The Women

by Alice Taylor

  On her arrival she went immediately to the birthing room. This could be the parlour, which was temporarily turned into a labour ward because it was the largest room in the house, or it could be the main bedroom. Here the maternal grandmother was usually in residence. The birthing room was strictly a female domain and all males were evicted, including the expectant father, who the Nurse felt had already made his contribution – and sometimes a little more often than was necessary! The Nurse might talk to him about that later as natural family planning was not outside her brief – but that was for another day. Now the father’s function was to keep his mouth shut, boil water and provide it on demand.

  The comfort and support of the mother in labour was the Nurse’s all-prevailing concern. She talked and soothed and if it was a first-time mother she advised on positioning, coping with pain and pushing. If it was a long labour, tea was brought to the room by the grandmother, who also brought in the hot water. As the labour became more intense, the Nurse supported the mother at one side of the bed and the grandmother did the same at the other side. During these hours of sometimes excruciating pressure the women worked in harmony to ride the waves of contractions as they came and went. Screams of pain and prayers blended with the sprinkling of holy water as the women bonded to bring new life into the world. Finally, in a crescendo of agony and ecstasy, a baby slid into life. If the delivery did not go according to plan the doctor was summoned, and gas and air came into action to ease the situation. But generally the women saw the whole delivery through to the end. The knowledgeable Nurse checked that all was well with the new baby and after other practicalities were seen to and the mother made comfortable, the father was invited in to see the new arrival.

  Also waiting in the kitchen could be the paternal grandmother and aunts, uncles and close neighbours. Sometimes while the labour went on, the rosary was recited for a safe delivery. Birthing was a family affair.

  After the safe arrival, a discussion might take place as to the naming of the new baby. If it was a first baby the name of the paternal grandparent was always on the agenda and for a second baby the other side of the house could be invoked. After that, various options came up for debate and the family tree was sourced for any overlooked ancestors whose name needed to be renewed. At the time it was considered very important to know who it was you were ‘called after’. In some way you felt connected to them, and it was also thought that this strengthened the branches of the family tree and tied the family more closely together. The Nurse sat through many of these discussions, but, unlike her predecessor the Handy Woman, she seldom voiced her opinion, though if she did, she was always listened to carefully.

  The christening took place within days and the new mother did not attend because she was still house-bound. She was confined to bed for ten days to two weeks and during that time the Nurse came daily to check that all was well with her and her baby. The Nurse also cast a caring eye over the other children in the house. When my baby brother was born I was suffering from an ear infection and every morning my ear was moist with discharge. The Nurse tackled my complaint with ear drops which she inserted on her daily visits. After a few mornings my ear was dry and I was very excited to report success. I was only two then, so the image of the Nurse must be one of my earliest memories. That memory is vague and misty, but I recall being curled up in the well of the window watching her talking to my mother and examining the new baby, and it was morning because the cows were out in the field below the house. Childhood has a long memory.

  Years later when I came into my own baby-production phase the District Nurse in our village had retired and babies were making their debut in the antiseptic hallowed halls of the Bon Secours Maternity Hospital in Cork, where I was installed for a week. But when I brought my firstborn home I too benefited from the Nurse’s experience and love of babies. Every morning on her way home from Mass she called in and bathed my baby. I was immensely grateful because as a new, inexperienced mother I was afraid I might inadvertently drown, choke or smother this new miracle in our midst. The Nurse sailed in the door exuding confidence and tranquility and effortlessly executed what I considered a gigantic and terrifying undertaking. As soon as she arrived I felt better and I could well understand how in bygone days her arrival at the home of a mother in labour calmed frayed nerves. For me her presence was like an Indian head massage, one of my favourite forms of relaxation!

  One morning, having bathed and bedded the new arrival, she and I sat having tea and chatting about her life as the Nurse. She told me that as soon as a woman became pregnant she called to the Nurse to discuss her situation, and throughout her pregnancy the Nurse came regularly to check on her progress. When I asked what home births were like she smiled in warm remembrance and told me simply, ‘They were great women’, and she repeated this constantly during our conversation. It was obvious that she had immense respect for ‘my mothers’, as she referred to them. ‘Had you any painkillers?’ I enquired. ‘Ah no,’ she said quietly, ‘sure, we didn’t need them. We prayed.’ With the excruciating pains of first childbirth still fresh in my mind, I was not at all sure that the power of prayer would have got me through my ordeal. I fully agreed with her pronouncement that they were great women.

  But although she did not dispense any painkillers she alleviated pain in her own way and brought great comfort and security to her mothers because she soothed, instructed, encouraged and always prayed. ‘The mothers prayed too,’ she said, ‘and sometimes we prayed together and it all helped, but for everything I trusted in God. I always felt close to God in my work and over the years He always helped me to get to my mothers when they needed me.’

  She told me that in 1930 she had trained as a midwife in the Coombe Hospital in Dublin and her first appointment was to a maternity hospital in Lower Leeson Street where she got valuable experience which she put into practice when she moved to Cork, where she joined the staff of St Kevin’s Nursing Home in South Terrace. Later she returned to her native Bandon, where she worked in what was called the ‘Miss Beamish Home’, after its matron. In 1943 a vacancy arose for a District Nurse in our village of Innishannon and she was appointed.

