Phyllis Crane is a perceptive woman.

She's quite pleased to note the moment at which the younger midwives switch from "Nurse Crane" and from sniggering at her presence, to "Phyllis", and the sharing of tea and confidences in the sitting room.

And she relishes the occasion when she – quite deliberately – shocks Nurse Gilbert with her story of her pilot in the war. There are other stories – and she gets to some of the others when they all come back from an evening of rather dire entertainment at the community hall, something arranged in the hope of raising money to send the scout troupe off to another jamboree. Fred's nephew's best friend (at least, that may have been the relation specified) had volunteered his band. It was not a resounding success. "Timothy Turner would have put on a better show – at least he can play something you can dance to!", Nurse Franklin had lamented. Phyllis couldn't help but agree, and offered them a story of some similarly terrible wartime entertainment – and the rather better ways she had found to amuse herself and keep the home fires burning instead.

She knows what "Art History Class" means. Of course she doesn't say – doesn't even hint at knowing. But she worries, sometimes, about Nurse Franklin, and Nurse Mount too. Oh, they're nice girls – esteemed by almost everyone in Poplar. But the way that they've thrown themselves into midwifery of late – that worries her.

Phyllis Crane has always believed in moderation. She has her vocation, true – but she also has her classes; her reading; her car – which takes her away where and when she likes. She's some family and friends in Leeds to visit on occasion (although that's not often, it's as often as she chooses, and that pleases her). She won't have anyone's pity – it is the life she chose, and it is a good and real one.

But Nurses Franklin and Mount have, of late, gone about their work with a kind of monomania, as though there were nothing else for them. Of course it's worthy work, and necessary work, delivering babies, but it's not all there is. Phyllis is thinking about this as she's flicking through an article in a travel magazine about a recently-rediscovered Roman temple at Cordoba. Quite the wonder, the magazine exclaims. She picked up the magazine on a whim, but now she's pondering a Spanish holiday – dare she drive there? It would be quite a distance. Perhaps a better start would be to try France – she doesn't speak the language, but has a phrasebook, somewhere – and work up the confidence for foreign roads. She has a sneaking suspicion, though, that French drivers are just as bad, if not worse, than Spanish ones. Consider the Morris.

Worries about continental motoring habits aside, she turns back to the temple at Cordoba, when the thought strikes her. Magnificent in its day: ten columns on each side, supporting a great weight of marble. She's not given to poetic flights of fancy, but she thinks again of Nurses Franklin and Mount. Watching them – the way they very pointedly talk only about their patients, or patients' urine samples, or their schedules, with only the merest concessions to small talk or anything beyond midwifery – it's as if nine columns have fallen down – slumped – and all that's left to hold them up, hold up all the weight of their ambitions and hope and expectations, is that one solitary column, their work. It doesn't do. There's no balance. Even nuns have more in their lives – they have both their jobs and their faith in the sure and certain resurrection of the flesh. They have a belief in something greater. Looking around the table at lunch, it worries her that Nurse Franklin and Nurse Mount – young women, women in their prime – should have lives so much flatter than nuns who have disavowed fleshly love, worldly possessions and personal freedoms.

Phyllis Crane is perceptive, but, more than that, she knows not to stick her beak where it isn't wanted. She smiles at Trixie and Patsy (because, really, she's been here so long now that she thinks of them by their first names), and she'll offer them words of encouragement, but she won't pry. Not to pry - that's a policy. She tells them that the world is waiting – that they should reach out and strike for it. The reaction is muted. Both of them seem there, but not quite there. So she watches them. It's not her job to do so, of course. She doesn't have the duty of care or pastoral office that Sister Julienne might lay claim to. But she feels she has to. As much as she respects the sisters, and as much as she sees their loving care in evidence every day, they do have a habit of seeing spiritual anguish as the supreme kind of pain, the most important kind of pain, a tendency to locate all things on the grand battlefield of spiritual struggle. The life they've chosen makes it hard to understand the other ways in which a soul can be troubled. It makes it hard to recognise the depth and solidity of troubles of the kind that Trixie and Patsy are enduring. Troubles – what – of the heart? Phyllis can't be sure. She hopes things will improve; but she might step in if they get worse.

Things get better – slowly, imperceptibly, over the course of months – the gloom lifts from both Nurse Franklin and Nurse Mount. She doesn't ask why, but she's pleased to see it.

One night, she is kept very late at a birth. Well – "late" – she'd arrived in the afternoon: the long and difficult labour had lasted until the early hours of the morning. The father, as it turned out, and his mother, were from Leeds – down in London only five months. After the birth (no complications), the new grandmother had made her a cup of coffee and they'd spoken about Leeds in the war, for a bit. Good to hear a familiar accent, and to talk to someone who remembers the map of Leeds city centre before it was remade postwar – but it doesn't do to become sentimental.

It was very early in the morning when she made her way back. She was not, of course, expecting to be alone at Nonnatus House. If memory served her correctly, Nurse Mount was second on rotation, Nurse Gilbert third – but a busy night was not expected, and Nurse Gilbert would likely be soundly asleep. This was a blessing – she knew that Nurse Gilbert was fit for little unless she got at least 6 hours of sleep, and otherwise had to be kept awake with strong tea and the promise of confectionery. It was not entirely professional.

