In Her Mothers' Shoes

by Felicity Price

  ‘There you are Em, there’s your first job as a grandmother.’ Aunt Doris grinned at Rose’s mother Amelia – whom she and Lottie always called Em – with what Rose suspected was a touch of malevolence.

  ‘Goodness, it’s a long time since I’ve had to deal with one of those. I think I’ll pass,’ her mother said. ‘Good luck, Rose!’

  Rose took her upstairs to the nursery. The towelling changing cloth was laid out on a small table, ready for its first use. She’d practiced often enough on a stiff-limbed doll; could she manage it with a real baby?

  Terrified of hurting her, she settled Katharine on the soft cream towel, whereupon she started to cry.

  ‘Shhh, little one. It’s all right.’

  The baby cried louder.

  She undid the two nappy pins on either side so the nappy was laid flat, ready for removal. But unlike the doll, the baby wriggled constantly, kicking her legs at just the moment Rose was going to remove the dirty nappy.

  The smell was revolting. Rose thought for a moment she was going to be sick. What sort of a mother was she, if she couldn’t cope with a little baby poo? She wiped the wet flannel across the baby’s chubby white bottom, whereupon the crying reached a crescendo and Katharine stomped her tiny, bootie-clad foot down in the mess, covering the new white wool in sticky yellow-brown poo.

  ‘Oh, no!’ She was so stupid; she should have seen that coming. Any mother would have known to watch out for it. Quickly, she plucked off the bootie, dropped it in the bucket to deal with later and reapplied the cloth to the wee bottom several times until she’d cleaned every last ounce of the mess. The flannel joined the bootie in the bucket then she folded up and whipped out the dirty nappy with one hand while holding the baby’s legs with the other, dropped the dirty nappy in the bucket, and plucked a clean nappy from the pile. At that same instant, Katharine gave another mighty kick and dislodged the baby powder and nappy pins off the side of the table onto the floor.

  ‘Oh dear, this isn’t going too well. How am I supposed to pick them up while holding on to you? I don’t think I can.’

  After pausing for a moment, trying to work out how to manage this seemingly insoluble problem, she figured she’d have to let the baby go, dive down to pick up the things off the floor and bob up again, hopefully before Katharine plunged off the side of the table. She was terrified. She’d only been a mother for two short hours and already she was incompetent. Luckily, her plan worked.

  ‘There you are, my sweet. All done.’ The talcum was applied, the clean nappy was pulled up just the way she’d practiced, all she had to do was fix the jolly pins into the cloth – a task that was apparently impossible, as the layers of thick white towelling puckered up into an impenetrable mass that the pin simply refused to pass through.

  It hadn’t been this difficult practicing with the doll. But then the doll didn’t wriggle and cry the whole time.

  ‘Ouch!’ She didn’t know nappy pins could hurt so much. Twice. She could feel tears of frustration pricking against her eyes. Meanwhile Katharine kicked and cried, her little face turning quite red with the effort, making the small oval birth mark on her temple and all the tiny milk spots blend into the background. She looked quite fearsome. Kate was terrified.

  After much manoeuvring, Rose finally snapped the second pin into place, pulled on the woollen pants and picked up this wee stranger who was by now bellowing so loudly she thought she’d go deaf.

  ‘Let’s find you another little bootie to wear. We can’t let your foot get cold.’ She fetched another one from the drawer, put Katharine back down on the table, tied on the bootie, and carried her downstairs to the kitchen, where she found her mother busily heating a bottle in a double boiler. The baby continued to cry lustily; quite different from the sweetly compliant baby at the tea party.

  Rose’s mother held out the warmed bottle. Katharine seemed to sense it because the crying reduced to an occasional whimper. ‘Here you are, dear. All ready for Katharine’s first feed.’ Then she turned to her new granddaughter and smiled, with a wistful, far-away look. ‘She’s so beautiful Rose, even when she’s been crying. She looks just like you did when you were a baby.’

  ‘You can’t mean that?’ Rose thought her mother must be trying to make her feel Katharine was really hers. But Katharine would never look like her, would never be her flesh and blood. Rose faced a lifetime of never knowing what her daughter’s mother was like, or whether Katharine would follow any of her birth mother’s traits and characteristics.

  She wondered how it must feel to have to give your baby away to strangers and never know how she would fare. She’d asked again at the hospital, trying once more to find out whatever she could about the mother. But they’d refused to tell her a thing. And the Department was just as tight-lipped. All she could discover was that the mother was about eighteen, was from Wellington, and had returned without seeing her baby. It made her shiver with fear – and guilt – just to think about it. Blocking it from her mind, she clutched Katharine closer and made a quick, silent promise that she would never let her down.

  ‘It’s true,’ Mother said. ‘I wouldn’t tell you wrong.’

  ‘But she’s not my …’

  ‘Hush. She is.’ Her mother looked so certain, so joyfully certain, that Rose thought she could almost believe it.

