The Midwives of Raglan Road

by Jenny Holmes

  Lydia came in next and luckily the examination presented no problems, though Hazel grew more and more aware of the silence in the waiting area.

  ‘Not so busy today, I see.’ Lydia’s pointed comment drew an awkward response.

  ‘More might come along later,’ Hazel said without conviction.

  ‘Or maybe that to-do with Myra Pennington has put ’em off.’

  Hazel didn’t reply as she brought Lydia’s notes up to date.

  ‘Not me, though,’ plain-speaking Lydia assured her on her way out. ‘I trust you, I do. You hear that, Dr Bell? I like Nurse Price and I’m keeping on with the clinic regardless.’

  Rid of his last patient of the day, David had come upstairs to find out how Hazel had coped. ‘Not so good, eh?’

  ‘No. Only three came.’ She put away her stethoscope with a dejected sigh.

  ‘Never mind. We expected people to gossip and sure enough, they did.’ A kind smile softened his sharp features and his eyes followed Hazel around the room. ‘As you know, the real job is not the science of delivering babies, it’s convincing patients that they can rely on you, come what may.’

  ‘I’m not doing a very good job of it then, am I?’

  ‘But it takes time and there are bound to be hiccoughs along the way.’

  ‘This feels like more than a hiccough,’ Hazel confessed with a face full of woe.

  David nodded then attempted to lighten the mood. ‘Don’t worry – you’ve got Eleanor on your side.’

  ‘Have I?’ She stopped tidying and shot him a surprised look. ‘Or are you just teasing me?’

  He smiled. ‘No, I’m serious. Eleanor is like one of the sentries on guard outside Buckingham Palace: she treats everyone who comes through the door with maximum suspicion. You’ve been here for how long?’

  ‘Three weeks all told.’

  ‘See – and you’ve already got her eating out of your hand.’

  ‘Honestly?’ Hazel couldn’t tell how serious he was. As far as she was aware, the receptionist still cast a cool eye over her and rarely said anything positive.

  ‘Believe me.’ Leaning against the door post in a relaxed manner, his smile broadened. ‘By the way, is there any point offering you a lift home, or are you on your old sit-up-and-beg bike?’

  ‘Bike,’ she confirmed. Recalling Gladys’s glee over David’s first offer of a lift, she blushed. ‘But thank you anyway.’

  ‘Well, when winter sets in and you stop wanting to brave the elements, the offer will still stand.’ He stood aside to let her pass.

  She dipped her head then hurried down the stairs, aware that he was following close behind. In Reception she nodded a farewell at Eleanor, who was still typing away. Then, through the stained-glass panel of the main door Hazel made out the outline of a man. She stepped back as the door knob turned and John Moxon came in. His left wrist was bound by a blood-soaked tourniquet and he nursed his left hand in the palm of his right. The hand bled profusely from a deep gash between forefinger and thumb.

  ‘Doctor, can you put a stitch in this?’ he asked David, ignoring Hazel. ‘I had a mishap at work.’

  This was Hazel’s second piece of bad timing of the day – bumping into first Dorothy and now John. Her heart plummeted into her boots.

  ‘Come with me.’ David reacted quickly, directing him towards the examination room while Eleanor tutted at the splashes of blood on the tiled floor. ‘I’ll need to give you an injection to stop it getting infected as well as a local anaesthetic for the stitches.’

  ‘Go,’ Eleanor mouthed at Hazel who was half hidden behind the door.

  But John sensed her presence and turned. For a second he looked startled then rapidly brought himself under control. ‘Wait a second,’ he said to David.

  Hazel bit her lip and prepared herself for the outburst that would surely follow.

  John towered over her, his face etched with sorrow, his injured hand forgotten. ‘Hello, Hazel. I was hoping I might run in to you at some point. I have something I wanted to say to you.’

  ‘This way, please.’ David’s brisk tone warned John that he wouldn’t stand for any nonsense.

  But John ignored him. His eyes locked onto Hazel, leaving her unable to move away. ‘Don’t worry – I only want to thank you.’

