The Country Nurse Remembers Read online

  I think it was with the same little friend that I shared my next adventure. I believe her name was Audrey, and I remember her as being small and always dressed in blue. She was slightly younger than I was, and therefore I was considered to be the ringleader in our games or escapades.

  Near ‘the house with the stream in front’, as I always thought of it, there was a little park with flowers and swings. One afternoon we went there and spent a long time on the swings. We tried to outdo each other to see how high we could go before the ropes bent and jerked. I seem to remember that we went very high!

  These days, parents would be unlikely to allow five-year-olds to go to a park, even a nearby one, unaccompanied. But life was safer for children then, and we were free to make our own fun.

  At the park, there was an old man who swept up and kept an eye on the children’s area. We spent a long time chatting to him from the swings. He must have been a patient old fellow because he kept saying that he would have to shut the gates, and we kept saying, ‘Just one more swing.’ We were the only ones left there and I remember that the sun had gone in, but as children we had no idea of time. The old man did not tell us to go but kept asking if our mummies would be worried about us. With great confidence, we assured him that we were allowed in the park. I don’t suppose he knew what to do with us.

  Suddenly, there was a commotion at the gate, and Daddy and Audrey’s father came striding towards us. They stopped to speak to the man, who smiled and nodded towards us. We got off the swings and ran to the two daddies—with our usual grins, no doubt.

  We were amazed when we saw their faces. I think they were cross and relieved at the same time. We had apparently been out for hours and had forgotten to tell our mothers where we were going. And it was not that the sun had just gone in … No, it was getting dark!

  We were scooped up and given a good talking to, plenty of hugs and a piggy back home. Poor Mummy greeted me with tears of relief, as she held me tightly. I couldn’t understand this at all. We had been fine, I reasoned.

  I remember being made to sit down and listen to Daddy telling me why they were worried. There was a long, deep brass fender in front of our fire, and two square leather-topped wooden boxes, like small ottomans, were attached at each end to form seats. One held old newspapers and one contained sticks, both for lighting the fire. I used to like sitting on these, and I can almost smell the brown leather as I remember my mother holding my hand that night as I sat on a box as Daddy talked.

  All these years later, I can still feel the warmth of my mother’s love, known for just those few years, not even understood, but perhaps more precious because it all ended so soon.

  Grandparents and Aunts

  There were other members of both my parents’ extended families who lived fairly near us and so were part of my early life. When at my father’s parents’ home at ‘Meadow View’, I had to be ‘grown-up’ even at the age of four. These grandparents seemed very, very old to me, probably because they both suffered ill health in different ways.

  Grandma had been totally blind from the age of about thirty. As a very small child, I understood that this meant she could see nothing at all, so I wondered how she knew when I came into the room or where in the room I happened to be. I was sure that she had a magic way of knowing when I was there and where things were kept, like Grandpa’s slippers or the ornaments on the side tables. Much later I learned that her hearing had become more acute as her blindness progressed and she had developed the ability to interpret little sounds, such as footsteps. She could judge the rough weight of a person by the noise that the feet made on the floor, so she knew if it was a child or an adult. She also had a phenomenal memory for the way in which everything was arranged in the house. Woe betide anyone who moved anything without warning her! It must have happened, though, because I remember her poor wrinkled face always had bruises where she had bumped into a half-opened door or fallen over a chair carelessly left protruding from the table.

  She had a dog called Flossie, a gentle, fluffy creature, who happened to be blind too. Flossie always moved out of Grandma’s way when she heard her feet coming but would stubbornly remain where she had decided to lie if anyone else tried to pass. She seemed to understand that we could see her, while Grandma could not. ‘Doggie magic’, I believed. I remember asking one day if we were ‘going to see Flossie’ and having to be reminded that we were going to see Grandma and Grandpa too! I loved Grandma and Flossie in about equal amounts, I think.

  I was afraid of Grandpa. As a result of a stroke, his left hand had set in a claw-like shape, and he had no real appreciation of the strength that still remained in it. He would play at ‘rough and tumble’ with my cousins and me and had no idea that he was hurting us by squeezing, prodding or pulling us. We had all been told that Grandpa ‘had a bad hand’ and we must not complain if he hurt us because ‘he can’t help it’. We did as we were told (of course) but often tried to slink away so that he should not see the tears. I can remember the terror I felt one day when he held me down for so long that I thought I was going to scream. That would not have done at all!

  Under his rather rough exterior, however, he must have been something of a gentleman because one day, to our enormous relief, he decided that we were getting to be ‘young ladies’ (at five or six years old) and it was not ‘seemly’ to play-fight anymore.

  When I look back on these times at my grandparents’, it is often without the warm feeling that trickled down through those years when my mother was alive; I can’t hear a voice in my head that could have been hers. This makes me think these years must belong to the ‘after’ time. But, then again, it was perhaps just that her quiet presence was somehow overwhelmed by my father’s large family of a brother, a sister, nephews, nieces and, it seemed, an endless parade of aunts, all of whom seemed to look alike to me.

