“Well, you will excuse us if we have a small meal. We usually prepare our own supper because we all come in at different times.”
The Sisters were bustling about, fetching plates, knives, cheese, biscuits and other things from the larder, and laying them on the kitchen table. A cry came from behind the door, and a red-faced nun emerged carrying the cake tin.
“It’s gone. The tin’s empty. Where is Mrs B.’s cake? She made it only this morning.”
This must be Sister Evangelina. Her face was getting redder as she glared around.
No one spoke. The three Sisters looked at each other. Sister Monica Joan sat aloof, beyond all reproach, her eyes closed. The cake was doing something nasty to my intestines, and I knew that the enormity of my crime could not be concealed. My voice was husky as I whispered, “I had a little.”
The red face and heavy figure advanced toward Sister Monica Joan. “And she’s had the rest of it. Look at her, covered in cake crumbs. It’s disgusting. Oh, the greedy thing! She can’t keep her hands off anything. That cake was for all of us. You…you…”
Sister Evangelina was shaking with rage as she towered over Sister Monica Joan, who remained absolutely immobile, her eyes closed, as though she had not heard a word. She looked fragile and aristocratic. I could not bear it, and found my voice. “No, you’ve got it wrong. Sister Monica Joan had a slice, and I had the rest.”
The three nuns stared at me in astonishment. I felt myself blush all over. Had I been a dog caught stealing the Sunday roast, I would have crept under the table with my tail between my legs. To have entered a strange house, and to have consumed the best part of a cake without the knowledge or consent of the lawful owners, was a solecism worthy of severe retribution. I could only mutter, “I’m sorry. I was hungry. I won’t do it again.”
Sister Evangelina snorted and banged the tin on the table.
Sister Monica Joan, whose eyes were still closed, head turned away, moved for the first time. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to Sister Evangelina, holding it by a corner with thumb and forefinger, the other fingers arched fastidiously. “Perhaps it is time for a little mopping up, dear,” she said sweetly.
Rage boiled even more fiercely. The redness of Sister Evangelina’s features turned to purple, and moisture gathered round her nostrils.
“No thank you, dear. I have one of my own,” she spat out through clenched teeth.
Sister Monica Joan gave an affected little jump, brushed her face elegantly with the handkerchief, and murmured, as though to herself, “Methinks ‘tis raining. I cannot abide the rain. I will retire. Pray excuse me, Sisters. We will meet at Compline.”
She smiled graciously at the three Sisters, then turned to me, and gave me the biggest, naughtiest wink I had ever seen in my life. Haughtily, she sailed out of the kitchen.
I felt myself squirm with embarrassment as the door closed and I was left alone with the three nuns. I just wanted to sink through the floor, or run away. Sister Julienne told me to take my case to the top floor, where I would find a room with my name on the door. I had expected a heavy silence and three pairs of eyes following me as I left the kitchen, but Sister Julienne started talking about an old lady she had just visited, whose cat appeared to be stuck up the chimney. They all laughed, and to my intense relief the atmosphere lightened at once.
In the hallway, I seriously wondered whether or not to cut and run. The fact that I was in something like a convent, and not a hospital, was ridiculous, and the whole saga of the cake, humiliating. I could have just picked up my case and vanished into the darkness. It was tempting. In fact I might have done so had the front door not opened at that moment and two laughing young girls appeared. Their faces were pink and freshened by the night air, their hair untidy from the wind. A few spots of rain glistened on their long gaberdine raincoats. They were about my age, and looked happy and full of life.
“Hello!” said a deep, slow voice. “You must be Jenny Lee. How nice. You’ll like it here. There are not too many of us. I’m Cynthia, and this is Trixie.”
But Trixie had already disappeared down the passage towards the kitchen with the words: “I’m famished. See you later.”
