The Midwife Trilogy (32 page)

The other problems were dirt, fleas and lice. It was my job to clean her up.

A tin bath was brought from Nonnatus House, and I boiled up water on the coke stove. Mrs Jenkins was dubious about all this, but I only had to mention that Sister Evangelina wanted her to have a bath, and she relaxed and chuckled, champing her jaws.

“She’s a good ’un, she is. I tells my Rosie an’ all. We ’as a good laugh, we ’as. Rose an’ me.”

I had quite a job persuading her to undress, and she was very apprehensive. Under the old coat she wore a rough wool skirt and jumper, but no vest or knickers. Her frail little body was pathetic to behold. There was no flesh on her, and all her bones stuck out at sharp angles. Her skin hung loose, and I could count every rib. The revulsion she had hitherto inspired in me turned to pity when I beheld her frail, skeletal body.

Pity is one thing, shock another. Shock was waiting for me when I took her boots off. I had noticed her huge man-sized boots before, and wondered why she wore them. With difficulty I untied the greasy knots and undid the laces. She wore no socks or stockings, and the boot would not budge. It seemed stuck to her skin. I eased a finger down the side, and she winced. “Leave it be. Leave it.”

“I’ve got to get them off to put you in the bath.”

“Leave it,” she whimpered; “my Rosie’ll do it by an’ by.”

“But Rosie’s not here to help. If you will let me, I can get them off. Sister Evangelina says your boots have got to come off before you have your bath.”

It would be a long job, so I wrapped a blanket over her and knelt down on the floor. Some of the skin was indeed stuck to the leather, and tore as I eased the boot back and forth. God knows when they had last come off. Eventually I eased the boot over her heel and pulled. To my horror there was a sort of scratching, metallic sound. What was it? What had I done? As the boot came off, an extraordinary sight met my eyes. Her toenails were about eight to twelve inches long, and up to one inch thick. They were twisted and bent, curling over and under each other, and many of the toes were bleeding and suppurating at the nail-bed. The smell was horrible. Her feet were in a terrible condition. How had she managed to tramp all over Poplar for so many years with feet like that?

She didn’t even murmur as I was taking the boots off, though it must have hurt, and she looked down at her bare feet with no surprise - perhaps she thought everyone’s toenails were like that. I helped her over to the bath, and it was surprisingly difficult because, without her boots, she had lost her balance and the toenails kept getting in the way, nearly tripping her up.

She stepped over the edge of the big tin bath and sat down in the water with delight, splashing and giggling like a little girl. She picked up the flannel and sucked the water noisily, looking up at me with smiling eyes. The room was warm because I had stoked up the fire, and a cat strolled up and looked curiously over the edge of the bath. She splashed him in the face with a giggle, and he retreated, offended. The front door banged, and she looked up sharply. “Rosie, that you? Come ’ere, girl, an’ look a’ yer ol’ mum. It’s a rare sight.”

But the footsteps went upstairs, and Rosie didn’t come.

I washed Mrs Jenkins all over, and wrapped her in the big towels provided by the Sisters. I had washed her hair and wrapped it in a turban. I had not seen too many fleas, but I applied a sassafras compress to kill any nits. The only thing I could not cope with were her toenails - a good chiropodist would have to be called in for such monsters. (I am reliably informed, incidentally, that Mrs Jenkins’ toenails are to this day displayed in a glass case in the main hall of the British Chiropody Association.)

The nuns always kept a store of second-hand clothes, rescued from many jumble sales, and Sister Evangelina and I had sorted out some garments which I had brought with me. Mrs Jenkins looked at the vest and knickers and stroked the soft material with wonder.

“Is this for me? Oh, it’s too good. You keep ’em fer yourself, duckie, they’re too good for the likes o’ me.”

I had difficulty in persuading her to put them on, and when she did, she rubbed her hands up and down her thin body with amazement, as though she couldn’t get over her new underwear. I dressed her in the jumble-sale clothes, which were all too big, and quietly put her old clothes out the back door.

She settled comfortably in the armchair, stroking her new clothes. A cat jumped on to her knee, and she tickled him gently.

“What’ll Rosie say when she sees all this finery, eh, puss? She won’ know ’er ol’ mum, she won’, dressed up like a queen.”

