The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (20 page)

“Me mam’s a long way off in Ireland.’

“Well, your dad then.’

“Me dad’s dead.’

“You poor little thing. I suppose you are living with an auntie in London?’

“He stroked my cheek again when he said ‘you poor little thing’, and I thought I would melt with happiness. So I snuggled up in his arms, and told him the whole story - but I didn’t tell him about me mam’s man and what he’d done to me, because I was ashamed, and didn’t want him to think badly of me.”

“He didn’t say anything. For a long while he just stroked my cheek and my hair. Then he said: ‘Poor little Mary. What are we going to do with you? I can’t leave you here by the Cuts all night. I feel responsible for you now. I think you had better come back with me to my uncle’s place. It’s a nice café. My uncle is very kind. We can have a good meal and then we can plan your future.’”

 

Pre-war Stepney, just east of the City, with Commercial Road to the north, the Tower and Royal Mint to the West, Wapping and the Docks to the South, and Poplar to the east, was the home of thousands of respectable, hard-working, but often poor East End families. Much of the area was filled with crowded tenements, narrow unlit alleyways and lanes and old multi-occupant houses. Often the old houses had only one tap, and one lavatory in the yard, to serve between eight and a dozen families, and sometimes a whole family of ten or more might occupy one or two rooms. The people had lived like this for generations, and were still doing so in the 1950s.

This was their inheritance and their accepted lifestyle, but after the war, things changed dramatically, for the worse. The area was scheduled for demolition, which did not actually take place for another twenty years. In the meantime, the area became a breeding ground for vice of every description. The condemned houses, which were privately owned, could not be sold on the open market to responsible landlords, so they were bought up by unscrupulous profiteers of all nationalities, who let out single, derelict, rooms for fantastically low rents. The shops were bought up in the same way and turned into all night cafés, with their ‘street waitresses’. They were, in fact, brothels, making life hell for the decent people who had to live in the area, and bring their children up in the midst of it all.

Overcrowding had always been part of the East Ender’s life, but the war made it far worse. Many homes had been destroyed by the bombing and not replaced, so people lived anywhere they could find. On top of this, in the 1950s, thousands of commonwealth immigrants poured into the country with no provision made for where they were going to live. It was not uncommon to see groups of ten or more West Indians, say, going from door to door, begging for a room to let. If they did find one, in no time at all it would be filled with twenty to twenty-five people, all living together.

This sort of thing the East Enders had seen before, and could absorb. But when it came to the blatant widespread use of their streets, their alleys and closes, their shops and houses, as brothels, it was a very different matter. Life became sheer hell, and women were terrified to go out of doors, or to let their children out. The tough, resilient East Enders, who had lived through two world wars, lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s, survived the Blitz of the 1940s, and come up smiling, were to be crushed by the vice and prostitution that descended in their midst in the 1950s and ’60s.

Try to imagine, if you can, living in a derelict building, renting two rooms on the second floor, with six children to bring up. And then try to imagine that there is a new landlord, and through threats, intimidation, fear, or genuine rehousing, one by one, all the families you have known since childhood have moved out. All the rooms of the house in which you live have been divided up and filled with prostitutes, as many as four or five to each room. The general store, which used to be the ground floor of the building, has been turned into an all-night café with noise and loud music, parties, swearing, fights, going on all night. The trade of prostitution goes on all night and all day, with men tramping up and down the stairs, and hanging around on the stairways or landings, waiting their turn. Imagine it, if you can, and imagine the poor woman who has to take her toddlers out shopping, or get the children off to school, or go down to the basement alone to get a couple of buckets of water with which to do her washing.

Many such families were on the council waiting list for rehousing for as much as ten years, and the biggest families had the least chance of getting other accommodation because the council (under the Housing Act) was not allowed to put a family of ten into a four-room flat, even though the two room conditions under which they were living had been condemned for human habitation.

Into this environment came Father Joe Williamson, who was appointed Vicar of St Paul’s in Dock Street in the 1950s. He devoted the rest of his life, his considerable energies, his powerful mind and above all his Godliness, to cleaning up the area and helping the East End families who had to live there. Later, he began his work of helping and protecting the young prostitutes, whom he loved and pitied with all his heart. It was he who opened the doors of Church House, Wellclose Square, as a home for prostitutes, and this was the place Mary went the day after I had picked her up at the bus stop. I visited her there several times, and it was during these visits that she told me her story.

