Read Farewell to the East End Online
Authors: Jennifer Worth
Farewell to the East End (32 page)
‘Did you deliver the baby?’ she enquired, incredulous.
‘S’posin’ I did?’ he said defensively.
‘Nothing. It’s just unusual, that’s all.’
He blew smoke into the air, still not looking at her.
‘It just come. Quick like.’
‘Well, I had better come if a baby has just been born. Your wife and baby will need attention. Do you think she was booked with us? If so, I’ll get the antenatal notes.’
‘Like I says, I dunno.’
Ena decided that looking for notes that might not exist would only be a waste of time. She went quickly to fetch her delivery bag. Many thoughts were racing through her mind: a baby just born would need attention, almost certainly the cord would not have been cut; the third stage of labour would have to be dealt with; perhaps the woman was bleeding. She returned. The man was still standing at the door. He had lit another fag.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Round ve corner.’ He pointed to a near-derelict road where 90 per cent of the houses had been destroyed by the bombing, or had been boarded up as structurally unsafe.
‘I thought no one lived in that road,’ she said.
‘We do, worse luck.’
‘We’d better get to your wife and baby, then. Come on.’
Ena walked quickly down the road. He followed a step or two behind, dragging his feet.
‘Which house?’
‘Over the road. The one with the windows.’
She crossed the road and approached the front door. It was locked.
‘Have you got a key?’
‘Reckon so. Somewhere.’ He fumbled in his pockets, seeming unable to find it.
‘Oh, do hurry. You must have the key. You only left the house a few minutes ago.’
He grunted and continued fumbling. Eventually he produced it and opened the door.
Ena entered a foul-smelling hallway, and for the first time since the man had approached her, it occurred to her that this might be a trap. She felt a sharp stab of fear. Everything about the man was so strange. He had seemed ill at ease, or even shifty, since the beginning of the interview. She stifled a moment of panic when it occurred to her that perhaps the blood around his fingernails was not from the birth of a baby, but from something much more sinister. A derelict house in a bomb-destroyed street was not the sort of place in which a baby would be born. Yet the man had specifically asked for a midwife. If he had had any ulterior motive, he would have been more likely to ask for a nurse. His next words were reassuring. ‘My wife’s upstairs. You’ll have to come up. Mind that broken step. Don’t hurt yourself.’ She controlled her fears and followed the man. He opened a door.
A woman was lying on the bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling. She did not speak, and neither did the man. ‘Where is the baby?’ asked the midwife. No one answered. ‘Where is it?’ she asked a second time. Panic was beginning to take hold of her once more. There was something menacing in the silence of the man and the woman. She looked from one to the other, but they both avoided meeting her eye. ‘Where is the baby?’ she demanded a third time, more emphatically. ‘There,’ said the woman, pointing to the floor.
Ena looked down and saw a chamber pot, overflowing with a gory, bloody mess, and two little white legs hanging over the side. She ran over to the pot. The mess she had seen was the placenta; the baby was head down in the chamber pot, covered by the placenta. Ena grabbed its legs and pulled the baby out. It was a little boy, quite limp and lifeless, suffocated by his own placenta.
Shock, horror and panic made her unable to speak. She was only young, scarcely more than twenty, and had seen nothing like this before. She wrapped the little body in a towel and tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; she tried milking the cord towards the body in a vain attempt to introduce new blood; she tried heart massage. All to no avail. The baby was quite dead.
‘Why did you leave it like that?’ she demanded hysterically.
‘We didn’t know what to do.’
‘But you’ve had other babies? You must surely know that a baby cannot be left head down in a chamber pot.’
‘No one told us what ter do. How was we to know?’
‘Why didn’t you call us earlier?’
‘It was all so quick. There was no time.’
‘Well why didn’t you pick the baby up?’
Neither one answered. The woman continued to stare at the ceiling, while the man blew smoke at the window as he gazed out into the street.
‘I must go and get the senior midwife. I don’t know what to do.’
She left the room and ran downstairs, stumbling and nearly falling. Out in the street she had to lean against the wall for several minutes to control herself. It was only a few hundred yards round the corner, but her steps were unsteady.
The senior midwife called the police, then went to the house. Mr and Mrs Harding repeated their story to the police. The baby’s body was taken for post-mortem examination.
The report stated that a normal baby at full term of gestation had been born. All internal organs – heart, brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, intestines, venous system – were well developed and normal, with full potential to support life. The lungs had expanded at birth, and the baby had taken several breaths, but the lungs were full of blood and amniotic fluid. The conclusion was that the baby had drowned in the fluids inhaled into the lungs.
A coroner’s inquest was held a few weeks later, at which Ena was required to give evidence. She told them everything she knew. Mr and Mrs Harding were questioned. Hilda said that she was booked to go into the Salvation Army Maternity Hospital to have the baby. She said she had felt a few labour pains and had asked Mrs Hatterton opposite to get her husband and to look after her two youngest. Bill came back and was just getting ready to take her to hospital when she felt a bit wet, and wanted to go to the toilet. So she had sat down on the chamber pot, and it all just came away from her.
The senior midwife confirmed that this was perfectly plausible, and that occasionally a multigravid woman could feel little more than slight abdominal discomfort, and a bearing-down sensation, just as Mrs Harding had described, in which case, labour need take no more than about fifteen minutes from the start of contractions to delivery of the baby.
When the coroner asked the Hardings what they did next, both of them repeated their story that they didn’t know what to do and no one was there to tell them. Mr Harding said that he’d thought the best thing would be to go round the corner to get one of the district midwives, which is what he did. By the time they got back, the baby was dead.
