Call The Midwife: A True Story Of The East End In The 1950S

by Jennifer Worth

  In fact the holiday proved to be a real eye-opener for Doris and Cyril. They had never before realised that West Indian people could be so much fun. It is said that East Enders are good-humoured. Well, beside the West Indians, Cockneys look positively dour. Doris and Cyril laughed from morning to night, and the hard work of hop-picking was barely felt. Tired but elated in the evenings, Doris would leave the fields to prepare a meal for her family, and then join the groups sitting around the fires. The songs were new this year. She had never heard West Indian singing before, with its blend of beauty and tragedy, and it stirred deep and nameless longings in her heart. She joined in the choruses and the round songs with an ear for music that she never knew she possessed. Cyril didn’t think much of the music, and nothing on earth would have induced him to open his mouth and sing, so he joined one of the other groups around another fire where the blokes were more to his liking.

  Time passes all too quickly when you are enjoying yourself, and no one wanted to leave at the end of the fortnight. But their time was up, and they all declared it was the best holiday of their life, and that they would meet again next year. The children cried at parting.

  The humdrum life of work and school and neighbours and gossip started again, and gradually the memory of the Kentish holiday faded into a dream.

  No one was surprised when Doris announced at the Christmas party that she was pregnant again. She was only thirty-eight, and five children was not considered to be a large family. Cyril was told that he “wasn’t ’alf a lad”, and they were both given everyone’s good wishes.

  She went into labour early one morning. Cyril rang us on his way to work. Doris was able to get the children up and off to school, and a neighbour came in to be with her for a while. I arrived around 9.30 a.m. to find everything in good order. The house was clean and tidy. The baby things were ready and immaculate. All the requirements we asked for, such as hot water, soap, and so on, were ready. Doris was calm and cheerful. The neighbour left as I arrived, and said that she would pop in later. Labour was uneventful, and fairly quick.

  At twelve noon she delivered a baby boy, who was quite obviously black.

  I, of course, was the first to see him, and didn’t know what to say or do. After I had cut the cord, I wrapped him in a towel, and placed him in the cot whilst I attended to the third stage. This allowed me a little time to think: should I say something? If so, what? Or should I just hand her the baby, and let her see for herself? I decided upon the second course.

  The third stage of labour usually takes at least fifteen to twenty minutes, so during that time I simply picked the baby up, and put him in Doris’s arms.

  She was silent for a long time, and then said, “He’s beau’iful. He’s so lovely, ’e makes me wanna cry.”

  Tears silently came to her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. She sobbed inwardly to herself as she clung to the baby.

  “Oh he’s so beau’iful. I never meant to, but wha’ could I do? An’ now wha’ am I goin’ to do? He’s the lovelies’ baby I ever seed.”

  She could speak no more for crying.

  I was shaken by the unexpected turn of events, but had to attend to my job. I said, “Look, I think the placenta will come soon. Let me put the baby back in the cot, only for a few minutes, so that we can complete your delivery safely, and clean you up. We can talk after that.”

  She allowed me to take the baby, and within ten minutes everything was complete.

  I put the baby back in her arms, and silently attended to my clearing up. I felt it better not to initiate any conversation.

  She held him quietly for a long time, kissing him, and rubbing her face against his. She held his hand, and flexed his arm, and said, “His fingernails is white, yer know.”

  Was this a cry of hope? Then she continued, “Wha’ am I goin’ to do? Wha’ can I do, nurse?”

  She sobbed in broken-hearted anguish, and clung to the baby with all the fervour and passion of a mother’s love. She couldn’t speak; she could only groan, and rock him in her arms.

  I couldn’t reply to her question. What could I say?

  I finished what I was doing, and checked the placenta, which was intact. Then I said, “I would like to bath the baby, and weigh him, is that all right?”

  She gave the baby to me quietly, and watched every move as I bathed him, as though she was afraid that I might take him away. I think she knew in her heart what was going to happen.

  I weighed and measured him. He was a big baby: 9lb 4oz, twenty two inches long, and perfect in every way. He certainly was beautiful; his skin was a dusky tawny colour, fine, dark curly hair already showed on his head. The slightly depressed bridge of his nose, and splayed nostrils accentuated his high, broad forehead. His skin was smooth and unwrinkled.

  I gave him back to his mother, and said, “He is the loveliest baby I have ever seen in my life, Doris. You can be proud of him.”

  She looked at me with bleak despair. “Wha’ am I goin’ to do?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. Your husband will be coming home from work this evening, thinking he is the father of a new baby. He will ask to see him, and you cannot hide him. I don’t think you should be alone when he comes home. Can your mother come round to be with you?”

  “No. That would make fings worse. He hates my mum. Can you be ’ere wiv me, nurse? You’re right. I’m frightened of Cyril seeing ’im.”

  And she clutched the baby to her, in a desperate gesture of protection.

  “I’m not sure that I would be the right person”, I replied. “I’m a midwife. Perhaps you need a social worker to be here. I definitely think you need someone for your own protection, and that of the baby.”

  I promised to look into it, and left.

