Call the Midwife Read online

  In a fever pitch of excitement, she enrolled at the Nightingale School of Nursing at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. She was an instant success, and won the Nightingale Prize three years in succession. She adored the work on the wards, feeling for the first time in her life confident and competent, knowing that she was where she should be. Patients loved her, senior staff respected her, junior staff admired her. In spite of her great size she was gentle, with an intuitive understanding of patients, especially the very old, very sick, or dying. Even her clumsiness – a hallmark of earlier years – left her. On the wards she never dropped or broke a thing, never moved awkwardly or crashed into things. All these traits seemed to beset and torment her only in social life, for which she remained wholly ill-adapted.

  Of course, young doctors and medical students, 90 per cent of whom were male and always on the look out for a pretty nurse, made fun of her and passed crude jokes about the difficulty of mounting a carthorse, and which of them had the organ of a stallion suited to the job. Freshmen were told of the ravishingly lovely nurse on North Ward, with whom it would be possible to fix a blind date, but they fled in horror when the blindness was given sight, vowing vengeance upon the jokers. Fortunately, such stories or pranks never reached Chummy’s ears and passed straight over her head unnoticed. Had she been informed, it is very likely that she would just not have understood, and would have beamed amiably at her tormentors, shaming them with her innocence.

  Chummy’s entry into midwifery was less successful, but no less spectacular. It was some days before she could go out on the district. In the first place, no uniform would fit her. “Never mind, I’ll make it,” she said cheerfully. Sister Julienne doubted if there was a pattern available. “Not to worry, actually I can make it out of newspaper.” To everyone’s astonishment, she did. Material was obtained, and, in no time at all, a couple of dresses were made.

  The bicycle was not so easy. For all the genteel education and ladylike accomplishments, no one had thought it necessary to teach her to ride a bicycle. A horse yes, but a bicycle, no.

  “Never mind, I can learn,” she said cheerfully. Sister Julienne said it was hard for an adult to acquire the skill. “Not to worry. I can practise,” was her equally exuberant response.

  Cynthia, Trixie and I went with her to the bicycle shed, and selected the largest – a huge old Raleigh, of about 1910 vintage, made of solid iron with a scooped-out front and high handlebars. The solid tyres were about three inches thick, and there were no gears. The whole contraption weighed about half a ton, and for this reason no one rode it. Trixie oiled the chain and we were ready for the off.

  The time was just after lunch. We agreed to push Chummy up and down Leyland Street until she found her balance, after which we would travel in convoy to where the roads were quiet and flat. Most people who have tried to ride a bicycle in adult life for the first time will tell you that it is a terrifying experience. Many will say that it is impossible, and give up. But Chummy was made of sterner stuff. The Makers of the Empire were her forebears, and their blood flowed in her veins. Besides which, she was going to be a missionary, for which it was necessary that she should be a midwife. If she had to ride a bicycle to achieve this, so be it – she would ride the thing.

  We pushed her, huge and shaking, shouting “pedal, pedal, up, down, up, down” until we were exhausted. She weighed about twelve stone of solid bone and muscle, and the bike another six stone, but we kept on pushing. At four o’clock the local school ended, and children came pouring out. About ten of them took over, giving us girls a well-earned rest as they ran along beside and behind, pushing and shouting encouragement.

  Several times Chummy fell heavily to the ground. She hit her head on the kerb, and said, “Not to worry – no brains to hurt.” She cut her leg, and murmured, “Just a scratch.” She fell heavily on to one arm, and proclaimed, “I have another.” She was indomitable. We began to respect her. Even the Cockney children, who had seen her as a comic turn, changed their tune. A tough-looking cookie of about twelve, who had been openly jeering at first, now looked solemnly at her with admiration.

  The time had come to venture further than Leyland Street. Chummy could balance and she could pedal, so we agreed to half an hour cycling together around the streets. Trixie was in front, Cynthia and I on either side of Chummy, the children running behind, shouting.

