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

my full height, which was nearly twice hers, and said in a cold professional voice, “Mrs Smith has been safely delivered of a little boy. Mother and baby are both well. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go.”
     
    “Fank Gawd,” she said, and released my coat sleeve and my bicycle. She said nothing else.
     
    Crazy old thing, I thought crossly as I rode off. She ought not to be allowed out.
     
    It was not until about a year later, when I was a general district nurse, that I learned more about Mrs Jenkins … and learned a little humility.
     

CHUMMY
     
     
     
    The first time I saw Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Browne (“just call me Chummy”), I thought it was a bloke in drag. Six foot two inches tall, with shoulders like a front-row forward and size eleven feet, her parents had spent a fortune trying to make her more feminine, but to no effect.
     
    Chummy and I were new together, and she arrived the morning after the memorable evening when Sister Monica Joan and I had polished off a cake intended for twelve. Cynthia, Trixie and I were leaving the kitchen after breakfast when the front doorbell rang, and this giant in skirts entered. She blinked short-sightedly down at us from behind thick, steel-rimmed glasses, and said, in the plummiest voice imaginable, “Is this Nonnatus House?”
     
    Trixie, who had a waspish tongue, looked out of the door into the street. “Is there anyone there?” she called, and came back into the hallway, bumping into the stranger.
     
    “Oh, sorry, I didn’t notice you,” she said, and made off for the clinical room.
     
    Cynthia stepped forward, and greeted the woman with the same exquisite warmth and friendliness that had chased away my thoughts of bolting the night before. “You must be Camilla.”
     
    “Oh, just call me Chummy.”
     
    “All right then Chummy, come in and we will find Sister Julienne. Have you had breakfast? I’m sure Mrs B. can fix you up with something.”
     
    Chummy picked up her case, took two steps, and tripped over the doormat. “Oh lawks, clumsy me,” she said with a girlish giggle. She bent down to straighten the mat and collided with the hallstand, knocking two coats and three hats on to the floor.
     
    “Frightfully sorry. I’ll soon get them,” but Cynthia had already picked them up, fearing the worst.
     
    “Oh thanks, old bean,” said Chummy, with a “haw-haw”.
     
    Can this be real, or is she putting it on? I thought. But the voice was entirely real, and never changed, nor did the language. It was always “good show”, or “good egg”, or “what-ho”, and, strangely enough, for all her massive size, her voice was soft and sweet. In fact, during the time that I knew her, I realised that everything about Chummy was soft and sweet. Despite her appearance, there was nothing butch about her. She had the nature of a gentle, artless young girl, diffident and shy. She was also pathetically eager to be liked.
     
    The Fortescue-Cholmeley-Brownes were top drawer County types. Her great-great-grandfather had entered the Indian civil service in the 1820s, and the tradition had progressed through the generations. Her father was Governor of Rajasthan (an area the size of Wales), which he still, even in the 1950s, traversed on horseback. All this we learned from the collection of photographs on display in Chummy’s room. She was the only girl amongst six brothers. All of them were tall, but unfortunately she was about an inch taller than the rest of the family.
     
    All the children had been educated in England, the boys going to Eton, and Chummy to Roedean. They were placed in the care of guardians in this country, as the mother remained in India with her husband. Apparently Chummy had been at boarding school since she was six years of age, and knew no other life. She clung to her collection of family photographs with touching fervour - perhaps they were the closest she ever got to her family - and particularly loved one taken with her mother when she was about fourteen.
     
    “That was the holiday I had with Mater,” she said proudly, completely unaware of the pathos of her remark.
     
    After Roedean came finishing school in Switzerland, then back to London to the Lucy Clayton Charm School to prepare her for presentation at Court. Those were the days of debutantes, when the daughters of the “best” families had to “come out”, an expression meaning something quite different today. At that time it meant being presented