The Wartime Midwives

by Daisy Styles

  ‘Maud! How do you do it?’ he enthused as he took her elbow and led her into the drawing room. Jones was already slumped low in the sofa by the fire. ‘Doctor! I was just saying,’ Percival boomed, ‘how does Matron always manage to look so young and attractive after a gruelling day on the wards?’

  Jones made an ungracious snort while Matron responded with a girlish laugh. ‘Oh, Archie, you say the nicest things,’ she gushed.

  Settling Matron on the chaise longue, he mixed her a stiff Gilbey’s gin and tonic, then poured himself a double malt whisky. Sitting on the sofa beside Matron, who inched closer to him, Percival chinked his cut-glass tumbler against her cocktail glass.

  ‘Bottoms up,’ he joked, as he all but drained his in one.

  The meeting proceeded with its usual tedium: monies were discussed and apportioned. End-of-year reports showed that Mary Vale, as usual, just about broke even on the back of the richer girls’ fees and the occasional bequest. The convent, an independent body, received rents both from its vast farming land and from the Home itself, out of which Father Benedict was paid and the nursing staff too. On his second stiff malt Percival grumbled about the meagre stipend that was allocated to Father Benedict, who oversaw all of the adoptions at Mary Vale.

  ‘I hardly see why the bumbling old fool should be paid anything,’ he barked. ‘After all, he is a priest – what’s he going to spend his money on, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere?’ he added with a sarcastic laugh.

  Matron, who agreed with every word that fell from Archie’s fleshy lips, nodded effusively. ‘My word, the fuss and bother Father Benedict and Sister Ann make, worrying over fitting the right child to the right parents – you’d think they were selecting the royal line of succession!’

  Making a disapproving moue with her mouth, Matron continued, ‘Some of the babies of the better class of girls end up with the most unsuitable parents – painters and decorators, fishermen, builders, chimney-sweeps and the like,’ she sniffed. ‘It pains me to see them fall so low in society.’

  Percival shot a furtive glance at Dr Jones, who by now was snoring softly against a bank of silk cushions.

  ‘And how would you have it otherwise, Matron?’ he asked in a low voice.

  ‘Well, take Cynthia Humberstone,’ Matron started. ‘You remember her being here only last year, don’t you? She gave birth to a fine young son of impeccable breeding – well, at least from one side of the family,’ she added, as she drained her glass. ‘And where did the illegitimate grandson of a lord end up? With a drab middle-aged couple who ran a corner shop in Atherton!’

  Percival stifled a yawn; what with a drunken Jones snoring on one side of him and Matron working up a storm on the other, he was longing for the wretched meeting to be over. ‘I suppose if the child is adequately housed, our business is seen to be concluded,’ he mumbled blandly.

  Matron pressed on undeterred. ‘In return for the adoption of the Humberstone boy, the Home received nothing!’

  Hard-hearted Matron would never appreciate the joy these new parents had experienced as they wheeled away their son in a brand-new pram they’d spent most of their savings on. After years of a barren marriage the couple hadn’t been able to believe that the child sleeping between the softest sheets they could buy was their own precious boy, who would grow up poor but happy and much loved in the back streets of Atherton.

  Impatient with the conversation, Percival remarked sharply, ‘I thought one of the purposes of Mary Vale was to get the unwanted babies adopted.’

  ‘You’re missing the point, Sir,’ she replied equally as sharply. ‘If the Humberstone child had been offered to a more suitable family, we might have received a donation, which has to be better than nothing at all.’ Matron sighed before she continued, ‘I don’t know, it just seems a tragedy that we can’t take advantage of the wealth some of our residents have to offer.’

  Hearing the word ‘wealth’, Percival’s flagging interest suddenly revived. Giving her a mocking look, he said, ‘And how could we do that, Matron? The Home is founded on the convent’s charitable trust fund; the Order of the Holy Mother is not a profit-making organization.’

  Checking to make sure the stupefied Dr Jones really was asleep, Matron dropped her voice so low that Percival almost had to press his ear to her mouth in order to catch what she said.

