Farewell To The East End

by Jennifer Worth

  It was surprising that they sold anything at all, but, strange to say, they were very successful, and their stall was easily the most popular. Women in curlers, wearing headscarves and carpet slippers, with Woodbines and babies appended, crowded forward with their shopping bags to be bullied and insulted as they acquired their bargains. Perhaps that was the secret of Megan’mave’s success – everything was a penny or a halfpenny cheaper than it was on other stalls. But I have watched them at work, and wonder if the bargains were not more apparent than real. The two women moved about with lightning speed and ferocious energy. They could weigh a pound of carrots or turnips, throw them in a bag, twist the corners, add the cost to the last item, glare at the customer, and demand ‘that will be three shillings and sevenpence halfpenny’ before the average person could draw breath. Mental arithmetic was their genius – and their prodigious memory. They would rattle off, with machine-gun precision, a list of about fifteen different items, together with the prices, adding it all up in complicated shillings and pence (there were twelve pence to a shilling, not ten), and no one dared to question them. Once I saw a bold woman look at her change and say, ‘I gave you a ten shilling note. I should have three and fourpence change, not two and elevenpence!’ The two women behind the stall drew together. They grabbed the shopping basket, tipped everything out, weighed it again, shouted out the prices, tossed figures back and forward to each other, and came up with the magic total of seven and a penny. They pushed the bag at the woman: ‘There you are, and there’s yer change, two and eleven. An’ don’ come back ’ere. We don’ wan’ your sort. Next?’ The poor woman wandered off, bewildered, counting her pennies.

  Perhaps most of their customers were too mesmerized by the speed of delivery and the confidence of their joint attack. No one could be as quick as they were. Singly, each was as sharp as a razor, but together they resembled a double-edged sword. To Megan’mave all customers were there to be manipulated, to be squeezed of a couple of pence here and there, to be bullied into buying more than they wanted, and to be hypnotized into thinking they had got a bargain.

  The physical appearance of Megan’mave was singular, to say the very least. They looked like something out of another century, and another country. They had fine features, high cheek bones and clear but slightly swarthy skin. I have mentioned their black, flashing eyes, which undoubtedly had an unnerving effect on their customers. They were both very thin, almost skeletal, but strong and muscular; their hands were large and bony, and their fingers long. Their clothes – how on earth can one describe their clothes? To begin with, they were identical, like their wearers, and excessively plain, yet would have stood out in any crowd. Megan’mave always wore garments of dark brown or fusty black, long in the skirt and shapeless in the body, pulled tightly into their waists by heavy leather belts, from which hung two or three rings of keys. Their stockings were thick lisle, and their shoes were old, shapeless, and unpolished. Their headgear, without which they were never seen, was distinctive. Each wore a headscarf, an ordinary headscarf that any woman could buy, but it was the way they wore them that arrested attention. The scarves were pulled down low over their foreheads, so that barely the eyebrows were visible, and tied very tightly at the nape of the neck, so that not a wisp of hair could be seen. So tight were the knots that the scarves were strained almost to splitting. I sometimes wondered if the two women were bald, as the result of some rare disease, but this proved not to be the case. What with their clothes and their headscarves they looked rather like Buddhist nuns, but without the smile. I was reminded of a Hogarth etching of very poor women from the back streets of eighteenth-century London transported to the life and vitality of Chrisp Street market, Poplar.

  Megan’mave were married. It was said that the banns had been read out on three successive Sundays for Margaret, spinster of this parish, but that Mavis had signed the register, or perhaps it was the other way round – hearsay can be notoriously unreliable. To be sure, both of them answered to the title of Mrs M. Carter. Which of them had stood at the altar and vowed to love, honour and obey, no one was quite sure, least of all Sid, the man of their choice. If he had ever had any illusions about the reality of these ancient marriage vows, Megan’mave soon relieved him of such fantasies. Megan’mave were the boss, and Sid had to honour and obey! In his romantic younger days Sid may have thought that he was getting a bargain – two women for the price of one – but life taught him that Megan’mave were the ones who got all the bargains, while everyone else paid the price. He was a little wisp of a Cockney, about five and a half feet tall and seven stone in weight, who was always seen in the market carrying boxes of apples and pears, cabbages and turnips, to the stall where his wives were doing their strident stuff. Unlike other Cockneys he never laughed and joked, never went for a drink with the other costers, never joined in when dirty yarns were being spun, could never see the funny side of life. He never even smiled. He just doggedly carried on, humping the boxes and crates, his thin frame sometimes trembling under the weight, his cap pulled well down over his eyes and his lips fixed in a tight, straight line. He spoke to no one, and invited no one to speak to him. When the market was over, he vanished. If he had a favourite pub, or a favoured walk or haunt by the river edge, no one knew what or where it was.

