Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950S

quietly for a long time, kissing him, and rubbing her face against his. She held his hand, and flexed his arm, and said, “His fingernails is white, yer know.”
     
    Was this a cry of hope? Then she continued, “Wha’ am I goin’ to do? Wha’ can I do, nurse?”
     
    She sobbed in broken-hearted anguish, and clung to the baby with all the fervour and passion of a mother’s love. She couldn’t speak; she could only groan, and rock him in her arms.
     
    I couldn’t reply to her question. What could I say?
     
    I finished what I was doing, and checked the placenta, which was intact. Then I said, “I would like to bath the baby, and weigh him, is that all right?”
     
    She gave the baby to me quietly, and watched every move as I bathed him, as though she was afraid that I might take him away. I think she knew in her heart what was going to happen.
     
    I weighed and measured him. He was a big baby: 9lb 4oz, twenty two inches long, and perfect in every way. He certainly was beautiful; his skin was a dusky tawny colour, fine, dark curly hair already showed on his head. The slightly depressed bridge of his nose, and splayed nostrils accentuated his high, broad forehead. His skin was smooth and unwrinkled.
     
    I gave him back to his mother, and said, “He is the loveliest baby I have ever seen in my life, Doris. You can be proud of him.”
     
    She looked at me with bleak despair. “Wha’ am I goin’ to do?”
     
    “I don’t know. I really don’t. Your husband will be coming home from work this evening, thinking he is the father of a new baby. He will ask to see him, and you cannot hide him. I don’t think you should be alone when he comes home. Can your mother come round to be with you?”
     
    “No. That would make fings worse. He hates my mum. Can you be ’ere wiv me, nurse? You’re right. I’m frightened of Cyril seeing ’im.”
     
    And she clutched the baby to her, in a desperate gesture of protection.
     
    “I’m not sure that I would be the right person”, I replied. “I’m a midwife. Perhaps you need a social worker to be here. I definitely think you need someone for your own protection, and that of the baby.”
     
    I promised to look into it, and left.
     
    I imagine she had one happy afternoon with her baby, dozing, cuddling, kissing him, forging with him that unbreakable bond that is a mother’s love for her baby, which is every baby’s birthright. Perhaps she knew what was coming, and tried to cram a lifetime of love into a few short hours. Perhaps she crooned to him the West Indian spirituals that she had learned around the camp fire.
     
    I reported to Sister Julienne, and expressed my fears. She said, “You are right that someone must be there when her husband sees the baby. However, I think it would be better for a man to be present. All the social workers in this area are women. I will speak to the Rector.”
     
    In the event, the Rector sent a young curate to be at the house from five o’clock onwards. He did not go himself, because he thought it would look too portentous if he arrived at the house.
     
    The curate reported that events had transpired very much as I had expected. Cyril took one silent, horrified look at the baby, and made a great swipe at his wife with his fist. The blow was deflected by the curate. Then he made to grab the baby and hurl it against the wall, and was only prevented from doing so by the curate. He said to his wife, “If this bastard stays in the ’ouse one single night, I’ll kill ’im, an’ you an’ all.”
     
    The savage gleam in his eye showed that he meant it. “You jest wait, yer bitch.”
     
    An hour later the curate left carrying the baby in a small wicker basket, with a bundle of baby clothes in a paper bag. He brought the baby to Nonnatus House, and we cared for him overnight. He was received into a children’s home the next morning. His mother never saw him again.
     

OF MIXED DESCENT III
     
     
     
    Ted was fifty-eight when his wife died. She developed cancer and he nursed her tenderly for eighteen months. He gave up his job in order to do so, and they lived on his savings during her illness. They had a happy marriage, and were very close. No children had been born to them, and they had depended entirely on each other for companionship, neither of them being particularly extrovert or sociable. After her death, he was very lonely. He had few real friends, and his mates at work had largely forgotten him since his