An Unsuitable Mother

by Sheelagh Kelly

  Aunty Phyllis cocked her head. ‘You poor lass – where on earth have you been since this morning? You should have come straight here.’

  Nell hedged her reply, looking at the worn carpet as she spoke. ‘Well, I had to go back into town to identify … and then I called in on friends. They’re letting me stay for a few days.’

  ‘Well, you must move in with us of course,’ said her aunty this invitation seconded by Uncle Cliff.

  ‘No, really, thank you, but I’m nearer to work where I am – I’m sorry, that sounds terribly churlish.’ Nell looked up swiftly to display amends.

  ‘Of course not.’ Her aunty took no offence. ‘Your Uncle Cliff and I understand, you live where you want, dear. We just want to make sure you’re being looked after. But whatever you do, you mustn’t lose touch with the rest of your family.’

  Nell came upright. ‘Yes, I was going to ask if you have everyone’s address, for the funeral …’

  ‘You don’t have to bother yourself with any of that, Eleanor,’ put in Cliff. ‘We’ll let them all know, and make all the arrangements, to spare you the trauma.’

  Obviously he and Aunty Phyllis adjudged their niece too young to cope. Did they really not understand what the job of a nurse entailed, thought Nell. But she merely dealt them a nod of appreciation, content enough to let them get on with it if they so wished. She had forfeited any rights to have a say in the proceedings by walking out on her parents on the very night she might have been able to save them. And for that she would never forgive herself.

  ‘I hate to raise the subject of finances, and the only reason I’m saying this is because I don’t want you worrying about any of that either,’ Uncle Cliff was saying. ‘About having to pay the mortgage on a wrecked house, I mean.’ Noting the bafflement on her face he explained, ‘I know there’s a bit of a one outstanding, but we’ll get that sorted out for you, and you’ll get help to rebuild from the War Damage Commission … though it might be a year or two before you can move back in.’

  ‘I don’t want to move back,’ said Nell hurriedly, totally confused by all this talk of mortgages. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

  Her uncle raised a gentle palm. ‘It’s all right, lass, you don’t have to concern yourself with any of that. We’ll take care of it all – now then, how you are you off for cash for your everyday needs?’ His hand thrust deep into his pocket.

  ‘No, I’m fine, thank you, Uncle Cliff, yes, yes, I’m positive,’ she affirmed, before hurrying to change the subject, seeking to ask after the couple’s daughters, one of whom was in the Land Army and living away from home, the other making munitions at Rowntrees’ factory. ‘I’m sorry, I should have asked before, how are Daphne and Margaret?’

  ‘Both safe, thank goodness,’ Aunty Phyllis was quick to reply. ‘Daphne’s nerves have been much better since she went to live in the country – I think it’s the manual work, takes her mind off it, you know. She pedalled over first thing to check on us. And Margaret’s gone to work as usual. We must let them know you’ve turned up.’ She gave a tearful sniff. ‘I’m not looking forward to telling our Ron. He was very fond of your mother and father.’

  Smarting over this application of salt to her wounds, Nell enquired over her cousin’s wellbeing. Uncle Cliff, who had been battling tears by honking into a handkerchief, seemed glad of the opportunity to regale her with tales of his son’s exploits.

  The young man’s mother had other concerns, though. ‘You can’t help worrying,’ murmured Aunty Phyllis. ‘He writes to us, of course, but we’ve only seen him once since he joined up, when he came home on leave prior to being sent overseas. It’s bad enough imagining what he must be going through, but – and this might sound silly – it almost seemed worse for having him here in the flesh, because in a way you’re losing him all over again, having to go through those awful goodbyes …’

  Stop, please, stop, Nell wanted to yell.

  ‘And you know, he’s lost so many good pals. You remember that going-away party we held for him? Well, I believe Ron’s the only one of those boys still alive …’

  Whilst her aunty’s eyes betrayed the dread of losing her son, Nell found herself assailed by memories of Billy, even more so when a spontaneous change of expression took over Aunty Phyllis.