  It was plain to see that the Nurse had loved her job and that for her the special joy of welcoming a new baby had never faded throughout the years. When I asked about the modern perception of the dangers of home births she smiled softly and said, ‘I brought seven hundred babies into the world and never lost a baby or a mother.’ What a wonderful achievement, and it was no wonder that at the end of her days the Nurse could look back with satisfaction on a job well done. During our conversation she had constantly proclaimed that her mothers were great women. But I knew that I was talking to a great woman!

  Chapter 6

  The Road from Puck

  Whenever they were camped down by the bridge, Maggie May called to our house to collect food and clothes for her children. There was often a baby sheltering beneath her shawl. She lived on the side of the road in a horse-drawn caravan with her husband and six children. They had no regular income and no social welfare, of course. Her husband Jimmy dealt in horses but often drank the money and she struggled to feed her family with door-to-door begging and selling religious trinkets, mothballs, paper flowers and clothes pegs from a basket. At different fairs around the country she told fortunes. Her mother had taught her how to read palms and sometimes she surprised people by what she was able to reveal.

  Her husband’s father travelled with them in a cart drawn by a piebald pony and at night he pitched his canvas tent on the ground between the shafts of the cart. It was a cold, hard bed but he never complained. He was a chimney sweep and he also still practised the old tinsmith’s skills that had earned their people the name ‘Tinkers’.

  It was a hard life and Maggie May wanted better for her children. Usually she called to our house after the dinner when the men had gone back out to the fields, and my mother gave her her dinner. One day as they sat talking, she told my mother about her struggle fo
r survival, a struggle shared by many women living in difficult circumstances. She also spoke of her hopes for the future. I was listening and never forgot. This is Maggie May’s story.

  * * *

  ‘Man mind thyself and woman mind the children.’ Maggie May mumbled her mother’s oft-quoted philosophy as she clustered her children behind her into the safety of the pub doorway. This horse-fair day invariably ended in a drunken brawl. Some bare-chested traveller men and a few diehard locals belted each other around the centre of the town. Their quick-thinking wives took advantage of the situation to help themselves to the forgotten money in their menfolk’s abandoned jackets – money that earlier in the day had been extracted from tight-fisted farmers after hours of arguing, horse tangling, back slapping, palm spitting and much walking to and fro until an agreement was hammered out.

  She had watched as Jimmy had argued and tangled all morning with a miserable old bachelor farmer from up the hill behind the sheltered corner where they were now camped. She knew that if old Paddy was too tight-fisted with Jimmy, tomorrow night Jimmy would even the score by opening a gate at night and letting their pony graze in Paddy’s best field. Paddy knew this as well and the unspoken agenda brokered a fair deal. She smiled in satisfaction when their cob mare fetched a good price. It would keep hunger at bay for the coming winter – that was if Jimmy did not flitter it away in Kitty Mac’s pub that evening. That was always the problem with Jimmy, once he got into a pub he lost the head and their money disappeared in over the pub counter faster than water down a hill. And it wasn’t always spent on himself but often on hangers-on who knew that once he was tanked up Jimmy acted as if he had money to burn.

  Then a chance to prevent this calamity presented itself when an old sparring partner landed a right upper cut on Jimmy’s jaw and sent him sprawling. Recalling her mother’s attitude, she put the eldest, Kate, in charge of the other children, then slipped down the street to Jimmy’s abandoned jacket and helped herself to most of the roll of money bulging from the inside pocket. She quickly pushed the wad of notes up the leg of her knickers and beckoning the children to follow she headed out of town. As they scrambled to catch up with her, Kate asked, ‘Where you going to hide it, Ma?’ ‘None of your business, child, better not to know.’ ‘Will you get away with it?’ Packie asked. ‘I’ll handle that,’ she said in a voice that threatened no squealing on her.

  Later, when the children were bedded down for the night, she slipped down the steps of the caravan and walked along by the ditch to where the old man had his makeshift camp between the shafts of his cart. ‘Will you mind it?’ she asked. ‘Of course,’ and the brown gnarled hand reached out through a flap in the canvas tent. She handed him the roll of notes. He was Jimmy’s father, but there was bad blood between them. Her mother had warned her to be careful: ‘Bad blood between father and son is never good.’ She had never been told the full story of the old man but she knew that there was something about a knife fight in a pub in London and that he had served time. It had turned him into a loner and people were afraid to cross swords with him.

  But she found that the bad blood between father and son worked to her advantage and early in her marriage she became aware that the old man was on her side. Jimmy was afraid of his father and it was good that he was afraid of someone because when he got in a rage he could wreck the caravan and beat them all. But the old man would have none of it. Nothing was ever said, but the old man would sense when a storm was brewing and quell it before it gained full force. This understanding worked to both the old man’s advantage and Maggie May’s. She fed him and he minded the money and Jimmy never knew a thing about it.

