The Wet Nurse's Tale (11 page)

Though I was full set to nurse a single babe, two were more than I could manage and still yet assist my husband in his parish duties. “We are fortunate,” said I when I spoke of it to him, “and I cannot abide it if I am unable to help you as much as you help those who have not what we have.” He kissed my brow when I finished my speech and thus I knew that he approved my plan. I inquired after a wet nurse and was directed to a Mrs. Rose in Leighton. I was assured that she was as good a Christian woman as could be had and that she would watch over little John with love and care. My intention was to nurse Luke myself for a half-year and then to trade him with his brother’s place, so that each might benefit from my own breast as is God’s plan for us mothers, and that is what I did.

Five

T
he Chandler babies are learning to keep a schedule, bless them. Their eyes follow me now and they smile when I come to lift them from their crib. The boy smiled first and will show his little gums at whatever’s in his view: a pigeon at the window, a candle, a bonnet string. The girl’s more serious-minded and only smiles at me if I smile first. The boy is very dear but it’s the girl I prefer. I cannot care much for smiles yet, even from babes, and she does not demand them of me as he does. Their names are Richard and Anne, after their parents.

Yesterday, Richard had a small fever, which worried his mother, though it did not stop her from going to dinner with her husband. In truth, it was I who persuaded her that all would be well and that she ought to go so I cannot blame her. I would not have let her persuade me to leave my child if our roles were reversed, but that’s the way of those with money. And even as I muse, I bite my tongue. Susan, says myself to myself, were you there when your Joey was sick enough to die? No, you were not.

On Friday last, I was given an afternoon to see the dentist, for I had a great pain in my tooth, and the cook said it looked black and ought to be pulled. I squeezed some milk into a basin before I left and covered it with a cloth and Barbara, the downstairs maid, said she’d see to the babies and feed them with a spoon if I was long. I walked down toward the part of town I knew, the part where the Hebrews live, as I had seen a dentist’s sign hanging there next to their worship house. I did not much like to have my tooth pulled next to a heathen temple, but as I was in somewhat of distress, I could not choose too nicely.

As I made my way toward the dentist’s house, it quite amazed me to see the bustle in the streets; so many people with such bundles! Indeed, the people were in a queue outside the baker’s shop, and when I looked in the window to see what could be the cause of it all, I could see nothing but backs. Soon I came upon the dentist’s door and knocked. He answered quickly but looked at me with surprise.

“What business has brought you here at this hour?” said he quite sharply.

I looked around me, astonished. “Why,” said I, “my tooth aches so and you are a dentist, are you not?”

He cast me a look even sharper and then he said, “Has your pain caused you to forget the Sabbath? Come in; if I work quickly, I may be able to help you before I must close up.”

I sat and he looked in my mouth and drew down his brow. His face was very close to mine. His eyes were brown and his reddish hair curled, like the fleece of a lamb. He saw me looking and he smiled at me. I know I blushed.

“Open your mouth as wide as you can. It will hurt, do you know that?”

I nodded.

“But I will try to be quick.”

He reached in with his metal tool, and gripped my tooth and pulled hard. The tooth was more rotten than he had expected and at the strength of his pull, it fairly slipped out. I yelped and he flew back across the room and landed on his bum, his legs straight out in front of him, holding his dentist’s tool aloft with my black tooth in its jaws. I gaped at him and then I realized: the worst of the pain was gone.

“Lovely!” cried I, holding my hand to my cheek, and at that he grinned very wide, still there on his floor. And then we both laughed and I helped him up from the floor and paid him plus a small extra for that it had hurt me so little when he pulled the tooth out.

“Thank you, Mrs. . . .” said he and he waited and I said, “Rose.” I did not tell him that I was not missus for there seemed no need for him to know it.

But he did not let go. “I see you wear weeds,” he said. “Are you widowed?”

I must have blanched because his brow lifted.

“I have said too much. I am a dunce and you will forgive me. I lost my own wife, you see, and since then, I seem to see more like me than I understood there were before.”

I saw what he meant and I nodded. “Yes,” I said, “and my baby . . .” but then I could not continue. We stood still for one moment and gazed at the floor.

“We were not blessed with children, my wife and I,” he said.

I said nothing.

“Well,” he said, “if ever you need a dentist again, remember the name Abrams, Harry Abrams.” And he smiled.

“I shall,” said I. “And I’ll tell those I know that you’ve the grip of a Goliath.”

I smiled to myself as I walked back to the Chandlers’, at his pleas antries though he was a Jew, as well as because I was afflicted no longer. But his name, Abrams, reminded me of Isaac in the Bible, and the story of how his father would have sacrificed him. I never could bear that story. And now I thought to myself, that is how it was with me. I sacrificed my own child for a pound a month.

I am sitting in the nursery with the Chandler twins. One’s suckling; the other’s already asleep in his cradle. I can hardly believe who came into this house just now.

Earlier this morning, I had visited the kitchen for a cup of tea and a bit of a chat with the cook while the babies slept. In came Mrs. Chandler, her nose tilted up as is her habit.

“Cook,” says she, “there’s guests for tea and we need, I think, something quite good. What can you do?”

“Better than scones and sandwiches, ma’am? Well, let me see: it’s early enough that I could get a cream cake together, will that do?”

“And chicken mayonnaise, I think,” said Mrs. Chandler. To me she said, “I will perhaps ring for you to bring in Richard and Anne. Make sure their smocks are not stained and put them in the lace bonnets.”

When she left we looked at her maid, Alice, who had come to bring her mistress some tea. “Oh,” said Alice, “it’s just a friend of hers and her mother. They’re richer and Mrs. C. feels it.”

