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

table, a mat, a bench; that was all. But the café looked enormous. She stared around in bewilderment. A heavy foot landed in the small of her back, and she was flung forward a yard or two.
     
    “Get on wiv it, you lazy bitch, don’t just stand there starin’.”
     
    Mary jumped to it. She remembered what Zakir had said about a job in the café washing up, and she ran round collecting dirty glasses, mugs, spittoons, and a few dirty plates. She hurried with them into the kitchen, which was filthy, and over to the greasy sink. There was only cold water in the tap, but she washed everything up as best she could, and then dried the things on a filthy bit of old sheet. Gloria, in the meantime, was putting chairs up on the tables.
     
    “Clean the floor when you’ve done,” she called.
     
    There wasn’t a broom, but there was a wet mop, and Mary rubbed it all over the floor, in reality just pushing the dirt around.
     
    “That’s better,” said Gloria. “Go and clean the kazi now.”
     
    Mary looked blank.
     
    “The gerry, the lav, the bog, stupid.”
     
    Mary went out to the yard. It stank. The lavatory had probably been used by over a hundred men during the night, and each night before, and had not been cleaned properly for years. Most of the men peed on the ground around the shack, so the cobblestones were always wet and slippery. There was no toilet paper, only the torn up newspaper that littered the place. Some of the men had been sick, and as it was a warm summer morning, the stench was rising. This was also the only lavatory available for the girls to use, and as there was no bin, used sanitary towels lay scattered all over the yard.
     
    Mary stared at it in horror, but fearing another kick in the back, she quickly got to work. There was a broom in the yard, so she swept up most of the more solid filth into a pile in a corner. Then she got a bucket of water, and swilled it over the yard. It seemed to be effective, so she fetched several other buckets of water, and did the same.
     
    Gloria came out, and stared around silently. She took the fag from her mouth. “You done a good job ’ere, Mary. Zakir’ll be pleased wiv you. An’ Uncle an’ all.”
     
    Mary glowed with pleasure. To please Zakir was her keenest desire. She said, timidly, pointing to the pile of filth in the corner, “What shall I do with that?”
     
    “Take it over to the bomb site in Graces Alley. I’ll show you where it is.”
     
    There was no other way of picking the mess up but with her hands. Mary was not happy about it, but did so nonetheless. She had to make four trips to the bomb site to get rid of it all.
     
    Mary felt filthy. Her last wash had been in the Cuts, and she hadn’t changed her clothes for days. She went into the kitchen and washed her face and arms under the cold tap, then her feet and legs, which made her feel better. She tried to remember what had happened to the string bag, that contained her clean blouse. She remembered Zakir had carried it the night before, and she had not seen it since. She asked Gloria where he might have put it.
     
    Gloria laughed: “You won’t see that again,” she said. And indeed Mary didn’t.
     
    At that moment a man entered the café. He was one of the knuckledustered pair Mary had seen the night before taking money from the men. He was thickset, with a large stomach, which hung over the belt of his trousers. Dirty slippers scraped across the floor and tattoo marks covered his arms. His face was terrifying, and robbed Mary of the power of speech. She slunk away out into the yard. The man was Uncle.
     
    “Come back here,” he shouted.
     
    Mary was powerless to disobey. She stood before him trembling. He just stared at her with hard black eyes and sucked at his fag end. He put out a podgy hand, grabbed her shoulder, pushed her head sideways, then said, “You good girl, obey me. I look after you. You bad girl…” He didn’t finish the sentence, just curled his lips and held a threatening fist up to Mary’s face.
     
    He said to Gloria, “Take her,” then he walked out.
     

     
    The old building consisted of the shop and back yard, two rooms in the basement, and about eight rooms on the upper storeys. All the rooms were divided into three or four small cubicles by thin boarding. In each cubicle was a narrow bed, or, in some, as many as four to six bunk beds. All the beds were filthy, grey, ex-army blankets the only cover.
     
    Mary was taken upstairs, past