  The old man was a chimney sweep and every year, once Puck was over, they all moved from valley to valley where people waited for him to clean their chimneys. He spoke very little, but for some reason that she could never quite fathom, the settled people treated him with far more respect than they did Jimmy. He carried his chimney sticks around in his cart and as she approached the cart now she could see them tied up firmly in black bundles at the bottom of the shallow cart.

  With the money safe, she continued walking until she reached a rusty gate. She climbed over it, tossed off her boots and headed down towards the river. It was great to feel the soft, moist, dewy grass under her feet. The freedom of bare feet after the constraining feel of battered old boots was wonderful. She seldom had comfortable shoes or boots to wear – only the leftovers that others had already moulded into the shape of their feet. She gathered them on the door-to-door begging and when people gave them away they were always well worn. The only time they got good footwear was when someone died; Jimmy called it ‘wearing dead man’s boots’. But she didn’t care once they provided a bit of comfort.

  As she walked along she sniffed the lovely smell of the night. The cows lying contentedly chewing the cud around the field looked at her calmly as if she was one of them. Pity, she thought, that some farmers were not more like their cows. It was a warm night and a long sunny summer had lulled her into thinking that she loved this way of life. And in many ways she did, but the winters were rough and it was hard on the children, though looking back to when she was a child she had never thought of it as hard. She had accepted that this was her life and she loved the freedom. It was only as she grew older and less able to cope with the hardships that she wanted things to change. But as a child she had enjoyed it and when she went begging with her mother up to some of the little houses in the mountains she could see that some people there were no better off than they were. But though these people were poor they were still tempted by the colourful contents of her mother’s basket. They bought the little holy pictures, mothballs and paper flowers and her mother always came home in the evening with money at the bottom of her basket.

  Down in the valleys where the land was good the people were different. Some of the farmers’ wives were generous and gave them leftover dinners, but some banged the door in their faces and threatened them with their dogs. But over the years she saw that her mother had grown to know the valley people and she treated with respect the people who treated them well. But she was mean to the people who were mean to them. Often on the way out of a farmyard where they had been badly treated her mother would call to the henhouses and would help herself to eggs from the nests, or, indeed, sometimes put a fine fat young hen under her shawl. That night they would have roast chicken for dinner.

  But what she envied the settled people most was the roof over their heads in winter. On freezing cold winter nights when her teeth chattered under bare blankets, she envied them their warm beds. But on warm balmy summer days as she travelled from place to place, she was glad to be out on the road and free. Yet this meant that she had never learned to read and write and now in middle age she realised that this was a big disadvantage. She had never been in any place long enough to go to school. When she protested to Jimmy about their children not going to school he turned a deaf ear. And, of course, they agreed with him as they had no desire to be locked up all day. So the odds were stacked against her. But she was determined that in some way or other she would get them some schooling and she knew that the old man agreed with her in this.

  When she got back to the caravan Jimmy was asleep at the bottom of the steps. He had obviously tried to climb up but was too drunk to make it and was now face downwards on the ground. She stepped over him and went up the ladder and shut the door firmly behind her. A night out in the open air would do him no harm, she decided.

  The following morning when he was still there she shook him awake and catching him by the collar of his shirt demanded, ‘Where is the money?’ ‘What money are you talking about, woman?’ he spluttered, trying to gather his clouded wits about him. ‘The money for the cob,’ she shouted, backing him up against the side of the caravan. A foggy remembrance ebbed into his eyes but she could see that the previous night was lost in a haze. Still, she was determined to hammer home her advantage just in case he would wonder why she was not raging mad o
ver the loss of the money. ‘Where is it?’ she blazed, slapping him hard across the face. This was a step too far and Jimmy lunged at her, but she was too adroit for him and he fell over the steps and lay cursing on the ground.

  Kate was in the caravan taking it all in and Maggie May knew that the young girl was learning the rules of survival for the road, as she had learned from her own mother. But she was hoping that Kate was also learning that there could be a better way. Some day, by hook or by crook, she was going to get Kate to school. That would open the door for the others.

  Chapter 7

  The Chapel Woman

  Ellie inherited the job from her sister Nonie, who had inherited it from their mother. How their mother became the Chapel Woman in the first place could have had something to do with the fact that they lived on Chapel Hill in the house nearest to the church. Nonie regarded it as an honour as much as a job. As well as cleaning the church and sacristy, she looked after the altar linen and brasses, which was no small job with so many ceremonies held in those days. She resisted strongly when a modern-thinking priest tried to put the whole arrangement on a more businesslike basis and give her a proper wage and pay insurance for her and stamp her card. To Nonie this was lowering her vocation to a mere job. She was a fine-boned stooped little lady who carried in her head the site map of the graveyard surrounding the church. Priests came and went, but the Chapel Woman went on for ever. She knew where we were all buried and directed grave diggers to the right spot. Once, due to misunderstood instructions, a coffin went into the wrong grave and the following day she had it dug up quietly and put in the correct location. She was respectful and deferential to the priest and almost genuflected to the bishop.