“Zakir put his coat around my shoulders, because it was getting chilly, and he carried my bag. He put his arm round me, and led me through the crowds of men leaving the docks. He escorted me over the road like a real gentleman, and I can tell you I felt like the greatest lady in London by the side of such a handsome young man.”

He took her down a side street off Commercial Road, which led into other side streets, each one narrower and dirtier than the last. Many windows were boarded up, others broken, others so dirty that it would have been impossible to see through them. There were very few people around, and no children played in the streets. She looked up the height of the black buildings. Pigeons flew from ledge to ledge. A few of the windows looked as if someone had tried to clean them, and had curtains. One or two even had washing hanging out on a little balcony. It looked as though the sun never penetrated these narrow streets and alleys. Filth and litter were everywhere; in the corners, the gutters, piled up against railings, blocking doorways, half filling the little alleys. Zakir carefully led Mary through all this dirt, telling her to be careful, or to step over this or that. The few other people they met were all men, and he protectively drew her closer to him as they passed. One or two of them he obviously knew, and they spoke to each other in a foreign language.

Mary said, “I thought he must be so clever and educated to speak a foreign language. He must have been to a very expensive school to have learned it, I thought.”

They came to a wider, longer street, which was Cable Street and Zakir said to her, “My uncle’s café is just up there. It’s the best and the busiest one in the street. We can have a meal together, just you and me. Won’t that be fun? My uncle also owns the whole building and he lets out rooms, so I’m sure he would find one for you. That way you won’t have to sleep by the Cuts any more. Perhaps he could find a job for you in the café, washing up, or peeling the vegetables. Or he could put you in charge of the coffee machine. Would you like to work the coffee machine?”

Mary was enchanted. Working the coffee machine in a busy London café was about the height of her dreams. She clung to Zakir in gratitude and adoration, and he squeezed her hand.

“Everything’s going to be all right for you from now on,” he said. “I’ve got that feeling.”

Mary was too overcome to speak. She loved him with all her heart. They entered the café. It was dark inside because the windows were so filthy, and the net curtains that hung from halfway down were nearly black with filth. A few men sat at formica tables, smoking and drinking. One or two of them sat with a woman, and a group of women and girls sat together at a bigger table smoking. No one spoke. The silence in the place was quite eerie, and somehow threatening. Everyone looked up as Zakir and Mary walked in, but still no one spoke. Mary must have contrasted sharply with the other girls and women in the café, who all seemed pale. Some of them looked sullen, some were scowling, and all looked haggard. By contrast, Mary’s eyes were shining with expectation. Her skin was glowing with the fresh air, first from the boat trip, then from sleeping by the Cuts for four nights. Above all, the soft, sensuous glow of love filled her, irradiated her whole being.

Zakir told her to sit down while he went to speak with his uncle. He took her string bag with him. She sat at a table by the window. Several of the people in the café stared at her, but did not speak to her. She didn’t mind, she smiled quietly to herself; she didn’t really want to talk to anyone, now that she had Zakir. A rough-looking man came over and sat opposite her at the table, but she turned her head away haughtily. The man got up and left. She heard some sniggering from the girls in the corner, so she turned to them and smiled, but no one smiled back.

After about ten minutes Zakir came back. He said, “I have spoken to my uncle. He is a good man, and he will look after you. We will have a meal together later. It is only seven o’clock now. The fun starts at about nine o’clock. You will enjoy the evening. This café is famous for its entertainment, and for its food: my uncle employs the best chef in London. You can have whatever you want. My uncle is a very generous man, and he says you can choose whatever you fancy from the menu and the wine list. He only says this because you are a special friend of mine, and I am his favourite nephew. I am the meat buyer, and I have to travel a lot to find the best. A good café must have good meat, and I am the best meat buyer in London.”

Certainly the meat in Mary’s dinner was very good. She chose meat pie and beans and chips. Zakir had the same, because there was nothing else on the menu that evening. But to Mary, who had been brought up in the poverty of rural Ireland, mainly on potatoes and swede, and then the destitution of Dublin, the meat pie was the finest thing she had ever tasted, and she sighed with contentment.

They sat in the corner by the window. From his seat Zakir could see the whole of the café and his eyes roamed around it continuously, even when he was talking to Mary. From her seat, she could see about half the café, but she didn’t look around, nor did she want to. She had eyes only for Zakir.

