Shadows Of The Workhouse: The Drama Of Life In Postwar London Page 14

  Mrs B exploded: “I don’t believe a word of it. Not a word. He’s a liar, vat bloke. I knows him, an’ I knows as what he’s a liar, I do. You won’t get me believing a story like vat about Sister Monica Joan, you won’t, love ’er.”

  Sister Julienne silenced her. “I’m afraid there is not a shadow of doubt about the truth of the matter. Several people are ready to testify that they saw Sister Monica Joan throw the bangle across the stall before she stalked off. But I’m afraid that is not all. There is worse to come.” She looked around at us, sadly and we held our breath.

  The costermonger, probably enraged at having been called a “boorish fellow” and a “loutish lump” went round other stall-holders who had talked about a “light-fingered Sister” and collected eight men and women who claimed that they had strong suspicions about her having stolen from them, or who had positively seen Sister Monica Joan take something small and hide it under her scapular. Collectively they had gone to the police.

  Sister Julienne continued, “The police were here yesterday and this morning. I felt bound to confront Sister Monica Joan with their report, but she wouldn’t say a word to me. Not a single word. She just looked out of the window as though she had not even heard me. I told her I was going to look in her chest of drawers, and she just shrugged her shoulders dismissively, and pursed her lips and said, ‘Pooh to you.’ I must say her attitude was extremely annoying, and if she behaved in that way to the coster, it is not surprising that he was so enraged.”

  Sister Julienne produced a suitcase from under the table, saying: “This is what I found in Sister Monica’s chest of drawers,” and she withdrew several pairs of silk stockings, three egg cups, a great quantity of coloured ribbons, a lady’s silk blouse, four children’s colouring books, an ornate hairpiece, a corkscrew, several small wooden animals, a tin whistle, a quantity of teaspoons, three ornamental china birds, a bundle of knitting wool all tangled up, a necklace of gaudy beads, about a dozen fine lawn handkerchiefs, a needle case, a shoe horn and a dog collar. All of the items were unused, and some of them still had a label attached.

  There was really no need for Sister Julienne to say, “I’m afraid this has been going on for some time.” It was painfully obvious to all of us and Mrs B burst into tears. “Oh, the love, bless ’er, oh the poor lamb, she don’t know what she’s doin’, she don’t. Wha’s going to ’appen to ’er, Sister? Vey wouldn’t lock ’er up, not at ’er age?”

  Sister Julienne said she didn’t know. Prison seemed an unlikely outcome, but the costermonger was definitely bringing a charge, and Sister Monica Joan would be prosecuted.

  Sister Monica Joan was a very old nun born into an aristocratic family in the 1860s. She had obviously been a strong-willed young woman who had rebelled against the restrictions and narrow self-interest of her social class, because she had broken away from her family (a shocking thing to do) around 1890 in order to train as a nurse. In 1902, when the first Midwives Act was passed, Monica Joan trained as a midwife and, shortly after, joined the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus. Her profession to a monastic order was the last straw for her family and they disowned her. But Novice Monica Joan didn’t care a hoot and carried on doing her own thing. When I knew her, she had lived and worked in Poplar for fifty years and was known by virtually everyone.

  To say that by the age of ninety she was eccentric would be an understatement. Sister Monica Joan was wildly eccentric to the point of being outrageous. There was no telling what she would say or do next, and she frequently gave offence. Sometimes she could be sweet and gentle but at other times she was gratuitously spiteful. Poor Sister Evangelina, large and heavy, and not gifted with verbal brilliance, suffered most dreadfully from the astringent sarcasm of her Sister-in-God. Sister Monica Joan had a powerful intellect and was poetic and artistic, yet she was quite insensitive to music, as I witnessed on the occasion of her shocking behaviour at a cello recital. She was very clever – cunning, some would say. She manipulated others unscrupulously in order to get her own way. She was haughty and aristocratic in her demeanour, yet she had spent fifty years working in the slums of the London Docklands. How can one account for such contradictions?

