Our Country Nurse: Can East End Nurse Sarah find a new life caring for babies in the country?. Sarah Beeson
to help me stay awake – I didn’t realise it would have the same effect on him.’
‘Not to worry. I can’t think straight in the morning until I’ve had a cup of tea and I don’t have a newborn baby keeping me up.’
‘Or a husband snoring in your ear when the baby goes down and you get a chance for forty winks?’ she said, giggling.
‘No,’ I agreed, with a chuckle. ‘Fortunately not. Do you think Mr Rudcliff could help with the housework and cooking a bit?’ I suggested.
She looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘No, Nurse. He’s a male chauvinist pig farmer,’ and we both burst out laughing for at least a minute.
‘Do you have any family nearby who could help?’ I asked.
‘My mum’s in Cheltenham. I don’t like to bother her.’
‘Has she offered to help?’
‘Lots of times but I don’t want her to think I can’t cope. I want her to be proud of me; she always had everything immaculate when I was little and look at this place!’ she said, casting her eyes round the farmhouse kitchen in dismay.
‘Housework always needs doing. I don’t see the harm in letting things slide for a little while.’
‘Oh! My mother-in-law said you’d be coming to see I kept the place clean and tidy or you’d report me.’
‘Not at all,’ I told her. ‘Are your husband’s family able to lend a hand?’
‘His parents live in the bungalow. Did you see it on your way in?’
‘Yes, up on the mound?’
‘Ghastly, isn’t it? I wouldn’t ask his mother to help me in a month of Sundays. She’d love nothing better than to get back into the farmhouse kitchen and shove me out. I won’t have it,’ she told me, getting quite worked up. Baby Craig started crying again.
‘I’ve only just fed him. Really I have,’ she said, her voice fading and her eyes glazing over.
‘Long babies can be difficult to feed,’ I explained.
‘Can they?’
‘Yes, and he was 10 pounds and six ounces when he was born and I can see from his discharge papers he’s nearly made his birth weight up already. That means you’re doing a fantastic job,’ I soothed.
‘I’m finding him a bit heavy. He’s only two weeks old and he’s already a handful – how am I going to cope?’ she asked as tears started to trickle down her freckled cheeks and her narrow shoulders shook as she took short intakes of breath. ‘I feel so lost sometimes. One minute I’m looking at him and my heart is fit to burst, I love him so much. But there are times in the middle of the night when I feel utterly alone. Joe’s snoring, none the wiser, the baby won’t go down in his crib and I’m so tired I can barely see straight. I swear I’ve seen the sunrise every morning since Craig was born.’ I sat by her side and listened, nodding and acknowledging her feelings. ‘Why did no one tell me it would be this hard? I don’t recognise myself at the moment and Joe’s life carries on exactly the same.’
‘Let’s look at one thing at a time. You’re doing really well, Mrs Rudcliff, you really are. What do you think could be better?’
‘The feeding. He’s so heavy, and he pounds on me with his fist and thrashes about and leaves me aching. I dread it, I really do, and it’s not getting any easier. I’m not fit to be his mother.’
‘You are a splendid mother. Do you think an unfit mother would care this much?’
She gave me a little shy smile. ‘I suppose that’s right. You’d know, Nurse.’
An hour later Craig was sleeping peacefully, we’d discussed feeding, sleeping and nappies, and Mrs Rudcliff was calmer but I was still worried about her health. She needed a bit of looking after. The kitchen door swung open and Joe Rudcliff appeared. A burly man and at over six feet his head practically scraped the ceiling as he came in. Silently he pulled off his muddy boots and went to wash his hands and face in the kitchen sink. He didn’t say a word or even show the slightest awareness there was a stranger, me, in his house.
‘What’s for lunch?’ he asked his wife, his back to us as he gazed out of the kitchen window onto his empire.
‘I’ve made mackerel pâté and freshly baked bread.’
‘Again?’
She nodded.
‘I’ll be half-starved in a month if you carry on this way,’ he informed her, taking a huge hunk of bread from the kitchen table and spreading it liberally with the delicious looking pâté. He stomped off, followed a minute later by the sound of the radio blaring from the sitting room.
‘I’m going to go now if there isn’t anything else?’ I asked. But Mrs Rudcliff didn’t reply. ‘While the baby’s asleep eat up some of that scrumptious pâté and then get your head down for a bit if you can.’
‘Would you like some?’
‘No, thank you. You eat it all up while you can.’
‘I will, Nurse,’ she said. A tone of defiance creeping into her voice. ‘But before that I’m going to telephone my mother and see if she can come for a bit.’
‘I think that’s an excellent idea, Mrs Rudcliff. I’ll call in next week and see how you are but do telephone me at the clinic if you need anything.’
As I made my way back down the path to my abandoned Mini I turned and saw Mrs Rudcliff in the window with a telephone in her hand. I grinned. Good for you, I thought. My first visit as a health visitor had been a good one but what did the other 799 and counting have in store?
When I returned to see Mrs Rudcliff at Treetops Farm the following week I fully prepared for the ascent in a pair of newly acquired black Wellington boots purchased at a smart little shop in Canterbury. I’d christened them on my second Sunday in Kent, digging over my small vegetable patch after borrowing a fork and spade from Clem. It would be a while before I could sow anything but at least I’d made a start – I was well on my way to becoming a country nurse, or so I thought.
I knew I was frowning slightly as Flo poured me a cup of tea before the doors opened for the two o’clock Totley baby clinic on Tuesday afternoon. I’d been stunned when Mrs Martha Bunyard, a matriarch of clinic volunteers, had practically shoved me into the cramped consulting room away from the hall when I arrived, but now I was fuming.
‘Your predecessor always saw mothers in here, Nurse. That’s the way we’ve always done it in Totley. Stops time-wasters taking liberties,’ she had informed me.
We’ll see, I thought as I agitatedly sipped my tea. Flo looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Don’t want to rock the boat at your very first clinic, do you?’ she suggested tentatively. ‘Martha Bunyard and Doris Bowyer have been running things round here for years, Nurse. No one likes change, do they?’
‘Hmm,’ I replied. I thought of Susan, whose baby I’d helped deliver only days before, and felt a pang of sympathy for her. The stalwart so-called helper, who was most likely banking on me being out of sight and out of mind, was probably a relative of Susan’s new husband, his mother even – poor girl.
Flo straightened the biscuits on her trolley. ‘Have you got through that vegetable box we left you, yet?’ she asked, changing the subject.
‘Still working my way through it. Best produce I’ve ever tasted,’ I enthused.
Flo beamed with pride. ‘I don’t like to boast but my Clem has won “Best in Show” for his root vegetables at the village fete every single year for the last decade. Beetroot, carrot, potato, you name it, he’s won the blue ribbon