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

I shout back, “Morning, lovely day,” and cycle on, exulting in my youth, the morning air, the heady excitement of the docks, but above all in the matchless sensation of having delivered a beautiful baby to a joyful mother.

Why did I ever start? Do I regret it? Never, never, never. I wouldn’t swap my job for anything on earth.

Had anyone told me, two years earlier, that I would be going to a convent for midwifery training, I would have run a mile. I was not that sort of girl. Convents were for Holy Marys, dreary and plain. Not for me. I had thought that Nonnatus House was a small, privately run hospital, of which there were many hundreds in the country at that time.

I arrived with bag and baggage on a damp October evening, having known only the West End of London. The bus from Aldgate brought me to a very different London, with narrow unlit streets, bomb sites, and dirty, grey buildings. With difficulty I found Leyland Street and looked for the hospital. It was not there. Perhaps I had the wrong address.

I stopped a passerby and enquired for the Midwives of St Raymund Nonnatus. The lady put down her string bag and beamed at me cordially, the missing front teeth adding to the geniality of her features. Her metal hair-curlers gleamed in the darkness. She took a cigarette from her mouth and said something that sounded like, “Yer washa nonnatuns arse, eh dearie?”

I stared at her, trying to work it out. I had not mentioned “washing” anything, particularly anyone’s arse.

“No. I want the Midwives of St Raymund Nonnatus.”

“Yeah. Loike wha’ oie sez, duckie. Ve Nonnatuns. Ober dere, dearie. Vat’s veir arse.”

She patted my arm reassuringly, pointed to a building, stuck the cigarette back in her mouth, and toddled off, her bedroom slippers flapping on the pavement.

At this point in my narrative it would be expedient to refer the bewildered reader to the supplement on the difficulties of writing the Cockney dialect. Pure Cockney is, or was, incomprehensible to an outsider, but the ear grows accustomed to the vowels and consonants, the inflexions and idiom, until after a while, it all becomes perfectly obvious. As I write about the Docklands people, I can hear their voices, but the attempt to reproduce the dialect in writing has proved to be something of a challenge!

But I digress.

I looked at the building dubiously; I saw dirty red brick, Victorian arches and turrets, iron railings, no lights, all next to a bomb site. What on earth have I come to? I thought. That’s no hospital.

I pulled the bell handle, and a deep clanging came from within. A few moments later there were footsteps. The door was opened by a lady in strange clothes - not quite a nurse, but not quite a nun. She was tall and thin, and very, very old. She looked at me steadily for at least a minute without speaking, then leaned forward and took my hand. She looked all around her, drew me into the hallway, and whispered conspiratorially, “The poles are diverging, my dear.”

Astonishment robbed me of speech, but fortunately she had no need of my reply, and continued, with near-breathless excitement, “Yes, and Mars and Venus are in alignment. You know what that means, of course?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, my dear, the static forces, the convergence of the fluid with the solid, the descent of the hexagon as it passes through the ether. This is a unique time to be alive. So exciting. The little angels clap their wings.”

She laughed, clapped her bony hands, and did a little skip.

“But come in, come in, my dear. You must have some tea, and some cake. The cake is very good. Do you like cake?”

I nodded.

“So do I. We shall have some together, my dear, and you must give me your opinion on the theory that the depths in space are forever being pulled by the process of gravitation into heavenly bodies.”

She turned and walked swiftly down a stone passage, her white veil floating behind her. I was in some doubt about whether to follow, because I thought I must surely have come to the wrong address, but she seemed to expect me to be right behind her, and talked all the while, asking questions to which she clearly did not expect an answer.

She entered a very large Victorian-looking kitchen with a stone floor, stone sink, wooden draining boards, tables and cupboards. The room contained an old-fashioned gas-stove with wooden plate-racks above it, a large Ascot water heater over the sink, and lead pipes attached to the walls. A large coke-burner stood in one corner, the flue running up to the ceiling.

“Now for the cake,” said my companion. “Mrs B. made it this morning. I saw her with my own eyes. Where have they put it? You had better look around, dear.”

Entering the wrong house is one thing, but poking around in someone else’s kitchen is quite another matter. I spoke for the first time. “Is this Nonnatus House?”

The old lady raised her hands in a theatrical gesture and in clear, ringing tones cried out, “Not born, yet born in death. Born to greatness. Born to lead and inspire.” She raised her eyes to the ceiling and lowered her voice to a thrilling whisper, “Born to be sanctified!”

Was she mad? I stared at her in dumb stupefaction, then repeated the question, “Yes, but is this Nonnatus House?”

“Oh, my dear, I knew the moment I saw you that you would understand. The cloud rests unbroken. Youth is freely given, the chimes sing of sad indigos, deep vermilions. Let us make what sense of it we can. Put the kettle on, dear. Don’t just stand there.”

There seemed to be no point in repeating my question, so I filled the kettle. The pipes all around the kitchen rattled and shook with a most alarming noise as I turned on the tap. The old lady poked around, opening cupboards and tins, chatting all the while about cosmic rays and confluent ethers. Suddenly she gave a cry of delight. “The cake! The cake! I knew I would find it.”

She turned to me and whispered, with a naughty gleam in her eye, “They think they can hide things from Sister Monica Joan, but they are not smart enough, my dear. Plodding or swift, laughter or despair, none can hide, all will be revealed. Get two plates and a knife, and don’t hang around. Where’s the tea?”

We sat down at the huge wooden table. I poured the tea, and Sister Monica Joan cut two large slices of cake. She crumbled her slice into tiny pieces, and pushed them around her plate with long, bony fingers. She ate with murmurs of ecstatic delight, and winked at me as she gobbled morsels down. The cake was excellent, and a fellowship of conspiracy was entered into as we agreed that another slice would be in order.

“They will never know, my dear. They will think that Fred has had it, or that poor fellow who sits on the doorstep eating his sandwiches.”

She looked out of the window. “There is a light in the sky. Do you think it is a planet exploding, or an alien landing?”

I thought it was an aeroplane, but I opted for the exploding planet, then said, “How about some more tea?”

“Just what I was about to suggest, and what about another slice of cake? They won’t be back before seven o’ clock, you know.”

She chatted on. I could not make head nor tail of what she was on about, but she was enchanting. The more I looked at her, the more I could see fragile beauty in her high cheekbones, her bright eyes, her wrinkled, pale ivory skin, and the perfect balance of her head on her long, slender neck. The constant movement of her expressive hands, with their long fingers like a ballet of ten dancers, was hypnotic. I felt myself falling under a spell.

We finished the cake with no trouble at all, having agreed that an empty tin would be less conspicuous than a small wedge of cake left on a plate. She winked mischievously, and chuckled. “That tiresome Sister Evangelina will be the first to notice. You should see her, my dear, when she gets cross. Oh, the hideous baggage. Her red face gets even redder, and her nose drips. Yes, it actually drips! I have seen it.” She tossed her head haughtily. “But what can it signify for me? The mystery of the evidence of consciousness is a house in a given time, a function and an event combined, and few are the elite, indeed, who can welcome such a realisation. But hush. What is that? Make haste.”