Jennifer Worth - Call The Midwife - A True Story Of The East End In The 1950S

Careful make-up, hat, gloves, handbag, and I was ready.

There was no underground beyond Aldgate then, so I had to take a bus along the East India Dock Road and Commercial Road to pick up the tube. I have always loved the top front seat of a London bus, and to this day I maintain that no transport, however expensive or luxurious, can possibly offer half so much by way of scenery, advantaged viewing point and leisurely locomotion. There is endless time to absorb the passing scenes, perched high above everyone and everything. So my bus ambled along its route, and my mind wandered to Jimmy and his friends, and the occasion when I had very nearly got myself thrown out of nursing, had I been found out.

The hierarchy was very strict in those days, and behaviour, even off-duty, was closely monitored. Except for organised social events, boys were never allowed in the nurses’ home. I even remember one Sunday evening, when a young man had called for his girlfriend. He rang the bell and a nurse opened the door. He gave the name of the girl he wanted, and the nurse went off to find her, leaving the front door open. It was raining quite heavily, so the young man stepped inside and stood waiting on the doormat. It so happened that the Home Sister passed at that moment. She stood stock-still, rooted to the spot, and stared at him. She drew herself up to her full 4 foot 11 inches and said, “Young man, how dare you enter the nurses’ home! Kindly go outside, at once.”

So intimidating were these hospital sisters of the old school, and so absolute was their authority, that the young man meekly went outside and stood in the rain, whereupon the Sister shut the door.

My behaviour over Jimmy and Mike would certainly have merited instant dismissal from the nurses’ training school, and very likely the profession altogether. I was working at the City of London Maternity Hospital at the time. Early one evening, after I had come off duty, I was called to the only phone in the building.

“Is that the fascinating Jenny Lee with the fantastic legs?” a smooth voice purred.

“Come off it, Jimmy. What’s up? And what do you want?”

“How could you be so cynical, my dear? You grieve me more than I can say. When have you got an evening off? Tonight! What good luck! Could we meet at the Plasterer’s Arms?”

Over a convivial pint it all came out. Jimmy and Mike shared a nominal flat in Baker Street, but what with one thing and another, such as girls, beer, clothes, fags, the flicks, the occasional horse, Lady Chatterley (the communal car), and other sundry essentials, there was never quite enough money to pay the rent. The landlady who, of course, was a dragon, was lenient when the rent was two or three weeks in arrears, but when it slipped to six or eight weeks with no money forthcoming, she started breathing fire. One evening the boys returned to find all their clothes gone, and a note stating they would get them back when the arrears had been paid.

They sat down with pencil and paper, and worked out that the replacement value of their clothes would be less than the eight weeks of rent outstanding, so their course of action was obvious. At three o’clock in the morning they slipped quietly out of the house, leaving their keys on the hall table, and spent the rest of the night in Regent’s Park. It was a fine September evening, and after a reasonable sleep they stepped jauntily off to work, congratulating each other on an excellent plan well executed. They reckoned they could continue such a modus vivendi indefinitely, and thought what fools they had been ever to have paid rent to that dragon of a landlady in the first place.

Jimmy was training to be an architect, while Mike was a structural engineer. They were both attached to the best firms in London (such training in those days was based on the old apprentice system, and students were not college based). Though they could wash and shave in the public lavatories, they could not change their clothes (they had none), and a smart London firm would not tolerate its staff turning up for work day after day covered in autumn leaves! After about a fortnight they began to think that another plan would have to be formulated. Unfortunately, both had an entire wardrobe of clothes still to purchase, so money was very tight.

A third pint was ordered as we discussed the problem. Jimmy asked, “Isn’t there perhaps a boiler room or something like that in the nurses’ home where we could camp out for a little while?”

Old friends are old friends. I did not even consider the risk I would be taking. I said, “Yes there is, although it’s not a boiler room. It’s the drying room at the top of the building. All the water tanks are in it, and it’s used for drying clothes. I think there’s a sink in it too.”

Their eyes lit up. A sink! They could wash and shave in comfort!

“As far as I know,” I continued “it’s only used in the daytime - not at night. There is a fire escape that goes up the back of the building, and presumably there will be a window or door from the drying room on to the fire escape. It’s probably locked from the inside, but if I opened it for you, you could get in. Let’s go and have a look.”

We had another pint or two before leaving for the nurses’ home in City Road. The boys went round the back to the fire escape, and I entered the front door. I went straight to the drying room, and found that the slide windows opened easily from the inside. I signalled to my friends below, and each of them in turn climbed the iron ladder. It was not a staircase, just a ladder fixed to the wall, and the drying room was on the sixth floor. Normally, such a climb would be hair-raising but, fortified by several pints, it proved no trouble at all to the boys, and they entered the drying-room jubilantly. They hugged and kissed me, and called me a “brick”.

I said, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t stay here, but don’t come before about ten at night, and you must leave before six each morning so that no one sees you. You must keep quiet, too, because I will be in trouble if you are found.”

No one ever found out, and they stayed in the drying-room of the nurses’ home for about three months. How they managed that terrifying fire-escape in the middle of winter at six o’clock in the morning I shall never know; but when you are young and full of life and vitality, nothing is a problem.

The cry “Aldgate East - all change” broke into my reverie. I found my way to the familiar pub. It was a glorious June evening when the endless daylight lingered on and on - the kind of evening that fills you with gladness. The air was warm, the sun shone, the birds sang. It was good to be alive. By contrast the enclosed atmosphere of the pub seemed dark and gloomy. This was usually our favourite hostelry. This evening the beer was right, the time was right, the friends were right, but, somehow, the venue didn’t feel quite right. We chatted a bit, drank a few glasses, but I think we were all feeling a bit restless.

Suddenly someone shouted out, “Hey! Let’s all go down to Brighton for a midnight swim!”

There was a chorus of approval.

“I’ll go and get Lady Chatterly.”

This was the name given to the communal car. Who now remembers the furore that surrounded the proposed publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence, written in the 1920s, and the court case brought against the publishers for intending to make widely available an “obscene publication”? All that happens in the book is that the lady of the manor has an affair with the gardener, but the case went to the High Court and some pompous QC is on record as having said to a witness, “Is this the sort of book you would allow your servants to read?”

After that Lady Chatterley became synonymous with illicit pleasures and millions of copies of the book were sold, making the publishers’ fortune.