The Midwife Trilogy (19 page)

The narrow hallway was almost, but not quite, impassable. Two ladders and three large coach prams lined the wall. In one, a baby of about seven or eight months slept serenely. The second was full of what looked like washing. The third contained coal. Prams were very large in those days, with huge wheels and high protective sides and I had to turn sideways to squeeze myself past. Washing flapped overhead, and I pushed it aside. The stairway to the first floor was straight ahead and was also festooned with washing. The sickly smell of soap, dank washing, baby’s excreta, milk, all combined with cooking smells was nauseating to me. The sooner I get out of this place the better, I thought.

The noise was coming from the basement, yet I could see no steps down. I entered the first room off the hallway. This was obviously what my grandmother would have called “the best parlour”, filled with her best furniture, knick-knacks, china, pictures, lace, and, of course, the piano. It was only used on Sundays and on special occasions.

But if
this
fine room had ever been anyone’s best parlour the proud housewife would have wept to see it. About half a dozen washing-lines were attached to the picture rail just below the cornices of a beautifully plastered ceiling. Washing hung from each of them. Light filtered through a single faded curtain that appeared to be nailed across the window, screening this front room from the street. It was obviously impossible to draw this curtain back. The wooden floor was covered with what looked like junk. Broken radios, prams, furniture, toys, a pile of logs, a sack of coal, the remains of a motorcycle, and what seemed to be engineering tools, engine oil and petrol. Apart from all this, there were scores of tins of household paints on a bench, brushes, rollers, cloths, pots of spirit, bottles of thinners, rolls of wallpaper, pots of dried out glue, and another ladder. The curtain was pinned up with a safety pin by about eighteen inches at one corner, allowing sufficient light to reveal a new Singer sewing machine on a long table. Dressmaking patterns, pins, scissors, and cotton were scattered all over the table, and also, quite unbelievably, there was some very fine, expensive silk material. Next to the table stood a dressmaker’s model. Also hard to believe, and the only thing that would have resembled my grandmother’s front parlour, was a piano that stood against one of the walls. The lid was open, revealing filthy yellow keys, with several of the ivories broken off, but my eyes were riveted by the maker’s name - Steinway. I couldn’t believe it - a Steinway in a room like this, in a house like this! I wanted to rush over and try it, but I was looking for a way down to the basement, where the noise was coming from. I closed the door, and tried the second room off the hallway.

This room revealed a doorway that led down to the basement. I descended the wooden stairs, making as much clatter and noise as I could, as no one knew I was there and I didn’t want to alarm anyone. I called out “Hello” loudly. No reply. “Anyone there?” I called, fatuously. There was obviously someone there. Still no reply. The door was ajar at the bottom, and there was nothing for it but to push it open and walk in.

Immediately there was a dead silence and I was conscious of about a dozen pairs of eyes looking at me. Most of them were the wide innocent eyes of children but amidst them were the coal-black eyes of a handsome woman with black hair hanging in heavy waves past her shoulders. Her skin was beautiful - pale, but slightly tawny. Her shapely arms were wet from the washing tub, and soap clung to her fingers. Although obviously engaged in the endless household chore of washing, she did not look slovenly. Her figure was large, but not over-large. Her breasts were well supported, and her hips were large, but not flabby. A flowered apron covered her plain dress, and the crimson band which held back the dark hair accentuated the exquisite contrast between skin and hair. She was tall, and the poise of her shapely head on a slender neck spoke eloquently of the proud beauty of a Spanish Contessa, with generations of aristocracy behind her.

She did not say a word. Neither did the children. I felt uncomfortable, and started babbling on about being the district midwife, and getting no reply when I knocked, and wanting to see the rooms for a home confinement. She did not reply. So I repeated myself. Still no reply. She just gazed at me with calm composure. I began to wonder if she was deaf. Then two or three of the children began talking to her, all of them at once, in rapid Spanish. An exquisite smile spread across her face. She stepped towards me and said, “
Si. Bebe
.” I asked if I might look at the bedroom. No reply. I looked towards one of the children who had spoken, a girl of about fifteen. She spoke to her mother in Spanish, who said, with gracious courtesy and a slight inclination of her sculptured head, “
Si
.”

