The Midwives of Raglan Road

by Jenny Holmes

  Ahead of her, the car came to a halt and a door slammed. John Moxon strode down the street towards her. ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it’s not!’ Her testy reply suggested that he was to blame for forcing her into the kerb. She gestured towards the tyre. ‘Now what am I going to do?’

  He quickly assessed the situation: Hazel dressed for work, the flat tyre, the ticking clock. ‘I can see to that,’ he offered as he crouched to examine the tyre. ‘I’m on my dinner break and it’ll only take two ticks.’

  Somehow his unlooked-for kindness drove Hazel’s irritation clean away. ‘There’s no need for you to give up your dinner time,’ she protested as she tried to work out if she had time to simply abandon the bike and get to the clinic on foot.

  ‘Or else I could give you a lift to wherever it is you’re going,’ he volunteered. He registered her confusion and took a step back to give her time to decide. ‘Either way – it’s up to you.’

  Hazel came down on the side of mending the tyre. ‘Would it really only take you a couple of minutes?’

  ‘Really and truly.’ Without more ado, John loosened the bike pump and screwed its narrow connecting tube in place. ‘Where’s your puncture kit, in case we need it?’

  ‘Here, in the front basket.’ Hazel lifted out her midwife’s bag to find the small tin box containing a tyre lever, rubber patches, glue and everything else necessary. She watched anxiously as John prised the tyre from the metal wheel rim and quickly spotted the source of the problem – a tiny, sharp stone that had pierced the inner tube.

  ‘Can it be mended?’ she asked when he showed her the stone.

  He nodded and worked on, sitting on the kerb while he cleaned the site of the damage then applied glue and a round patch. ‘We have to let it dry,’ he explained, ‘but it won’t take long.’

  ‘It’s very good of you to do this.’ Hazel spoke hesitantly, still not sure of her ground with him, even after the visit to the Green Cross.

  He glanced up at her. ‘It’s my pleasure,’ he assured her with a smile she recalled from the first time they’d met. Behind it lay amusement with something she’d said or done that she couldn’t work out. ‘Tell me more about Saturday’s jaunt while we’re waiting. Did you visit the Pleasure Beach while you were there? The Big Dipper’s still my favourite – I don’t know about you.’

  ‘I loved all of it,’ she admitted, looking up the street to avoid his gaze. The smell of fish and chips from Pennington’s wafted towards them and brought her attention back onto more sober matters. ‘You’d no need to do this, you know,’ she murmured.

  ‘I wanted to,’ he insisted as he fed the mended inner tube back inside the tyre then went to work with the pump. ‘And I might as well say now what I meant to mention in the pub on Saturday night: Dorothy might still have it in for you, but there’s no reason for us to avoid each other – at least not as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘That’s good to know – ta.’

  ‘So we’ve cleared the air.’ Testing the tyre with the flat of his thumb, John unscrewed the pump then clipped it back into place on the bike frame.

  ‘We have,’ she agreed. She took the bike from him.

  ‘Shake hands on it?’ He offered his hand and gave his characteristic smile.

  ‘Agreed,’ she said. Her hand was small in his but she made sure not to let it rest limply. Instead, she gave a vigorous shake and a firm nod. ‘And now,’ she said as she perched on the saddle and pushed away from the kerb, ‘I’d best be on my way.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Who says miracles don’t happen?’ David greeted Hazel in the entrance to the surgery. He smiled broadly from behind Eleanor’s desk where he’d been signing referral letters and bringing his records up to date.

  ‘What’s this? Have I got a full waiting room for once?’ Hazel’s question revealed her ongoing worry about clinic numbers.

  ‘No, sadly not,’ he replied. ‘But Irene Bradley has given birth to a healthy baby girl. She’s named her Grace.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’ Hazel couldn’t have been more pleased. She was on her way up the stairs when Eleanor called her back.

  ‘That’s not all,’ the receptionist said, casting a significant glance over her shoulder at her busy employer. ‘Shall I tell her the rest or will you?’

  David screwed the top of his pen in place then came out from behind the desk. ‘No time to tittle-tattle,’ he said on his way out.

