The Country Nurse Remembers

by Mary J. Macleod

  Outside, the hoses were pouring gallons of water onto both ricks. Evidently, the second was smouldering and the smoke was now mixed with steam. The noise was frightening. The roaring of the flames, the swooshing of the hoses, the hiss of the steam and the crackling of the thatch were combined with the shouts of the firemen. Then the hoses were turned onto our shed, which was near the hedge. Daddy kept all sorts of tools and useful bits and pieces in there.

  I suddenly remembered two toys that I had not seen for years.

  ‘Where is Ted? And where is Wilfred?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ said Mum.

  ‘Ted and Wilfred. I haven’t seen them for a long, long time.’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. In any case, now is not the time to worry about such things.’

  But I was worrying. I had completely forgotten about these two once-precious toys and was afraid that they might be in the shed. But there was nothing I could do about it.

  Very gradually the flames died down, the men scattered the remaining hay and straw, and continued to soak it all. The shed had survived, and our house was no longer in any danger.

  Later that day, after the fire engine had gone and Daddy, black from head to foot from the smoke, had washed the dirt off, we were looking at all the mess, and I thought of Ted and Wilfred again.

  ‘Daddy, what happened to Ted and Wilfred?’

  Daddy looked at me, thought for a bit and then opened the shed door and rummaged around a bit. There, on a high shelf, looking rather wet and bedraggled, were the big teddy bear and the equally huge rabbit. How could I have forgotten these two? They had been so much a part of my early life. One or the other had accompanied me everywhere. Ted was a huge, fluffy bear with a very happy face, while Wilfred was a pink rabbit in the sitting position with very large, wired ears. He must have been about three feet tall. I remember that I could not carry him when I was small.

  I was so thrilled to have found them again, but I have never understood why they had faded entirely from my mind until the haystack fire. And why I suddenly thought of them then.

  The Plane Crash

  We were becoming used to the sight of aircraft returning home from bombing raids on Germany as they flew over us on their way to the air base in Bristol. Often the plane was in a poor state, with holes in the wings where they had been hit by anti-aircraft fire. We could clearly see the sky through these holes, they were so big! Sometimes we could tell that one of the engines was not firing properly because the sound was all wrong, then the plane would fly lopsided, and often there would be smoke coming from the rear or from an engine. Occasionally, a plane was so low that we could see the pilot as he struggled to keep his crate, as the planes were called, in the air. Then we would hope that it got to the airfield safely. Sadly, some did not; we heard that several of the planes that we saw crashed before getting home.

  We children were now able to tell by the engine sound if it was ‘one of ours’ or ‘one of theirs’. Some of ‘theirs’ straggled home to Germany or France over our house, often in a very bad way. We ought to have been afraid because they frequently offloaded their bombs to lighten the aircraft so that they had a better chance of getting back—but we were fascinated, and bloodthirsty enough to hope that they would crash so that we could cheer.

  But one afternoon it was one of ‘ours’ that crashed in the village.

  Mum and I had been to the grocer in the middle of the village and had set off to go to the co-op. A plane, pouring smoke, came from behind us and roared over the village very low, almost touching two tall houses as it rapidly lost height, completely out of control.

  Mum grabbed my hand to rush for shelter somewhere, but we did not know where to go; the plane was swinging from side to side and could have landed just about anywhere. We started to run, but I didn’t know where we were going. Other people were rushing to and fro, as well. Then the plane lost so much height that it disappeared behind a row of houses, and a moment later we heard a terrific bang and a lot of crashing noises. By this time, we were crouching behind a low wall, but it was obvious that the actual crash had occurred at the bottom of the hill on the edge of the village, a little way off.

  I know we had been going to do more shopping, but Mum was shaking and decided that we would go home instead. On the way down the lane, we met Daddy, driving up to find us and see if we were all right.

  ‘I’ll take you home and then I’ll be back to see if I can do anything to help,’ he said.

  He was home again quite soon, as the ambulance and the fire engine were already at the crash scene, which was in the railway station yard. The plane had nose-dived into the weigh bridge, and no one was hurt except the pilot, who was ‘very dead, poor chap’, as Daddy said.