He said, “Now let us choose our wine. You must always be careful with the wine, because a good wine is essential to a good dinner. I think we will have Chateau Marseilles 1948. It is an excellent wine, full bodied, yet not too heavy, with a tantalising piquancy that lingers on the palate and suggests the warmth and brilliance of the grape. I am an expert in wines.”

Mary was impressed, in fact overwhelmed by his polish and urbanity. She had never tasted wine before, and did not like it. She had expected something delicious from the dark-red liquid in her tumbler, but thought it was bitter and sour. However, as Zakir was drinking his with delight, murmuring things like “an excellent vintage, drink up, you won’t find anything better than this in all of London” or “ah, what a bouquet - quite exquisite - I assure you this is a rare treat”, and as she did not want to hurt his feelings by saying she didn’t really like it, she swallowed the whole tumbler full in one gulp, and said, “Delicious.”

He refilled her glass. All the while his eyes were roving around the café. When he spoke to Mary he smiled, but as he looked around the café neither his eyes nor his mouth smiled. Mary could not see the table where the girls and women were sitting, but they were directly opposite Zakir. Frequently he stared over towards them with cold unblinking eyes, nodded slightly, and moved his head momentarily in another direction, then back again towards the table. Each time, Mary could hear the scrape of a chair as one of the girls got up. About half a dozen times during the meal he got up and went over to the table. Mary followed him with her eyes, not because she was suspicious, but because she just couldn’t take her eyes off him. She noted with satisfaction that he did not seem to like the girls very much, because he never smiled at them, but seemed to be talking with his teeth closed and his eyes fixed and hard. Once she saw him clench his fist, and push it up against a girl’s face in a menacing fashion. The girl got up and went out.

Mary thought, “He likes me the best. He doesn’t like those girls. They look a nasty bunch anyway. But I am his special friend,” and a warm glow flooded over her.

Each time Zakir returned, he showered Mary with smiles, his beautiful white teeth flashing and his dark eyes gleaming.

“Drink up,” he said. “You can’t have too much of this excellent wine. Would you like some fruit or some gateau? My uncle says you can have anything you want. Soon the entertainment will begin. It is the best in London. The night clubs of London, Paris and New York are famous all over the world, and this one is the best in London.”

Mary drank up, and ate a piece of sticky, sweet cake which Zakir said was Black Forest gateau with morello cherries marinated in chartreuse. Although Mary could not find the cherries it tasted delicious, but unfortunately the wine now tasted even worse than before and the sourness made her tongue feel all furry and her lips and mouth rough.

She was vaguely aware, in a hazy sort of way, that the café was filling up. Men were coming in continuously. Zakir said, “This is our busy time. You will enjoy the entertainment, won’t you?”

Mary smiled and nodded, anxious to please. In reality her eyes were hurting, because the air was getting more and more smoky, and her head was beginning to ache. She felt deeply tired after the meal, and would rather have gone to sleep, but she thought that she must stay awake to enjoy the entertainment that Zakir had so kindly brought her to see. She drank some more wine, and tried to keep her eyes open. She was not aware that shutters had been put up at the windows, the doors locked, and the lights dimmed.

Quite suddenly the most deafening noise shattered her fuddled senses. She nearly fell off her chair in fright, and had to grip the edge of the table to keep herself upright. It was louder than anything she had ever heard in her life, louder even than the dock yard siren that had frightened her in Commercial Road. And it went on and on. It was a jukebox, and the noise was rhythm music.

Zakir shouted: “The entertainment. Turn your chair and watch. It is the best in London.”

All the men in the room had turned their chairs, and were silently facing a table in the centre.

A girl leapt up on to the table and started dancing. The table was only about three foot wide, so she could not really dance for fear of falling off, but she moved her body, her hips, her shoulders, her arms and neck in rhythm with the music. Her hair flew about her. The men cheered. Then she threw off a shawl that was round her shoulders. The men cheered again and scrambled to get it. Slowly, suggestively, she undid the buttons of her blouse and threw it off, revealing a crimson bra. She undid the band which kept her skirt on, and it dropped to her feet. Beneath it, she wore only a crimson string that ran round her waist and between her legs. Her bottom was enormous. She turned to face the wall, shaking her bottom and thighs then bent over with her legs apart.