  ‘House calls.’ Eleanor explained the hasty departure. ‘Yes, Irene and her baby are doing well, thanks to him,’ she went on. ‘Matron called him out at midnight. She could see Irene was having trouble and forceps would be necessary, and it turned out she was right. Baby was born at breakfast time but Dr Bell didn’t get back here until the middle of the morning, what with tidying up afterwards, et cetera.’

  Though Eleanor didn’t go into details, Hazel was easily able to picture the episiotomy procedure and the care that Irene would have needed after a difficult birth. ‘I’m glad it ended well and that she was in the right place.’

  ‘Thanks to you,’ Eleanor insisted. ‘But that’s only half the story.’

  Hazel glanced at her watch and saw that it was almost half past two. ‘How many have we got waiting upstairs?’

  ‘Four so far. But listen to this. Dr Bell has only gone and offered Irene the job of housekeeper.’

  The news stopped Hazel in her tracks. ‘Where?’

  ‘Here! He was adamant he didn’t want her and the baby going back to Nelson Yard and the conditions there. No heating, no hot water, and such like. There’s a spare room here and he says he needs someone to clean and do for him. So the solution was obvious – Irene should move out of the Yard and come here.’

  ‘And she said yes?’ Hazel wondered about the baby’s father and his place in the new scheme of things but she had no time to ask because Lydia Walker opened the main door and made a breezy entrance before heading upstairs.

  ‘Come along, Nurse, chop-chop!’ she said as she passed Hazel.

  Hazel followed quickly and was soon engulfed by clinic business – measuring, weighing and examining amidst the desultory chat of the mothers-to-be and the clatter of instruments on metal trolleys. Behind the green screen one woman bearing her seventh child confided her resentment about her husband who blamed her for conceiving one child too many, as if she alone were responsible. Another talked of practicalities – from the enema administered during labour to the stitching-up afterwards, and everything in between. Hazel’s answers were clear and calm and she gave each of her patients – a total of six in this session – her full attention. By the end of the afternoon she was tired out and ready for home.

  ‘My stomach’s rumbling,’ she told Eleanor, who had come upstairs to help with washing up the tea things. ‘I didn’t have any dinner. And my feet ache something rotten.’

  ‘But you love every minute,’ Eleanor reminded her as she dried a stack of saucers.

  ‘I do – especially now that numbers are creeping up,’ Hazel said with a satisfied sigh. She shut her bag then put on her mackintosh. ‘A couple of months back I didn’t even know if I’d find any work.’

  ‘And now look at you – rushed off your feet, thanks to Dr Bell and the risk he took when you landed on his doorstep.’

  Hazel nodded. ‘Yes, thanks to him.’ It was true – she owed a lot to one man. A thought struck her and she blurted it out without stopping to think. ‘Do you think he puts me in the same boat as Irene?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Eleanor hung her tea towel over the radiator to dry.

  ‘Am I someone he was sorry for and felt duty-bound to help?’

  The receptionist raised her eyebrows and treated Hazel to one of her blunt home truths. ‘Don’t be daft. You’re not the same thing at all. You only have to see the way Dr Bell looks at you to notice the difference.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Plain as the nose on your face,’ Eleanor concluded with a hint of th
inly disguised envy in her voice. ‘But then there’s none so blind as those that will not see.’

  It was unusual to see Rose off her home turf in Nelson Yard so it was a surprise for Hazel to find her ensconced with her mother on Raglan Road.

  ‘Your dinner’s in the oven,’ Jinny told her as she took off her coat. ‘Good job it was a hot pot that can be reheated.’

  Famished as she was, Hazel delayed setting out her knife and fork in order to listen to what Rose had to say about the day’s events. ‘Hello, Aunty Rose. What happened at Sylvia’s house earlier?’

  ‘What didn’t happen?’ her aunt replied with a sigh. ‘We had tears, we had doors slamming – the lot.’

  ‘Trust Sylvia to turn on the waterworks,’ Jinny commented.

  ‘But what did you find out? Was Mabel still there when you arrived? I take it Aunty Ethel went with you and Nana? Was Norman at work?’

  ‘Hold your horses,’ Jinny warned. ‘Poor Rose has already been through it all for my benefit. She’s worn out, poor thing.’