  We got to the top of Leyland Street and no further. It had not occurred to us to show Chummy how to turn a corner. Trixie turned left, calling “just follow me”, and rode off. Cynthia and I turned left, but Chummy kept going straight ahead. I saw her fixed expression as she came straight for me, and after that all was confusion. Apparently a policeman had been in the act of crossing the street when the two of us hurtled into him. We came to rest on the opposite pavement. Seeing a representative of the law hit full frontal by a couple of midwives was joy for the children. They screamed with delight, and doors opened all down the street, emitting even more children and curious adults.

  I was lying on my back in the gutter, not knowing what had happened. From this position I heard a groan, and then the policeman sat up with the words, “What fool did that?” I saw Chummy sit up. She had lost her glasses, and peered round. Maybe this could account for her next action or maybe she was dazed. She slapped the man heavily on the back with her huge hand and said, “No whingeing, now. Cheer up, old bean. Stiff upper lip and all that, what?” Clearly she was unaware that he was a policeman.

  He was a big man, but not as big as Chummy. He fell forward at the blow, his face hitting one of the bicycles, and he cut his lip. Chummy merely said, “Oh, just a little scratch. Nothing to make a fuss about, old sport,” and slapped him on the back again.

  The policeman was outraged. He took out his notebook, and licked his pencil. The children vanished. The street cleared. He looked at Chummy with menace. “I’ll take your name and address. Assaulting a policeman is a serious offence, I’ll have you know.”

  I swear it was Cynthia’s sexy voice that got us off. Without her, we would have been up before the magistrate the next day. I never knew how she did it, and she was quite unconscious of her charm. She said little, but the man’s anger quickly vanished, and he was eating out of her hand in no time at all. He picked up the bicycles and escorted us down the street to Nonnatus House. He left us with the words, “Nice meeting you young ladies. I hope we meet again sometime.”

  Chummy had to spend three days in bed. The doctor said she had delayed shock and mild concussion. She slept for the first thirty-six hours, her temperature raised and pulse erratic. On the fourth day she was able to sit up, and asked what had happened. She was horrified when we told her, and deeply remorseful. As soon as she could go out, her first visit was to the police station to find the constable she had injured. She took with her a box of chocolates and a bottle of whisky.

  MOLLY

  When I called at the Canada Buildings to reassess Molly for a home confinement, she was out. It took three calls before I found her in. On the second attempt, I thought I heard movement in the flat, and knocked several times. There certainly was someone inside, but the door was locked, and no one came to open it.

  On the third visit, Molly answered the door. She looked dreadful. She was only nineteen, but she looked pale and haggard. Lank greasy hair hung down her dirty face, and the two filthy little boys clung to her skirt. A week had passed since the first visit when I had interrupted a fight and a glance around the room told me that the domestic situation was worse, not better. I told her that we were reassessing her flat for a home confinement, and that perhaps it would be better if she went into hospital for the delivery. She shrugged, seeming indifferent. I pointed out that she had been to no antenatal clinics, and that this could be dangerous. She shrugged again. I was getting nowhere.

  I said, “How is it that four months ago, the Midwives assessed your place as satisfactory for a home confinement, and now it is not?”.

  She said, “Well, me mum come in, and
cleaned up, din’t she?”

  At last some communication. There was a mother on the scene. I asked for her mother’s address. It was in the next block. Good.

  A hospital confinement had to be booked in advance by the expectant mother concerned through her doctor. I was not at all sure that Molly would do this; she seemed too slovenly and apathetic to bother about anything. If she won’t go to antenatal clinic, she won’t bother to change the arrangements for delivery, I thought, and I could imagine a midnight call to Nonnatus House in two or three weeks’ time to which we would have to respond. I resolved to see her mother, and report to her doctor.

  The Canada Buildings, named Ontario, Baffin, Hudson, Ottawa and so on, were six blocks of densely populated tenements lying between Blackwall Tunnel and Blackwall Stairs. They were about six storeys high, and very primitive, with a tap and a lavatory at the end of each balcony. It was beyond me how anyone could live there, and maintain cleanliness or self-respect. It was said that there five thousand people living in the Canada Buildings.

