In Her Mothers' Shoes

by Felicity Price

  After enduring the agonising contractions for five hours Lizzie asked if she could have something to make it less painful. She was given a couple of pills to take, but they didn’t seem to make any difference.

  ‘I can’t give you anything stronger than that. You’ll have to wait until the doctor comes.’ The nurse, to her credit, looked sympathetic; Lizzie soon came to the conclusion she was the only member of staff in the whole hospital with any feelings.

  The nurse departed and Lizzie dozed off again, alone – terribly alone – in the sterile white room, bare of any adornments and smelling strongly of antiseptic.

  She awoke to another gripping pain, but this time it felt different, lower down somehow. It was followed quite soon by another. She felt an urgent desire to go to the toilet and staggered down off the high bed, padding off in her bare feet to the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ The nurse was in the corridor, her voice urgent, almost fearful. ‘I told you to stay on the bed.’

  ‘But I have to go to the toilet, right now!’

  ‘I’ll get you a bed pan.’

  Lizzie wailed as another sharp jolt went through her. ‘I’m sure my contractions are a lot closer together.’

  After being told off so severely for not being sufficiently dilated, Lizzie felt she deserved praise for this, but the nurse said nothing, just helped her up on the bed then fetched a bed pan from behind the curtain. But Lizzie couldn’t produce anything in it. By now the contractions were coming so close together she hardly had time to get her breath back.

  The nurse disappeared behind the curtain then produced an unsightly contraption with what looked like horse stirrups dangling down from a bar and insisted Lizzie put her feet through them. Protesting made no difference. The nurse was firm: this was the way it had to be; all the girls had their babies like this, she insisted. Weakened by the constant pain, Lizzie did as she was told, lay back on the uncomfortable hard bed with its clingy plastic cover and held her legs in the air. Was there no end to this public humiliation? First the enema and now this. She’d never been so exposed in her life, especially when the nurse started peering between her legs.

  ‘Looks like the baby is ready,’ the nurse smiled at last. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you were going to get there.’

  The momentary relief Lizzie felt at this news was quickly dissipated by another contraction, awful in its intensity.

  ‘I think I’d better ask Matron to get the doctor,’ the nurse said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ Lizzie implored as the young woman left the room.

  It seemed an eternity before she returned, bringing Miss Mayhew with her.

  ‘Matron’s gone for the evening. I’ve made the decision to call the doctor. He should be here soon,’ she said, only looking at her momentarily before departing again.

  Lizzie screamed in pain as another contraction tore through her.

  ‘I need the bedpan again,’ she cried out.

  ‘Oh my goodness, the baby’s coming. I wish the doctor would hurry.’ The nurse looked up from her position at the end of the bed. ‘You need to push now. As if you’re going to the toilet.’

  Lizzie thought her pelvis was going to give way, such was the pressure on it, it was as if her fanny, as Jessie called it, was on fire. She screamed again. She’d never felt such intense, burning pain, not even during the strongest contractions.

  ‘There, you’re doing so well. Keep pushing.’

  She thought she was going to explode. She pushed as hard as she could, gripping the sides of the bed as if it might run away.

  And through the mist of pain and terror, she heard a baby’s cry.

  She wept.

  It was done.

  ‘A baby girl!’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘Not yet. There’s a lot of blood.’

  The door opened and a young man appeared.

  ‘Oh, Doctor Gardiner, thank goodness you’re here. She’s going to need stitches.’

  That was the last thing Lizzie remembered hearing as she passed out.

  When she came too, she was in a small hospital room and was quite alone. She tried to get out of bed but was so woozy she couldn’t make her limbs move.

  ‘Help!’ she cried out. Or thought she did, but it sounded nothing like it and her voice was croaky and weak. ‘Help,’ she tried again.

  A different nurse came in. ‘Oh, you’re awake.’ She approached the bed, shook a thermometer and put it up to Lizzie’s mouth; she obediently sucked on it.

  ‘Can I see my baby?’ Lizzie asked, twisting her mouth round the tiny glass tube.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. She’s asleep now.’

  ‘But I want to see her. I want to hold her.’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Matron.’

  ‘Is she . . . is she all right?’

  ‘Of course she’s all right. She’s been bathed and dressed and given a bottle, and now she’s asleep.’ The nurse took the thermometer and wrote something on Lizzie’s chart.

  ‘But she’s my baby.’

  ‘I’m sorry, dear.’ The nurse softened. ‘But you know the rules.’

  The rules. She’d signed the papers; she’d agreed to give her baby up and now it was happening.

  ‘But can’t I just see her, just the once? Can’t I hold her?’

  ‘I’m sorry, dear.’ The nurse gathered the thermometer and its kidney-shaped bowl, the chart and an empty water jug and bustled out.

