Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950S by Jennifer Worth Page A

It may not have been to Muriel’s liking, but it certainly got my gastric juices going. I was starving, and a delicious lunch awaited me at Nonnatus House. I bade them goodbye, and made for my bicycle. Mrs Jenkins was standing over it, as though she were keeping guard. How am I going to get rid of her? I thought. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to get back to my lunch, but she was hanging on to the saddle. Clearly she was not going to let me go without some information.
     
    “’Ow is she? An’ ve li’l one. ‘Ow’s ve li’l one?” she hissed at me, her eyes unblinking.
     
    There is something about obsessive behaviour that is off-putting. Mrs Jenkins was more than that. She was repellent. About seventy, she was tiny and bent, and her black eyes penetrated me, shattering any pleasant thoughts of lunch. She was toothless and ugly, in my arrogant opinion, and her filthy claw-like hands were creeping down my sleeve, getting unpleasantly close to my wrists. I pulled myself to my full height, which was nearly twice hers, and said in a cold professional voice, “Mrs Smith has been safely delivered of a little boy. Mother and baby are both well. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go.”
     
    “Fank Gawd,” she said, and released my coat sleeve and my bicycle. She said nothing else.
     
    Crazy old thing, I thought crossly as I rode off. She ought not to be allowed out.
     
    It was not until about a year later, when I was a general district nurse, that I learned more about Mrs Jenkins … and learned a little humility.
     

CHUMMY
     
     
     
    The first time I saw Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Browne (“just call me Chummy”), I thought it was a bloke in drag. Six foot two inches tall, with shoulders like a front-row forward and size eleven feet, her parents had spent a fortune trying to make her more feminine, but to no effect.
     
    Chummy and I were new together, and she arrived the morning after the memorable evening when Sister Monica Joan and I had polished off a cake intended for twelve. Cynthia, Trixie and I were leaving the kitchen after breakfast when the front doorbell rang, and this giant in skirts entered. She blinked short-sightedly down at us from behind thick, steel-rimmed glasses, and said, in the plummiest voice imaginable, “Is this Nonnatus House?”
     
    Trixie, who had a waspish tongue, looked out of the door into the street. “Is there anyone there?” she called, and came back into the hallway, bumping into the stranger.
     
    “Oh, sorry, I didn’t notice you,” she said, and made off for the clinical room.
     
    Cynthia stepped forward, and greeted the woman with the same exquisite warmth and friendliness that had chased away my thoughts of bolting the night before. “You must be Camilla.”
     
    “Oh, just call me Chummy.”
     
    “All right then Chummy, come in and we will find Sister Julienne. Have you had breakfast? I’m sure Mrs B. can fix you up with something.”
     
    Chummy picked up her case, took two steps, and tripped over the doormat. “Oh lawks, clumsy me,” she said with a girlish giggle. She bent down to straighten the mat and collided with the hallstand, knocking two coats and three hats on to the floor.
     
    “Frightfully sorry. I’ll soon get them,” but Cynthia had already picked them up, fearing the worst.
     
    “Oh thanks, old bean,” said Chummy, with a “haw-haw”.
     
    Can this be real, or is she putting it on? I thought. But the voice was entirely real, and never changed, nor did the language. It was always “good show”, or “good egg”, or “what-ho”, and, strangely enough, for all her massive size, her voice was soft and sweet. In fact, during the time that I knew her, I realised that everything about Chummy was soft and sweet. Despite her appearance, there was nothing butch about her. She had the nature of a gentle, artless young girl, diffident and shy. She was also pathetically eager to be liked.
     
    The Fortescue-Cholmeley-Brownes were