The Midwife's Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain's Longest Serving Midwives

by Linda Fairley

  However, as far as I knew, none of these issues affected the Petty household. The Pettys were not victims of the economy or social change. Instead, it seemed they chose to live the way they did, scraping by with what little money they were given in state hand-outs because they didn’t appear to know any better.

  The home visits prior to the birth were a huge eye-opener for me and I didn’t enjoy them one bit, but Mrs Tattersall always made sure I accompanied her. I didn’t fully realise until the night of the actual delivery that she had done it to prepare me and cushion me from the shock in advance.

  When we met outside the house at 10 p.m. I was shivering.

  ‘Ready?’ Mrs Tattersall asked with a reassuring look after I had parked my moped and pulled off my helmet.

  ‘I am,’ I nodded. Thanks to Mrs Tattersall I was shivering more from the cold wind that was blowing than through nerves this time.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘I need you to be focused on mother and baby tonight, nothing else.’

  Hauling her bag of instruments out of the boot of her car, Mrs Tattersall continued in a voice loud enough to be heard down the street, ‘I hope the lover’s not here. That bloody man gets right up my nose. We could do without him swaggering around drunk, getting in the way.’

  I’d never met the man myself and had no idea what his name was, and I don’t think Mrs Tattersall did either as she only ever referred to him as ‘the lover’. All I knew was that he was Moira’s mum’s boyfriend, and according to Mrs Tattersall he appeared to be the only man to have anything to do with the household. She had it on good authority he was in trouble with the police and only ever went out at night, under cover of darkness, when he snuck to the local pub and staggered home blind drunk at closing time. His police record meant he couldn’t work, or so the story went, and we could only presume he lived on the state benefits claimed by the women. Mrs Tattersall clearly didn’t see fit to delve any deeper into the family set-up, and I trusted her instincts.

  I dearly hoped he wasn’t home and was relieved when one of Moira’s sisters answered the door and showed us into the front room, which the family referred to as the parlour. This was the best room in the house, and as such was usually reserved for the mother and her lover. Moira must have been given special permission to use it tonight. She was lying down on a saggy mattress in the middle of the floor, surrounded by an assortment of grubby, threadbare towels and blankets.

  My heart went out to her. She was wearing an old skirt and had bare legs that looked grey with cold and dirt. Mrs Tattersall examined her and remarked it was lucky she’d brought the instruments already sterilised, as labour was very well established and the baby could arrive before midnight.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ she whispered to me under her breath. ‘The lover’s at the pub. It would be good to get this baby out before he rolls in.’

  I thought so too. I wasn’t used to seeing people drunk and I felt anxious in this house late at night and wanted to go home as quickly as possible.

  It was an uneventful, routine labour. Moira was courageous in the face of her contractions, making relatively little noise and following Mrs Tattersall’s instructions carefully with regards to breathing correctly and shifting her position on the mattress when it would make her more comfortable.

  ‘It will be time to push very soon, I think,’ Mrs Tattersall advised. ‘But don’t push until I tell you, Moira. You know that, don’t you?’

  Moira nodded. ‘I’ve done it twice before,’ she said, ‘and it weren’t that long ago. I’ve not forgotten, Nurse.’

  The dog barking manically in the hallway alerted us to the sound of the front door opening.

  ‘Will ya mind me bleeding coat,’ Mrs Petty slurred. ‘You’ll be yanking it right off me arm, ya big oaf!’

  Moments later the parlour door swung open and the lover stood swaying dangerously before us. He was a dead ringer for Stan Ogden in Coronation Street, and Mrs Petty didn’t look too dissimilar to Hilda Ogden with her headscarf and red lipstick, which was painted on in a thin bow shape that didn’t match the size of her lips.

  The pair of them stank of alcohol and appeared too drunk to register what was happening to Moira. I felt sick to my stomach and my legs started to twitch and jump involuntarily with nerves. It had never happened to me before, but I simply couldn’t stop my legs from jangling.

  ‘What’s she doin’ in here?’ the lover bawled, waving his finger towards poor Moira.

