Call The Midwife: A True Story Of The East End In The 1950S
Page 13
There were shrieks from the children, and Ivy’s discipline ruled no more. They were all pointing in one direction, clamouring round something on the floor.
I followed their gaze and, to my astonishment saw, progressing slowly and in a stately manner from under the bed, an exceedingly large tortoise. He looked one hundred years old or more.
Dave roared with laughter. “Of course he wants to see the baby. He knows all about it. He’s a clever one, our Perce.” He picked the tortoise up, and the children tickled its wrinkled old skin, and felt its hard toenails.
“Perhaps he wants his Christmas dinner an’ all. We’ll get ’im some, shall us?” Dave said.
Most of the children were now more interested in the tortoise than in the baby, and Ivy wisely said, “Off you go, downstairs, an’ see about Percy’s Christmas dinner.”
The children left and I was told the reason for this apparition. Percy was kept in a cardboard box under the bed to hibernate for the winter. The bedroom was usually cold. The warmth from the fire, and, perhaps, the movements for several hours, must have woken him up, and, thinking it was spring, he had made his appearance. In theatrical terms, his timing was perfect.
It was seven o’ clock by the time I had packed up and was ready to leave. But Dave wouldn’t let me go. “Come on, nurse. It’s Christmas day. You’ve got to wet the baby’s head.”
He pulled me towards the back room where the bar was to be found.
“What’s yer poison, then?”
I had to think quickly. I had had only half a Christmas lunch, and nothing to eat since then. Spirits would have knocked me out, so I accepted a Guinness and a mince pie. I didn’t really want to hang around. The delivery had been a beautiful Christmas experience, but the party was really not my scene. I had loved hearing it in the background, but to be in the midst of all those buxom, hiccupping aunts with their paper hats and red-faced, sweating uncles, was more than I could take at that moment. I just wanted to be alone.
Out in the street, after the excessive warmth of the delivery room, the cold cut me like a knife. It was a cloudless night, and the stars shone brightly. There was very little street lighting in those days, so starlight was a reality. A heavy frost had descended in all its beauty, covering the black stones of the pavements, the walls, the houses, even my bicycle. I shivered, and decided I must pedal very hard to keep myself warm.
Only a mile or two away from Nonnatus House a sudden impulse made me turn right into West Ferry Road and on to the Isle of Dogs. To go all the way round the Isle before rejoining the East India Dock Road is a seven or eight mile ride, and I can’t tell you what prompted me to do it.
No one was about. The docks were closed, and the ships in port were silent. The splash of the water was the only sound as I cycled over the West Ferry Bridge. On the Isle there were no lights, apart from the starlight and the Christmas tree lights in the windows of many houses. The great, majestic Thames was on my right, closely guarding all its secrets. I cycled more slowly, as though afraid to break the spell. As I turned westwards, a low moon started to rise, and a silver path shone across the river from Greenwich to my feet, or so it seemed. I had to stop my bicycle. It looked as though I could have walked on silvered feet from the north to the south bank of the Thames.
My thoughts were fleeting and flickering, like the moonlight on the water. What was happening to me? Why was the work so engrossing? Above all, why were the Sisters affecting me so deeply? I remembered my scornful reaction, only twenty-four hours earlier, to the crib in the Chapel, and then the calm beauty of Sister Bernadette’s face as she said her daily office by the soft moving flames. I couldn’t match the two up. I couldn’t understand. All I knew was that I couldn’t dismiss it.
JIMMY
‘Is that Jenny Lee? Where the hell have you been hiding all this time? We haven’t heard from you in months. I had to get on to your mother to find out where you were. She said you are a midwife in a convent. I had to tell her, gently, that nuns don’t do it, so she must be wrong, but she wouldn’t listen. What? You are? You must be mad! I’ve always said you had a screw loose somewhere. What? You can’t talk? Why not? The house phone reserved for expectant fathers! Look, that’s not funny. All right, all right! I’ll hang up, but not till you agree to meet us at the Plasterer’s Arms on your evening off. Thursday? OK that’s a date. Don’t be late.”
