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

The rest must have done the old lady good because, over the crest, as we freewheeled down, she gave a deep cough of contentment, and the engine purred into life. We continued back to London with no further troubles. We were all working that morning, mostly starting at 9 a.m. I was supposed to be on duty at 8 a.m., miles away in the East End. I got back to Nonnatus House just after ten o’clock expecting serious trouble. But, once again, I realised how much more liberal the nuns were than the inflexible hospital hierarchy. When I told Sister Julienne about the night’s adventures I thought she would never stop laughing.

“It’s a good thing we are not busy,” she commented. “You had better go and get a hot bath and a good breakfast. We don’t want you down with a cold. You can start your morning’s round at eleven o’clock, and sleep this afternoon. I like the sound of your Jimmy, by the way.”

A year later Jimmy got a girl into trouble and married her. He could not support a wife and child on his apprentice pay, so he left his training in the fourth year and took a job as a draughtsman with a suburban county council.

About thirty years later, quite by accident, I bumped into Jimmy in a Tesco’s car park. He was staggering under the weight of a huge box, walking beside a large, cross-looking woman carrying a potted plant. She was talking incessantly in a rasping voice that assailed my ears before I even noticed them. He had always been slight, but now he looked painfully thin. His shoulders were stooped, and a few grey hairs were brushed across his bald head.

“Jimmy!” I said as we came face to face. His pale blue eyes looked into mine, and a thousand memories of the fun of a carefree youth instantly sparked between us. His eyes lit up, and he smiled.

“Jenny Lee!” he said, “After all these years!”

The woman poked him heavily in the chest with her thumb, and said, “You come along with me, and don’t hang about. You know the Turners are coming round tonight.”

His pale eyes seemed to lose all their colour. He looked at me despairingly and said, “Yes, dear.”

As they left, I heard her say, suspiciously: “Who is that woman, anyway?”

“Oh, just a girl I used to know in the old days. There was nothing between us, dear.”

He shuffled off, the epitome of the hen-pecked husband.

Large families may be the norm, but this is ridiculous, I mused as I ran through my day list. The twenty-fourth baby! There must be some mistake. The first digit is wrong. Not like Sister Julienne to make a mistake. My suspicions were confirmed when I got out the surgery notes. Only forty-two years old. It was impossible. I’m glad someone else can make mistakes as well as me, I thought.

I had to make an antenatal visit to assess the mother and the viability of the house for a home delivery. I never liked doing this. It seemed such an impertinence to ask to see people’s bedrooms, the lavatory, the kitchen, the arrangements for providing hot water, the cot and the linen for the baby, but it had to be done. Things could be pretty slummy, and we were used to managing in fairly primitive conditions, but if the domestic arrangements were really quite unviable, we reserved the right to refuse a home delivery, and the mother would have to go to hospital.

Mrs Conchita Warren is an unusual name, I thought as I cycled towards Limehouse. Most local women were Doris, Winnie, Ethel (pronounced Eff ) or Gertie. But Conchita! The name breathed “a beaker full of the warm South ... with beaded bubbles winking at the brim”. 3What was a Conchita doing in the grey streets of Limehouse, with its pall of grey smoke and the grey sky beyond?

I turned off the main road into the little streets and, with the help of the indispensable map, located the house. It was one of the better, larger houses - on three floors and with a basement. That would mean two rooms on each floor, and one basement room, leading into a garden - seven rooms in all. Promising. I knocked on the door, but no one came. This was usual, but no one called out “Come in, luvvy”. There seemed to be a good deal of noise inside, so I knocked again, harder. No reply. Nothing for it but to turn the handle and walk in.

The narrow hallway was almost, but not quite, impassable. Two ladders and three large coach prams lined the wall. In one, a baby of about seven or eight months slept serenely. The second was full of what looked like washing. The third contained coal. Prams were very large in those days, with huge wheels and high protective sides and I had to turn sideways to squeeze myself past. Washing flapped overhead, and I pushed it aside. The stairway to the first floor was straight ahead and was also festooned with washing. The sickly smell of soap, dank washing, baby’s excreta, milk, all combined with cooking smells was nauseating to me. The sooner I get out of this place the better, I thought.

The noise was coming from the basement, yet I could see no steps down. I entered the first room off the hallway. This was obviously what my grandmother would have called “the best parlour”, filled with her best furniture, knick-knacks, china, pictures, lace, and, of course, the piano. It was only used on Sundays and on special occasions.

But if this fine room had ever been anyone’s best parlour the proud housewife would have wept to see it. About half a dozen washing-lines were attached to the picture rail just below the cornices of a beautifully plastered ceiling. Washing hung from each of them. Light filtered through a single faded curtain that appeared to be nailed across the window, screening this front room from the street. It was obviously impossible to draw this curtain back. The wooden floor was covered with what looked like junk. Broken radios, prams, furniture, toys, a pile of logs, a sack of coal, the remains of a motorcycle, and what seemed to be engineering tools, engine oil and petrol. Apart from all this, there were scores of tins of household paints on a bench, brushes, rollers, cloths, pots of spirit, bottles of thinners, rolls of wallpaper, pots of dried out glue, and another ladder. The curtain was pinned up with a safety pin by about eighteen inches at one corner, allowing sufficient light to reveal a new Singer sewing machine on a long table. Dressmaking patterns, pins, scissors, and cotton were scattered all over the table, and also, quite unbelievably, there was some very fine, expensive silk material. Next to the table stood a dressmaker’s model. Also hard to believe, and the only thing that would have resembled my grandmother’s front parlour, was a piano that stood against one of the walls. The lid was open, revealing filthy yellow keys, with several of the ivories broken off, but my eyes were riveted by the maker’s name - Steinway. I couldn’t believe it - a Steinway in a room like this, in a house like this! I wanted to rush over and try it, but I was looking for a way down to the basement, where the noise was coming from. I closed the door, and tried the second room off the hallway.

This room revealed a doorway that led down to the basement. I descended the wooden stairs, making as much clatter and noise as I could, as no one knew I was there and I didn’t want to alarm anyone. I called out “Hello” loudly. No reply. “Anyone there?” I called, fatuously. There was obviously someone there. Still no reply. The door was ajar at the bottom, and there was nothing for it but to push it open and walk in.

Immediately there was a dead silence and I was conscious of about a dozen pairs of eyes looking at me. Most of them were the wide innocent eyes of children but amidst them were the coal-black eyes of a handsome woman with black hair hanging in heavy waves past her shoulders. Her skin was beautiful - pale, but slightly tawny. Her shapely arms were wet from the washing tub, and soap clung to her fingers. Although obviously engaged in the endless household chore of washing, she did not look slovenly. Her figure was large, but not over-large. Her breasts were well supported, and her hips were large, but not flabby. A flowered apron covered her plain dress, and the crimson band which held back the dark hair accentuated the exquisite contrast between skin and hair. She was tall, and the poise of her shapely head on a slender neck spoke eloquently of the proud beauty of a Spanish Contessa, with generations of aristocracy behind her.