  Whilst being a professed nun and a devout Christian, in her old age Sister Monica Joan had become fascinated by esoteric spirituality, ranging from astrology and fortune-telling to cosmology and centric forces. She loved to expound on these subjects, but I doubt if she knew what she was talking about.

  At the time I knew her, she was verging on senility. The focus of her mind seemed to come and go, to shift and change. Sometimes she was perfectly rational, while at others it was as though she were seeing the world through a mist, trying to grasp, things half-seen. Yet I suspected she knew her mind was going, and occasionally used the fact to get what she wanted. Somehow she had a magnetic quality about her and she fascinated me. I loved her dearly and enjoyed spending time in her company.

  When Sister Julienne solemnly told the group in the dining room that Sister Monica Joan would be prosecuted for theft, a wave of shock had rippled around the table. Novice Ruth cried quietly.

  Mrs B protested vociferously that she wouldn’t believe it. Trixie said she wasn’t surprised. Sister Evangelina snapped, “Be quiet, we’ll have none of that,” and sat very still, staring down at her plate, but her temples were twitching, and her knuckles went white as she gripped her hands together. Sister Julienne said: “We must all commit Sister Monica Joan to our prayers. We must seek God’s help. But I will also engage a good lawyer.”

  I asked if I might visit Sister Monica Joan in her room that afternoon, and permission was readily given.

  As I mounted the stairs, my mind was in a turmoil. How would I be received by a lady who had been visited by the police, from whose chest of drawers numerous stolen items had been extracted, and who had been told that she would be facing prosecution?

  Sister Monica Joan’s room was not the customary cell of a nun, bare and plain. Hers was an elegant bed-sitting room with all the comforts due to a distinguished old lady. These were probably a great deal more than any other nun might expect, but Sister Monica Joan had a knack of always getting her own way. Since the pneumonia she had spent more time in her room, and I had been a frequent and happy visitor. But on this occasion, my heart was pounding with anxiety.

  I knocked, and heard a sharp: “Enter. Come in, don’t just stand there. Come in.”

  I entered, and found her at her desk, notebooks and pencils all around her. She was scribbling away furiously and chuckling to herself.

  “Ah, it’s you, my dear. Sit down, sit down. Did you know that the astral permanent atom is equivalent to the etheric permanent atom and that they both function within the parallel universe?” She seemed to have no recollection of what had been going on, for which I was profoundly relieved. If she had been in a state of remorse it would have been hard to know what to say.

  I grinned and sat down. “No, Sister. I didn’t know about the parallel universe, nor the permanent atoms. Do tell me.”

  She started to draw a diagram for my benefit. “See here, child, this is the point within the circle, and these bands are the seven parallels that are the unifying stability within the atoms that are the essence of the parallel universe wherein men and angels and beasts and others . . . I think.”

  Her voice trailed away as she scribbled furiously, her mind obviously racing ahead of her pencil. Suddenly she cried out, her voice squeaking with excitement: “I have it. Eureka! All has been revealed. There are eleven parallels. Not seven. Ah, the perfection of eleven. The beauty of eleven. All is revealed in eleven.”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper, and she raised her eyes to heaven, her features radiant. I felt again the magnetism of this woman, who could hold me in a spell just by moving her fingers or lifting an eyebrow. Her skin was so fine and white that it seemed barely sufficient to cover the fragile bones and blue veins that meandered up her hands and arms. She sat perfectly still, a pencil poised between two finger
tips, the first joint of which she could bend independently of the rest of the finger. With eyes closed, she murmured, “Eleven parallels, eleven stars . . . eleven crowns,” and I was bewitched all over again. I knew that many people could not stand her. They found her arrogant, haughty, supercilious and too clever by half – and, I had to admit, with some justification. Many thought she was an affected poseur, playing some sort of role, but I could not agree with that. I thought she was absolutely sincere in everything she said.

