‘This one’s yours’: On being raised by a nanny

Venetia (on the roof) and her sisters with their mum (left), Nan and the Buick. (Photo: Supplied)

ShareCommentPrefer us on GoogleWhen a nanny becomes a part of the family, what happens once the children grow up? Venetia Sherson reflects on a relationship that lasted 36 years.

Family folklore has it that when my mother returned from hospital after giving birth to me, she passed me to our nanny and said, “This one’s yours."

Whether my mother was postnatally exhausted, disappointed at producing a third girl when my father had longed for a boy, or simply acknowledging the importance of “Nanny” in our family’s lives was never said. But the deal was sealed. From that day on, I had two women in my life.

It was 1948, an era when nannies were common among middle-class families in Britain, where we lived. They wore starched uniforms with a silver badge, denoting their credentials. At St Helens, a small coastal town on the Isle of Wight where I was born, they wheeled perambulators with huge wheels through the town, sometimes pausing by the village green to let the older children play. There wouldn’t have been a lot of rough and tumble. A nanny’s job was to keep her charges clean.

My family wasn’t rich. My father was a retired mariner and former pub owner; my mother had been an actress on the London stage. I don’t know where the money came from to employ a nanny. What I do know is that Nan, as she became known when I grew older, had a massive impact on our family life and probably saved us all in different ways.

She was 25 when she came to live with us. We weren’t her first gig. She had been a nanny for another British couple who briefly lived in New Zealand but returned when war broke out. When we also set sail for Aotearoa in 1950, Nan made the trip a second time, sharing a cabin with we three girls while our parents enjoyed life on the upper decks. I wonder how she felt about leaving friends and family behind. Perhaps she saw it as an adventure.

During our first year in New Zealand, my mother valiantly drove a heavy Buick around the North Island as my father – who didn’t drive – looked for a place that most resembled England. In the back seat, Nan held our heads over a plastic bowl as we threw up.

We settled in Cambridge. My father liked the village green where he imagined he would play cricket as he had in England. The town also had an English name. But he came to loathe the country. In New Zealand, he couldn’t find his place. He longed for a class system where one mingled only with one’s social set. He didn’t like the children’s tortured vowels or bare feet.

Aged in his early 50s, he also couldn’t find work. Instead, he spent hours at Cambridge’s exclusive gentlemen’s club where people called him by his rank of captain. Whisky was his friend.

My mother could have gone crazy right there. In a strange land, without friends and a maudlin husband, staggering home late at night, hissing at her in their bedroom.

Nan loved my father for all his faults. She called him “Sir” to maintain his status in her books. She helped him to bed if my mother couldn’t manage it alone; she kept my sisters and I apart from any fallout.

I often think had we been at all famous, she could have sold our family secrets for a bob or two, as many nannies have. But she was loyal to a fault.

My father’s mood continued to darken. In my first year at primary school, he decreed we should return to England. For Mum, who had fallen in love with the country, it was a body blow. She was a strong woman who had lived through a war and lost her beloved only brother. She wanted a new start.

Then fate intervened. On a trip to Waihi Beach, we drove through Te Aroha. The mountain reminded my father of the peaks in the Lake District where he had grown up. He decided to give New Zealand another shot. We moved to Te Aroha when I was seven.

In Te Aroha, we would have raised some eyebrows. The quiet, rural service town had a population of less than 3,000. News would have spread fast about the English family with the live-in nanny. Plus, we three girls all dressed alike.

After my father died, some probably wondered if we would return to England or whether Mum would remarry. Neither happened. Instead, Mum and Nan forged a pragmatic partnership based on their individual skills and aspirations. Nan cooked, cleaned and supervised our homework. She filled the tins with baking, pressed our school uniforms and tended to the vege garden. She also mediated spats between we sisters and listened to my older sisters’ angst about their love lives. When I had bad dreams, she would make room for me in her single bed and sing me back to sleep.

Her nanny training meant she was firm on manners, respect for elders and hand-written thank-you notes.

Mum, on the other hand, embraced an independent life. Freed from marriage to a moody man with a drinking problem, she became a sought-after teacher of speech and drama. She joined the Te Aroha Dramatic Society and most evenings would be spent at rehearsals at the Little Theatre. We girls were enthralled by theatre life. We lived for post-production parties at our home when the gramophone blared and young men who could not come out publicly (homosexuality was still a criminal offence) called each other “darling”.

Nan made snacks behind the scenes. And she still told us when to go to bed.

The position of a nanny in a home is well defined. They are employed when children are young. They are paid employees with specific duties. When the children are grown, they usually depart, sometimes to take up other positions.

But the relationship is far more than transactional.

Nannies forge relationships with their charges that are second only to those of the parents – and sometimes surpass them. Winston Churchill described his nanny as his dearest friend throughout his life. Royal families are known to continue paying their nannies beyond retirement and often provide them with accommodation.

In New Zealand, where nannies weren’t common, there were no conventions. Nan’s life had been determined by her role with our family. She had lived with us from when we were born until we flew the coop. Without children to care for, she was free to leave. But what would she do?

In 1976, aged 62, she returned to England where her siblings still lived. But she found it had changed. “Too many dark people,” she confided to my husband. It seemed less like malice, and more an observation. When she had left in 1950, England – at least on the Isle of Wight – had seemed largely white.

Instead, she returned to live with my mother, but their relationship had shifted. They weren’t friends in the traditional sense, nor helpmates. They lived separate lives. Nan regularly babysat for other young families, who also called her Nan. She knitted delicate baby shawls and booties. In the evenings, she retired to her room.

As my sisters and I had children, she visited regularly. She hinted about helping us. But our families weren’t designed for live-in nannies. As a young mother I knew it would not have been easy to have another adult help to raise my boys.

Last year, I was contacted by her nephew, a church minister in England. He wanted to share further details about her life and ask about the family his aunt had lived with for more than three decades. He wrote that her love for us was evident from the letters she wrote home. I replied, “She was like my second mum.”

Nan was buried at Te Aroha Cemetery following a packed service at St Mark’s Church. Many in the congregation had been children she had watched grow up. The inscription on her headstone included her full name, Clare Francis Cook. But no one called her that.

She left me a hand-written note which said, “Thank you, dear, for all your help and understanding through the years.”

For her, thank you notes were always top of mind.

Back to topShareVenetia ShersonVenetia Sherson is a former daily newspaper editor and award-winning journalist who now works as a freelance writer, editor and media trainer.

Sign up to The Weekend, delivered straight to your inbox.