  ‘Baby’s on it’s way, ya daft fool,’ Moira’s mum chided, as the penny dropped.

  ‘Well, I’m having the parlour!’ he grunted.

  Mrs Tattersall sprang towards him immediately and stood taller than I had ever seen her, hands on hips and chin jutted forward.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t come in,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Who the ’ell are you to tell me what to do?’

  ‘The midwife, for your information. Moira here is in labour. Now if you don’t mind, sir …’

  The lover took a step forward and pushed his jowly face towards Mrs Tattersall’s.

  ‘But I want to come in here,’ he implored, sounding more pathetic than menacing now. ‘I just want to come in t’parlour and sit down …’

  He was rocking from side to side as he spoke and his speech was so slack it was as if he’d been punched in the face and his jaw was unhinged.

  Moira’s mum just gaped and stood rooted to the spot, making no attempt to stop her boyfriend as he lunged haphazardly forward once more.

  Mrs Tattersall snapped in frustration. ‘Get out of this parlour NOW!’ she yelled, sounding more like a fishwife than a professional midwife. ‘Go on, move it! Get out of here!’

  With that she literally pushed the lover out the door. Moira’s mum staggered out behind him and Mrs Tattersall closed the door firmly. ‘Good riddance,’ I wanted to say, and I knew that was exactly what Mrs Tattersall was thinking. Rubbing her hands together and smoothing down her apron, she went briskly back to attend to Moira, who was smiling sweetly and thanking her.

  ‘There now, where were we before we were rudely interrupted?’ Mrs Tattersall asked calmly, and order was magically restored.

  I still felt on edge, but thanks to Mrs Tattersall my nerves were no longer fraught, and I felt a little less sick inside.

  I delivered Moira’s baby, a little boy she named Jimmy, just before 1 a.m. It was a straightforward birth and, despite our grim surroundings, when I held the baby I felt the same incredible surge of exhilaration I’d experienced when I brought Lorinda Louise into the world. After I’d cleaned Jimmy up as best I could with some water boiled in a battered old metal pan, I was delighted to see Moira had a new set of clothes for him.

  I dressed him in the little white vest, white knitted trousers and a pale yellow matinée jacket, which Moira told me had been made by a kindly old neighbour. Moira’s two sisters and her mother, who had sobered up considerably by now, all came to have a look at the new addition to the family.

  ‘Look at you, gorgeous – another flamin’ mouth to feed!’ one sister said as she gazed lovingly at her new nephew.

  ‘What are we going to do with you then, little Jimmy?’ asked the other sister. ‘We’re outnumbered now, girls, that’s for sure!’

  There were no complications, and Mrs Tattersall and I left around 3 a.m.

  ‘I’m so glad he had a new set of clothes,’ I remarked as we stepped on to the pitch-black street outside. It was the only positive thing I could think of to say about the family.

  ‘Linda, love, they will be the only new clothes that child will ever have,’ Mrs Tattersall sniffed. ‘And I can guarantee that before we’ve turned the corner of Hope Street, Moira will be out of that parlour as quick as you like so the lover can install his fat backside in the best chair as per usual.’

  I don’t know if that’s actually what happened on the night she gave birth, but when I returned for a home visit a few days later Moira was indeed crammed in the back room again with her si
sters and their seven young children. I had never seen any evidence of them cooking a meal during any of my visits, and the children seemed to survive on unbuttered buns, which their mothers dished out and let them roam around with, scattering crumbs on the floor that the dog wolfed down. My heart ached for Moira, but I tried to take comfort from the fact little Jimmy was in fine fettle in spite of his desperate surroundings.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not your job to get involved in the whys and wherefores,’ Mrs Tattersall told me when Moira was discharged from our care a few weeks later. ‘That family is very unusual in these parts, thank God. It’s a crying shame for those girls, but our job is done. We’ve delivered her baby safely, Moira has no ongoing complications and we’ve dished out all the advice we can.’

