Sleep in Peace (56 page)

“Doing well,” dictated the doctor to Laura, as Ted left the room in his mother's arms. “But still needs care. Weaned. Mother again pregnant.”

But Ted was, as Laura had prophesied, the only bright spot of the afternoon. Too often Laura wrote at the doctor's dictation such entries as:
In the battle from the start. Illegitimate. Mother turned out by family; anaemic
, or
Fifth child in eight years; all delicate; cold has taken him off his feet again, he had just begun walking
, or
Father out of work. T.B. threatened in spine; plaster of paris necessary
, or
Mem: write to the Council of Social Welfare about teeth for mother;
while in the column for
Treatment Ordered
the zinc ointment, the lint, the glycothymoline, the drops for nose and eyes, the cod liver oil, the “nurse to visit” entries mounted rapidly. Not once but many times this afternoon the doctor, having sent Nurse out of the room on an errand, dipped into her coat pocket and drew out some coins, which she put, her head bent conspiratorially, in the mother's hand—it was strictly against the rules to give charity at the clinic, so Laura always pretended to be absorbed in her cards when this occurred. Presently an accident case came in, a toddler who had fallen and broken her arm on the Awe Hill slope. The doctor called for splints and cotton wool and set the tiny, soft little limb, and the look of anguished impotence on the face of the mother was soothed and faded. This afternoon there came the mother who was feeble-minded; the mother who kept her successive infants so warmly wrapped that when their shawls were laid aside their thin, dirty little bodies steamed; the mother in a shawl whose thin yellow hands and pale gums revealed chronic anaemia due to underfeeding; the mother in a good winter coat, with a plump rosy face, whose only child, a little boy, was “late in developing”.
Mongol type
, dictated the doctor with a sigh;
Thyroid treatment
. Then there came the elderly woman with three babies, none of them her own; she “looked after” babies while their mothers were working in the mill. The children concerned were usually illegitimate, and this afternoon one of them had spots—the woman, conscientious as far as she was able, had brought him so that it might be decided whether the spots were infectious or harmless. The doctor, having examined
the child with a look of trouble and asked a great many searching questions, called Nurse and gave special orders; then as the woman left, volubly protesting her good intentions, she turned to Laura and murmured:
Suspect parental V.D
. Laura sighed; she had not attended the Awe Hill clinic once a week for a couple of years without knowing the meaning of those fatal letters.

The doctor commanded a fresh kettle of hot water and as she washed her hands said to Nurse: “Aren't there
any
cheerful children this afternoon?” Her tone was wistful, and Nurse—who loved the doctor, as did every clinic worker, paid or voluntary, including Laura—said brightly: “Well now, I'll see what I can find.” She went away, and returned beaming; a mother was entering her baby for a beauty competition and had brought the photographs to show the doctor. The child came running in, a florid, bouncing boy whom Laura remembered as a pale, fretful infant; the doctor smiled, patted his cheek, asked if she might be allowed to give him a penny. But even this case, it seemed, though Laura wrote joyously on his card:
Entered for beauty competition
, was disappointing; when the proud mother had left the room the doctor bent towards her and whispered:

“I didn't like to tell her, but those photographs make him look as though he were a mouth-breather.”

The clinic was now in the full swing of the afternoon's work; a loud hum of talk, and an incessant wailing of babies—for as fast as one hushed its cry another began—resounded strongly from the other room, mingled with the welcome clash of teacups. Nurse came in with two cups of strong tea on a tray, and Laura and the doctor drank avidly, their throats parched by the stifling air, heavy with the odour of the excreta and vomit of ailing infant humanity, mingled with disinfectant. Outside rain was now falling, and the smell of wet wool, from the women's head-shawls, was added to the mixture.

After tea there came, as it chanced, several mothers in turn whom Laura found particularly depressing. They were robust,
healthy women, each with a series of healthy babies whom they sensibly brought to the clinic merely as a precautionary measure. The infants whom they laid on the doctor's lap were well-formed, pleasing, jolly, with firm sound flesh of a good colour, bright lips and bright eyes. So far, so good. But beside them stood a couple of older children; brothers and sisters of the present baby, they had visited the clinic themselves a few years back; these were now mouth-breathers, with crusted eyes and running nose; slightly bowlegged—the water of Hudley had a serious lime deficiency—rough in manner, with an ugly Yorkshire accent and dirty clothes. It went to Laura's heart to see the process by which the beautiful baby, who might have been anybody's child, became the member of the working-class, with inferiority of physique and therefore so often of brain, indelibly stamped upon him before he even got to school. And stamped by what? Ah, thought Laura, writing
elder child's nose needs attention
, what, indeed!

