An Unsuitable Mother

by Sheelagh Kelly

  Even Cissie’s Gordon was to receive this personal treatment, for though he was a terror, that was explicable by his deprived beginnings and the loss of his twin, and after waking him she sought to show him some affection whilst giving him a bath.

  The little game they played with the boats and ducks seemed to be appreciated by the child, who splashed about to his heart’s content, but was viewed with some obliquity by Nell’s colleague.

  ‘You’re making a rod for your own back.’ Whizzing through a score of tasks to Nell’s half-dozen, Nurse Mullen wore a look that said she knew better. ‘He’ll have you forever at his beck and call.’

  ‘Isn’t that what we’re here for?’ demanded Nell reasonably. ‘To look after them.’

  ‘Pff! You’ll change your tune after a day with that little demon. But don’t mind me, you do as you like!’

  And Nell did do as she liked, proceeding to treat Gordon as she would have done her own son – not as a substitute, for he could never be that, nor could any child – but to try to give the poor little mite some form of normality, before the water grew too cool and she was forced to lift him out. Then she was to see the wisdom of the other’s words, for Gordon showed his displeasure by kicking and lashing out with his limbs as she tried to shove them back into his institutional clothing, and even when she managed to install him in the playpen with the others, upon seeing his nurse devote her special treatment to another infant, he became lost in a tantrum, rattling the bars like an enraged monkey at the zoo.

  To others this was a nuisance, to Nell quite distressing, though she managed to shut her ears to his noise and concentrate on the task of bathing Arthur, to make sure that he did not bite a chunk out of the soap, or, even worse, the sponge, for that might warrant a surgical operation.

  It took a great feat of resilience, due to Gordon perpetually rattling and shaking the bars of the playpen and calling for her, but somehow she managed get Arthur bathed and dressed, then ensconced in the playpen too, checking there were no soft toys for him to eat, before reaching for the next in line.

  Though hardly enjoying this, Nell was proud of herself for not breaking into fits of tears under such emotional pressure, for it came to the point when the last child had been bathed and put in the playpen, and she had managed to achieve this without panic. It was with a sense of victory that she untied her flannel pinafore and set about damp dusting the windowsills and cot rails.

  But this was premature. Ignored by the nurses, Gordon had begun to take his frustration out on one of the other toddlers, and now hit him over the head with a wooden lorry, drawing forth howls.

  ‘You’ll have to see to him!’ called Nell’s colleague. ‘My hands are full, and it’s your fault he’s like it.’

  So, draping her pinafore over the bars of a cot, Nell rushed to pick up the screaming toddler and to comfort him, before turning to reprehend Gordon – only to see Arthur sneaking up on her pinny. Before she could stop him he was ramming it for all he was worth into his mouth. With an exclamation of concern, she set the yelling toddler down and rushed to prevent Arthur from choking, which was like trying to extract a goat from a python that had already swallowed half of it. With screams in the background from the injured toddler, and this setting off others too, Nell fought to keep her head whilst maintaining tight hold of one end of the pinafore, and inch by inch managing to extricate it from teeth that were clamped as tight as a bulldog’s, though she needed the help of the other nurse before eventually both succeeded in pulling it from Arthur’s jaws.

  Even then there was no time to relax, for it was immediately pointed out to her that Gordon had taken this opportunity to escape from the playpen and was nowhere in sight. With an exasperated gasp, Nell rushed from the ward and looked both ways along the corridor, before hearing a commotion. Following the sound into one of the adult wards, there she caught sight of the tiny absconder, running between one elderly patient and another, and dealing each a hefty thump or a kick, which obviously gave him deep enjoyment, for he gave a maniacal laugh before cantering off to inflict the next bruise.

  Apologising profusely to Gordon’s victims, and to the ward sister, Nell managed to grab the infant thug before he had done too much damage, and with his flailing limbs pinioned beneath her arm, carted him to his rightful place. On her way back there, though, who should she see hurrying up to greet her but the culprit’s mother. Before that beaming face could utter even a greeting, Nell threw her a not entirely jocular warning. ‘If you so much as mention that man in the black hat, Cissie Flowerdew, I’ll swing for you both – the trouble I’ve had with this child of his!’