  Later we heard that the plane had been involved in a dog-fight over Bristol. ‘Dog-fight’ was the name given when an enemy plane and one of our planes were involved in a battle in the air, shooting at each other and swirling and swooping to avoid the bullets. I thought dog-fight was a great name. I remembered Crib’s dog-fights!

  The enemy plane had crashed in the suburbs of Bristol, but our pilot had tried to avoid killing people on the ground by steering away from the town and our village.

  ‘He could have bailed out, but he stayed at the controls to avoid bloodshed. The man was a hero,’ said Daddy, who was most upset. ‘He saved dozens of lives by staying put and steering that plane away from built-up areas. They say he was already wounded, too. I hope they award him a medal.’

  I couldn’t understand this at all. I didn’t know that anyone could get a medal after they were dead. Where did they put the medal?

  In the playground, everyone talked about the crash for at least a week. The boys pretended to be very knowledgeable about the type of plane, who the pilot was and what the dog-fight would have been like. Most of them had managed to get close enough to the cordoned-off area at the station to see the bent and twisted aircraft. Many claimed to have seen blood! We were all most impressed.

  One of the boys, I’ll call him David, had certainly been very close. A week or two after the crash, his mother began to notice an unpleasant smell about the house and could not identify its source. Then, one day, as she was turning out his pockets, which were usually full of bits of string, sticky crumbs, cigarette cards and the like, her fingers touched something smooth and soft. A she pulled it out, she realised it was the pilot’s thumb! Her screams could be heard in the next road, apparently.

  David, with the thumb in a tin box, was taken to the police station and given a good ticking off. But for days, of course, at school he was the centre of morbid interest. What ghouls we were! We wanted to know if ‘it’ was covered in blood. Was the bone sticking out? Was it a big thumb? Was it all there? The only thing that slightly spoilt the excitement was the fact that the pilot was ‘one of ours’. ‘Wish he’d been a Jerry,’ was the general opinion.

  Tig and Trouble

  Two things seemed to happen at home at about the same time. We got a puppy—which was lovely—and there was a big family row—which wasn’t.

  Every Friday on the way home after school, I went to see Grandma and Grandpa at Homelea for about an hour. I hardly ever saw Aunt Lizzy on these visits, as she only got home from work just before I had to leave, strictly at 5:30 p.m. This particular day Mum told me to stay until she and Daddy came to pick me up at about 6 p.m., so Aunt Lizzy was at home and had given me milk and cake to keep me going until teatime, she said.

  While I was with them, Grandpa started to ask me all sorts of questions. Aunt Lizzy kept trying to stop him, but he took no notice.

  ‘What do you do when you get home from school?’ he asked.

  ‘I clean my shoes.’

  ‘Then what happens?’

  ‘I have my tea.’

  ‘By yourself?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy is not home by then.’

  ‘What do you have for tea?’ he continued.

  ‘Bread and butter and jam or something, perha
ps cake and a cup of tea.’

  ‘Do you go home from school for dinner?’ Dinner meant ‘lunch’.

  ‘Yes, except on Fridays.’

  ‘Fridays?’ he questioned.

  ‘I take sandwiches to school for dinner and have whatever they have had for dinner, for tea. Mum puts it in the oven,’ I explained.

  They knew that Daddy had to go into Bath on Fridays to do something to do with the Works. Perhaps they didn’t know that Mum went with him. So I stayed at school to eat my sandwiches. I was usually the only one.

  ‘Then I do some washing up and then I have about half an hour to play in the garden, if it’s nice, or the ‘other’ room, if it’s raining, and then I go to bed.’

  ‘What time is that?’

  ‘Quarter to six, except Friday, like today.’

  ‘What about supper?’

  ‘I don’t have supper. I’ve had tea.’

  ‘I mean later, like just before bed.’

  ‘No, I’m not allowed,’ I said.

  ‘What time was tea?’

