Dolly's War (9 page)

I was admitted immediately and handed over to a young probationer nurse for a bath and a shave. The blade was blunt, my young nurse was extremely nervous of the shaving session and to Sister's horror and annoyance I was cut about a bit. ‘Oh,' I dismissed my wounds airily, ‘It's nothing, Sister, really,' adding, ‘I didn't feel a thing.' ‘Well,' said Sister, ‘I can see we have a model mother here,' then patting my shoulder, she went on with her years of experience of character assessment, ‘I knew you were going to be no bother.' That same night she must have regretted these words, for without the benefit of anaesthetic I thought the end of the world had come. I had always been told by my teachers and parents that I had a vivid imagination, but what I had imagined was a hundred times more peaceful than the real thing. Doctor was there, in his dressing-gown, with a midwife and a ‘learner' nurse. Sister kept dashing into the room from somewhere exhorting me to ‘cease my dreadful noise'. At every entry of hers I apologised profusely, it wouldn't happen again I assured her, but no sooner had the door swung on her retreating back than my good intentions were drowned in that valley of torture. ‘Take no notice of her,' said the doctor (not of course in Sister's presence). ‘Just hang on to the cord of my dressing-gown, you're doing fine,' but when I did as he invited he remonstrated, ‘Hey, steady on.' Then an elderly doctor brought into the room what appeared to be a large tea-strainer, minus its handle. This was lined with white lint and very gently and kindly he said to me, ‘Now as soon as you feel...' I guessed the end of the sentence and like a drowning man I buried my head in the tea-strainer and breathed magic ozone. In the quiet and sudden armistice the young doctor said triumphantly,

‘Don't you want to see your pretty little daughter?' and I turned my aching neck to see, sitting upright on the midwife's lap, a little crumpled being. The baby, I didn't feel as though she were mine, was very wet-looking. ‘This is the sort of baby
I
like to see,' said the midwife, but I didn't ask what she meant for I was waiting for that
FLOOD
of mother-love which everyone assured me would permeate my being at the sight of my first born. And I waited, and waited and waited, but nothing came except a feeling of scalding pain. A nurse, giving me tea from a cup with a spout, was so intent on gazing at my baby that she hadn't realised she was sticking the spout down the neck of my gown!

I was then delivered to a ward containing three other ‘radiant' mums. I could see why my baby might have been described as ‘pretty' for the three occupants, already in residence, of the little swing cots on the ends of the beds, were all boys, all very tiny, all with black coconut thatch hair. They seemed yellowish with rather large mouths, whereas my baby was an 8 lb. girl, with a plump face, a tiny mouth and a little bit of down for hair. Still the surge of mother-love did not come. Instead in came a nurse bearing aloft on a tray three mugs of hot cascara. ‘Oh,' she said brightly, ‘I didn't know there were four mothers here, I'll fetch another cup,' as though she was bringing sherry to celebrate my arrival. I was unaware that the other mums had been in that ward for nearly a week and were troubled with constipation, and thinking it was all in the day's work, obediently drank the obnoxious fluid.

That evening, the first visiting-time for me, should have been radiant with Chas holding my hand and both of us gazing at our daughter with love and pride. What a time of horror! Mother came with Chas and tutted testily when he announced our daughter was ‘Just like his mum.' Now his mum was lovely, but not physically so. Then the cascara decided to make its move. The visiting-time was only half an hour and I had already been regaled by the other mums with the story of the dreadful woman who had previously occupied my bed. She always required attention during visiting hours and no extra time had been granted to the other dads for the time they were turfed out of the ward. So I just would not allow Chas or Mum to find a nurse. They must have loved me very much for between them they raked up five men's handkerchiefs and three paper-bags and by exercising considerable ingenuity I was able to keep going until almost the end of the visiting time. Sister was cross with nurse for giving me the cascara so soon after baby's birth. Nurse stared at me as though I had been stupid to drink it, and my baby cried and cried and cried. In sympathy perhaps. In the end she was taken away from the little flowered cot at the end of my bed and relegated to the linen-cupboard and when I thought of her crying and lonely I too wept into my pillow.

