The Midwives of Raglan Road

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, relinquishing her hand and acknowledging Gladys and her companions before going off to rejoin Bernard.

  Gladys raised her eyebrows at Hazel. ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘Hush, leave off!’

  If it turned out that Gladys and Eleanor were right and David really did have a soft spot for her, how would she feel?

  ‘Confused’ was the answer. David was a kind man – there was no doubt about it. And she held him in great respect. But she doubted that respect could lead to romance and she knew that her heart should have fluttered more than it had when he’d asked her to dance.

  Next to her at the bar, John stopped listening to Reggie, who was telling a joke. He caught Hazel’s eye as Dan and Norman laughed loudly at the punchline.

  ‘What do you think of the band?’ he asked, letting his gaze flick from Hazel’s face to David’s retreating figure and back again. ‘As good as Earl Ray or better?’

  ‘Good, but there’s something about Earl Ray …’

  She hadn’t got far into her sentence before Reggie claimed her for the next dance and the one after that. An hour later, with her head in a whirl from turning and swaying and having her feet trodden on, she made her excuses then escaped to the ladies’ toilets where she looked in the mirror at her flushed complexion and faded lipstick. Dipping a corner of her handkerchief under the cold tap, she dabbed her cheeks, ran a comb through her hair but decided not to bother with her lipstick. She’d enjoyed her evening but she decided she’d had enough of Reggie’s relentless flattery and clumsy plates of meat and so it was time to go home.

  Out in the tiny foyer, she reclaimed her hat and coat from the cloakroom and headed up the narrow steps out onto the foggy pavement where she joined a short queue at the tram stop outside Merton and Groves. She breathed in the cold, damp air, buttoned up her coat and reflected on the evening’s events.

  ‘What’s this? We can’t have you standing here in the cold,’ a voice at her shoulder said.

  It was John, jangling his car keys and offering her a lift home. ‘Come on – you might as well take me up on it. At least you’ll be warm.’

  The lights from the department-store window outlined his tall figure and broad shoulders and his deep, slow voice drew the admiring attention of some other young women in the queue. Without thinking, Hazel accepted. She left the tram shelter and walked with him down a side street to where his car was parked.

  ‘I wanted to ask you for a dance,’ he said as he opened the passenger door. ‘But Reggie beat me to it.’

  ‘Never mind – maybe next time.’ She sat as gracefully as she could in the deep seats and waited for him to settle himself behind the wheel. Her heart fluttered as he started the engine. She tried to clear her head but the jazz rhythms lingered and the suspicion that John had staged his exit to coincide with hers made her feel giddy and a bit ashamed, coming hard on the heels of Myra’s death. She glanced sideways at his profile – that long, straight nose over a full top lip, both in perfect proportion with his strong, closely shaven chin. His hair was combed back from his smooth forehead.

  ‘It’s nice to see you out and about,’ she told him in an attempt to quell her nerves.

  ‘Yes, but I’m not much of a night owl,’ he admitted. He glanced in the overhead mirror then signalled to draw out into the traffic. ‘I don’t go to many of these places. I’m still a country boy at heart.’

  ‘Where exactly did you grow up?’

  ‘A little place called Shawcross – up in the Dales, miles from anywhere. I lived on a farm. My mum passed away when I was five, so that left me and my dad to run the place.’

  ‘That sounds like a hard job.’

  ‘It wasn’t so bad – better than being cooped up in a spinning shed or crawling under looms, scavenging for scraps of wool any day. Not that I look down on the bobbin liggers and weft men round here – don’t get me wrong. I just wasn’t brought up to it.’

  This was more than Hazel had expected to hear and it piqued her curiosity. As John braked and then stopped at a junction, she felt brave enough to ask more. ‘When did cricket come into the picture?’

  ‘When wasn’t it?’ he said with a smile. ‘I’ve had a bat in my hand ever since I can remember. As a lad I used to chalk the wickets onto the barn door and get Dad to bowl me spinners. Poor bloke – he’d be worn out after a day rounding up sheep on the fell, but he always made time for a game of cricket.’

  ‘Happy memories,’ she murmured.

