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

There was no doubt that Sister Evangelina had her cross to bear, and perched on the top was Sister Monica Joan, giggling and winking, kicking her heels in delight as she made such catty remarks as, “I think there’s thunder coming - oh no, it’s only you, dear. The weather is a little unsettled, isn’t it, dear?”

Sister Evangelina could only grind her teeth and plod on. She never got the better of these altercations, try as she might. Had she possessed a sense of humour, she could have defused the situation with laughter - but I never saw Sister Evangelina laugh spontaneously, whatever fun was going on in the house. She would watch other people, to make sure it was funny, and then laugh when others did. Sister Monica Joan would mock this also, “The tinkling bells chime, and the stars laugh with joy. The little cherubs clap their wings and laugh with heavenly harmony. Sister Evangelina is a little cherub, and the tinkling sounds of her laughter ring the changing universe into eternal changelessness. Don’t they, dear?”

Poor Sister Evangelina could only say, with solemn emphasis, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Ah, so far, so far, the never star, the fruition of Joy, the husk of Despair.”

Sister Julienne tried her best to keep the peace between the two Sisters, but not very successfully. How can you reprimand a nonagenarian whose mind is wandering? And would it do any good? I am sure she wondered, as I did, how much of it was due to senility, and how much was calculated mischief-making; but she could never be sure, and in any case Sister Monica Joan’s wit had always flashed and gone before she could do anything about it. So Sister Evangelina’s suffering continued.

The monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are hard, very hard. But harder still is the task of living, day in, day out, with your Sisters in God.

She must have planned it, and picked me out as I got off the bus at the Blackwall Tunnel. It was about 10.30 p.m. and I had been to the newly opened Festival Hall. Perhaps I looked smarter than most of the other travellers that night, which she assumed meant more affluent. She came up to me, and said quietly, in a lilting Irish voice: “Could you change a five pound note for me?”

I was staggered. Change for five pounds! I doubt if I had three shillings to last the rest of the week. It would be like someone stopping you in the street today and asking if you had change for a five hundred-pound note.

“No, I haven’t,” I said brusquely. My head was full of music, I was replaying the performance over and over again in my mind. I didn’t want to be bothered with total strangers asking silly questions.

It was something about her despairing sigh that made me look at her again. She was very small and thin, with a perfect oval face, rather like a pre-Raphaelite painting. She could have been anywhere between fourteen and twenty years of age. She wore no coat, only a thin jacket that was quite inadequate for the cold evening. She had no stockings or gloves, and her hands trembled. She looked a very poor, ill-nourished girl - yet she obviously had five pounds.

“Why don’t you go into that café and change it?”

She looked furtive, “I dare not. Someone would see me and tell. Then they would bash me up, or kill me.”

It occurred to me that she had probably stolen the money. Stolen goods are of no value unless you can get rid of them. Sterling can usually be passed on without much trouble, but this girl was obviously too afraid to attempt it. Something made me say: “Are you hungry?”

“I haven’t eaten today, nor yesterday.”

No food for forty-eight hours, and five pounds in her pocket. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said to the caterpillar.

“Well look, let’s go into that café and get you a meal. I will pay with your five pounds, and then anyone who sees will think it’s mine. How’s that for a scheme?”

The girl’s face brightened with a joyful smile. “You had better take it now, so no one will see me giving it to you.”

She looked around her, and then thrust the huge white crackling bank note into my hand. She is very trusting, I thought. She is afraid of someone, but she’s not afraid that I will pocket the five pounds and run off.

In the café we ordered steak and two eggs and chips and peas for her. She took her jacket off and sat down. It was then that I saw she was pregnant. She wore no wedding ring. Pregnancy outside marriage in those days was a terrible disgrace. It was not as bad as it had been twenty or thirty years previously. Nonetheless, she would have a hard time ahead of her, I reflected.

She ate in hungry concentration, whilst I sipped a coffee, looking at her. Her name was Mary and was an Irish beauty, with tawny brown hair, delicate bone structure, and pale skin. She could have been a Celtic Princess, or the spawn of a drunken Irish navvy, it was hard to tell - perhaps there is not much difference, I thought.

The first of her hunger was assuaged, and she looked up at me with a smile.

“Where do you come from?” I asked.

“County Mayo.”

“Have you ever been away from home before?”

She shook her head.

“Does your mother know you are pregnant?”

Fear, guilt and resentment came into her pretty eyes. Her lips tightened.

“Look, I’m a midwife. I notice these things. I’m trained to do so. I don’t suppose anyone else has noticed yet, though.”

Her face relaxed, so I said again, “Does your mother know?”

She shook her head.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You will have to go back home,” I said. “London is a big and scary place. You can’t bring up a child by yourself here. You need your mother’s help. You will have to tell her. She will understand. Mothers hardly ever let their daughters down, you know.”

“I can’t go back home. It’s impossible,” she said.

She wouldn’t answer any more questions on that subject, so I said, “How did you get to London, and why did you come, anyway?”

She was more relaxed now, and looked more inclined to talk. I ordered apple pie and ice cream for her. Slowly, and in bits and pieces, the story came out. I was so charmed by the lilting music of her voice, that I could have listened all night, regardless of whether she was reading a laundry list or telling me the age-old pathos of her life.

She was the eldest of five living children. Eight of her brothers and sisters had died. Her father was a farm worker and peat cutter. They lived in what she called a sheelin’. Her mother did washing for “the big house”, she told me. When she was fourteen her father caught pneumonia in the west Irish winter, and died. The family was left with no protector. The sheelin’ was tied to the lands worked by the father and, as none of the sons was old enough to take over the labour, the family was evicted. They moved to Dublin. The mother, a country woman who had never travelled more than walking distance from the mountains and meadows where she had been brought up, was quite unable to cope with the alien environment. They found lodgings in a tenement, and at first the mother took in washing, or tried to, but there was so much poverty and competition from other women similarly placed that she soon gave up the struggle. They couldn’t pay the rent, and were again evicted. Mary took a job in a factory, working sixty hours a week for a pittance. Mick, her brother of thirteen, lied about his age and left school, taking a job in a tannery. For both of them it was child slave labour.

The combined efforts of these two might have been just enough to keep the family afloat, had it not been for their mother.

“Me poor mam! I hate her for what she did to us, yet I can’t hate her really. She never could get herself away from the hills and the broad sky, from the sound of the curlew and the skylark, the sea, and the silence of the night.”