Chapter One. Born on The Hill

I believe in angels which means I must believe in ghosts so I wonder which angels trailed the ghosts who followed us home from McHardy House with their naughty devils and cacklers.

There were six kids in our family and all but one were born in this grand home that had been remade into a maternity home called McHardy House. It was up on The Hill. We lived down on The Beach. In a fishing town in New Zealand. The maternity home was on The Hill because that is where all the rich people lived. 

That's where My Mum wished she lived, aye Mum. 

You see, McHardy House was a mansion built by a bygone sheep station owner, (stations are bigger and more affluent than farms). It was his town house.  After the McHardy family moved on, the house was used as a hospital for returning servicemen (no-one talks about the returning service women who were mostly nurses and deemed tough enough to shift for themselves) this was after World War Two.

Later the convalescent home was refashioned as a maternity home for mothers. (The women got their turn but only if they had babies first). 

Anyway, that is where Mum went to give birth to her babies. A beautiful mansion filled with the lost wandering souls of dead wretched soldiers.

All screaming, you would say, right Mum?

Later I wondered whether the babies were watched over by the ghosts of the men who had died there. Leaning on our bassinets, their transparent uniforms worn and stained, dead smokes in the corners of their mouths, their eyes tired, softening around the edges at the sight of the babies.  

I don’t think you saw any of that though, Mum. I think you were just happy to get some time off from the house. A job you were signed up for when really you wanted to be a writer. An intellectual. A thinker. Probably a nun when we really get down to it but Dad was a handsome bastard. (Yes, he was) 

Us babies were born into high airy rooms with flock wall paper and perfect plaster mouldings and wrap-around porches, huge floor to ceiling sash windows opened to let the last puff of the sea breezes curtsy through the rooms, wide corridors shining with polish, angels made of dusty light moving aside the elbows of the serviceman ghosts who littered the floors. 

Every afternoon the French doors from the nursery were opened into the scented rose filled gardens with little brick lined courtyards where all the babies were lined up to ‘take the air’ while the Mums had a wee lie down.  Babies literally pushed outside in their bassinets by starchy nurses. Sunning the babes up on the hill. The best thing for jaundice so we were told. 

But baby was never allowed outside before the 5 day mark. They were not quite themselves yet the nurses said to Mum. And were susceptible to germs and ill humours (and ghosts, and angels and naughty wee devils, Mum would fill in).

The Hill was called The Hill -  it was the only hill for miles. We lived on The Beach, that was really a spit of sand way below The Hill, though you could see our house from the windows of the maternity home. Down there we had sea before us and sea behind us (The Lagoon) and a bridge that connected us to the town.  

The Hill. The War. The Lagoon. The Bridge. South Island. North Island. New Zealanders are not known for adventurous naming of stuff. 

When I was due to be born Mum went up the hill to the beautiful refurbished McHardy house for the second time.  (It was free for all you see, being a training hospital too). 

 The beds were metal and flat, with ample pillows to help you sit up, sheets white starched cotton, hospital corners,  blankets were cotton or wool. Baby had a little cotton hat, a long cotton gown and a bracelet with her name spelled out in beads. She spent her time in the nursery then was brought to Mother every four hours for a feed. On the dot. The bed pans were metal (a kind nurse might warm it up for you - most didn’t). The bedside cabinets were wooden with formica tops and the wheels made of metal. They never rolled in a straight line. Nothing was that easy. 

But all these ordinary Mums basked in a special kind of glory in that olden times space. 

The nurses wore white uniforms with bright white caps on their heads and a little watch that rested against their bosom. A nurse needed a good bust to be able to read her watch without picking it up.  A tea lady in a green apron pushed her trolley through the wards three times a day, an hour or so after each meal. She would bring Mum and any visitors a cup of tea in a cup and saucer. 

My mother had TB as a young woman so they said she was not allowed to breastfeed us (in case she gave us TB) so my brother and I were brought up on cows milk. After the first few kids my mother told the doctors where they could take their advice and breastfed without any problem at all.  No-one got TB. No-one was allergic to cows milk. We all grew up lanky and wild and full of rude health.

 Mum always stayed the full free two weeks then picked up whatever baby she had popped out and went home. Baby was celebrated then unceremoniously dumped back in with the passel of beach kids in that rambly beach house - no more scented rose gardens for us. Mum would change back from her landed gentry dream, pull out her house shoes, put on her apron and get back to the harsh reality of getting tea on the table by six.  No wonder she up and died young.  Tom was the last newborn to be dropped into the pack and us girls grabbed him screaming at each other that he was Mine, No Mine, No Mine, N Mi …  Shall I chop him up for you, Dad said brandishing a huge antler handled carving knife. 

Immediate silence. 

Our house was long and rambly, and just a little above high tide. Dads Dad bought it and as the story goes Dads Dad - (we never met him so he never had a name other than Dads Dad) the story goes that he hated the front gate so much he drove right through it in his old Bedford truck the moment he took over ownership of the house.  Dad was a wee fella in short pants screaming with delight beside his Dad in the front seat. 

(Let’s not talk about seat belts) for that is another story for next time. 

