We reassured her. What else can you do? We did not say that, in those days, no one had ever been known to recover from cancer of the pancreas. Frank was given the choice of hospitalisation for the radium therapy, or an out-patient visit twice a week. He stayed at home. He handed over the lease of his stall to a mate of his for three months, saying he would want it back when he had had a good rest and was better. He told Peggy not to give up any of her work, because he didn’t want to be fussed. However, Peggy did give up most of her work, arguing that this would be the only time in their lives when he was not working six days a week, and they could treat it as a holiday. A bit of radium therapy would hardly get in the way and they could go out and about on the other days and have a good time.
However, Peggy continued her work at Nonnatus House. Perhaps she needed the proximity of the Sisters for reassurance and advice. She did not appear anxious, saying things like, “He’s getting on nicely now, thank you, Sister,” or, “We haven’t been out anywhere, really. The radium seems to make him tired, so we stay in, and he likes to hear me reading to him. It’s better than going out, we reckon.”
One day she said, “He seems to get pain at night, but they’ve given him some tablets, and that’ll do the trick, eh, Sister?” Another time she said, “He’s lost a bit of weight. Good thing too, I tell him. ‘You were beginning to get quite a paunch on you,’ I said, and he laughed and said, ‘You’re right there, Peg.’”
Within a few weeks we were requested to take Frank for home nursing. Sister Julienne and I went to assess him.
Peggy and Frank lived in a prefab on the Isle of Dogs. These were small, ready-made buildings erected in huge numbers after the war, to house some of the thousands of people whose homes had been destroyed. The prefabs were put up as an emergency measure and intended to last only four to five years, but many of them lasted forty to fifty years. They were very pleasant, cosy and greatly preferred to the terraces that had been destroyed by the bombs. As we approached the prefab estate in the morning sunlight, it looked charming, with the low buildings, leafy trees full of sparrows and the river lapping in the background. It always surprised me that only a short distance from one of the biggest commercial ports in the world such quietness and peace could prevail.
Their tiny garden, about six to ten feet of space all around the house, was well tended, with flowers and cabbages and runner beans growing well. A vine was trained up the south wall and I wondered if they ever got any grapes worth eating. The front door opened straight into the sitting room, which was comfortable and pretty. It was also spotlessly clean. Peggy was obviously very house-proud.
She greeted us with her usual happy smile. “It’s good of you to come,” she said as she took Sister’s cloak and hung it up. “He’s in bed at the moment, but he’s getting along nicely. He’s had two weeks of the radium treatment now and he’s getting stronger all the time. He says he’ll be back at the market in no time.”
We went into the bedroom and I was thankful that Sister Julienne was with me. Had I been alone, my reaction at seeing Frank for the first time in about three months would probably have betrayed my shock. He looked ghastly. He lay in the middle of the big double bed, his eyes sunken, his skin grey. He had lost so much weight that his flesh hung in wrinkles and he had lost most of his hair. I doubt if any of his mates at the market would have recognised him.
Sister went straight up to him, with her gentle warmth. “Hello Frank, how nice to see you again. We miss you at Nonnatus House, and look forward to your return. The other man’s good, we’ve no complaints, but it’s not the same as having you.”
Frank smiled, and the skin pulled tight across his nose and cheek bones. His eyes, sunk deep into their bony sockets, gleamed with pleasure. “I’ll be back right enough, Sister. It’s only a few more weeks of this radium, an’ I’ll be on me feet again.”
“Are you sure you won’t go into hospital for the remainder of your treatment? It would be more restful, you know. The ambulance journey back and forward can be very tiring, especially after the treatment.”
But Frank and Peggy were both adamant that he should remain at home.
Sister examined him. She carefully moved his emaciated body, the arms and legs that seemed to have insufficient muscle to lift their own weight. Was this the man who had lifted a hundredweight box of cod only a few short weeks ago? I went to the other side of the bed and caught in my nostrils the smell of death as I leaned over him.
Strangely enough, Peggy did not seem to notice how desperately ill he was. She seemed perfectly happy, and kept saying things like: “He’s getting on fine,” “He’s getting stronger each day,” or, “He ate all the milk pudding I made for him. That shows he’s getting well, doesn’t it?” I was struck by the fact that we all see what we want to see. Peggy appeared to have closed her mind to the reality of Frank’s condition, to the extent that she literally couldn’t see it. To her, Frank was exactly the same as he had always been, her brother and her lover. He was the beat of her heart, the blood in her veins, and the physical changes, obvious to anyone else, she just did not see.
It was arranged that I should call for home nursing twice a day, and that Sister would come any time that Peggy requested.
I do not know whether or not Sister Julienne noticed the sleeping arrangements in the little house. The prefabs were constructed in a rectangle with a single large room and two small rooms leading off it. These were intended as bedrooms, but one of the rooms in Frank’s house was a dining room, which we could see through the open door. The only room used for sleeping had a double bed in it. If Sister Julienne noticed these things, and put two and two together, at no time did she say so. The Sisters had seen it all before, many, many times. In cramped living conditions, where a family of ten, twelve, fifteen or more lived in one or two rooms, incest was hardly surprising. Families kept their secrets and the Sisters did not comment or judge. I felt that there was nothing in human life that they had not witnessed in the seventy years they had worked in Poplar.
Later Sister said to me, “We will have to keep up this pretence that he is going to get better. The charade has to go on – treatments that will do no good, drugs that are useless – to give, the impression of medical competence and nursing care. ‘Hope’ lies in those treatments and, without hope for the future, most of our patients would find themselves in torment at the end.”
One day when I called they were studying travel brochures received from Thomas Cook. Frank was very alert in his mind. His speech was slower and quieter, but his eyes were bright, and he seemed almost animated.
“Peg an’ me, we thinks we’ll go to Canada for a good ’oliday when the treatment’s done an’ I’m on me feet again. She’s never bin abroad afore. I was in France and Germany in Hitler’s war, an’ I never wants ’a go near Europe agen. But Canada, now – big clean open spaces. Look a’ this ’ere, nurse. Lovely pictures, aren’t they? We reckons Canada’s just the place for us, don’t we, Peg? Who knows, we might stop there if we likes it enough, eh, Peg?”
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her eyes glowing with happy anticipation. “We’ll go on the Queen Mary,” she agreed. “First Class, like a couple of swells.”
They both laughed and squeezed hands.
Together Peggy and I helped him to the bathroom. It was difficult, but he still had the strength to get there. She washed him all over, because although he could get into the bath, he did not have the strength to get out. In clean pyjamas he sat in the sitting room looking at the plaster ducks flying across the wall, whilst Peggy and I changed the bed with the text over it, executed in big, childish embroidery stitches, ‘God is Love’.