Dear Jimmy! I had known him all my life. Old friendships are always the best, and childhood friends are very special. You grow up together, and know the best and the worst of each other. We had played together for as long as I could remember, then left home and gone our separate ways, only to meet again in London. Jimmy and his friends came to all the parties and dances organised in the various nurses’ homes to which I was attached, and I joined their fraternity in sundry pubs in the West End when I could. It was an excellent arrangement, because they could guarantee meeting lots of new girls, and I could enjoy their company without any commitment.
I had no boyfriends at all when I was young. This was not (I hope) because I was unattractive or boring or sexless, but because I was so in love with a man I couldn’t have, and for whom my heart ached more or less all the time. For that reason no other male held the slightest romantic interest for me. I enjoyed the company and conversation of my men friends, and their lively and wide-ranging minds, but the mere idea of a physical relationship with any man other than the one I loved was abhorrent to me. In consequence I had a great many friends, and was in fact very popular with the boys. In my experience nothing arouses a young man’s interest more than the challenge of a pretty girl who for some inexplicable reason does not appear to find him the sex symbol of the century!
Thursday evening came. It was nice to be stepping up west for a change. I had found life with the sisters and the work in the East End so unexpectedly absorbing that I hadn’t wanted to go anywhere else. However, the chance to dress up couldn’t be resisted. Dress was rather formal in the 1950s. Long full skirts that flared outwards at the hem were in vogue; the smaller the waist and the tighter the waistband the better, irrespective of comfort. Nylon stockings were fairly new, and had seams that, de rigueur, had to be straight up the back of the leg. “Are my seams straight?” was a girl’s constant worried whisper to her friends. Shoes were killers, with five to six inch steel-capped stiletto heels and excruciating pointed toes. It was said that Barbara Goulden, the top fashion model of the day, had had her little toes amputated in order to squeeze her feet into them. Like all the smartest girls of the day, I would totter around London in those crazy shoes, and wouldn’t have been seen dead in anything else.
Careful make-up, hat, gloves, handbag, and I was ready.
There was no underground beyond Aldgate then, so I had to take a bus along the East India Dock Road and Commercial Road to pick up the tube. I have always loved the top front seat of a London bus, and to this day I maintain that no transport, however expensive or luxurious, can possibly offer half so much by way of scenery, advantaged viewing point and leisurely locomotion. There is endless time to absorb the passing scenes, perched high above everyone and everything. So my bus ambled along its route, and my mind wandered to Jimmy and his friends, and the occasion when I had very nearly got myself thrown out of nursing, had I been found out.
The hierarchy was very strict in those days, and behaviour, even off-duty, was closely monitored. Except for organised social events, boys were never allowed in the nurses’ home. I even remember one Sunday evening, when a young man had called for his girlfriend. He rang the bell and a nurse opened the door. He gave the name of the girl he wanted, and the nurse went off to find her, leaving the front door open. It was raining quite heavily, so the young man stepped inside and stood waiting on the doormat. It so happened that the Home Sister passed at that moment. She stood stock-still, rooted to the spot, and stared at him. She drew herself up to her full 4 foot 11 inches and said, “Young man, how dare you enter the nurses’ home! Kindly go outside, at once.”
My behaviour over Jimmy and Mike would certainly have merited instant dismissal from the nurses’ training school, and very likely the profession altogether. I was working at the City of London Maternity Hospital at the time. Early one evening, after I had come off duty, I was called to the only phone in the building.
“Is that the fascinating Jenny Lee with the fantastic legs?” a smooth voice purred.
“Come off it, Jimmy. What’s up? And what do you want?”
“How could you be so cynical, my dear? You grieve me more than I can say. When have you got an evening off? Tonight! What good luck! Could we meet at the Plasterer’s Arms?”
Over a convivial pint it all came out. Jimmy and Mike shared a nominal flat in Baker Street, but what with one thing and another, such as girls, beer, clothes, fags, the flicks, the occasional horse, Lady Chatterley (the communal car), and other sundry essentials, there was never quite enough money to pay the rent. The landlady who, of course, was a dragon, was lenient when the rent was two or three weeks in arrears, but when it slipped to six or eight weeks with no money forthcoming, she started breathing fire. One evening the boys returned to find all their clothes gone, and a note stating they would get them back when the arrears had been paid.
