The Midwives of Raglan Road

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Jinny and Robert echoed.

  Hazel saw him out onto the street, trying to overcome the flood of guilt that threatened to engulf her. The sun had gone down below the rooflines, leaving the pavement in shadow though the sky was tinged fiery red.

  ‘I’ll see you at clinic,’ David said, his gaze steady and kind. ‘I mean this, Hazel – you must take no notice of the gossips. And if Dorothy sets Mabel onto you, you’ll let me know?’

  She nodded. If she tried to thank him again, her voice would be sure to break down.

  ‘It’s a pet hate of mine – they way these old handywomen still lord it over everyone.’ He launched into a speech that he hoped would ease Hazel’s obvious pain. ‘The sooner they’re stopped, the better. They’re untrained, self-taught medievalists who, as often as not, abandon or let down women in their hour of need. They permit and provoke the spread of infection, have nothing at hand to prevent haemorrhage and offer nothing by way of proper pain relief. There – I’ve said what I think. Now I can get down off my soapbox and leave you in peace.’

  Taken aback, Hazel walked a little way up the street with him. ‘I do know, deep down, that Myra’s case on Friday night was hopeless. I think I realized it the moment I saw her.’

  ‘Good. So you’ll rise above the gossip.’ Settling his hat on his head, David gave a reassuring smile. ‘I speak out of experience. I’ve been subjected to all sorts of accusations in my time. And I’ve suffered my own losses.’

  Hazel reached out a hand and lightly touched his arm. It wasn’t the occasion to say more, but she wanted to let him know that she understood.

  ‘I will see you on Tuesday,’ he affirmed, striding away from her.

  She watched him go – square-shouldered and brisk, his warm words filtering through the wall of ice-cold shock she’d felt for two days. They gave her little comfort as she lay awake all that night, reliving events and feeling the courage she needed to carry on doing her hard, risk-filled job drain away.

  Next day, Jinny went upstairs to Hazel’s room and announced that she’d taken the day off work.

  Hazel sat fully dressed in the chair next to her bed, staring up through the skylight at the leaden sky. The sleepless night had taken its toll and her spirits were at rock bottom.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked lethargically.

  ‘To help you find homes for the rest of these – that’s why.’ A determined Jinny waved Hazel’s roll of posters in front of her face. ‘Shift! Get your coat on – we’re going out.’

  ‘No,’ Hazel protested. She didn’t have the energy, and besides, she dreaded people staring and pointing.

  ‘Yes.’ Her mother pulled her to her feet and bundled her down the stairs. In less than a minute, she’d helped her on with her coat and had her out on the street. ‘You know what they say – when you fall off your horse you have to get straight back in the saddle.’

  Hazel frowned at the flippant comparison. ‘You make it sound simple.’

  ‘And it’s not,’ Jinny agreed, waiting for Hazel to look up from the pavement and meet her gaze. ‘You’ve taken a bad knock. That’s why we’re doing this together, you and me. We’ll drop in on some chemist’s shops in town and get them to put a poster in their windows. Then we’ll take the bus out to Hadley and ask at the library there.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ Hazel faltered.

  ‘But I do!’ Jinny’s blue eyes gazed intently at her daughter’s pale face, as if by merely looking she could put back together and heal her fractured heart. ‘Shall we catch the tram into town or walk?’

  ‘We’ll walk,’ Hazel whispered.

  So they set out arm in arm, across Ghyll Road and down onto Canal Road, weaving between cars, bikes and buses – mother and daughter on a mission to put Myra’s death behind them.

  ‘Yes’ was the answer at Hawkins’ Chemists on Booth Street and ‘yes’ again at Lawson’s in Market Square – they were more than willing to advertise the Westgate Road clinic.

  And another ‘yes’ at the small branch library after Hazel and Jinny’s bus journey out to Hadley, up the steep hill out of town and along the moor top to the old pit village in the next valley. The narrow main street, with its church, village institute and pub, was dominated by disused mine workings and by grey, barren slag heaps that formed a backdrop to life here.

  ‘If anyone’s interested in coming along, remind them that the number 65 bus will drop them off right outside the surgery,’ Jinny told the librarian behind the counter.

