The Midwife Trilogy Read Free Page A

delivery bag on to the bicycle, and push it out into the deserted street.
    Round the corner, Leyland Street, across the East India Dock Road and then on to the Isle of Dogs. The rain has woken me up and the steady pedalling calms my temper. Why did I ever go into nursing? My thoughts flit back five or six years. Certainly there had been no feeling of vocation, none of the burning desire to heal the sick that nurses are supposed to feel. What was it then? A broken heart certainly, the need to get away, a challenge, the sexy uniform with the cuffs and ruffs, the pinched-in waists and pert little caps. Were they reasons though? I can’t tell. As for the sexy uniform, that’s a laugh, I think as I pedal through the rain in my navy gabardine, with the cap pulled down well over my head. Sexy, indeed.
    Over the first swing bridge that closes off the dry docks. All day they teem with noise and life, as the great vessels are loaded and unloaded. Thousands of men: dockers, stevedores, drivers, pilots, sailors, fitters, crane drivers, all toiling ceaselessly. Now the docks are silent, the only sound is the movement of water. The darkness is intense.
    Past the tenements where countless thousands sleep, probably four or five to a bed, in their little two-room flats. Two rooms for a family of ten or twelve children. How do they manage it?
    I cycle on, intent on getting to my patient. A couple of policemen wave and call out their greetings; the human contact raises my spirits no end. Nurses and policemen always have a rapport, especially in the East End. It’s interesting, I reflect, that they always go around in pairs for mutual protection. You never see a policeman alone. Yet we nurses and midwives are always alone, on foot or bicycle. We would never be touched. So deep is the respect, even reverence, of the roughest, toughest docker for the district midwives that we can go anywhere alone, day or night, without fear.
    The dark unlit road lies before me. The road around the Isle is continuous, but narrow streets lead off it, criss-crossing each other, each containing thousands of terraced houses. The road has a romantic appeal because the sound of the moving river is always present.
    Soon I turn off the West Ferry Road into the side streets. I can see my patient’s house at once - the only house with a light on.
    It seems there is a deputation of women waiting inside to greet me. The patient’s mother, her grandmother (or were they two grandmothers?), two or three aunts, sisters, best friends, a neighbour. Well thank God Mrs Jenkins isn’t here this time, I think.
    Lurking somewhere in the background of this powerful sisterhood is a solitary male, the origin of all the commotion. I always feel sorry for the men in this situation. They seemed so marginalised.
    The noise and the chatter of the women engulfs me like a blanket.
    “Hello luvvy, how’s yerself? You got ’ere nice an’ quick, ven.”
    “Let’s ’ave yer coat and yer ’at.”
    “Nasty night. Come on in an’ get warm, ven.”
    “How about a nice cup o’ tea? That’ll warm the cockles, eh, luvvy?”
    “She’s upstairs, where you left ’er. Pains about every five minutes. She’s been asleep since you left, just afore midnight. Then she woke up, about two-ish, pains gettin’ worse, an’ faster, so we reckons as ’ow we ought ’a call the midwife, eh, Mum?”
    Mum agrees, and bustles forth authoritatively.
    “We got the water hot, an’ a load o’ nice clean towels, an’ got the fire goin’, so it’s all nice an’ warm for the new baby.”
    I have never been able to talk much, and in this situation I don’t need to. I give them my coat and hat, but decline their tea, as experience has taught me that, in general, Poplar tea is revolting: strong enough to creosote a fence, stewed for hours, and laced with sticky sweet condensed milk.
    I am glad that I shaved Muriel earlier in the day when the light was good enough to do it without risk of cutting her. I