  Hazel tried not to show her exasperation. ‘All right, well, you can tell me later then. Shall I make you a cup of tea, Aunty Rose?’

  ‘No, no, I don’t mind telling you all about it.’ Rose sat by the fire, her face pale and her hands trembling slightly in her lap. ‘By the time Mother, Ethel and I had got ourselves organized, Mabel had already made herself scarce, so it was just Sylvia in the house on her own. We spotted her at the upstairs window so we knew she was in, even though she refused to come to the door.’

  ‘She’s taken to doing that lately.’ Hazel hated to see her aunt upset like this and had a mind to go round and tell Sylvia a few home truths as soon as she’d heard the full story.

  ‘Mother wasn’t having it,’ Rose went on. ‘She hammered on that door until Sylvia was forced to answer. Mother’s first words, before she even stepped over the threshold, were, “When were you thinking of telling me that I’m going to be a great-grandmother?”’

  ‘And what did Sylvia say?’ Hazel pictured it – wizened old Ada face to face with firebrand Sylvia. She thought she knew who would back down first, but she was surprised.

  ‘She flatly denied it,’ Rose explained. ‘It was three against one – Ethel, me and Mother – all demanding to know why Mabel had paid her a visit, telling her she couldn’t go on pulling the wool over our eyes and anyway, what was the point?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Jinny agreed. ‘What is the point?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because she hasn’t told Norman yet,’ Hazel suggested without much hope that this would ease Rose’s worry.

  ‘So she doesn’t want anyone discussing it until she’s put her husband in the picture – is that it?’ Jinny was sceptical.

  ‘With anyone but Sylvia that might be true,’ Rose conceded. ‘The thing is, we all knew she was lying by the look on her face and poor Ethel felt ashamed of her own daughter. It didn’t help when Sylvia turned it all around and said nasty things about us that I won’t repeat but you can imagine. In the end she told us to mind our own business, shouting at the top of her voice then weeping and wailing, saying it wasn’t fair and we were to leave her alone.’

  ‘Which they did,’ Jinny concluded.

  ‘Mother has washed her hands of the whole business,’ Rose reported sadly. ‘Ethel, too. They went away leaving Sylvia to stew in her own juice. It’s hard when your own child or grandchild is untruthful about something so important – it must cut very deep.’

  ‘And how did you feel?’ Hazel expected a different reaction from Rose – softer and less judgemental – and she was right.

  ‘I’m sorry deep down. I say we should be celebrating, not arguing. But Lord knows what Sylvia’s up to – that’s what worries me more than anything.’

  In the end, Jinny’s advice to her worried older sister had been to give Sylvia time to calm down and talk to Norman. It was the only way forward, she said.

  But Hazel had brooded over the problem long into the night and come to a decision. She was up at dawn, dressing quietly and slipping out of the house before either Robert or Jinny was awake. Walking in the grey light on Overcliffe Common, she rehearsed in her own mind exactly what she would say.

  I need a clear head, she told herself, relishing the cold gusts of wind blowing from the moors and looking down into the valley at the network of twinkling lamps that lined the streets and the canal running straight as a die through the centre of the town. Already the factory chimneys churned out black smoke and the roads were choked with traffic. Close by, on the edge of the Common, a tram stopped to let on mill workers bound for a day’s slavery in spinning and weaving sheds in the valley bottom.

  A clear head and a stout heart, Hazel vowed as she trod the cinder paths across the rough grassland to one side of the fancy wrought-iron bandstand. White lines marked out a football pitch on the grass and beyond that stood the sports pavilion, the centre of weekend activity for the young men and boys of the neighbourhood.

  ‘It’s time,’ she said out loud, turning and retracing her steps down to the very bottom of Raglan Road, where she boldly knocked on Mabel Jackson’s front door.

  ‘Hazel Price – what do you want at this hour?’ was Mabel’s hostile greeting.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Hazel said. Behind her, one or two mill workers still made their way along Ghyll Road. Hooters sounded the warning for these stragglers to hurry or lose half a day’s pay.

  Taken by surprise, Mabel considered her options. Her overall hung loose, her hair was still in metal curlers concealed under a paisley scarf that was tied turban-style around her head and her feet were encased in felt slippers.

