9:00 AM TO 10:00 AM: Chores.
10:00 AM: Woke Susanna for a feed. She was a very easy, contented baby; and most times I loved to just sit with her snuggled in my arms, watching her coo and gurgle.
10:30 AM: Visit from district nurse or took Susanna to NHS clinic for checkup.
11:00 AM: Prepared lunch, and sterilized used bottles. Made up feeds for the next twenty-four hours, did the washing and ironing and cleaned the nurseries and bedrooms.
12:30 PM: Lunch.
2:00 PM: Susanna out for afternoon nap in fresh air under shade of a big oak tree at the far end of the garden. While she slept I did housework.
3:00 PM: Fed Susanna. Twins returned home from school; and they loved to help feed their little sister.
4:00 PM: A simple meal for the twins: jam or Marmite sandwiches, slices of cheese, milk to drink, followed by sponge cakes, jelly, fresh fruit.
5:00 PM: If home, the girl’s father visited while I prepared for the children’s bath time.
6:00 PM: Twins bathed and I topped and tailed Susanna. All girls to be dressed for bed.
7:00 PM: Fed Susanna her bottle, then she went to sleep in her cot like a dream.
7:30 PM: Supervised twins’ bedtime and ensured lights out when they had finished reading to themselves.
7:30 PM TO 10:00 PM: I spent my evenings catching up on ironing, sewing, mending. I scarcely had time to read a novel or socialize in the evenings. Mr. Gordon had dinner parties once a month, so I cooked for him and then washed and cleared up after.
11:00 PM TO 6:00 AM: Woke every four hours through the night to feed Susanna until she was three months old.
“GOOD TO HAVE YOU BACK,” boomed Mr. Gordon, opening the door to the spacious Surrey home. “Come on in and meet the new arrival.”
It was 1965 and many years had passed since I first worked for Mr. Gordon and his wife. Nine years to be precise since that fateful job in Kensington when Mother had passed away. Were she still alive, she wouldn’t recognize London from the place where we had taken tea in the Lyons Corner House all those years ago.
Now the Beatles were dominating the charts; women’s hemlines had risen to almost indecent levels; and there was a revolution in fashion, music, and sexual behavior fueled by the pill.
Girls in Mary Quant miniskirts and go-go boots strode down the King’s Road in London’s Chelsea. Nowadays people shopped in supermarkets; ate sliced bread; watched soap operas; and bought mass-market, low-quality disposable products. Would Mother have approved? I’m not sure.
I had returned to the Gordons’ on a number of brief occasions since the twin’s birth but never stopped for more than a few weeks each time.
My quest to work for as many families as I possibly could had spurred me on; and even now, one day after I had turned forty-four, I had not the slightest inclination to stop.
I must have cared for nearly one hundred children but still the itch wasn’t yet scratched.
I had long since given up on finding a man: that boat had sailed for me and with acceptance of it came a kind of freedom I could never have imagined.
While my contemporaries were taking the pill, forging new careers, and traveling more than ever before, I was now firmly entrenched in the nursery. But I was at peace with my decisions, a stronger, more confident woman than ever before.
A decade of troubleshooting, of living in other women’s homes, and caring for their offspring does that to you.
“Can’t we tempt you to stay longer, Nurse Ashford?” said Mrs. Gordon. “The twins are eight and now I have a new baby, we really could do with your help.” I’d heard this kind of plea before from many a mother, but I was adamant.
“I’m afraid not.” I smiled. “I’ll stay for six weeks until you’re up on your feet.”
She sighed. “Oh well, perhaps you better meet your new charge.”
Suddenly, the twins, Belinda and Fiona, rushed in.
“Oh, Nana,” they said, laughing and wrapping their arms round me and smothering me in kisses. “You’ve come back.”
“Gracious.” I chuckled, untangling myself from their sticky embraces. “It’s so nice to feel wanted.”
“Do you want to meet our new baby sister, Susanna?” Belinda blurted, eyes shining. “Do you? She’s very little, just like a real doll.”
