At the age of thirty-nine she met a clergyman who was a widower and had a son. They married, and his needs, mentally, were even greater than her own. Somehow the necessity to look after him and organise his life became the focus of her existence and cured her. We none of us can understand the complexities of the human mind. She became a very happy and successful vicar’s wife and a health visitor. Her husband Roger was also a classical scholar. At the age of sixty-five he retired from the ministry, and for several years they lived like a couple of hippy teenagers. With no more than a rucksack each, and a budget of £3 a day, they roamed hundreds of miles across Greece, Israel, Jordan and Turkey, examining the architectural ruins of ancient civilisations. They slept in little caf’s, on buses, under the stars on beaches, in fields, in olive groves and lemon orchards. They planned nothing, but simply went where the fancy took them.
After retirement, Cynthia’s husband joined the Church of England World Mission Association. This meant that he could be asked to act as a locum for any church, at home or overseas, which was temporarily without a priest.
The couple were both about seventy years of age when the telephone rang one evening.
‘This is the World Mission Association. Could you go to Lima? The vicar has just been shot.’
‘Sounds nasty. Well yes, certainly. When do you want me?’
‘The week after next.’
‘I dare say we could go. I must ask my wife.’
Aside: ‘Cynthia, could we go to Lima the week after next? The vicar has been shot.’
‘Where’s Lima?’
‘Peru. South America.’
‘Well, yes, I should think we could. A fortnight is enough time to pack things up here. For how long?’
To the telephone: ‘Yes, we could go. For how long?’
‘Three months. Six, perhaps. Not really sure.’
‘That’s all right. Send us details, flight tickets, etc., and we’ll go.’
Cynthia – quiet, sensitive, depressive – led a life of high romance and breathtaking adventure in her old age that few of us would have dared contemplate, still less had the courage to carry out.
Some people have described my first book
Call the Midwife
as a spiritual journey, and they are correct – it is. I owe to the Sisters more than I could possibly repay. Probably they do not know how great is my debt. The words ‘if God really does exist, then that must have implications for the whole of life’ could not be dismissed. Sister Julienne and I spent many hours discussing these subjects, and the influence of her goodness has shaped my development. We corresponded, and I visited her all through my life, and I took my own children with me to the Mother House; we stayed in the caravan in the grounds of the convent.
I remained very close to her and always sought her prayers and wisdom at any difficult point in my life. She always guided me well. In 1991 Sister Julienne developed a brain tumour, and for the last three months of her life I visited her every Friday. It was an enriching experience, even though, or perhaps
because
, she was deteriorating week by week. Time was short, and getting shorter, in which to convey, if not in words, then in silent empathy, my love and gratitude. On the last Friday she was deeply unconscious, and it was obvious that her life was drawing to its end. She died two days later on Sunday morning – a beautiful day in June at the hour when her Sisters were saying Lauds, the first monastic office to greet the dawn.
It was a singular honour to be invited to attend her funeral at the Mother House. The service was the Requiem Mass for the dead as ordained by the Book of Common Prayer. The funeral of a nun is very quiet and reverent. Her Sisters do not mourn and grieve; they are more likely to express joy that a life given in the service of God is fulfilled. For them death is not an enemy. Death is seen as a friend.
At the end of the service, while plainsong was being chanted, one of the Sisters took up a pile of folded garments that had been lying on the altar throughout. The Reverend Mother came towards her with hands outstretched, palms facing upwards. The Sister placed the garments on the hands of the Reverend Mother, who turned and walked slowly towards the coffin. She placed the small burden on the centre of the coffin and turned and bowed to the altar. It was the folded habit, surmounted by the gold cross and rosary that Sister Julienne had worn all her professed life, and they went with her to her grave in the Sisters’ cemetery in the convent garden.
Rest eternal, rest in peace, beloved Sister Julienne.
Sister Evangelina died some years ago. At her own request she was buried in Poplar, and not in the Sisters’ cemetery at the convent. She had always been one of the people, and that is how she wished to be remembered.
Novice Ruth took her final vows and practised her calling for about twenty years. But in the mid-1970s she encountered a spiritual crisis, which in religious language is called ‘the black night of the soul’. It is a most terrible experience, probably more shattering than the worst kind of divorce. It is well known and documented in monastic literature, and is a spiritual phenomenon to be dreaded, yet in some ways welcomed, as it is a testing of the soul and suffering can lead to an enriched spiritual experience. Sister Ruth was tormented for years with no respite and eventually renounced her life vows and left the order.
Sister Bernadette, an inspired midwife from whom I learned all the practical skills of the profession, also left the Order but for a very different reason. She worked faithfully all through the 1960s and ’70s as a midwife. In the 1980s, when the HIV virus infected the Western world and when medical and nursing staff were vulnerable to being infected, she nursed AIDS patients at a time when the mortality rate was close on 100 per cent. Throughout the 1980s there had been debate in the Church of England about the ordination of women, and in 1993 the General Synod voted that women could be admitted to the priesthood. Sister Bernadette could not take this. Deep religious conviction based on theology and history told her that it was wrong. She was in her seventies and crippled with arthritis, but she had the courage of her convictions to leave the Anglican Church. This meant that she would have to leave the Sisters with whom she had shared her life. She was accepted into a Roman Catholic order, where she lived the strict life of a solitary contemplative, devoting her time to prayer and meditation.