The coroner said that he found it very difficult to know what judgement to record. He found it hard to believe the story that the Hardings did not know what to do. On the other hand, he supposed that in the absence of a trained midwife or a doctor, two ignorant and unlettered people might really be at a loss to know how to act, especially if they were in a state of shock at the unexpected and rapid birth of a baby. Mr Harding had taken the course of action that seemed to them to be appropriate – he had gone to call a midwife. But it was too late.
In the event the coroner recorded an open verdict, which meant that the case was not closed, and that, if any further evidence came to light, it could be reopened and re-examined. But no further evidence was forthcoming.
THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER
It was well that Chummy was on first call. Who else would have had the grit, the stamina and the sheer physical strength and courage to do what she did in the Docks that night?
Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Browne came from a long line of ‘Builders of the Empire’. District Commissioners and Colonels were her forebears. All the women seemed to be Lady This, That or the Other, and could not only run a garden party or a county ball for thousands but could also live in torrid isolation, maintaining the Hill Stations for their husbands the District Commissioners, who single-handedly governed areas the size of Wales. Whatever one may say about the British Empire, it certainly bred self reliance and courage in its administrators.
Chummy was typical of her family in this respect. In other ways, though, she was a misfit, because she was gauche, awkward and shy. Roedean and expensive finishing schools had been a failure. Chummy possessed no social graces whatsoever – a fact of which she was quite unaware – and she was always surprised and hurt when her mother let her know that she was an embarrassment to the family. The fact that she was over six feet in height and that she could not seem to control her long limbs did not help. She was always falling over or bumping into things, and after several disasters in public places her parents decided they could not take her anywhere. Many genteel and ladylike occupations were proposed, but after a fair trial, it had to be admitted that she was no good at any of them. ‘Whatever are we to do with Camilla?’ her mother would ask despairingly. ‘She can’t do anything, and no one is going to want to marry her.’
Demoralised and bewildered, Chummy accepted her role as the family failure. But the ways of man and the ways of God are not the same thing. Quite suddenly she found her vocation. Chummy was going to be a missionary. For this purpose she trained as a nurse and was an instant and brilliant success. Then she trained as a midwife, which is how we came to meet at Nonnatus House.
And, as I said, it was well that Chummy was on first call that night.
The telephone rang at 11.30 p.m., getting her out of bed.
‘Port-of-London-West-India-Docks-nightwatchman speaking. We needs a nurse, or a doctor.’
‘What’s the matter? An accident at the docks?’ asked Chummy.
‘No. Woman ill, or somefink.’
‘A woman? Are you sure?’
‘’Course I’m sure. Think I can’t tell the difference?’
‘No, no. I didn’t mean that. No offence, old chap. But women are not allowed in the Docks.’
‘Well, this one’s ’ere all right. Captain’s wife or somefink, the mate says. Least, that’s what I think he’s tryin’ ’a say, because he can’t speak no English. Just rolls his eyes and groans and rubs ‘is tummy – vat’s why I called ve midwives.’
‘I’ll come. Where do I go to?’
‘Main gate. West India.’
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
Chummy dressed in haste and went out into the night. It was windy. Not cold or raining, but a strong head wind made cycling slow, and it took Chummy nearly twenty minutes to reach West India Dock. The nightwatchman was sitting by the burning brazier next to the gate, which he unlocked.
‘You bin a long time. Bloody wind, I s’ppose. Don’t like ve wind.’
Chummy had never been inside the Dock gates before, and the place seemed eerie and alien in the darkness. The stretch of water in the basin looked vast, as she gazed down it, and the hulks of huge cargo boats loomed over the oily water. On the skyline numerous cranes criss-crossed each other. Some of the boats were dimly lit, but others were completely dark. The night watchman’s coke fire glowed on the quay. The wind caused the water to splash and the rigging to tremble, making hollow moaning sounds.
‘Swedish timber carrier on South Quay. Woman got a belly ache or somefink. Shouldn’t be there, I told the mate, but I reckons as ’ow he never understood.’
Reluctantly he hauled himself up, left his comfortable little hut and tipped some more coke onto the fire.
‘This way,’ he sighed mournfully. ‘Bloody women. Shouldn’t be ’ere, I says. I’ve go’ enough ’a do, wivout all vis.’
They made their way to the South Quay.
‘’ere we are. The
Katrina
. Yer rope ladder’s there and yer guiders.’
Katrina
. Yer rope ladder’s there and yer guiders.’
He grabbed a rope, pulled it and shouted. A faint sound was heard about forty feet up. The watchman was thinking of his fire, and his cosy hut, and the sausages and fried bread he was going to cook. ‘Bloody women,’ he muttered, ‘no offence to you, nurse.’
A head appeared over the side of the boat.
‘Ya?’
‘The nurse.’
‘Bra. Valkommen. Tack.’
‘Yer’ll ’ave to climb ve rope-ladder. It’s leeward o’ the wind, an’ won’t rock too much. You can climb this, can’t yer?’
Most women would have taken one look at the bulk of the ship towering above, at the slender rope ladder swinging dizzily in the wind, and said ‘No’. But not Chummy.
‘Right,’ she said, ‘Jolly-ho. But I think they will have to haul my bag up separately. I’m not sure I could carry it, and climb the ladder one handed.’
The watchman groaned, but tied the handle of the bag to a rope and shouted to the men above to start hauling. Somehow they understood him, and Chummy watched it swinging upwards.
‘Now for it,’ she said, taking hold of the rope ladder.
‘Ever done this afore?’
‘We had a tree house when we were children, so I suppose you could say I’ve had some practice.’
‘The ’ardest part is when you jumps off, because you’re goin’ to ’it the side of ve boat. But just hold steady and yer’ll be all right. Ven you can start climbing.’
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