may have been alone but suddenly, with a jolt I realized, I didn’t care!
I was nearly thirty now with no husband or a child to call my own, but for some reason it didn’t seem to matter. The need to find a man didn’t drive me in quite the same way as being the best nanny that I could possibly be did.
Being on my own wasn’t actually the end of the world.
From what I could see, men were nothing but trouble anyway. Perhaps I was wise to leave the heartache to others?
After that, every spare minute was spent down on the farm, helping out, watching the beauty of the changing seasons, and observing the centuries-old traditions of farming.
One such tradition was that of Buttercup’s yearly baby. Poor cow, every year she had to be artificially inseminated and have a calf to keep her milk supply going. The baby boom was nothing new for this sweet old cow.
When I’d been at the Barclays’ for nearly four years, Buttercup gave birth to a frisky young black-and-white heifer. This heifer was quite mad: she ran round the field like a bucking bronco, charging anyone who dared come near her.
It wasn’t just the heifer. Half the animals on this farm seemed quite, quite mad. The geese used to chase the horses round the fields and Percy, the enormous boar, regularly broke free from his sty and rampaged round the farm.
The war nursery and caring for Jimmy and the evacuees seemed tame in comparison!
I woke one morning on my thirtieth birthday to find the girls had made me a card. I was quite touched and looking forward to the day.
Mrs. Barclay had other ideas.
“Brenda, would you mind feeding Buttercup’s heifer?” she asked over the breakfast table. “The relief milker’s not shown up.”
I wasn’t surprised. He was scared out of his wits of that mad creature. Even the local gravedigger who came on occasion to help out refused to go in the field to lay out her hay.
But what sort of message would I send to the girls if I said no?
“Of course,” I agreed.
“Thanks, Brenda.” She smiled, returning to her paper. “You are a treasure.”
With the girls lined up, watching safely from the other side of the fence, I picked up the stack of hay and quietly opened the gate to the cows’ field. The mad heifer was grazing at the far end of the field. If I sneaked in, she may just not notice me. “You are brave, Nana,” piped up Pippa, her nose pressed against the wooden gate.
Brave or stupid.
Venturing farther into the field I started to stealthily scatter the hay, hardly daring to breathe.
Just a few more minutes and then I’d be home and dry. Suddenly,
I felt a hot breath on my neck. “Er, Nana,” cried Jane. “Run!”
Turning round to find myself face-to-face with the mad heifer, I leaped to my feet. Not since the German planes had flown overhead had I felt such adrenaline pump through my body.
I hurtled through that muddy field toward the gate like a woman possessed, the mad heifer in hot pursuit.
“Run!” whooped and hollered the girls. “She’s gaining on you.…”
“I’m nearly …” I started to yell, until “urghhh,” I grunted. An almighty thud hit me in the back and I felt the air rush out of my body.
Suddenly, I realized I was airborne! Flying through the air I landed facedown in the mud with a splat.
Tossed into the mud by a mad beast? Some birthday this was turning out to be!
Limping back to the house with the girls supporting me, head to toe in mud, I had to laugh. Children were definitely easier to deal with than animals. To everyone’s relief Buttercup’s wayward daughter was sold shortly after, but it had certainly made it a birthday to remember.
Most people these days seem to spend their thirtieth birthdays in some riotous fashion, hosting a party or going on a holiday. I daresay on mine I was tucked up in bed after I put the girls down and was sound asleep by 10:00 PM, as I was most nights. I did some reflection on my life. Thirty is rather a milestone, isn’t it, and one does tend to take stock at these times.
Jane was ten, Penny seven, and Pippa four, and caring for these three little angels was my life. If I wasn’t collecting or dropping the older girls at school or helping them with their homework, I was caring for Pippa, and life was certainly most busy. There was not so much as a whiff of a man on the scene and quite honestly I didn’t seem to find the time nor the inclination to go looking for one.
Was I unhappy about that fact? Honestly, if I searched deep inside my soul, I would have to say no. Child care had always been my calling. I had answered this call, and every day brought its own rewards. Okay, I might not have had a man, but I still had plenty of love in my life. I was doing perfectly well on my own, thank you very much.
You’d have thought we’d have learned our lesson about working with animals from the mad heifer incident, but sometime later at a local fair the girls won a goldfish.
A Spoonful of Sugar Page 26