The Midwife Trilogy (30 page)

Sister Evangelina and her ageing Poplar patients spoke frequently about the First World War, and shared memories and experiences. It was from these conversations overheard during a bed bath or a surgical dressing that I was able to piece together her history. Occasionally she would speak to me directly, or answer a question, but not very often. She never unbuttoned with me much.

She spoke only once about her soldier patients. She said, “They were so young, so very young. A whole generation of young men died, leaving a whole generation of young women to weep.” I looked across the bed at her - she did not know I was looking - and saw tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. She sniffed loudly, and stamped her foot, then continued bandaging up the dressing somewhat roughly, with: “There you are, Dad, that’s that. We’ll see you in three days. Keep ’em open,” and stomped off.

She was twenty when she volunteered to go behind enemy lines. She and a patient were talking about the air force of those days, the tiny bi-planes, only invented about twenty years previously. She said, “It was after the German spring offensive in 1918. Our men were wounded, stranded behind the line with no medical help. None could be sent to them by road, so an airlift was arranged. I parachuted down.”

The patient said, “You’ve got guts, Sister. Didn’t you know that 50 per cent of all those early parachutes never opened at all?”

“Of course I knew,” she said, bluntly. “It was all explained to us. No one was pressed. I volunteered.”

I looked at her with new eyes. To volunteer to jump from an aeroplane, knowing full well that there was a 50 per cent chance of it being your last step, would take more than guts. It would take an inner heroism of a rare quality.

One day we were returning from the Isle of Dogs to Poplar. West Ferry Road, Manchester Road, and Preston Road were, as they are today, a continuous thoroughfare following the course of the Thames. In those days, however, the road was cut by bridges in several places. This allowed the cargo boats to enter the docks, which were a mass of canals and berths and basins and jetties. Just as we approached the Preston Road Bridge, the traffic lights turned red, the gates closed, and the swing bridge rotated. This could mean as much as half an hour’s closure of the road. Sister Evangelina cursed and fumed under her breath. (That was another thing, incidentally, that the Poplar people liked about her; she was not too holy to swear quietly to herself!) An alternative was open to us: we could retrace our steps, and cycle all the way round the Isle of Dogs to rejoin the West India Dock Road in the Limehouse area, a distance of about seven miles. Sister Evangelina would have none of that. Pushing her bike, she strode purposefully through the NO ENTRY, KEEP OUT gate, past DANGER signs, over the cobbles to the water’s edge. Fascinated, I followed; what on earth was she up to? She stomped over towards the massed barges, calling to any dockers in sight to come and help us. Several came forward, grinning and pulling off their caps. One of them was known to her.

“Morning, Harry. How’s your mother? I hope her chilblains have cleared up now the weather’s better. Give her my regards. Take this bike, will you, there’s a good lad, and lend us a hand.”

Pulling her long skirts up and tucking them into her belt, she strode towards the nearest barge. “Give me your arm, lad,” she said to a huge man of about forty. Grabbing him, she cocked up a leg, giving us a glimpse of thick black stockings and long bloomers elasticated just above the knees, and stepped on to the nearest barge. I realised what she was going to do: she was planning to cross the water as the dockers did, by jumping from barge to barge until she reached the other side.

There were eight or nine moored barges to be traversed in that way. The men, bless them, gathered round. Across the deck of the first barge there was no trouble. But then there were the two adjoining sides of the boats to be clambered over, before she could reach the second deck, and the barges were moving. It took all the strength of the big man, and two or three others besides, to get her over. I heard “gi’s a leg up, there’s a good lad” and “heave” and “hold me” and “push” and “good for you, Sis”. I followed nimbly enough, and couldn’t take my eyes off this game old nun, her veil blowing in the wind, rosary and crucifix swinging wildly from side to side, her nose growing redder with the exertion. Two men carried the bicycles, high above their heads, and she turned round and reprimanded them sharply: “Just you look after our bags. This is no laughing matter.”