  When Mave became pregnant it was a shock to the three of them. They had been married for several years with no issue, to use the old biblical term, and life without children was comfortable enough. They were thirty-eight, and Mavis assumed a saintly, martyred expression. Poor Sid got the rough end. The wives grumbled and nagged at him mercilessly, until he lost another stone in weight and looked as if he might disappear altogether.

  Mave’s pregnancy brought out the warrior in Meg. Mave became rather docile and quiet, whilst Meg doubled her energy and aggression. She had found a new meaning to life. It would be no exaggeration to say that her whole life had hitherto been leading up to this point. She suddenly discovered that Mavis had been suffering for years from numerous diseases and infirmities caused by neglect, hardship, ignorance (other people’s) but most seriously by medical error. The catalogue of ailments could easily be traced to babyhood, when Mave, the second twin, had had her arm pulled by a stupid and ignorant midwife, who ought to have been strung up, Meg reckoned. Everyone could see that there was nothing wrong with Mave’s arm; she had been heaving fruit and veg around the markets for twenty years, but Meg was unimpressed by the evidence. ‘An’ look at her constitooshun! It’s ’er constitooshun, see! No proper nourishment when she was a baby – ooh, terrible it was, I tells yer. Dad – he drank, an’ Mum – no good she was, couldn’t stand up to ’im. No proper nourishment – vat’s what started it – an’ look at ’er now – can’t expect ’er to go through wiv bein’ pregnant. She ain’t got no constitooshun, see?’

  Long-standing complaints and grudges against the medical profession were remembered, dragged up and exploited for all they were worth. ‘Medical blunders’ became her pet phrase.

  ‘Welliclose weins. She ’ad welliclose weins, see? Right mess they made of ’em. Stripped ’em, they did. Well, they shouldn’t ’ave done it. I’ve been readin’ up about it, an’ it was done all wrong. Medical blunder! Made ’er ’alf lame. Look at ’er. It wasn’t done right. Them weins is all swellin’ up. Show ’em yer legs, Mave.’

  Mave pulled down her stockings. ‘Well, vat’s not right. If them weins ’ad been done proper in ve first place, they wouldn’t be swellin’ up now. Doctors! I could teach ’em a thing or two. Don’t know nuffink, vey don’t.’

  Another day it was ‘golf stones’.

  ‘Look at ’er. Gone yeller she ’as. I tells ve doctor, I sez, look ’ere, she’s gone yeller – it’s golf stones, see? You wan’s ’a do somefink about it, or I’ll call the Medical Council. But ’e wouldn’t do nuffink. Too busy playin’ golf, if you ask me.’

  Meg became a voracious reader. She plundered all the secondhand bookstalls and book fairs from Portobello Road to Poplar, searc
hing for ancient medical text-books. Most of the stall holders were glad to get rid of the old rubbish, out of date medically by a century or two, but Meg was delighted with her purchases and bore them home triumphantly. ‘Ancient wisdom,’ she called it. Megan’mave devoured the faded print and agreed that everything the doctors said about Mave’s pregnancy was based on error, ignorance, stupidity, or downright malevolence, and was not to be trusted.

  Because of her age – thirty-eight years – Mavis was told by her doctor that she must have a hospital confinement for the delivery of her first baby. Meg immediately came in, all guns firing. ‘’ospital! Don’t make me laugh. Charnel ’ouse, you mean. I know vese infirmaries, I do. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, you can’t. Women die like flies in them infirmaries!’