  ‘For what?’ she murmured. She overcame the band of guilt and fear that had tightened around her chest. After all, what she had suffered since Myra’s death was nothing compared to what John must be going through. She imagined the undiluted torment of losing those he loved in one fell swoop, the deep well of sorrow down which he stared.

  ‘For doing your best.’ His voice cracked and ended in a sigh.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ There were no words, no way of raising him out of his grief. Though there were tears in her eyes, she didn’t flinch under his gaze.

  He stood with one hand cradled in the other, pale and bleeding but determined. ‘Thank you,’ he said again.

  Eleanor came out from behind her desk and took him by the elbow. ‘Doctor is ready for you,’ she said as she led him away.

  Hazel’s lips quivered. She went out and closed the door, paused on the top step and glanced back through the red and green leaded glass. In the midst of grief John Moxon had looked her in the eye and said the decent thing. It took courage. Another word came to mind as she hurried down the stone steps onto the busy street. ‘Honour.’ John was an honourable man, head and shoulders above others in more than the obvious sense. She admired him for rising above his own suffering to offer her a scrap of comfort. Not many men would have done that – of this she was certain.

  CHAPTER NINE

  September eased into October without Hazel realizing how fast the year was slipping away. Though Jinny went to Myra’s funeral, she said nothing to Hazel afterwards about Dorothy’s cold looks or Mabel’s forthright criticism at the church gate.

  ‘That girl of yours is still wet behind the ears, Jinny Price. That’s how we’ve come to this.’

  Jinny had told Mabel to keep her opinions to herself. ‘If anyone’s to blame, it’s Myra’s mother for not getting her the proper help in time.’

  ‘We’ll agree to differ,’ Mabel had muttered stiffly, bowing her head as the cortège had pulled up.

  There’d been no weeping and wailing from the thin-lipped chief mourners, just a sombre silence as the single coffin containing both mother and child had been carried inside.

  Afterwards, life returned to normal for most of the residents on Raglan Road. Hazel continued her struggle to bring more women back to the clinic as strong winds brought down the rust-red leaves from the beech trees bordering the Common and morning mists crept down from the moors into the narrow streets and crowded courtyards. They combined with black smoke churned out by the mill chimneys to form a choking, foul-smelling smog that cut visibility to a few feet. On some days this was so bad that traffic came to a standstill, requiring a man to walk ahead of each vehicle carrying two bright lights. Hazel heard of several old people in the neighbourhood being taken to hospital with acute respiratory failure, while four of the women in her clinic developed bronchitis. Two others were laid low by influenza.

  However, Margie Daniels did come back to the clinic and was one of the lucky ones who sailed through pregnancy and whose home birth under Hazel’s care went without a hitch. At half past eleven at night on 24 October, after a four-hour labour, she delivered a baby boy, weighing in at a bouncing eight pounds two ounces. Mother and baby thrived from the off; Margie took to breastfeeding for the second time like a duck to water and little Bertie soon put on weight, so that Hazel’s post-natal visits to the house on Ada Street quickly ceased.

  With Evelyn Jagger, however, Hazel was presented with a more difficult situation to test her skills. Despite her worries during pregnancy, careworn Evelyn had insisted on giving birth to her first baby at home and went into labour in the early hours of a Wednesday morning, having attended clinic the day before. Her husband Archie was away from home looking for
work so Hazel got the call from Evelyn’s mother who lived next door to her daughter and son-in-law.

  Hazel’s heart lurched at the sound of urgent knocking in the middle of the night and the usual call of ‘Baby’s on its way!’, but she was up and dressed, running through the deserted streets ahead of the older woman, down slippery, moss-covered steps and through dark alleys until she arrived at the house on Canal Road to find Evelyn in great distress.

  Within minutes she’d found out the cause – the baby’s presentation was wrong and it needed strong manual manipulation on Hazel’s part to bring the head into a position where it would engage and labour could progress, hopefully without the use of forceps, which usually required a doctor.

  ‘Just my luck!’ Evelyn moaned between bouts of agonizing pain. But she had more grit and determination than Hazel had expected and she delivered her daughter unaided. In the end there was no need for Hazel to call on David for assistance. Instead, she used ergometrine to ensure that the placenta was spontaneously pushed out and by this time a smiling Evelyn was cradling the baby in her arms.