“Oh yes, please.” I laughed. “I should like that very much indeed.”
Just then the door to the drawing room swung open and in walked Mr. Gordon, carrying the nearest thing I had ever seen to a real-life little doll.
“Oh my,” I breathed. “May I?”
“Of course.” He laughed, gently placing her into my arms.
Not since David’s birth thirty-five years previously, nor Pippa’s eighteen years ago, had such a little baby had such a profound effect on me.
Everyone else in the room just seemed to melt away as I locked eyes with this precious pink bundle. “She’s so tiny,” I marveled. “Just a little scrap.”
“She was a month premature,” said Mrs. Gordon. “Just five pounds.”
She may have been the size of a tiny porcelain doll, but she was perfect in every single way. I was so filled with wonder I could scarcely take my eyes off her.
Each exquisite slender little finger was complete with a minuscule little fingernail, and her tiny little cheeks were as soft as satin.
Little dark lashes curled out from tiny eyelids as she slept soundly in my arms. Only her little lips, like petite rosebuds, twitched in her sleep. Suddenly, something startled her and her eyes shot open in surprise and her arms and legs jerked backward.
I sensed the twins take a step back.
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “She’s quite okay. It’s called the Moro reflex—she was just startled.”
Baby Susanna gazed up at me with serious deep blue eyes. Then she snuffled, her eyes gently closed, and she snuggled down into my embrace. I felt quite overwhelmed with love.
How could anything so tiny be so perfect?
I had held countless babies in my arms before, but none touched my heart quite like this little girl.
Holding her tenderly, I was suddenly reminded of every child who had made an impact on my life.
It had started with the wonder of seeing my baby brother David, but so many children had influenced me and made me the person who I had become: the Ravenshere boys who taught me the importance of family life; the helpless yet tremendously brave children at Great Ormond Street who fought a daily battle with pain; the irrepressible Bethnal Greenies at Hothfield, separated from their parents but making the best of each and every day. Then there were Benjy and Peter, my darling first charges who never stopped smiling even when the bombs rained down; bewildered Gretel, the Jewish girl forced to flee her country by the Nazis; Jimmy the sweetheart brought up in dismal poverty; the Sacks twins, who helped me in my journey; and Pippa, whose first moments on earth I so gratefully shared—not to mention countless others who have entered and then left my life again, leaving their own indelible mark on my heart.
Those children were all unique in their own ways, but they all shared a robust and brave resilience, all sparkled with fun, and had an endless capacity for love. That is what is so precious about childhood. Love and cherish a little person and you will receive love back tenfold. What other relationship on earth promises so much magic? Was it any wonder I chose to spend my life surrounded by children and not with a man?
I learned so much from all these little folk: how to be organized, fair, loyal, patient, consistent, reliable, energetic, fun-loving, and resourceful, not to mention tenacious. As I sat cradling this new tiny soul I was overcome with a rush of devotion for my profession. As a nanny my love hadn’t been squandered. Twenty-six years ago, in 1939, I had received a calling to help overturn the tyranny of the nursery. How grateful was I that I had answered it?
Maybe it was this, or maybe it was because Susanna was so tiny and so vulnerable, but holding her in my arms was having a powerful effect on me.
Love
flooded my body. I imagined this must be what a new mother feels like holding her baby for the first time.
In the weeks that followed the bond between us grew and intensified. It was most extraordinary. Susanna yelped when strangers tried to hold her and clung to me. Even her own father in his smart dark suit got short shrift, but nestled in my arms she was as good as gold.
As far as I was concerned she was the best thing since sliced bread. And when six weeks was up, could I leave? Nothing on earth would have dragged me from her side.
Bonds between humans are a most mysterious thing. Why then, after years of holding babies, did such a powerful bond form between Susanna and me? What chemistry ran between us that made me feel compelled to break free from my wandering ways?
Why then, after all these years, did I feel the need to settle down?