  ‘It’s all right, Nurse, he’s going to marry me this time!’ proffered the gormless one.

  Nell stopped dead and gasped as the truth hit her, and her joke was transformed to a nightmare. ‘Oh, surely, Ciss, not another?’ Then, clicking her tongue in despair and shaking her head, with the noisy, wriggling child under her arm, she strode on.

  ‘I warned you you’d regret it!’ Nurse Mullen smirked, as her perspiring colleague dumped Gordon back in the playpen and tried to distract him with a game.

  ‘So you did,’ Nell had to concede, soon to be glad that her attempt to calm Gordon was successful, for at that moment Matron Fosdyke made an appearance, and she was wearing her stern face.

  Both nurses came to attention, Nell praying that Gordon wouldn’t kick up another fuss, whilst Matron cast an experienced eye about her, checking that all children were safe and well-tended, that their cots were all neatly made, the castors turned in, the ward scrupulously clean, the floor polished, and nothing out of place.

  Apparently satisfied with what she saw, Matron seemed about to leave, then in afterthought turned back. ‘You look as though you’re in dire need of a cup of tea, Nurse Spottiswood.’

  At the terse observation, Nell flushed, and her hands went up to check that her hair was not poking from her headdress. Was this a precursor to a more severe reprimand?

  ‘I’m pleased to see that Gordon seems to have settled down a little now,’ noted Matron, who had quite obviously heard the commotion.

  ‘I’m very sorry he got out, Matron.’ Nell was instantly contrite. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it. A shame that can’t be applied to his mother,’ replied Matron, remaining stiff, but with a jovial glint in her eye. ‘Go and get yourselves a cup of tea – and whilst you’re about it, bring me one too. I think we all need it after hearing Cissie’s news.’

  ‘Oh, she isn’t?’ groaned Nurse Mullen to Nell, after Matron departed.

  ‘’Fraid she is – baby number seven!’ But despite everything, Nell found that she could raise a genuine smile as she sailed off to aid her recovery with a cup of tea, before the rest of the morning’s duties must be resumed.

  As expected, these turned out to be equally taxing, from having to hold the infants still whilst medicines and painful treatment were administered, to the time-consuming feeding of those who lay helpless, added to an endless round of nappy changing and potty emptying.

  But at the end of the day, when it was time to hand over to the night sister, and Nell went from cot to cot wishing her little charges goodnight – and even reading them a short story before she went home – she was left with a feeling that she had succeeded in jumping the first hurdle. No matter how arduous the test, she had managed to keep her head. The weight of a baby in her arms had not engendered the insanity she so feared. True, it had only been one day. But it was a start.

  One step forward, two steps back, was how Nell’s life was to go from there. Gaining confidence in her ability to manage the nursery ward, often alone, she was eventually to progress in finding a home for herself. At least it was a home of sorts: an upstairs room in a Victorian terraced house in the Groves, a shabby but respectable enough area that was a stone’s throw from the Infirmary and also from town. Lacking just about every mod con, it had a two-ringed gas stove and a fire, and a washstand that served both f
or personal ablutions and to sluice the pots. Of the latter there were few, this also applying to furniture, for Nell was only able to afford the very basics, and all of them utility items – a bed, a small table, an upright chair, a few utensils and some crockery – and had only acquired these due to her inheritance and the generous twenty-first gift from her aunty and uncle. This expenditure had left her with five pounds, which she had decided to retain as a contingency, for she was not yet sure how she would manage to run a household, even one so modest as this.

