by Trisha Merry
After baths, we had group bedtime stories, then off to their own beds. Daisy and Paul lapped it all up, Daisy quietly and Paul with more gusto. ‘Night-night,’ I said as I plonked a kiss on each of their foreheads and tucked them in, both holding their new cuddlies. I tiptoed out and listened in the night-light’s dim glow. They didn’t say a word and within minutes all I could hear was the heavy breathing of sleep.
‘The two new ones seem like good kids,’ said Mike over supper that evening.
‘Yes, Daisy is quiet and rather subdued – I’ll keep an eye on her. Paul is very different – he’s already making his presence felt!’
‘Yes, I noticed,’ agreed Mike with a grin. ‘Do you know anything about their circumstances?’
‘They came with their young dad – very detached. The sort that would probably be a swaggery jack-the-lad with his friends, but he didn’t want to be here. There was something shifty about him. I don’t know whether he has a criminal record, but I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘Do you think he would harm the children?’
‘I don’t know. Probably not, but I wouldn’t leave him alone with them.’
I told Mike about their mother abandoning them, and how their grandma too couldn’t keep them. ‘And now their dad can’t manage them either. They’re like cast-offs.’
‘Do you think he’ll come and visit them?’
‘He said he would when he can. But I’m not so sure.’
‘Poor kids. I hope he doesn’t let them down.’
2
Dalek!
Sunday was another warm day, but showery. We always tried to take all the children out somewhere together on Sundays, so after everyone had finished their breakfast Mike asked, ‘Who wants to go and feed the ducks?’
‘I do,’ they all shouted out in unison.
‘I’ll hold the bread,’ offered four-year-old Chrissy, the eldest.
‘Can we have an ice cream?’ pleaded Ronnie, a few months her junior.
‘They don’t sell ice creams at the duck pond!’ Mike laughed.
‘Good job too,’ I added. ‘You can have ice cream after lunch if you’re good. Right, everyone get in a line. Let’s put your welly-boots on first, so you can jump in the puddles, but we don’t want anyone getting their feet muddy near the edge of the pond.’
‘We might fall in!’ Ronnie always hoped for something exciting to happen.
‘I don’t like it where the grass is squishy,’ three-year-old Sheena made a face.
‘That’s where the ducks do their pooh.’ Ronnie giggled.
Mike finished squeezing them into their boots while I tore up some slices of bread into paper bags, and gave them out to the older ones.
‘’Snot fair,’ moaned little Peter, who used to be the shy one, but was getting braver now. He glared at the others. ‘They got more than me.’ A tear started to trickle down his chubby cheek.
I calmed him down and off we all went down the lane. Mike went off first with the walkers and I followed a few moments later with the big pram for baby Katie and toddlers Brian and Paul. We rounded the bend just in time to see two-year-old Peter fall headlong across the muddy grass.
‘Yuk,’ yelled Ronnie with delight.
Peter sat up and wailed. Chrissy tried to help him up, but fell over him instead.
By the time we got back home again, everyone was covered in mud. Oh what fun!
After lunch it had stopped raining and the sun was out again, so they all ran outside to play in the garden while I rocked baby Katie to sleep in the pram. Chrissy encouraged Daisy to join in with her and Sheena in the Wendy house, while Paul hooted and laughed as he was pulled all around the garden in a large cardboard box with a bit of rope threaded through by Ronnie. That kept both of them happy until the box gradually fell apart and Paul landed in a puddle.
First thing Monday morning, before the children were awake, I wrote out a quick advert to stick in the village shop’s window.
Mother’s helper wanted part-time.
Evenings and weekends.
I added our phone number and tucked it into my bag for later. Right now I needed to feed and change the little ones, get the others up and dressed, then set out the children’s breakfasts and a cooked breakfast for Mike.