  I imagine she had one happy afternoon with her baby, dozing, cuddling, kissing him, forging with him that unbreakable bond that is a mother’s love for her baby, which is every baby’s birthright. Perhaps she knew what was coming, and tried to cram a lifetime of love into a few short hours. Perhaps she crooned to him the West Indian spirituals that she had learned around the camp fire.

  I reported to Sister Julienne, and expressed my fears. She said, “You are right that someone must be there when her husband sees the baby. However, I think it would be better for a man to be present. All the social workers in this area are women. I will speak to the Rector.”

  In the event, the Rector sent a young curate to be at the house from five o’clock onwards. He did not go himself, because he thought it would look too portentous if he arrived at the house.

  The curate reported that events had transpired very much as I had expected. Cyril took one silent, horrified look at the baby, and made a great swipe at his wife with his fist. The blow was deflected by the curate. Then he made to grab the baby and hurl it against the wall, and was only prevented from doing so by the curate. He said to his wife, “If this bastard stays in the ’ouse one single night, I’ll kill ’im, an’ you an’ all.”

  The savage gleam in his eye showed that he meant it. “You jest wait, yer bitch.”

  An hour later the curate left carrying the baby in a small wicker basket, with a bundle of baby clothes in a paper bag. He brought the baby to Nonnatus House, and we cared for him overnight. He was received into a children’s home the next morning. His mother never saw him again.

  OF MIXED DESCENT III

  Ted was fifty-eight when his wife died. She developed cancer and he nursed her tenderly for eighteen months. He gave up his job in order to do so, and they lived on his savings during her illness. They had a happy marriage, and were very close. No children had been born to them, and they had depended entirely on each other for companionship, neither of them being particularly extrovert or sociable. After her death, he was very lonely. He had few real friends, and his mates at work had largely forgotten him since his leaving. He had never cared for pubs and clubs, and was not going to start trying to be the clubby sort at the age of nearly sixty. He tidied the house but couldn�
��t bring himself to clear his wife’s room. He cooked scrappy meals for himself, went for long walks, frequented the cinema and the public library, and listened to the radio. He was a Methodist, and attended church each Sunday, and although he tried joining the men’s social club, he couldn’t get on with it, so he joined the Bible class instead, which was more to his liking.

  It seems to be a law of life that a lonely widower will always find a woman to console and comfort him. If he is left with young children he is even more favourably placed. Women are queueing up to look after both him and the children. On the other hand, a lonely widow or divorcee has no such natural advantages. If not exactly shunned by society, she is usually made to feel decidedly spare. A lonely widow will usually not find men crowding around anxious to give her love and companionship. If she has children, the men will usually run a mile. She will be left alone to struggle on and support herself and her children, and usually her life will be one of unremitting hard work.

  Winnie had been alone for longer than she cared to remember. Her young husband had been killed early in the war, leaving her with three children. A meagre pension from the State barely covered the rent, let alone compensated for the loss of her husband. She took a job in a paper shop. The hours were long and hard - from 5 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. She got up each morning at 4.30 a.m. to get down to the newsagents to receive, sort, pack, and put out the newspapers. Her mother came in each day at 8 a.m. to get the children up and off to school. It meant that they were alone for about four hours, but it was a risk that she had to take. Winnie’s mum suggested that they should all come and live with her, but Win valued her independence, and refused unless, as she said, “I jes’ can’t cope any more”. That day never came. Winnie was the coping sort.

  They met in the paper shop. She had served him for many years, but never noticed him particularly amongst all her other customers. It was when he started hanging around in the shop for longer than necessary to buy a morning paper that she, and the other staff, began to take note. He would buy his paper, then look at another, then look at the magazine shelves, sometimes buying one. Then he would pick up a bar of chocolate and turn it over in his hand, sigh, and put it back, and buy a packet of Woodbines instead. The staff said to each other, “Somethink’s up with that old geezer”.

  One day, when Ted was holding a bar of chocolate, Winnie went up to him and asked kindly if she could help.

  He said, “No, dearie. There’s nothing you can do for me. My wife used to like this chocolate. I used to get it for ’er. She died last year. Thank you for asking, dear”.

  And their eyes met with sympathy and understanding.

  After that Winnie always made a point of serving him. One day Ted said, “I was finkin’ o’ goin’ to the flicks tonight. How about comin’ wiv me - if yer ’usband don’t object”.

  She said, “I aint got no ’usband, an’ I don’t mind if I do”.

  One thing led to another, and within a year he asked her to marry him.

  Winnie thought about it for a week. There were over twenty years between them; she was fond of him, but not really in love with him. He was kind and good, though not wildly exciting. She consulted her mother, and the outcome of the female deliberations was that she accepted his offer of marriage.

  Ted was overjoyed, and they had a Methodist Church wedding. He did not want to take his new bride to the house which he had shared for so long with his first wife, so he gave up the rental and took another terraced property. Winnie was able to give up the tiny cheap flat where she had brought up her children, so the terraced cottage was just for her and Ted. It seemed like a palace to her. As the weeks and months passed after the marriage her happiness grew, and she told her mother that she had not done the wrong thing.

