A Mother's Gift

by Maggie Hope

  It had been different with Robert. Her lovely man. Robert. Aching, she turned over on to her side. Robert had loved her, really loved her, not what she could bring to the marriage. She had been able to conceive with Robert and she had two beautiful children to show for it. Oh, Robert, why did you have to die? The familiar ache settled on her, in her stomach, in her head. Robert was gone and in his place she had Matthew and Matthew didn’t love her. It was her own fault, she could have refused to marry him, she had been a widow for goodness sake. She had wanted a father for her children and her own father had persuaded her that Matthew was just the man. And he had been kind when he courted her. In fact, he was kind to her most of the time. The exceptions were all in bed.

  Dear God, she prayed, let there be a child. Then perhaps he would leave her alone. She lay awake for a long time, allowing the thoughts and memories of Robert to fill her mind. They were a comfort to her, she could almost forget the reality of her present life when she did that but sometimes they made her feel disloyal to Matthew. Tonight she didn’t care.

  Grey light was creeping around the edge of the curtains before Mary Anne finally got to sleep. She could hear movement in the dressing room next door, then water running. Matthew was an early riser. After a while the soft noises stopped; she heard his door close. It was only then that she relaxed sufficiently to drop into sleep and then she dreamed. The old dream, the one she loved. Robert was alive and they were living at Whitworth Hall and the sun was always shining and the children laughing. All four of them would go down on to the beach near Hart and they would search for shells and watch the sea coalers and their donkeys. Little Robert loved to watch the sea coalers.

  Maisie was slow to walk and Robert would take her on his shoulders and they would walk along the beach to Crimdon and back to the Hall in time for tea. And then she woke up and the euphoria would fade.

  Matthew never had time to spare to take the afternoon off from the business, she thought. And even if he did it wouldn’t be the same. Wearily, Mary Anne forced herself out of bed. It was time to start another day.

  Chapter Six

  ‘BY,’ SAID KITTY as they sat by the sitting-room fire on the afternoon of Christmas Day. ‘I reckon everyone in the rows will remember this Christmas all right. You should have seen the queue at the store yesterday morning, Noah. Ready money going over the counter an’ all. Some folk could even afford to go into Auckland to buy the bairns a few bits. Radley’s bus was nearly full.’

  ‘Will you stop rattling on, woman? I’m trying to tune the wireless in,’ Noah growled.

  All that came from the accumulator set Noah had his ear pressed up against was a series of crackles and buzzes. Katie watched her grandfather excitedly, the wireless had been bought especially for Christmas with the dividend money Kitty had saved up in the store. All three had gone into Auckland to the main Co-op store to buy it, for the local branch sold little else but groceries and hardware. It had been a new experience altogether to see her grand-parents walking arm in arm down Newgate Street for all the world like a young courting couple.

  ‘Merry Christmas to all!’

  A perfunctory knock heralded the entrance of Dottie and Jim from next door, Jim actually wearing a collar on his shirt and his braces on his shoulders rather than dangling down by the sides of his trousers. They were swiftly followed by Billy Wright, his mam and dad and his sister June. Before long the room was full to bursting. The young ones sat on the clippie mat leaving the sofa and the chairs brought in from the kitchen for their elders. Billy managed to sit next to Katie and was conscious the whole time of her thigh pressed close to his in the crush. All eyes turned to the corner by the window, where Noah still had his ear to the set. The crackling sounds were becoming longer and louder.

  With an important though abstracted expression he fiddled with the aerial wire running from the back of the set out of a hole in the window frame up to the roof. He moved it slightly then went outside to gaze up at the aerial; came back in and twiddled with the knob.

  ‘Can I give you a hand, Noah?’ asked Will Wright, Billy’s father, starting to get to his feet but Noah waved him back.

  ‘Nay lad, I can manage,’ he said.

  Sure enough the crackling stopped and a voice came over the airwaves. Instantly there was an absolute hush among the listeners in the room. Noah sat back in triumph and looked round at the others with pride.

