There were minor irritations too—one I’m sure shared by many new parents—the naming of the child. Not long after the birth, a young nurse had approached me to ask what the baby’s name was to be. Michael and I had not made any final decisions in our pre-natal discussions, so I replied cautiously, ‘It might be Frances, but I haven’t quite made up my mind.’
I was therefore rather peeved to find that name written on to the card attached to her cot almost immediately afterwards.
Nevertheless, I soon rang my mother to report on the probable name. I also felt that I should forewarn her of the baby’s appearance.
‘She’s very plain, I’m afraid,’ I told her, but my mother did not seem unduly concerned.
The name, however, was a subject of concern! In the next telephone conversation, my mother acted as spokesman.
‘The family don’t like “Frances”,’ she informed me, and though I was irritated by the family’s intervention in what should have been a personal decision, I couldn’t help but be influenced by this information, particularly when the lack of enthusiasm was reinforced by Michael’s family.
In the bed facing me sat Elizabeth, the young woman who, following her complicated delivery on the night of my own production, had now been returned to the maternity home. She had, without difficulty (and very appropriately), named her daughter Dawn. The mother alongside me had an older daughter named Frances, which inhibited my discussion of the problem, so I spent much time silently poring over my A to Z of names.
My mother arrived to visit and I had to restrain her from telling me again (loudly) how much she didn’t like ‘Frances’.
‘We think you should call her Elizabeth,’ she informed me, and I had to explain in whispers, to avoid offending my neighbour that I really didn’t like the name ‘Elizabeth’ all that much (it was too traditional, too ‘Establishment’) and in addition, it seemed rather excessively patriotic to name the baby after the Queen.
My mother, however, explained that my paternal grandmother had been Elizabeth, which reminded me that my other grandmother, who had died when I was a teenager, was named Miriam and that her name ought to be included too. I agreed to review the situation and soon a nurse brought in the young lady under discussion.
‘Oh, she’s beautiful,’ said my mother, always a connoisseur of new babies. ‘How could you say she was plain?’
I had to admit she had improved a bit since she had put on a little weight. My mother even discovered dimples in her cheeks, which I had not noticed. Robert had one dimple—two was something of a bonus.
I conducted another search through the bible of names and made my decision speedily, after a brief conversation with Michael. I caught the Registrar on her weekly visit, thus avoiding any further family referenda on the subject, and my petite daughter was registered as Amanda—a pretty name with the meaning ‘loveable’ as I pointed out to everyone—Meriel—Meri after Miriam and El for Elizabeth. Then I discovered that Michael’s grandfather was called Mendel which resembled Amanda, so it seemed we had effectively paid our respects to everyone that was required.
I wrote to Sonia, at present on holiday, so that she would have the news as soon as she re-entered her house. To tease her, I deliberately held back the sex of the baby until the second page of the letter, for Sonia, like everyone else in the family, had hoped for a girl to join the four boy cousins.
But if I thought I could now relax and enjoy my little daughter, I was mistaken, for the latter half of my stay in the maternity home was fraught with battles with Sister, who had just returned from her holiday.
I had become aware of Sister’s imminent return when the cleaners, who had been remarkably restrained in the previous few days, came into the ward, caused dust to fly underneath my congratulatory cards and vacuumed and polished with uncustomary zeal and speed. In Sister’s absence, everyone had apparently been having a bit of a holiday—even the expectant mothers had stopped producing, so that the mothers present had been reduced to a mere half dozen or so in number.
‘You mark my words,’ commented one of the midwives, ‘as soon as she comes in through that door, they’ll all start following her in!’
I greeted Sister politely enough, but something of a cold war soon commenced and it all started when Jill came to visit me.
Michael warned me in advance, ‘She’s coming prompt at three o’clock, so don’t keep her waiting.’ He knew that, because of Amanda’s three-hourly feeds, I wasn’t always ready to receive visitors when the visiting hour began. Nevertheless, I rushed through the feed and, after Jill had come and gone, crept into the nursery to find, not altogether unexpectedly, that Amanda was howling with hunger.
