In Her Mothers' Shoes (26 page)

Rose felt close to tears. ‘I’m a hopeless mother,’ she said to her daughter. ‘You’d have been better off with someone else. I’ve got no idea how to do this.’

Katharine kept crying.

Rose shook a little bit of milk on her finger. It felt just the right temperature, just as it had after she’d practiced these past weeks to get it right. She tried again. Still the baby turned her mouth away.

‘I’m sorry, Katharine. Perhaps I should have called you by the name your birth mother wanted for you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have changed you out of her layette. Perhaps I shouldn’t have bought the perambulator before you were born, like Aunt Doris said. She said it was bad luck to do that. She said I should have waited. Oh dear, I don’t know what to do.’

Suddenly Katharine stopped squirming and was calm and still. Her lips nuzzled the teat and sucked it into her mouth. The crying ceased. The only sound was that of the baby sucking at the teat, swallowing the milk. The sound of contentment.

Perhaps she wasn’t going to be such a bad mother after all.

Chapter 2.

Te Kuiti, January 1951

Rose nearly missed the letter announcing she and George had been approved for adoption. If she hadn’t found it by chance, days after its delivery, they might never have been able to adopt, passed over by the Department in favour of a couple capable of responding by the due date.

The envelope was lying hidden in the agapanthus beneath the letter box. She was in the garden cutting flowers for a table arrangement when she’d spotted it under the leaves, down where the snails had chewed their way across the neat cream square, cutting a trail of tiny holes through the handwritten address, leaving a winding line of silvery slime.

She’d asked George to fix the catch on the letter box some months ago. But George was a dreamer, she’d realised that long ago, long before their pared-down wartime wedding. Ask him the minutest detail about the Battle of Hastings or who issued the first banknote, he could tell you without a moment’s hesitation. But fix a letter box? Not a chance.

She bent down to pick it up. Sure enough, the postmark was nearly two weeks old; the envelope had been feeding the snails for at least a week. It was addressed to Mr and Mrs George Stewart, Ward Street, Te Kuiti, in neat handwriting and bore an official government stamp.

A government stamp!

She let go her basket, heedlessly scattering the flowers and secateurs across the path, and slid open the back flap carefully. She had a feeling this would be a letter to keep.

‘Dear Mr and Mrs Stewart,’ she read. ‘It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been selected to adopt a baby. At this stage, the baby we have selected for you is due to be born in two months’ time. . .’

She could read no further. Ignoring the strewn roses and secateurs, she ran up the path, plumped herself down on the front doorstep and absent-mindedly pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket before holding the letter up, turning it over, waiting for it to vaporise into the mirage she feared it might be. But it remained very real. She read it again, expecting at any moment there would be a catch, that this precious gift could be taken away with a ‘but’ or a ‘maybe’. But there were no conditions, no qualifying clauses. The baby was to be theirs, providing they responded to the Department within ten working days.

She gasped. That was today!

Without stopping to think, without even powdering her nose or checking her lipstick, she pocketed the letter, ran inside and grabbed her purse then ran out the door, dashed down the path, along the street, over the railway line and all the way down the main road until she reached the Union Bank, totally breathless but not caring. She pushed her way through the big, heavy wooden doors and searched around for her husband. He wasn’t at his usual teller window. Where was he? Was he at lunch perhaps? More likely, he’d be talking banknotes with his friend Charlie Bates, forgetting about his lunch entirely.

The hands on the bank’s enormous Roman numeral clock read twenty-five to one. He should still be here.

‘Hello, Mrs Stewart. Are you looking for George?’ It was Mr Smythe, the manager. Her heart sank as she realised she was breaking the rules. It was not the done thing for a bank wife to turn up at the banking chamber and harass her husband during banking hours.

Well, too bad. She had important news. She steeled herself. ‘Yes, Mr Smythe. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m afraid I have some urgent news. Would it be possible to see George for just a minute please?’

Mr Smythe’s thick black moustache quivered with irritation and his brow furrowed as he swept past the long counter, pulled his key chain from his pocket and unlocked the distant door to reach the offices beyond.

All the bank tellers seemed to be looking at her; in the aftermath of her outburst to Mr Smythe, she felt silly and a little embarrassed. Her news seemed insignificant compared to the important financial transactions occurring all around her. She slunk over to one of the writing counters fixed to a rear pillar and tried to appear invisible. Time passed. She was just about to leave, feeling really intrusive by now, suspecting that Mr Smythe had deliberately forgotten all about her, when George came through the far door and hurried over to her, looking perplexed.

‘Whatever are you doing here, Rose?’ he said, taking her by the elbow and steering her towards the exit. ‘You know Mr Smythe doesn’t like it.’

‘I know, George, but I’ve got some good news.’ By this time he’d pushed open the door to the street and was ushering her through it. She waited until they were on the pavement, turned to him and seized both his hands. ‘We’re going to be given a baby. We’ve been selected for adoption.’

‘We have? Really?’