It was clear that Mrs Conchita Warren spoke no English. In all the time that I knew her the only words that I heard her speak, apart from dialogue with the children, were “
si
” and “
bebe
”.

The impression this woman made upon me was extraordinary. Even in the 1950s that basement would have been described as squalid. It contained, haphazardly, a stone sink, washing, a boiler bubbling away, a mangle, clothes and nappies hanging all over the place, a large table covered with pots and plates and bits of food, a gas stove covered with dirty saucepans and frying pans, and a mixture of unpleasant smells. Yet this proud and beautiful woman was completely in control and commanded respect.

The mother spoke to the girl, who showed me upstairs to the first floor. The front bedroom was perfectly adequate: a large double bed. I felt it - no more sagging than any other. It would do. There were three cots in the room, two wooden dropsided cots, a small crib, two very large chests of drawers and a small wardrobe. The lighting was electric. The floor covering was lino. The girl said, “Mum’s got it all ready here,” and pulled open a drawer full of snowy white baby clothes. I asked to see the lavatory. There was more than that. There was a bathroom - excellent! That was all I needed to see.

As we left the main bedroom I peered briefly into the room opposite, the door of which was open. Three double beds appeared to be crammed into it, but there was no other furniture at all.

We descended two flights to the kitchen, our feet clattering on the wooden stairs. I thanked Mrs Warren and said that everything was most satisfactory. She smiled. Her daughter spoke to her and she said: “
Sí
.” I needed to examine the woman and take an obstetric history, but obviously I could not do that if we could not understand each other, and I did not feel that I could ask one of the children to interpret. I therefore resolved to make a repeat visit when her husband would be at home. I asked my little guide when this would be, and she told me “in the evening”. I asked her to tell her mother I would come back after six o’ clock, and left.

I had several other visits that morning, but my mind continually drifted back to Mrs Warren. She was so unusual. Most of our patients were Londoners who had been born in the area, as had their parents and grandparents before them. Foreigners were rare, especially women. All the local women lived a very communal life, endlessly engaged in each other’s business. But if Mrs Warren spoke no English, she could not be part of that sorority.

Another thing that intrigued me was her quiet dignity. Most of the women I met in the East End were a bit raucous. Also there was her Latin beauty. Mediterranean women age early, especially after childbirth, and by custom used to wear black from head to foot. Yet this woman was wearing pretty colours, and did not look a day over forty. Perhaps it is the intense sun that makes southern skins age, and the damp northern climate had preserved her skin. I wanted to find out more about her, and intended asking some questions of the Sisters at lunch time. I also wanted to tease Sister Julienne about writing the “twenty-fourth pregnancy”, when she really meant the fourteenth.

Lunch at Nonnatus House was the main meal of the day, and a communal meal for the Sisters and lay staff alike. The food was plain, but good. I always looked forward to it because I was always hungry. Twelve to fifteen of us sat down each day at the table. After grace was said I introduced the subject of Mrs Conchita Warren.

She was well known by the Sisters, although not a lot of contact had ever been made because of her lack of English. Apparently she had lived in the East End for most of her life. How was it, then, that she didn’t speak the language? The Sisters did not know. It was suggested that perhaps she had no need, or no inclination to learn the language, or perhaps she just wasn’t very bright. This last suggestion was a possibility, as I had noticed before that certain people can completely disguise a basic lack of intelligence simply by saying nothing. My mind flitted to the Archdeacon’s daughter in Trollope, who had the whole of Barchester society and London at her feet, praising her beauty and bewitching mind, when in fact she was profoundly stupid. She achieved this enviable reputation by sitting around on gilded chairs, looking beautiful and saying not one word.