After only two nights, Daisy and Paul had settled in so well that no one would guess they were new. I was beginning to see their characters coming out now – very different from each other. Even at two, Daisy was a dainty, thoughtful and rather serious little girl who didn’t like things to be untidy, but I could already see she had a will of her own and wasn’t afraid to stick up for herself if she had to.
Paul, on the other hand, was as lively as a bag of monkeys – a happy-go-lucky little boy with an infectious laugh – nothing seemed to faze him.
Once they were all up, washed, dressed and fed, I put babies Katie and Paul top and tail in the pram, then Brian on the seat, as before. The other five had to hang on – one at each end of the pram handle, one on each side, holding on to the apron flap, and one in front, holding on to the hood. In this way, I took the lot of them down to the village. It was a slow process, and quite tricky down the bank at one point, but we made it without losing or injuring anyone – a bit of a nightmare.
As we reached the flat ground and passed the bus stop, Paul threw his teddy out of the pram, so I put the brake on. Two women, waiting for a bus, glanced at all the children, and the little ones in the pram, then gave each other a look.
As we started off again, the snootier of the two turned to her friend.
‘These Catholics – they don’t know what contraception is!’
I had to turn away to suppress my helpless laughter as I bustled us all off down the road. If only they knew!
The advert went into the village shop window. ‘Do you think anyone will reply?’ I asked Ron, the friendly shopkeeper.
‘I know just the person,’ he said with a wink. ‘I’ll give her a ring this afternoon.’
Next on my list was the chemist. The doorway to the chemist’s shop had an old-fashioned bell contraption that the children loved. If they’d had their way, we’d have been in and out of that door at least six times.
There were quite a few people in the chemist’s, including a nun, in black robes down to her feet and a white headdress. I’d never seen a nun in the village before, so goodness knows where she came from. I checked afterwards, and nobody knew what she was doing there.
I held on to Brian’s hand as his eyesight was very poor. He used to wear those round, wire-framed National Health glasses, with glass as thick as bottle-bottoms.
Even with his glasses on, he was always bumping into things. However, he could see solid colours and shapes, as long as they were straight in front of him. The chemist’s wife was giving all the children a ‘healthy’ sweet each from her special jar, so I started picking the things we needed from the shelves.
Suddenly, Brian shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Dalek!’ He clutched my long skirt in terror. ‘No, no . . . Dalek! Don’t like Dalek!’ He could hardly breathe, he was so frightened.
Meanwhile, the nun had turned round to see what the noise was about, and what she saw was this little toddler staring at her and shouting that unintelligible word. Understandably, she looked horrified, assuming that ‘Dalek’ might be a swear word. Or maybe she thought we were putting a curse on her!
I was torn between picking Brian up to comfort him, and calming down the offended nun, so I did both, giving Brian a cuddle, while at the same time apologising to the nun.
‘I’m so sorry. He didn’t mean to be rude. He’s almost blind, that’s the trouble. He probably just saw you as a black shape.’ I paused. ‘Do you mind if I just hold him in front of your face, so that he can see you are a real person?’ I asked her. ‘And then he will stop being frightened of you.’
‘All right,’ she agreed.
‘Look Brian, here is the nice lady you thought was a dalek. Can you see her smiling?’
Fortunately, the nun took her cue and gave Brian a weak smile. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Not dalek?’ asked Brian, still clinging on to my clothes.
‘No,’ I reassured him. ‘Not a dalek.’ Brian relaxed his grip.
‘What is this word “dalek”?’ asked the nun.
So I then had to try to explain to someone who had probably never watched television in her life. ‘Well, it’s a kind of metal character on a TV programme. Not a person; more like an alien . . .’ I was struggling for words to describe it.
‘I don’t really understand,’ she interrupted my confusion, with a smile that said she was humouring me. ‘But it’s all right. No harm done.’
Phew, I thought. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry we upset you.’
‘Please don’t worry.’ She bowed her head and turned, her robes swishing past us as she walked out of the shop.
As soon as the door closed after her, everyone in the shop burst into laughter.
