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

astonishment, it was Sister Evangelina, laughing! In fact she was laughing so much, she was spluttering into her napkin. Her neighbour Jimmy, kind and gentlemanly, patted her on the back and handed her a glass of water. She gulped it down, and sat, dabbing her eyes and nose, muttering through chokes and giggles.
     
    “Oh dear. This is too much for me … it takes me back to the time when … oh, I shall never forget … ”
     
    Jimmy set to work seriously slapping her back, which seemed to help, but it caused her veil to slip sideways.
     
    We were all determined to get to the bottom of this. Never before had Sister Evangelina been seen laughing convulsively in the Convent, and it obviously had something to do with young men in nurses’ bedrooms.
     
    “What happened? Tell us.”
     
    “Come on, now. Be a sport.”
     
    Sister Julienne paused, serving spoon in hand.
     
    “Oh come on, Sister. You can’t leave us in suspense like this. What’s the story? Jimmy, give her another glass of wine.”
     
    But Sister Evangelina couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell. She blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. She spluttered and gurgled and coughed. But she wouldn’t say any more. She just grinned mischievously at everyone. A grin from Sister Evangelina was unheard of, never mind a mischievous one!
     
    Sister Monica Joan had been watching this little exhibition with half-closed eyes, and a tiny smile playing round her lips. I wondered what she was thinking. Sister Evangelina certainly looked a mess, with her veil askew, her face bright red, moisture seeping from every orifice. I feared an icy comment and so, I think, did Sister Evangelina, for she looked at her tormentor with apprehension. But we were both wrong.
     
    Sister Monica Joan waited until the laughter had subsided, and with the timing of an instinctive actress recited slowly and dramatically, ” ‘Oh - I shall remember the hours that we spent, In age I’ll remember, and not to repent.’”
     
    She paused for effect, then leaned across the table towards Sister Evangelina, and winked. In a stage whisper that could be heard by all, she said confidentially, “Don’t say another word, my dear, not another word. The nosy lot. They clamour and clatter. They chatter and natter. Don’t feed their idle expectations, my dear, ’twill only debase your memories!”
     
    She looked Sister Evangelina straight in the eyes, and winked again, with warmth and understanding. Was it possible? Did I imagine it? Was it a trick of the light? Did Sister Evangelina, or did she not, wink back?
     
    Sister Evangelina never told. I daresay she went to her grave with the story locked in her heart.
     
    The puddings were a masterpiece of Mrs B.’s creative skills. Sister Monica Joan had two helpings of ice cream with chocolate fudge sauce and a little apple pie. She was in brilliant form.
     
    “I remember a young man shut in a wardrobe at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital,” she recalled. “He was locked in for three hours. It would have been perfectly all right, and no one would have found out, but the foolish fellow had borrowed his father’s horse, and tied it to the hospital railings. Now you can hide a young man in a wardrobe or under a bed. But how, I ask, can you hide a horse?”
     
    With a gasp I realised that these memories dated back to the 1890s! What happened? But she wouldn’t remember.
     
    “I only remember the horse tied to the railings.”
     
    What a pity! Life is so fleeting, and the past so rich. I wanted to hear more. Her mind was perfectly clear at that moment, and knowing how it could cloud over, I asked if she had not found the discipline and petty restrictions of nursing to be intolerable.
     
    “Not a bit of it. After the confinement and restraints of family life, nursing was freedom and adventure. We did not have the licence you young people enjoy today. It was the same for all of us. I recall my cousin Barney. His mother, my aunt, had a French maid. One day - in the middle of the day, my dears - she, my aunt, stepped out on to the terrace to find the French maid seated on a chair, and Barney on his knees placing the shoe on to the foot of the gel. The shoe.”
     
    She paused and looked around her.
     
    “Not the petticoat, or anything like that. Just the shoe. My aunt screamed and fainted, I was told. The maid was immediately dismissed, and the family was so scandalised that Barney was given a ten pound note, and a one-way ticket to Canada. He was