  If life had been austere before, then it was even more so now, baths being restricted to one a week and costing a shilling, the landlady seeming to think herself most generous in providing the soap. For all that, its lack of comforts did not really matter that much when its tenant was hardly in residence, except to sleep. As ever, Nell was most often to be found at the Infirmary, where, after so many years, she had formed a close working bond with her colleagues – as close as she would ever allow herself to feel towards anyone, in case they too should be snatched away like others she had loved. After their rocky start, Sister Barber had come to be included in her favourites. Having long ago renounced the opinion that these untrained girls had been foisted upon her, and the notion that their intelligence was nil, Sister had also relinquished much of the hierarchical nonsense that had marked their earlier years. Recalling her own surprise at first being invited to share a pot of tea with her superior, nowadays Nell took it for granted that they would drink together whilst going over the patients’ notes. And though each retained a professional air towards the other, it was no rarity to hear them sharing a chuckle with the residents – unthinkable in the old days – Sister having the same particular favourites as herself. Having cut herself off from her true relations through fear of pain, and taken diversionary measures to avoid them in public, one might say that Nell had her own little family at the Infirmary: with Sister, Cissie, and Blanche who scrubbed the corridors, and pretty little Connie Wood who had been written off at birth, but would have been an entertainer if ever she could have escaped the institution, with a repertoire of dirty jokes picked up from lord knew where. In a way Nell was similarly trapped, not by authority, but by affection for all these dear folk – though none so dear as Beata.

  Her friend, too, had become independent now, renting a single room in a house quite nearby. Strangely, though, Nell had chosen not to be a regular visitor there, nor to the Melody household – however many times she had been invited – preferring the stillness and quietude of her own room in the hours when she was not at work. Though, of course, she had promised her friend that, ‘If any of you should ever need my help, just say the word and I’ll be there in a flash.’ For she had become well-acquainted with Beata’s sisters via all the snippets of news about them, which she loved to hear, and she had come to regard them, too, as second kin of sorts.

  But, like all families, its members had their differences. That morning, Nell’s mind was consumed with the latest development as she made her way home from night shift through autumn fog and smoke. The youngest sister, Mims, was about to remarry: an act she herself found hard even to contemplate. But then, Nell did not have a child to care for, like Beata’s widowed sister. As a mother, one must put one’s own needs aside.

  Ruminating over the position she herself might be in now, had she been allowed to keep William, Nell found herself tormented by dire need of a cigarette, and she changed direction to seek out a tobacconist – but in doing so, she almost bumped into one of her cousins, and had to jump into a doorway in order not to be seen, and to hide there like the Scarlet Pimpernel until the danger had passed.

  Her visit to the tobacconist was to attract rude reception, for, on the threshold, she was tumbled to the ground by two labourers engaged in bitter struggle. Apparently one had bought the last packet of cigarettes in the shop, and the other was determined to get it, not caring that he trampled a nurse in the process. Shocked, and with the oafs’ boots still scuffling about her, she rolled out of their way whilst the shopkeeper helped her up and set about berating them. ‘Ruddy hooligans! As if it isn’t bad enough the Germans trying to kill us. I’m sorry about that, nurse …’

  Wearing a disgusted frown, Nell brushed herself off. Why do, I bother to help folk, she asked herself bitterly, if this is what the world has come to, Even more desperate for a smoke, she headed into town in the hope of finding a packet. But the situation was no better there. She would just have to hope that there was tobacco left in her pipe when she got home. Even a stale smoke would do, the way she felt at this moment. Empty-handed, and depressed at being so unappreciated, she resumed her trail home.

  However, as she was passing a shop that sold furniture and carpets – at least it had before the war, its window displays were much reduced nowadays – the salesman who was leaning against the jamb, without anything to do, made an exclamation of delight at seeing her nurse’s badge. ‘Just the person I’ve been waiting for!’ And he summoned her in clandestine fashion, and from behind a cupped hand whispered: ‘I’ve got a lovely bit of coconut matting just arrived!’

  ‘I’ve no wish to sound churlish, but can one smoke it?’ said Nell, tongue in cheek. But she followed him anyway, for such commodities were as scarce as tobacco. ‘Anyway, I’ve no permit –’

  ‘If you don’t let on then neither will I! We have to look after the ones who are looking after us!’