‘Well,’ chortled the chemist. ‘That was a first on both counts. The first nun in my shop and the first dalek as well!’
I think we made his day.
After that, we carried on down the lane to register Daisy and Paul at the doctor’s surgery, then back home again.
By the time we arrived back at the house, and I set to getting the children’s tea ready, I was full of hope about the advert in the shop window. I remembered the shopkeeper’s confidence that he knew just the person. What a difference it would make to have a helper, even if it was only an hour or two at tea, bath and bedtime. I wondered who this paragon might be.
Mike had the Tuesday afternoon off, so he took all the children out into the garden, including baby Katie, who was now six months old. She was still suffering the effects of her burn injuries, when her father had poured boiling water on her chest and arm a week after her birth. So Mike made sure she was protected from bright sunlight on her skin. Only the day before, we had heard that Katie’s father would be tried the following week, and would probably be sent to prison for two or three years. That might sound long enough to some, but Katie would suffer the scars all her life.
So there she lay in my pram, under the shady apple trees, while all the other children played with the assortment of ride-on and pull-along toys that Mike had got out of the shed for them. It was good to see three-year-old Ronnie pushing little Paul, laughing like mad, on a toddler-trike, while four-year-old Chrissy and three-year-old Sheena encouraged Daisy to join them, rolling small logs to make a ‘camp’.
As I was unloading the washing machine, the doorbell went. It was Fay, baby Katie’s social worker, popping in as she passed by. We went out to look at Katie, fast asleep in her pram, under the trees.
As if on cue, Katie woke up and looked straight at us, then set off with her hungry cry, trying to eat her little fist.
‘She looks well,’ said Fay as I lifted her out of her pram and we turned to go back inside.
At the kitchen door, we met three little girls – four-year-old Chrissy leading Sheena and Daisy.
‘What are you three up to?’ I asked with a chuckle.
‘We showed Daisy where we wash our muddy hands,’ said Chrissy, holding hers up to show how clean they now were.
‘Well done.’
‘Come on,’ Chrissy said to the other two, with a giggle. ‘Let’s go outside again.’ They scampered down the steps, with Daisy, the smallest, bringing up the rear.
‘That little one’s a poppet.’ Fay smiled.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘That’s Daisy. She only arrived a couple of days ago, with her little brother.’
‘Well, it looks as if she’s made some new friends already.’
‘Have you got time to stay for a cup of tea?’
‘Not today, I’m afraid.’
I put Katie’s bottle to warm, while I comforted her at my shoulder and set all the food out on the table for the children’s tea – one-handed.
I knocked on the window for Mike to bring the children in and it was all go for the pair of us, washing hands, sitting everyone at the table or in their high-chairs with their bibs on, making sure they all had the right food and drinks in front of them. By now, Katie was reduced to a pitiful whimpering, desperate to be fed.
‘You look like you could do with a hand,’ Mike offered, as he took Katie and her bottle and sat down at the table to feed her.
‘Quite a few hands,’ I agreed. ‘That’s why I put an ad in the village shop yesterday. Now that we’ve got nine under-fives, maybe we need someone to help us out. What do you think?’
‘Good idea,’ he agreed. ‘You’re the boss.’
We spent the next couple of hours going through the bath and bedtime routines, more frazzled than ever with a six-month-old baby to fit into the schedule as well.
‘Are babies more demanding these days?’ asked Mike. ‘Or are we getting older?’
‘Speak for yourself!’ I grinned, as we started to clear away the children’s tea things, before cooking supper for ourselves.
Just then the phone rang. I looked at the clock. It was half past seven and we were both hungry. It rang again and again as I looked at Mike.
‘Don’t answer it,’ he said.
‘I better had. It might be important.’
‘Yes, we might have won the pools,’ he said. ‘Except that we don’t go in for them.’ He shrugged and carried on clearing up, while I picked up the receiver on its umpteenth ring.