Ambition is a double-edged sword. One side will cut through stagnation and lead to a new life; without ambition, mankind would still be living in caves. But the other side can be destructive, leading to feelings of loss and regret. I was ambitious, and my sights were set high. I was planning to be a hospital matron or at the very least a sister tutor, and I would have to climb the ladder of the nursing hierarchy. A district nurse and midwife was only a lower rung on that ladder. I did not really want to leave the Sisters, but I knew that, if I stayed with them, I would stagnate. I loved the Sisters and their devotional life, and I loved the fun and freedom of district work in the docklands, but to continue would have rendered me unsuitable for the discipline of hospital work, which was very strict indeed in those days. I left the Sisters in 1959 to become a staff midwife at the London Hospital, Mile End Road, where I enjoyed seeing more of Cockney characters. But it took a long time to settle down to the rigours and discipline of hospital routine. Eventually the move paid off, and after a couple of years I obtained my first junior sister’s post at the famous women’s hospital, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson in the Euston Road (now sadly closed). Later I became night sister there, which in those days meant being in overall charge of the hospital throughout the night. Then I became ward sister of the Marie Curie Hospital in Hampstead.
I was climbing the ladder, as anticipated. But then I met a certain young man, and ideas of becoming a hospital matron seemed rather irrelevant. We have been happily married for about forty-five years at the time of writing. After our children were born I gave up full-time nursing, but continued part-time.
In 1973, after a twenty-year nursing and midwifery career, I left nursing altogether. All my life I had been a frustrated musician, and with intensive study, supported by my husband, I achieved a Licenciate of the London College of Music and later a Fellowship and started twenty-five years of music teaching.
IN MEMORIAM CYNTHIA
This book was dedicated to Cynthia as early as 2004, but she never read it. In June 2006 Cynthia died. She had had cancer six years previously, which had been successfully treated, and she and Roger had continued their adventures, but in 2004 he developed congestive heart failure, from which he died about eighteen months later. Clinical depression returned to cloud Cynthia’s mind during his last illness, and then there was a recurrence of the cancer.
She died as she had lived, quietly, peacefully and with no fuss. Gently she let go of life, and had said to many people that death was what she wanted. She knew it was approaching, and was content. ‘I hope I have been useful,’ she whispered to me a few days before her death. Cynthia received her last communion and she, who was virtually sinless, made her confession and received Holy Unction.
Her stepson, her sister and I were with her during the last five days of her life, and on the final day, when to all appearances she was unconscious, I said to her slowly and clearly, ‘I am so thankful I have been with you.’ Her eyelids flickered, and she breathed rather than spoke the words, ‘And so am I.’ In my experience the dying always know who is with them and need the love they bring.
Cynthia was Godmother to my elder daughter, Suzannah, who had sent a card to her during that week. It was a complete surprise to me, and I read it aloud to Cynthia. The words were so beautiful I cried as I read them, and Cynthia smiled her slow, sweet smile, and whispered, ‘I remember too.’
It may seem pointlessly sentimental to those who do not know either character, but for me a testimonial to my dear friend is necessary, and so I quote my daughter’s card in full:
Dear Cynthia,
I am thinking about you a lot at the present time, but most especially I am remembering past times and what you have meant to me over the years.
When I was a little girl, I remember dropping a bowl of jelly on the floor twice, and the second time the bowl broke! I was so upset I cried, but you didn’t get cross.
I remember what fun it was when you took us up into the bell tower of Roger’s church. You let us ring the bells – you said it wouldn’t matter if all the people in the village thought it was the wrong time.
I remember sleeping in the caravan and being kept awake all night by the owls and the bells. More recently I remember visiting you when our girls were little. You took us for a lovely walk along the coast, and you made them a special pudding with smiley faces on.
Most recently you sent me some of your jewellery, and you patched up my old bear, which you made for me when I was christened.
All these things are memories I will treasure forever – they remind me of you, my Godmother. Over the years I have come to realise that you are essentially what a Godmother should be. Thank you for being you. Bless you, now and always.
Your loving God-daughter
Suzannah XXX
FAREWELL TO THE EAST END
The Sisters had opened Nonnatus House in the 1870s to meet the needs of women living in dire poverty. However, during the 1960s things began to change rapidly, and the old way of life vanished.
One by one the docks closed; air freight had replaced the old cargo boats, and the dockers became redundant. At the same time demolition of bomb-damaged and slum property started, and people were rehoused out of London in the new towns. For many this was life-shattering, particularly for the older generation who had lived their entire lives within a radius of two or three streets, close to their children and grandchildren. The rehousing programme tore apart the extended family, which had provided the unity and been the strength of East End life for generations. Families in the suburbs started a new, more affluent life, and began to feel ashamed of their old Cockney dialect with its distinctive accent, its idiosyncratic grammar, its delicious word order, its double and triple negatives, its back slang and rhyming slang. Sadly the old Cockney lingo virtually disappeared.
In the 1960s vast areas of London were torn down, and with them went the Canada Buildings. The heart went out of old Poplar.
I wandered around the Buildings after they had been evacuated. Where little girls had played hop-scotch and skipped, where boys had played football or marbles, where women in curlers and head scarves had gossiped and men exchanged racing tips, where teeming human life had been lived in all its rich fecundity was now a ghost town. Hollow sounds echoed up the walls of the high buildings, a dustbin lid rolled across the cobbles, a broken door swung against a wall. In the court, where costers had once trundled their barrows, stood rows of municipal rubbish bins. Where once there had been washing lines festooned with clean washing, broken lines now trailed in the dirt. Where the coalman with his horse and cart had sauntered in stood a notice – NO ENTRY. Stairways up which women had heaved everything, including a baby in its pram, were barricaded with the notice DANGER. Dark corners, where giggling and kissing had once been heard, were now filthy, piled high with detritus blowing in from the yard. Windows, where net curtains had fluttered, were boarded up. Doors that had always been open were now permanently closed. No movement, no life, no humanity. I left the Buildings and never went back.