  Lizzie turned her face into the pillow and screamed ‘I want my baby!’ But it was muffled, lost inside the kapok. She couldn’t even get out of bed, she couldn’t walk. Her bottom hurt. A lot. She desperately wanted to find the nursery and see her baby girl, just one look, that wasn’t much to ask. Her arms ached from the emptiness. She wished she could die.

  Chapter 7.

  Wellington, 1952

  Lizzie put down the protractor and rubbed her eyes, sore after hours of close, detailed tracing work. She looked at her watch, a present from her mother when she’d been hired by Paterson and Paynter Architects just over a year ago and the most beautiful piece of jewellery she’d ever owned. Delicate traceries of silver filigree surrounded the small oval face; the fine silver hands showed it was five to four. In half an hour, she could start packing up her desk and get ready for the journey home.

  She looked across the big open-plan drafting room, past all the other tables where men and women bent in concentration on their drawings, through the windows beyond and the view across the harbour all the way to Eastbourne. Being the most junior on staff, her post was furthest from the view and closest to the draughty door and neighbouring tea-room, where she was expected to make both morning and afternoon tea for the entire team of draughtsmen and women. The architects had their own tea-lady presiding over their separate tea-room on the floor above.

  She didn’t mind making tea; she’d dreamed of all this – the drafting office, the clever men and women who knew how to get the angles and trajectories just right, how to turn the architects’ visions into practical detailed drawings – but she never dared hope in all that time down south it might actually happen. Only last week, Mr Simes, the head of drafting, had asked her if she’d like to take an evening course at the Technical Institute next year to help her qualify as a draughtswoman. Straight off, she’d written away for a prospectus. She could just see herself, a student, like the other girls in her class who’d gone on to teachers’ college, secretarial college, even to university. Julia had told her about them when she’d seen her at netball over the winter – Lizzie playing for the Karori team, Julia for the Kelburn club.

  Julia had seemed a bit stand-offish when they’d spoken after the game. But Lizzie hadn’t made many friends since returning home – she hadn’t even had a single letter from the girls at Bleak House, but then, she hadn’t written to any of them either – and hoped to see Julia again. They’d agreed to have lunch in town one weekday.

  With just half an hour for
lunch, by the time they walked to the tearooms – Julia was attending secretarial college a few blocks away from the architects’ offices – they would be lucky to have twenty minutes. Which suited Lizzie perfectly. No time to go into too may details; no time to talk about the past.

  But she was wrong.

  As soon as they sat down, Julia said ‘It’s been so long since we were able to talk, just the two of us. Where were you all that time? I mean really?’

  ‘I was sick. I had glandular fever. I thought they would have told you.’

  ‘Come on Lizzie, don’t try to pull the wool. How well do we know each other?’

  ‘Pretty well, I guess.’

  ‘I know what happened. I know about the baby.’

  ‘You do?’

  Lizzie felt sick. But there was clearly no point in denying it. The last person she wanted a row with was Julia. Lizzie put down her knife and fork, the chicken pie no longer having any appeal. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘One of the girls at school . . .

  ‘You mean everyone at school knows?’

  ‘No, not everyone. In fact, hardly anyone. Just a few of us in our class. You know how it is.’ Julia was looking uncomfortable.

  ‘No.’ She waited for Julia to finish.

  ‘Well, there was me and Sylvia and three or four others. Sylvia was the one who seemed to know in the first place. But we swore we wouldn’t tell anyone else.’

  So that was six girls who knew. And how many others had they told, despite promising to keep it a secret? And how many had told their parents? There seemed to be no end to the suffering for that one irrational night in the Karori Pavilion, paying again and again, facing one consequence after another. When would it be over?

  ‘Lizzie?’

  She swivelled round on her chair. Her supervisor Pauline was standing behind her carrying a set of plans.

  ‘You were miles away.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I just looked up for a moment.’

  Pauline smiled. ‘It’s all right, don’t worry, I’m not complaining. I know how hard on the eyes all that tracing work can be. You need to take a short break every now and then.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She gave Pauline a grateful smile.

  ‘Here, I’ve got another project for you to work on. You can leave it ‘til tomorrow, though.’ She put down the big sheets of paper at the end of Lizzie’s desk. ‘They should be quite straightforward, but come and see me if you need anything more.’

  ‘I will.’ Lizzie smiled again. She liked Pauline. Although she wasn’t much older, she’d become a role model, working her way up from the same job Lizzie was doing now to become a top draughtswoman, in charge of seven underlings, with Lizzie on the bottom rung. Every time she looked at Pauline, she felt inspired to produce perfect plans, even though they were mere tracings of other craftsmen’s fine line drawings. If Pauline could make it, so could she. She knew there was a long way to go to climb up the career ladder, especially without any qualifications. But she had plenty of time. There was nothing else in her life. She hadn’t even any letters to write.