Cynthia’s voice was astonishing – soft, low, and slightly husky. She also spoke extremely slowly, and with just a touch of laughter in her tone. In another type of girl, it would have been the cultivated, sexy voice of allure. I had met plenty of that type in four years of nursing, but Cynthia was not one of their number. Her voice was completely natural, and she could speak no other way. My discomfort and uncertainty left me, and we grinned at each other, friends already. I decided I would stay.
Later that evening I was called to Sister Julienne’s office. I went filled with dread, expecting a severe dressing-down about the cake. Having endured four years of tyranny from hospital nursing hierarchies, I expected the worst, and ground my teeth in anticipation.
Sister Julienne was small and plump. She must have worked about fifteen or sixteen hours that day, but she looked as fresh as a daisy. Her radiant smile reassured me and dispelled my fears. Her first words were, “We will say nothing more about the cake.”
I gave a great sigh of relief and sister Julienne burst out laughing, “Strange things happen to us all in the company of Sister Monica Joan. But I assure you, no one will mention it again. Not even Sister Evangelina.”
She said the last words with special emphasis, and I found myself laughing also. I was completely won over, and glad I had not been so rash as to run away.
Her next words were unexpected. “What is your religion, nurse?”
“Well…er…none…er…that is, Methodist – I think.”
The question seemed astonishing, irrelevant, even slightly silly. To ask about my education, my training and experience in nursing, my plans for the future – all that would have been anticipated and acceptable. But religion? What had religion to do with anything?
She looked very grave, and said gently, “Jesus Christ is our strength and our guidance here. Perhaps you will join us sometimes at Church on a Sunday?”
Sister then went on to explain the training I would receive, and the routine of Nonnatus House. I would be under the supervision of a trained midwife for all visits for about three weeks, and then go out alone for ante- and post-natal work. All deliveries would be supervised by another midwife. Classroom lectures were held once a week in the evening, after work. All study would be done in our spare time.
She sat quietly explaining other details, most of which went over my head. I was not really listening, but wondering about her, and why I felt so comfortable and happy in her company.
A bell rang. She smiled. “It is time for Compline. I must go. We will meet in the morning. I hope you have a restful night.”
The impact Sister Julienne made upon me – and, I discovered, most people – was out of all proportion to her words or her appearance. She was not imposing or commanding, nor arresting in any way. She was not even particularly clever. But something radiated from her and, ponder as I might, I could not understand it. It did not occur to me at the time that her radiance had a spiritual dimension, owing nothing to the values of the temporal world.
MORNING VISITS
It was about 6 a.m. when I arrived back at Nonnatus House after Muriel’s delivery, and I was ravenous. A night’s work, and a six to eight mile cycle ride can sharpen a young appetite like nothing else. The house was quiet when I entered. The nuns were in Chapel, and the lay staff not yet up. I was tired, but I knew that I had to clean my delivery bag, wash and sterilise my instruments, complete my notes and leave them on the office desk before I could eat.
Breakfast was laid out in the dining room, and I would take mine first, then go to bed for a few hours. I raided the larder. A pot of tea, boiled eggs, toast, home-made gooseberry jam, cornflakes, home-made yoghurt and scones. Heaven! Nuns always have a lot of home-made food, I had discovered. The preserves came from the many church bazaars and sales that s
eemed to go on throughout the year. The delicious cakes and biscuits and crunchy bread were made either by the nuns or by the many local women who came in to work at Nonnatus House. Any staff who had missed a meal through being called out had a free run of the larder. I was deeply grateful for this liberality, which was so unlike hospitals, where you had to plead for a bit of food if you had missed a meal for any reason.
It was a royal feast. I left a note asking to be called at about 11.30 a.m., and persuaded my tired legs to carry me up to my bedroom. I slept like a baby, and when someone roused me with a cup of tea, I couldn’t remember where I was. The tea reminded me. Only the kind Sisters would send a cup of tea up to a nurse who had been working all night. In hospital it would be a bang on the door, and that would be that.