I was looking forward to feeding my daughter. I felt she was crying because she was hungry. I had watched the other mums expertly feed their babies, sliding their large dark brown nipples into their babies' mouths, their breasts huge with milk. Then seen them wind a satisfied and drunken babe. Now I had very tiny nipples which still remained pink, but as my baby had a small mouth I thought nature had matched us up. Until feedingtime that was. It was a superhuman effort to get my baby to open her mouth, then when she did, after a day or two I was bleeding, cracked and sore, and, horror upon horrors, a little piece of nipple was missing. Had she swallowed it? And still she cried and cried and cried. Sister pushed baby's head hard on to me, grumbling when I flinched and in the end Matron said, ‘Get your husband to bring you some golden eye ointment.' My father, worried by Mother's tales of a starving child and a maimed and weeping mother, went straight to the chemist for this magic salve and thinking I had the name wrong because the word ‘poison' was printed on the tube, decided to wrap it in a note of extra
CAUTION
. This he intended to leave at the porter's lodge but someone insisted he bring it up to the ward. When he was ushered in it was feeding-time. He was always shy with the opposite sex and I knew he felt his manliness would embarrass the bare-breasted mums. He did a ballet exercise when nurse approached, for he was ever fearful of getting in the way of authority, and nurse was forced to join in this exercise for neither could make up their mind as to which way the other intended to prance. Finally he gave me the package with a hoarse whisper, ‘Poison, Dolly, poison, be careful.'

The word ‘poison' panicked me as much as it did my father and I waited matron's next morning visit to the ward. She would walk through with an aluminium flour-dredger in her hand, scrape back the clothes on the hanging cots and shake powder all over the babies' umbilical parts. As she left the ward the mothers would crawl down to the ends of the beds, re-arrange the cot clothes and give a glance of hatred towards a receding matron. This morning, trying to appear a competent and unpanicked mother, I said casually to Matron, ‘The golden eye ointment is stamped poison, Matron.' She ignored the pathetic plea in my eyes and announced briskly, ‘Rub it well in, rub it
W-E-L-L
in', just like a military command. But I never used it, terrified I would kill my child.

One day when baby was brought in from the linen-cupboard for her abortive feeding I noticed one of her eyes was closed and inflamed. ‘Nurse,' I called. ‘Oh,' said nurse, ‘that's sticky eye.' Chas, of course, looked this up in the encyclopaedia and discovered it could be a congenital disease. So we had an ancestor somewhere responsible for our baby's trouble. Again a weeping mother, again a cross matron. It wasn't the terrible thing we had thought. The baby had been in a draught and poor nurse was castigated for using this expression. I felt very guilty about this for she was so kind to me.

The other mothers thought us a very strange family, I am sure, for when we were asked for names for our infants, neither Chas nor I had even thought about it. Above my bed was a plaque informing the occupant that the bed had been endowed to the hospital by a Susan Boake, and I thought, ‘Well, thank you, Susan, that shall be my daughter's name,' and so she was just Susan. The other mums said it was terrible to give such a pretty baby girl such a plain old-fashioned name when I could have called her ‘Pearl', ‘Dawn', etc., but I liked the sound of Susan and for once in my life did not change my mind.

When I asked Matron why Susan cried so much she said, ‘She is just a bad-tempered baby,' and it seemed that I had so many reasons to weep that I was happy to go home, though not at all confident in my ability to cope. I would sit in my vast bathroom and tremble at baby's bath-time, sure I would let my slippery Susan fall underneath the water and drown. And still she cried. At my first visit to the local clinic the doctor said, ‘Why, mother, your baby is completely tongue-tied,' her tongue apparently was fastened, at its tip, to the ‘floor' of her mouth by a fine ligament. ‘You must call in your own doctor to free the tongue for your baby.' The young local doctor came in that very same evening. Chas boiled his equipment. I held Susan, and Chas held my hand while the doctor performed this minor, but frightening to us, operation. ‘Susan,' laughed the doctor. ‘You gave her the right name for a tongue-tied baby, Thoothan.' After the deed was done he said, ‘Put her to the breast for comfort, Mother.' Then he gazed intently at my bosom, gave it an extremely hard squeeze and announced, ‘Good God, woman, you have no milk,' adding to Chas, ‘Dash down to the chemist and get some dried milk.' Chas chose Cow and Gate and from that moment on Susan became the loveliest, happiest and sweetest baby I think it was possible to have. I felt so guilty about the early weeks of her life spent half-starving in a linen-cupboard, that I made up my mind to try and think for myself in future.

At Susan's christening when she was in the tongue-tied, half-starved state she had cried all the time and at the party afterwards, when both Chas's family and mine were present, I had forbidden anyone to pick her up for I had been informed by ‘authority' that babies should only be nursed at feeding-time. I recall the two grannies nearly in tears at what they thought was my harsh attitude and lack of maternal feeling for they gave me severe looks every time I passed them. But neither of them was brave enough to argue with me. I could cry myself now when I remember I wouldn't allow those two dear grannies to pick up and nurse their little grand-daughter.