  Returning to her task, she completed tracing the set of plans in front of her and signed herself out of the book to go home, walking companionably with the others along the road to Lambton Quay, where they split off to their various tram stops.

  Moments later, the Karori tram arrived and she clambered up the steep high steps, found a seat and fumbled in her purse for the fare home. She looked up to see if the conductor was on his way. She could see him down the other end, collecting fares. He looked vaguely familiar, that sandy hair, that tall, narrow back, the way he joked with the passengers. It was Peter.

  She hadn’t seen him since that humiliating trip to the tram depot before she’d gone down to Christchurch. She’d wondered if he might appear one day down the aisle of a tram calling ‘Tickets, please,’ smirking, making smart remarks. But for over a year now she’d caught the tram to work and home again every day and hadn’t seen him once. She’d assumed he’d moved on, maybe gone up the east coast like he’d mentioned, not that there were trams up that way. ‘I don’t want to be a tram conductor all my life,’ he’d said.

  But here he was, nearly two years on. And on her route.

  She looked away from him, out the window. The tram had only just commenced its steep climb out of the city. Perhaps she could sidle down the back and jump off at the next stop before he spotted her. But then how would she get home? It was too far to walk and she could hardly ask her father to come and get her in the car; he’d only want to know why she hadn’t stayed on the tram; besides it was Thursday so he’d probably still be at his club.

  Perhaps if she kept her head down, she could avoid paying? But Peter prided himself on never missing a fare. ‘I remember them all,’ he used to tell her. ‘I know exactly who’s paid and who hasn’t.’ Still, that was her only option. Perhaps he wouldn’t recognise her. She’d worn her new beret today and it would at least keep her hair hidden.

  She heard him approaching down the aisle. ‘Tickets, please,’ he called above the rattle and click of the rails. His voice was getting closer. ‘All fares.’

  The tram stopped to let people on and off and, with all seats taken there was a crush in the aisle. She knew she should be offering her seat to the elderly, but she didn’t dare look up. If there was a little old lady who needed a seat, too bad: she’d have to find one elsewhere. Lizzie kept her head down and made a fine study of her purse, the soft pigskin one her mother had given her. She followed the swirls in the leather with her finger.

  ‘Ticket please, miss.’ That voice.

  It was right beside her. It still caused a ripple of excitement, even after all he’d done. She held out her coins without looking up.

  ‘Karori, please.’ She waited for the ticket to be handed back. She heard him drop the money in his bag and the snap of the clicker making a hole in the ticket. She could picture it, a jagged-edged gap right in the little square that said ‘Journey Out’ and ‘3’ to mark the number of sections she was travelling. But there was no ticket. She waited.

  ‘Your ticket, Miss.’ She raised her eyes slightly and there was her ticket, hanging down between his thumb and forefinger, waiting for her to take it. She reached up. The ticket jerked away higher. Her eyes followed it to find the owner of the thumb and finger grinning at her, clearly aware of her identity and not a single qualm about seeing her again.

  Suddenly the fear and mortification left her. That taunting grin, the grin that had got her into all that trouble in the first place, the grin that had turned into a sneer when she’d told him about the baby, how dare he look at her like that?

  She narrowed her eyes and gave him a furious stare, snatching the ticket from his hand then turning away and looking out the window.

  ‘I say, what side of bed did you get out of this morning?’ she heard him say sarcastically under his breath.

  Not your side, thank goodness, she wanted to say, but didn’t, and continued to stare out the window, ignoring him completely for the rest of the journey.

  But she couldn’t stop thinking about him and the baby – his baby; her baby; the baby she’d never hold.

  Leaving Bleak House was a wrench, but also a relief. She was sad to say farewell to her friends, the closest friends she’d ever had. She’d made a point of returning from the hospital across to Fitzgibbon House at a time when she knew they’d be gathered in the lounge – the two that were left from their group and the other girls she come to know. Jessie was there, and Meg, and that was it. They’d just had time for a hug and Miss Mayhew appeared to hustle her out the door.

  But at the same time, she was overjoyed to be at last going home. She couldn’t wait to see the gates disappear out the back window of Miss Mayhew’s car, to get on the boat train then the ferry, wave that bright red Lane’s Emulsion sign goodbye and sail out of Lyttelton Harbour never to return.

  The whole family was at the Wellington dock to meet the ferry. He
r mother ran forward up the gangplank to meet her and took her suitcase.

  ‘Welcome home, Lizzie.’

  ‘Mummy!’ She flung into her arms and breathed in the familiar Shalimar perfume, willing herself not to cry, not in such a public place with hundreds of people milling around staring. He mother looked beautiful, in a dove grey tailored woollen suit, a jaunty grey hat and matching court shoes – the immaculate style that Lizzie realised, to her surprise, she’d missed so much.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ her father said, waiting his turn.

  ‘I am, now,’ she said, giving her father a more subdued hug, feeling the reticence behind his embrace.