The wonderless 'Curly Pet', By Tracey Vale

Mrs. Preece was very important to me for it was she and my Nan who had delivered me into the world—which was in opposition to my mother’s very specific plan. Isabel had always been very particular about how she wanted things to be—my pending birth was no different.

Isabel was adamant about what she wanted from her pregnancy from almost the very beginning. When she became pregnant, she found a picture of a blonde, blue-eyed, curly-haired baby boy and insisted from then on that this was the baby she would have. She was also adamant about the birth—it was to be a home birth with a nice young midwife in attendance.

“But you must have Dr. Baker,” her mother exclaimed. Dr Baker was the family doctor and had been Isabel’s doctor for many years.

 “Absolutely not! He has a beard! I don’t like men with beards. They make me queasy,” said Isabel. During my childhood I would learn that there were many things that made her ‘queasy’. Her mother, my Nan, was often exasperated by her admonitions and eccentricities, labelling her a “flippertygibbet”—I loved the sound of that!—and making her determined that I  would not turn out the same. “I won’t have you turning out to be a flippertygibbet like your mother!” she would say, well within earshot of Isabel.

To this end, Nan, my Grandmother, Mary Jane Meers, set about ensuring this. As a result, Nanny, as I called her, was the rock in my childhood and the person I would go to when I couldn’t sleep or if I felt ill or concerned. We lived with Nan and Grandad, Joseph Henry, until they moved to a cottage nearby when I was about 9 years old.

Nan taught me to fish for tadpoles, pick up worms and to love all living things. She taught me to stuff a chicken, take medicine ‘like a soldier’ and to do all the numerous other things my mother felt too squeamish to attempt.

Several hours before my birth in October 1932, Isabel appeared numerous times, dramatically standing at the top of the stairs, flourishing one arm back and forth and holding the back of her other hand over her forehead. Each time she stated hysterically that the baby was coming. “Quick! Get the midwife--Now!” she demanded.

Nan, well versed in her daughters theatrics and melodrama, retorted “You’ve got hours to go—so don’t go demanding to us now!” Her mother made it quite clear that the hysteria was nonsense and that she should calm down and be sensible. So, following the last incident, Isabel locked herself in her room, refusing communication with anyone.

“Leave her alone,” Nan said, seeing Les' worried expression after he'd returned from a bout of door-knocking. “She’ll come down when the pain gets big enough.”
 

It was not until mid-afternoon that she appeared again at the top of the stairs, dramatically breaking her silence with another bout of hysteria. Her waters had broken. The baby was on its way.

Les sprang into action to fetch the planned midwife, wasting precious time getting the two-stroke motorbike to start. Eventually, after five or six attempts, it spluttered to life with more than a puff of smoke. He arrived in town to find that the midwife was not home and was informed that she had gone to the movies. There were five movie houses in town—so there was no chance he could find her easily. He returned home and was ordered to inform Mrs. Preece, as the baby was well and truly on the way.

Pacing back and forth and unable to take the bellowing much longer, Granddad Joseph, also upset by the delay and obvious lack of a qualified midwife, raced into town on foot to fetch Dr. Baker. This was an easy ten-minute journey and, as luck would have it, the bearded doctor was home.

Meanwhile, Joan was delivered skilfully at the hands of her Nan and Mrs. Preece. Dr Baker arrived with Granddad Joseph shortly after my birth. After a brief inspection, he said to Isabel “You have a perfect baby girl. I have never seen such long hair! And such a colour!”

Isabel gestured toward me and said to him “The colour is blonde, like the picture, but the hair should have been curly! I expected a baby boy with curly hair!” Isabel pouted.

The product “Curly Pet” was ordered up, mainly to placate her, and Les was sent without delay to the nearest chemist to fetch it. The label stated that it was “guaranteed to give your baby curls”. Although my head was liberally smothered with it, my hair, of course, remained stubbornly straight.

The next concern for Nan in regard to my mother was the name she was to give me. Isabel kept this under wraps until the day of my christening, three weeks after my birth. She was to reveal it before going to the church and Nan could only imagine what she’d come up with.

The other Grandparents, Mary and Alfred Jenkins, arrived at our house along with a number of other relatives to walk together to St Andrew’s Church. The moment of announcement had arrived.

“The name chosen,” she began, pausing for effect. “Is a combination of mummy’s and daddy’s names....Lesabel!”

A moment of silence and disbelief followed, for this was a time of good, old-fashioned family names. After a hurried discussion, the grandparents had their say and I was duly baptised ‘Joan Mary’—Mary, after my two grandmothers and ‘Joan’ in honour of my mother’s late brother, Joseph.

The picture of the baby my mother had envisaged--a curly-haired, blue-eyed baby boy--hung in my parent’s bedroom throughout my childhood. In the picture, he was sitting up and wore a blue baby suit and matching blue bootees. So many times over my childhood, my mother would look at it and tell me “That was the little boy I wished for. The little boy I believed I would have. And then you came along—a girl with long, straight hair!” I didn’t think anything of it at the time and, like many things in my childhood that I now reflect on, just accepted it as part of the norm. Like many things since, I now realise it was odd and potentially damaging to my self esteem.

The picture was moved to the bathroom when I was 14. I said to Isabel “It doesn’t suit the bathroom. It looks silly there.” With that, after so many years of seeing it, the picture was taken down.

As for Mrs. Preece, she informed everyone in the neighbourhood of the part she played in my birth and did not allow a day to go by without enquiring about my health and wellbeing. I always felt very close to her and loved her dearly. She was also a constant source of information about the various events of World War Two, so often exchanged over the fence.

“Did yer hear? Selfridges has been bombed!” and “What will be left of London when all’s said and done? Have yer heard the extent of the bombing?”