  ‘Oh, but I’m forgetting, you knew one of them quite well, didn’t you?’ She turned to her husband. ‘Cliff, remember that photograph we saw of Eleanor and – what was his name? Bill, that’s right – the photo of the pair of you on the front of the press – oh, your mother was mortified when I mentioned we’d seen it! You’d have thought from the way she went on that you were Lady Godiva …’ Noting her niece’s stricken expression, Phyllis changed tack with a sympathetic smile. ‘Well, it was all quite innocent, we realised that, and it’s all such a long time ago. I’m sure Thelma forgave you. Poor Bill, he was such a handsome, lovely young chap – did you ever see him again?’

  Stiff as a board, wondering what was to come next, Nell shook her head. Under attack by demons, she rose abruptly and went towards the kitchen. ‘Shall I make us a pot of tea?’

  But, after drinking only half a cup of this, and listening to her aunty and uncle’s painful reminiscences, she declared that with another evening shift ahead she must regretfully depart.

  Her prime reason for leaving so soon, though, was the agitation she still felt at the thought that her son might have been one of those killed in the raid. It was a futile pursuit, Nell knew it, when she was totally unaware of what name William went under now, but, in her demented state, that did not stop her alighting from the bus in town and going to scour the lists of dead and injured that had been posted, looking for a child of a similar age. Superfluous to say, she was to come away none the wiser, and no less demented.

  Undergoing the last stage of her journey on foot, she was to witness a queue of blood donors at the County Hospital. It had occurred to Nell to contribute too – though not at this minute, with a twelve-hour shift ahead of her. However, upon mentioning it to Beata when she arrived on the ward, her friend, who was a regular donor, said that they ought not to inundate the already overstrained doctors and nurses there. ‘They’ll ask if they need us,’ she assured Nell.

  The latter was quite thankful, for she felt drained enough already, and was to feel sucked completely dry after spending much of that night terrorised by her imagination. Thankfully, the German bombers did not strike again, the only disturbance during those small hours being Mrs Gledhill’s hymn-singing, and this easily remedied by a measure of bromide.

  It was with deep gratitude that Nell handed over to the day staff and went home, to be greeted by Ma with a different little dog in her arms. Poor Milo’s wiry black coat had turned white overnight.

  In the aftermath of the Baedeker raid, those houses that were not totally demolished were patched up and their owners allowed to return, the city appearing like a mouth that had suffered much dental work, some teeth completely missing, others snapped and jagged, with a great amount of emergency bridge work yet to be done.

  Excluding the death toll and the calamitous depredation of housing, the main target of the German raid was miraculously easy to fix, for against initial fears the railway signalling system was virtually unscathed, and within days the trains were once again running as normal, albeit from a skeleton of a building.

  But Nell wasn’t going anywhere, apart from to her parents’ funeral, this being just one in a massive round of burials during that week following the raid. Friends and relatives turned up from far and wide, to converge first on the church, and then on Uncle Cliff’s for the funeral tea; some she hardly knew, but all were totally benevolent towards their orphaned member. It was obvious that none of them were acquainted with the parental rift created by her illegitimate baby, not even Uncle Cliff and Aunty Phyllis, for they would have treated her very differently had they known. Despite everyone’s niceness, though, Nell felt out of place amongst them, as if she had no right to be there. Which was strange, really,
when she had just found out that her mother really was her mother … even if her father was not. None of which she could reveal to these nice people. Nice people, who said silly things.

  ‘Did you see her, Eleanor?’

  ‘Sorry, what?’ Nell turned her dazed expression on the aunt seated beside her.

  ‘The Princess Royal, did you see her when she paid her respects to York?’

  As if I’d be out flag-waving at a time like this, thought Nell, but simply shook her head as the mourners discussed similar trivialities.

  ‘We were just saying, your hair looks nice, worn up like that,’ offered Aunty Vera.

  ‘Thank you … it’s only because I never seem to have time to get it cut.’ Feeling awkward under their sympathetic examination, once again Nell used the excuse of her very important vocation to depart. ‘And I’m afraid time’s in short supply, even today. I must be away to my patients.’

  Yet there was to be one last ordeal.

  ‘Before you go …’ Her uncle rose and withdrew, returning with a brooch and a pearl necklace displayed athwart his palms: her mother’s jewellery. ‘Just a few things we managed to sift from the wreckage before the looters got in – did you read in the press about that wretch pinching from his neighbours?’ He broke off to ramble on to the gathering about the prosecution, before finally returning to his tack.

