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

practical, if unusual.
     
    “Here, Win, you tek over the supper, will you, love? Nurse wants a look at yer mum. Tim, come ’ere, lad, you tek the baby, an’ keep them two away from the boiler. We don’t want no accidents in vis ’ouse, do we now? An’ Doris, love, you lends a hand to our Win. I’ll tek yer mum and the nurse upstairs.”
     
    The girls spoke rapidly to their mother in Spanish, and Conchita came towards me, smiling.
     
    We went upstairs, Len chatting all the time to different children, “Now then Cyril, now then. Let’s get that lorry off them stairs, shall we, there’s a good lad. We don’t want the nurse to break ’er neck, do we nah?
     
    “Good on yer, Pete. Doin yer ’omework. He’s a scholar, our Pete. He’ll be a professor one of these days, you’ll see.
     
    “’Allo, Sue, my love. Got a kiss for yer ol’ dad, then?”
     
    He very seldom stopped talking. In fact I would say that in all my acquaintance with Len Warren, he never stopped talking. If occasionally he ran out of something to say, he would whistle or sing - and all executed with a thin roll-up in his mouth. These days health workers would be very disapproving about smoking around babies and a pregnant woman, but in the fifties no connection had been made between smoking and ill health, and nearly everyone smoked.
     
    We went into the bedroom.
     
    “Connie, love, the nurse just wants to have a look at your tum.”
     
    He smoothed down the bed, and she lay down. He started to pull up her skirt, and she did the rest.
     
    Her abdomen showed stretch marks, but nothing excessive. From appearances, this could have been her fourth pregnancy, not her twenty-fourth. I palpated the uterus - about five to six months.
     
    “Any movements?” I enquired.
     
    “Oh yeah, yer can feel the li’l soul kickin’ an’ wrigglin’. He’s a right little footballer, that one, ’specially at night when we wants ’a get some sleep.”
     
    The head felt uppermost, but that was to be expected. I couldn’t locate the foetal heart, but with all the kicking described, it hardly mattered.
     
    I examined the rest of her. Her breasts were full, but firm - no lumps or abnormalities. Her ankles were not swollen. There were a few superficial varicose veins, but nothing serious. The pulse was normal, as was her blood pressure. She seemed to be in perfect condition.
     
    I wanted to try to establish her dates. Merely going on clinical observation can be deceptive. A small baby and a large baby of the same gestation can give the appearance of about four to six weeks’ difference, so you need some dates to back up observation. However, with a baby of about seven to eight months old downstairs, it seemed unlikely that Conchita had had a period at all. I was not accustomed to asking such delicate questions of a man. In the 1950s such things were never mentioned in what was called “mixed company”, and I felt myself blush scarlet.
     
    “Ah, nah, nuffink like that,” he said.
     
    “Could you ask her, please; she might not have mentioned it to you.”
     
    “Yer can tek it from me, nurse, she ain’t ’ad no periods for years.”
     
    I had to leave it at that. If anyone knows, he should, I thought.
     
    I mentioned that we had an antenatal clinic every Tuesday, and we preferred patients to come to the clinic. He looked dubious. “Well, she don’t like goin’ out, yer know. Not speakin’ the lingo an’ all, like. And I wouldn’t want ’er to get lost or frightened, like. ‘Sides, she’s got all them babies to look after at home, yer know.”
     
    I didn’t feel I could insist, so I put her down for home antenatal visits.
     
    In all this time, Conchita hadn’t said a word. She just smiled, and submitted passively to being felt and prodded all over, to hearing herself talked about in a foreign language. She got up from the bed with grace and dignity, and moved to the chest of drawers, searching for a hairbrush. Her black hair looked even more beautiful being brushed, and I observed hardly a grey hair. She adjusted the crimson band, and turned with proud confidence to her husband, who took her in his arms and murmured, “There’s my Con, my gel. Oh yer looks lovely, my tresher.”
     
    She gave a contented little laugh, and nestled in his arms. He kissed her repeatedly.
     
    Such a display of unashamed love between husband and wife was unusual in Poplar. Whatever the relationship in private, the men always kept up a