  ‘After school—half past four. When I get home. Except on Fridays.’

  ‘What do you take to bed? Dolls, books, pencils?’

  ‘I have to go to sleep,’ I answered.

  ‘And do you?’

  I was scared here because if I said ‘Yes,’ it was a lie, and if I said ‘No, I can’t because it’s too light and I’m not tired,’ and they told Mum, I would be in trouble. I think I was about nine at the time and no one else I knew was sent to bed so early, so I was called a baby at school. I didn’t know that early bedtimes would go on until I was at least thirteen and were only relaxed then because of homework. Oddly, I do not remember what my answer was in the end.

  All through these questions, Grandpa kept giving Aunt Lizzy a ‘look’.

  ‘It looks as though she was right,’ he said eventually.

  Aunt Lizzy looked worried. ‘Yes. She’s been school nurse for a long time.’

  In fact, a few days earlier, Nurse Furney had been to the school to inspect the children. Parents were not involved in this when I was at school: the nurse just turned up, and the children were marched in, one by one, to see her. They undressed to knickers or pants and were given the once over. The nurse was a friend of Aunt Lizzy. I began to feel worried in case I had said something to the nurse that would get me into trouble. ‘Inspection day’ was taken as just a bit of fun at school. Why were there all these questions now?

  Then we heard the horn. Daddy and Mum had arrived. I ran down the steps to the car. There sat Mum with something under her fur coat.

  ‘Look,’ she said. She was smiling.

  I looked. It was a brown-and-white puppy, very wriggly and squeaky.

  I was delighted. A puppy! Now I would have someone to play with in the garden. I would be able to give him his dinner, walk him … I was so excited.

  But then I remembered Peter-the-Pup.

  He had disappeared.

  And Crib. He had disappeared.

  Would this dog vanish, too? Oh, I hoped not. I didn’t want to love another dog, just for him to be spirited away.

  We took him home. He had to be bathed, because he had been born in a dirty stable and his coat was full of fleas. Daddy brought the old tin bath in, and he was popped in and washed with carbolic soap. He didn’t like this, and squirmed and whined. I was allowed to dry him on an old towel, and he licked my ears and bit my nose and wagged, not just his tail, but his whole back end, while I cuddled him. I was so happy!

  Mum’s coat was also full of fleas, and she screamed as she took it off. Daddy took it into the garden and shook it and shook it.

  ‘What shall we call him?’ I wanted to know.

  Just then, he did a ‘tiddley winks’ on the floor.

  ‘Let’s call him Tiddley Winks,’ laughed Daddy.

  ‘That’s too long,’ said Mum. ‘What about Tig?’

  So Tig he was, and he lived with us until, at the age of about ten, he had to be put to sleep. I used to cuddle him and whisper to him, and he seemed to love me, too. He was much more than just a dog to the lonely, rather frightened child I had become.

  The next day my father went to see Grandma and Grandpa. It was a Saturday, so Aunt Lizzy was there, too. He came home, called Mum and they both went into the dining room and shut the door. After a while and a lot of loud talking, Daddy called me. I knocked on the door and was told to come in.

  ‘Why do you knock the door?’ asked Daddy in a surprised voice.

  ‘Mum says I must knock before I go into a room.’

  He looked at her. ‘Why? This is not our bedroom or anything.’

  ‘I’m not having her barging in on private conversations,’ said Mum sternly.

  My father looked a bit taken aback, as well he might, as I never barged anywhere. In fact, I was a bit of a mouse.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, then told me to sit down.

  What had I done?

  ‘What have you been saying to Grandpa and Aunt Lizzy?’ he asked.

  ‘I … What … what do you mean?’

  Mum spoke. ‘It’s a simple question. Just answer it.’

  ‘Grandpa asked me lots of questions about my tea and bedtime and things.’

  ‘You must have told him some lies then, because he thinks I am not looking after you properly,’ said Mum.

  I was sobbing by now. ‘I didn’t, Mum. I told him what I have and when I go to bed.’

  ‘You must have said something to make him ask about all those things?’

