by Ruth Skrine
I stayed in the maternity hospital for a week. When I went home to Green Gables I was expected to do nothing but feed the baby and myself. I was glad of my mother’s supervision. In response to some superstitious fear she had refused to buy anything for the baby until the birth was safely over. Then she had rushed out and bought dresses, nappies and a set of scales to test weigh the baby before and after every feed. At the time I thought they were helpful but now I wonder. For her, test weighing had provided a way of getting through the process as rapidly as possible. For me it was different. I wanted, as all mothers do, to provide the very best care in the world. I enjoyed breast feeding and if the requisite weight had not been gained I would sit for a long time, giving my baby no opportunity to take more at one time, less at another. I was trying to impose my will on someone who had a strong will of her own. Looking back this seems symbolic of an invasive and perhaps over-controlling style of mothering. I had no wish to emulate my mother in any way, but patterns repeat themselves however much we try consciously to break them.
Ralph came to collect us after two weeks. When we got back to Hewell Grange I walked into the sitting room and found a small black and white television set, still something of a rarity. Trying to adapt to an unfamiliar routine, and tied to the house for much of the time, I found the set a great comfort.
Despite the opportunity to be passively entertained, and to prop Helen up in front of Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men from an early age, I did not take easily to motherhood. Living in a semi-detached house I was sensitive about disturbing the neighbours, so tended to feed the baby at the first cry during the night, with the result that it took her a long time to drop that feed.
Dilla, the governor’s wife, was a great help. She loved babies and ground her teeth with pleasure when she saw one. If Helen would not stop crying, I carried her the two-minute walk to the governor’s house, the old gatehouse which stood at the top of the drive to the large mansion that was the main borstal building. I would sit in Dilla’s kitchen, where the atmosphere soothed us both. Dilla taught me various household skills I did not know I lacked, including the way to hang shirts on the line so that the wind blew down the sleeves. She walked with us through the grounds, ever patient and interested in the minutiae of my disturbed nights, washing powders and tiny changes in my developing offspring that only I could see.
The grounds were beautiful, with a lake and rhododendron bushes. One patch must have been a nursery bed for azaleas. The bushes, in different shades, were now so big and tightly packed that one could not move between them. The perfume was overpowering. We were not supposed to pick any of the flowers, but once I pushed Helen down the drive in her large pram and smuggled some scented yellow blooms under the cover. I dared not put them in the window – my husband was a member of the senior staff and I was supposed to be setting an example to the officers’ wives, not stealing from prison property.
After about four weeks I was asked to do some surgeries in one of the practices where I had helped out before, some way from our home. The GP’s wife offered to look after my baby while I worked. I was pleased and flattered, thinking that seeing patients would be easier than motherhood. On the second day I was waiting to collect some results at the pathology lab. There was no one behind the counter so I rang the bell. No one came. I put my finger on the bell and left it there. A startled girl appeared.
‘Where have you been?’ I shouted. ‘This desk should be manned at all times.’ Then I burst into tears and blurted out, ‘I’m late for her feed.’
The poor girl had no idea what to do with this distraught doctor. It took me a while to explain that my baby was totally breast fed and the person looking after her had nothing to give her. ‘She will be crying and I can’t bear her to feel I’ve deserted her.’ As I ran from the room, without the report, I realised I was not yet fit for work.
A few months later I started to do surgeries in Redditch while my neighbour Cathy looked after Helen. By this time I could manage, and it was the start of a variety of part-time jobs.
I was particularly lucky to be a professionally trained woman at that time. My parents had been passionate believers in the equality of men and women and had given me exactly the same chances as my brother. They had assumed I would train for a profession, like my mother, who had benefited from the first wave of feminism at the beginning of the twentieth century. However there was no pressure from them or from society to climb to the top of my particular ladder or to compete on equal terms with the men. I was not expected to return to full-time work, or return at all if I did not want to do so. I would have been deeply unhappy to hand over my mothering role to anyone else, despite the fact that it did not come easily. In addition, we had not built our lifestyle on the assumption of two salaries, but started modestly with what furniture our parents could spare.
I was always aware that the majority of women still had to fight for the right to equal opportunities and equal pay. But during my career I have met some women who have been left in a muddle. I remember one girl in particular whose longstanding relationship broke up because her man wanted more cherishing. She wept bitterly in my surgery, sobbing that if only she had realised, she would have enjoyed cooking for him and running the house. She had been brainwashed into thinking those jobs were beneath her. We seem to have gone through a period when social and peer pressures made women feel it was weak for them to be more ‘caring’ than their man. Jenny, whose views always influenced me greatly, believed firmly that small children need their own mothers. She also thought that one member of the couple needed to be prepared to bend and that this was usually the woman. I’m not sure about either of these views. Good mothering in the early months and years is vital but does not necessarily have to be supplied by the mother herself. Modern relationships are much more flexible and couples can work out differently balanced partnerships. However, the unfulfilled nurturing needs of some high-flying business or professional woman may be a high price to pay. Perhaps in the past some men with such needs also felt deprived. My husband could have been among them. I suspect that he sublimated his parental energies into the care of offenders of all ages, contributing much to society. But by expectation and by nature, I think my need to be the carer of my only child was stronger.