  Tell that to the two who just smashed me to the ground, Nell wanted to grumble, but her upset over that incident was gradually being dispelled by the eager generosity of this man, who, having unfurled the small but very pleasing rug, declared: ‘There! What do you think of that?’

  One would have thought he was displaying a Persian carpet. Rubbing her mouth, Nell pondered on whether it was wise to break into that precious five pound note that was meant for a rainy day. In fact she vacillated so long that he thought she was trying to negotiate a discount, and he was quick to reduce the price even more. ‘I swear that’s no more than I paid for it!’

  Still, she found it a wrench to part with the cash, but then it was so very difficult to get one’s hands on anything decent these days, and her room was so very bare, that she eventually relinquished her fiver.

  ‘Blinking ’eck, if I’d known nurses were paid that much I would’ve protected my own profit! Put your moniker on the back, will you, Nurse – not for me, you understand, just regulations.’

  ‘Look, no printing ink on my hands, honestly!’ Displaying her palms, she laughingly explained that the money had been a birthday gift, and scribbled her name on the fiver. Then, pocketing her change, and feeling rather pleased with herself, she humped her roll of coconut matting from the shop – though thereafter, her progress was to be retarded. For all the way home through dingy old streets with boarded-up windows and peppered with bombsites, she was to meet eager interrogation, every man and his dog delaying her to ask where on earth she had managed to acquire such a gem.

  Half-amused, half-irritated, as she shifted the heavy roll from one arm to the other, by the time she did arrive home, Nell was glad to throw it upon the floor, and also felt like collapsing into bed. But, being even more eager to see if the bowl of her pipe held enough for a smoke, which, thank God, it did, she put the kettle on first, made a cup of tea, then lit up and sat on the bed with her feet up, to admire her recent purchase.

  But then her drowsy gaze was to stray to the hat box, neglected in a corner. It was all very well feeling pleased with oneself over a bit of coconut matting when there were things that must still be confronted. Was now the ideal time, though, argued the weaker side of her character, when she was worn out from her shift, and her mind perhaps not able to cope? You’ve managed to look after those babies without crumbling, she told herself forcefully, now do this. Do it.

  Drawing a last disquieted puff, she set her feet to the new rug and laid her pipe on the hearth. Even then, it took much effort to push herself from the bed, and to finally confront the box. Still, she
simply looked at it for a while, her fingers abstractedly picking at the skin at the edges of her thumbnails. Her hands seemed glued to her sides. She fought the cowardly urge to leave them there, and directed them at the lid, her whole body trembling as they hovered just above it. This was ridiculous! With a self-scolding gesture, the lid came off and was set aside. And there was Billy’s photograph grinning up at her. Placing the box on the bed, Nell delved in quickly and took firm hold of the snapshot, looked masochistically into that beloved face, those eyes …

  His voice, she thought to her sudden horror, I can’t remember his voice. And though she strained to recall that southern twang, she could not; would have to be satisfied in remembering it in essence, the effects of its laughter upon her, the intense happiness it had sired, the murmured endearments …

  Her heart aching, Nell allowed her eyes to fill with tears. Tears were all right. It was the suppression of them that caused all the problems. The man in the photograph became a blur. She wiped away the veil of moisture and allowed him back into focus, gazing at Billy for long moments, just to ensure that she could, before laying his portrait aside on the red counterpane. Then came his watch, its time forever at seven; this too she gripped with quiet determination, studying it for long moments before setting it on the bed. The gold chain that held her wedding ring came next, Nell placing a tender kiss on the grubby little scrap of baby ribbon, before hanging the chain once more around her neck. Finally, the letters. Repositioning herself on the bed, her back supported by the wall, Nell undid the ribbon that bound them, then proceeded to take each from its envelope and to read every single line, though she knew most of them off by heart. It hurt. And she cried. And at the bottom of the box was a gaping maw of emptiness, which was how she herself felt – as if someone had taken a large pair of shears and hacked her heart from her breast.