Free Johnson-Johnson 06 – Dolly and the Nanny Bird by Dorothy Dunnett

sterilise all your own bottles.’
    I had guessed Bunty bought her feeds ready-made. I said carefully, ‘I just like it that way. Disposable bottles are perfectly sterile, Mr Eisenkopp. And I couldn’t really…’ I held out the cheque.
    He ignored it. ‘Mrs Eisenkopp and Bunty and I would like you to help us with Grover and Sukey. As a favour. Naturally, we should not show ourselves ungrateful.’
    Two jobs was all that I needed. ‘Mr Eisenkopp,’ I said. ‘I’m paid to look after one baby for twenty-four hours a day, five and a half days a week. I couldn’t take Sukey and be fair to both of them. I shouldn’t mind an odd hour with Grover in an emergency, but you’d have to ask Mrs Booker-Readman. And if he misbehaves, I can’t promise not to smack. I don’t mean beat. I mean smack, a couple of times on the bottom.’
    That, I reckoned, got me off the hook. He pushed the cheque back in my hand and stood gazing at me, more in frustration than sorrow. ‘You know the Germans have the worst problem of adult violence and child-to-child aggression because their kids get beat up all the time by their parents?’
    Eisenkopp. I ask you.
    He developed the thesis. ‘Mrs Eisenkopp and I made up our minds long ago. No doctor will ever push his dirty hypodermic into this little flower or her brother. Do you believe in injections, Nurse Joanna?’
    I stared at him, but he was serious. I said, ‘I believe child diseases can kill. I’ve been injected. I’ve also been smacked by my father when I deserved it.’
    He tried. His lips hung out together as he made the effort. ‘I want you to promise,’ he said, ‘that if you have cause to reprimand Grover, you will tell Mrs Eisenkopp or myself?’
    ‘Mr Eisenkopp,’ I said, ‘Grover will tell you.’
    ‘Nurse Joanna,’ said Comer, ‘I’m real glad I met you.’
    ‘I also,’ said Hugo Panadek. Inside the gorilla skin he was bare to the navel, and the boundary demarcation was not all that evident either. ‘When you are off duty one day, you and I and Bunty will drink vodka together and play with my hypodermics. And if I am bad, you may smack me.’
    I left right away. I sometimes wonder which of my two trades is the riskier.

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CHAPTER 5
    « ^ »
    Simon was away and Rosamund was just going out when I got back to the house with my booty. I emptied my pocket on to the hall table among the air mail
Times
copies and shuffled the ikon together.
    Rosamund said, ‘What’s that? It doesn’t smell very nice.’
    The bandeau she was wearing drew attention to her large open eyes and high cheekbones. She had the kind of fine, sallow skin that flushes easily. It began to turn red as I answered her. It became redder and redder, and then returned to being quite pale. Rosamund Bookcr-Readman said, ‘You are talking absolute rubbish. Of course that isn’t the ikon my husband lost. Anyone can see it’s some cheap reproduction. Give it me. You’ll give us all typhoid.’
    And lifting the whole sopping bundle, she stalked down the basement steps and as I watched her, thrust the lot into the boiler.
    It burned like firewood. When the last chip was consumed she banged the door shut and came upstairs for some hand-washing. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Hadn’t you better get on with the feed? Or has Benedict lost his fascination now you’ve met the Eisenkopps?’
    I said good-night and I hoped she’d have a pleasant evening. By hook or by crook, I could see, Benedict was going to have to smile at his mother.
    I fed him and he cried all the time I was trying to do my ironing. At eight-thirty I gave in and supplied him with a clean nappy and an extra five ounces, upon which he fell asleep instantly. I switched on the baby alarm and went downstairs again to my ironing.
    I like being alone. Outside were the spaced lights of the street, and the lines of parked cars, and the dark space where the Carl Schurz Park was, and the blazing edifice next door in which was the Eisenkopp duplex.