Downstairs I looked at the daybook. Only three calls before lunch. One to Muriel, and two visits to patients in the tenements that I would pass on the way. Four hours of sleep had refreshed me completely, and I got out the bike and cycled off in high spirits in the sunshine.
The tenements were always grim looking, whatever the weather. They were constructed as a four-sided building with an opening on one side, all the flats faced inwards. The buildings were about six storeys high, and sunlight seldom reached the inner courtyard, which was the social centre for the tenement dwellers. The courtyard contained all the washing lines and as there were literally hundreds of flats in each block, they were never without loads of washing flapping in the wind. The dustbins were also in the courtyard.
In the times I am writing about, the 1950s, there was a lavatory and running cold water in each flat. Before the introduction of these facilities, the lavatories and water were in the courtyard, and everyone had to go down to use them. Some of the tenements still retained the lavatory sheds, which were now used to house bikes or motor cycles. There did not seem many of them – perhaps three dozen at the most, and I wondered how there could have been enough lavatories for the occupants of about five hundred flats.
I threaded my way through the washing, and reached the stairway that I wanted. All the stairways were external, made of stone steps, and led up to a balcony, facing inwards, which ran the length of the building, going round all the corners, continuously. Each of the flats led off this balcony. Whereas the inner courtyard was the centre of social life, the balconies were the lanes, teeming with life and gossip. The balconies for the tenement women were equivalent to the streets of the terraced house dwellers. So close was the living space, that I doubt if anyone could get away with anything without all the neighbours knowing. The outside world held very little interest for the East Enders, and so other peoples’ business was the primary topic of conversation – for most it was the only interest, the only amusement or diversion. It is not surprising that savage fighting frequently broke out in the tenements.
The tenements looked unusually cheerful in the noonday sun when I arrived that day. I picked my way through the litter and dustbins and washing in the courtyard. Small children crowded around. The midwife’s delivery bag was an object of intense interest – they thought we carried the baby in it.
I found my entry, and climbed the five storeys to the flat I wanted.
All the flats were more or less the same: two or three rooms leading off each other. A stone sink in one corner of the main room; a gas stove and a cupboard constituting the kitchen. The lavatories, when they were introduced, had to be installed near the water supply, so they were situated in a corner, near to the sink. The installation of lavatories in each flat had been a great leap forward in public hygiene, because it improved the conditions in the courtyard. It also avoided the necessity of chamber pots in every flat which had to be emptied daily, the women carrying them downstairs to the emptying troughs. The ordure in the courtyards used to be disgusting, I was told.
The tenements of London’s East End were built around the 1850s, mainly to house the dock workers and their families. In their day, they were probably considered to be adequate housing, quite sufficient for any family. They were certainly an improvement on the mud-floor hovels that they replaced, which barely protected a family from the elements. The tenements were brick built with a slate roof. Rain did not penetrate and they were dry inside. I have no doubt that 150 years ago, they were ever considered to be luxurious. A large family of ten to twelve people in two or three rooms would not have been judged as overcrowding. After all, the vast majority of mankind has lived in such conditions throughout history.
But times change, and by the 1950s the tenements were considered to be slum areas. The rents were a lot cheaper than the terraced houses, and consequently only the poorest families, those least able to cope, entered the tenements. Social law seems to suggest that the poorest families are often the ones that produce the greatest number of children, and the tenements were always teeming with them. Infectious diseases ran through the buildings like wildfire. So did the pests: fleas, body lice, ticks, scabies, crabs, mice, rats, and cockroaches. The pest control men from the council were always busy. The tenements were deemed unfit for human habitation and evacuated in the 1960s, and stood empty for over a decade. They were finally demolished in 1982.