  She took the bottle gratefully and turned to go back upstairs, then hesitated. ‘Do you think I should take her back in the sitting room with the aunts and feed her there? Or should I take her upstairs again to the living room?’

  ‘Whatever you think is right, dear.’

  ‘Well, they said I should establish a routine right from the start.’ Rose took the bottle and held it up to her daughter. ‘Is this what you want?’ Katharine started to wriggle and cry again. ‘I’m not supposed to feed her for another fifteen minutes yet.’

  ‘Heavens, dear, I wouldn’t worry about a few minutes either way. Surely it’s not as regimented as that?’

  ‘The Matron at the hospital said that routine was important. She said “Baby must not dictate to you. You must remain in charge.” I don’t like to disobey at the very first feed.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find by the time you get settled with her in a chair, your fifteen minutes will nearly be up.’

  A burst of laughter drifted through from the sitting room.

  ‘I don’t like to leave them on their own,’ Rose said. ‘Perhaps I’d better feed her in there, so they can see her?’

  ‘Don’t worry about them. They can keep themselves amused.’

  Rose took the baby upstairs, which was just as well. Katharine proved as difficult feeding as she was having her bottom cleaned. She refused to settle and rejected the rubber teat every time she held it in front of her, turning her head away and crying all the more fiercely.

  Rose felt close to tears. ‘I’m a hopeless mother,’ she said to her daughter. ‘You’d have been better off with someone else. I’ve got no idea how to do this.’

  Katharine kept crying.

  Rose shook a little bit of milk on her finger. It felt just the right temperature, just as it had after she’d practiced these past weeks to get it right. She tried again. Still the baby turned her mouth away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Katharine. Perhaps I should have called you by the name your birth mother wanted for you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have changed you out of her layette. Perhaps I shouldn’t have bought the perambulator before you were born, like Aunt Doris said. She said it was bad luck to do that. She said I should have waited. Oh dear, I don’t know what to do.’

  Suddenly Katharine stopped squirming and was calm and still. Her lips nuzzled the teat and sucked it into her mouth. The crying ceased. The only sound was that of the baby sucking at the teat, swallowing the milk. The sound of contentment.

  Perhaps she wasn’t going to be such a bad mother after all.

  Chapter 2.

  Te Kuiti, January 1951

  Rose nearly missed the letter announcing she and George had be
en approved for adoption. If she hadn’t found it by chance, days after its delivery, they might never have been able to adopt, passed over by the Department in favour of a couple capable of responding by the due date.

  The envelope was lying hidden in the agapanthus beneath the letter box. She was in the garden cutting flowers for a table arrangement when she’d spotted it under the leaves, down where the snails had chewed their way across the neat cream square, cutting a trail of tiny holes through the handwritten address, leaving a winding line of silvery slime.

  She’d asked George to fix the catch on the letter box some months ago. But George was a dreamer, she’d realised that long ago, long before their pared-down wartime wedding. Ask him the minutest detail about the Battle of Hastings or who issued the first banknote, he could tell you without a moment’s hesitation. But fix a letter box? Not a chance.

  She bent down to pick it up. Sure enough, the postmark was nearly two weeks old; the envelope had been feeding the snails for at least a week. It was addressed to Mr and Mrs George Stewart, Ward Street, Te Kuiti, in neat handwriting and bore an official government stamp.

  A government stamp!

  She let go her basket, heedlessly scattering the flowers and secateurs across the path, and slid open the back flap carefully. She had a feeling this would be a letter to keep.

  ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Stewart,’ she read. ‘It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been selected to adopt a baby. At this stage, the baby we have selected for you is due to be born in two months’ time. . .’

  She could read no further. Ignoring the strewn roses and secateurs, she ran up the path, plumped herself down on the front doorstep and absent-mindedly pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket before holding the letter up, turning it over, waiting for it to vaporise into the mirage she feared it might be. But it remained very real. She read it again, expecting at any moment there would be a catch, that this precious gift could be taken away with a ‘but’ or a ‘maybe’. But there were no conditions, no qualifying clauses. The baby was to be theirs, providing they responded to the Department within ten working days.

  She gasped. That was today!

  Without stopping to think, without even powdering her nose or checking her lipstick, she pocketed the letter, ran inside and grabbed her purse then ran out the door, dashed down the path, along the street, over the railway line and all the way down the main road until she reached the Union Bank, totally breathless but not caring. She pushed her way through the big, heavy wooden doors and searched around for her husband. He wasn’t at his usual teller window. Where was he? Was he at lunch perhaps? More likely, he’d be talking banknotes with his friend Charlie Bates, forgetting about his lunch entirely.

  The hands on the bank’s enormous Roman numeral clock read twenty-five to one. He should still be here.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Stewart. Are you looking for George?’ It was Mr Smythe, the manager. Her heart sank as she realised she was breaking the rules. It was not the done thing for a bank wife to turn up at the banking chamber and harass her husband during banking hours.

