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

tribute to our postal service that it arrived at all, for, apart from the address, it had no stamp. On the back was scrawled:
    BABY GON. CUM TOO SEE MEE. MARY xxxxxx.
     
     
     
    I showed the card to Sister Julienne, feeling concerned.
     
    “Does GON mean gone? If so where? Surely it cannot mean the baby has died?” I asked.
     
    Sister turned the card over in her hand several times, before saying: “No, I think if the baby had died, she would have written DED. You had better go to see her on your day off, which is obviously what she wants.”
     
    The train journey to Kent seemed longer and more tiresome than the previous one. I had no happy thoughts to make the time fly past. My mind was puzzled, and an unpleasant feeling of foreboding would not go away.
     
    The mother and baby home looked much the same as before, pleasant open grounds, prams dotted about the gardens, smiling young women, nuns going about their work. I entered, and was taken to a sitting room.
     
    I was stunned when I saw Mary. She looked absolutely ghastly: her face was swollen, red and blotchy, with great rings under her eyes. She stared at me, unseeing. Her hair was dishevelled, her clothes were torn. I stood in the doorway looking at her, but she did not see me; instead she leapt up, rushed to the window, and began to hammer the glass with her fists, moaning all the while. Then she ran to the opposite side of the room and beat her forehead on the wall. It was hard to believe what I was seeing.
     
    I went over to her and said “Mary” quite loudly. I repeated her name several times. She turned, eventually recognising me, and gave a cry. She grabbed me and tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come.
     
    I led her to a sofa, and sat her down.
     
    “What is it?” I asked “What has happened?”
     
    “They have taken my baby.”
     
    “Where?”
     
    “I don’t know. They won’t tell me.”
     
    “When?”
     
    “I don’t know. But she’s gone. She wasn’t there in the morning.”
     
    I didn’t know what to say. What can one say to such terrible news? We stared at one another in mute horror, then she winced with pain, a pain that seemed to suffuse her entire body. She threw her arms outwards and fell back against the cushions. I saw at once what the trouble was. She had been breastfeeding, and now, with no milk being drawn off, her breasts were horribly engorged. I leaned forward and opened her blouse. Both breasts were enormous, as hard as stone, and the left side was bright red and hot to touch. ‘She could get a breast abscess,’ I thought. ‘In fact she probably has one already.’
     
    She moaned: “It hurts,” and gritted her teeth together to stop herself from screaming.
     
    My mind was in turmoil. What on earth had happened? I couldn’t believe that Mary’s baby had been taken away. When the worst spasm of pain had passed, I said, “I am going to see the Reverend Mother.”
     
    She grasped my hand. “Oh yes, I knew you would get my baby back.”
     
    She smiled, and as she did so, tears flooded her eyes, and she turned her head into the cushion, sobbing pitifully.
     
    I left, and enquired my way to the Reverend Mother’s office.
     
    The room was bare and sparsely furnished: a desk, two wooden chairs, and a cupboard. The walls were white, and only a bare crucifix broke the smooth surface. The Reverend Mother’s habit was entirely black, with a white veil. She looked middle-aged, and very handsome. Her expression was serene and open. I felt at once that I could talk to her.
     
    “Where is Mary’s baby?” I demanded aggressively.
     
    The Reverend Mother looked at me steadily, before replying, “The baby has been placed for adoption.”
     
    “Without the mother’s consent?”
     
    “Consent is not necessary. The child is only fourteen.”
     
    “Fifteen,” I said.
     
    “Fourteen or fifteen, it makes no difference. She is still legally a child, and consent is neither valid nor invalid.”
     
    “But how dare you take her baby away without her knowledge. It is killing her.”
     
    The Reverend Mother sighed. She sat perfectly straight, not resting against the back of the chair, her hands folded beneath her scapular. She looked timeless, ageless, pitiless. Only the cross on her breast moved to the rhythm of her breathing. She said evenly, “The baby is being adopted into a good Roman Catholic family who have one child. The mother, due to an illness, can have no more. Mary’s baby will have