Sister Monica Joan fascinated me as she did most people. But she never treated me as a lady’s maid. No doubt her instinct told her that it just would not work. We understood each other as equals and found endless pleasure in each other’s company. During the uncertain weeks of waiting we had many conversations in her pretty room just after lunch, or before Compline. We talked for hours. Her short-term memory was faulty – often she did not know what day or month it was – but her long-term memory was excellent. She could clearly recall facts, incidents and impressions from her Victorian childhood and her working life in the Edwardian era and the First World War. She was highly intelligent and articulate and could express herself vividly, often in beautiful language that seemed to come naturally to her. As I wanted to learn more about old Poplar, I tried questioning her. But this did not work. She was not easy to pin down, and often took no notice of what I had said or asked. She had a habit of making statements unrelated to anything that had been said beforehand, like: “That rapacious old mongrel!” And then no more! The old mongrel had obviously come into her mind unbidden and then slunk away, his tail between his legs.
Sometimes she developed her thoughts and her words flowed easily. She would make a dramatic statement: “Women are the cohesive force in society.” She picked up a pencil and balanced it delicately between her two fingertips, those astonishing fingers that she could bend at the first joint. Would she continue? To say a word might break her thoughts.
“And ‘woman’ in the slums is capable of taking on almost superhuman responsibility, from a very young age, that would crush most of us. Today they live in luxury – look at all the giddy young girls around us – they have no memory of how their mothers and grandmothers lived and died. They have no understanding of what it took to raise a family twenty or thirty years ago.”
She glanced at the pencil and twisted it round with her thumbs. Privately I questioned the “luxury” in the tenements, but said nothing for fear of chasing away her memories. She continued.
“There was no work, no food, no shoes for the children. If the rent was not paid the family would be evicted. Thrown onto the streets by the law of the land.”
She paused, and a memory flashed through my mind of something that I had seen only a few weeks earlier, when I was cycling back from a night delivery.
It had been about three o’clock in the morning, and I saw a group of people, a man and woman and several children, coming towards me, keeping close to the wall. The woman was carrying a baby and a suitcase. The man was carrying a mattress on his head, a rucksack and several bags. Each of the children, none of them over ten, was carrying a bag. They saw the headlights of my bike and turned their faces to the wall. The man said, his voice quite distinct in the darkness: “Don’ chew worry. It’s only a nurse,” and I cycled past, not realising at the time that a dramatic and tragic event was taking place; an event that used to be referred to light-heartedly as a “moonlight flit”. The family were anticipating eviction and fleeing unpaid debts. God only knows where they ended up.
Sister Monica Joan was staring at me, hard, and then she narrowed her eyes. “You remind me of Queenie – turn your head.”
I did so.
“Yes, you look just like her. I was so fond of Queenie. I delivered her three children and I was with her when she died. She was no more than your age, but she died trying to avoid eviction.”
“What happened?” I whispered.
“She went into the Bryant and May factory that made matches. They were a lovely family, and I knew them well. No fights in that family. Her husband was no more than a boy when he was killed in a riverboat accident. What could Queenie do with three little children? The Parish would have taken them from her, but she wouldn’t have it. She went into the match factory because they offered higher pay than anywhere else. Danger money, they called it, and wriggled out of any responsibility by saying the women accepted the danger when they accepted the pay. Wicked it was. Wicked. Death money it should have been called. Queenie worked there for three years and kept a roof over their heads and just enough to eat. We thought she would escape phossy jaw. But it got her, yes, it got her, and she died a terrible death. I was with her at the end. She died in my arms.”
Sister Monica Joan said no more. Could I risk a question?
“What is phossy jaw?”
“There you go. What did I say? Young girls have no idea how women had to live and work. The matches were made from raw phosphorus. The women inhaled the vapour, and the fumes got into the mucous membrane of the mouth and nose. The phosphorus penetrated the bones of the upper and lower jaw. The bones literally sloughed away. In the dark you could see the woman’s jaw glowing with a bluish light. There was nothing that could be done for these women and they died a slow and agonising death. Don’t ask me again what phossy jaw is, you ignorant girl. It’s what Queenie died of, trying to provide for her children, trying to avoid eviction.”
She glanced at me, and clamped her teeth together.
“That’s what we fought for. Girls like Queenie, hard-working, loving, young women full of life, who were driven to their deaths by the system. I was with her when she died. It was ghastly. The bones of her lower face crumbled away, and she suffered weeks of agony. There was nothing we could do. Her children went to the workhouse. There was nowhere else for them.”
The rain fell quietly on the window, and she sat quite still. I could see the pulse beating sluggishly in her long neck, carrying the life-giving blood to her brain. “Draw the curtains, please, dear.” I did so, hoping she would continue, but she only murmured, “It seems like yesterday, no time at all.” And there was no more.
The memories of people like Sister Monica Joan should be cherished. I sat on the edge of her bed, my legs drawn up underneath me, and tried to interpret from her sensitive features what was in her mind. I did not want Queenie to fade from her memory, so I asked about the children going to the workhouse, but she became irritable and snappy.
“Questions. Always questions. You give me no peace, child. Can I not expect a little repose in my old age?”
She threw her head to one side with an affected sigh. At that moment the bell sounded for Compline. “There now. See what you have done. You’ve made me late for my religious duties.”
She swept past me without a further glance and made her way to the chapel.
That evening I attended Compline. The lay staff at Nonnatus House were not bound to do so – we were not professed religious – but we could attend any offices if we wished to. I particularly loved the words of Compline, the last office of the day, and had been very affected by the story of Queenie, so I followed Sister Monica Joan into the chapel. Her behaviour was atrocious! She entered without so much as looking at anyone else, and did not take her usual pew but went straight to the visitors’ seats, took a chair and sat with her back to her Sisters and the altar. Sister Julienne quietly came up to her and gently tried to draw her into the group around the altar, but Sister Monica Joan rudely pushed her aside and even drew her chair further away so that she was looking directly at the wall. Compline proceeded in this fashion.
Sister Julienne was obviously saddened, and the love and pity in her eyes showed that she knew something strange was going on in the mind of the old lady, which she was trying to understand. Perhaps it was advancing senility, or perhaps one of those mental illnesses that make people turn away from, and become aggressive towards, the people who have been closest and most dear to them. Quietly the Sisters left the chapel. The Greater Silence had begun. After that evening Sister Monica Joan always sat with her back to her Sisters, even at Mass.