The little ward was deserted—the three girls in my room and their visitors had disappeared into the garden. I couldn’t bear to think of Amanda lying there, crying hungrily until the next feed, and I took her from the cot and went back to my room and fed her again. However, just as I finished, I heard voices and within seconds was confronted by Sister. I was always in awe of her—as I had been all my life with people in positions of authority—and I couldn’t behave or speak naturally to her. Instead, I behaved like a schoolgirl caught in the act of doing something naughty (and I felt very much like that), and retorted rather defiantly to her cross tone.
After that she watched me with dedicated vigilance, and I often received messages to return the baby to the nursery if I took a long time over a feed. I couldn’t look at it from her point of view, that a small baby wants a minimum of handling and a maximum of rest. I felt only that I was being harassed. Once I took the baby back to the nursery and reinstated her in her cot and rewrapped her in her bedclothes so fast that Sister called me back a few minutes later and showed me how to make up the bedding tidily.
The feeling of being the ‘black sheep of the fourth form’ persisted—in fact the ward atmosphere was very much like that of a girls’ school and, despite the frustrations, frequently filled with the noise of hysterical female giggles at our own in-jokes about the staff, the food and even about my own particular position in ‘the dog house’.
I dared not let Sister find out that I was intending to go to Brighton with the family (even though I felt quite sure that it was in all our best interests to get away for a few days.) My parents and aunts shared a hut on the promenade. We could sit and enjoy the fine weather, make a drink or snack lunch in the hut and Robert would be able to enjoy the fresh air and the sea. I was due to leave the maternity home on Saturday, a convenient day for Michael to drive us all there, so I was naturally surprised and dismayed when a senior midwife approached me a couple of days beforehand, particularly as Amanda had been gaining weight steadily.
‘Would you be awfully disappointed if you had to stay an extra day?’ she asked. Naturally, I replied that I was prepared to do what was best for Amanda, despite my disappointment.
‘Well, I should ask Sister,’ she advised. ‘Wait till she’s had her breakfast—then she’s in a good mood.’
I plucked up my courage just after Amanda had been weighed.
‘Will I be able to take her home, as planned?’ I queried.
Sister looked at me sharply. ‘Why shouldn’t you?’ she snapped.
‘Er, well, because of her small weight…’
‘Why she’s done ever so well!’ exclaimed Sister. ‘What more do you expect of her?’
Duly squashed, but relieved, I returned to the ward to tell the girls how, once again, I had rubbed Sister up the wrong way.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t altogether quell a feeling of concern about Amanda. One day when I was sitting her up, supporting her chin with two fingers, she started to cough—I must have been practically strangling her—and I realised that I was going to have to be extra careful in my handling of her. Then there was the problem of infections—and I confided this worry to the Matron of the maternity home.
‘She’s been protected from germs here—but what about when she gets home? My son is always getting colds and coughs.’
For Robert had an unfortunate tendency to get tonsillitis invariably followed by bronchitis. But Matron reassured me—it seemed that their main concern was keeping Amanda away from the various germs brought in by different visitors, but there was no need to worry about the germs circulating in our own family.
On my last night I had a surprise visit, long after visiting hours, from Michael, accompanied by Robert, who looked almost grotesquely huge to me, now that I had become accustomed to Amanda’s minute features. They crept in, bearing my suitcase, and luckily did not receive a chilly reception; Robert, who had done a tour of all available relatives, including Mrs. Goldsmith, an ‘adopted Grandma’ who lived locally, clasped my hand.
‘Has it really gone?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Your tummy.’
‘Oh yes!’ I laughed. ‘You feel it,’ and sure enough it was—well more or less—flat.
Then the accommodating nurse on duty took him into the nursery for a peep at his little sister.
The next morning Michael arrived for the ritual departure; there was always a little farewell scene, and Sister usually carried the baby to the doorway or even the car.
As we stood making polite exchanges, Michael, never renowned for his tact, said, ‘Well we’d better make a move, if we’re going to Brighton today.’