  Auntie Jinny

  There was one aunt who stood out from the rest: Auntie Jinny. She was not part of the great gaggle of aunts in my father’s family but rather my mother’s aunt, so in fact she was a great aunt to me. She was a tiny lady who had lost her husband in the Great War. She spoke of this long-dead, much-loved heroic man with great reverence.

  She always referred to the ‘Great’ War, so I thought it was something splendid, imagining shining armour and glossy horses. It was only after school history lessons that I realised she meant the First World War. (The Second World War was a few years ahead then, and so the Great War was still thought of as the war to end all wars.)

  She lived in a tiny cottage in a little town in the Cotswolds, and we used to go to stay with her quite often when my mother was still alive. My father did many odd jobs for her about the cottage while I ‘helped’ to dig the garden. Mummy would rattle about in the stark kitchen making all manner of nourishing foods for Auntie, being convinced that she did not eat properly because she lived alone. The kitchen was more of a scullery because the actual cooking was done on a huge old range which stretched the length of the living room and was faithfully black-leaded daily. The big china sink in the kitchen was very low down, supported on two little brick walls, while a board placed across one end of the room held back the coal heap. I remember a lot of talk about the dust from the coal getting into the food, but we just washed the dust off the plates before we used them. Daddy said it was ‘clean dirt’.

  The front door led straight into the living room from the pavement. In order to reduce draughts and add a little privacy from passers-by when the door was open, a huge settle was placed inside the doorway to hide the room. Looking back now, I believe it had been a church box-pew before being demoted to Auntie’s cottage. In front of the fire (the open part of the range) was a rag-rug that I remember Auntie once repairing with some old stockings. I was allowed to cut the thick material into small pieces for her to hook into the holes in the ancient rug. A comfortable old settee faced the fire, while a sort of chaise longue (Auntie did not call it that—it was the ‘couch’) was placed against the wall under the
window. I used to stand on this and watch the people walking past. Somewhere in the room there was a square, highly polished dining table with a huge china ‘something’ in the middle. The room must have been smaller than I remember and probably very cluttered, but I loved that room!

  There was no bathroom in the cottage, and I remember being washed in front of the fire and my clothes warmed on the fender. The lavatory was in a little brick building outside the back door. It was very cold in the winter, but I liked the picture of Jesus that hung on the wall.

  Many more pictures of a golden-haired Jesus, with a shining halo, adorned the rest of the cottage, as did images of a stately St. Francis. I liked the animals and birds that always surrounded him. Another picture showed God sitting on a cloud, and I know I used to feel uneasy sometimes when it rained because I would worry that God would get very wet. But where did he sit when there were no clouds? That was another worry. I was intrigued by a particular picture showing Jesus knocking at a door overgrown with weeds. Much, much later I learned that this was a print of the famous Holman Hunt painting. I think Auntie’s interpretation of these pictures was about the nearest I got to any understanding of what it was all about because my father prided himself on being an agnostic. None of this made sense to a four- or five-year-old, but I loved Auntie, I loved the pictures and I was happy in her cottage, so I associated God and Jesus with a warm, comfortable feeling.

  Interspersed among the religious pictures were so many photographs of family members that it was difficult to see the flowered wallpaper. One day my father asked Auntie Jinny to name one or two of them. Her reply caused a lot of laughter: ‘I can’t remember their names,’ she said, ‘because several have been dead for years.’ But the photos were still there the next time we visited her.

  The staircase opened from a kind of cupboard beside the range. It had a latch door. If my father stood on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, he could place his hand on the floor of the tiny landing: the ceilings were so low and the stairs so steep.

  There were only two bedrooms, both with steeply sloping ceilings. Mummy and Daddy slept in the front and larger room, which was kept aired for guests, while I slept in the double bed, on a feather mattress, with Auntie Jinny in the smaller room at the back. I was on the inside, under the slope of the ceiling. If I sat up without thinking, I banged my head; it was so low.

  The back gardens of the row of cottages were all joined together; there were no fences between them. There were narrow paths running down the gardens and across them, made from years and years of ashes from the fires, and in the squares of ground all the neighbours grew cabbages, peas, carrots and all manner of vegetables and soft fruit and shared the produce among them. I loved to run up and down and across these paths, pretending that they were roads. At the bottom of the gardens was a brook with tadpoles and frogs and sometimes a water vole.

  I loved it! All of it: Auntie, her cottage, staying there with Mummy and Daddy, the laughter and the quiet chats about ‘dear Frank’ and about God. Auntie was the only person in the family who spoke of such things (and certainly the only one who spoke about my ‘dear mother’ after her death). She loved Mummy and me; in fact, she seemed to love everyone. She had no children, and, although she would have loved to have had a child, she said, ‘If God had wanted me to have children, He would have given me children.’ Those were the days when one accepted such things, rather than moving heaven and earth to change them.

  Auntie Jinny was the link between the time ‘before Mummy died’ and the time ‘after Mummy died’, which was how I thought of my life. Even then, when that life was not very good, we went to see her. I cherished those times! They were like an oasis in an otherwise bleak world because instinctively I knew that she loved me. She was the only person who spoilt me and spent time with me when my mother was no longer there.