The urge to nurture and protect is the most powerful instinct in mankind. Perhaps there was something about her fragile little body that tugged at my heartstrings and made me vow to remain by her side. But remain by her side I did. I unpacked my bags and, when six weeks was up, not one word was said by either side. It remained an unspoken agreement.
I’m so glad I did. For shortly after Susanna turned nine the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Gordon sadly broke down and they made a decision to divorce.
I had tried not to get involved, but living cheek by jowl with them as I did, I could tell all was not well. “Mrs. Gordon is leaving to live in London,” Mr. Gordon informed me. “Please, will you stay on, Nurse Brenda? Susanna and the twins need some stability and continuity in these difficult times.”
“Of course,” I reassured him. “You can count on me.” It was even written into their divorce agreement that I would stay on to care for Susanna. She was such a sensitive little girl and I felt sure she would feel it deeply. After her mother left, I found little notes under my pillow: Please don’t leave, Nana.
As if I could. Instead, I stayed. I took over the running of the house and tried my hardest to provide stability, love, and reassurance for all its occupants.
I stayed because I realized that finally, after all these years, after losing my parents, I had found the closest thing to a family to call my own. My mission was over. I had come home.
TESTIMONIAL
Nana was my rock. She was always there for me, when I was tiny, when I was growing up, and when I was old enough to know better. Never questioning, always supporting. Her total love and kindness to me were those of a mother. I never knew any different. And so it has always been and is still now, and the most lovely thing for me is that my children love her just as I have always done. Truly inspirational, with a love of babies that enabled her, even at the age of eighty, to get up in the small hours to care for them. She just has a way with them that is impossible to put into words, they just respond to her. “I can’t” is not in her vocabulary. Always there to help and love, through good times and bad.
—SUSANNA MORRIS
Nanny’s Wisdom
GIVE CHILDREN SECURITY.
All children need consistency and continuity in their lives. It’s vitally important in order for them to feel secure, confident, happy, and good about themselves. It was very painful for Susanna when her parents divorced and sadly not uncommon. Divorce rates seem to be skyrocketing, I’m not sure why, but perhaps another good reason that I never actively pursued a relationship.
I’m so glad it was agreed that I stay on to care for her after her parents parted. It meant I could really be there to ensure she didn’t suffer. A mother may not have been living with her any longer, but I could provide consistency of care. Susanna and I didn’t talk about the divorce much; the main thing was I was there, and I could lavish her with love and cuddles whenever I sensed she was down. I think all parents who are going through a difficult divorce could do well to remember that. It’s not what they say—it’s what they do, their actions, that count. Families rocked by a breakup need to be fair, reliable, consistent, but above all physically be there with a ready supply of cuddles and kisses. Painful separations can be soothed if both parents put their children’s emotional well-being first.
PUT BLACK BACK.
Some children do seem to react strongly to color. Susanna absolutely yelped whenever anyone, even her own father or godmother, came near her wearing a dark-colored suit. Some babies find dark colors intimidating and frightening. I never wore black, only white, pastels, or on occasion royal blue, and I know babies reacted better to it.
EPILOGUE
CLIFTON COURT RESIDENTIAL HOME
OLNEY, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, ENGLAND
[2013, AGE NINETY-TWO]
Star light, star bright,
The first star I see tonight,
I wish I may,
I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.
—NURSERY RHYME
I AM ETERNALLY GRATEFUL FOR the love that I was able to give and receive in return from Susanna and her family. We don’t share blood but a powerful all-consuming love flows through my veins for her.
I left Susanna when she turned fifteen and went to boarding school, then carried on working until well into my seventies, when I finally retired.
Not once did I lose my enthusiasm or my total devotion and love for the job. “Why don’t you retire?” my brothers asked when I turned seventy. Why? I shrugged. Being a nanny wasn’t a job as far as I was concerned. It was my vocation—my calling—and everyone knows you can’t simply retire from love. Children leave you; you don’t leave children. That’s the natural order of things. As long as I had breath in my body and the will to go on, I would.
