Linda Fairley - The Midwife’s Here! - The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain’s Longest Serving Midwives

I reached for her wrist. There was no pulse, and my own heartbeat quickened, as if to compensate. I smoothed her hair neatly off her face, and pulled the curtain slowly around her bed.

‘Lesley,’ I said, tears starting to well in my eyes. ‘Mrs Pearlman is dead.’

Half an hour later, Lesley and I were tasked with the job of laying out Mrs Pearlman’s body. Lesley was an old hand at this by now, but it was my first time and I didn’t mind admitting I was a little frightened.

‘I don’t know what to expect at all,’ I told Lesley. ‘I’ve never seen a dead body before, let alone touched one.’

‘We’ll work together,’ Lesley said. ‘It’s not half as bad as you might think.’

I nodded, silently asking God to help me in my job, and to take good care of Mrs Pearlman.

‘She was a very good lady,’ I said, telling myself she had lived to a ripe old age and appeared to have died in her sleep, which was a blessing. I guessed that Mrs Pearlman might have anticipated her death, and that is why she’d wanted to give me her gold watch. She was preparing to leave. ‘She deserves the best possible care. Please, God, help me to work well, and please may she rest in peace,’ I said silently.

Lesley had fetched a trolley upon which she had placed a basin of water, some cloths, cotton wool, bandages and fresh white sheets. There was also a label attached to a piece of string.

‘First we have to wash her,’ Lesley said quietly, dipping the cotton wool in the water and setting to work, delicately wiping Mrs Pearlman’s face. There were some faint smudges of mascara below the old lady’s eyes and some spittle around her mouth, which Lesley tenderly removed.

‘There we are,’ Lesley said brightly. It was almost as if Mrs Pearlman were still alive and Lesley was chatting to her as she gave her a bed bath.

For a moment I had to remind myself that Mrs Pearlman was very much dead. I stared at her face and could scarcely believe she could no longer talk or smile, because she looked for all the world as if she were in a deep sleep and might wake up at any moment.

Lesley caught my eye. ‘Let’s pop her teeth back in, shall we?’ she said, reaching for Mrs Pearlman’s dentures.

I’d been taught the theory of laying out a patient in school, but putting it into practice was another thing entirely.

Lesley opened Mrs Pearlman’s mouth gently and inserted the false teeth effortlessly, before flashing me a sympathetic smile. ‘There now, she looks better already,’ she said. ‘Once, I had to lay out a man whose body was cold and rigor mortis had started to set in. It took the strength of two of us to prise open his jaw and squeeze his dentures back in place!’

I smiled gamely, and Lesley kept talking. ‘How about we pop a little label on her toe?’

Lesley picked up the brown label upon which she wrote ‘Moran Pearlman’ and her dates of birth and death. I calculated she had been seventy-six years of age, and was glad she had lived a long life. ‘Here, Linda, this needs tying around her big toe,’ Lesley said, placing the label in my hand and giving me a nudge of encouragement as I got to work.

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