  She talked about my mother in a natural way: with sadness, but not in the hushed, embarrassed way that others did, if they said anything at all. Later still, when even the mention of my mother became taboo, she still spoke of her and would not be silenced.

  Great Aunt Louisa and Grandmother

  There was another aunt on my mother’s side: a very different lady from Auntie Jinny. She was Great Aunt Louisa and she suited her name. I was always overawed when we went to tea in her elegant flat, which had been left to her by her employers. She had been a lady’s maid to an aristocrat in Cheltenham and had frequently attended her at the Royal Court, absorbing much of that way of life. She had acquired a very precise way of speaking, which gave her an autocratic bearing.

  When we arrived, the door would be opened by the ‘daily’ (who never seemed to have a name), and we would be shown in to the drawing room, a long, rather cold room with huge windows. After curtsying slightly, while being greeted, I was expected to answer questions about every aspect of my young life. Her opinions would then be offered about any shortcomings, as she saw them, in my upbringing and general behaviour. After that the ‘daily’ would bring in tea in small cups, tiny cucumber sandwiches and dainty cakes. I would be given a glass of milk because it was not socially correct for small children to drink tea, we were told. Oddly, I was not afraid of her, as one might have expected. I think I was fascinated by this glimpse into a different world.

  After my mother’s death, Great Aunt Louisa would not entertain my father, so I did not see her again. When she died, however, she left me £100, which was a lot of money in 1950!

  Great Aunt Louisa was my maternal grandmother’s sister. Grandmother was a stickler for social niceties in much the same way as Great Aunt Louisa, and, although kind and careful of my emotional well-being (‘Hush! The child is present’), she seemed remote, reserved and unapproachable. I must have spent much time with those grandparents before my mother’s death, but I do not remember any hugs, just a peck on the cheek on arrival and another when I left.

  Grandfather was a bank manager, which was considered to be a very good job in those days, and he always seemed to be going out of the front door in a pinstripe suit with a bowler hat, carrying a rolled umbrella and a briefcase, or coming in looking exactly the same.

  I never saw Grandfather open the big briefcase, but one day I was bold enough to ask him what was in it. He humphed a bit, saying in an irritated way, ‘Papers, child, papers!’ I was no wiser but dared not ask again.

  Their house smelled of furniture polish and had soft carpets. There was a formal dining room, a parlour and a great big kitchen, where I had my meals.

  Crib

  I loved Meadow View, Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house, better than Grandmother’s house, because it was not so precise and there were animals there: Flossie and Crib, and the three big shire horses.

  Crib was a big bull terrier, an outside dog, a working dog. The waste-water treatment plant, which we called the Works, and the horses’ stables were infested with rats and mice, so Grandpa had bought Crib and trained him to eliminate them.

  I loved Crib in a different way from the fluffy, cuddly Flossie, who was so gentle. Crib was lively, cunning and deadly to rats, cats and even other dogs (other than Flossie, whom he adored), but he was the champion protector of small children such as me and my cousins. We would put him on a rope and march him round the garden, supposedly taking him for a walk. Compared with his free and busy life, this must have been quite boring, but he happily trotted with us, tail wagging. He would join in our hide-and-seek, crouching behind a bush or a building until someone would find us, and he would leap about in ecstasy, having no idea what all the fuss was about but delighted to be part of our game.

  One weekend, when Daddy and Mummy and I were staying at Meadow View, two small friends joined my cousin Ellen and me for a game of hide-and-seek in the garden—but this time the grown-ups had to find us. They gave us a good long time to get hidden and then they began the search. After some time they must have started to worry, as I could hear Daddy saying, ‘What have they got up to now?’ then, ‘They have been gone too long.’


  We were trying not to giggle when we heard him say, ‘I think that dog knows something. Look at him, sitting there in the doorway of his kennel. He looks far too pleased with himself.’ But we could contain ourselves no longer and pushed our way out of the huge kennel past Crib, who had been doing a grand job of hiding us by filling the doorway with his huge bulk. He joined our victory dance with barks and leaps, and the event joined all the other stories that grew around Crib.

  When he was not working, he would often be chained to the kennel, which was placed beside the garden path. It must have been there for years because all sorts of grass and weeds were growing around it, so that it looked partially buried. I used to annoy Grandpa by saying that Crib would be cold.

  ‘He’s a tough outside dog and he’s got a warm straw bed in there. He’s fine!’ he’d say.

  He certainly seemed fine. He was a big, muscular dog, healthy and alert. One day he was chained outside the kennel as usual, when a mouse ran past his nose on its way up the garden path. In no time, Crib was after it, dragging the enormous kennel and assorted plants and turf with him. He must have had great strength to pull it virtually out of the ground. And he caught the mouse!

  Grandpa had a hazy photo of Crib, sitting against the house wall at about nine a.m. one day, looking extremely smug. Tied across the wall behind him were some pieces of string holding the remains of ten rats and several mice. He had caught and killed all these before breakfast.