And as for that feeling of flooding mother-love. I believe it does not come flooding at all, I believe it comes as the seconds, minutes and hours go by caring for a helpless creature.

*

Our vast rooms needed more human habitation than Chas, baby and I could supply and we were happy to have our parents stay some week-ends. Chas's parents visited first. Now Chas should have been the chef of the family, possibly because he loved cooking, he was the expert, well, more the expert than I was. He had some bee in his bonnet, possibly associated with an early childhood memory, that his father was fond of, even crazy about, oxtail. This puzzled me for I had been to lunch with my in-laws on many many Sundays and it was always the usual roast and I knew if Alfred, my father-in-law, was so crazy about oxtail, Ethel, his wife, would have been happy to prepare it for him.

But Chas insisted oxtail took over a day to prepare, that was why his busy mother prepared it so infrequently. He would take care of the oxtail main course, I would be the sweet chef. I was happy about this for I had no more desire to cook than I had to spit and polish. I could therefore make various fruit pies and banish myself from the kitchen leaving the ‘galley' to him. He cooked the oxtail twice so that every vestige of fat could be removed, for oxtail is a very fatty meat. He took hours grating finely the various assorted vegetables.

The great day came and Ethel, Alfred and Dolly were seated expectantly at the table, snowy white cloth, shining glass. Alfred was hungry and excited, it was such a cold day. Chas entered with our beautiful china serving-bowl, a wedding present, and with all the professional know-how of his waiting years, served us all with his lovingly prepared oxtail. After the hours and hours of cooking I thought it looked only like thick soup, and I thought also that Alfred, like a little boy, looked as though he would burst into tears for I was sure he had been looking forward to roast sirloin.

As Chas left with the dirty dishes, Alfred said in a stage whisper to Ethel, ‘What a disappointing meal, whatever was it? I was so sure we'd have a real meal, especially on a Sunday!' ‘Hush, man,' said Ethel sharply. ‘That girl has done her best, she has a young baby to look after, you know.' But he was full of praise for my redcurrant and raspberry tart with thick cream. Chas told his mother he had chosen and prepared the oxtail thinking to delight his father and she said, ‘Lor luv you, bor, years ago he would have been, it's not stews on Sundays now.' Not only had Alfred a regular job as a storekeeper, now that all his children were married, he was able to let the upstairs flat in his house thus receiving a weekly rent. If his upstairs tenant had a baby or children, then he was doubly delighted.

The following week-end it was the turn of my parents, who came with Marjorie, now pregnant, and her Alfred. Chas, quite disinterested in the Sunday lunch this time, left all culinary arrangements to me and took charge of Susan. At the first peal of the doorbell I rushed to let my folks in, hardly recognising Marjorie. Someone, possibly Mother, had advised her, that because of her condition, warm, sensible clothes should be worn. She had been in her interesting condition for a few weeks only, yet there she stood like a refugee from Lapland, clad in Mother's famous kangaroo coat that my sister Winifred had sent her from Australia. Grey woollen stockings, flat heeled ward-maid's shoes and a matronly ‘toque' completed her outfit. Much to Mother's indignation I became hysterical, although my unrestrained laughter finally infected her as well as for the first time she really ‘sighted' Marjorie. Marjorie could see no humour in the situation and was politely aloof, at the same time a little hurt. Dolly was now a fully fledged mother, and having experienced this expectant condition such a short time ago, surely a sisterly, sympathetic squeeze of the hand was not too much to expect. I was sorry I had laughed at Marjorie's maternity outfit and was almost calm and compassionate to the ‘little' mother-to-be, when my father, who had been sitting on a hall chair slowly rose, saying in broken English, ‘You give my bear bread my bear he dance for you.' He then pivoted slowly around singing in a grunting tone, ‘Ronnie ronnie ron ronnie ron ron ron.' His impromptu mime of the dancing bears of his childhood was so expertly executed, so delightfully comical, his face so dazedly yet wickedly bear-like, I had to dash off to the kitchen to restrain a further bout of laughter. The dance finished I heard my father's high pitched giggle and Mother's reproving, ‘What has got into you, Walter, you've always said how nice I always looked in that coat.' Obviously through the years my father had thought the coat a comical affair but if it had pleased Mother it really hadn't worried him what she wore, as long as she was decently covered.