Sisters of the East End

by Helen Batten

  After the first few months of teaching we were deemed ready to be let out onto the wards. From now on our learning would consist of lectures and seminars with practical training on the job. We all waited with eagerness to find out where we were going. There were definite preferences – the men’s surgical ward was the most coveted placement. Indeed, all the surgical wards seemed to be preferred to the medical wards. I think this is because generally surgical wards are less physically and emotionally demanding. Patients come in, have their operation and are generally out again quite quickly and in a better state than when they arrived. It’s heavy work looking after patients with chronic diseases and, as with so many chronic conditions like kidney disease and emphysema, these patients are never going to get better and that can be really demoralising for the nurses, never mind the patients themselves. I also noticed the nurses preferred working on the men’s wards and I think that’s because as a young woman, even as a young nun, it’s easier to chivvy the male patients on and cheer them up. A smile and a joke can go a long way with the opposite sex.

  We were handed our envelopes. I hadn’t put in any preference – I wanted it to be God’s will where I ended up. I opened up my envelope: my placement was on the men’s surgical ward.

  ‘You lucky devil!’ the nurses cried.

  I was somewhat taken aback. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been called a devil; that’s not to say I hadn’t felt like one at times. So I’d managed to land myself the plum job. On the first day I came out onto the ward, wearing my habit with an apron over the top. My year in the nursing home had paid off: it felt easy and natural to be there and I was able to start my duties with confidence, especially as there had been such high standards at the Mother House. People’s reaction to my Sister’s habit was interesting (and mixed). One gentleman who was seriously ill, and in fact didn’t have long to live, called me over and said, ‘I want to talk to you because you will tell me the truth.’

  I actually didn’t know what the truth was, but I suspected it was bad. So I went over to the doctor and said, ‘Look, you’ve got to go over and talk to him. He wants and needs to know exactly what you think is going on.’

  There was another old gentleman, who had been high up in the Navy, who was seriously ill after heart surgery. He kept telling me he was agnostic but every evening he called me over and talked with me at great length about the meaning of life. One day he opened the drawer beside his bed and got out the Gideon Bible. He opened it at one of the psalms. ‘See here, Sister. It says “The fool says in his heart that there is no God”.’

  He looked terribly sad. Then he took my hand and squeezed it.

  ‘I would like to be able to believe.’

  After he had recovered from his surgery, I never saw him again, but for a long time I wondered what had happened to him and whether he ever regained his faith. That’s the disadvantage of working in a hospital; if the patient recovers, you never see them again.

  It was good to be doing something useful and caring for people, although it was definitely more demanding. Most of the patients in the Mother House had been elderly, long-term residents; in the hospital you had to keep your wits about you and constantly observe your patients. It was acute care and you had to know what to do in an emergency. This was especially true with my next placement, in Accident & Emergency.

  The patient who most stays with me was the little two-year-old girl who came in on a hot sunny day. Annie was on holiday with her parents and had run out in front of a car on Hastings High Street. She had suffered terrible injuries and, as was customary in those days, her parents were sent away while we battled to save her. Before they left, I was sent to get her details. I was of course already deeply distressed for Annie and her family, but when her mother told me that her date of birth was 14 November – the same birthday as my little niece – I was really shaken. When I went into the room where she was, I couldn’t help but notice her beautiful long blonde hair which, again, was like my niece’s. After an hour spent trying to save her, Annie died. The doctor took me aside and said, ‘Look, Nurse, somebody has got to ring her parents. I can’t do it. Will you do it?’

  It was as if my habit gave me an added responsibility, or maybe extra abilities, in the eyes of those around me. I agreed, but I was absolutely dreading it. The parents were staying on a campsite just outside Hastings. I called the campsite phone and the owner answered. I told him that I had some terrible news, and asked him to have the parents ready and, if possible, a doctor for when I rang back a bit later. Half an hour later, her father was waiting for the call. I had to tell him we hadn’t been able to save Annie.

  When they came back later to the hospital to see her, they thanked us for trying to save her. It was humbling, and as my niece has grown and now has children of her own, I still think that ‘this is how old Annie would be now’. Perhaps she would be married and have children of her own. Some patients do penetrate your psyche and stay with you as a living memory and a question. I have prayed many times for her, and for her family. That afternoon as I held her mother I prayed for strength and acceptance and faith in the healing power of God, for her and for me too. I realised my path as a nurse was not always going to be easy. For me the worst moments are when children or young people are irreparably injured. Sometimes I feel haunted. That evening when I turned my bedroom into a little chapel I brought out my book of sacred poems and found William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’:

  Joy and Woe are woven fine,

  A clothing for the soul divine.

  Under every grief and pine

  Runs a joy with silken twine.

  I pondered this verse. Its beauty soothed me except for the nagging thought, where was the joy, where could there be joy in the death of a little girl? Sometimes God doesn’t answer me.