  ‘She’s called her Sally, after the girl in the Gracie Fields song,’ Hazel told David when she dropped in at the surgery to complete Evelyn’s record card at midday. She smiled at his raised eyebrows. ‘“Pride of our alley”. They’re all naming them after well-known songs and film stars these days.’

  ‘It could have been worse,’ he admitted. ‘At least it’s not Tallulah.’

  ‘Sally’s a pretty name; I like it.’ The light-hearted banter sent her on her way with a smile. She was quietly pleased with how well she’d coped with the tricky situation. I’m moving on, she thought. I’m remembering the reasons why I came into midwifery in the first place. Yes, it was still a struggle to find enough work to make a good living and yes, there was every chance that there would be another case like Myra’s waiting around the corner – a baby delivered too prematurely to survive, say, or more transverse presentations, and worst of all, other cases of full-blown eclampsia. But being the mainstay at David’s antenatal clinic had helped Hazel get over the feeling of being an outsider that she’d suffered when she first came home. It was true that Dorothy Pennington still harboured bitter resentment – a feeling made doubly obvious by the cold shoulder offered by the women whom Hazel had fixed in her mind as ‘the coven’.

  ‘Her? She’s clueless,’ Mabel would say with a shake of her head whenever Hazel’s name was mentioned.

  ‘Book learning never got anyone anywhere,’ Doreen or Berta would wholeheartedly agree.

  Jinny’s steady advice to Hazel was to take no notice.

  ‘Easier said than done.’ Hazel’s weary response came at the end of another fruitless day trying to drum up custom. She carried upstairs her mother’s parting advice to stick at it regardless and crept miserably into bed.

  At teatime on 4 November, shortly after Evelyn’s home birth, there was a loud knock on the door of number 18.

  ‘Leave it – it’s probably kids,’ Jinny remarked as Hazel went to answer the door. ‘It’s Mischief Night, remember.’

  This was the night before Bonfire Night when there was a tradition of letting the boys and girls of the neighbourhood go wild with any number of practical jokes. They knocked on doors then ran away, posted jumping-jacks through your letter box or else tied a dustbin lid to your door handle and scarpered.

  There was a second knock with no surprise fireworks and then a third more impatient one before Hazel decided she’d better see who it was.

  ‘Five shillings and three pence!’ Betty Hollings stood on the doorstep with a bright smile and an outstretched palm full of sixpences, three-penny bits and coppers. ‘It’s the rest of what we owe you. Sorry it’s taken so long!’

  Hazel returned the smile. ‘Come in, Betty!’

  ‘Quickly, before we freeze to death in here,’ Jinny added.

  ‘No, ta. I’m not stopping.’ Betty had braved the usual November pea-souper without hat or coat. ‘Doreen’s keeping an eye on the kids. I promised her I wouldn’t be long.’ She tipped the coins into Hazel’s cupped palms. ‘Never say we don’t pay up, eh?’ she said with a wink.

  ‘Ta – I appreciate it. It’ll come in handy in the run-up to Christmas. How’s little Daisy getting on, by the way? I haven’t called in to see her for a while.’

  ‘Fit as a fiddle,’ Betty reported. ‘I had Mabel having a go at me the other day, though.’

  Hazel came out onto the step and held the door closed behind her. ‘What for?’

  ‘The usual. She’d overheard Len in the Green Cross saying he was having trouble scraping together what we still owed you then next day she ran into me at Hutchinson’s, asking the grumpy old sod to put a few things on the slate for me until the end of the week – meat paste, a tin of sardines and suchlike. Well, that was Mabel’s cue. “It serves you right for going to Hazel Price in the first place. If you’d stayed with me like you did for the first two, I’d have kept the price down and you wouldn’t be in here begging for favours” – on and on like a stuck record.’

  Hazel was by now used to the rivalry between herself and Mabel so she skipped over that part of what Betty was saying. She concentrated instead on a picture of the hard-up housewife wheedling her way into getting basic groceries from Ben Hutchinson on tick. ‘Are you sure you can afford this?’ she asked, jingling the coins between her hands.