All day long, Mrs. Chandler was on the knife’s edge and wouldn’t be content til the rest of the household was as well. She ignored the babies and me, and I felt the luck of it, for when I peeped out of the door, I heard her shout at the scullery for some spot that had been there since that girl was in swaddling and then I saw her hand snake out and slap her as well.

Finally, the doorbell rang. I changed the babies into their prettiest little frocks as I’d been told. I waited for the bonnets because of them being scratchy, but when we was rung for, after the ladies ate their cream cake and mayo, I popped on the bonnets and carried both babies out, cooing so as they wouldn’t cry. I am big enough, see, in my arms and elsewhere, that I could easily carry two babes. And they are little mites, having been two instead of one.

When I walked into the room with the ladies, I kept my eyes down as is proper. I know’d they wasn’t looking at me, those ladies; they wanted a peep at the mites and then Mrs. C. would say, “Thank you, Susan,” and I’d bob and leave. That’s how it’d all happened before, and I’d say, if you asked me, that a big part of my job here at the Chandlers’ house is to look like a perfect servant, whether I am one or not. So I was as surprised as I could have been when I heard a voice I knew say my name.

“Why, it is Susan, is it not?”

When I looked up I stared right at Miss Eliza Bonney and who was sitting on her left but her mother. I might’ve dropped the babies if I’d been a smaller lass, but as it was, they was in no danger.

I smiled at Miss Eliza because what else was I to do and mumbled my “yes’m.”

“Oh, yes. Susan,” said Mrs. Bonney in that way she had that I remember quite well, like she’s about to fall asleep over her milk, or some such.

I bobbed again, but could not look at her full-ways.

“Oh, was Susan yours?” said Mrs. Chandler, all surprised and thrilled, quite, by the discovery that what she had now had been good enough for them. “But surely not as a nurse, I don’t expect.”

There was a little pause, just tiny, not hardly so you’d notice. And then Mrs. Bonney said, “No, not as nurse. She was a maid in our house, I believe.”

“And how do you do, Susan,” asked Miss Eliza all cheerful.

“Well, miss, and I hope you are.”

“Oh, yes,” she went on, “we are in town for Freddie’s wedding. But, oh, look how sweet—two babies, Anne, how smart of you to do it at once!”

And then they all remembered what I was in the room for, so they coo’d and smiled til little Anne got squally and then Mrs. Chandler told me I could go. I’m sure I felt Mrs. Bonney’s eyes on me til I was out of the room.

I considered all that could be known about me if someone were to ask Mrs. Chandler a question. That I’d had a baby that died. That I’d been a nurse here in this house and somewhere before and also before that. Mrs. Bonney could do the adding up if she liked. And she might, at that. She might not have much in the way of spirit but there was cunning there. She’d realize, I thought, she’d realize about Master Freddie and me, and then I thought: what of it? What if she knows? It means little to me. Most likely, if Mrs. Bonney thought about me at all, she thought, well, if Susan Rose wanted to ask for money she would have done it by now. But I made up my mind to not be much disturbed by it. And the reason is that I feel quite sure that ladies do not converse about the lives of their servants much when there’s frocks and balls to be spoke of.

The summer was so hot. Twas all I could do to keep the babies’ bottoms from chafing with their sweat, and I came up with a rash under my left tit that itched til I thought I’d go mad. The Chandlers took two days at Seagrove—my mother’d been hired by a lady there once—and left the babies and me in Aubrey. I was sorry because I have never glimpsed the sea and would like to do so. But Mrs. Chandler felt that it would be difficult to carry all the things the babies needed and I suppose it is so. Oh, but for a chance to see the sea, I would have washed a barrelful of nappies.

At her return, Mrs. Chandler’s evil mood turned the house topsy-turvy. Her maid reported that the lady had found an old school acquaintance at the seaside who was to holiday in Switzerland up in the mountains where the weather was cool. She’d invited Mrs. Chandler to accompany her but Mr. Chandler wasn’t willing to give her the money. Alice said she was pouting something terrible. She made our lives a misery for about a week but I daresay Mr. Chandler felt the worst of it. It wasn’t long before he told her she could go after all and weren’t we all pleased then. Her being gone was like our holiday, after all.

And that was indeed how it came to be. Mr. Chandler ate at his club and came in very late. The cook asked for a few days to visit her brother in Manchester. Barbara, the downstairs maid, went across town for a day or two to see her sister’s new baby. Mrs. Chandler had taken Alice, her maid, with her to Switzerland. That left only Lottie the scullery, and Lucy, who was the upstairs maid, and George the butler, and me.

I felt sorry for myself. Of us all, only my duties had not changed; the others were either gone or lazy, not that I could blame them. I was glad for them but I wanted a holiday too. That’s the way of a nurse though; no one can stand in for me. What I do’s not the same as scrubbing or baking. It’s not as if I can stay abed late because the mistress is gone. When the babes are hungry, I’m on my duty. And they’re hungry right often. No one had told them that their mother was gone on holiday and you can’t blame them if they didn’t notice, can you? What I do is God’s miracle, I know it, but it seems sometimes like a burden nonetheless.

I asked Lottie, one day, if she’d trade with me—to a point—I said, pointing at my chest, and after we both laughed, she said yes. She agreed that if I’d make a bit of milk for the babes, she’d look after them and give me an hour or two of my own and then I’d do some grates for her on the very next day. (In truth, I’d had my eye on the hob in the parlor, which hadn’t never been properly cleaned, at least not while I’d been at the house. I might have taken it on before but that I didn’t want to do work for free, did I?)