  There was another day when a young man was brought in. It was his eighteenth birthday. His stepfather had bought him a high-powered motorbike and, egged on by his friends, he’d raced down a hill outside Hastings and come off and landed on his head. He’d suffered terrible internal injuries but he was still conscious. His stepfather kept saying to me, ‘I feel so guilty. Why did I do it? Why did I buy it for him? If only I hadn’t bought the bike.’

  It was terrible to witness. All I could do was say, ‘It wasn’t you that caused the accident. You’re not guilty. Sometimes there are terrible, terrible accidents that are no one’s fault.’

  A few hours later his stepson died. We sat in a room together as he castigated himself even more ferociously.

  ‘I should never have bought it for him. It’s my fault – I’ve killed him.’

  ‘You haven’t killed him. As a parent, that’s part of your job. Every parent has to do it: at some point you have to let go, and they have to take responsibility for themselves. This was not your responsibility.’

  I’m not sure he was hearing me but there were times when I got the feeling that being a Sister might help. Sometimes the habit was not a barrier but a comfort; it allowed God into the room and gave permission for a more profound conversation and prayer when often, unfortunately, they were very much needed.

  Another young man came in who had been in a car accident. He was badly injured and although we tried to save him, he died within a few hours. His wife, who was in her early twenties (they had only been married for a year) stayed for several hours after he died, talking to me, and we struck up a friendship that lasts to this day. I was so pleased to be invited to her wedding five years later, and I have watched her family grow. Perhaps I am a link to her past and a witness to her present.

  It is special work. The shadow side of life and the reality of death and suffering calls for greater reserves of faith and strength. The only way to survive was to keep praying. But I felt useful in that I could perhaps share and ease the pain by being alongside and praying with the patients.

  So I was studying hard and really engaging with the work on the wards. I was also getting good marks for my case studies and wri
tten work. However, all this was going to be pointless if I didn’t manage to pass my exams. I had to get my State Registered Nurse Certificate. This bit of paper was all that really mattered. I was very nervous and only too aware that I had never actually managed to pass an exam. I had Sister Julia’s words ringing in my ears that if I did make a fool of myself then I should do so with dignity.

  But it was not just about pride: it occurred to me that my vocation was also at stake. At that time the Community of St John was a specialist nursing and midwifery Order. If I failed to get my nursing qualification, then I could no longer remain as part of the Community. The thought was almost unbearable. I realised that there was a difference between being in the outside world safe and contained, as part of a Community with my identity intact, and just being in the outside world alone. I wondered that after only a few years my identity had become so entwined with being a Sister.

  We sat in Brighton’s Town Hall, in neat rows, all nurses in uniform except for me in my habit. I looked down the rows, spotting the backs of the people I knew – watching Andrew fiddle with his pen and tapping his foot and Fiona being all neat, laying out her pencils. A big clock was ticking loudly on the wall. Everyone had been complaining about how early it was. Not me: I’d been up praying since five o’clock that morning. As I waited to turn over my paper I held on to my cross, fingering the eagle of St John, rubbing it as if a genie might appear and write down the answers for me. I was wildly swinging between the compliant/obedient, ‘Wherever you lead me, Lord, I will follow. If this be Your will, then let it be’, and then, ‘Please God, let me pass. Don’t let me fail. Please don’t let me down. Please don’t let me let You down. Please don’t let me let the Sisters down.’

  I wasn’t making any sense and I realised my faith in the Divine Will was wobbling. In the end I gave up and said, ‘Forgive me’ and then settled on Julian of Norwich: ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well’.

  ‘Turn over your papers,’ the invigilator said, and then I forgot everything. I was totally engaged and away.

  The final hurdle was our Viva. Once again I got on my scooter and rode along to Brighton. I had to go and face a panel and answer questions on practical matters. I remember in particular a rather handsome young doctor in a white coat. I was doing all right, my antiseptic technique went well, but I suddenly started to flounder on infections. I was making it up and I could see he could see I was making it up, and then the bell went.

  ‘Well, Miss Crisp, it seems you have been saved by the bell! Thank you,’ he said.

  I quickly exited the room.

  It was a couple of months before the results came out. I stayed working on the wards and commuting between the hospital and the Mother House. The day before my results were due I was on my way back to the Mother House on my moped and in a world of my own. I was going round a roundabout and a car came straight out in front of me and knocked me flying. The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital bed, with Mother Sarah Grace sitting beside me. Her eyes were closed deep in prayer. As I waited to try and work out where I was and why, her eyes opened and she stared down at me.

  ‘Catherine Mary, my dear, we have all been so worried about you. You’ve had a nasty knock, but praise the Lord you will be fine. A few broken bones and bruises, that’s all; nothing that won’t mend. God be praised.’

  Then she bent closer to my face.

  ‘And you passed, my child. You have passed your exams and with flying colours too. You have your State Registered Nurse Certificate and we are all so, so proud.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  DELIVERANCE

  Mother used to say that when I was born they rang a bell to let the whole world know that another new baby had arrived. Unsurprisingly perhaps, as a child this story had stuck in my mind and rather tickled me. As I got a bit bigger I started to question it – did they really ring a bell for every baby, or was I so special that it was just me? And then as a young teenager I started to think Mother might have got a bit mixed up – she was not the sort to make anything up, but I wasn’t aware of bells ringing without a clock or a church service attached.