“How did she come to be in London at all?” I asked. The Sisters knew the answer to this one. Apparently Mr Warren was an East Ender, born into the life of the docks, and destined for the work of his father and uncles. But when he was a young man, something had made him a rebel. He was not going to be cast into any mould. He cut loose, and went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. It is doubtful if he had the faintest idea of what he was doing, as foreign affairs rarely penetrated the consciousness of working people in the 1930s. Political idealism could have played no part in it and whether he fought for the Republicans or the Royalists would have been immaterial. All he wanted was youthful adventure, and a war in a remote and romantic country was just the stuff.

He was lucky to survive. But survive he did, and came home to London with a beautiful Spanish peasant girl of about eleven or twelve. He returned to his mother’s house with the girl, and they obviously lived together. What his relatives or neighbours thought of this shocking occurrence can only be conjectured, but his mother stuck by him, and he was not one to be intimidated by a pack of gossiping neighbours. Anyway, they could hardly send the girl back, because he had forgotten where she came from and she didn’t seem to know. Quite apart from this, he loved her.

When it was possible, he married her. This was not easy, because she had no birth certificate and was not sure of her surname, date of birth, or parentage. However, as she had had three or four babies by then and looked about sixteen, and as she was presumably Roman Catholic, a local priest was persuaded to solemnise the already fecund relationship.

I was fascinated. This was the stuff of high romance. A peasant girl! She certainly didn’t look like a peasant. She looked like a princess of the Spanish court, whom the Republicans had dispossessed. Had the brave Englishman rescued her and carried her off? What a story! Everything about it was unusual, and I looked forward to meeting Mr Warren that evening.

Then I remembered the children. I said to Sister Julienne, saucily, “I’ve caught you out in a mistake at last. You put in the day book the twenty-fourth pregnancy when you must have meant the fourteenth.”

Sister Julienne’s eyes twinkled. ” Oh no,” she said, “that was no mistake. Conchita Warren really has had twenty-three babies, and is expecting her twenty-fourth.”

I was stunned. The whole story was so preposterous that no one could possibly have made it up.

The door was open when I returned to their home so I stepped in. The house was literally teeming with young people and children. I had seen only very young children and a girl in the morning. Now all the schoolchildren were home, as well as several older teenagers who had presumably returned from work. It seemed like a party, they all looked so happy. Older children were carrying tiny ones around, some of them were playing out in the street, some of them were doing what might have been homework. There was absolutely no discord among them and in all the contact I had with this family no fighting or nasty temper was ever in evidence.

I squeezed past the ladder and the prams in the hallway, and was directed down to the basement kitchen. Len Warren was sitting on a wooden chair by the table, comfortably smoking a roll-up. A baby was on his knee, another crawled along the table, and he had to keep pulling him back by his pants to prevent him falling off. A couple of toddlers sat on his foot and he was jigging them up and down singing, “Horsey, horsey don’t you stop”. They were screaming with laughter, and so was the father. Laughter lines creased his eyes and nose. He was older than his wife, about fifty-ish, not at all good-looking in the conventional sense, but so frank and open, so downright pleasant-looking, that it did your heart good to see him.

We grinned at each other, and I told him that I wanted to examine his wife and take some notes.

“That’s OK. Con’s doing the supper, but I spek she can leave it to Win.”

Conchita was calm and radiant, standing by the boiler, which in the morning had been doing the washing and was now cooking an enormous quantity of pasta. Copper boilers were common in those days. They were tubs, large enough to contain about twenty gallons, standing on legs, with a gas jet underneath. A tap at the front was the means of emptying them. They were intended for washing, and this was the first time I had seen one used for cooking, but I surmised that this would be the only way of catering for such a huge family. It was sensible and practical, if unusual.

“Here, Win, you tek over the supper, will you, love? Nurse wants a look at yer mum. Tim, come ’ere, lad, you tek the baby, an’ keep them two away from the boiler. We don’t want no accidents in vis ’ouse, do we now? An’ Doris, love, you lends a hand to our Win. I’ll tek yer mum and the nurse upstairs.”

The girls spoke rapidly to their mother in Spanish, and Conchita came towards me, smiling.

We went upstairs, Len chatting all the time to different children, “Now then Cyril, now then. Let’s get that lorry off them stairs, shall we, there’s a good lad. We don’t want the nurse to break ’er neck, do we nah?