The Grim Smile of the Five Towns | Page 8

moment of your awakening. Conceive that an
appointment with the dentist implies heavenly joy instead of infernal
pain, and you will have a notion of the daily state of Mrs Blackshaw
and Emmie (the nurse) with regard to the baby's bath.
Even at ten in the morning Emmie would be keeping an eye on the
kitchen fire, lest the cook might let it out. And shortly after noon Mrs
Blackshaw would be keeping an eye on the thermometer in the
bedroom where the bath occurred. From four o'clock onwards the
clocks in the house were spied on and overlooked like suspected
persons; but they were used to that, because the baby had his sterilized
milk every two hours. I have at length allowed you to penetrate the
secret of his sex.
And so at five o'clock precisely the august and exciting ceremony
began in the best bedroom. A bright fire was burning (the month being
December), and the carefully-shaded electric lights were also burning.
A large bath-towel was spread in a convenient place on the floor, and
on the towel were two chairs facing each other, and a table. On one
chair was the bath, and on the other was Mrs Blackshaw with her
sleeves rolled up, and on Mrs Blackshaw was another towel, and on
that towel was Roger (the baby). On the table were zinc ointment,
vaseline, scentless eau de Cologne, Castile soap, and a powder-puff.

Emmie having pretty nearly filled the bath with a combination of hot
and cold waters, dropped the floating thermometer into it, and then
added more waters until the thermometer indicated the precise
temperature proper for a baby's bath. But you are not to imagine that
Mrs Blackshaw trusted a mere thermometer. No. She put her arm in the
water up to the elbow. She reckoned the sensitive skin near the elbow
was worth forty thermometers.
Emmie was chiefly an audience. Mrs Blackshaw had engaged her as a
nurse, but she could have taught a nigger-boy to do all that she allowed
the nurse to do. During the bath Mrs Blackshaw and Emmie hated and
scorned each other, despite their joy. Emmie was twice Mrs
Blackshaw's age, besides being twice her weight, and she knew twice
as much about babies as Mrs Blackshaw did. However, Mrs Blackshaw
had the terrific advantage of being the mother of that particular infant,
and she could always end an argument when she chose, and in her own
favour. It was unjust, and Emmie felt it to be unjust; but this is not a
world of justice.
Roger, though not at all precocious, was perfectly aware of the
carefully-concealed hostility between his mother and his nurse, and
often, with his usual unscrupulousness, he used it for his own ends. He
was sitting upon his mother's knees toying with the edge of the bath,
already tasting its delights in advance. Mrs Blackshaw undressed the
upper half of him, and then she laid him on the flat of his back and
undressed the lower half of him, but keeping some wisp of a garment
round his equatorial regions. And then she washed his face with a
sponge and the Castile soap, very gently, but not half gently enough for
Emmie, nor half gently enough for Roger, for Roger looked upon this
part of the business as insulting and superfluous. He breathed hard and
kicked his feet nearly off.
'Yes, it's dreadful having our face washed, isn't it?' said Mrs Blackshaw,
with her sleeves up, and her hair by this time down. 'We don't like it, do
we? Yes, yes.'
Emmie grunted, without a sound, and yet Mrs Blackshaw heard her,
and finished that face quickly and turned to the hands.
'Potato-gardens every day,' she said. 'Evzy day-day. Enough of that,
Colonel!' (For, after all, she had plenty of spirit.) 'Fat little creases! Fat
little creases! There! He likes that! There! Feet! Feet! Feet and legs!

Then our back. And then WHUP we shall go into the bath! That's it.
Kick! Kick your mother!'
And she turned him over.
'Incredible bungler!' said the eyes of the nurse. 'Can't she turn him over
neater than that?'
'Harridan!' said the eyes of Mrs Blackshaw. 'I wouldn't let you bath him
for twenty thousand pounds!'
Roger continued to breathe hard, as if his mother were a horse and he
were rubbing her down.
'Now! Zoop! Whup!' cried his mother, and having deprived him of his
final rag, she picked him up and sat him in the bath, and he was
divinely happy, and so were the women. He appeared a gross little
animal in the bath, all the tints of his flesh shimmering under the
electric light. His chest was superb, but the rolled and creased bigness
of his inordinate stomach was simply appalling, not to