I could have sunk through the floor. I knew the next line in the script before it was even uttered.
‘You’re not going gallivanting off to Brighton!’’ Sister exclaimed in horror.
I couldn’t bear a repeat performance of the same argument.
‘I think we’ll have to reconsider that,’ I said to Michael, bluffing, and hoping he would catch on quickly.
At last we made our escape. I hoped Sister wouldn’t accompany us to the car, because it looked such a disgrace, but she did. However, she didn’t see the hole in the floor of the car.
Then we were driving off, with me weakly giggling with relief at the scene that had taken place and wishing I could nip back and tell the girls in the ward all about it. But in the end, I never did see them again.
* * *
The first weeks with a new baby are always spent in a haze and the days in Brighton were no exception. Sometimes I sat in the seafront hut and fed Amanda, and sometimes the Aunties took Robert to the front without me, and I followed later, contentedly wheeling Amanda past gardens ornamented with enormous blue and pink hydrangeas.
Robert tricycled along the promenade, visiting neighbouring huts and occasionally playing ball with a paraplegic child in a wheelchair nearby. Frequently he persuaded the Aunties to tiptoe painfully over the shingle to paddle in the water with him, and even I, now my figure was a comfortable size, was occasionally persuaded to join him.
The holiday of sorts came to an end and we resumed our life at home, where days and nights merged together, punctuated by nighttime awakenings and daytime dozes, and only an occasional unusual event stood out from the monotony. Like ‘Alice’, I had to run very fast to stay in the same place and rarely made any progress.
I tried ringing the local primary school to find out if Robert could be admitted before his fifth birthday, but the earliest time was at the beginning of the term in which he was five and that was not for another year.
We were welcomed back in the local shops.
‘And what,’ one of the shopkeepers asked Robert, ‘have you got that’s new?’
Robert replied immediately, ‘A new car.’
Everyone roared with laughter; we had finally had to replace the A40, which was beyond repair, with an old Vauxhall, and this was far more exciting and interesting to Robert than the new baby. I was relieved and glad that he was not obsessively interested in Amanda, for I hoped he would avoid the pain of extreme jealousy. When I fed her, I tried not to exclude him from the occasion, and I would invite him to make himself comfortable on my bed, as I myself did, and whilst Amanda contentedly took her feed, I would sing to him, racking my brains for inspiration and coming up with such varied concerts as songs from ‘South Pacific’, followed by ‘My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean’ and ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’.
Morning playschool and regular clinic visits somehow fitted into the scheme of things and I was happy to see that Amanda—often discontented and always hungry—was nevertheless gaining weight fast, at a rate of half a pound a week.
At weekends, the pressures abated a little. One Sunday, we displayed Amanda to our neighbours, Doug and Beryl, and they took photographs of my sleepy three-week old daughter in my arms, with Robert standing solemnly next to us, like a guard on duty.
A couple of weeks later, on our fifth wedding anniversary, I cooked a celebration dinner, and unexpectedly that night, Bruce, on a flying visit from Ireland, called in. We sat talking for hours, putting out of our minds the sink full of washing up awaiting us and the impending two o’clock feed.
The next day, I sat in the garden, savouring the September sunshine, browsing through a garden catalogue, while Amanda was peaceful and Robert playing, visualising displays of spring bulbs in my mind’s eye—something to look forward to during the winter months.
The garden played an important part in my life now. It wasn’t tidy and it wasn’t weeded, except when Guiseppe appeared occasionally and took it in hand, but it was a place of creation. Babies—and three-year-old boys too—are demanding creatures, and flowers are not. Often, I would run from the house, just to see a new bud or flower, and after a minute or two of absorbing the peace of the garden away from the call of domesticity, I would return, refreshed, only to find Robert hurriedly putting on his boots to join me. Then sometimes, to spare his disappointment, I would take him on a guided tour, pointing out the radiant dahlias flowering happily next to marguerites, a pot marigold fortuitously planted by an unknown bird and tomatoes, at last ripening in the sun. Only the fruit trees had failed to produce their harvest.