  I found her mother Marjorie’s address in the Ontario Buildings, and knocked. A cheery voice called “Come on in luvvy”. The usual invitation of an East Ender, whoever you were. The door was unlocked, so I stepped straight into the main room. Marjorie turned round as I entered with a bright smile. The smile vanished as soon as she saw me and her hands dropped to her sides.

  “Oh no. No. Not again. You’ve come about our Moll, ‘aven’t you?” She sat down on a chair, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.

  I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do or say. Some people are good at dealing with the problems of others, but not me. In fact, the more emotional people get, the less I am able to cope. I put my bag on a chair and sat down beside her, saying nothing. It gave me the chance to look around the room.

  Having seen Molly’s squalor, I had expected to see her mother’s place in the same sort of condition, but nothing could have been more dissimilar. The room was clean and tidy, and smelt nice. Pretty curtains hung at clean windows. The mats were clean, well brushed and shaken. A kettle was bubbling on the gas stove. Marjorie was wearing a clean dress and pinafore, her hair was brushed and looked nice.

  The kettle gave me an idea, and as the sobs lessened I said, “How about making a nice cup of tea for us both? I’m parched.”

  She brightened up and said, with typical cockney courtesy, “Sorry nurse. Don’t mind me. I gets that worked up about Moll, I do.”

  She got up and made the tea. The activity helped her, and she sniffed away the tears. Over the next twenty minutes, it all came out, her hopes and her heartache.

  Molly was the last of five children. She had never known her father, who had been killed at Arnhem during the war. The whole family had been evacuated to Gloucestershire.

  Marjorie said, “I don’t know if that upset her, or what, but the others turned out all right, they did.”

  The family returned to London, and settled in Ontario Buildings. Molly seemed to adapt to the new surroundings and her new school, and was reported to be doing well.

  “She was that bright,” Marjorie said. “Always top o’ the class. She could’ve been a secitary an’ worked in an orfice up West, she could. Oh, it breaks my heart, it do, when I thinks on it.”

  She sniffed and pulled out her handkerchief. “She was about fourteen when she met that turd. His name’s Richard, an’ I calls ‘im Richard the Turd.” She giggled at her little joke. “Then she was stopping out late, saying she was down the Youth Club, but I reckoned as how she was telling me lies, so I asks the Rector, an’ he tells me Moll wasn’t even a member. Then she was stoppin’ out all night. Oh, nurse, you can’t even know what that does to a mother.”

  Quiet sobs came from the neat little figure in the flowered apron.

  “Night after night I walked the streets, looking for ’er, but I never found ’er. ‘Course I never. She’d come home in the morning, an’ tell me a pack of lies, as though I was daft, an’ go off to school. When she was sixteen, she said she was going to marry her Dick. I reckoned as how she was pregnant anyhow, so I says, ‘That’s the best thing you can do, my luvvy.’”

  They married, and took two rooms in Baffin Buildings. From the start, Molly never did any housework. Marjorie went in and tried to show her daughter how to keep her rooms clean and tidy, but it was no use. The next time she went, the place was as dirty as ever.

  “I don’t know where she gets her lazy ways from,” Marjorie said.

  At first Dick and Molly seemed fairly happy, and although Dick did not appear to be in any regular job, Marjorie hoped for the best for her daughter. Their first baby was born, and Molly seemed happy, but quite soon, things began to get worse. Marjorie noticed bruises on her daughter’s neck and arms, a cut above her eye, a limp on one occasion. Each time Molly said she had fallen down. Marjorie began to have her suspicions, but relations between her and Dick, never cordial, were breaking down.

  “He hates me,” she said “and won’t never let me come near her or the boys. There’s not nuffink I can do. I don’t know what’s worse, knowing he hits me daughter, or knowing he hits the kids. The best time was when he done six months inside. Then I knew as how they was safe.”

  She started crying again, and I asked her if social services could do anything to help.

  “No, no. She won’t say a word against him, she won’t. He’s got such a hold on her, I don’t think she’s got a mind of her own any more.”

