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

into Ted’s arms with the cry, “Daddy.”
     
    “Lets go down the docks today, son,” he would say, kissing him. “There’s a big German vessel jes’ come in vis mornin’ wiv three funnels. Yer don’ see ’em very often. An’ yer mum will ’ave tea ready when we gits back.”
     
    Yet still he didn’t seem to notice.
     
    Of course there were whisperings and gossip amongst neighbours and acquaintances, but none of them actually said anything to Ted. The more unkind would snigger and say, “There’s no fool like an old fool.” And the rest would laugh and agree, “Yer can say tha’ again”.
     
     
    I have a different theory.
     
    In the Russian Orthodox Church there is the concept of the Holy Fool. It means someone who is a fool to the ways of the world, but wise to the ways of God.
     
    I think that Ted, from the moment he saw the baby, knew that he could not possibly be the father. It must have been a shock, but he had controlled himself, and sat thinking for a long time as he held the baby. Perhaps he saw ahead.
     
    Perhaps he understood in that moment that if he so much as questioned the baby’s fatherhood, it would mean humiliation for the child, and might jeopardise his entire future. Perhaps, as he held the baby, he realised that any such suggestion could shatter his whole happiness. Perhaps he understood that he could not reasonably expect an independent and energetic spirit like Winnie to find him sexually exciting and fulfilling. Perhaps an angel’s voice told him that any questions were best left unasked and unanswered.
     
    And so he decided upon the most unexpected, and yet the simplest course of all. He chose to be such a Fool that he couldn’t see the obvious.
     

THE LUNCHEON PARTY
     
     
     
    “No Jimmy, not this time. You and Mike are not camping out in the boiler room at Nonnatus House. I may have deceived the Home Sister at the Hospital, but I am not going to deceive Sister Julienne. Besides, I don’t trust you. I don’t believe for a moment that there is another emergency. I think you just want to be able to boast to the boys that you have slept in a convent!”
     
    Jimmy and Mike looked a trifle crestfallen. They had been plying me with beer and soft talk, in the confident expectation that I would swallow a load of rubbish about them being down on their luck and out of their digs, and would I smuggle them in the back door of Nonnatus House? The male of the species is sweetly naive.
     
    The evening had been fun - a change and relaxation from the rigours of daily work. The beer had been pleasant, and the conversation exuberant, but it was time to go. It was a long way back to the East End, buses were not plentiful after 11 p.m., and I would have to be up at 6.30 a.m. the next morning for a full day’s work. I stood up. An idea had come to mind. It seemed a pity to disappoint them altogether.
     
    “But how would you like to come to lunch one Sunday?”
     
    Their enthusiastic agreement was immediate.
     
    “OK. I will ask Sister Julienne, and will ring you to fix a date. I must be off now.”
     
    I spoke to Sister Julienne next day. She had heard about Jimmy before, on the occasion when I had taken a 3 a.m. swim in the sea at Brighton and arrived for work at ten in the morning. She agreed at once to a luncheon party for the boys.
     
    “It would be delightful. We usually entertain retired missionaries, or visiting preachers. A couple of lively young men would be a pleasure for us all.”
     
    She fixed a date for three weeks ahead, when there were no other guests for Sunday lunch, and I telephoned Jimmy to firm up the arrangements.
     
    “Do you think the nuns could run to three of us for lunch? Alan wants to come. He thinks he might get a story.”
     
    Alan was a reporter, scraping a modest living on his first job in Fleet Street. I thought it highly likely that Sister Julienne could find one more chair at the refectory table, but was not at all sure that Alan would get much of a story out of the lunch. However, hope always runs high in a young reporter’s heart - until the iron enters his soul, that is.
     
    The girls were in a flutter of excitement about three young men coming to Sunday lunch. We were all single nurses with a seemingly endless working week and were often hard put to meet eligible young men. Expectations ran high.
     
    I wondered, with a good deal of amusement, how the meal would go. What would the boys make of us? How would they react to