  ‘We’ll manage, don’t you worry,’ Betty said, pulling her brown cardigan across her chest. ‘We always do; one way or another.’ With a cheerful goodbye she backed down onto the greasy pavement and was lost in the yellowish-grey fog. Further up the street there was the sound of fire crackers followed by children’s running footsteps and laughter.

  Hazel went into the kitchen and spread the coins across the table, making piles of sixpences, three-penny pieces and pennies that she pushed towards Jinny. ‘That’s for my keep this week,’ she told her.

  Her mother counted out three shillings then pushed the rest back. ‘This is more than enough.’

  Hazel calculated that she was left with two and three for herself, which she would deposit in the bank tomorrow. Over the years she’d been a careful saver and now the total in her bank book stood at ten pounds, seven and six – more than enough for her to pay the deposit on a flat or a house plus the first week’s rent if she so chose.

  ‘You’ll soon be thinking of moving out into a place of your own at this rate.’ Jinny seemed to read Hazel’s mind. ‘Don’t look at me like that – it’s bound to be the next step for a girl like you.’

  Hazel sat down beside her mother and studied her with a worried frown. She had a close view of the wrinkles forming at the corners of Jinny’s eyes and the lines just visible from her nose to the corners of her mouth – signs of ageing that rouge and face powder couldn’t hide. ‘What kind of girl is that?’ she asked.

  ‘One who sets about doing things without letting anyone get in her way,’ Jinny said with a sigh.

  ‘Am I like that?’ Hazel’s dismay showed in her face. The real her, hidden from view, certainly wasn’t the out and out go-getter that Jinny described.

  ‘It’s how it comes across – yes. I’ve always said to Mother, ever since you were little: “Hazel will do what she wants to do – come what may.”’

  ‘But it doesn’t feel like that to me. Often I’m quaking in my shoes – when I first left home and went to college, for a start. That was very hard.’

  ‘You still went ahead, though,’ Jinny pointed out. ‘We may be alike in some ways, you and me, but we’re opposites in that respect. I always followed what people expected of me – the same as Rose. In my case it was to get married to Alec and leave home. For Rose it was to stay and look after Mother. Neither of us would ever have been able to branch out on our own. But times change; I realize that.’

  ‘So would you and Dad mind if I found a place of my own?’ Hazel wondered aloud.

  ‘Like I said, it wouldn’t make any difference if we did.’


  ‘But would you?’ Hazel persisted. Part of her longed to hear her mother say that she wanted her to stay here on Raglan Road where she belonged, but a more urgent, forward-looking voice was telling her to spread her wings.

  ‘Where are you thinking of?’ Jinny asked. ‘Would it be very far away?’

  ‘No, not far. I’ve got my group of women from the clinic to think of. I thought I’d start looking for a flat on Ghyll Road. That would be handy.’ Hazel was frustrated that Jinny still hadn’t told her how she felt about the idea. Why couldn’t she share her feelings, just this once?

  ‘Your dad will miss you.’ Jinny’s reflective remark led to a short silence, broken by the boom and clang of a banger exploding under a metal dustbin lid. The racket echoed down the street. ‘Don’t breathe a word until you’ve found somewhere – he’ll only get in a state.’

  ‘All right. Anyway, it might not be until after Christmas.’

  ‘Yes, it would be nice if we could have Christmas together.’

  ‘Mum, I’m not planning to emigrate to Australia.’ Hazel’s exasperation broke through. ‘With a bit of luck I’ll only be round the corner.’

  ‘You’ll need pots and pans.’ Jinny’s mind turned to the practical as usual. ‘I’ve got a spare pair of curtains in a drawer upstairs that I can let you have.’

  Best to put a lid on any hopes of Jinny expressing her feelings or even offering an opinion, Hazel realized. She looked sadly around the kitchen at the clock on the mantelpiece that had taken second place to her framed certificate and at the green and cream wallpaper with its up-to-date geometric pattern that her mother had carefully chosen from a heavy book of samples. Jinny was now pestering to get rid of the old black range and replace it with a tiled fireplace but the cost was against it, Robert said.

  ‘I’ll miss you too,’ Jinny admitted out of the blue, going to answer a fresh knock on the door.