They sat down with pencil and paper, and worked out that the replacement value of their clothes would be less than the eight weeks of rent outstanding, so their course of action was obvious. At three o’clock in the morning they slipped quietly out of the house, leaving their keys on the hall table, and spent the rest of the night in Regent’s Park. It was a fine September evening, and after a reasonable sleep they stepped jauntily off to work, congratulating each other on an excellent plan well executed. They reckoned they could continue such a modus vivendi indefinitely, and thought what fools they had been ever to have paid rent to that dragon of a landlady in the first place.
Jimmy was training to be an architect, while Mike was a structural engineer. They were both attached to the best firms in London (such training in those days was based on the old apprentice system, and students were not college based). Though they could wash and shave in the public lavatories, they could not change their clothes (they had none), and a smart London firm would not tolerate its staff turning up for work day after day covered in autumn leaves! After about a fortnight they began to think that another plan would have to be formulated. Unfortunately, both had an entire wardrobe of clothes still to purchase, so money was very tight.
A third pint was ordered as we discussed the problem. Jimmy asked, “Isn’t there perhaps a boiler room or something like that in the nurses’ home where we could camp out for a little while?”
Old friends are old friends. I did not even consider the risk I would be taking. I said, “Yes there is, although it’s not a boiler room. It’s the drying room at the top of the building. All the water tanks are in it, and it’s used for drying clothes. I think there’s a sink in it too.”
Their eyes lit up. A sink! They could wash and shave in comfort!
“As far as I know,” I continued “it’s only used in the daytime - not at night. There is a fire escape that goes up the back of the building, and presumably there will be a window or door from the drying room on to the fire escape. It’s probably locked from the inside, but if I opened it for you, you could get in. Let’s go and have a look.”
We had another pint or two before leaving for the nurses’ home in City Road. The boys went round the back to the fire escape, and I entered the front door. I went straight to the drying room, and found that the slide windows opened easily from the inside. I signalled to my friends below, and each of them in turn climbed the iron ladder. It was not a staircase, just a ladder fixed to the wall, and the drying room was on the sixth floor. Normally, such a climb would be hair-raising but, fortified by several pints, it proved no trouble at all to the boys, and they entered the drying-room jubilantly. They hugged and kissed me, and called me a “brick”.
I said, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t stay here, but don’t come before about ten at night, and you must leave before six each morning so that no one sees you. You must keep quiet, too, because I will be in trouble if you are found.”
No one ever found out, and they stayed in the drying-room of the nurses’ home for about three months. How they managed that terrifying fire-escape in the middle of winter at six o’clock in the morning I shall never know; but when you are young and full of life and vitality, nothing is a problem.
The cry “Aldgate East - all change” broke into my reverie. I found my way to the familiar pub. It was a glorious June evening when the endless daylight lingered on and on - the kind of evening that fills you with gladness. The air was warm, the sun shone, the birds sang. It was good to be alive. By contrast the enclosed atmosphere of the pub seemed dark and gloomy. This was usually our favourite hostelry. This evening the beer was right, the time was right, the friends were right, but, somehow, the venue didn’t feel quite right. We chatted a bit, drank a few glasses, but I think we were all feeling a bit restless.
Suddenly someone shouted out, “Hey! Let’s all go down to Brighton for a midnight swim!”
There was a chorus of approval.
“I’ll go and get Lady Chatterly.”
This was the name given to the communal car. Who now remembers the furore that surrounded the proposed publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence, written in the 1920s, and the court case brought against the publishers for intending to make widely available an “obscene publication”? All that happens in the book is that the lady of the manor has an affair with the gardener, but the case went to the High Court and some pompous QC is on record as having said to a witness, “Is this the sort of book you would allow your servants to read?”
After that Lady Chatterley became synonymous with illicit pleasures and millions of copies of the book were sold, making the publishers’ fortune.
