THE BOTTOM DROPPED OUT OF PIGS 16 page

morality was expected and enforced. But I digress. Sister Evangelina

interested me greatly because of her background: the slums of Reading in the nineteenth century, and the fact that she had raised herself from abject poverty and semi-literacy to become a trained nurse and midwife. It would have been hard enough for a young man, but for a girl to break free from ignorance and poverty and become accepted in a middle-class profession was exceptional. Only a very strong character could have achieved it.

I discovered that the First World War had been her key to freedom. She was sixteen when war broke out, and had been working in the Huntley and

Palmer’s Biscuit Factory in Reading since the age of eleven. In 1914, posters appeared all over the town calling on people to join the war effort. She hated Huntley and Palmer’s and with youthful optimism decided that a munitions factory could only be an improvement. She had to leave home as the factory was seven miles away - too far to walk when working hours were from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Accommodation was provided for the girls and women in dormitories that slept sixty or seventy females on narrow iron bedsteads with horsehair mattresses. The young Evie had never slept in a bed all by herself before, and thought this really must be an example of superior living. A uniform and shoes

were provided for the workers, and as she had only worn rags and no shoes before, this was also a real luxury, even though the shoes hurt her poor young feet. Food from the factory kitchens, though plain and meagre, was better than anything she had ever had, and she lost the pale, pinched, half-starved look. She became, not a beauty, but passably pretty.

At the factory bench, where she stood all day putting nuts into military machinery, a girl talked about her sister who was a nurse, and told stories about the young men who were wounded, diseased and dying. Something stirred in young Evie’s soul, and she knew that she must become a nurse. She found out

where the girl’s sister worked, and applied to the Matron. She was only sixteen, but was accepted as a VAD, which really meant, for a girl of her class, a skivvy in the hospital wards. She didn’t mind. It was the sort of menial work she had been doing all her life, with no promise of anything else. But this time the horizons were broader and clearer. She watched the trained nurses with admiration, and decided that, however long it took, she would be one of them.

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 sign 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 tha 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.

Eventually, after about twenty stones, some of which missed, the window opened, and a man’s voice called out in a thick foreign accent, “You see old woman? I come.”

Bolts were pulled back, and the man stood well behind the door as it opened so that I could not see him. He pointed along the passage to a door at the end, saying: “She live there.”

Victorian tiles flagged the passageway which passed a staircase with a fine carved oak banister. This was still in beautiful condition, although the stairs were crumbling and looked highly dangerous. I was glad that I did not have to walk up them. The house had obviously been part of a fine old Regency terrace once, but was now in the last stages of decay. It had been classed as “unfit for human habitation” twenty years previously, yet people were still living there, hidden away amongst the rats.

No sound came when I rapped on the door, so I turned the handle and walked in. The room had been the back scullery and wash house of the premises.

It was a single storey extension with a stone-flagged floor. A large copper boiler was attached to an outside wall, and next to it was a coke stove with an asbestos flue running up the wall and out of the ceiling through a huge and jagged hole open to the sky. A large wood and iron framed mangle and a stone sink were the only other objects that caught my eye. The room appeared empty and abandoned and smelled powerfully of cats and urine. It was very dark, because the windows were so black with dirt that no light could penetrate. In fact, most of the light in the room came from the hole in the roof.

As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I discerned a few other things:

several saucers lying around on the floor with bits of food and milk in them; a small wooden chair and table with a tin mug and teapot on it; a chamber pot; a wooden cupboard with no door. There was no bed, no sign of a light, nor of gas or electricity.

In the corner furthest away from the hole in the ceiling was a decrepit-looking armchair in which an old woman sat, silent, watchful, her eyes filled with fear. She shrank back in the chair as far as she could go, her old coat pulled tight round her, a woollen scarf over her head and covering half her face. Only her eyes showed, and they penetrated mine as our gaze met.

“Mrs Jenkins, the doctor tells us

you are not well and need home nursing. I am the district nurse. Can I have a look at you, please?”

She pulled her coat closer round her chin and stared at me silently.

“Doctor says your heart’s fluttering a bit. Can I feel your pulse, please?”

I put out my hand to feel her wrist pulse, but she pulled the arm away from me with a terrified intake of breath.

I was nonplussed, and felt a bit helpless. I didn’t want to frighten her, but I had a job to do. I went over to the unlit stove to read the notes by the light coming through the ceiling: there had been evidence of a mild attack of angina pectoris when the patient had fallen in the street outside the house, and an

unnamed resident had carried her back to her own room. The same man had called a doctor and admitted him. The woman had obviously been in pain, but this seemed to pass fairly quickly. The doctor had been unable to examine the patient, due to her violent resistance, but as her pulse was fairly steady, and her breathing had improved rapidly, the doctor had advised a nursing visit twice a day to monitor the situation, and suggested that the Social Services department might improve the woman’s living conditions. Amyl nitrite had been prescribed in the event of another attack. Rest, warmth, and good food were advised.

I tried again to feel Mrs Jenkins’

pulse, with the same result. I enquired if she’d had any more pain, and got no reply. I asked if she was comfortable, and again there was no reply. I realised that I was getting nowhere, and would have to report back to Sister Evangelina, who was in charge of general district nursing.

I was not too keen on reporting my total failure to Sister Evangelina because she still seemed to think me a bit of a fool. She called me ‘Dolly Daydream’, and spoke to me as though I needed to be directed in the most rudimentary points of nursing procedure, even though she knew I had about five years of nurse’s training and experience behind me. This, of course, made me

nervous, and so I dropped or spilled things, and then she called me “butter-fingers”, which made it worse. We did not have to go out together very often, which was a relief, but if I reported, as I would have to, that I could not manage a patient, inevitably she would have to accompany me on the next visit.