  I knew this was true, and I took some solace from Mrs Tattersall’s experienced words. Moira had been told how to boil up the bottles and teats in a pan before filling them with warm milk. The milk should be squirted onto the inside of the wrist to test it was not too hot or too cold, I told her. I also gave instructions about soaking cloth nappies overnight in a bucket before washing them out, and keeping the baby’s bottom clean so as to avoid nappy rash.

  Moira nodded obediently but I knew full well the family did not even own a bath, and the other children in the house wore dirty nappies, scratched their heads because of the lice and smelled absolutely awful.

  When I returned to my own home that night, I found a note on the kitchen worktop from Graham, who had gone out to the pub for the evening with some friends. It read: ‘Your mum brought a steak pie for tomorrow and some parkin. Are you off next Friday and if so shall we go to The Sportsman for a meal? Love you, sleep tight.’ I felt almost guilty, having so much when the Pettys had so little, and I understood exactly why Mrs Tattersall often helped poor families with gifts of food and baby equipment.

  This feeling stayed with me and was intensified two days later when my father came round to deliver the most wonderful news. My brother John and his wife Nevim had become the proud parents of a healthy little boy they named Kerem. He was born on Monday 7 September 1970 by Caesarean section at a hospital in Brussels, where my brother and sister-in-law were now happily living and working.

  ‘Shame you weren’t on hand, Linda,’ Dad smiled. ‘I expect they could have used your skills!’

  I’d heard variations on this comment for months now, ever since we discovered Nevim was pregnant. Everybody I told about the baby asked me, ‘Oooh, will you be their midwife?’ to which I always laughed and explained that they lived abroad. Besides, my sister-in-law had been advised to have a Caesarean section as she is very petite and Kerem was a large baby. My brother had everything organised, and had booked her in to a private clinic. ‘Just because you bake bread doesn’t mean you should deliver John’s bread in Brussels, does it?’ I teased my father in return. ‘Anyway, I haven’t passed all my exams yet!’

  Looking back, I’m surprised to recall that my training didn’t affect how I felt about Nevim’s pregnancy in any way. I didn’t worry more than anyone else as we counted down the months and waited excitedly for news of Kerem’s safe arrival. Nevim was my sister-in-law, not a patient, and despite tragic cases like Mrs Wainwright’s, which still weighed heavily on my mind, for the most part I remained full of the optimism of youth. I had eagerly awaited this very exciting new arrival and I couldn’t wait to meet him.

  My mum had departed on the first available train and was planning to stay and help Nevim for three weeks while John went back to his job as a journalist for United Press International.

  I was absolutely thrilled at becoming an auntie. Kerem was the first baby born into our family for many years. He would be loved and cherished, and I felt grateful that my brother and his wife had the means to give him the best possible start in life. If only every baby could be as lucky as Kerem.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘She’s at top o’ stairs!’

  ‘There you are!’ a familiar voice called out. ‘Wherever did you get to, Linda?’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Tattersall,’ I replied, ‘Had to see Miss Sefton about my exam.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you did, but Gwyneth Griffiths’s baby won’t know anything about that. Let’s go. She got her husband to phone for us, and I must have had the message more than ten minutes gone!’

  Mrs Tattersall carried a pager which she called a ‘bleep’ and when husbands and neighbours, and occasionally even the labouring mothers themselves, called from phone boxes on street corners, a message was relayed via the hospital switchboard operator, telling Mrs Tattersall she was needed. The majority of homes in the district had no telephone and, typically, the ‘pips’ went on the payphone before anything more detailed than the name of the patient and possibly an address were relayed to the telephonist. As a result Mrs Tattersall rarely had the opportunity to make any sort of assessment of the situation before she dashed off to what might be a false alarm or an imminent delivery. This meant she had to treat each call as if it might be an emergency, which accounted for her always appearing to be in a tearing hurry.

  I had grown used to my heart rate quickening whenever Mrs Tattersall used the word ‘bleep’, and that morning I responded as she had taught me to, immediately focusing on the job in hand. I took the gas and air cylinder from her and we dashed to the car park together, with me apologising again and having a job keeping up with her impressively fast pace.

