Helen Forrester - Yes, Mama

As her own confinement drew near, Florence looked white-faced and drawn. She dreaded the birth of her baby, because she had no idea how it would make its way into the world. There did not seem to be an aperture big enough to give it access! She wondered if she would split down the middle, like a pea pod giving up its peas, and the idea terrified her. She was much too afraid of her stout, dogmatic husband, the Reverend Clarence Browning, to ask him. Having been taught nothing about sex and having been horrified when Clarence took her on her honeymoon, she felt that life was vulgar enough, without giving him further opportunity for lewd remarks and disgusting behaviour. She simply did not believe frustrated Clarence’s assurance that their sex life was normal.

She was relieved to see her mother looking very elegant in a copper-coloured gown with the hint of a train at the back and a velvet collar edged with cream lace. It was comforting to realize that her mother had always survived childbirth, despite whatever ordeals it presented.

With the aid of her friend and her elder daughter, Elizabeth was gently eased into an armless easy chair near her work table in the window. Florence had brought a bunch of fat, pink roses from her own garden and had set them in a silver bowl on the table. She had also thoughtfully placed her mother’s workbasket by her chair. Her mother still followed the old custom of making and embroidering her own petticoats and drawers, though Messrs George Henry Lee, a fashionable shop in the town which made her dresses, cloaks and hats, would have been happy to undertake the work for her.

Florence had already been up to the nursery to see Alicia, and now she asked her mother if she had seen the child that day.

Elizabeth was silent for a moment. Then she said heavily, ‘No. Polly will bring her down at teatime.’

‘She is thriving, isn’t she?’

‘I believe so.’

Though Florence had herself been cared for by a nanny, she was worried about the little mite so summarily handed over to a wet-nurse. The baby seemed contented enough, but her mother showed no interest in it; and the nursery, when Flo had visited, appeared neither clean nor tidy. She had spoken sharply to Mrs Tibbs and to Polly about the need for cleanliness. Mrs Tibbs, all indignation, had promised to order the housemaid to turn the room out immediately.

Now, with Sarah Webb nodding agreement, she strove to awaken her mother’s interest in Alicia. ‘Polly needs supervision,’ she told her.

Her mother merely sighed absently, unable to tell her daughter of the sweating fear within her. She asked Florence to serve each of them with a glass of port from the decanter on the sideboard and to hand round biscuits from the biscuit barrel; when her glass was given to her she drank the contents with unmannerly speed.

‘It’s a pity Papa won’t keep a carriage, isn’t it, Mama? Such a lovely afternoon. We could have gone for a drive round the park.’

Elizabeth replied acidly, ‘You know that your father has money for everything – railways, roads, ships, are all he’s interested in. Never thinks of my needs.’

Sarah Webb, anxious to cheer up her friend, broke in, ‘Dear Elizabeth, if you don’t mind being driven in a governess cart, I should be delighted to take you out. I stabled it in Crown Street during your confinement, so that I would have it close by. As you know, I can handle the reins quite well.’

The idea of being seen in her old friend’s extremely shabby, humble vehicle, made Elizabeth shudder.

‘No, no, Sarah, thank you. If I wished, I could, I suppose, hire a carriage from the stables. Thanks to my own dear Papa, I am not without funds for such things. And Andrew has managed my portion so well that it has increased.’

Elizabeth’s dowry, legally tied up so that Humphrey could not touch it, provided her with a good wardrobe and sufficient pin money for small luxuries, like a hired carriage to take her shopping. But if Humphrey was so mean that he would not provide her with a fashionable vehicle, she preferred to put him in the wrong by being a martyr among her better-equipped friends. So, while Sarah and Florence sought to raise her spirits, she sighed and sulked, and looked forward with absolute dread to her husband’s return from his office in the city.

She had not seen Humphrey since the night of Alicia’s birth. As he had done for the past year, he had slept in the dressing-room next to their bedroom; in addition to the entrance to the bedroom, it had a door leading on to the landing, so he came and went without entering her room. Today, unless she feigned fatigue and returned to her bed, she would have to meet him at dinner. Later in the afternoon, Sarah and Florence would both go home and there would be no one present to make it necessary for him to control himself. The prospect made her feel sick, and she wondered what Andrew would do, if she ordered a carriage and fled to him.

As she drank her second glass of port and listened to Sarah and Florence talking about the joys of motherhood, she wanted to cry. Where was Andrew? He could have called or, at least, have sent some flowers from his wife and himself. He was her lawyer. He had every right to call on her. But in her heart she knew Andrew. He was in many ways weak; he would avoid a troublesome mistress as if she had the plague.

‘Babies are such darlings,’ gushed Sarah, none of whose nephews and nieces had ever been presented to her by their nannies, unless dry, fed and sleepy. She herself would not have known what to do with a sopping wet, hungry, howling infant, except to coo over it.

Florence was smart enough to realize this. She remembered her younger brother, Charles, with whom she had shared the nursery for a while; he had been anything but lovely. Clarence had told her flatly that they could not afford a nurse for their baby and that she must do the best she could with the aid of their cook – general and kitchen – maid. Because Charles was a boy, she had never seen him either bathed or changed. How did you change a small, wriggling creature like a baby? Or bathe it? Or put it to the breast? She hoped, rather frantically, that Mrs Macdonald, the midwife, would instruct her; she could not ask such vulgar questions of Mama. In some despair, she had made a point of arriving at her mother’s house quite early, during the past ten days, having taken the horse-bus from home, so that she could go upstairs to watch Polly struggling with Alicia.

Polly was herself learning on the job, though she knew much more about birth and babies than poor Florence did. Before coming to the Woodman household, she had received some strict advice from her mother and from her Great-aunt Kitty, herself a midwife to the slum women around her. The result was that, much as she protested, Alicia was scoured twice daily from head to heel. To Fanny’s irritation, the child was changed the moment she was damp; it was poor Fanny who had to carry the pails of dirty napkins, petticoats and gowns down to the cellar ready for the washerwoman.

‘All for nought but a little bastard,’ Fanny had muttered, as she heaved the heavy pails down the stairs.

To the Woodmans, Fanny was nothing but a quiet, little shadow responsible for all the coal fires in the house. As she went from room to room, she had become well aware of Andrew Crossing’s interest in her mistress; raucous jokes at his expense had been a real source of entertainment on quiet evenings in the kitchen, as the maids sipped their fender ale.

Fanny had also seen something of the bitter fights between Elizabeth and Humphrey. When she went through the house to make up all the fires and they heard her knock, they would stop their shouting and upbraiding and would stand rigidly staring at each other while she poked up the fire and added more coal; as soon as she was out of the door, coal hod in hand, she would hear them renew the battle.