  ‘If we were to very discreetly, and only in the right circles, let it be known that Mary Vale could offer – for a fee, of course – a child of good breeding, we may be able to reach a group of more discerning parents.’

  Percival was flabbergasted by the audacity of her idea. ‘You mean cherry-pick the more superior babies?’

  Matron bridled. ‘They might be bastards, but we could assure our clients that at least one line of their genealogy was respectable.’

  Percival shook his head. ‘You’re suggesting we offer desirable babies with a good blood line to select, affluent customers? For a fee?’ he asked incredulously.

  Matron, unshaken, held his gaze. ‘Exactly so, Sir.’

  Slumping back in his chair, Percival slowly lit up a cigarette, and, blowing smoke into the air, he continued to question Matron. ‘How do we get round the not so small problem of Father Benedict’s role? He is, after all, responsible for all the adoptions in the Home?’

  Matron, who was a little tiddly by now, waved a hand in the air. ‘I’m not sure on that detail,’ she admitted. ‘I’d have to give the matter some thought.’

  Percival got to his feet. Matron might think she’d come up with an interesting concept but the old bat was three sheets to the wind! Glaring at Jones now snoring loudly on the sofa, he wished they’d both get the hell out of his drawing room and leave him in peace. He ended the conversation abruptly. ‘Let’s talk about this matter another time.’

  Seeing Matron’s expression suddenly harden, he quickly changed his tone: the last thing he wanted to do was get on the wrong side of Maud Harding, no matter how irritating she was. Flashing her his most charming smile, he added, ‘Perhaps we could pursue your interesting idea further another time … in private?’

  ‘Of course, Archie,’ Matron gushed as she wobbled to her feet.

  When Sir Percival finally got rid of Matron, who’d rather reluctantly taken Dr Jones home too, he refilled his glass; then, leaning against the ornate marble mantelpiece, he stared long and hard into the flickering flames of the dying fire. Matron’s suggestion of selling specially selected Mary Vale babies was something that had never crossed his mind. He’d dismissed the idea as unworkable, but was there a way, he wondered. Stubbing out his cigarette, Percival slowly drained his glass. If they could get around the sticky problem of Father Benedict’s role, Matron’s idea might be viable. He’d talk to her another time, he decided, when the old bat was stone-cold sober.

  4. Edinburgh

  In her college digs in Durham, Isla Ross took small sips of water from the glass she clutched in her trembling hand.

  ‘God!’ she gasped. ‘If only I could stop being sick …’

  She was trying to pack her belongings into a suitcase in order to vacate her room, which her crabby landlady was keen to repossess.

  ‘I’ll be off soon,’ Isla had promised.

  Secretly, she’d been hanging on for longer than was sensible for one purpose only – to talk to Professor Wiley about her condition.

  ‘God!’ She gagged again, as her stomach seemed to rise into her mouth.

  For somebody who hadn’t eaten for what seemed like days, how could she keep on vomiting like this? After the bout had passed, Isla almost collapsed on her narrow single bed; staring up at the ceiling, she tried to stop the tears welling up in her eyes. What a mess she’d made. What an unbelievable bloody fool she’d been. Up until she’d been twenty-one years old, she’d never even as much as kissed a boy; then, at the beginning of her second year at Durham, she’d fallen head over heels madly in love with her middle-aged English professor, who’d literally seduced her with the poetry of William
Shakespeare.

  All through her first year at college her friends had tried to involve Isla in their social life, which centred around the local dancehall. To start with, just to show willing, she’d gone along with their giggling plans, allowed herself to be made up and dressed up in borrowed crêpe dresses. At the dancehall she’d drunk only shandy, while her friends downed gin and orange, and she’d actually hidden in the ladies’ toilet when the dance band struck up.