  ‘We are here in Salisbury Cathedral where the Carol Service is about to begin,’ the voice said.

  ‘Hey! He talks funny, doesn’t he?’ Kitty demanded of Dottie. ‘Do you think he’s one o’ them foreigners?’

  Noah frowned blackly at her. ‘By, woman, you don’t half show your ignorance,’ he snapped.

  ‘I only thought—’

  ‘Well, don’t! He talks like that because he’s a southerner, that’s all. He can’t help it,’ said Noah. Then everyone fell silent as organ music filled the room and the choir began to sing. And they stayed silent for the whole of the programme which lasted forty-five minutes.

  Afterwards Kitty served tea and slices of Christmas cake with Wensleydale cheese. Katie, handing round plates of food and cups of tea, was happy enough to burst. It was the first party she could remember since she was very small. By the time the visitors filed out of the front door rather than the back for it was, after all, Christmas Day it was already dark. Outside, she could see the lamplighter with his long pole over his shoulder walking down the row, pausing at intervals to light the streetlamps. The gas flaring up before dying down to a steady glow added to her enjoyment of the magical day.

  ‘Eeh, it’s a miracle all right,’ said Dottie, lingering on the doorstep.

  ‘What?’ asked Katie, still watching the lamplighter.

  ‘Tch,’ Dottie chided. ‘What do you think? The wireless of course. By, I don’t know what my poor mother would have made of it. Merry Christmas, pet.’

  ‘Aye, merry Christmas,’ the others echoed and Katie went in and closed the door. The light from the gas mantle shone softly on the tinsel streamer wound round the brass rail above the fire and the red paper bell hanging from the ceiling. Oh yes, it had been a lovely Christmas.

  1931

  The memory of that day came back to Katie as she wheeled the trolley round F Ward. Christmas Day in hospital was so different from what she had been used to, it was a different world altogether. She certainly had not realised how different when she passed her entrance examination and received the letter of admittance. She had been euphoric about it and her gran had been so proud she had told everyone in the rows. But Katie had worked so hard at night school, she deserved to get in.

  She gazed round the ward; there were some empty beds, their counterpanes lying smooth and green and with the sheet turned over them showing white for the regulation twelve inches. Everyone who could be sent home for the holiday had been but there were still patients who needed to stay. Women who had had emergency operations within the last week; a ruptured ectopic pregnancy case and three who had miscarried. Or had tried to abort their babies, depending on the way you looked at it, Staff Nurse had said caustically.

  ‘A bit too heavy with the pennyroyal,’ the senior nurse had muttered. A bit hard, they were on this ward, Katie thought. Especially remembering some of the young women from Winton Colliery trying to bring up three or four children born in as many years with next to no money.

  For the hard times were back yet again, the men working short time or not at all. According to the wireless, it was all due to something that had happened in America, the Wall Street crash they called it and it triggered off depression around the world. Three days’ pay a week went absolutely nowhere, she knew that all right.

  Katie had just started her probationer nurse’s training and had been on the wards of South-East Durham General Hospital for only a few weeks yet she had dared to voice her opinion of the staff’s suspicious attitudes to some of the unfortunate women once. Only the once had she done that for she had had her head bitt
en off for her trouble.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ Nurse Potter had snapped. Nurse Potter was a third-year nurse who would soon be taking her finals and so someone not to be argued with.

  ‘Well, she has five children already and she is only twenty-two, I—’ Katie had begun, referring to a recent emergency admission but she had shut up as she saw the quelling look on Nurse Potter’s face.

  ‘They deserve what they get,’ the senior nurse had said as they walked down the corridor on their way to the breakfast break. ‘She could have left those bairns without a mother, did you think of that? And any road, it’s against my religion. It’s murder.’

  What Doris Teasdale, the girl in question had got was a night of appalling pain after the registrar had examined her. ‘She won’t die this time,’ he had said. ‘Let her stew for a few hours.’