I left her with the happy feeling that we were doing a great deal to improve her intolerable conditions. Outside, I put her flea-ridden clothes into a bag, and looked for a dustbin. There were none to be seen. There was no provision for waste disposal in the area because no one was supposed to be living in the condemned buildings, so no public services were provided. The fact that people
were
living there and everyone, including the Council, knew about it, made no difference to official policy. I left the bag of clothes in the street amongst the piles of rubbish already lying around.

A feeling of decay and menace hovered over the whole area like an evil vapour. The craters left by the bombs were filled with rubbish and smelled horrible. Jagged bits of wall, rose starkly towards the sky. No one was around: mornings in a red-light district are generally slow for business. The quietness had an oppressive quality about it, and I would be glad to get away.

I had barely turned the corner of the house when the sound started. I froze to the spot, the hair prickling on the back of my neck as a sort of terror gripped me. It was like the howl of a wolf, or an animal in dreadful pain. The sound seemed to come from everywhere, echoing off the few buildings, and filling the bombsites with an unearthly pain. The noise stopped, but I literally couldn’t move. Then it started again, and the window in the house opposite opened. The woman who had told me to throw stones to attract the landlord leaned out, shouting, “It’s that mad old hag. Yer lookin’ after ’er. Tell ’er to shu’ up, or I’ll come and kill ’er, I will. You tell ’er from me.”

The window banged shut. My mind raced.

Mad old hag? Mrs Jenkins? It couldn’t be! She couldn’t be making that anguished noise. I’d left her contented and happy only a few minutes ago.

The noise stopped and, trembling, I went back into the house, down the passage to her door and turned the handle.

“Rosie? That you, Rosie?”

I opened the door. Mrs Jenkins was sitting just as I had left her, with a cat on her knee and another preening itself beside her chair. She looked up brightly.

“If you see Rosie, tell ’er I’m coming. Tell ’er not to lose ’eart. Tell ’er I’m comin’, an’ the li’l ones, an’ all. I’ll scrub an’ scrub all day, an’ they’ll let me come this time, they will. You tell my Rosie.”

I was bewildered. She couldn’t have made that howling noise; it was impossible. I took her pulse, which was normal, and enquired if she felt all right, to which she did not reply but smacked her lips together and looked steadily at me.

There seemed no point in my staying, but I left with misgivings that morning.

Sister Evangelina took the morning report, and I told her that Mrs Jenkins seemed to enjoy her bath. I reported on the toenails and the fleas. I reported that her mental condition seemed fairly stable - she loved her new clothes, was chatting companionably to the cats, and was not at all withdrawn and defensive. I hesitated to report the unearthly noise I had heard in the street; after all it might not have come from Mrs Jenkins. It was only the woman opposite who had suggested it had.

Sister Evangelina looked up at me, her heavy features expressionless.

“And?” she said.

“And what?” I faltered.

“And what else? What have you not reported?”

Was she a mind reader? There was clearly no way out. I told her of the ghastly cry I had heard from the street, adding that I couldn’t be sure it was Mrs Jenkins.

“No, but you cannot be sure that it was
not
Mrs Jenkins, can you? Describe the cry.”

Again I hesitated, as it was so difficult to describe, but I ended by likening it to the howl of a wolf.

Sister looked down at her notes, not moving, and when she spoke her voice was different, subdued and low. “Those who have heard that sound can never forget it. It makes your blood run cold. I think the cry you heard probably did come from Mrs Jenkins, and it was what used to be called ‘the workhouse howl’.”

“What is that?” I enquired.

She did not reply straight away, but sat tapping her pen with impatience. Then, “Humph. You young girls know nothing of recent history. You’ve had it too easy, that’s your trouble. I will come with you on your next visit, and I will also see if we can get hold of any medical or parish records about Mrs Jenkins. Proceed with your report.”

I completed the report and had time to wash and change before lunch. At table, it was hard to join in the general conversation. I was hearing in my mind that horrible wolf-howl, thinking of Sister Evangelina’s explanation, and remembering. Her words brought to mind something my grandfather had told me years before, about a man he knew well who had fallen on hard times. The man had applied to the Board of Guardians for temporary relief, and had been told that he could not have it, but would be sent to the workhouse. The man replied, “I would rather die” and went away and hanged himself.