The fresh, unlined face that I started with at eighteen grew more wrinkled over time, and my brown curls faded to silver. But each laughter line told a story—the creases round my eyes, furrowed deep from years of laughter spent in the company of children. I’ll admit, there were times when my back ached and my knees throbbed. Bending down to a child’s level was certainly more of a challenge as the years rolled by, but I ignored the aches and pains because the passion in my heart and the fire in my belly urged me to keep on, day after day, child after child, year after year.
I only eventually stopped in my late seventies, and that was because Kathleen, my elder sister, had retired as a midwife and then promptly had a breakdown. Poor Kathleen, she always wanted something or somebody to feel they belonged to her, but she never found love or had children. Like me, she spent her life in service and so never found the time to have her own family. Unlike me, it affected her so deeply and, I suspect, in part led to her breakdown.
Kathleen always loved Yorkshire in the north of England, so I felt it my duty to move with her and keep her company; she was family, after all, and one must put family first. So I retired and we moved in together in a little bungalow, two elderly spinsters together. A nanny and a midwife with about 120 years’ experience between them of delivering and caring for babies. Dinner table conversation certainly did tend to revolve around baby stories.
And that would have been that, the end of the story. Except then Susanna, whom I had always stayed in touch with, fell pregnant and asked for my help. I was absolutely thrilled to come out of retirement at age eighty to help care for Susanna’s two children, Felix first, in 1999, and then Jemima a year later, in 2000.
Such joy I didn’t know existed. Felix and Jemima are my “grandcharges” and as every grandparent knows, that is a unique relationship like no other on earth. When I held them both in my arms, as I had done all those years before with their mother, Susanna, I marveled at the glory of life and birth. My baby had had her babies—what an unbelievably astonishing moment. “You clever thing, you.” I smiled when she first brought them home from hospital.
Just like that, I knew I had to go on, and suddenly, with renewed vigor, I became the nanny I was all those years before; getting up in the night to feed them, pacing the bedroom with Felix when he decided to try his little lungs out, or just sitting snuggled with them on my lap.<
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With each child, I stayed for six weeks to help Susanna get up on her feet, and then I decided to move back down to the south of England to be closer to them and my brothers.
That was my last job and perhaps my proudest. Today, Susanna is forty-eight, and I love her, care for her, and worry about her as you would a daughter. She visits me regularly; and she is so good, picking me up and having me to stay at Christmas and Easter. When I was confined to hospital recently after a fall, she rushed to my side and told the doctor she was my daughter. What a lovely, warm feeling it gave me to hear her say that.
Felix is fourteen, and Jemima is thirteen; they are both splendid children who have me in fits of giggles regularly. Jemima adores my chocolate cake, and cheeky Felix makes me laugh so. Last Christmas we went to church, and it was so packed we all had to squeeze into the pew. Felix slid off the end of the pew and pulled a hilarious face when no one was watching. The naughty thing kept nudging me until I had tears streaming down my face. What a scream! His voice is breaking and he seems to have grown six inches every time I see him. He towers over me, and I’m so proud of the fine young man he’s growing into. Jemima is a beautiful, intelligent, affectionate, young lady who is forever giving me cuddles. “I’m your last baby, aren’t I, Nana?” she says all the time. Bless her, she is so terribly proud to be my last charge.
The last time I stayed with them, they had picked me the most wonderful bunch of flowers and put them by the side of my bed in a vase. I was so touched.
They both call me Nana, just as Susanna still does. What a privilege and honor to have earned that name.
Sadly, my sister Kathleen and brothers Basil and Michael have passed away, but David, now eighty-three, and Christopher, now eighty-five, are very dear to me. They ring me every Sunday and visit regularly to check I am okay. To me they’ll always be my baby brothers.
As for me? Today, I am ninety-two, and I can look back on a wonderful, rich, and rewarding life crammed full of adventures and love.
A Spoonful of Sugar Page 31