When Helen was three months old, Jenny got married and I was her maid of honour. I chose a most unsuitable green satin frock that showed every mark; I had to pad it with gauze to prevent my milk leaking through. I hardly dare hold my baby for she used to regurgitate milk after every feed, probably because I over-fed her. Ralph was still not confident enough to hold her for any length of time. Biz had also been invited to the celebrations and performed a most useful aunt’s role of holding the baby, mostly upside down, during the ceremony and reception.
Immediately afterwards Ralph and I left for a holiday in a hire boat on the fens. We had an idyllic week, it never rained and my fully breast-fed baby had no dirty nappy during the whole time. Luckily I knew this could happen and did not worry. We passed several other boats with nappies strung out on deck. News of the age, sex and sleeping patterns of our offspring was shouted over the calm waters as we drifted past, generating a sense of solidarity. The trip strengthened our love of inland waterways, but we had to wait until Helen was able to swim before we could embark on another holiday afloat.
She was never a good sleeper and for several months between the ages of two and three years she was awake for three or four hours every night. The only way we could keep her quiet was to take her downstairs and play. Again, like the time Ralph got us moved when he thought our marriage was in danger, he showed a strength I had not expected. When I became exhausted and could not get out of bed he took over, endlessly patient and enjoying the chance to get to know his daughter for the first time. My possessiveness played into his apprehension, so that throughout our parenting life I had to be on the verge of collapse before he was able to come to my aid.
On Helen’s third birthday we moved to Parkhurst on th
e Isle of Wight. Our house was one of the best we ever had, with airy rooms and high ceilings. It was outside the walls of the prison but set in a large garden with a tennis court, next to a similar property where the governor lived. A working party of prisoners tended our gardens and distributed plants with abandon. If my garden sprouted new clumps it meant Ralph was in favour that week and bare patches would have appeared in someone else’s flowerbeds.
The men made a great fuss of Helen. On one occasion they gave her a pristine teddy bear. To her dismay it had to be returned. Staff and their families could not accept presents that could be misconstrued as bribes. One day I came home from work to discover they had made us a pond, in a most unsuitable place under a tree, and carved the letters HELEN in the concrete at the front. It had set hard by the time I arrived, making me cringe with embarrassment. Logos were not the ubiquitous presence that they are now and I had inherited the belief that carving one’s name, or even initials, on a desk, tree or anywhere else was extremely vulgar.
I started to work part-time in the infant and school health service. The medical officer of health was keen to build a good relationship with the local GPs and freed me to work for them as a locum during the school holidays. This cooperative approach was unusual at the time. Many GPs felt the public health service interfered with their patients and caused unnecessary work for them. Historically the National Health Service had been organised in three parts, Hospitals, General Practice and Public Health. Not until the 1970s did these barriers begin to break down and the attachment of nurses and health visitors to individual practices started the primary health care teams of today.
I enjoyed infant welfare clinics, though the health visitors did much of the routine work. Having a small child of my own it was easy for me to sympathise with the worries of other mothers and they appreciated the time I gave them. Many doctors are irritated by over-anxious patients but I have always been happier trying to help the worried well than the seriously ill.
School medical sessions were more of a strain. I worked to increase my paediatric knowledge, reading and attending meetings where possible. Most of the children were physically fit. My worries were directed to the school misfits. I realise now that I must have missed several cases of sexual abuse. One particular child, louse-ridden and constantly wet with urine, had clearly been sexualised, wanting to kiss me on the lips and snuggling too close at every opportunity. The signs were not well recognised at the time and the system of cooperation between social services and the medical profession almost non-existent.
Before Helen started at the local primary school, Mrs Hurford, the wife of the prison chaplain, kindly took care of her while I was at work. She was much better with small children than I was, patient and gentle with a family of her own. I am greatly in her debt and we have remained in contact with her family ever since.
I remember our stay at Parkhurst as a settled and fulfilling time. We learned to body surf in Compton bay. One memorable day in the pouring rain we went down to the beach with the Robertons. We were the only people on the wide expanse of sand and even Dilla, who normally needed strong sunlight to come alive fully, swam and laughed in the waves. We climbed back into the cars in our soaking swimsuits, there being nowhere to change in the dry. But one near disaster of my own making overshadows these happy memories.
