Christmas With Nurse Millie

Book 3: Nurse Millie and Connie

by Jean Fullerton

Genres: Coming of Age; World War II; Sagas; Medical Romance

Synopsis

A wonderfully moving Christmas midwife story from the author of Call Nurse Millie. Christmas is approaching - but for Nurse Millie and Nurse Annie babies are still being born, and in the East End of London, new mothers still need all the care and support they can give. Vividly summing up all the friendship of a close-knit community - both for the midwives and for the families - CHRISTMAS WITH NURSE MILLIE powerfully brings to life post-war London - with a heartwarming festive twist.

Release date: November 21, 2013

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 160

Sample

Annie Fletcher, the young Queen’s Nurse responsible for the Stepney Green area of the St George and St Dunstan Nursing Association, wiped a lock of her corn-coloured hair from her brow with the back of her hand. With Christmas 1947 a few weeks away the temperature outside was close to zero, but the fire in the cast-iron grate of the small bedroom in the terrace house was roaring.

‘Right young man,’ Annie said to the three-day-old baby lying on the candlewick bedspread. ‘Let’s see if you’re bantam or middle-weight.’

Stanley Wiggins screwed up his little face and farted.

His mother, Glenda, a plump woman in her mid-thirties with four other lively children, smiled. ‘See Fran, just like his father.’

Fran straightened her sister’s pillows. ‘A right chip off the old block.’ They exchanged a fond look.

Although Glenda’s home in Elbow Lane was one of the ancient two-up two-down workmen’s cottages alongside the Shadwell Basin, like many others in the neighbourhood surrounding London Docks, it housed two families. She was luckier than most however, as she shared with her sister Fran. So while Glenda, her husband and brood occupied upstairs, Fran, her husband and their three girls lived snugly below.

Fran looked at Annie. ‘Can I get you a cuppa, Nurse?’

Annie shook her head and the wayward lock of hair sprang forward again. ‘Thanks, but I must get on.’

Although in some grubby houses Annie visited the stock answer to such an offer was ‘I’ve just had one’, Glenda and Fran’s spotless home was one where you could safely accept a cuppa. But today Annie would wait until she got back to Munroe House, the clinic and nurses’ home. It seemed that since they were demobbed over a year ago the local menfolk had been making up for lost time, and now Annie and her fellow nurses seemed to spend every moment of their working day delivering babies. That, on top of the usual rounds of patients with winter chills and chest infections, meant she struggled to finish her afternoon rounds on time.

‘You’re sure?’ persisted Fran.

Annie smiled. ‘Honest, I’m having supper at my mum’s. We’re going to try and finish writing the Christmas cards after.’

Fran’s jolly face lifted. ‘That’s nice. She live far?’

‘Old Ford.’

Glenda’s eyebrows rose. ‘You don’t sound much like a local.’

Annie pulled Glenda’s clinic notes from her bag. ‘My parents come from Hornchurch.’

And it was where her mother would very much prefer to be still, but as a field manager for the Hoxton and Haggerston Mission Society her father felt he should live alongside those he was ministering to. As her mother drew the line at setting up home any closer than Bethnal Green, her father had rented them a three-storey Regency townhouse behind the Museum in Old Ford Road.

‘The council are building up that way, on Harold Hill, and my old man’s put our names down,’ Fran said.

Positioning baby Stanley in the middle of a net square, Annie took the fishermen’s scales from the bag at her feet and secured the four corners of the sling on the hook. She raised the scales until they took Stanley’s weight. As the infant dangled a few inches above the bed Annie watched as the needle hovered around the middle of the gauge.

‘Six eleven,’ she said, gently lowering Stanley to the patchwork bedspread.

With a sure hand she popped on a fresh nappy, fastened with a blue-top safety pin, and redressed him. Annie placed him in the wooden drawer lined with blankets beside the bed. He gave a sigh, then snuggled into his improvised cot and went back to sleep.

‘He’s only lost an ounce from his birth weight,’ she said as she recorded the baby’s weight on a record card. ‘I see it was Sister Sullivan who delivered Stanley and that it was uneventful.’

‘She wouldn’t have said that if it had been ’er having to push the bugger out,’ Glenda replied.

Annie suppressed a smile. ‘You’re feeding him yourself?’

‘I might as well,’ said Glenda. ‘It costs nuffink and I can keep me green ration book. Those couple of eggs and the extra milk really help.’ She shifted carefully and winced.

‘Are your stitches hurting?’

Glenda nodded.

Annie stood up. ‘Let me take a look.’

Glenda threw back the covers and hoicked up her nightdress to reveal a pair of washed-out cotton knickers.

Annie tied on a facemask and put on a pair of freshly boiled rubber gloves. Bending forward she hooked her finger in the gusset of the grey underwear and pulled it aside.

‘Was it Doctor Hayhurst who attended?’ she asked, studying the seven tightly knotted black silk sutures.

‘’ow did you know?’

‘Just a guess.’ Annie dropped the fabric back. ‘It looks nice and clean, but bathe with salt water twice a day.’

Glenda adjusted her clothing and sat up.

Annie removed the mask and slipped it into the outside pocket of her nurse’s bag along with the gloves. She’d boil them and her other soiled equipment back at the clinic.

Retrieving her coat from the large paper bag all nurses carried for the purpose, Annie slipped it on. ‘Sister Scott will call tomorrow and the next day, and it will be Sister Sullivan on the weekend.’

‘I thought she was getting married.’ Glenda gave a searching look. ‘She ain’t called it off ’as she?’

‘No,’ said Annie. ‘Sister Sullivan’s wedding is next Saturday.’ She snapped her case shut. ‘I’ll be back on Monday to remove your stitches. You might want a small glass of brandy before I start.’

When Annie closed Glenda’s front door behind her, the gas lamps along the street were already alight and front-room curtains closed against the gathering gloom. In contrast, across from the Wiggins’ house, the stark electric light from a shop window shone out.

Like many neighbourhood shops Goldings was actually a house with its front room lined with shelves and a counter squeezed across one corner. It sold anything and everything, and what it couldn’t squeeze inside was stacked up on the pavement or dangled from the awning. Being just three weeks before Christmas, the usual window display of jars of jam, knitting patterns pinned on to painted plyboard and cane carpet-beaters had been replaced by boxes of glass baubles, packets of gummed paper for paper chains, pastel-coloured Chinese lanterns and sheets of wrapping paper decorated with holly and bells.

Putting her bag into the wicker bicycle basket, Annie pulled her scarf tighter to keep out the cold river fog. Standing on the pedals to pick up speed, she cut across Old Gravel Lane into West Garden.

There, a horse with a bag of oats over its muzzle was standing in the shafts of a wagon piled high with nondescript rusty metal and a mangled pram. He raised his head as Annie bumped over the age-old cobbles before returning to his supper.

Glancing over her shoulder, Annie moved to the middle of the road. But as she passed the wagon’s tailgate something crashed into the front fork of her bike, knocking the wheel aside and wrenching the handlebar from her grip. Carried forward by the momentum, she slid off the seat and her bag crashed to the kerb. She was just about to hit the pavement herself when someone caught her.

Annie reached out to get her balance and made contact with a flowery waistcoat. She looked up into amused hazel eyes in an arrestingly handsome face.

Her rescuer was at least six foot tall (if not an inch or two more) with a mass of curly chestnut hair. Although dressed in rough canvas trousers and a shapeless donkey jacket, the work-day clothing emphasized his broad f. . .