Farewell To The East End

an’ hangs on, and says, “I’m sorry, Sister, but I gotta get in. You can’t stay in ’ere all night. You’ll catch yer death o’ cold.” Nah, tricky bit is ve bath’s under the winder, so I ’as ter get in an’ over the bath, wiv ’er in it an’ not fall in meself.’
    ‘How did you manage that, Fred?’
    ‘Wiv difficulty ’an injinuity. Jest bein’ smart, like.’
    ‘Fred, you are so clever.’
    ‘Nah, nah, jest smart like,’ he said modestly. ‘Worse fing was I drops me fag some’ow, an it floats around ve ole lady. Then I unlocks ve door, and Sisters come in, an’ now I’m goin’ a put me ladders away.’
    ‘Would you like a cup of tea before you go, Fred?’
    ‘Well now, vat’s an invitation I can’t resist, if you girls will ’ave one wiv me.’
    Of course we would. We would like nothing better. So we all sat down in the big kitchen for a cup of tea and some of Mrs B’s cake and a good old natter.
    Upstairs we heard further sounds of movement and voices, then splashing of water and the gurgling of a waste pipe. Then no more. The Greater Silence had begun.

    Sister Monica Joan was found in the bicycle shed one winter’s night by Chummy who had been called out at about two o’clock. Again, the angels must have arranged it. If Sister had remained in the shed until morning she would probably have died of hypothermia; she was very thin, having no protective reserves of fat to cover her old bones. Chummy was getting her bicycle out when she heard a movement in the corner of the shed and thought it was a rat – we were all nervous of rats in dark places. She shone her torch over the area and was horrified, and indeed terrified, to see an arm move. Then an imperious voice, accustomed to being obeyed, ordered, ‘Don’t shine the light in my eyes like that! Fetch me a pillow if you want to be useful, but turn the light off.’
    Sister Monica Joan was curled up in some old camping equipment, probably dating back to someone’s Girl Guide endeavours. She was very cold and very sleepy, which is a dangerous combination. She resented being disturbed and tried to push Chummy away. ‘Go away with your nasty lights and bothersome noise. Why can’t I be left in peace?’ Chummy carried her into the house and alerted the Sisters as she had to go out to a labouring mother. The Sisters covered the old lady with warm blankets and hot-water bottles and gave her hot drinks. Astonishingly she came to no harm, not even a cold in the nose.
    I was in her room a few days later and referred to the night’s adventure. She dismissed it as ‘a lot of fuss about nothing’.
    ‘Well,’ I remarked, ‘you were lucky that there was some old camping equipment in the shed to cover you, or you might have died of cold.’
    ‘Camping,’ she said, ‘such fun! We used to love it.’ Her eyes were alight and her voice animated.
    ‘Camping, Sister?’ I exclaimed. ‘You can’t be serious. You’ve been camping?’
    She was offended.
    ‘Certainly, my dear. You don’t imagine I have done nothing in my life, do you? We used to go camping often, my brothers and sisters, and some friends, with the maid and the manservant. It was wonderful.’
    ‘A maid and manservant? Camping?’
    ‘It was perfectly proper – a husband and wife in our service.’
    ‘I wasn’t thinking of the propriety of the arrangements But servants! Camping …’ My voice failed me.
    ‘We needed them, my dear. We needed the man to put up the tents and fetch the water and light the fires and things like that, and we needed the maid to do the cooking.’
    ‘Well, if you put it like that, Sister, I suppose you did.’
    I chuckled quietly, but I don’t think she saw the joke.

    One memorable Sunday afternoon Cynthia and I took Sister Monica Joan for a walk. The weather was beautiful, and we decided to take her up to Victoria Park, where there is a lovely lake, and where East Enders would gather with their children in sunny weather. But when the bus arrived it was full, so on the spur of the moment we changed our plan and took the next bus, which was going to Limehouse, and past the canal known as the Cuts. We thought we could have a walk along the towpath. The canal was dug in the nineteenth century to connect the River Lea to the Limehouse Reach of the Thames and was much used by commercial barges until the closure of the Docks in the 1970s. It was always a pleasant area for walking.
    When we got there Sister said unexpectedly, ‘I