  All Isla had ever wanted to do was to read books and study English literature: Shakespeare, Byron, Keats, Chaucer, the Brontës, Jane Austen, T. S. Eliot. A star pupil at Benenden, she’d come to Durham to study – not to dance and drink and find a boyfriend. She appreciated her friends’ joie de vivre (the last thing she wanted was for them to think she was an intellectual snob), but she really did detest those Saturday nights at the dancehall, where she actively avoided men rather than enticed them. When her friends finally realized how shy and retiring Isla was in public, they stopped asking her to join them, for which Isla was truly grateful. And that’s how her student life had been: quiet, peaceful, studious and happy – until Professor Keith Wiley had laid eyes on the cleverest student in his tutorial group. Isla Ross, with her silver-blue, dreamy Highland eyes and luscious pink lips set in a sweet, heart-shaped face framed by curling silver-blonde hair. She had a soft young body, with curves in all the right places, and distinctly strong, muscular legs because of all the hockey matches she’d played at boarding school. Though innocent Isla didn’t know it, Keith Wiley was famous for his dalliances with clever, pretty girls, whom he charmed with compliments and attention. Nobody could have been more infatuated than Isla when Wiley critiqued her essays or selected her to read passages from Shakespeare and Marlowe in her lilting Scottish voice.

  When the professor had asked Isla if she’d like to accompany him to the theatre to see a local production of The Tempest, Isla had almost swooned in delight. They’d met on a snowy night and walked into the town centre, the Professor gallantly taking her arm in order to stop her from slipping on the icy roads. The production was mediocre, but Isla thought it was sublime; she knew all the great lines from the play and whispered them under her breath as she watched the actors on stage. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on,’ she murmured.

  Taking her hand and softly kissing her fingertips, Keith Wiley had concluded the line for her: ‘And our little life is rounded with a sleep.’

  Hearing his deep Northern voice in her ear, Isla’s pulse raced and her heart beat so fast she was sure he would hear it. During the interval they drank sherry at the bar and discussed the performance; Isla had never been so happy, so alert and so in tune with another human being. He might be double her age and her tutor, but she was quite incapable of resisting his kisses; in fact, she welcomed them with an intensity that surprised her.

  ‘Goodnight, dearest girl,’ he’d murmured as they parted, with the snow still falling softly around them. ‘Come and see me in my rooms tomorrow; we have so much to discuss.’

  Weak at the knees, Isla had agreed and gone to bed in a haze of romantic infatuation.

  ‘And look where that got me!’ she thought bitterly now.

  Isla wearily dragged her body off the bed, and, throwing the last of her clothes into a suitcase, she tucked her books and files into a smaller case and checked the room to make sure she’d left nothing behind; then she closed the door on her student days and set off for home. On the train journey north Isla tried to make a plan: she’d keep her condition private for as long as she could, but, when her strict Calvinist parents discovered the truth, would they forgive her for what they would surely consider a wicked sin of the flesh? She’d overheard whispered conversations between her mother and her friends, disapproving remarks about local girls from good families who’d got themselves into trouble. Well, now it was their only daughter who was in trouble, she thought ruefully, as the train rattled towards Edinburgh and the parents who had always terrified her.

  Once the thrill of the chase had worn off, as it inevitably did, Professor Wiley had started to avoid Isla. When she managed to track him down by following him around campus, he’d bundled her into his office and shouted at her after hearing she was pregnant.

  Outraged, he screamed at her, ‘It’s not mine! I know what you stupid young girls are like, sleeping with every Tom, Dick and Harry. Don’t you go laying the blame for your bastard on my doorstep.’

  In floods of tears Isla had sobbed. ‘But, Keith, I was a virgin! You must know that!’

  Even though Wiley had turned his angry gaze away from her tear-stained, imploring face, Isla knew he recalled as clearly as she did the afternoon he’d made love to her on the big sofa in his college rooms, where she now assumed he’d seduced so many other innocent girls long before her. His kisses and caresses had transported her with a passion she’d never experienced before, and it had blazed through her entire body. When she had briefly hesitated, overwhelmed by what she was about to do, her lover had gathered her close to his chest.

  ‘My darling, I promise I will always look after you.’

  Catching her breath, Isla gazed adoringly into his tender face. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really, dearest, darling girl, you’re my treasure, I could never bear to part from you.’

  And in a daze of romantic love Isla had given herself unconditionally to her amorous professor, who had responded with expert skill and tenderness.

