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

She took two steps, and cried out in pain. Obviously she had not been aware of her cut and bleeding feet. Thank God for Chummy, her size and strength. She picked Sister Monica Joan up in her arms as though she were a child, and carried her all the way back to Nonnatus House. A crowd of curious children followed.

We alerted Mrs B., who was full of concern.

“Oh, the poor lamb. Get her up to bed. She mus’ be froze, poor dear. She’ll catch ’er death o’ cold. I’ll get a couple of ’ot water bottles, and make her some porridge, an’ some ’ot chocolate. I knows as wha’ she likes.”

We got her to bed and left her in Mrs B.’s capable hands. We both had a morning’s work to attend to, and had to go.

I attended my morning visits as though in a dream. Now and then in life, love catches you unawares, illuminating the dark corners of your mind, and filling them with radiance. Once in a while you are faced with a beauty and a joy that takes your soul, all unprepared, by assault. As I cycled around that morning, I knew that I loved not only Sister Monica Joan, but all that she represented: her religion, her vocation, her monastic profession, the bells, the constant prayers within the convent, the quietness, and the selfless work in the service of God. Was it perhaps - and I nearly fell off my bike with shock - could it be the love of God?

Sister Monica Joan developed pneumonia. She fell deeply asleep when Chummy, Mrs B. and I placed her into bed that cold morning, and remained apparently unconscious for the whole day. Her temperature was high, her pulse full and throbbing, and her breathing laboured. Nonnatus House was sad and subdued. The chapel bell, calling the Office of the day, sounded like the portent of a funeral bell. We all thought that she would die. However, we had not taken into account two significant factors: antibiotics, and her own phenomenal stamina.

Today, antibiotics are as common as a cup of coffee. In the 1950s they were relatively new. Today, over-use has reduced their efficacy but in the 1950s they really were a miracle drug. Sister Monica Joan had never had penicillin before, and responded immediately. Within a couple of shots her temperature dropped, her pulse returned to normal, the murmur in her chest vanished, and she opened her eyes. She looked around. “I really don’t know why you are all standing there doing nothing. Haven’t you got any work to do? I suppose you think I am going to die. Well, you are wrong. I’m not. You can tell Mrs B. that I will have a boiled egg for breakfast.”

Her stamina and physical strength became apparent during the next few weeks. Had she led a life of luxury and idleness, as her aristocratic birth would have allowed, I am quite sure that she would have died, in spite of the penicillin. However, a life of intense hard work had rendered her as tough as old boots. A mere touch of pneumonia could not kill her. She recovered quickly, and became very peevish about being kept in bed, which the doctor insisted upon. She thought she had a slight cold, and had no memory of the incident that had brought her to bed in the first place. She did not actually call the doctor a fool, but she looked at him in such a way that left no doubt in his, or anyone else’s mind.

“I do not pretend to understand your superior wisdom, doctor, but we will go with God in all things. Am I to understand that I can have visitors?”

Yes indeed, Sister Monica Joan could have visitors (as long as they did not tire her), whatever she wanted to read (provided it did not strain her eyes), and whatever she wanted to eat (provided it did not upset her digestion).

Sister Monica Joan settled back on her pillows, contented. Books were provided and Mrs B. was instructed to attend to her every wish.

A nun’s bedroom is properly called a cell and is small, bare, and plain, without comfort. However, since her retirement from active midwifery, Sister Monica Joan had managed to wangle things so that her cell was comparatively large, comfortably furnished, and pretty: an elegant bedsitting-room would be the more appropriate description. Lay people are not normally admitted to a nun’s cell, but Sister Monica Joan had just extracted the doctor’s assurance that she could have visitors, and thus began a very happy period of my life.

Every day I visited her, and as I entered the room, an almost tangible feeling of peace and tranquillity surrounded me. She was always sitting up in bed, with no outward signs of illness or fatigue, her veil perfectly adjusted, her white nightie high in the neck, her soft skin opaque, and her large eyes clear and penetrating. Her bed was always covered in books, and she had a number of notebooks in which she wrote voluminously in a firm stylish hand.

I discovered that she was a poet. I suppose it should not have surprised me, but it did. All her life she had written poetry, and had in her notebooks a collection of several hundred poems dating from the 1890s.

I am no judge of poetry - I do not have an ear for it. But the consistency of her output impressed me and I asked if I might have a look. She shrugged negligently.

“Take it. I have no secrets, my dear. I am but a spark in the divine fire.”

Over many long evenings I studied these poems. I had expected them all to be religious poetry, having been written by a nun, but they were not. Many were love poems, many satirical, and many were humorous, as:

One of the sweetest things in life to see

Is a calm, settled fly,

Cleansing its fastidious face

On my chosen reading place;

He twines his legs around his arse

And takes his time,

As Beauty with her glass.

or:

Lyric of an Obese Dachshund Bitch

They are equally pretty,

My toes or my tittie,

To ramble or gallop upon;

Whatever will happen

When I must re-cap’em

The days that my nipples wear out

And are gone?

This is my favourite:

It’s OK to be tight on

The seafront at Brighton

But I say, by Jove

Watch out if it’s Hove.

It may not be great poetry, but I thought it had charm. Or perhaps it was the charm of Sister Monica Joan that coloured my assessment.

I found a revealing poem about her father, which told a lot about her early life:

Fretful, unloving, mannerless Papa,

What a crustaceous old boy you are -

How you do go it!

Blowing your bugle, like a ham stage-star,

How you do blow it!

And where does it get you, Papa?

Or is it wasted breath?

“Leave everything to me”

Vainly the old man saith.

With an arrogant, domineering father her struggle to assert herself and to leave home must have been monumental. A weaker character would have been crushed.

For a lovesick young girl, her love poems spoke to my heart, and brought tears to my eyes. As:

To an Unknown God

I sang to you

In the day of my bliss

And you were near

I thought of you

In my lover’s kiss

And felt you there

I turned to you

When our love was too brief

And found your strength.

I needed you

In the years of my grief

And knew you, at length.

“Our love was too brief.” Oh, I knew all about that. Does one have to suffer so dreadfully in order to know the unknown God? Who, when, what was the story of Sister Monica Joan’s lost love? I longed to know, but dared not ask. Did he die, or did her parents object? Why was he unobtainable? Was he already married, or did he just cease to care, and leave her? I longed to know, but could not ask. Any intrusive questions would deserve, and receive, a caustic comment from that barbed tongue.

Her religious poetry was surprisingly slender, and as I was eager to know more about her religion, I asked her about this aspect of her poetry. She replied with these lines from Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn :