by Ellie Dean
Flo closed Julie’s hand over the coin. ‘We don’t need it, love. Not now I’m working at the tool factory and your dad’s staying with the Water Board. We’ve more than enough for the two of us to live on, and you need to be saving up for your wedding.’
Her mother said this to her every time and, as usual, Julie ignored it and put the coin next to the clock. Her parents had sacrificed a lot so she could qualify as a nurse and midwife, and now she was earning two hundred quid a year, a couple of bob a week would not only ease her conscience but bring a few extra treats into her parents’ lives. God knew they worked hard enough, for her father was sixty-five and had deferred retirement to continue working as a plumber for the Water Board, and her mother not only kept this house going, did her sewing and helped out with the neighbours, but stood for hours in front of a lathe making tools.
While Franny hugged and kissed their mother, Julie planted a kiss on her father’s bald spot. ‘Take care of yourself, Dad,’ she murmured, ‘and look after Mum.’
‘I’ve been looking after yer mum long before you was born, gel,’ he said gruffly. ‘I don’t need you telling me.’ He eyed her sternly. ‘It’s you what needs to take care, gel. Out at all hours, rushing about in the middle of raids. You keep that tin ’at firmly on yer bonce at all times – you hear?’
Julie gave him a swift hug, aware that, despite his gruffness, he loved them all dearly. She pulled on the navy overcoat supplied by the Nursing Association and grabbed her overnight bag and gas mask. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, but I’m on duty for three weeks until I have another sixty hours off.’
Bert rose from his chair, adjusted his braces over his shoulders and fastened his top shirt button before reaching for his jacket. ‘The pub’s on the way to the station, so I’ll walk down with you.’ He rammed his cap over his receding hair. ‘What about you, Flo? Fancy a port and lemon?’
‘I could do with one, and that’s a fact.’ Peeling off her wrap-round pinafore, Flo yanked out the curler that poked from the front of her scarf and fluffed out her fringe, then pulled on her thin, rather worn overcoat. She blew out the candles and dampened down the fire in the range, then picked up her battered handbag and gas-mask box and linked arms with Franny.
As they headed down the narrow street it was almost like the old days when they’d set off for the pub on a Saturday evening. But the evidence of war was everywhere. Bombed-out houses stood in isolation where once there had been terraces, the pitiful remains of their furnishings open to the elements. Vast craters were overflowing with rubble and had become playgrounds for the children still living in Stepney who used them as a treasure trove to find bits of prized shrapnel. The pavements were almost impassable, and nearly every house had been shored-up, patched with bits of timber, scraps of metal and salvaged bricks. Front doors were scarred, windows boarded, chimneys taken down before they could fall and kill someone. Looming over it all was the tool factory, which filled an entire block and rose three floors above the terraced roofs. Dark and dingy, it had been a fixture in Stepney for as long as anyone could remember.
The journey that should have taken a matter of minutes lasted almost half an hour, for although most of their neighbours had popped in during the last two days, and the night was chilly, they still stood on their doorsteps, arms folded as they gossiped, wanting to have a bit of a chat with Julie before she left for Shoreditch.
Julie’s qualification as a nurse-midwife had been the talk of the community, stoking both envy and pride in this sprawling, close-knit London borough, and, as the war had progressed and news had filtered back about how hard she worked and how much she cared about her patients, the pride had eclipsed the envy. She was one of their own – a girl who’d made something of herself against all the odds – someone to be looked up to and admired.
The Toolmakers’ Arms stood squarely on the corner opposite the vast factory. Built at the start of the last century, it was two storeys of dirty red brick, with fancy green tiles running in a frieze above the ground floor. The rooms upstairs, which had once accommodated dock workers and sailors on shore leave, were now billets for evacuees. The stained glass windows had been boarded over to protect them from the bomb blasts, and the picture on the weathered old sign that swung above the door was barely discernible beneath the grime. Despite the reasonably early hour, the noise inside was reaching deafening point, and two drunks were already staggering home arm in arm, their singing cheerful but discordant.
Julie hugged her mother and squeezed her father’s arm – he was not a man to want to show any kind of affection out of doors where someone might see him. ‘Have a good night, and we’ll see you soon.’
‘You watch yerself out there,’ her dad muttered.
‘Let me know the minute Franny goes into hospital and I’ll be over,’ said Flo. ‘They’ve got a telephone at the factory. You can ring me there.’
‘I’ll let you know when there’s a bed free,’ said Julie, giving her a kiss. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Take care of ’er, Jules,’ said Flo, her voice unsteady as the ready tears glistened. She hugged her youngest daughter.
‘Blimey, Mum, you don’t ’alf go on. I’ll be fine,’ murmured Franny, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
‘Come on, gel,’ muttered an impatient Bert. ‘Me throat’s as dry as a parrot’s cage, and we’re wasting good drinking time.’
Julie and Franny waved them goodbye as they pushed through the pub’s doorway, and then linked arms and hurried down the road towards the station. As long as the lines weren’t up, and Gerry didn’t decide to bomb them, they should be back in Shoreditch in time to hear the news on the BBC Home Service before Julie had to leave for the nurses’ hostel and prepare to go on duty.
Almost a week had passed since Julie’s visit to Stepney, and the weather had taken a turn for the worse, with sleet and snow to add to the misery of the continued enemy bombing raids.
The telephone call had come to the nurses’ hostel just as Julie was hoping for a quiet night. It had been a long day, with countless air-raid warnings disrupting her mother and baby clinic as well as her rounds as district nurse. Now it seemed it would be an even longer night, for this particular patient had already suffered two stillbirths, and despite all her advice, and that of the doctor, had refused a hospital delivery.
‘I don’t fancy your chances out there, mate,’ muttered her best friend Lily, who was sitting on her bed filing her nails in the room they shared with four others.
Julie grimaced. ‘Not my idea of fun either,’ she admitted as she fastened the soft white cap over her hair and straightened the folds that fell almost to the shoulders of the pale blue striped dress. ‘Sadie’s mum’s bound to be there, sticking her oar in and filling the room with her fag smoke.’
Lily grinned with understanding. She too was from the East End and had volunteered as a VAD. ‘Need an ’and with this one, Jules?’
Julie put on her navy coat and gloves and tightened the dark scarf round her neck. ‘No thanks, I can handle Val Wickens,’ she muttered. She reached for the black Gladstone nursing bag that was always to hand. ‘It’s Sadie I’m worried about.’
Lily shrugged. ‘She might be only eighteen, but she knows the score. If anything goes wrong this time, it won’t be your fault, Jules.’
Julie didn’t agree but said nothing as she plonked the tin hat over her flowing cap and picked up her gas-mask box. ‘See you later,’ she murmured.
Hurrying out of the room, down the stairs and along the corridor, she reached Matron’s office and peeked her head round the door. ‘I’m on me way.’
‘Cut along then,’ Matron replied, not lifting her forbidding gaze from the pile of paperwork on her desk. ‘Good luck, Harris,’ she added almost as an afterthought.
Julie ran down the stairs and out into the bitter cold of a winter’s night that promised more snow. Once the precious bag was secure on the luggage rack at the back, Julie set off on her bike down the dark, deserted streets. She
had no fear of being attacked in a neighbourhood where coppers patrolled in pairs and only the prostitutes dared walk the streets after dark, for her uniform protected her – brought respect even from the roughest kind.
The sirens began to shriek as she reached the narrow alleyway that led to the crumbling rows of ancient warehouses which had been turned into tenements on the southern edges of Whitechapel. It was one of the poorest districts on her vast round and had suffered badly during the bombing, but the inhabitants clung to it, for it was all they knew, and they would defend their right to stay there to the last breath.
Julie returned hurried greetings as a tide of people rushed past her to get to the nearest shelter. She knew most of them from her rounds as a district nurse and midwife, and from the clinics at the centre. She propped her bicycle against a wall and looked up. The searchlights were already sweeping across the sky, and above the wail of the sirens and the shouts of the wardens, she thought she could hear the ominous drone of approaching enemy planes.
She quickly took her large bag from the luggage rack, shouldered her gas-mask box and straightened her tin hat before switching on her torch and hurrying through the profound darkness beneath the high tenement walls. It was a hazardous trip, for she had to dodge the piles of rubbish and dubious puddles littering the alleyway. She tried to ignore the advancing roar of the enemy bombers but still flinched as the big guns boomed out and a huge rat shot out of the darkness across her path.
‘Put that bleedin’ light out and get down the bleedin’ shelter!’ The warden stepped out of the shadows right in front of her.
Julie’s heart missed a beat. ‘You scared the daylights out of me, Harry!’
‘Sorry, love, didn’t realise it were you.’ He looked shamefaced. ‘What you doin’ here at this time of night, gel?’
‘I’ve got a mother in labour. Sadie Smith, number fifty-nine.’
Harry saluted with an index finger tapping his tin hat. ‘Right you are, Sister. Sorry to shout at you like that. Need any help?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured him, even though she wasn’t at all sure what she’d find up in that poky little room.
‘Goodnight then – and good luck.’ He marched off and was immediately swallowed by the shadows.
Julie wove through the endless lines of washing strung across the courtyard, hurried past the communal taps and lavatory sheds which were the only sanitary provisions for the hundreds that lived here, and lugged her heavy bag up the endless flights of stairs, the torchlight flashing over crumbling plaster and broken banisters. Her footsteps rang out in the echoing, bug-infested building until she reached the fourth floor. The stench of those bugs mingled with that of urine, faeces and unwashed bodies, and was accompanied by the reminders of boiled fish and cabbage and the general filth of too many desperately poor people crammed into one building. But she was inured to it, knowing that despite their poverty, there was always a cheerful welcome for the midwife.
‘Thank Gawd you’re ’ere,’ said the blousy, henna-haired woman who was furiously puffing on a cigarette outside Sadie’s door. ‘I didn’t think you’d make it what with Gerry on the bleedin’ way.’ Dressed in her usual attire of short skirt, high heels and ratty fur coat, Val Wickens had clearly taken time off from the street corner where she usually plied her trade.
Julie smiled back. Val might work the streets, and think she knew it all when it came to having babies, but under that thick make-up and tough talk, she had a heart of gold when it came to her precious family. ‘Hello, Mrs Wickens. How’s Sadie doing?’
Val shook her head, the cheap earrings swinging back and forth. ‘By the looks of ’er, she’s pretty far gorn,’ she muttered. ‘Silly cow didn’t say nothing when I saw her earlier, but she must’ve been on the boil even then.’
Julie and Val were old adversaries when it came to Sadie. Val had had eight children, all born in her dingy basement room, and considered herself to be an expert. It had been Val that had persuaded Sadie to follow the family tradition and not be delivered in hospital. Julie merely nodded and went inside.
The small cold room was lit by a single candle wedged in a saucer and was bare of anything to alleviate the hopelessness of Sadie’s circumstances. Apart from the iron bedstead with its stained, lumpy mattress, there was a sagging chair, a battered chest of drawers and a scarred table which held a jug and bowl for washing and a frying pan and primus stove for cooking. A faded coat hung on the back of the door along with the rest of Sadie’s few bits of clothing, and a pair of shoes sat in front of the gas fire which hadn’t been lit – either because there were no tanners to feed it, or the very real possibility that it might blow up if a match went anywhere near it.
But despite the bare floorboards and the rotting plaster, the room had been swept and scrubbed determinedly into some order. A blackout curtain had been nailed over the only window, a photograph of Sadie’s sailor husband had pride of place on the mantel, and one of the dresser drawers had been fitted out as a cot with a knitted blanket, a scrap of sheet, and a small pile of hand-me-down napkins and baby clothes.
Sadie was curled on the rumpled bed, groaning as another contraction ripped through her. As it waned, she gripped Julie’s gloved hand, her eyes wide with fear. ‘I ain’t gunna lose this one, am I?’ she pleaded. ‘It ain’t dead already, is it?’
Julie gave her a soft smile and patted her naked shoulder. ‘There was a strong heartbeat when I examined you this morning, Sadie. Now let me get me coat off and set up me things so I can check you again.’