  The young woman held her rubber stamp aloft over an open book. She looked from Jinny to Hazel and back again then spoke in a hushed, library voice. ‘Who runs this clinic then – you or her?’

  ‘I do.’ Hazel forced herself to step forward, though she trembled inwardly.

  ‘She has a certificate,’ Jinny informed the sceptical librarian. ‘From the Royal College.’

  The girl nodded and smiled. ‘In that case, you can count me in. I’ll display your poster and pass the word around.’

  ‘Ta – that’s good.’ Hazel managed a grateful smile.

  ‘I’ll tell my sister Cynthia, for a start. She’s six months’ gone with her first.’

  Hazel thanked her again then she and Jinny left the library and walked back to the bus stop.

  On the ride home she noticed patches of blue in the sky and a dappled pattern of light and shade across the open moorland.

  ‘Feeling better?’ Jinny asked.

  ‘A bit.’ Sheep grazed among the heather. There were rabbits wherever you looked, sitting at the roadside or hopping lazily along the verges.

  ‘That’s the ticket.’ Jinny rested her hand on Hazel’s. ‘Rather him than me,’ she said about a man beginning a hard slog up the steep hill.

  A bit better, Hazel acknowledged to herself, feeling the warmth of her mother’s hand.

  They arrived home in a state of rare harmony, in time to meet the postman delivering a parcel for Hazel.

  ‘My new uniform,’ she guessed as they hurried inside. Placing it on the kitchen table, she untied the string then peeled back the brown paper to reveal a neatly folded blue cotton dress, white hat and apron. ‘I ordered it from the people who supply uniforms to nurses at the King Edward’s. What do you think?’

  Jinny held the dress up against Hazel’s slim frame. ‘It looks like the right size.’

  Hazel felt a new resolve form inside her. She wouldn’t shut out the memory of Myra and her stillborn baby, she decided, but from now on she would think of them more calmly and move forward in her career – slowly, one step at a time.

  ‘Will you wear it tomorrow?’ Jinny asked gently.

  ‘I will,’ she said with grateful tears in her eyes.

  Her mother smiled then thrust the fresh new uniform towards her. ‘Good – that’s my girl. But this will need a good iron before you put it on.’

  Before the end of the day, Hazel steeled herself to call in on Irene Bradley at the infirmary on Ghyll Road. She approached the grim building with fingers firmly crossed, parking her bike in the shaded courtyard and doing her best to avoid formidable Matron Fuller by slipping in through a side entrance close to Irene’s ward. Her luck was in and she found her patient sitting up in bed in a room shared with five other women. Irene’s bed was by the window overlooking the yard.

  ‘I thought I spotted you,’ was Irene’s opening remark. ‘I told the others, “Hey-up, it’s the girl from the clinic.”’

  Not knowing which way to take this, and still shaken by recent events, Hazel hovered in the doorway. ‘I came to find out how you were,’ she began nervously. All eyes were on her – six heavily pregnant women wearing nightdresses and crocheted bed jackets of various pastel hues, all tucked up under crisp white sheets and green bedspreads. They eyed the newcomer with open curiosity, one with curlers in her hair, one rubbing face cream into her cheeks, another knitting baby’s bootees.

  ‘I said, “That’s the one who got me sent here in a blooming amb
ulance,”’ Irene went on.

  Neither her expression nor her voice gave anything away but Hazel was reassured to see that her lank hair was newly washed and her cheeks had a better colour than when she’d seen her at clinic, so she ventured towards the bed. ‘You’re looking better. How are you feeling?’

  Ignoring Hazel’s question, Irene went on addressing the other women in the ward. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at her, being a little slip of a thing, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She takes one look at me and has a listen to the baby then she dashes off to fetch the doctor.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ the woman in curlers said as the scrutiny continued.

  ‘She doesn’t look anyway near old enough to be a midwife.’ Knit-one, pearl-one – the knitter in the next bed – voiced what they were all thinking.

  Irene pointed to the chair beside her bed. ‘Now, Nurse, take the weight off your feet, why don’t you?’

  ‘Ta, I will.’ Hazel sat on the edge of the chair, glad of the invitation but still ready to make an exit if things took a turn for the worse.

