Farewell To The East End

assess and maintain the correct dose of insulin and to inject it hypodermically.
    Sister Evangelina and I went to assess Mr Lacey. The pub was in a side street and was in no way attractive. The street was narrow and dingy, several houses had been bombed, and many walls were held up with scaffolding. The pub itself was hardly noticeable, the frontage resembling any of the houses around it: dark brown paint flaking off, windows caked with dirt, a narrow front door, always shut. The only thing that might at one time have distinguished the pub from its neighbours was its sign; but it was so old that it hung from only one hinge, and most of the paint had worn off.
    Sister Evangelina and I entered by the pub door, which was the only entry to the landlord’s living accommodation upstairs. The public bar was about twenty feet square, high-ceilinged with a wooden floor. A few cheap wooden tables and chairs stood around the place, with the bar itself to one side. An unshaded electric light bulb, around which flies buzzed continuously, hung from the centre of the ceiling. The walls and ceiling were a dirty yellowish brown and were spotted all over with fly-stains. A single picture hung on a wall, but it was so dingy and faded that one would have been hard pressed to say whether it was a seascape or a hunting scene.
    It was 12.30 p.m. when we arrived – opening time – and the pub, which at that time of day should have been humming with life, had only one customer: a solitary man of indeterminate age staring at the wall and sieving a pint of beer through his moustaches. The silence was oppressive.
    A woman stood behind the bar, half-heartedly wiping a few glasses with a grimy cloth. She was old, far too old to be a barmaid. Her grey hair was scooped into an untidy bun at the back of her head, and wisps hung across her face, which was lined and grey. Her eyes seemed dull and lifeless, and her lips lacked any colour. She was small and thin and had no teeth. She looked up as we entered.
    ‘You wants ’a see Mr Lacey, I s’pose? I’ll take you to ’im.’
    She turned towards the man with the moustaches.
    ‘Look to ve bar a bit, will yer, Mr ’arris? If anyone comes in, call me, will yer?’
    She had an apologetic, deferential air about her, and her voice echoed bleakly in the bare room. The man grunted and continued sieving his beer, as he watched us over the rim of his glass.
    We followed the woman up a dark, uncarpeted stairway. ‘Vere’s no light,’ she said. ‘Watch yer step.’
    We entered the rooms above the bar, and she led us to the bedroom. A large, fat, pink man lay on a bed in a fair-sized room also swarming with flies. A bar-table covered in fag-ends and a rough wooden cupboard were the only other furniture. It was summer time, and a thin army blanket was thrown over the man’s stomach, apart from which he was naked. The light was dim, because the sunlight struggled to penetrate the dirt on the windows.
    ‘Is that my beer, Annie?’
    ‘No, John, it’s ve Sister’s.’
    ‘You idle, useless, woman, I told you ’a get me a beer. I don’t want no bloody Sisters.’
    Sister Evangelina strode across the room.
    ‘Don’t you call me a “bloody Sister”, and I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. What are you doing in bed at this time of day? Sit up.’
    ‘Who the hell are you?’
    ‘I’m the “bloody Sister”, now sit up. Go on.’
    The man looked at her in astonishment and struggled to a sitting position, keeping the grey blanket carefully over his middle. The woman crept into a corner and stood there, meekly fingering her apron.
    ‘That’s better. Now what’s wrong with you that a good dose of salts wouldn’t clear?’
    ‘I’m ill.’ He groaned and raised his eyes to Heaven.
    ‘Rubbish. You’re fat. That’s what’s wrong with you. When did you last open your bowels? What you need is a good clear-out. ’
    ‘No, I’m ill. I’m in agony.’ He groaned again and rubbed his hands over his chest and stomach. ‘It’s no use. You’re too late. I’m dying.’ He leaned back on the pillows and sighed weakly.
    ‘Good riddance, if you ask me.’
    The man jerked his eyes open. ‘What?’
    ‘You old fraud. You’re no more dying than this young nurse here. Now what’s wrong with you?’
    ‘I got die-betes.’
    ‘Is that all? Millions of people have cancer.’
    ‘I’m dying, I tells ya.’
    ‘Rubbish. Now get up. I want some of your pee to test for sugar.’
    ‘I