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

Lady Chatterley was not a family car, but an obsolete 1920s London taxi. She was magnificent and huge, and on occasion actually achieved a speed of forty mph. The engine had to be coaxed into life with a starting handle, inserted beneath the elegant radiator. Considerable muscle power was needed, and the boys usually took it in turns to do the cranking. The front bonnet opened like two huge beetle wings when it was required to get at the engine and four majestic coach lamps shone on either side of the fluted radiator. There were running boards from front to back. The wheels were spoked. The capacious interior smelled of the best leather upholstery, polished wood and brass. She was their pride and joy. The boys garaged her somewhere in Marylebone, and spent all their spare time coaxing her frail old engine into life, and titivating her majestic body.

But there was still more to Lady Chatterley. Chimney pots had been added and flower boxes attached. The windows were curtained, which meant that the driver couldn’t see out of the rear window, but no one bothered about little things like that. The car also boasted brass door knockers and letter-boxes. Her name was painted in gold across the front, and a notice at the rear read: DON’T LAUGH, MADAM, YOUR DAUGHTER MAY BE INSIDE.

She was brought round to the pub, and everyone turned out to admire her. A few of the original enthusiasts had dropped out, but a crowd of about fifteen climbed into Lady Chatterley and she set off, amid cheers, at a steady twenty-five mph down Marylebone High Street. The evening was exquisite, warm and windless. The declining sun looked as though it never really would decline altogether, it being already about 9 p.m. The plan included a midnight swim in Brighton, near the West Pier, then back to London with a stop at Dirty Dick’s - a transport cafe on the A23 - for bacon and eggs.

Roads in the 1950s were not as they are today. To begin with we had to get out of central London by weaving our way through miles of suburbs - Vauxhall, Wandsworth, the Elephant, Clapham, Balham, and so on. It wasn’t quite endless, but it took a couple of hours. Once through the suburbs the driver called out, “We’re on the open road now. Nothing to stop us till we get to Brighton.”

Nothing, that is, except the temperament of Lady Chatterley, who tended to overheat. Forty mph was her maximum, and she was being driven at that speed for too long. We had to stop at Redhill, Horley (or was it Crawley?), Cuckfield, Henfield and numerous other ‘-fields’ so that she could rest and cool down. Tempers inside the Hackney carriage were becoming as frayed as the upholstery. The sun, which we had thought would never desert us, had relentlessly crept around to the other side of the globe, leaving us girls chilly in our flimsy summer dresses. The boys at the front called out, “Only another couple of miles. I can see the South Downs on the horizon.”

Eventually, after a five-hour journey, we crawled into Brighton at about 3 a.m. The sea looked black, and very, very cold.

“Right,” cried one of the boys. “Who’s for a swim? Don’t be chicken. It’s lovely once you get in.”

The girls were less optimistic. A midnight swim conceived in the warmth and security of a London pub is a very different thing from a 3 a.m. swim in the cold, black reality of the English Channel. I was the only girl who did swim that night. Having come all that way, I was not going to be beaten!

The pebbles of Brighton beach are nasty at the best of times, but if you happen to be wearing six-inch stiletto heels, they are murder. We had planned to swim in the nude, but no one had thought of what we might use for towels. It had been a cold winter and early spring, but nobody had thought about the temperature either.

About six of us stripped off, and with falsely jolly shouts to cheer each other on, we plunged into the sea. Normally, I love swimming, but the cold stabbed like a knife, taking my breath away, and brought on an asthma attack that lasted for the rest of the night. I swam a few strokes, then crawled out of the sea, gasping for breath. I sat on the wet pebbles shivering with cold. I had nothing to dry myself with, nothing to wrap around me. What a fool I had been! Why did I get myself into these crazy situations? I tried to dry my shaking shoulders with a small lace handkerchief. No help. My lungs were on fire, and air just didn’t seem to go into them. Some of the boys were really enjoying themselves, tumbling about with one another. I envied their vitality. I hadn’t even the strength to crawl back up the beach to the car.

Jimmy came out of the water, laughing and throwing seaweed at someone. He walked towards me. We couldn’t really see each other as he threw himself on the pebbles beside me, but at once he sensed that something was wrong. Perhaps he could hear me wheezing. His gaiety left him, and he became kind, concerned, thoughtful, as I had always known him when he was a little boy.

“Jenny! What’s up? You’re ill. You’ve got asthma. Oh, my dear, you are frozen. Let me dry you with my trousers.”

I couldn’t answer. I could only fight for breath. He wrapped his trousers around my back and rubbed hard. He gave me his shirt with which to dry my face and wet hair, and dried my legs with his socks and underpants. He had kept his vest dry, and he put it on me, as I had none of my own. He helped me into my thin cotton dress, then put his shoes on my feet, and helped me walk up the beach to the car. His own clothes were soaking wet, but he seemed impervious to this.

Everyone was sleeping in Lady Chatterley, sprawled about all over the place, and there was nowhere for me even to sit. Jimmy soon dealt with that. He shook a boy. “Wake up, and move over. Jenny’s having an asthma attack. She needs somewhere to sit down.”

Then, to another: “Wake up there, and take your jacket off. I need it for Jenny.”

Within minutes he had procured a corner for me to sit comfortably and a jacket to place around my shoulders. He woke another lad, and took his jacket to put over my legs. He did it all with charm and ease, and everyone liked him so much that no one grumbled. Not for the first time I reflected on what a pity it was that I couldn’t love Jimmy. I had always liked him, but no more than that. I had love for only one man, and this had eclipsed the possibility of loving anyone else.

Eventually we started back for London. The boys who had been swimming were in high spirits, invigorated by the swim and bantering with each other. All the girls were sleeping. I sat, leaning forward, elbows on my knees, by an open window, trying to get my lungs working properly again. There were no nebulisers in those days; the only treatment was the breathing exercises I was doing. An asthma attack usually passes in the end. Death from asthma is a new phenomenon related to modern living - indeed we used to say “no one dies from asthma”.

A beautiful midsummer dawn was breaking as we left Brighton. We made our slow, majestic way north, several times stopping to let Lady Chatterley cool down. At the foot of the North Downs she refused to go any further.

“Everyone out. We’ll have to push,” cried the driver, gaily. It was all right for him. He would be sitting at the steering wheel, or so he thought.

The sun was well up, and the summer morning spread over the countryside. We all climbed out of the vehicle. Worried that the physical effort of pushing might bring on another attack of asthma, I said, “I’ll take the wheel. You can push. You are stronger than me, and you don’t get asthma.”

I sat at the wheel of Lady Chatterley while the others pushed her up the North Downs. My heart went out to those poor girls in their stiletto heels pushing all that way, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I simply enjoyed the ride.