  ‘I don’t mean to make trouble,’ Hazel explained. ‘I’ve come to talk to you about my cousin, Sylvia.’

  ‘Hmm. Trouble is that one’s middle name, isn’t it?’ Mabel was taken aback by Hazel’s decision to knock on her door. It took plenty of nerve – she would give her that. She looked down from the top step at the windswept, earnest figure, dressed in warm coat and headscarf, remembering the eager schoolgirl Hazel had been not so many years before – the type who read a lot and kept to herself, not the sort to play hopscotch on the pavement or to join in skipping games with the other girls.

  She got that from her mother, Mabel thought sourly. Jinny Drummond was just as stand-offish when she was a nipper.

  ‘It’s important,’ Hazel insisted, her heart racing.

  Mabel made her decision. ‘I don’t know what Dorothy will think about me making time for you, but you’d better come in out of the cold.’ Her face was blank, her voice expressionless, but she stood to one side and let Hazel pass.

  ‘Ta.’ Hazel followed the long, narrow hallway into the kitchen at the back of the house. The hall bore the musty smell of old stair carpet overlaid with lavender floor polish. The kitchen itself clearly hadn’t moved with the times, from the black range where Mabel still boiled her kettle and did her baking to the stone sink and the plain Welsh dresser along one wall displaying blue and white crockery.

  ‘Sit down.’ Mabel pointed to a wooden rocking chair next to the fire.

  ‘No thanks. I’d rather stand.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Mabel’s owlish gaze didn’t waver. She waited for Hazel’s next move.

  ‘Sylvia,’ Hazel began again. ‘You went to see her.’

  ‘I did, because she asked me to.’

  ‘To tell you she was pregnant and to ask you for an abortion?’ There – it was out in the open, the topic that had gnawed at Hazel for days.

  Mabel didn’t blink. Her expression didn’t change.

  ‘I’ve tried to talk to her about it,’ Hazel said in a rush. ‘But once she realized I wouldn’t help her she sent me packing. I told her she should talk things through with Norman.’

  ‘Oh, Norman,’ Mabel said with a slight nod of acknowledgement.

  ‘It’s as much his baby as hers. He has a right to know.’

  ‘I knew his mother before she married Dick Bellamy. And look where tha
t got her – seven babies on the trot before the worthless so-and-so did a midnight flit. He left her without a brass farthing.’

  ‘It’s not really Norman I want to talk to you about.’ The heat from Mabel’s fire made Hazel’s cheeks feel flushed and her heart was still thudding away at her ribcage. ‘It’s Sylvia. We’re agreeing she came to you for help to get rid of the baby, aren’t we?’

  After a pause, during which Hazel prepared herself for a barrage of the usual criticism, Mabel nodded again.

  ‘Thank you.’ Letting out a long sigh, Hazel’s shoulders sagged and she lowered her head.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For not trying to pull the wool over my eyes.’

  ‘Sit,’ Mabel said again, and this time Hazel obeyed. ‘We won’t see eye to eye on this one, I know that much.’

  ‘No,’ Hazel agreed.

  ‘I don’t have to remind you how long I’ve been at this game. There’s nothing I haven’t seen.’

  ‘I appreciate that. And I know you think I’m wet behind the ears. But Sylvia is my cousin and I’m worried about her.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  ‘I mean – I can’t help wondering why a young girl who has managed to persuade the father to marry her and set up home suddenly wants to back out of having the baby?’

  ‘Maybe she thinks she’s made a mistake.’ Mabel’s deep, unhurried voice had the unexpected effect of calming Hazel’s nerves and making her listen rather than rush on with her own thoughts. ‘It happens, you know. Perhaps she’s realized that Norman isn’t the one for her after all.’

  ‘She did say there was a part of marriage that she was finding hard.’ Hazel remembered Sylvia’s awkward confession. ‘I thought lots of girls probably did. I’m no expert.’

  A faint smile crossed Mabel’s face before she continued. ‘Let’s say Sylvia has seen her mistake. It’s too late to be un-married but it’s not too late to change her mind over the baby. So she turns to someone like me. That’s the sensible thing to do.’

  ‘You’re right – we don’t see eye to eye,’ Hazel said in a louder, firmer voice than before.