  ‘Right enough.’ Reaching the end of Ghyll Road, John had to stop once again for the traffic. ‘What about you, Hazel? What gave you the idea to do what you’re doing?’

  ‘I don’t really know.’ The question silenced her for a while. ‘No one in my family has gone into anything like this before. The women have worked in the mill or on the market like my mum, except for Rose. She hasn’t been strong enough for full-time work so she does millinery and a bit of upholstering. I just knew I needed to do something different. I wanted a job where I could be of use.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he said without irony. ‘A lot of women couldn’t face what you sometimes have to.’

  The comment jerked her back to the terrible scene of Myra struggling to breathe, of the stillborn baby and the slack weight of him as Hazel had laid him in his crib. John too must be remembering it – not just every now and then, but many times a day since it had happened.

  ‘And how is it working out with Dr Bell?’ He went smoothly through the gears as they pulled out from the junction.

  ‘Tip top. We get on swimmingly. We could do with more patients attending my antenatal clinic, though.’

  ‘Well, good luck with that.’ Turning off from Ghyll Road onto the cobbled surface of Raglan Road, he slowed down outside Hazel’s house. ‘I was wondering, would you like to drive out to Shawcross with me some time?’ he asked as casually as he could manage, tapping his forefinger against the steering wheel while he awaited her reply.

  Hazel breathed in deeply. She saw a light on in the front bedroom – that would be her mother and father lying awake, waiting for her safe return. ‘When?’ she murmured.

  ‘How does Sunday morning sound?’

  ‘Sunday morning it is,’ she said, fumbling with the door handle then making a hurried exit. The door closed with a heavy clunk. She didn’t look back or wave goodbye as she went up the steps and turned her key in the lock. John’s car purred on up the hill.

  ‘Remember to bolt that door before you come up,’ her mother called sharply from the bedroom.

  ‘I will.’ Hazel kicked off her shoes then sat a while beside the fire. The room was silent and she enjoyed the peace and quiet, and the way her thoughts glowed, shifted then settled like the embers in the grate.

  The next day Jinny left instructions for Hazel to take sandwiches to Robert in Nelson Yard.

  ‘Your father’s helping Norman with a few odd jobs,’ she explained on her way out of the house. ‘You’ll need to buy some boiled ham from Hutchinson’s.’

  Still in her dressing-gown, Hazel followed Jinny to the door and watched her make her rapid way up the street. She was dressed for work in a paisley-patterned wrap-over apron under her dark green coat, wearing a woollen headscarf and brown laced boots with a fur lining. Even in this workaday outfit, her mother managed to attract glances from the men digging up the cobbles outside number 30, Hazel realized with a pang.

  She thought of the times she’d heard Jinny wish that she’d had the chance to make more of herself by finding office work after leaving school at fourteen. ‘A typist or a telephonist – that would have been the job for me.’ Then she would quickly sigh and dismiss the notion as a fairy tale.

  ‘Count yourself lucky you’ve got a decent husband,’ Ada would chide, one eye on young Hazel who soaked up every word. ‘There’s a lot of war widows around here who would give their eye teeth to be in your position – a steady new husband, a nice house and a little girl growing up to be your spitting image.
’

  It hadn’t been enough, though, Hazel knew now as her mother disappeared around the corner and she went back inside. She got dressed and spent the morning dusting and polishing then slipped out to buy the ham – enough for Norman and Sylvia as well if they happened to be in. At twelve o’clock she made the sandwiches and set off for Nelson Yard.

  With luck, Sylvia would be there. Hazel would find her on home territory and she would perhaps be calmer. There was even a chance that she would have talked things through with Norman and settled in her mind to go ahead and have the baby after all. This at least was what Hazel was hoping as she headed down the dank alley into the yard.

  As it happened, she crossed paths with her father on his way to the ironmonger’s on Ghyll Road for a bag of screws and some rawl plugs.

  ‘I’m helping Norman put up shelves in the kitchen,’ he explained. ‘Everything is in a right mess. Best leave the sandwiches on the draining board, out of harm’s way.’

  So Hazel went on and found Norman alone in the comfortless house, sawing planks of wood to fit an alcove. There was sawdust everywhere, parts of an iron bedstead waiting to be carried upstairs and a tea chest full of borrowed pots and pans in the corner next to the sink.