The second and third barges were traversed without mishap, but there was a gap of about eighteen inches before the fourth one. She looked at the water between and said “humph”. She pulled her skirts even higher, rubbed a dewdrop off her nose with the flat of her hand, and said to the big man: “You go over there first and be ready to catch me.” Three young men got hold of her - she was no lightweight - and she stepped up on to the side. She stood on the narrow edge of the moving barge, her two flat feet firmly planted, and looked resolutely at the big man on the other side. She was panting. She sniffed again loudly, and said: “Right, if I can put my weight on your shoulders, I’ll be OK.” He nodded, and raised his arms. Gingerly she leaned forward and placed her hands on his shoulders, and he caught her under the arms while the younger men steadied her from behind. My heart was in my mouth. If the barge moved at that moment, or if she slipped, there would have been nothing anyone could have done to prevent her from falling into the water. Could she swim? What if she went under the barge? It didn’t bear thinking about. Slowly, carefully, she lifted one foot, brought it forward, and put it on the edge of the next barge. She waited a second, gaining her balance, and then swiftly brought the other leg over, and jumped into the arms of the big man. Cheers went up all round, and I nearly collapsed with relief. She sniffed again.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad. No worse than a fart in a colander. Let’s carry on.” The remaining barges all adjoined each other, and she reached the other side, red faced and triumphant. She pulled her skirts down, took her bicycle, smiled at them all, and said, “Thanks, lads, you’ve been great. We’ll be off now.” And with her usual parting comment to dockers, “Keep ’em open and you won’t need a doctor,” she cycled out of the harbour.

MRS JENKINS

Mrs Jenkins was an enigmatic figure. For years she had been tramping all over the Docklands, from Bow to Cubitt Town, from Stepney to Blackwall, yet no one knew anything about her. The reason for her ceaseless tramping was an obsession with babies, specifically newborn babies. She seemed to know, God knows how, just when and where a home confinement would take place, and nine times out of ten would be found hanging around in the street outside the house. She never said much, and her enquiries about “’Ow’s ve baby? Ow’s ve li’le one?” were invariably the same. On being told the baby was alive and healthy, she often seemed satisfied and shuffled away. She was always seen on a Tuesday afternoon hanging around outside the antenatal clinic, and most of the young mothers brushed past her impatiently, or pulled their young toddlers away from her, as though she were contaminated or would put an evil spell on the child. We had all heard the muttered comments, “She’s an ol’ witch, she is, she gives the evil eye,” and no doubt some of the mothers believed it.

Mrs Jenkins was never welcome, never wanted, often feared, yet this did not deter her from going out, at any time of the day or night, often in atrocious weather, to stand in the street outside the house where a baby was born, asking “Ow’s ve baby? Ow’s ve li’l one, ven?”

She was a tiny woman, as thin as a rake, with birdlike features, and a long pointed nose that stretched sharply between hollow sunken cheeks. Her skin was a yellowish grey, criss-crossed with a thousand wrinkles, and she appeared to have no lips because they were drawn in over her toothless gums, and she chewed and sucked them all the time. A faded black hat, greasy and shapeless, was pulled down low over her head, from which tufts of wispy grey hair escaped now and then. Summer and winter she wore the same long grey coat of indeterminate age, from beneath which protruded enormous feet. For such a tiny woman the huge feet were not only improbable, but absurd, and I am sure she received much ridicule as she shuffled her endless way around the neighbourhood.

Where she lived, no one knew. This was as much a mystery to the Sisters as it was to everyone else. The clergy had no idea. She didn’t appear to go to church or belong to any parish, which was unusual among the older women. The doctors did not know, as she did not seem to be registered with any doctor. Perhaps she did not know that there was now a National Health Service and that everyone could have medical treatment free of charge. Even Mrs B., who always had her ear close to the ground as far as local gossip and information were concerned, didn’t know anything about her. No one had ever seen her going into a Post Office to collect her pension.

I had always found her interesting but repugnant. My contact with her was frequent, but was always confined to her questions about the baby, and my cold reply, “Mother and baby are well”, to which she invariably replied “Fank Gaud, fank Gaud fer vat.” I never tried to initiate conversation, because I didn’t want to get involved, but once when I was with Sister Julienne, she went straight up to the woman, took both her hands in her own and, with her all-embracing smile, said, “Hello Mrs Jenkins, how nice to see you. What a lovely day it is. How are you getting on?”