  ‘Arrogant pig,’ Katie muttered, fortunately not close enough for Dr Raine to hear properly. He had eyed her suspiciously however and after that ignored her presence completely, sailing past her down the ward as she stood, often with mop in hand cleaning the floor or coming and going to the sluice with bedpan in hand.

  Doris Teasdale was one of the patients still in the ward. She lay against her pillow with a face so white it matched the pillow slip as Katie handed out the tea.

  ‘There’s a nice bit of cake, today, Mrs Teasdale,’ Katie said as she brought round the tea trolley. ‘Howay, I’ll help you sit up. I’ve put two sugars in the tea and there’s some nice bread and butter. It’ll do you good to eat it.’

  ‘I’m not hungry, Nurse,’ Doris said, her voice thin and weary.

  ‘Mebbe not but you have to eat it, man, it will get thrown into the pig bin if you don’t. Anyway, think of the bairns,’ said Katie and tucked her own arm under Doris’s so as to haul her up the bed. ‘The visitors will be here in half an hour, there’s a full hour today, won’t that be lovely?’

  ‘I’m not expecting anybody,’ said Doris. ‘Just me mam and she can’t stay long ’cause she has to leave the bairns with the neighbour.’

  Katie almost asked where her man would be but bit the words off unspoken. She’d only seen Mr Teasdale once before and then he had stayed for all of ten minutes of the allotted half-hour. He was probably out getting a skinful, she thought.

  Doris took a sip of tea, however, and started on the bread and butter. She just couldn’t leave good food to get thrown in the pig bin. She’d eat it now, Katie knew, even if she had to force it down.

  ‘Don’t stand there talking to the patients all morning, Nurse Benfield.’

  Katie jumped at Sister’s voice, she hadn’t realised she was in the ward. Sister was standing only a few feet away frowning heavily.

  ‘No Sister.’ Katie hurried back to the trolley and pushed it on to the next patient jerking it a little and catching it on the end of Doris’s bed and making the cups rattle. Behind her she heard Sister’s long-suffering sigh.

  ‘And hurry up with the teas,’ said Sister. ‘Father Christmas will be in shortly.’

  A merry Christmas to you, too, Katie muttered under her breath as she hurried round the rest of the patients. She took the trolley in to the ward kitchen and cleared it. There would be the washing up to do later for the maid had the day off on Christmas Day. The nurses and housemen were the only ones working today. All the nursing staff was because, as had been explained to Katie, it wasn’t fair for only some of them to have the day off. So it was decreed that there should be no off-duty at all on this special day. With the number of patients down and empty beds on the wards it meant that the nurses spent a lot of their time avoiding Sister who was of the opinion that a good nurse could always find something useful to do.

  Consequently, Katie was lurking in the sluice when the consultant, Mr Hobson, came sweeping into the ward, booming heartily. His cotton-wool beard and moustache clung precariously under his nose, rather in the way his theatre mask so often did. His red gown, the hospital’s second best, for the best one was doing duty in the children’s ward, barely fitted his rotund figure but the few patients hardly noticed. As usual they were struck with awe at his august presence.

  The nurses were in a row with Sister at the head, ready to do Mr Hobson’s bidding. All except Katie, that is, she was coming into the ward behind him. When she did manage to sidle round him and attach herself to the end of the line, she was rewarded with another of Sister’s black looks.

  She hadn’t time to be apprehensive, however, for Mr Hobson was fishing in his bag and bringing out small parcels and handing them to the nurses to give out. So for the minute it was all bustle. And when the surgeon went off down the corridor, having done his duty so that he could go home to his own Christmas, it was time for the visitors to be allowed in.