  ‘Hello – somebody’s hard at it!’ she said cheerily as she stepped through the open door.

  Norman was in shirtsleeves and braces and was clean shaven, having given up his attempt to grow a moustache. He had the stump of a pencil tucked behind his ear and a list of scribbled measurements tacked to the wall. ‘You don’t say. Your dad’s a stickler for getting things right. Not that I’m complaining, not when he’s given up his weekend to lend a hand.’

  ‘So I take it Sylvia isn’t in?’ Hazel plunged into the topic that troubled her more with each day that passed. ‘I haven’t seen much of her lately. Is she trying to avoid me?’

  Norman frowned then laid down his saw. ‘She’s never in, to tell you the truth. What with me being out at work and her gadding out and about in the evenings, we hardly ever see each other.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘At the shops, so she said.’

  Norman’s unhappy expression brought out the protective side of Hazel’s nature. ‘Never mind. I expect she wanted to keep out of the way while you and Dad got to grips with things.’

  He shook his head. ‘Why would she go shopping without any money in her purse?’ he asked. ‘It was only an excuse. I’m worried about her, if you must know.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong?’

  Norman had taken to Hazel as she had to him and his open nature meant that he saw no reason not to come clean. ‘Half the time she’s avoiding me, the other half she’s crying on my shoulder. But she won’t talk to me so how can I get to the bottom of it?’

  Hazel sighed. ‘Doesn’t she say anything at all?’

  ‘Not about why she’s upset. When she does open her mouth, it’s to tell me off for being on short time at Calvert’s and getting under her feet here in the house. She wants me to go around looking for more work, but it’s not easy. I’m only a packer in the warehouse – we’re ten a penny when it comes down to it.’

  ‘Don’t give up on her,’ Hazel urged. ‘Sylvia’s had things her own way for most of her life. Now she’s having to come down to earth with a bump. It’ll take time for her to learn how to make the money spin out, to keep the house tidy, and so on.’ Aware that she was skirting around the main issue, Hazel trailed off and tried to read Norman’s expression. He looked weary and dispirited, totally out of his depth.

  ‘She was blubbering all last night,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it – crying non-stop until by morning she made herself poorly.’

  ‘Was she sick?’ Hazel wanted to know, her mouth suddenly dry and her heart racing. If so, it could mean one of two things – either Sylvia was suffering from common or garden morning sickness or else she’d taken a strong purgative to try to rid herself of the baby.

  ‘As a dog,’ he confirmed. ‘Then she got dressed and rushed out without any breakfast. That was four hours ago and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her since. It’s not the first time she’s done it either.’

  ‘Rightio, I’ll try to have a word with her if you like.’ Anxious to be off, Hazel made her way to the door.

  ‘I doubt that she’ll listen,’ Norman mumbled before stopping to think then following her onto the doorstep. ‘Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?’

  Hazel groaned inwardly. Lying didn’t come easily, yet David had been adamant that knowledge of Sylvia’s condition mustn’t be shared. ‘Let me have a word with her,’ she said again before hurrying off.

  Crossing the yard, she saw Betty Hollings tucking Daisy into her pram and perching Polly at the bottom end while Keith picked up a stone and chucked it at a pigeon sitting on the ash-pit roof. Next she spotted her grandmother, who sat at her window surveying all. Can’t stop! she mouthed, waving at Ada. She said the same to her Aunty Ethel, who was labouring down the ginnel with a heavy bag of groceries.

  But Ethel collared her. ‘I was wondering – have you seen Sylvia?’ she asked, blocking Hazel’s exit onto Raglan Road.

  ‘Not lately,’ Hazel confessed. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into her. She snaps my head off before I even open my mouth. And she looks downright peaky.’ Plain-speaking Ethel came quickly to the point. ‘Sylvia can scowl and stamp her foot all she likes when me and your nana and Aunty Rose knock on her door, but she can’t kid us that she’s not three months’ gone. That’s why I was hoping she’d stay in touch with you.’