Her reaction was predictable. She listened to my report in heavy silence, glancing up at me from time to time from under thick grey eyebrows. When I had finished, she sighed noisily, as though I were the biggest fool ever to carry the black bag.

“This evening I have twenty-one insulin injections, four penicillin, an ear to syringe, bunions to dress, piles to

compress, a cannula to drain, and now I suppose I have to show you how to take a pulse?”

I was stung by the injustice. “I know perfectly well how to take a pulse, but the patient wouldn’t let me, and I couldn’t persuade her.”

“Couldn’t persuade her! Couldn’t persuade her! You young girls can’t do anything. Too much bookwork, that’s your trouble. Sitting in classrooms all day, filling your heads with a lot of cods-wallop, and then you can’t do a simple thing like taking a pulse.”

She gave a contemptuous snort and shook her head, spraying the bead of moisture that balanced on the end of her nose all over her desk and patients’

notes that she was writing up. She drew a large man’s handkerchief from beneath her scapular and wiped up the fluid, which caused the ink to smudge, and so she humphed again, “There now, look what you have made me do.”

The further injustice made my blood boil, and I had to bite my lips to prevent a sharp reply, which would only have made things worse.

“Well then, Miss Can’t-take-a-pulse, I suppose I will have to go with you at 4 p.m. We will make it our first evening visit, after which we can both go our separate ways. We will leave here at 3.30 p.m. sharp, and don’t be a minute late. I won’t be kept hanging around, and I shall want my supper at

seven o’ clock as usual.”

With that, she pushed her chair back noisily, and stomped out of the office, with another pointed “humph” as she passed me.

Half past three came round all too quickly. We pulled the bicycles out of the shed, and the nun’s silence was more eloquent than her grumbling had been. We reached the house without a word, and knocked. Again no reply. I knew what to do, so told Sister about the man on the second floor.

“Well, get hold of him then, don’t stand around talking, chatterbox.”

I ground my teeth and started throwing stones up at the window in a fury. It was surprising I didn’t break the

glass.

The man shouted out, “I come”, and hid behind the door again as we passed. However, he then added “I come no more. You go round back, see? I not answer no more.”

In the dim light of Mrs Jenkins’ room a cat came towards us, mewing. The wind made a curious sound as it hit the hole in the roof. Mrs Jenkins was huddled in her chair, just as I had left her in the morning.

Sister Evangelina called her name. No reply. I was beginning to feel justified - she would see that I had not been exaggerating. Sister walked over to the armchair. She spoke gently, “Come on, mother. This won’t do. Doctor says

there’s something up with your ticker. Don’t you believe a word of it. Your heart is as good as mine, but we’ve got to have a look at you. No one’s going to hurt you.”

The bundle of clothes in the chair didn’t move. Sister leaned forward to feel her pulse. The arm was pulled away. I was delighted. “Let’s see how Sister Know-all copes,” I thought.

“It’s cold in here. Haven’t you got a fire?”

No reply.

“It’s dark, too. What about a light for us?”

No reply.

“When did you first feel bad?” No reply.

“Do you feel a bit better now?” Again, total silence. I was feeling

very smug; Sister Evangelina appeared as incapable of examining the patient as I had been. What would happen next?

What in fact did happen next was so utterly unexpected that, to this day, more than fifty years later, I blush to remember it.

Sister Evangelina muttered, “You’re a tiresome old lady. We’ll see what this does.”

Slowly she leaned over Mrs Jenkins and as she bent down she let out the most enormous fart. It rumbled on and on and just as I thought it had stopped it started all over again, in a higher key. I had never been so shocked

in all my life.

Mrs Jenkins sat upright in her chair. Sister Evangelina called out: “Which way did it go, nurse? Don’t let it get out. It’s over there by the door - catch it. Now it’s by the window - get hold of it, quick.”

A throaty chuckle came from the armchair.

“Cor, that’s better,” said Sister Evangelina happily; “Nothing like a good fart to clear the system. Makes you feel ten years younger, eh, Mother Jenkins?”

The bundle of clothes shook, and the throaty chuckle developed into a real belly laugh. Mrs Jenkins, who had never been heard to speak apart from

obsessive questions about babies, laughed until the tears ran down her face.

“Quick! Under the chair. The cat’s go’ it. Ge’ it off him quick, e’ll be sick.” Sister Evangelina sat down beside her, and the two old ladies (Sister Evie

was no spring chicken) rocked with laughter about farts and bums and turds and stinks and messes, swapping stories, true or false, I couldn’t tell. I was deeply shocked. I knew that Sister Evie could be crude, but I had no idea that she possessed such an extensive and varied repertoire of stories.

I retreated to a corner and watched them. They looked like two old hags from a Bruegel painting, one in rags, one

in a monastic habit, sharing lewd laughter with the happiness of children. I was completely out of the joke, and had time to ponder many things, not least of which was how on earth Sister Evangelina had been able to produce such a spectacular fart at that precise moment. Could she command one at will? I had heard of a performer at the Comedie-Francaise, immortalised by Toulouse-Lautrec, who would entertain the Parisian audiences of the 1880s with a rich variety of sounds emitting from his backside, but I had never heard of, still less encountered, anyone who could actually do it. Was Sister Evangelina gifted, or had she acquired the skill through hours of practice? My mind

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 760