Mrs Jenkins shrank back, a half-afraid, half-suspicious look in her dull grey eyes, and pulled her hands away.

“Ow’s ve baby?” she said. Her voice was rasping.

“The baby’s lovely. A beautiful little girl, strong and healthy. Do you like babies, Mrs Jenkins?”

Mrs Jenkins shrank away still further, and pulled the collar of her coat up over her chin.

“A baby girl, yer say, doin’ nicely. Fank Gaud.”

“Yes, thank God indeed. Would you like to see her? I’m sure I could get the mother’s permission and bring the baby out for a few moments.”

But Mrs Jenkins had already turned, and was hobbling away in her large, man-size boots.

An expression of infinite love and compassion spread over Sister Julienne’s face. She stood quite still for several minutes, watching the bent old figure shuffling along the pavement. I watched Mrs Jenkins too, and noticed that she shuffled because she hadn’t the strength to lift the boots off the ground. Then I looked again at Sister Julienne, and felt ashamed. Sister wasn’t looking at the boots. She was looking, I felt, at seventy years of pain and suffering and endurance, and holding Mrs Jenkins before God in her silent prayers.

I had always been repelled by Mrs Jenkins, mainly because she was so dirty. Her hands and fingernails were filthy, and the only reason I spoke to her, reporting on the baby just born, was to avoid her grabbing my arm, which she would do with surprising strength if her questions were not answered. It was easier to answer briefly, and at a safe distance, and then to escape.

On one occasion while I was on my rounds, I saw Mrs Jenkins step off the pavement into the road. She stood with legs wide apart, and peed into the gutter like a horse. There were a lot of people around at the time, and none of them looked surprised as a torrent of urine streamed into the gutter and down the drain. Once I saw her in a little alley between two buildings. She picked up a piece of newspaper from the ground, then lifted up her coat and started rubbing the newspaper around her private parts, intent on her task, grunting all the while. Then she let the coat fall and started examining the contents of the newspaper, poking it with her fingernail, sniffing it, peering at it closely. Finally she folded it up and put it in her pocket. I shuddered with revulsion.

Another unpleasant thing about Mrs Jenkins was a brown stain on her face that extended from her nose to her upper lip, and was ingrained in the lines at the corners of her mouth. Having seen and observed her lavatorial habits, it is not hard to imagine what I assumed this brown stain to be. But I was wrong. As I got to know her better, I discovered that Mrs Jenkins took snuff (her “comfort”, she called it) and the brown stain was caused by the snuff dropping out of her nose.

Not surprisingly, shopkeepers would not serve her. One green-grocer told me he would serve her outside the shop, but wouldn’t allow her in.

“She picks over all me fruit. She squeezes me plums an’ me tomatoes, then puts ’em back. Then no one’ll buy ’em. I got a business to run, I can’t have ’er in ’ere.”

Mrs Jenkins was a local “character”, known by name only, avoided, feared, ridiculed, but a complete mystery.

The Sisters received a request from a locum doctor in Limehouse to visit a house in the Cable Street area of Stepney. This was the notorious prostitutes’ area which I had explored during my brief friendship with Mary, the young Irish girl. The doctor reported that an elderly lady with mild angina was living in appalling conditions, and probably suffering from malnutrition. The patient’s name was Mrs Jenkins.

I turned off Commercial Road, heading towards the river, and found the street. Only half a dozen buildings remained standing; the rest were just bomb sites with a jagged wall sticking up here and there. I found the door and knocked. Silence. I turned the door handle, expecting to find it open, but it was locked. I went round the side, which was littered with filth, but a thick layer of dirt covered the windows and I could not see through. A cat rolled sensuously on its back, whilst another sniffed at a pile of garbage. I returned to the front door, and knocked louder several times, feeling glad that it was daylight. This was not the sort of area to be alone in after dark. A window opened in a house opposite, and a female voice called out: “What you want?”

“I’m the district nurse, and I have come to see Mrs Jenkins.”

“Throw a stone up a’ ve second floor winder,” was the advice given.

There were plenty of stones lying around, and I felt a perfect fool standing in nurse’s uniform, with my black bag at my feet, throwing stones up at the second floor. “How on earth did the doctor get in?” I wondered.