  That she was utterly unpredictable was agreed by all, but now, it seemed, she was a shoplifter! I felt quite sure that she had no recollection of what she had been doing, and could not be held accountable for her actions. She was still murmuring, “Eleven stars . . . eleven spheres . . . eleven teaspoons.”

  Suddenly she opened her eyes and snapped, “Two policemen were here this morning. Two great big clomping fellows with their boots and their notebooks, going through my drawers, as though I were a common criminal. And Sister Julienne took it all away. All my pretty things. My colouring things, my ribbons, eleven teaspoons. I had been collecting them – eleven – just think, and I needed them, every one.”

  Grief seemed to overcome her. She didn’t cry, but she seemed frozen with terror, and murmured: “What is going to happen to me? What will they do to me? Why do elderly, respectable women do this sort of thing? Are we tempted, or is it a sickness? I don’t understand . . . I don’t know myself . . . ”

  Her voice faltered, and the pencil dropped from her trembling fingers. She knew all right. Oh yes, she knew.

  PHOSSY JAW

  Nonnatus House was subdued and saddened as we awaited the prosecution of Sister Monica Joan for shoplifting. Even we young girls, always ready to giggle and joke about almost everything, were more restrained. We somehow felt it unseemly to laugh when the Sisters were suffering. Sister Monica Joan spent more of her time in her room. She did not go out of the house at all, seldom came down to the dining room, and really only left her room for Mass and the five monastic offices of the day. I sometimes saw her entering or leaving the chapel, but she hardly spoke to her Sisters. They treated her with gentleness, but she returned their smiles and kindly glances with a toss of her proud head as she went to her pew to kneel in prayer. We are all complex creatures, but prayer and downright rudeness seemed incompatible.

  The only people she consistently spoke to were Mrs B and myself. Dear Mrs B, whose love of Sister Monica Joan was unconditional and unreserved, and who still didn’t believe a word of it, was up and down the stairs all day, pandering to her every wish. Sister Monica Joan treated her more like a personal lady’s maid than she had any right to, but Mrs B seemed perfectly happy with her new role, and nothing seemed to be too much trouble. She was heard muttering to herself in the kitchen one day: “China tea. I though’ as ’ow tea was just tea. But no. She wants China tea. Now where am I goin’ to get vat?” None of the grocers in Poplar seemed to stock China tea, so she went all the way up West to get it. When she proudly presented a cup to Sister Monica Joan, Sister sniffed it and sipped it, then declared that she didn’t like it. Anyone else would have been furious, but Mrs B took no offence: “Not ’a worry, my luvvy. You just ’ave a slice o’ vis honey-cake I made this mornin’, while I run along and make you a nice pot o’ tea, jus’ as ’ow you likes it.”

  Sister Monica Joan could out-queen the Queen when she chose. Her attitude was serenely gracious as she inclined her head. “So kind, so kind.” Mrs B glowed with pleasure. Sister broke a piece of honey-cake with her long fingers and delicately raised it to her lips. “Delicious, quite delicious. Another slice, if it’s not too much trouble.” Mrs B, fairly bursting with happiness, ran downstairs for the umpteenth time that day.

  Sister Monica Joan fascinated me as she did most people. But she never treated me as a lady’s maid. No doubt her instinct told her that it just would not work. We understood each other as equals and found endless pleasure in each other’s company. During the uncertain weeks of waiting we had many conversations in her pretty room just after lunch, or before Compline. We talked for hours. Her short-term memory was faulty – often she did not know what day or month it was – but her long-term memory was excellent. She could clearly recall facts, incidents and impressions from her Victorian childhood and her working life in the Edwardian era and the First World War. She was highly intelligent and articulate and could express herself vividly, often in beautiful language that seemed to come naturally to her. As I wanted to learn more about old Poplar, I tried questioning her. But this did not work. She was not easy to pin down, and often took no notice of what I had said or asked. She had a habit of making statements unrelated to anything that had been said beforehand, like: “That rapacious old mongrel!” And then no more! The old mongrel had obviously come into her mind unbidden and then slunk away, his tail between his legs.