I had gone to work leaving a bottle of cough medicine on a high shelf. Helen, now in her fourth year, decided to play nurses with the daughter of the lady who cleaned my house. She got a chair and climbed up. As the ring leader she must have drunk the larger portion, for the other girl suffered no ill effects. Helen became increasingly sleepy as the afternoon went on. I sent for our GP, Paul Hooper, who with his wife Helen became good friends of mine. He judged that my Helen was going to be all right – but the drowsiness got worse and it seemed to me that she forgot to breathe if I did not tell her to do so. I did not dare leave her for a second, even taking her with me to the toilet. Later that evening we moved her into a ward in the local hospital but she got worse during the night. At 6 a.m. both Paul and I thought she needed to be on a ventilator. No such apparatus for a small child was available on the island. He rang the shipping company to ask them to hold the first ferry across to the mainland. We raced to the terminal with sirens blazing. Paul and the Ward Sister from the hospital came with me in the ambulance while Ralph followed in his car. During the crossing Helen became so deeply unconscious that she tolerated an airway in her mouth. I suggested that we might have to use a laryngoscope to put a tube down through her vocal cords. Paul said he did not have the experience or skill to consider such a thing. Having given some anaesthetics in Pontefract I surprised myself by being prepared to try if necessary, although I had never attempted such a manoeuvre in a small child.
We waited. At that stage I told Paul that I wished I could pray. He put an arm round me and said, ‘Don’t worry, you have an Anglican on one side of you and a good Catholic on the other, we will do the praying for you, atheist though you are.’
Helen got no worse. By the time we arrived at the hospital I had watched every breath she had taken for the last twenty hours. The doctor on call came into the ambulance to assess her and carried her into the small intensive care unit. I could hardly believe she was now in safe hands and I could relinquish my vigil. The doctor showed us kindness beyond the call of any duty, walking us round the grounds and arranging somewhere for us to stay. I phoned my parents. When I woke from a few hours’ sleep in the B&B they were in the room, having already visited Helen. They said that in their opinion she was fine and at the moment she was in no need of a ventilator. They had brought money, washing things, pyjamas, all sorts of eats and even reading matter for the two of us. We had left the island in such a hurry that we had nothing. The one thing I wanted was lipstick. I still felt undressed without it, and my mother, who did not really approve, ventured forth and bought me some.
The next morning we went into the ward to find Helen sitting up in her bed studying an alphabet book. ‘Look Mummy, that is a V and that a W.’ She had never identified them before. Clearly she had not suffered any lasting brain damage. I left the room and wept while Ralph sat with her identifying more letters.
10
The Tug of Domesticity
By the time we moved to Wormwood Scrubs in west London, after three years on the Isle of Wight, I had accepted that our unsettled life would make it impossible for me to get a job as a hospital specialist. I needed to remain in the sort of work that would be easily available, even if we were a long way from the big centres of population. My mother and others thought I was at a great professional disadvantage; for me it was an excuse to forgo the struggle up any academic ladder. But I had become bored by community infant welfare and school clinics. I took on some surgeries in general practice but they did not fit easily into my domestic set-up.
Ralph was still on duty every other weekend, but came home earlier than he had done when working with young offenders. I had to juggle surgeries with his hours and the regular task of driving Helen to and from school. This made me consider the possibility of training to work in family planning clinics, which were often held in the evenings. So far I had avoided the Family Planning Association (FPA), for it had been started and was run by lay women, whom I associated with the sort of do-gooders my mother despised so much. . . who wore large hats and spent their time at tea parties. My friend and colleague Heather Montford reminds me that the family planning doctors were often considered ‘nice ladies in twin sets and pearls’ who had taken up the work as ‘something to do in the evenings’.
Such ignorant views were a parody of the truth. The FPA had been formed by dedicated pioneers who appreciated the plight of women with no access to birth control. It took time for me to realise what an enviable position I had enjoyed, growing up in a family where such matters were discussed. My father was isolated as the one GP in the area, possibly even in the country at that time, prepared to give advice and fit vaginal diaphragms, the
only reasonably reliable method for the woman to use. I am sure this was prompted by his wish for women to have healthy babies, spaced appropriately, but I suspect my mother also encouraged him to provide the means for women to have some control over their own bodies. Before the 1970s doctors did not consider that it was their job to give such advice. Only with the introduction of the pill did they show a reluctant interest and it was many years before they began to offer the full range of services developed by the FPA.
When the NHS was introduced in 1948, family planning was not included. A network of FPA clinics continued to offer a service for which patients paid a modest fee. The pill was approved for use in these clinics in 1961 and the intrauterine device (IUD) made its appearance a few years later. The organisation trained their doctors and nurses well, and then employed them to run the clinics. Under the supervision of the Medical Director the basic training demanded attendance at a training clinic for at least six sessions, observing and then seeing patients under the critical eye of a training doctor. Once I had obtained the necessary certificates I started to do locum sessions and was soon appointed to a couple of permanent clinics within easy reach of the prison.
Following Helen’s episode with the cough medicine I had become an even more anxious mother. This was not helped when she developed vestibular neuronitis, a viral infection of her inner ear that gave her acute vertigo. The symptoms came on one evening when I was at a clinic – where Ralph phoned me. I finished the remaining patients and dashed home convinced, for some reason, that she had a cerebral tumour. We wrapped her in a blanket and carried her to the Hammersmith Hospital, almost next door to our house. The doctor on call tried to reassure me and arranged for us to see the consultant paediatrician the next day. She did not recover as quickly as the specialist expected. He put the blame on me for being a working mother. He insisted I take at least three months off work to look after her.