  When he was young Ted had prudently taken out an insurance policy that matured when he was sixty. He now did not have to go out to work ever again. Winnie, on the other hand, did not want to give up the paper shop. She was so used to hard work that idleness would have bored her to tears but, as Ted wanted her at home more, she agreed to cut down her hours. Their life was very happy.

  Winnie was forty-four when her periods stopped. She thought it was the menopause. She felt a bit odd, but her mother told her that all women feel a bit funny during the change, and not to worry. She continued in the paper shop, and brushed aside any feelings of queasiness. It wasn’t until six months later that she noticed she was putting on weight. Another month passed, and Ted noticed a hard lump in her tummy. Having experienced his first wife dying of cancer, hard lumps were a source of deep anxiety for him. He insisted that she should see the doctor, and went with her to the surgery.

  Examination showed her to be in an advanced stage of pregnancy. The couple were shattered. Why this obvious explanation had not occurred to either of them before is impossible to conjecture, but it hadn’t, and they were both knocked sideways by the news.

  There wasn’t much time to prepare for a new baby. Winnie left the paper shop that day, and booked with the Sisters for her confinement. Hastily, the bedroom was prepared, and baby equipment bought. Perhaps it was buying the pram and little white sheets that affected Ted so profoundly. Overnight he changed from a bemused and bewildered elderly man to an intensely excited and fiercely proud father-to-be. Suddenly he looked ten years younger.

  A fortnight later Winnie went into labour. We had arranged for a doctor to be present at the delivery, because there had been so little time for antenatal preparation, and because Winnie, now forty-five, was decidedly old for having a baby.

  Ted had taken note of our requirements and advice about preparation. He couldn’t have planned it more carefully or thoroughly. He had told Win’s mother not to come but that Ted would inform her when the baby was born. He had obtained books on childbirth and babycare, which he read all the time. When she went into labour he called us, full of joy and anticipation, tinged only with a little anxiety.

  The doctor and I arrived at almost the same time. It was early first stage, and it had been agreed that I should stay with her throughout labour, from the time of arrival to the third stage completion. The doctor examined her and said he would leave and call back just before evening surgery to assess progress.

  I sat down to watch and wait. I advised that she should not lie down, but walk about a bit. Ted took Win’s arm and gently and carefully led her up and down the garden path. She could quite easily have walked it by herself, but he wanted and needed to be protective, quite forgetful of the fact that only two weeks earlier she had been dashing off to the paper shop. I suggested she should have a bath. The house boasted a bathroom, and so he heated up the water, and gently helped her in. He washed her, carefully helped her out and then dried her. I advised a light meal, so he poached an egg. He couldn’t have done more.

  I looked at his library books: Grantley Dick Read’s Natural Childbirth; Margaret Myles’s Midwifery; The New Baby; Positive Parents; The Growing Child; From Birth to Teens. He had been doing his homework.

  The doctor returned just before 6 p.m., and there was no real change in the early labour pattern. We agreed that, in view of her age, if the first stage continued for longer than twelve hours, Winnie should be transferred to the hospital. Both Ted and Winnie agreed to this, but hoped it would not be necessary.

  Between 9 and 10 p.m. I observed a change in the labour pattern. Contractions were more frequent and stronger. I started her on the gas and air machine, and asked Ted to go out and phone for the doctor.

  When he arrived the doctor gave her a mild analgesic, and we both sat down and waited. Ted courteously offered us a meal, or tea, or drinks, whatever we wanted.

  We did not have long to wait. Just after midnight the second stage of labour commenced, and within twenty minutes the baby was born.

  It was a little boy, with unmistakably ethnic features.

  The doctor and I looked at each other, and the mother, in stunned silence. No one said a word. I have never known such an unnerving silence at a delivery.
What each of us was thinking the others never knew, but our thoughts must all have been about the same question: “What on earth is Ted going to say when he sees the baby?”

  The third stage had to be dealt with, and this was conducted in dead silence. While the doctor was busy with the mother, I bathed, checked, and weighed the baby. He certainly was a beautiful little thing, of average weight, clear dusky skin, soft curly brown hair. A picture perfect baby - if you are expecting to see a baby of mixed racial origins. But Ted wasn’t. He was expecting to see his own child. I shut my eyes in a futile attempt to obliterate the scene to come.

  Everything was finished and tidied up. The mother looked fresh in a white nightgown; the baby looked beautiful in a white shawl.

  The doctor said, “I think we had better ask your husband to come up now.”

  They were the first words to be spoken since the delivery.

  Winnie said, “I reckons as ’ow we’d best get it over wiv”.

  I went downstairs and told Ted that a baby boy had been safely born, and would he like to come up.

  He shouted, “A boy!” and leaped to his feet like a youngster of twenty-two, not a man of over sixty. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, entered the bedroom and took both his wife and the baby in his arms. He kissed them both and said, “This is the proudest and happiest day of my life.”

  The doctor and I exchanged glances. He hadn’t noticed yet. He said to his wife, “You don’t know what vis means to me, Win. Can I ’old ve baby?”