  In vain the doctor protested that modern hospitals were not like the old infirmaries, but Megan’mave were adamant. With cold and crafty eye, Meg produced from her bag a book, yellow with age and disfigured with damp marks, and gave him a knowing look.

  ‘What do you say to this, ven? “Pregnancy is a natural process, requiring little mechanical assistance. No man should act as accoucheur, but women should be instructed to do all that is required.” What do you say to that, Dr Clever Dick? It’s ’ere, in ve book.’ Triumphantly Meg pushed the book towards him. ‘Read it.’

  ‘But this is Dr A. I. Coffin, Treatise on Midwifery, published in 1866. Medical and midwifery practice have moved on since then.’

  ‘Don’t come vat one on me. You doctors is all the same. I know your sort. Medical neglect, vat’s what you get in ’ospitals. She needs special treatment. Look at ’er. Weak constitooshun, she’s got.’ Mave put on her martyred expression. ‘An’ all from medical blunders years ago.’

  Mave pursed her lips. ‘Terrible, it was.’

  Meg did the same, and echoed, ‘Terrible.’

  They both rolled their eyes and sucked in their breath: ‘Shocking!’

  The doctor could hardly refrain from laughing.

  ‘What do you want, then, if you don’t want to go into hospital?’

  ‘Special treatment, that’s what, the best.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Sister Julienne, the Sister-in-Charge of the Midwives of St Raymund Nonnatus. They are a very old established order of midwives who have been practising in the area since the time when Dr Coffin wrote his book. Sister Julienne might agree to accept Mavis.’

  Sister Julienne accepted Mavis for antenatal care and for delivery at home, but she would require a doctor present at the birth because of the age of the mother having her first baby.

  Meg rapidly became an expert in pregnancy, antenatal care and childbirth. She studied Nicholas Culpeper, a seventeenth-century apothecary famous for his herbal remedies, and his A Guide to Having Lusty Children, published in 1651. She applied all his remedies to Mavis. She found on a stall a copy of Culpeper’s Directory for Midwives, published in 1656, which greatly impressed her, because the burden of the text was the castigation of all other manuals on midwifery – an easy approach that suited Meg’s turn of mind precisely. However, she failed to notice the confession made by Culpeper that the book contained no practical advice as he, the author, knew nothing about midwifery.

  Then she discovered Jane Sharp’s The Whole Art of Midwifery of 1671 and started talking about lily, hyacinth, columbine, jasmine and cyclamen, to hasten delivery and ease the pains of childbirth; cinnamon and aniseed to nourish the child in the womb; poultices of fennel and parsley to lay over the abdomen; caraway and cumin seeds to increase the breast milk. ‘Ancient wisdom,’ Meg said, with a knowing air.

  In the 1950s the rules of the Central Midwives Board required women to be seen at antenatal clinic once a month for the first six months; once a fortnight from six to eight months pregnancy; and each week during the final month. This was not good enough for Megan’mave. They came in to clinic every week, and sometimes twice a week, because we held two clinics, one in Poplar and the other in Millwall. Each visit they reported another serious illness which must be examined at once, and every new complaint was accompanied by a new book, or a new chapter in an old book that had suddenly revealed there was something wrong with Mavis, which the ignorant and neglectful doctors and midwives had failed to notice. The consequences would have been calamitous had it not been for the untiring vigilance of Meg.

  It had been an exhausting Tuesday afternoon clinic in the converted church hall next to Nonnatus House – hot, sticky, smelly, sweaty. I was just about at the end of my tether, having examined dozens of women, some of them none too clean, and boiled up dozens of urine samples to test for albumen, nearly being sick at the stench every time, when Megan’mave entered the clinic door. Four midwives were on duty, and one of the nuns. We all looked sideways at each other and groaned inwardly. My table was nearest to the door, and unfortunately no one was with me. Megan’mave sat down, and without a word of introduction Meg barked, ‘Well, what ’ave you got to say to vis?’ She pushed a book towards me.

  Wearily I looked up at the four black eyes staring at me accusingly. The headscarves were pulled down low, identical features wore the same expression of mistrust, four hands rested on the table, four solid feet were planted firmly on the floor. They had come to do battle.