Lady Chatterley was not a family car, but an obsolete 1920s London taxi. She was magnificent and huge, and on occasion actually achieved a speed of forty mph. The engine had to be coaxed into life with a starting handle, inserted beneath the elegant radiator. Considerable muscle power was needed, and the boys usually took it in turns to do the cranking. The front bonnet opened like two huge beetle wings when it was required to get at the engine and four majestic coach lamps shone on either side of the fluted radiator. There were running boards from front to back. The wheels were spoked. The capacious interior smelled of the best leather upholstery, polished wood and brass. She was their pride and joy. The boys garaged her somewhere in Marylebone, and spent all their spare time coaxing her frail old engine into life, and titivating her majestic body.
But there was still more to Lady Chatterley. Chimney pots had been added and flower boxes attached. The windows were curtained, which meant that the driver couldn’t see out of the rear window, but no one bothered about little things like that. The car also boasted brass door knockers and letter-boxes. Her name was painted in gold across the front, and a notice at the rear read: DON’T LAUGH, MADAM, YOUR DAUGHTER MAY BE INSIDE.
She was brought round to the pub, and everyone turned out to admire her. A few of the original enthusiasts had dropped out, but a crowd of about fifteen climbed into Lady Chatterley and she set off, amid cheers, at a steady twenty-five mph down Marylebone High Street. The evening was exquisite, warm and windless. The declining sun looked as though it never really would decline altogether, it being already about 9 p.m. The plan included a midnight swim in Brighton, near the West Pier, then back to London with a stop at Dirty Dick’s - a transport cafe on the A23 - for bacon and eggs.
Roads in the 1950s were not as they are today. To begin with we had to get out of central London by weaving our way through miles of suburbs - Vauxhall, Wandsworth, the El
ephant, Clapham, Balham, and so on. It wasn’t quite endless, but it took a couple of hours. Once through the suburbs the driver called out, “We’re on the open road now. Nothing to stop us till we get to Brighton.”
Nothing, that is, except the temperament of Lady Chatterley, who tended to overheat. Forty mph was her maximum, and she was being driven at that speed for too long. We had to stop at Redhill, Horley (or was it Crawley?), Cuckfield, Henfield and numerous other ‘-fields’ so that she could rest and cool down. Tempers inside the Hackney carriage were becoming as frayed as the upholstery. The sun, which we had thought would never desert us, had relentlessly crept around to the other side of the globe, leaving us girls chilly in our flimsy summer dresses. The boys at the front called out, “Only another couple of miles. I can see the South Downs on the horizon.”
Eventually, after a five-hour journey, we crawled into Brighton at about 3 a.m. The sea looked black, and very, very cold.
“Right,” cried one of the boys. “Who’s for a swim? Don’t be chicken. It’s lovely once you get in.”
The girls were less optimistic. A midnight swim conceived in the warmth and security of a London pub is a very different thing from a 3 a.m. swim in the cold, black reality of the English Channel. I was the only girl who did swim that night. Having come all that way, I was not going to be beaten!
The pebbles of Brighton beach are nasty at the best of times, but if you happen to be wearing six-inch stiletto heels, they are murder. We had planned to swim in the nude, but no one had thought of what we might use for towels. It had been a cold winter and early spring, but nobody had thought about the temperature either.
About six of us stripped off, and with falsely jolly shouts to cheer each other on, we plunged into the sea. Normally, I love swimming, but the cold stabbed like a knife, taking my breath away, and brought on an asthma attack that lasted for the rest of the night. I swam a few strokes, then crawled out of the sea, gasping for breath. I sat on the wet pebbles shivering with cold. I had nothing to dry myself with, nothing to wrap around me. What a fool I had been! Why did I get myself into these crazy situations? I tried to dry my shaking shoulders with a small lace handkerchief. No help. My lungs were on fire, and air just didn’t seem to go into them. Some of the boys were really enjoying themselves, tumbling about with one another. I envied their vitality. I hadn’t even the strength to crawl back up the beach to the car.