The next case was a child with a serious bronchitis which threatened to turn to pneumonia; the doctor had already, at the morning's clinic held elsewhere, written an order for her admission to the municipal hospital. The mother now returned, to say that her husband would not allow the child to go—”you never know what they do to you in them places, once they get you in,” he had said.

“Then you must have your own doctor,” said the doctor severely. “The child is not fit to be out. You must put her to bed and give her your whole attention.”

The woman burst into tears. “I want her to go to t' hospital,” she said. “He's out of work. He's waiting at door.”

“Go out with her, Nurse,” commanded the doctor, “and tell the man that if he cares for his child's life he must take her to the hospital at once. Take the order with you. Call me if necessary.”

Nurse flew off.

It sometimes chanced that children otherwise healthy needed small operations of an intimate kind which the doctor performed—a
tongue-tie to be snipped, a membrane loosened. As luck would have it, the next baby was a case of this kind. The mother was young, and had never been to the clinic before; she trembled with fear, hesitated, seemed to wish to consult her husband.

“If it was my own child, I should do it without hesitation,” said the doctor.

The mother's glance involuntarily sought the doctor's left hand, to see if a wedding ring graced it.

“Yes, I've three children—three,” said the doctor, understanding.

“Well—I'll have it done, then,” yielded the mother. “But I won't see it done,” she added fearfully. “I couldn't. I couldn't,” she repeated, gazing wildly from the doctor to Laura.

“No; you wait outside the door,” urged the doctor sympathetically.

She sterilised the scissors, then looked around for Nurse, who was still absent, coping with the previous woman's husband.

“Hold his legs for me, Miss Armistead,” commanded the doctor peremptorily: “The others are all busy.”

Laura gulped. It was one thing to enter
Tongue-tie snipped
on a card, another to grasp a kicking baby's legs, and contribute by one's firmness or lack of it to the success or failure of the operation. But there was nothing else to be done; saying meekly, “Yes, Doctor,” she rose and knelt before the child lying in the doctor's, lap, as she had often seen Nurse do before. As usual, her effort was disproportionate to its aim; she put all her passionate desire to serve humanity into restraining this small struggling baby's hands and ankles. Pale without and squirming within, she firmly watched the snipping: of the scissors and the spurting of the tiny jet of blood; though her muscles felt like water they remained under command, and did not relax till the business was done.

“You can call the mother now,” said the doctor, holding the baby's tongue in a strip of boracic lint, “and fetch the next one, please, Miss Armistead.”

When at last Laura came out into the cool blowing air, it seemed as if a whole day had passed since she entered the clinic, but in fact the hour was as yet only between five and six, and the evening buzzers were just upon sounding. The rain had ceased; the muddied setts were drying in a windy twilight. She turned the corner into the steep main road and began to descend Awe Bank.

It was at this moment every Monday that she began to think of Edward, for it was Edward's world which now lay stretched before her: an industrial artery, rhythmically pulsating. The bleak grimy hillside roads plunging to the valley, the broad flat bridge crossing to the grimy slope beyond, all roared with traffic; trucks thudded along the shadowed railway lines below; the blocks of lighted oblongs which were the mills, thrown down at odd angles as if a child had upset a box of bricks, throbbed with the whirr of machinery; the slender chimneys soared to throw out their black smoke viciously into the dusky air. From the foundry furnaces flames leaped up, flickering eerily from mauve to yellow. The whole scene vibrated, hummed; a seething complex of production. Yes, this was Edward's world, thought Laura, holding up her face to the gritty wind, and if only Edward were alive he would be busying himself to improve it. He wouldn't be satisfied to-day with a scheme planned in 1911.