Rose nodded.

‘How do you know?’

She produced the envelope out of her pocket. ‘This arrived in the mail. Look.’ She handed it over to him and watched while he read, smiling as he smiled, nodding as he shook his head in apparent disbelief.

‘It’s wonderful news for you, Rose. After all this time, you’ve finally got there. You’ve made it to the top of the queue.’

‘Not just me, George. You too. This is addressed to both of us.’

A look of concern crossed his face. ‘But it’s mostly been you that wanted it.’

‘But you do too, don’t you?’

‘Well, yes, but…’ George looked away up the street, seemingly avoiding her gaze.

‘But what? Don’t say you’ve changed your mind after all this time?’

‘No, I haven’t changed my mind. It’s just a bit sudden, that’s all.’

‘Sudden? We’ve been married for ten years this month. This isn’t sudden.’ She held up the letter again, waving it, demanding his attention again. ‘What is it George, what’s troubling you?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s just a big responsibility, taking on somebody else’s baby.’

‘Isn’t that what you wanted? What
we
wanted?’

He turned back to her, wiped his brow and smiled. ‘Yes, of course. It’s just now that it looks as if it’s really going to happen, I hope we’re up to it, that’s all.’

She took his hands and placed them on her shoulders, pushing herself into his arms.

‘Of course we can do it,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll make sure everything’s fine. You won’t have to worry about a thing.’ She decided not to tell him about the deadline. She could phone the department herself, as soon as she got home.

He gave her a comforting squeeze then looked at his watch and said, ‘I’d better be getting back to work or Mr Smythe will dock my pay.’ So Rose slipped the letter in its envelope, stuffed it back in her pocket, kissed her husband goodbye and walked on air all the way back home to find the path strewn with roses, the front door still wide open and her neighbour Mrs Abercrombie’s cat up on her bench sniffing around the butcher’s parcel from the morning’s shopping.

She didn’t care. Normally, she would have shooed it outside straight away. Today, she undid the paper parcel and cut a small portion off for the cat, smiling as she fed it to him.

‘George won’t miss that tonight,’ she said. ‘He’ll have a lot more important things to think about.’

After she’d phoned the department – worrying about how much the phone bill would be for spending so long waiting for the woman who’d written the letter to come on the line – she turned on the radio and set about preparing dinner. Frank Sinatra was singing
Some Enchanted Evening;
she turned up the volume and sang along.

Rose had enjoyed their six years under the wide-open skies and warm summers of the King Country. For the first time since the nurses’ hostel, where she’d been surrounded by dozens of trainee nurses and formed close friendships among those in her group, she’d found the women from both town and country welcoming and easy to get on with. In particular, she’d become close friends with the other bank wives, Bea and Sally.

Not that she had much time for socialising. She’d persuaded George to let her take on two private nursing patients – a young woman confined to a wheelchair and an elderly lady who needed help with showering three mornings a week – just a few hours each, but enough to keep her hand in.

Old Mrs Rutherford was always trying to get Rose to stay longer, do more than just shower her and Rose would try to be as accommodating as she could. But if she delayed her much after ten-thirty, Rose knew the cuts of meat she wanted and the freshest vegetables for George’s dinner would be sold out before she walked back into town. She’d tried to fit in the old dear’s demands by arriving early, but she only added more tasks to her list of chores. Just yesterday morning, Rose had taken a firmer line.

‘How would it be if I arrived after ten in the morning, Mrs Rutherford?’ she’d said. ‘Then I’d be able to get the shopping done on the way here. I could get yours too if you like. But coming here first and spending all the extra time with you, I miss out.’

She could see the old dear weighing up her options: having her shopping done three mornings a week or having to wait until after ten before she could be assisted out of bed and showered.

‘It’s all right, Nurse. Don’t you worry about me.’ Mrs Rutherford took on the martyred air she was so adept at. ‘I wouldn’t want to put you out. You come at half-past-eight as usual. I won’t keep you past ten.’

Rose would find out tomorrow if her ploy would work.

She enjoyed the long walk to Mrs Rutherford’s cottage at the roadside entrance to her son’s big farm. A widow, with no daughter-in-law to help her, Mrs Rutherford was lonely and in need of both social and physical aid. Rose didn’t mind listening then dismissed the chatter and let her mind wander freely on the walk home.

Her new-found pleasure in walking for miles exploring the surrounding countryside had unleashed her creativity: she’d started writing poetry - bad poetry, she suspected, but poetry nevertheless.

‘The Mangakino softly slips between the silent stones …’ She whispered it to herself, emphasising the sibilants, smiling at the memory of the picnic she and George had at the stream surrounded by bush and birdsong.

She was under no illusion about her poems. But there was something about the endless space after the city, the unbelievable greenness of the bush, the hills and pastures after living through dry summers on the Canterbury Plains and negotiating the narrow windy streets of Wellington. She didn’t remember ever being so contented since she’d passed her exams and become a fully qualified, fully employed registered nurse.