  ‘She hasn’t,’ Hazel said, looking Ethel in the eye as best she could. It came to her how lonely Sylvia must be – talking to no one except Mabel, unhappy in her new marriage and desperate to end her unwanted pregnancy.

  Mabel. The name stayed with her as she managed to sidle past Ethel. Before she knew it she’d walked the few yards down the street and was knocking at the door of the corner house.

  ‘Before you ask – no, Sylvia hasn’t got back to me,’ Mabel said the moment she opened the door.

  Hazel bit her bottom lip and was about to turn away. But she hesitated. ‘How did you know …?’

  ‘Why you were hammering on my door?’ Mabel stood full square, chin jutting out, feet wide apart. ‘She’s the only reason you’d be here, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. She’s keeping out of the way of everyone except you. I’m worried about her, and I’m not the only one. I was hoping you’d have some news.’

  ‘No news.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sixth sense was telling Hazel otherwise. Mabel’s voice was edgy and defensive. Besides, she’d jumped the gun over Hazel’s enquiry.

  ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Hackles rising, Mabel made as if to close the door.

  ‘No. Wait. From what I can gather, Sylvia’s reached the end of her tether. I know for a fact she didn’t take your advice about talking things through with Norman.’

  Mabel clamped her lips tight shut and grunted in acknowledgement. She relaxed her hold on the door.

  ‘He still hasn’t got a clue about what’s going on and Sylvia makes every excuse she can find to vanish for hours on end. I can’t help thinking the worst—’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Mabel interrupted with a sigh of resignation. ‘You’d better come in.’

  So, rehearsing her next set of questions, Hazel walked down the hallway then turned into the front room where there was a low fire and the curtains were drawn against the daylight. After her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, she saw Sylvia lying on Mabel’s horsehair sofa, covered by a patchwork blanket, her dark eyes glittering in her pale, exhausted face.

  ‘Good heavens above!’ Hazel exclaimed, feeling as though someone had punched her in the pit of her stomach.

  Mabel thrust her further into the room then closed the door behind her, standing with her arms folded while Hazel recovered from the shock.

  Sylvia raised herself onto h
er elbows then fell back. She groaned and turned her head away.

  Hazel knelt beside the sofa. ‘What have you done?’ she whispered as she put her hand to Sylvia’s forehead and found it damp and cold.

  ‘Don’t …’ Sylvia whimpered.

  ‘How long has she been like this?’ Hazel asked Mabel. ‘Have you examined her?’

  ‘She won’t let me near,’ Mabel explained. ‘I found her half-dead on my doorstep. I brought her in but I couldn’t get a word out of her, except for her to say I shouldn’t fetch help.’

  ‘And you agreed!’ Exasperated, Hazel found Sylvia’s wrist under the blanket and felt her pulse. ‘Have you taken something?’ she asked. ‘Tell me – what was it? Was it from the chemist?’

  Weakly Sylvia pulled her hand away. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘I found these in her coat pocket,’ Mabel told Hazel. She handed over a small round box labelled Renovating Pills, and underneath the words For Female Ailments. ‘They’re the sort you send away for.’

  ‘Sylvia, listen to me.’ Leaning in and stroking her cheek, Hazel spoke gently. ‘The box is empty. Does that mean you took them all?’

  Sylvia groaned and placed her hands on her belly. She shivered violently and yet her whole body was drenched with sweat. ‘I had to,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t have this baby. I won’t!’

  Hazel folded back the blanket to reveal Sylvia’s bare shoulders. She was in her brassiere and petticoat. Her dress was draped over the back of the sofa. ‘Listen, Sylvia, I have to find out what’s happening to you. Will you let me examine you?’

  ‘No. Leave me alone,’ she insisted, drawing the blanket back up.

  Turning to Mabel, Hazel asked for a damp flannel to wipe Sylvia’s face and a glass of water. ‘She needs to drink as much as possible,’ she explained.

  ‘I’ve tried that. She can’t keep anything down – not even water.’ Mabel’s attitude had changed – no longer defensive but resigned. ‘We just have to wait until the pills do what they’re supposed to do.’

  ‘No.’ Hazel was adamant. ‘We don’t even know what’s in them or if they will work. All we know is that they’ve made Sylvia very sick.’