  At the end of their love-making, when she lay half naked on the sofa, smiling up at her lover, who traced his hands over her perfect breasts and hips, she had felt sure of his love and devotion. There wasn’t a single doubt in her guileless mind that he didn’t return her feelings; so when Wiley refused to see her or answer her letters, Isla had been devastated. If she hadn’t cornered him in the English faculty building, she doubted whether they would ever have had the grim conversation that would forever draw a line under their romance.

  ‘I suggest you leave Durham immediately,’ he’d barked; then, flinging open his door, he’d unceremoniously bundled Isla into the corridor. ‘Girls in your condition aren’t welcome at this university!’

  Too appalled to speak, Isla could only stare at her former lover, who clearly couldn’t get rid of her quickly enough. Before he slammed the door in her face, she managed to cry out, ‘Keith! Don’t you remember? You promised to look after me – you told me you loved me!’

  Professor Wiley gave Isla one last humiliating look, then closed the door on her grief-stricken face. A member of staff hurrying down the corridor to his own rooms stopped when he saw the young girl weeping.

  ‘Can I help?’ he inquired politely.

  Blinded by scalding tears that streamed down her face, Isla numbly shook her head, then, groping her way out of the building, she fled. Staring moodily out of his study window, Wiley watched her, bent double with torment, stumbling across the quad in the sleeting rain.

  ‘The bloody little fool had better keep her mouth shut,’ he muttered furiously. ‘If this ever gets out, she could ruin me.’

  Feeling dreadfully ill and looking pale and dishevelled, Isla was picked up from Waverley Railway Station by her father, who gave her a dry kiss on her cheek before loading her suitcases into the boot of his Rover.

  ‘Isn’t that rather a lot of luggage for a brief visit home?’ he asked, as he navigated the traffic along Princes Street.

  Pretending not to hear his comment, Isla asked about the weather and his friends from church, which successfully took her father’s mind off the amount of luggage she’d arrived home with.

  Isla repeated her well-rehearsed line, ‘The landlady of our digs asked all of us to clear our rooms for the decorators,’ she told her father.

  In her pristine room, Isla carefully washed her tired face and brushed her untidy hair; smelling the food that the maid, Peggy, was carrying into the dining room, she clutched her heaving stomach. The last thing she wanted to do was eat, but she knew she must join her parents in the dining
room. Taking deep breaths, she made her way downstairs, where she bumped into Peggy, whom her arrogant parents always treated in an embarrassing, high-handed manner.

  ‘Nice to see you, Miss,’ Peggy said with a warm smile.

  Isla smiled back. ‘Are you well, Peggy?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye,’ Peggy quickly retorted. ‘In you go, Miss, they’re waiting for you,’ she added with a knowing nod of her head.

  Isla took up her usual place at the gleaming, polished mahogany dining table that sparkled with cutlery and cut glass. Before the smell of smoked haddock and cabbage totally overwhelmed her, she quickly made her apologies: ‘I’m so sorry, I seem to have picked up a tummy bug – please excuse me for not eating.’

  Her mother threw her a disapproving look, while her father tucked into his food with relish; in between mouthfuls of fish and vegetables, followed by prunes and custard, he barked questions at Isla about her English course and her predicted grades for her forthcoming exams. Taking sips of water, Isla answered as best she could, then, when the meal was, mercifully, over, she fled to her room and remained there all night.

  In the days that followed Isla spent as much time as she could outside; the fresh air and long walks seemed to improve her health and clear her brain. In order not to arouse suspicion, she told her parents she was studying in the library, when, in fact, she was drifting around the streets of Edinburgh, wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life. Even though the Professor had treated her shamefully, Isla was shocked to realize as the days passed that she missed him desperately. She acknowledged she’d been an utter fool, duped by an older man’s sweet-talking, but, for all her self-hatred, she longed for the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand. Feeling increasingly lost and lonely, she knew she couldn’t go on deceiving her parents; but neither could she summon up the courage to speak to them. She needed advice from somebody she could trust. She waited impatiently for her parents to go out to their twice-weekly church meeting; then, when the house was empty and all she could hear was Peggy washing up in the back scullery, she telephoned her grandmother in Windermere. Using the name she’d always called her by, Isla almost sobbed with relief when she heard her grandmother’s clear, strong voice.