  Altogether, Katie thought to herself as she trailed off-duty at half past eight in the evening having been on the ward for thirteen hours, her first Christmas on the wards had been long and hard. For in the middle of the visiting hour there had been an emergency patient to be prepared for theatre who turned out to be a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Mr Hobson had been called out to operate and he was none too pleased about that. Then old Mrs Turner, who had an prolapsed uterus sticking out between her legs, had had a touch of diarrhoea from a surfeit of Christmas cake her daughter had brought in for her. The daughter had also brought a quarter-bottle of navy rum to wash the cake down and the old lady had kept it under the bedclothes so she could take an occasional sip.

  By six o’clock the odour of rum had begun to permeate the ward and Mrs Turner was complaining that she was feeling badly and a body could die in this hell-hole of a place. And other, worse smells got mixed up with the rum and there was a great deal of shouting when Staff Nurse found the almost empty bottle and tried to take it away. And Katie and the third-year nurse had the job of cleaning up Mrs Turner and stopping her from climbing out of bed. Then they had to make her comfortable which wasn’t too difficult because the old lady fell asleep halfway through her bed being re-made.

  The bed had to be made up for the patient returning from theatre and Sister wasn’t satisfied with the way Katie had done her hospital corners and pulled them out so they had to be done again. Staff Nurse was doing the round of dressings and douches and when she woke Mrs Turner up to do her, once again there was pandemonium.

  ‘What is all this racket?’ demanded Sister coming out of her office, report book, in which she had been recording the happenings of the day, in hand. Her voice was so thunderous even Mrs Turner was cowed and peace reigned for a while.

  Katie was too exhausted to eat much supper. In any case she had promised Billy she would pop out to see him if she got the chance. Billy Wright was staying in Middlesbrough over the Christmas holiday. He was staying with his aunt and uncle who had left the coal pits of South-West Durham to manage an iron mine at Eston.

  Of course, his real reason for being there was so he could be near Katie for Billy was in love with her; couldn’t remember a time when he was not. She knew that, but now that Katie had achieved her ambition of being accepted for nursing training, she was not about to give it all up to become a housewife. Maybe in three years’ time when she had finished her training. Or better still, five years when she would be a qualified midwife with a bit of luck. Or even something higher? A ward sister? But usually her imagination gave up when she thought of that, a ward sister was altogether too exalted a position for a lass from Winton Colliery.

  Katie exchanged her white nurse’s cap for the outdoor regulation one and wrapped her cloak close around her before closing the door of her tiny room in the Nurses’ Home and leaving the building. She hurried along the side path to the imposing iron gates at the entrance.

  ‘Evening nurse,’ the porter’s voice came from inside the lodge where he sat muffled against the cold. ‘Merry Christmas.’

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ Katie echoed, ‘I’m just popping out for a breath of air.’ She hurried along the damp pavement to the corner for it was strictly forbidden t
o have followers hanging round the hospital gates. Around her, mist from the river rose and curled as the tide ran in from Teesport. In the distance a ship’s fog horn blew eerily.

  Billy was there, stamping his feet against the cold and rubbing his hands together. Katie hurried up to him.

  ‘I’m not very late, am I? Only Sister keeps finding something else for me to do—’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Katie Benfield.’ He interrupted her explanation by taking hold of her by both arms and kissing her quickly on the lips.

  ‘Oh! Merry Christmas,’ said Katie, rather breathlessly. She could still feel the soft but firm touch of his lips against her own and they tingled, confusing her. ‘I – I can’t stay long mind.’

  ‘I thought we could go into the Station Hotel and have a drink though,’ said Billy.

  ‘I’m in uniform, I can’t go for a drink.’

  ‘Well, we can have a cup of coffee in the lounge, there’s nothing to take exception to in that, is there?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  So long as no one saw her, she thought. That was the trouble with meeting him so late in the evening. There were no tea shops open. Sitting in a deep, plush armchair in a corner of the lounge, half-hidden from the few other customers by an enormous Christmas tree, she felt a little safer. It was warm, and the coffee hot and milky though it still tasted bitter to Katie. She felt she would never get used to drinking coffee.