  Sometimes she developed her thoughts and her words flowed easily. She would make a dramatic statement: “Women are the cohesive force in society.” She picked up a pencil and balanced it delicately between her two fingertips, those astonishing fingers that she could bend at the first joint. Would she continue? To say a word might break her thoughts.

  “And ‘woman’ in the slums is capable of taking on almost superhuman responsibility, from a very young age, that would crush most of us. Today they live in luxury – look at all the giddy young girls around us – they have no memory of how their mothers and grandmothers lived and died. They have no understanding of what it took to raise a family twenty or thirty years ago.”

  She glanced at the pencil and twisted it round with her thumbs. Privately I questioned the “luxury” in the tenements, but said nothing for fear of chasing away her memories. She continued.

  “There was no work, no food, no shoes for the children. If the rent was not paid the family would be evicted. Thrown onto the streets by the law of the land.”

  She paused, and a memory flashed through my mind of something that I had seen only a few weeks earlier, when I was cycling back from a night delivery.

  It had been about three o’clock in the morning, and I saw a group of people, a man and woman and several children, coming towards me, keeping close to the wall. The woman was carrying a baby and a suitcase. The man was carrying a mattress on his head, a rucksack and several bags. Each of the children, none of them over ten, was carrying a bag. They saw the headlights of my bike and turned their faces to the wall. The man said, his voice quite distinct in the darkness: “Don’ chew worry. It’s only a nurse,” and I cycled past, not realising at the time that a dramatic and tragic event was taking place; an event that used to be referred to light-heartedly as a “moonlight flit”. The family were anticipating eviction and fleeing unpaid debts. God only knows where they ended up.

  Sister Monica Joan was staring at me, hard, and then she narrowed her eyes. “You remind me of Queenie – turn your head.”

  I did so.

  “Yes, you look just like her. I was so fond of Queenie. I delivered her three children and I was with her when she died. She was no more than your age, but she died trying to avoid eviction.”

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  “She went into the Bryant and May factory that made matches. They were a lovely family, and I knew them well. No fights in that family. Her husband was no more than a boy when he was killed in a riverboat accident. What could Queenie do with three little children? The Parish would have taken them from her, but she wouldn’t have it. She went into the match factory because they offered higher pay than anywhere else. Danger money, they called it, and wriggled out of any responsibility by saying the women accepted the danger when they accepted the pay. Wicked it was. Wicked. Death money it should have been called. Queenie worked there for three years and kept a roof over their heads and just enough to eat. We thought she would escape phossy jaw. But it got her, yes, it got her, and she died a terrible death. I was with her at the end. She died in my arms.”

  Sister Monica Joan said
no more. Could I risk a question?

  “What is phossy jaw?”

  “There you go. What did I say? Young girls have no idea how women had to live and work. The matches were made from raw phosphorus. The women inhaled the vapour, and the fumes got into the mucous membrane of the mouth and nose. The phosphorus penetrated the bones of the upper and lower jaw. The bones literally sloughed away. In the dark you could see the woman’s jaw glowing with a bluish light. There was nothing that could be done for these women and they died a slow and agonising death. Don’t ask me again what phossy jaw is, you ignorant girl. It’s what Queenie died of, trying to provide for her children, trying to avoid eviction.”

  She glanced at me, and clamped her teeth together.

  “That’s what we fought for. Girls like Queenie, hard-working, loving, young women full of life, who were driven to their deaths by the system. I was with her when she died. It was ghastly. The bones of her lower face crumbled away, and she suffered weeks of agony. There was nothing we could do. Her children went to the workhouse. There was nowhere else for them.”

  The rain fell quietly on the window, and she sat quite still. I could see the pulse beating sluggishly in her long neck, carrying the life-giving blood to her brain. “Draw the curtains, please, dear.” I did so, hoping she would continue, but she only murmured, “It seems like yesterday, no time at all.” And there was no more.