  Well, too bad. She had important news. She steeled herself. ‘Yes, Mr Smythe. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m afraid I have some urgent news. Would it be possible to see George for just a minute please?’

  Mr Smythe’s thick black moustache quivered with irritation and his brow furrowed as he swept past the long counter, pulled his key chain from his pocket and unlocked the distant door to reach the offices beyond.

  All the bank tellers seemed to be looking at her; in the aftermath of her outburst to Mr Smythe, she felt silly and a little embarrassed. Her news seemed insignificant compared to the important financial transactions occurring all around her. She slunk over to one of the writing counters fixed to a rear pillar and tried to appear invisible. Time passed. She was just about to leave, feeling really intrusive by now, suspecting that Mr Smythe had deliberately forgotten all about her, when George came through the far door and hurried over to her, looking perplexed.

  ‘Whatever are you doing here, Rose?’ he said, taking her by the elbow and steering her towards the exit. ‘You know Mr Smythe doesn’t like it.’

  ‘I know, George, but I’ve got some good news.’ By this time he’d pushed open the door to the street and was ushering her through it. She waited until they were on the pavement, turned to him and seized both his hands. ‘We’re going to be given a baby. We’ve been selected for adoption.’

  ‘We have? Really?’

  Rose nodded.

  ‘How do you know?’

  She produced the envelope out of her pocket. ‘This arrived in the mail. Look.’ She handed it over to him and watched while he read, smiling as he smiled, nodding as he shook his head in apparent disbelief.

  ‘It’s wonderful news for you, Rose. After all this time, you’ve finally got there. You’ve made it to the top of the queue.’

  ‘Not just me, George. You too. This is addressed to both of us.’

  A look of concern crossed his face. ‘But it’s mostly been you that wanted it.’

  ‘But you do too, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes, but…’ George looked away up the street, seemingly avoiding her gaze.

  ‘But what? Don’t say you’ve changed your mind after all this time?’

  ‘No, I haven’t changed my mind. It’s just a bit sudden, that’s all.’

  ‘Sudden? We’ve been married for ten years this month. This isn’t sudden.’ She held up the letter again, waving it, demanding his attention again. ‘What is it George, what’s troubling you?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s just a big responsibility, taking on somebody else’s baby.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you wanted? What we wanted?’

  He turned back to her, wiped his brow and smiled. ‘Yes, of course. It’s just now that it looks as if it’s really going to happen, I hope we’re up to it, that’s all.’

  She took his hands and placed them on her shoulders, pushing herself into his arms.

  ‘Of course we can do it,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll make sure everything’s fine. You won’t have to worry about a thing.’ She decided not to tell him about the deadline. She could phone the department herself, as soon as she got home.

  He gave her a comforting squeeze then looked at his watch and said, ‘I’d better be getting back to work or Mr Smythe will dock my pay.’ So Rose slipped the letter in its envelope, stuffed it back in her pocket, kissed her husband goodbye and walked on air all the way back home to find the path strewn with roses, the front door still wide open and her neighbour Mrs Abercrombie’s cat up on her bench sniffing around the butcher’s parcel from the morning’s shopping.

  She didn’t care. Normally, she would have shooed it outside straight away. Today, she undid the paper parcel and cut a small portion off for the cat, smiling as she fed it to him.

  ‘George won’t miss that tonight,’ she said. ‘He’ll have a lot more important things to think about.’

  After she’d phoned the department – worrying about how much the phone bill would be for spending so long waiting for the woman who’d written the letter to come on the line – she turned on the radio and set about preparing dinner. Frank Sinatra was singing Some Enchanted Evening; she turned up the volume and sang along.

  Rose had enjoyed their six years under the wide-open skies and warm summers of the King Country. For the first time since the nurses’ hostel, where she’d been surrounded by dozens of trainee nurses and formed close friendships among those in her group, she’d found the women from both town and country welcoming and easy to get on with. In particular, she’d become close friends with the other bank wives, Bea and Sally.

  Not that she had much time for socialising. She’d persuaded George to let her take on two private nursing patients – a young woman confined to a wheelchair and an elderly lady who needed help with showering three mornings a week – just a few hours each, but enough to keep her hand in.

  Old Mrs Ruth
erford was always trying to get Rose to stay longer, do more than just shower her and Rose would try to be as accommodating as she could. But if she delayed her much after ten-thirty, Rose knew the cuts of meat she wanted and the freshest vegetables for George’s dinner would be sold out before she walked back into town. She’d tried to fit in the old dear’s demands by arriving early, but she only added more tasks to her list of chores. Just yesterday morning, Rose had taken a firmer line.

  ‘How would it be if I arrived after ten in the morning, Mrs Rutherford?’ she’d said. ‘Then I’d be able to get the shopping done on the way here. I could get yours too if you like. But coming here first and spending all the extra time with you, I miss out.’

  She could see the old dear weighing up her options: having her shopping done three mornings a week or having to wait until after ten before she could be assisted out of bed and showered.