  ‘Don’t worry, love,’ Mrs Tattersall wheezed, hauling her heavy bag of equipment into the boot of the car. ‘First baby, should be slow, and it’s very close by. Had a couple of false alarms already, so we might be on a wasted journey in any case.’

  It was November now and I’d been working alongside Mrs Tattersall for five months – long enough to know she often said something along those lines. Even if her own heart was pounding faster and faster as we sped to each labouring mother, you would never have known it.

  ‘I remember Mrs Griffiths,’ I said, registering that she lived close to Moira Petty along Hope Street. ‘Little two-up, two-down, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, one of them you can’t swing a cat in,’ Mrs Tattersall sighed. She paused for a moment to light a cigarette before pushing her foot hard on the accelerator.

  Mr Griffiths threw the front door open dramatically as we stepped out of the trusty Avenger less than ten minutes later.

  ‘Midwife’s here!’ he called to his wife upstairs. He turned back to us. ‘Come quick, baby’s coming!’ he told me, his voice agitated, imploring me to get a move on. With mounting panic in his voice, he added breathlessly, ‘She’s at top o’ stairs!’

  There was a narrow hallway at the foot of the stairs and when I stepped inside and looked up I was greeted by the startling sight of Mrs Griffiths standing on the very top step, groaning and holding two rather tatty-looking tartan tea towels between her legs. She was wearing a long skirt that was hitched up around her hips and I was shocked to see that she was, in fact, trying to hold the baby back in with the tea towels.

  ‘I’ll get the gear,’ I heard Mrs Tattersall call over my shoulder as I shot up the stairs like a rat up a drainpipe.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Griffiths,’ I soothed. ‘Let’s get you comfortable.’

  There was no way in the world I could have shifted her, so I helped Mrs Griffiths lie down right where she stood, on the tiny square of landing that divided the two bedrooms on either side of the house. She was a large woman and she filled the entire space, while I crouched perilously on the top stair.

  ‘Waters went,’ she gasped. ‘Tried to stop baby comin’ as best as I could.’

  ‘Keep breathing and try not to push just yet,’ I instructed. ‘Mrs Tattersall is …’

  ‘Right here!’ I heard my mentor puff.

  I turned and saw her mounting the stairs two at a time, gas and air in one hand and her equipment bag in the other. The sight of her instantly reassured me. I even managed a smile, as I saw that she still had her cigarette in her mouth as she dash
ed towards us. With no free hand, she was dragging on it through puckered lips.

  Dropping her baggage, Mrs Tattersall deftly manoeuvred herself into a position behind Mrs Griffiths and rasped through her half-smoked cigarette: ‘Try to squat, that’s it, lean back on me, on my legs if you like … Linda, can you see the head?’

  ‘Yes I can,’ I answered, though I could barely see Mrs Tattersall through the swirls of grey smoke gathering all around us.

  ‘It’s coming!’ Mrs Griffiths coughed.

  Her baby daughter was born moments later into a thick cloud of smoke while Mrs Tattersall continued to suck on the last dregs of her cigarette. The elated parents didn’t seem to bother about that one bit, and I had long ago learned never to be surprised by what happened on my rounds with Mrs Tattersall.

  Mr Griffiths, who was standing at the bottom of the stairs, gave us a hearty round of applause when he heard the little girl cry, while Mrs Griffiths thanked us over and over again and apologised for leaving it so late to phone.

  ‘Good job I had the tea towels,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want the baby to arrive before you did. Anyway, I can’t thank you enough, I really can’t.’

  As I drove home from work on my moped that evening I was mulling over the events of the day and feeling quietly pleased with myself for dealing with Mrs Griffiths so calmly in the circumstances. It was very dark, damp and foggy. My legs were aching with tiredness as I rode the moped, but my mind was alert with the excitement of the day. I was almost a qualified midwife and I was thoroughly enjoying myself, delivering babies out in the community. I’d been studying hard, too, and I was fairly confident I would pass my final exam, which was an oral and written test, without a hitch.