Nurse Sheasby 1921

Bridge Cottage
Whimple
15^th January 1921

Dearest Mother

So I am settled in Whimple. As settled as a body can be when they can’t find a comfortable side to sleep on. 

Would you like to know what my first pay packet was spent on? Not dusters, polish and trinkets as befit a lady moving to her first professional lodging, but the following:

10 grams of Arnica ointment

A bottle of antiseptic

A roll of abrasion gauze

A quart of whisky for pain

How things got to this sorry state of affairs I will soon relate, but I must start at the beginning.

As the charabanc puffed and rumbled into the village of Whimple I was immediately struck by the huge Whiteways sign and sweet pleasant smells emanating from the orchard. The thatched roofs were like spun gold under a clear blue sky, a welcome contrast to the mucky sea mists that plagued one at Plymouth College of Midwifery.

Barely had we stopped when the door was yanked open by a bold and grinning straw-haired young man who announced himself Alfred Breyley, the village saddler. He seized my cases off the back of the bus and strode away, leaving me to scamper after him as the charabanc spluttered off.

Mr Breyley informed me proudly his village dated back to 500 AD, though the Breyleys didn’t go all that way back, and the Whimple name had nothing to do with nuns and everything to do with the Celts, in whose language it means White Pool, which set me thinking of spilt milk, and how long it would be before I would set my first baby suckling. 

Well I didn’t need to worry. I’d scarce been shown into Bridge Cottage, when a red-faced man from Talatan burst in, the whites of his eyes gleaming. His wife was in the last stages of labour, he gasped, and I was to attend to her forthwith.

I rolled up my sleeves, prepared my instruments and asked to be shown to his cart. Imagine my chagrin when he indicated a rusting village bicycle before jumping on his horse and galloping bareback home to Talaton. 

Well, mother, you know and I know that I have never ridden a bicycle in my life. Especially one with a most unladylike and high-situated crossbar. But I wasn’t going to let that slip with the mocking eyes of that self-confident Alfred Breyley on me, who doubtless could have accessed any number of horses for me. So I hooked my satchel on the handlebar and wheeled the noncompliant article off round the corner, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Mother dear, there are scarce three miles between Whimple and Talaton but it felt like ten times as many. They say the hedge rows of Devon have been well-established over millennia and I can confirm the first hedgerow I ploughed into felt very well-established indeed. As did the second third, fourth, fifth, sixth. There were bonnie primroses growing in each one but I was more cognisant of the briars. 

In a ditch a mile outside Talaton, covered in bruises, my trusty steed somehow above me rather than below, I felt I might succumb to tears. But at that moment I remembered the many women I had assisted in Plymouth, their faces set through breach births and worse and a sense of shame at my self-pity gripped me. As if sent by God, in that same moment, I spied a stone wear flagon nestling among the nettles. To check its contents I brought it to my lips and a trickle of sweet appley nectar instantly filled me with the courage of the Celts.

I pedaled true as an arrow into Talaton village and, counting off the cottages, reached my mark with a smooth and seemly halt. I was at the side of the poor vexed mother before the head crowned. Her baby was a hale strong-lunged chap, 9 pounds five ounces. And I like to think the considerable satisfaction of the father was not solely down to his repeated and impudent speculations that I had argued with a bull on my journey over, and come off the worse.

It was with some trepidation that I left the cottage two hours later, with the beginnings of a headache, to remount the disobedient contraption. So I was quite beside myself to see a cart loom at me through the gloaming, even if it was the complacent Alfred Breyley at the reins. In spite of his thick accent and rough callused hands he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Noel Coward’s songs and can hold a tune to boot. He talked with great enthusiasm of the Wassail happening in the Victory Hall that Saturday, bouncing his eyebrows at me all the while. The building is a YMCA hut for soldiers in the Great War which has found its resting place here, and become the heart of the community.

The Whimple villagers play music and bang on drums to wake up the apple trees. Not sure how such pagan practices fit with the Liturgy, but, I decided, “when in Rome” and was about to agree to accompany him when he mentioned his wife Ellen, the Whimple Baker’s neice. Kaiser Wilhem has a lot to answer for, ensuring as he has that all the best English men were invalided, killed or prematurely married off in the Great War. Will I ever be using the services of someone like myself?

There are no telephones in Whimple so I have put a slate outside Bridge Cottage to inform expectant fathers where I can be found at any hour of the day. I don’t feel it necessary to indicate the spare moments I spend practicing my cycle proficiency round the orchard. Post office tittle tattle informs me a Mr A Smith of Clyst Hydon is the owner of the stone wear flagon that came to my rescue. He apparently makes his daily cycle commute to Whiteways more pleasant, by secreting a bottle at hundred metre intervals in the hedgerow. He hasn’t yet fallen in the vat.

I hope this finds you well mother, and fathers knees aren’t troubling him too much,

Yours, healing slowly,

Elizabeth May