  ‘I don’t hold with doctors and nurses as a rule.’ Irene seemed to enjoy holding the floor for once in her hand-to-mouth life. ‘I only turned up at the clinic because Betty said there’d be tea and biscuits. Then lo and behold, they take one look at me and whisk me in here! Now they’re everywhere I look.’

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ a woman in the bed nearest to the door warned as Matron Fuller stalked in from the corridor, resplendent in dark blue uniform, with her white cap starched like the peaks of the Himalayas.

  ‘This is not visiting time,’ she informed Hazel with a frown, taking in her casual appearance and apparently failing to recognize her from her previous visit. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.’

  Hazel had only just begun to frame an explanation when Irene broke in.

  ‘This isn’t a visitor,’ she said with a nod of her head towards Hazel. ‘This here is my midwife, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘Indeed?’ With an air of disbelief Matron Fuller studied the slight, fair-haired girl in the pink blouse and dark slacks sitting by the side of Irene’s bed.

  ‘Yes, h-indeed!’ Irene didn’t budge an inch as she held Matron’s stern gaze, her arms crossed defiantly. ‘Her name is Hazel Price and she’s the one I’ve chosen to look after me when my baby’s born.’

  Buoyed up by her experience at the infirmary and by Jinny’s precious support, Hazel got ready for clinic next day. She was up early, had washed and dressed and was eating breakfast when her father came down the stairs.

  ‘Good luck for today.’ Robert stooped to kiss the top of her head as he left for work.

  ‘Luck won’t come into it,’ Jinny insisted from her position at the sink where she washed and dried the dishes. ‘Hazel will prove herself by doing her job right and that’ll be the end of it.’

  Not quite, Hazel thought at the time, and later that day she was proved right.

  It was two o’clock when she donned her new uniform and set off for clinic, cycling up Raglan Road. She felt her heart judder and miss a beat as she passed the drawn curtains of number 80 – and on around the corner onto Overcliffe Road. Unluckily for her, on the edge of the Common she found Dorothy Pennington gathered in a huddle with Berta, Doreen and Mabel – the witches’ coven plus one, she thought wryly. Spotting them before they saw her, she tried to avoid them by making a U-turn, intending to double-back down Albion Lane and take a different route onto Westgate Road.

  That was her first mistake.

  ‘Well, look who it isn’t!’ Mabel caught Hazel midway through her ill-thought-out manoeuvre.

  Panicking, Hazel wobbled and tipped to one side. She put her foot out to save herself but her heart sank further to discover that the sudden back-pedalling had made the chain come off her bike. She dismounted then crouched to fix it without replying – her second mistake.

  ‘Giving us the cold shoulder, are you?’ Mabel taunted, muttering something under her breath before crossing the road to join Hazel.

  The oily chain slipped through Hazel’s fingers and she failed to loop it back around its cog. Brushing back stray strands of hair, she looked up at Mabel with a frustrated air.

  The handywoman’s expression was sourly judgemental. ‘Ignoring poor Dorothy won’t make things any better.’

  ‘I know – I’m sorry.’ At last Hazel fixed the chain and stood up, her face burning with embarrassment. ‘I thought she would rather not have to talk to me.’

  Mabel shook her head slowly. ‘The funeral’s on Friday. John’s decided to bury them both in the same coffin – the baby and Myra together.’

  The detail, delivered with an unsparing directness, demolished Hazel’s still fragile confidence. Her mouth went dry and she was only able to mutter a barely audible ‘Sorry’.

  ‘Likewise – I’m sorry John didn’t fetch me sooner and that he wasted time taking you up to the house. Those few precious minutes might have made all the difference.’

  Hazel frowned, stared down at her oily fingers then up at Mabel. ‘I doubt it,’ she said quietly but more steadily. ‘Myra was already very poorly when I got there.’

  ‘Aye, but she was used to me and my way of doing things. If I’d been there, I would have been able to quieten her down.’

  Mabel’s claim angered Hazel.

  ‘No – she was already unconscious. At that stage she wasn’t responding to anything anyone said.’

  Aware of Dorothy, Berta and Doreen’s stares, Mabel held her ground. ‘I’ve seen it all a hundred times before. There are still ways of bringing people round when something like that happens.’

