Our Country Nurse: Can East End Nurse Sarah find a new life caring for babies in the country?. Sarah Beeson
informed the company with all the overbearing confidence of the depressingly ignorant.
‘Well, she’s not having a bottle yet, she’s on the breast,’ Susan Bunyard diplomatically informed this interfering old biddy.
‘That’s another thing, Nurse,’ chipped in Mrs Martha Bunyard. ‘I’ve told her to put the baby on the National Dried, but she won’t have it. She’s crying because you’re not feeding her right, girl. She needs feeding up; you need to put her on the bottle before she wastes away. All my babies were right whackers.’
Oh, the horror of unwanted baby advice, I thought, digging my fingernails into the palm of my hand. I looked at Mrs Bunyard; there was no doubt in my mind she knew this was all total rubbish. The new mother’s eyes were narrowing, her cheeks getting pinker and pinker by the second. I didn’t know if she was going to scream or cry. She raised her eyes to the ceiling with a pleading look in my direction.
‘I need to check your tummy, Mrs Bunyard,’ I said clearly, picking up the desperate hint. ‘Is the bedroom upstairs?’
‘Follow me, Nurse,’ she told me, keeping the baby firmly clutched to her chest as she opened a small wooden door off the kitchen that led up a narrow twisted staircase to the two tiny rooms above.
‘You do that, Nurse,’ said Mrs Martha Bunyard, giving me her unnecessary assurance. ‘And take a look at baby Sharon’s belly button. I don’t trust that Nurse Higgins. I don’t believe she trained in a proper English hospital. She’s cut the cord all wrong and given the baby a sticky-out belly button; it looks black as your hat too.’
Don’t say anything, Sarah, just get upstairs, I told myself. My chest was tight, I was burning to tell these women how foolish and harmful their pestering was. Not now, not now, I had to repeat to myself.
‘You can’t trust ’em,’ agreed her daughter, Connie, returning to their disparagement of the lovely midwife. ‘I swear it’s some voodoo. She did it to all four of mine but I fixed it. Got a penny off one of them gypsies and bound it round the baba till it went back in again,’ she said proudly.
Susan Bunyard had already fled up the dilapidated staircase like lightning, eager to get away. As we closed the door on the three Bunyard matriarchs slurping their tea I heard Great-aunt Constance give the most dim-witted piece of baby advice I’d heard yet.
‘That baby probably has thrush. I’ve told her if you wipe their wet-cloth nappy on their tongue it clears up straight away. But she doesn’t take heed. She’s not a Kentish girl. She’s from Essex, so what do you expect? I don’t know what your Alan was thinking, Martha.’
I firmly shut the door on them. It would not be the last time I had to watch mothers taunted with ill-conceived baby advice that was sometimes well meant but other times was nasty, cruel and harmful.
Mrs Bunyard was on the bed feeding her lovely baby, propped up by pillows to shield her back from the uncomfortable brass bars of the headboard. Her wide square-necked peasant shirt was just the job for nursing. She’d pulled her long sandy-coloured hair into a messy bun and looked different to how she was only moments before. Relaxed and contented now she was alone with her baby, I could see what a strong bond they had already: it was beautiful.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked.
‘Not at all. You look like you’re doing a splendid job. How was last week?’
‘It was all right when it was just me and Sharon. But it’s hell when his lot are traipsing in and out of the place. Wanting cups of tea and giving me filthy looks if I offer them shop-bought cake. Where would I get the time to make bloody cake for the hordes that have been through here?’ she told me indignantly.
‘Could Mr Bunyard help keep some of the visitors at bay?’
‘He’s as much use as a wet tea towel, Nurse. He likes to play the doting daddy but it’s like having another kid to look after. He made a big show of changing Sharon’s nappy last night and stuck a pin in her!’ she told me, her eyes filled with exasperation.
‘But he does want to help?’ I asked tentatively.
‘What would help me out is a proper bathroom with an indoor toilet, hot and cold water, and a proper plumbed-in bath for Lord’s sake,’ she cried. ‘I’m not used to living like this – it’s like something out of a BBC olde-worlde drama. My parents’ house has all mod cons, thank you very much. My mother had a properly fitted kitchen – she never had to try and turn out a dinner on a clapped-out stove. He says he’ll get onto the brewery about updating the cottages but they’ve been promising to modernise since after the war apparently. I’ve said the men and him need to get organised, demand proper housing, but they couldn’t organise …’ her voice trailed away as she paused to change the baby’s nappy, spreading out the terry towelling on the bed and then washing her hands in a ceramic bowl and jug of water on a wash stand.
‘It’s like I’m in a bloody episode of Upstairs, Downstairs,’ she said with a grim laugh. ‘Only you imagine you’ll be one of ladies in fancy dresses, not living like a charwoman.’
I nipped down to the kitchen to fetch her a glass of water. When I returned, baby Sharon was feeding steadily on the other side.
‘I’ve brought you some cake,’ I said as I put a tray on the bedside table with a jug of water and a big slice of Victoria sponge cake on it.
‘Thank you, Nurse. You shouldn’t have,’ she said, drinking down her water in almost one go.
‘Yes, I should. You need to rest and get plenty to eat and drink if you’re going to keep on doing such a fabulous job feeding little Sharon.’
‘You don’t think she’s underweight? Honestly she doesn’t cry that much.’
As the baby came off the breast all satisfied and sleepy I had a quick hold, while Mrs Bunyard ate her cake. I took the opportunity to give her a full MOT, discreetly checking everything was as it should be – she was perfect.
‘She seems just right to me.’
‘I know what his lot think, that I’m no good. That I should give the baby to them. Well, no one is taking this baby off me; I’d die first than let them take her away. They won’t take her away, will they, Nurse?’
‘No one is going to take your baby away – please don’t worry about that.’
‘They try and make out that she never stops crying but it’s not true. I think she cries sometimes because she wants her mum, or because everything is a bit new and she wants a bit of comfort – I know how she feels.’
‘That sounds right to me. You know your baby best, Mrs Bunyard. You really are doing a splendid job.’
Susan Bunyard grinned and took the baby to a large wicker crib and popped her daughter down for a nap.
‘She’s kept me up a lot in the night, though. Are you sure she’s getting enough milk?’
‘Are you getting lots of wet and dirty nappies?’ I asked.
‘There’s an endless stream,’ she laughed. ‘Her poo’s all yellow, though.’
‘Yes, that’s how it should be. How she’s sleeping during the day?’
‘She’s an angel in the day. When will you come back, Nurse?’
‘End of next week if it suits you?’
‘Yes, that would be great. And hopefully the Wicked Witch of the West won’t be here,’ she whispered.
‘Do you want to lie down flat and I’ll take a look at your tummy?’ I asked her.
As I pressed down on her belly she gazed up at the cracks in the low ceiling above the marital bed and said in a whisper almost more to herself than to me, ‘I’d never change having Sharon. But I’m not sure if I did the right thing marrying Aly.’
‘It’s