  ‘We didn’t salvage much else, I’m afraid, apart from one or two documents that we handed to your father’s solicitor. The furniture and pictures were all splintered, the car wrecked, and there was nothing that belonged exclusively to you –’

  No, well, there wouldn’t be, thought a frozen Nell, who had taken all cherished items with her.

  ‘– but at least this is something personal for you to keep,’ finished Cliff. ‘And as I told you before, there’ll probably be a decent amount of cash from the War Damage Commission once this is all sorted out –’

  I don’t want it! came Nell’s inner scream. None of it.

  ‘– I know for definite that your dad took out an endowment for when you’re twenty-one, him being a big one for insurance. That’s only another year off. Must seem a long time to a youngster like you, but I’m going to apply on your behalf to the Air Raid Distress Fund, too. I’m sure you must be entitled to something to tide you over.’

  Feeling utterly wretched, Nell thanked him for rescuing the tokens she now held in her hand. But she did not look at them for long before shoving them into her bag and proceeding to leave.

  ‘Don’t regard yourself as completely alone in the world.’

  An anguished Nell wrenched her gaze from the door to blink at Aunty Phyllis, who appeared to have read her mind.

  ‘I know what it feels like when your parents go,’ came her aunty’s kind addition. ‘And it was a much greater shock for you, with it being so premature. But there are lots of us you can turn to if you’re ever in need – not that you have to be in need, we’d love to see you whenever you feel like it,’ added Phyllis, with a touch of her niece’s arm.

  Intent on escape, Nell gave an appreciative nod.

  ‘Try not to picture your mum and dad as you last saw them in that awful place.’ counselled Uncle Cliff, as, to a host of sympathetic murmurs, his niece finally managed to open the door. ‘Remember them on the day before, going about their everyday affairs, happy and smiling, and content with their lot …’

  How was he to know that his words made her feel a hundred times worse?

  Throughout all this heartrending upheaval, and in its chaotic after-effects, Nurse Spottiswood was to remain at her post. There were millions in her position who had no option but to go on; why should she be any different? But just because Nell carried on her valiant work, did not mean she coped on an emotional plane. Had she not felt responsible for so many less fortunate, she would perhaps have been unable to hold herself together at all.

  Thank God that others seemed able to function in this awful aftermath, if purely on a mundane level, for Nell did not know what she would have done without the Preciouses’ hospitality. The gas was off for five days, requiring them to fall back on even more out-dated oil lamps for their lighting. Whilst it might be little hardship to sit in half-darkness, the lack of cooking facilities was another matter. The situation had already been testing enough, the meagre allowance of coal failing to throw out enough heat, and much of it going to waste in the high-ceilinged rooms, and even though it was late spring the residents were forced to wrap themselves in blankets to ward off the night-time draughts. But now with the gas oven redundant, the coal would have to be used for cooking too. None of this appeared to faze old Georgie, and, somehow, there was always a nourishing meal for the soldiers and the resident nurse, who might otherwise have neglected herself.

  All this fine fare was at personal cost, though. ‘Me last little chucky hen, Nell,’ mourned Georgie, as he carried in another lifeless creature from the back garden that ran down to the river. ‘Those bloomin’ Germans have done for every one.’

  ‘Thank God!’ heaved his unappreciative wife. ‘We might get summat else to eat now.’

  ‘But there’ll be no more eggs, dearie,’ he warned.

  ‘Ruddy things’d stopped laying anyway!’ stated Ma. ‘Bung it in the pot – and make it taste like summat different tonight. We’re sick to death of blasted chicken – aren’t we, Milo?’

  The poor old man looked so comical in his balaclava, being kept on his toes by Ma, who, typically, only exerted herself with the odd reassuring cuddle to a blanched and trembling Milo, whom she perpetually nursed like a baby. At any other time Nell would have laughed; but not now.