Edith was small and stringy, and as tough as old boots. She looked a good deal older than forty years. She had brought up six children. During the war they had been bombed out of a terraced house, but it had not been a direct hit, and the family had survived. The children were then evacuated. Her husband was a dock labourer, and she was a munitions worker. After the bombing, she and her husband had moved into the tenements, which were cheaper to rent. They both lived there throughout the entire Blitz, and miraculously the tenements, which were the most densely populated dwellings, were not hit. Edith did not see her children for five years, but they were reunited in 1945. The family continued to live in the tenements, because of the rent, and because they had become used to the life. How anyone could manage in two rooms with six growing children was always beyond my understanding. But they did, and thought nothing of it.
She had not been pleased to fall pregnant again, in fact she was furious, but like most women who have a baby late in life, she was besotted with the little thing when he arrived, and cooed over him all the time. The flat was hung with nappies all over the place – there were no disposable nappies in those days – and a pram further reduced the living space in the crowded room.
Edith was up and doing. It was her tenth day after delivery. We kept mothers in bed for a long time after delivery in those days – ten to fourteen days known as the “lying-in” period. Medically speaking, this was not good practice, as it is far better for a woman to get moving as soon as possible, thus reducing the risk of complications such as thrombosis. But this was not known back then, and it had been traditional to keep women in bed after a birth. The great advantage was that it gave the woman a proper, and well-earned, rest. Other people had to do all the household chores, and for a brief period, she could lead a life of idleness. She needed to gather her strength, because once she was on her feet again, everything would devolve to her. When you consider the physical effort required to carry all the shopping up those stairs: coal and wood in the winter, paraffin for stoves, or rubbish carried down to the dustbins in the courtyard; if you consider the fact that to take the baby out, the pram had to be bumped down the stairs, one step at a time, and then bumped up again to get home, often loaded with groceries, as well as the baby, you might begin to understand how tough those women had to be. Almost every time you entered the tenements, you would see a woman bumping a big pram up or down. If they lived at the top, this would mean about seventy steps each way. The prams had big wheels, which made it possible, and were well sprung, which bounced the baby around. The babies loved it, and laughed and shrieked with glee. It was also dangerous if the steps were slippery, because the whole weight of the pram had to be controlled by the handle, and if the mother missed her footing or something happened and she let go, the pram and baby would go cascading down the length of the steps.
I always helped when I saw a woman with a pram by taking the other end, therefore half the weight, which was considerable. The whole weight, for a woman alone, must have been tremendous.
Edith was in a grubby dressing gown, down-trodden slippers and hair curlers. She was simultaneously feeding her baby and smoking. The radio was blaring out pop music. She looked perfectly happy. In fact she looked a better colour, and younger than she had a couple of months earlier. The rest had obviously done her good.
“Hello, luvvy. Come on in. How about a nice cup of tea?”
I explained that I had other calls to make and declined the tea. I was able to see how feeding was going. The baby was sucking voraciously, but it struck me that Edith’s thin little breasts probably did not contain much milk. However, it was far better for her to continue than to put the baby on to formula milk straight away, so I said nothing. If the baby fails to gain weight, or shows real signs of hunger, we can talk about it then, I thought. It was our practice to visit each day post-natally for a minimum of fourteen days, so we saw a lot of each patient.
It became the fashion about that time to put babies on to formula milk, and to suggest to the mother that this would be best for the baby. The Midwives of St Raymund Nonnatus did not go down this path, however, and all our patients were advised and helped to breastfeed for as long as possible. A fortnight of rest in bed helped to facilitate this, as the mother was not tiring herself by rushing around, and all her physical resources could go into producing milk for the baby.
As I glanced around the crowded room, the minimal kitchen area, and the general lack of facilities, it flashed through my mind that bottle-feeding would be the worst thing for the baby. Where on earth would Edith keep bottles, and tins of formula milk? How would she sterilise them? Would she bother to? Or even bother to keep them clean, never mind sterilising? There was no refrigerator, and I could well imagine bottles of half-consumed milk left lying around the place, to be given a second or third time to the baby, with no thought to the fact that bacteria quickly builds up in milk that has been left to go cold, and then warmed up again. No, breastfeeding would be much safer, even if there was not quite enough milk.
Call the Midwife Page 4