She made her way inside, so intensely engaged in removing her cloak – she's still not convinced it constitutes an improvement to the uniform – that she was slow to recognise the voices in the air. Not that voices were to be expected at all at this time. She made them out – one polished, RP; one a rich Welsh burr – coming from the kitchen.

"You don't need to wait up for me every night, you know."

"I know. And I don't do it every night. But I was reading, and then it was late, and then I thought…why not?"

"That doesn't mean I'm not awfully glad you did."

"Mmm, it's nice to be appreciated."

And with that, she saw Nurse Mount lean into Nurse Busby and press her mouth to Nurse Busby's lips. Not chastely.

Phyllis was not scandalised. When all was said and done, there was not much to be scandalised by. (There was nothing happening here that - she didn't doubt - wasn't happening in a hundred households up and down the country at the same time. Perhaps a thousand. She'd had some sense of that, during the war; because in those circumstances, when people are called upon to pull together, sometimes the intimate and unsought-for details of other people's lives were thrust upon you. Even then, she'd not been scandalised, only surprised by the numbers. You couldn't fairly label it deviancy when there were so many people at it. In those circumstances it became - well - just a demographically significant feature.

She very occasionally thought about these things: "these things" being the body of opinion that gets the name "morality", because people who were very vocal and very self-assured labelled it so, rather than just calling it "human behaviour". It was not, generally, something she though about off her own bat, because she liked to set her mind to more practical tasks - but people would inevitably bring it up when laying claim to their own moral dignity. So when she did think about it, Phyllis thought about it medically. Humankind is just a series of variations on a theme, after all: in eye colour, in height, in weight, in handedness, in disposition and temperament - and this was only another variation. It was not something to get worked up about.)

So she was not scandalised. It was more that she now had information which needed to be understood and put in its proper place – in the same way as when she received new details about a patient, she would update the rolodex, add a new card, make a new note, or cross old or incorrect information out – scored twice through, so there could be no mistakes, with black ink. The information needed putting in place.

And suddenly, bits that were unclear to her before become far clearer. That conversation with Nurse Mount in her car, after the visit to Mrs Smith. Why a bright girl – so full of possibility, and charm, and resolve – could sometimes look so crushed.

Possibly, it also occurred to her, such bold romantic entanglements in a communal kitchen could be quite unhygienic.

What took Phyllis longer to realise – as she ran through these thoughts – was that she was standing on the threshold of the kitchen. That she was not as discretely tucked away as she had believed herself to be. And now Nurse Busby and Nurse Mount were watching her with something very like horror on their faces.

"Nurse Crane...Phyllis", began Nurse Mount.

Nurse Busby, who, of the two, Phyllis had always considered the more forward, seemed not to know how even to begin.

Phyllis interjects. "This is nothing that I haven't seen before. Which is not to say this is appropriate behaviour for a kitchen, or for 2 o'clock in the morning. I suggest you both get to bed, or remove yourselves to a more appropriate venue, before you wake any of the sisters."

A pause. Nurse Busby slowly speaks "…So you won't… tell Sister Julienne?"

"As far as I'm concerned, Sister Julienne has never expressed the wish to be kept apprised of what happens in this kitchen in the small hours. That is, unless the two of you have found the Holy Ghost in the biscuit tin."

Nurse Mount offers a weak smile. She grasps the hand of her companion and urges her out of the kitchen.

As they leave, Phyllis has one further thought.

"Nurse Mount?"

"Yes?"

"How was Mrs Turnbull – I assume you were called out to her?"

"Oh… a girl, an easy delivery, mother and baby both doing well."

"Good. And Nurse Mount?"

"Yes?"

"I'm pleased to see you've been looking better. Recently. You'd developed quite a pallor – even for someone of your celtic complexion."

Phyllis Crane isn't fool enough to believe that everything always turns out for the best. Nor is she devout enough to trust that all will – in the end – be well. (Another variation among humankind: only a rare few are capable of sustaining that kind of belief. She doesn't envy them it.) But she does believe that everyone deserves a bit of tenderness, and should take it where they can.

That moment in the kitchen isn't mentioned again. Nurse Busby and Nurse Mount look nervous for a day, and then, after they make eye-contact with her, their anxiety seems to subside. Her look is enough to convey that they have nothing to be nervous about, even if her manner remains – characteristically – brusque. Phyllis treats it as one more confidence in a house (a home, really) which is full of confidences and unspoken understandings.

But a few weeks later, when Patsy mentions that she is planning to take her holiday in Paris, and Delia with her (Phyllis rearranges the rota without comment, but with a smile), an idea strikes her. Patsy finds a French phrasebook on her bed.

When the two of them return, they reassure her about the habits of continental motorists, and bring her back a bottle of something very nice indeed. Standing in front of her, in her room, Phyllis can't help but notice that Nurses Busby and Mount stand rather closer together here than they do in a more communal setting.

And Phyllis thinks that perhaps Cordoba isn't so far away after all.

A/N (1): I wrote this when I was drunk and then forgot about it for months. A sure indication of its quality.

(2) As a stickler for historical accuracy (even when it concerns classical archaeology, not 1960s Britain), I note that the Roman imperial temple at Cordoba mentioned here is a real one, only rediscovered accidentally during excavations in the city centre in the 1950s. It did have 10 columns on each side, and supported a marble wall. There's no suggestion that 9 out of the 10 columns collapsed though - that's my authorial liberty.