‘Mrs Merry?’ It was a young female voice, sounding a bit tentative.
‘Yes.’
‘My name is Lizzie and I’m phoning about your advert for a mother’s helper.’
‘Oh yes?’ I was so tired by now that I’d quite forgotten. ‘That was quick. I only put it in the shop window yesterday.’
‘Yes, Ron came out and showed me it when I was walking home from the bus stop.’ She paused. ‘That’s how I knew your name.’
‘Good. So are you interested in working a few hours for us?’
‘Yes, but I’m only fifteen and still at school, just starting my last year, so I could only come from about half past four to half past seven each evening. And maybe some of the weekend too, if you like.’
‘That’s just what I need. Your age is no problem, as long as you like playing with noisy children! Come round and we’ll have a chat.’
I liked the brightness in her voice, but I wanted to see her with the kids. If she survived that, she could do as many hours as she wanted.
She came the next afternoon. She was a lovely girl and great with the children, so I offered her the job, starting the next day.
She was thrilled. ‘I can’t wait.’
It was what they call a baptism of fire for her that first evening, with all the kids clamouring to have her feeding or washing them, brushing their hair, giving them cuddles . . . She went home exhausted.
‘She was good,’ said Mike. ‘Do you think she’ll come back?’
Lizzie did come back; she kept on coming and she soon settled into our routines and idiosyncrasies. She made such a difference to all our lives. She really got stuck in and got to know all the funny things about the children. They idolised her. She loved it all – mess, bubbles, noise, everything. She was particularly good at getting them ready for bed and calming them down as she read stories to the older ones and sang songs to the babies.
Two or three mornings after Lizzie started, one of the ladies in the village came and knocked on our door.
‘Hello?’ I said with a smile as I opened it.
‘I need to have a word,’ she said, keeping her voice to a whisper, and glancing over her shoulder before she continued. I expected the KGB to come round the corner any moment.
‘It’s about Lizzie Hopkins.’
‘Yes . . . OK.’ I tried to look suitably serious.
She leant towards me and spoke in little more than a whisper, as if we were conspirators. ‘Are you aware that she lives in a council house?’
Somehow I managed to
keep a straight face, though I was giggling uncontrollably inside. ‘Oh no!’ I replied, in a shocked voice. ‘Really?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she continued. ‘You weren’t to know.’
‘Thank you for telling me,’ I said.
She turned and walked off, nose in the air. I closed the door and at last I could let out the laughter.
I think she thought I was taking her seriously. She probably went away happy that I would be sacking Lizzie immediately. Aren’t people funny? I’d seen her before and I knew she lived at our end of the village, which she obviously thought of as the ‘posh’ end.
Sonnington was a quaint old village, a community of two halves. And this woman clearly didn’t think we should mix with the other end.
But although we lived in a big house, which we needed for all our foster children, in the ‘posh’ part of the village, we didn’t fit the required profile . . . what with all our ‘unruly’ kids (which they weren’t at that stage; they were just normal, lively toddlers) and our unconventional ways. I think they thought I was a hippy, with all my flowing skirts and long curly hair, so that didn’t help. But nonetheless, I suppose this snob-woman presumed that even I wouldn’t want to employ someone from a council house! If it wasn’t so laughable, it would have been outrageous.
‘So are you going to give Lizzie the sack?’ Mike grinned when I told him about my snooty visitor that evening.
‘No way!’ I exclaimed. ‘The children adore her – she’s their Mary Poppins, and ours too. Lizzie is an angel.’
‘Yes, she’s made our lives a lot easier.’
‘And more fun too. I couldn’t do it without her now.’
‘You’re right,’ agreed Mike. ‘She’s worth more than a hundred of Sonnington’s posh matrons.’ He paused. ‘But what if they try to frighten her off?’
‘I don’t think our Lizzie would frighten easily!’ I smiled, hoping I was right.
3
Bush-Baby