Laura thought of Edward nowadays no longer in terms of fantasy, as an embodiment of the male virtues heroically rescuing her, but soberly, as a real person, imperfect, disconcerting, human, whom she loved. She remembered almost every word that he had ever said in her presence, and liked to consider them again, as if to extract their last ounce of meaning. And indeed she made discoveries from them as she probed. It now seemed to her that if only she had not been such a completely fatuous little ass, absorbed in herself and her griefs and her petty little triumphs, Edward might well have loved her; indeed there were actual indications, in scenes which she remembered, that he was ready to do
so, and she—blind, neurotic little fool that she was—had repulsed him. She discovered also, in these excursions into the past, that between Edward and his: mother there had been an exceptionally deep love. Edward's death had killed Mrs. Hinchliffe, decided Laura; with Edward gone, Edward's mother had no wish to live. Laura speculated on the kind of woman Mrs. Hinchliffe really was; only the vaguest, faintest outline of a pious kindness remained in her mind. Impossible to see across the gap of the generations, decided Laura; Mrs. Hinchliffe would always remain a mystery to her; so would Madeline.

And now the buzzers gave forth their raucous bellow, the mills loosed, and the workers came pouring across the bridge towards their homes. Awe Bank, though not precisely a slum, was certainly not a “residential” district—meaning, reflected Laura fiercely, that far too many people lived there. Rows of ugly smoke-blackened little houses, one yellow-stoned step separating their living-room from the street, lying huddled in terraces across the grimy face of the hillside, waited to receive the workers whose steps now thundered on the bridge. Laura, as she stemmed the tide of work-roughened faces and dirty clothes, felt a deep shame that she should be leaving Awe Hill, going home to a hot bath, a fine fire, clean large rooms, a solid well-cooked meal, her drawing, her books, and leaving these men, these women, these children whose distresses she had seen that afternoon, behind her in this grime. Why should it be so? What right had she to pretty clothes and a handsome house, while these, her brothers and sisters, lived in this grimy hole? It's quite intolerable, decided Laura; I simply cannot bear that it should be so. I can't sleep sound in my cosy bed, I can't enjoy my nice warm meal, until everyone else in the world has beds arid meals as nice. Grace has become a Socialist from a sense of justice, reflected Laura, and I am one too, because I am so damned
sorry
for these people; it's such a shame.… If only Edward were here, he wouldn't let it stay like this; he would find a way to change the system.

Gradually, as she made her way along, left Awe Bridge behind her and approached the “respectable” shopping streets of Hudley, the crowd thinned, and the footsteps of the workers died away. The streets now seemed singularly quiet and empty. Laura could not help feeling relief at this quiet, but was ashamed of her relief.

At home, various items of interest awaited her. A post card on the hall table from Grace saying
At last At last AT LAST: I have been given the junior Tapworth post
recorded that Grace would now achieve her desire to “tackle her job at the roots”, as she expressed it, for Tapworth was a noted Teachers' Training College. In the bathroom Geoffrey was having a cut lip washed by Gwen; it seemed he had been fighting at school because one of the boys had said his mother wasn't married. Gwen's loving look, her gentle hands, as she bathed her son's cheek and then kissed it, seemed to reveal her feeling that the libel on herself was a small price to pay to be defended by Geoffrey. According to Geoffrey's somewhat bellicose account of the fight, he had come off decidedly victorious; Mr. Armistead, leaning against the bathroom door and jingling the money in his pocket cheerfully, listened to his grandson with a smile of boyish pleasure. Madeline was in the nursery alone, kneeling on the hearth-rug in her diminutive gym-costume, and surveying, either with ecstasy or profound indifference, it was impossible from her expression to tell which, a couple of hassocks and a poker balanced in front of her.

“Where is Uncle Ludo, do you know, dear?” said Laura.

“In bed,” replied Madeline without moving a muscle.

Laura clicked her tongue, grieved but not alarmed by this news; for owing to the whiff of gas he had received at Ypres, the sleet and the east winds of Hudley drove Ludo to go to bed for a few days every spring and every winter with a chest cold, without making him seriously ill. She called in to see Ludo, who looked comfortable, enjoying a bright fire and a detective story. Indeed
everybody in the house looked physically comfortable, reflected Laura: everything was clean, bright and snug.