When I was a child the local workhouse had been pointed out to me with hushed and terrified whispers. Even the empty building seemed to evoke fear and loathing. People would not go down the road in which it stood, or would pass on the other side with faces averted. The dread even affected me, a little child who knew nothing about the history of the workhouses. All my life I have looked on those buildings with a shudder.

Sister Evangelina frequently accompanied me on my visits to Mrs Jenkins, and I had marvelled at the way in which she got the old lady talking. Reminiscing was obviously good therapy for her, as she relived the pain of the past with a loving and sympathetic person.

The Council supplied Sister with the old records of the Board of Guardians of Poplar Workhouse. Mrs Jenkins had been a pauper inmate from 1916 to 1935. “Enough to drive anyone mad,” Sister Evie commented wryly. She had been admitted as a widow with five children, unable to support herself. She was described as an “able-bodied adult”. The records stated that Mrs Jenkins was discharged in 1935, with the gift of a sewing machine, the use of which would enable her to support herself, and twenty-four pounds, which was her accumulated earnings after nineteen years in the workhouse. No further mention was made of the children.

The records were dry and scant. Mrs Jenkins herself filled in the missing details in her conversations with Sister Evie. Little bits of the story came out here and there, relived with a complete lack of emotion or melodrama as though her story were nothing unusual. I felt that she had seen and experienced so much suffering for so long that she had accepted it as inevitable. A happy life seemed unthinkable to her.

She had been born in Millwall, and like most girls had gone to work in a factory at the age of thirteen, and then married a local boy when she was eighteen. They rented two rooms over a tailor’s shop in Commercial Road, and six children were born to them over the next ten years. Then her young husband developed a cough that did not get better. Six months later he was spitting blood. “He jus’ wasted away,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. Three months later he was dead.

Mrs Jenkins was strong and less than thirty years of age at the time. She left the two rooms and took a small back room for herself and her children. She returned to work in the shirt-making factory, working from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Her baby was only three months old, but Rosie - her eldest daughter - was already ten and left school in order to look after the younger children. Extra hand-sewing was taken in, and she often sat half the night sewing by candlelight. Rosie learned to sew too and became a good needlewoman, often sitting up with her mother into the night hours. These silent hours of female labour brought in a little extra money - enough to feed the family - after the rent was paid.

Then catastrophe struck. The machinery of the factory was completely unguarded, and the sleeve of Mrs Jenkins’ dress caught in a wheel, dragging her right arm towards the cutting blades. Her arm was badly injured, she lost a lot of blood, and tendons were severed before the machine was stopped. She was lucky not to lose her arm. She showed us the six inch scar. The lacerations were never stitched because she could not afford to pay a doctor, and the scar, though healed, was wide, deep red, and irregular. Her arm was slightly withered because the tendons had not been sutured. It was surprising that she could use her hand at all.

She looked at the scar without emotion. “This is wha’ done fer us,” she said.

The family moved out of the back room, and found shelter in a basement with no window. It was close to the river’s edge, and at high tide, when the water level rose, moisture seeped through the brickwork and ran down the walls. For this hovel, the landlord demanded one shilling a week, but with the mother not earning, how was this to be found?

She went out begging, but was driven off the streets by the police who saw her as an undesirable vagrant. She pawned her coat, and with the money bought matches, then went out into the streets as a match seller. The profits from her sales brought in a little money, but not enough to pay the rent as well as feed the children.

Bit by bit she pawned everything they had - the furniture, pots, saucepans, the plates and mugs, clothes, linen. Last to go was the bed in which they all slept. She constructed a platform out of orange boxes to raise them off the damp floor, and on this the family slept. Finally the blankets had to go in to be pawned, and mother and children clung to each other for warmth at night.

She asked the Board of Guardians for outdoor relief, but the chairman said she was obviously lazy and workshy, and when she told them of the accident in the factory, and showed them her right arm, she was told not to be impertinent, or it would count against her. The gentlemen debated amongst themselves, and offered to take two of her children off her hands. She refused, and returned to the basement with six hungry mouths to feed.