  Daddy interrupted: ‘Just leave that, Mildred. What about the nurse’s inspection?’

  I didn’t know what he meant, so I just looked at him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that she had been?’ asked Mum.

  ‘I … I forgot.’ It was such an ordinary event that I had forgotten about it.

  ‘So. What did she say, when she looked at you?’

  ‘She said, “Oh dear! What a pale, thin, quiet little girl you are.”’ I trotted out the exact words.

  ‘Why did she say that?’ Mum was very red.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I knew that there was going to be big trouble of some sort.

  I was not aware of the fact that I was pale and thin and too little. I was probably quiet as well, because home was still a place where, for the most part, I only spoke when spoken to.

  Daddy was looking at me with a worried frown. Mum seemed to gather herself together. ‘You’ll have to eat more and get plenty of rest,’ she said.

  I must have suddenly gained some courage. ‘But, Mum,’ I said. ‘I eat everything you give me, and I go to bed when I’m supposed to.’

  Whoops!

  Mum looked at Daddy and said, ‘You see how cheeky she is!’

  He seemed startled. ‘But does she eat everything you give her?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll have to give you more, I suppose. But I don’t want you overloading your stomach.’

  ‘Overloading my stomach’ was a favourite phrase of hers. If I was sick and certain foods affected me badly, or if I was particularly worried about something and had a ‘bilious attack’, Mum would say that I had ‘overloaded my stomach’. After these events, she always cut my food down, not just for a day or two, but for about a week. But until that moment I had not realised that I was almost perpetually hungry. The revelation was a surprise. The constant feeling in my tummy was just that: the feeling in my tummy! I had not associated that feeling with chronic hunger.

  Maybe I was going to get more food now, I thought—though Mum forgot that I had not had any tea that evening and I did not dare remind her. So again I went to bed with a rumbling tummy.

  Food rationing had begun by this stage, but at first only a few things were limited, and because we lived in the country with vegetables and chickens, there was no need for hunger. But I was not allowed in the larder or to ask for extra helpings or to have more than my allotted meals or drinks. Snacking was certainly not considered.

  Along with
most children at that time, I was given a dessert spoon of cod liver oil and malt daily. It was toffee-like and gooey, and tasted of fish, but I loved it! Most school friends said ‘ugh’ and hated it, but it was quite filling, as well as being good for you. In the summer, it was considered to heat the blood too much, so Parrish’s food was substituted. This was a bright red medicine-like liquid that tasted horrible. I think it was full of iron, which is also good for you … So I was probably all right for minerals and vitamins, just rather empty.

  I don’t think my father had given my appearance a thought. As with most men of that era, he worked and provided, while the upbringing of a child, particularly a girl, was the woman’s job. Days would go by and I wouldn’t see him, because he would be gone in the morning and still working after I had gone to bed. I do not think he noticed. As far as he was concerned, I was being looked after, and that was that.

  There was a very stiff atmosphere with Grandpa and Grandma for a while, and I was not allowed to go alone to see them. Mum did not speak to me, except for essentials, for days. Being sent to Coventry was one of Mum’s main punishments, and, with no-one else to talk to, I was very miserable.

  But at least there was Tig now, and I could talk to him.

  I knew that my mum was much stricter than all the other mums, but that was just the way it was. But now I began to see that nearly everything about my upbringing was different. I was often teased at school because I was not allowed to stand and talk to the others after school, as I had to leave immediately and walk straight home—alone. If I waited for my friends who lived farther up the lane, I might be late. I could not hover outside Miss Mitchell’s shop with the rest, or pause to pick flowers. I must wear my coat, not carry it. I had to wear my gas mask (in its box) and my satchel in a certain way. As time went by, I began to realise just how many things there were that I must or must not do that seemed peculiar to the other children.

  Being different from them made me miserable, and when they all laughed at me I was very ashamed. Unfortunately, I covered this with a sort of bravado, a pretence that I did not mind Mum being so strict or that it was my idea to do things in such and such a way. This meant that I was often described as ‘weird’ or ‘daft’.