Sadie gritted her teeth as another contraction began, and the enemy bombers droned overhead.
The crumps of the first explosions were distant, but the echo of their blasts still trembled in the walls as Julie pulled off her gloves, coat and scarf and swiftly tucked them neatly away in the sturdy brown paper bag she always carried with her. It was wise in such circumstances never to hang things up next to patients’ clothes or risk the horsehair-stuffed chairs and mattresses, for they were alive with fleas and bugs.
‘I got clean sheets and a bunch of old nappies wot I used fer my lot. There’s water an’ all,’ said Val, lighting another fag. ‘But it ain’t hot, ’cos I didn’t have no money for the paraffin.’
Julie silently noted she’d had enough money for her fags but said nothing as she opened her bag, took the carbolic soap, nail brush and small towel from the outside pocket, and hurried to wash her hands in the icy water. Pulling on her rubber gloves, she bent over the sagging bed to listen to the baby’s heartbeat through the metal pinard, and give Sadie a swift examination. At least she’d shaved Sadie this morning and given her an enema, which was a blessing, for things were going too fast to do anything now.
‘Everything is going just fine,’ she reassured a terrified Sadie. ‘You’re in the second stage of labour and your baby’s pulse is strong and steady.’
Sadie burst into noisy tears and grabbed Val’s hand. ‘Oh, Mum. It’s going to be all right this time.’
‘I give her a fag and a drop of gin to ease the pain, like,’ said Val from the other side of the bed. ‘D’you think she could do with a drop more?’
Julie looked across at Val in despair. ‘Gin and fags aren’t the answer, Val. I’ve told you before.’
‘They done me no ’arm,’ said Val with a shrug.
Julie didn’t even waste time replying as she covered Sadie with the grubby sheet and rough blanket, and tried to think of some way to get Val out of here so she could concentrate on Sadie. ‘Could you find me some more candles, Val? I can’t see what I’m doing.’
A bomb exploded close by and made the whole building shudder, bringing down a cloud of filthy plaster. Julie swiftly placed the lumpy pillow over Sadie’s face to keep off the worst of the downpour, and held tightly to her tin hat.
Val merely ducked her head and continued to smoke. ‘What you want candles for?’ she shouted. ‘You got yer torch, ain’t yer?’
‘I can’t hold the torch and deliver a ba
by at the same time,’ yelled Julie over the high-pitched scream of an enemy fighter plane. ‘Just do it, Val.’
Val grumbled good-naturedly as she tottered off in her high heels for her basement room in the next block, and Julie quickly set out her instruments as the dogfights went on overhead and the bombs continued to explode. There were enamel bowls, a douche can, forceps for holding swabs or needles, a dilator to enlarge the cervical canal, cotton wool, gauze, a hypodermic syringe, umbilical tape, sulphanilamide tablets and scissors.
‘I wish I hadn’t listened to Mum,’ groaned Sadie from beneath the muffling pillow. Despite the cold, she was drenched in sweat and writhing on the bed. ‘Is it true they can give you something to ’elp with the pain in ’ospital?’
‘It is, yes, but it’s too late to worry about that now,’ shouted Julie over the rattle and boom of gunfire. As she examined Sadie again there was a sudden gush as her waters broke. It was a good sign, for it didn’t bode well if the sac burst too early. She managed to catch most of it in the rumpled sheet before it could soak the already stained mattress. ‘I’m just going to roll you on your side and get rid of this wet sheet so you’ll be more comfortable,’ she murmured.
‘It ’urts,’ moaned Sadie, who was now panting hard.
‘I know, lovey, but it’ll soon be over.’ Julie bundled up the sodden sheet and tossed it aside. ‘Right,’ she said, after she’d got Sadie on her side. ‘Now I want you to draw your right knee up to your chin so I can see what’s going on.’ She switched on the torch. ‘The head’s crowning, Sadie,’ she said as calmly as she could above the surrounding racket. ‘Now, I don’t want you to push just yet, but keep on panting.’
Sadie did as she was told as the walls trembled, the candle flickered and the dirt of decades sifted down with the plaster.