  Following the shock and the guilt came anger. Anger that, much too late, York had received its protective battery of ack-ack guns and barrage balloons; anger at her parents for dying and leaving her with no idea where in the world her son was; anger, too, that they had forced her to give him away to save their reputations, and now they were dead and united in heaven, whilst she was left with no one. Sometimes the fury and loneliness made life feel unbearable; certainly too unbearable to sleep, whether on night shift or day. The scrap of ribbon attached to Bill’s wedding ring had received such punishment from her twitching fingers that it was frayed almost to nought. In danger of being left with nothing at all to mark William’s existence, and not daring to risk unpicking its knot for fear of the silk disintegrating completely, she had been forced to remove the chain and its pendants from around her neck and consign them to the hat box. Yet another thing, the one last comforting thing, that the Germans had taken from her.

  Kept awake by these bitter feelings, further stirred by the drone of British bombers as squadron after squadron winged over her roof, Nell tried to gain comfort from the knowledge that they were intent on wreaking vengeance, felt glad at the havoc that would be visited on the German people, and wondered how her counterparts would fare under such ruination as she had suffered. She knew it was wrong for a nurse to want revenge, knew that many others had lost loved ones, too, for that was what happened in war. But she just could not help it. It all felt so overwhelmingly personal. First they had taken Bill, and now Mother and Father. God forbid they had taken William too.

  Added to this emotional unrest, the summer of ’42 was turning out to be exceptionally hot. In contrast to those earlier months and their paucity of coal, the Preciouses’ high-ceilinged sitting room was now a much more pleasant venue than Nell’s attic. Finding it nigh impossible to sleep at the best of times, but even more so with the sun beating down on its roof and creating a furnace, more often than not she was to rise long before work demanded it, to seek out the cool tranquillity of downstairs – at least, tranquil for so long as the soldiers were out on their daily exercise. Once those khaki-clad terrors were unleashed and came home to run berserk, there was no scrap of peace to be had. Many a stuffed animal had fallen prey to a mis-aimed dart, and some had been rearranged in the most lewd positions. None of which seemed to bother the rough and ready Ma, though Nell found
such disorderly behaviour grating, particularly when one was faced with a twelve hour shift after snatching only a quarter of this in sleep.

  It was therefore quite a relief when the soldiers moved on to different climes, some of them possibly to their deaths. It was solely due to this latter prospect that Nell withheld any malice towards them for what were, after all, quite petty disruptions, instead sending them on their way with a kiss. That last exchange with her mother reverberating through her mind, she was to remain ever conscious of the importance of one’s parting words.

  Soldiers came and went, bricklayers too, bussed in to help rebuild the city. Another Christmas converged, made merrier for some by the glorious victory at El Alamein that followed so many disasters. But not for Nell, she citing heavy workload as an excuse not to linger over the festive dinner laid on by Ma, and to duck out altogether of the amateur concert that came after. And another year was gone.

  With the threat of invasion lifted, the Minster bells rang out the following Easter. This transitory joy fooled nobody. The war had become a way of life now, no one able to foresee an end to it, children being born who considered it the norm to have no father on the scene, or to have their vision obscured by an ugly network of brown tape; who didn’t know the taste of a banana, a grape, or a tinned peach – or even what these looked like – to queue half an hour for scraps that one might normally feed to a dog; to undergo a scrum at every issue of new ration books, to have coils of barbed wire impede one’s route, and sandbags at every turn, and large, inviting tanks of water in the middle of a city street into which an un supervised toddler might tumble and drown.

  Nell had shuddered to read of too many such accidents during the last twelve months, and more prevalently during a summer that augured to be as hot as the last. Each little death was another crack in her heart, and she wondered angrily which of these children could be judged the less fortunate: those with the so-called respectable parents who allowed them to drown, or those relegated to an institution like Cissie’s twins. It was such thoughts as this that tormented her as she bustled about the wards, trying to keep sane – ten times harder when she was at home and trying to sleep in her claustrophobic attic. For then her hands would inevitably be drawn to the irritating patch of dermatitis this had developed on her trunk, the one that would not go away even when lathered in cream, that prompted her fingernails to rake deep, to scratch and to claw until they drew blood, the relentless pain of it making her want to scream for the hour to arrive when she could go back to work, for only devotion to others could lure her mind away … Hence the reason she was never to complain when asked to sacrifice her day off for the benefit of a married colleague.