  I felt deeply sorry for this poor woman, and her silly daughter. But most of all I felt sorry for the two little boys, whom I had seen in a pitiful state on the occasion when I had interrupted a fight. And now a third child was coming.

  I said, “My main reason for coming to see you is about the new baby. Molly is booked for a home confinement, but that, I believe, is only because you had cleaned the place up before our assessment.” She nodded. “We think now that a hospital delivery would be best, but she has got to book it, and she must go to antenatal clinics. I don’t think she will do either. Can you help?”

  Majorie burst into tears again. “I’ll do anything in the world for her and the kiddies, but the Turd, he won’t let me go near them. What can I do?”

  She bit her fingernails and blew her nose.

  It was a tricky situation. I thought perhaps we would simply have to refuse a home delivery, and inform the doctors. Molly would then be told that she must go into hospital when labour started. If she refused antenatal treatment, that would be entirely her own fault.

  I left poor Marjorie to her sad thoughts, and reported back to the Sisters. A hospital confinement was in fact arranged without Molly’s active consent, and I thought that would be the last we heard of her.

  It was not to be. About three weeks later the Midwives received a phone call from Poplar Hospital asking if we could arrange post-natal visits for Molly, who had discharged herself and the baby on the third day after delivery.

  This was almost unprecedented. In those days it was accepted by everyone, medical and lay people alike, that a new mother should stay in bed for two weeks. Apparently Molly had walked home, carrying the baby and this was considered to be very dangerous. Sister Bernadette went straight round to Baffin Buildings.

  She reported back that Molly was there, looking a good deal cleaner, but as sullen as ever. Dick was not at home. He was supposed to have been looking after the children whilst Molly was in hospital, but whether he had or not was anyone’s guess. Majorie had offered to take care of them, but Dick had refused, saying they were his kids, and he wasn’t going to let that interfering old bag poke her nose into his family.

  There had been no food in the flat. Perhaps Molly had anticipated this, and that was why she’d discharged herself. She had no money on her, but on the way home with the baby, had called in the cooked meat shop, and begged a couple of meat pies on tick. As the butcher knew and respected her mother, he let Molly have them. The two little boys, dressed only in filthy jumpers, were sitting
on the floor devouring the pies ravenously when Sister Bernadette had arrived.

  Molly hardly spoke, Sister told us. She had submitted to being examined, and the baby, a little girl, to examination, but remained morosely silent all the while. Sister had said she was going to tell Marjorie that her daughter was home.

  “Please yerself,” was all the reply she got.

  Marjorie had had no idea of the turn of events, and ran round to Baffin Buildings straight away. Unfortunately Dick chose the same moment to return, and they met on the landing. He lunged at her drunkenly, and Marjorie ducked. Had he hit her, she would have fallen down the stone staircase. After that, all the poor woman dared to do was to buy food and leave it on the landing outside her daughter’s door.

  Our custom was to visit twice a day for fourteen days after delivery. Molly and baby were satisfactory, from a purely medical point of view, but the domestic situation was as bad as ever. Sometimes Dick was at home, sometimes not. Poor Marjorie was never seen there. She would have made all the difference in the world to Molly and the little boys. Her cheerfulness alone would have lightened the atmosphere, but she was never allowed in. She had to content herself with coming round to Nonnatus House to ask the Sisters how her daughter and grandchildren were getting on. One day she gave us a bag of baby clothes to take on our next visit. She said she didn’t like to leave them on the landing, in case they got damp.

  Over the next few days several nurses visited Molly, all reporting the same disquieting condition. One nurse said that she was very nearly sick in the room, and had to rush outside into the fresh air in order to control her stomach. On the eighth evening I called, and there was no reply to my knock. The door was locked, so I knocked again – no response. I thought Molly might be busy with the baby and unable to answer. As it was only 5 p.m., I continued my visits, intending to return later.

  It was about 8 p.m. when I got back to Baffin Buildings. I was tired, and it seemed a long climb up to the fifth floor. I was almost tempted to skip it. After all, Molly and baby were medically satisfactory, which was our remit. But something prompted me not to miss this visit, so I wearily climbed the stairs.