  ‘But Megan, I don’t know ...’

  ‘Me name’s not Megan!’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I fumbled with my notes to gain time.

  ‘My name is Meg, short for Margaret, see, an’ I’ll thank you to get it right, young lady.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Certainly. Now what is the trouble?’

  ‘The fillipin toobs is crossed.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Fillipin toobs. Don’t you listen?’

  ‘Yes, I heard you. But what are fillipin toobs?’

  ‘Call yerself a midwife, an’ you don’t know?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of them.’

  Both women drew in their breath and rolled their eyes backwards and sideways in an exaggerated expression of disbelief. ‘Shocking!’ ‘Sheer ignorance!’ ‘Never ’eard of ’em?’ ‘Medical incompetence!’ They shook their heads, groaned, rolled their eyes and tut-tutted to each other. One of them behaving in such a way would have raised a smile, but the two of them with identical body language doing it was indescribably funny. This is going to be rich, I thought to myself and perked up no end.

  ‘You will have to enlighten me,’ I said sweetly.

  ‘We’ve got to teach ve midwives, ’ave we?’

  ‘I’m only a student,’ I murmured humbly.

  ‘Shockin. An’ vey call this the National ’ealth Service.’

  They showed the whites of their eyes again and sucked in their breath, and I had to dig my fingernails into my skin to prevent myself from laughing.

  ‘Well, young lady, since you don’t know, I’ll ’ave to tell you. The fillipin toobs is ’ere in vis book.’ She opened a grimy old book at what seemed to be a very primitive sketch of the female genital tract. Meg pointed with a dirty fingernail.

  ‘Vat’s the toobs, an’ Mave’s, they’re crossed, see?’

  Mave put on her martyred look, and groaned again. Meg took her hand.

  ‘Vat’s what’s doin’ it. Makin’ ’er feel bad.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I understand you.’

  ‘No, you don’t know nuffink, you don’t. I’m tellin’ yer, the fillipin toobs is crossed, an’ it’s makin’ her bad. Now d’you understand?’

  ‘I understand the Fallopian tubes. But they can’t be crossed. It’s not possible.’

  ‘Course it’s possible. Don’t try no cover-ups. You can’t fool me, you can’t. They’ve tried that afore, but I’m too smart for ’em. Medical blunders, an’ medical cover-ups. Mave, she ’ad ’er ’pendix out when she was fourteen – show ’em yer scar, Mave.’ Mave obligingly lifted her skirts. ‘an’ vey sewed ’er up wrong an’ got the toobs crossed, an’ she’s bin sufferin’ ever since, see? Oooh, I could write a book on the sufferin
’ she’s ’ad. Write a book, I could.’

  Both women started rolling their eyes again, and I had to stand up to control myself. Trixie had finished her afternoon’s work, and she sauntered over, sensing a bit of fun. ‘What’s up?’ she enquired.

  Meg described for her the whole saga of the ’pendix and the fillipin toobs, and the medical blunders that Mavis had suffered, starting with the withered arm caused by a midwife who should have known better, and welliclose weins stripped by a surgeon as didn’t know what ’e was doin’, and golf stones the doctor wouldn’t do nuffink abaht, and the fact that now Mave was pregnant she was sufferin’ because the toobs was all crossed.

  Trixie was an outspoken girl, short on tact.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said bluntly.

  Meg leaped to her feet and clenched her fists. She would possibly have struck Trixie full in the face, had not the gentle Novice Ruth come up at that moment.

  ‘Ladies, ladies, please, what is the matter?’

  ‘Matter? She called me daft, vat’s what’s the matter.’

  Novice Ruth looked disapprovingly at Trixie, who shrugged. ‘You haven’t heard the story yet.’

  The nun turned to Megan’mave.

  ‘I apologise if one of our nurses has been rude to you. I assure you it will not happen again. Now, please tell me your troubles. I’m sure we can help.’

  The opportunity was too good to miss, and the two women jointly, with mirrored body language, moans and groans, rolling eyes and hissing breath, recalled every misfortune that Mavis had suffered at the hands of an incompetent and hostile medical profession.