  It was only when I started my midwifery training that I discovered that Mother had indeed heard a bell. But the bell wasn’t to announce the arrival of a baby, it was to tell the trainee midwives to get down to the delivery room as fast as possible because there was an opportunity to witness a birth. Before a nurse could qualify as a midwife she had to witness ten deliveries in a hospital and could then work as a midwife conducting deliveries. The bell was rung in the hospital to alert us trainees, so we could drop what we were doing and rush for the labour ward. We’d hopefully have met the mother first in the antenatal clinic, or at least when she arrived in the hospital in the early stages of labour. However, sometimes we didn’t have this luxury and just went flying in somewhat apologetically and stood by her side holding her hand, the stranger at the feast.

  I absolutely loved every minute of my midwifery training. I hadn’t always wanted to be a Sister but as well as wanting to be the actress Vivien Leigh, I had always quite fancied being a midwife. Of course my mother had been a nurse, but I had been more impressed by my much-loved maternal grandmother, who had been one of the women who ‘followed the doctor’.

  In the old days, when the doctor went to deliver a baby, there would often be a woman following behind on her bike. She would clear up after the delivery and settle the mother. I remembered watching her shoot off on her bike with her big black bag in the basket. She had never been formally trained, but then you didn’t have to be in those days: you learned your skills on the job, skills that were passed down from generation to generation.

  My grandmother possessed an aura of calm and wisdom, and as I listened to her extraordinary tales of life coming into the world, I longed to be part of those everyday miracles. So when at the beginning of 1963 Mother Sarah Grace announced it was time for me to become a midwife, I couldn’t suppress a little squeal. She chose to ignore me and carried on.

  ‘For Part One of your training, we’ve got you an interview at the General Lying-In Hospital in London.’

  ‘Oh really, Mother, that is wonderful!’

  ‘And for your Part Two you will be going to the Mission House in Poplar.’

  She stared at me, as if daring me to look too pleased. I worked hard to stifle my smile. She must have known how much that meant to me. To go back to London, to Poplar, where I had been a parish worker and had so many friends and knew so many people. It felt like a wonderful gift; and of course my real family were just down the road in Camden Town, it would be so easy for me to visit them. It would be another test.

  Then as I was leaving the room, she called me back.

  ‘Ah yes, Catherine Mary, one more thing: we hope you will be joined at the General Lying-In Hospital by Sister Cecilia. She hopes to start her training alongside you.’

  This time I couldn’t contain my joy.

  ‘Oh, Mother, that is truly wonderful news! I have so missed Sister Cecilia.’

  It had been nearly four years since Cecilia and I had last shared a room. While I had gone to Hastings Hospital to train as a nurse, Cecilia, who had already got her SRN certificate, had gone to work as a district nurse in the Community’s house in Deptford. She had also just taken her life vows and was now a fully-fledged Sister. Although we had bumped into each other at the big gatherings, such as Christmas and Easter at the Mother House, and I had watched her taking her life vows, we had not had a chance to really catch up. So on our first night at the hospital, we enjoyed saying Compline together in my room, and then, by the light of the candle on my homemade altar with a little icon of St John the Divine looking down on us, we started to talk. What Cecilia had to say came as a shock.

  ‘I’m struggling. Really struggling,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t think I can do this – I don’t want to be a midwife. I’m t
hinking maybe I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.’

  I was taken aback. Suddenly I was very aware of the candlelight flickering on Cecilia’s gold ring, the ring she was given when she took her final vows to signify her lifelong consecration to Christ.

  ‘But you’ve just taken your life vows. I mean, isn’t that it? You’ve had the doubt and come through.’

  ‘I know. I thought I’d been through all those struggles with the whole lifestyle and rule – you know what I mean.’

  I nodded. Totally.

  ‘It’s not God, it’s me. I’m not sure about my call to the religious life any more.’

  It was shocking to hear such a blunt, honest admission of something that most, if not all, members of the Community had felt at one time or another. I was now gazing at her girdle with its three knots signifying the three vows – poverty, consecrated celibacy and obedience. Cecilia had always seemed so sure of her path.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s this midwifery. I don’t want to become a midwife – I never have.’

  ‘But you love being a nurse.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Well, what’s the difference?’

  ‘Well, it’s difficult to explain. I don’t know. I feel that it’s one thing caring for somebody who’s sick. Helping them to get better or even helping them towards a good death, that makes sense but I have never been to see myself as a midwife.’

  ‘Is that really how you see it?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry: I don’t want to do it. I don’t think I have a calling for it. I have prayed and prayed, and the same answer comes back: I can’t face a future like that.’

  I was stunned. Cecilia had been my role model. We sat in silence for some minutes and then she changed the subject.