  ‘Not without a strong sedative, there aren’t,’ Hazel argued. ‘And even then, the mother’s high blood pressure had probably put paid to the baby’s chances of being delivered safely.’ On sure ground over medical matters, she found that she was able to stand up to Mabel after all, though her heart was pounding. ‘I am truly sorry for Myra’s family, but that doesn’t alter the facts of the case. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d better be on my way to clinic.’

  ‘Oh yes, don’t keep them waiting.’ Sarcasm was Mabel’s last resort. Instead of making Hazel feel small, as she’d intended, she recognized that the tables were in danger of being turned. ‘But remember – the word is out.’

  ‘What word?’ Hazel was about to remount her bike and head off down Albion Lane, but the hidden threat made her pause.

  ‘About you and your qualification,’ Mabel scoffed. ‘We all know it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. And if folks didn’t realize before, they do now.’

  ‘What do you mean? What have you been saying?’

  ‘Me? I’ve not said a word. I don’t have to.’

  Mabel’s gloating attack broke down the last of Hazel’s defences, so she turned and cycled shakily towards Ghyll Road where she picked up speed, threading through cars and delivery vans until she turned left again, back up the hill onto Westgate Road. There she dismounted and pushed her bike down an alley into a small yard at the back of the surgery. Leaning it against a dustbin and taking her midwife’s bag from the basket, she hurried onto the street, up the steps and into Reception.

  ‘There were only two or three of your ladies waiting outside the door, so I let ’em in and made a list of names – there it is, right under your nose,’ Eleanor told Hazel without preliminaries. Dressed as usual in a neat white blouse with pin-tucked panels and a Peter Pan collar and with her dark hair swept back from her forehead in a fashionable roll, Eleanor’s fingers didn’t cease flying across the typewriter keys. ‘They’re upstairs waiting for you. Oh, and I’d wash my hands before I went in if I were you,’ she added.

  ‘Thanks.’ Hazel’s reply was breathless as she took the receptionist’s advice and rushed into the cloakroom, scrubbing her hands to remove the oil then dashing out again. She took the stairs two at a time to find the clinic room almost empty. Hiding her disappointment, she said hello to Lydia and Eve
lyn, whose houses she’d visited. They gave cheery replies and quips about not being whipped off to the infirmary like poor Irene. Hazel responded with a thin smile then went behind the green screen to open her bag and lay out her instruments. Then she emerged and called the first name on her short list. ‘Cynthia Houghton, please!’

  ‘Here!’ Cynthia looked the picture of health as she got up. Her face was rosy, her skin smooth and her bobbed hair formed a glossy, nut-brown cap. She chatted non-stop as Hazel weighed then examined her, telling her that her librarian sister in Hadley had sent her. ‘She’s a bossy boots, is Tilly – she takes books off the shelf and bones up about having babies, says we women have to take charge and not follow the old ways. That’s why I’m here.’

  Average weight gain; steady foetal heartbeat – strong and regular; no oedema. Hazel was quickly satisfied that all was well. She praised Cynthia for taking good care of herself and said she hoped to see her in two weeks’ time.

  As Cynthia departed, Hazel called out the next name on her list. ‘Evelyn Jagger, please.’

  Evelyn, the nervous prima gravida. Here was someone who would need more careful handling, Hazel decided. She softened her voice as she invited Evelyn to lie down to be examined and did everything as gently as she could. ‘Baby’s in a good position and kicking nicely,’ she reassured her. ‘What are we – thirty-two weeks? Not too long to go now.’

  Evelyn – a tall, ungainly woman with rounded shoulders and a permanently worried expression – was evidently not enjoying pregnancy. ‘I haven’t got any get-up-and-go,’ she complained as she got dressed. ‘It’s not like me at all.’

  ‘Which is why you should put your feet up whenever you get the chance,’ Hazel told her. ‘Don’t do too much – and that’s an order!’

  Evelyn responded with a weak smile. ‘Easy for you to say. Father’s poorly with his chest and that means Mother needs a lot of help. I’m at their beck and call.’

  ‘Well, it’s time to put yourself first for a change,’ Hazel insisted. ‘Starting right now. I’ve just heard Eleanor bring in the trolley. It’s a good strong cup of sweet tea for you before you leave. And I’ll see you next week.’