Our house was one of those stucco affairs with years of additions hidden under more stucco. Shocked white with blue trim reflecting the wicked squinty bright heat of those beach summers. Enormous trees, unkempt hedges, wild gardens  and ivy surrounded the house. Down the back were chickens and the vegetable gardens. Apple trees, plum trees, walnut trees and a white nectarine. We were always harvesting something. Dogs and cats lay in sunny spots where they were guaranteed to trip someone. 

Mum and Dads room had a sunroom that ran the length of the house, and my sister and I shared a room in what had once been a parlour. The parlour was off the front room which was called Up The Front - as in take your Mum a cup of tea, she is Up the Front.  The Front room was cool and still, with its Axminster carpet, a big fireplace, long solid dark mantel, old deep reading chairs and every wall covered in floor to ceiling books. The Front Room windows were always smeary from salt spray. Mum was not one for extra housework (sorry Mum but you weren’t) so I remember that room in a kind of  diffused light. Hazy. A secret place. 

When Mum died we brought her home from the funeral place and she lay in state in The Front Room waiting for her funeral and taking callers. Her casket set up on a shiny trolley. Her dog laid underneath. This was probably the only time those windows had a good wash. 

I won’t bore you to death by describing the whole house but it was a warren made for very tall rabbits. Some corners were so dark, even in broad daylight, that you may as well just close your eyes as you ran through the halls.  

The back kitchen was long with a huge pine table in the middle just like you see in the movies. We always sat around it for lunch. 

I guess I should take you back and introduce you to my family and me. I’ll be quick because these kinds of introductions can bore the pants of anyone. 

Us kids were sixth generation New Zealanders on both sides; my mother was always very sure to remind us of this. Dad’s Dads family Came from Land up the coast ( though we were never able to substantiate this as apparently one of the cousins sold the land and ran off with the proceeds while Dad was at sea)  Dad was an only child of elderly parents. His mother was a concert pianist and his Dad was a builder who went through two world wars building bridges across exploding river banks and across stinking trenches.  

Dads Dad did his time in the convalescent home that became a home for mothers where I was born but he became well enough to go home to the house on The Beach, though he would never again walk up to the front of the church for communion on a Sunday. He was afraid people were watching him. And talking about his ears. He died of despair and a broken heart soon after. 

The land up the coast belonged to his three maiden cousins - triplets. Two lost their sweethearts in the war and the third was too shy for any of that dirty stuff so they lived together in a big house on the beach until they were very old and it fell into the sea in a storm. (I was never sure what came first).

I have never been able to quite work out how the house fell into the sea and then someone was able to sell it and run off with the proceeds at the same time or where the land was but there you are, family legends are much more fun in the re-telling. 

There definitely were triplets though - they were born so young that when their mother brought them home from the hospital she slept them in shoe boxes on the rack above the warm coal range. I always hoped she took the babies down when she stoked the fire up to cook dinner - (I had nightmares of roasting babies for half my life after hearing that story from various relatives and then my Mother's mother, Grandma, showed me how to roast whole rabbits in the oven.  And they looked so much like little roasting babies that I almost lost the plot and ran screaming into the hills joined by the ghosts and angels and naughty wee devils). 

You reassured us - didn’t you Mum - that you would never sleep babies above the stove.  

My Mothers father had flat feet so he never got to go to war at all but never recovered from the rejection. Pa went on to have one of the biggest junk yards in the South Island - collecting any metal he could find for the war effort. He had bright blue eyes and short buzzed hair and rolled his shoulders forward as he walked. He strode through the dystopian demolition site of the junkyard, his large hands hung down, palms swinging back. He powered along as though he was rowing through the air. Forehead tipped down. Eyes up.  Great black coat flaring out. His eagle head looking left and right. It was a powerful walk, his woollen cap and his woollen pants hitched up high. The junk yard dogs yanking hard at their chains, unable to reach him. 

Last year I binge watched the Peaky Blinders and I saw Pa.   He was all the characters. Him and his brothers.  It was unnerving. (You would not have liked it Mum, too much swearing).

He never much smiled, Pa. Those blue eyes like chips of ice cutting to the side like that.  That blistering loyalty to family. He would smack a kid as quick as look at him.  Fast. No talking back. He would drive to town in one car and return in another, having traded the first in on a whim, on the way back from wherever he went. 

He said never go anywhere with one arm as long as the other. Always have a gift. His would be a load of firewood, a loaf of bread, a fish wrapped in newspaper or a bag of spuds from Grandma’s garden. He was the most generous man I knew and probably the scariest. 

By the time I came along Mum had moved with Dad to another island. Far from her family. We only saw Mums family on holidays. 

Dads parents had died by then and this was when we moved to their big house on the beach with a new gate, and grew up wild.  Mum always had an ethereal, graceful, pale quality, as though she were on loan and really belonged in another place, one we were not privy to. She would smile at the ghosts and angels who would move past her towards us curly haired, weedy, unruly, scrappy kids.  Gathering for meals at the big kitchen table before falling off our chairs and commando rolling back out the door and back down to the beach. Our guardian angels and ghosts and wee devils sliding through the cracks and open windows to follow along behind us.

 Mum said they kept us from drowning. 

They were there the night of the car accident though.  The ghosts of the war-men. 

I will tell you about that next week. 

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Letters to My Mother is a short collection of memories of my time as a child in New Zealand in the 50’s and 60’s.  I will post a story every Monday. 

Thank you so much for reading and thank you so much for subscribing. 

Image from Open Culture.