Obvious inspirations for the story: Call the Midwife, North and South

A Bookmaker. A Robber. A Fighting man. And a Fool.

Trigger warnings: Rape/non con (not in the primary relationship, not as I've intended to write it but power dynamics are at the core of the story), cannon-type violence, BDSM, D/S, spanking with hands and a belt, virginity loss

The doorbell rang twice on a small, dirty little street in Small Heath. It was eleven o'clock on a Sunday morning in June and Ada Thorne (nee Shelbey) was still abed.

"I'm fuckin' comin'!" The woman cried out, exasperated. Almost seven months pregnant it took her a few long moments to maneuver carefully down the narrow front stairs to the small door of the rented flat. "What'cha want then?" She said, flinging the door open.

The girl on the steps nearly flinched back at her tone. Her mouth opened to reply but instead she just goggled at the other woman without saying much. It was enough time for Ada to take in the uniform dull blue hat and plain dress and the satchel slung over one slim hip. "Oh fuck me, sorry sister. Of course you've come about the babe, sorry about that."

"Ah, yes Mrs. Thorne, as you said, I've come about the baby."

"Yes right, come in then, won'tcha?"

Ada stepped aside to let the other woman through. Big as she'd become the slender girl could nearly just pass by in the cramped staircase but she managed it. Ada shut the door behind them, locking both the top bolt and the turn-key. "Where is Sister Ruth gone off to then?" She asked as she mounted the steps slowly, panting a bit as she went.

"I'm afraid she had a family matter present itself. She returned to the country to tend to her ailing mother. I've taken over most of the mothers she was tending to."

"You're a posh one aren't you then." Ada said. "Where are you from then? Not from around here with that accent I'll wager."

They had come out into the small kitchen, a dingy little place but at least with good light. Ada went to the stove to put the kettle on while the other girl stood, trying not to shift uncomfortably from side to side in the doorway. "No, I'm not from Birmingham."

"Schooled in London I'd wager." Ada said, her own Birmingham tone making the simple phrase into a sing-song. "No one talks like that who ain't from London."

"I was schooled in London." The blond stranger admitted. "My name is Eleanor Arden by the way Mrs. Thorne, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance."

Ada took the proffered hand with a bemused smile. "Please to make my acquaintance? I'm not sure anyone ever has been before. Would you like some tea then?"

"Yes, that would be lovely in fact."

"I could listen to you talk all day luv." She went to get out two mugs and some tea. When she turned and found Eleanor still standing she gestured to the seat at the table. "Well go on then, make yeself comfortable won'tcha?"

"Oh yes, thank you very much."

As the pot heated Ada sized the other girl up as she fought not to stare to long at anything in the kitchen, the little broken sugar bowl on the table, the meager assortment of half-eaten and stale bread on the counter between two empty wine bottles and a well-used ash tray. Not to mention the communist pamphlets that were stacked or strewn over what seemed like every surface.

"You're not a nun then?" Ada said finally after another moment of scrutiny.

"No, I'm not. Only a midwife. Working with the nuns is great training though as most of them have been doing it for decades or more. We sleep in the convent but we don't take vows and we're free to work at secular hospitals if we choose too afterward."

"I thought you were a nun at first looking atcha. But not with your hair out so and on display like it is."

Eleanor didn't really feel it was fair to characterize her hair as on display. It wasn't covered with a habit but surely the meek, mousy little red cap the nuns had dreamed up as their uniform couldn't count as such. She didn't hate it as much as the dress though, a cheap woolen thing that made her itch like the dickens in such heat.

But there was something about Ada Thorne that made her not quite eager to disagree with the other woman, even about something so trivial. She reminded Elanor in a strange sort of way of the children of great houses who had been her playmates growing up: bossy little tyrants who never questioned that they would get their own way of what games were going to be played and who was going to win. Here was a woman who was used to getting her own way, Eleanor could tell from the door.

It was a rather strange thing to find on such a small, dingy street in Small Heath.

Of course Eleanor counted herself as no expert in the area but her upbringing at least made her confident when it came to recognizing people who came from wealth or power or both. As a new graduate from midwifery school she had been in practice only a year and practicing in Small Heath only a month since Sister Ruth's mother had taken ill. But her experience with her mothers here was all but the opposite of what she found in Ada Thorne. The power she wielded over them as a professional woman, someone who earned her own money and not on her back, in addition to her accent tended to make the woman shy and deferential to the point of muteness.

She made herself smile at the other woman as she put down a mug of tea in front of her. "Thank you very kindly Mrs. Thorne."

"Don't mention it. Would you like a biscuit with it? Or maybe some whiskey?"

Eleanor had grown up with enough older brothers to recognize teasing when she heard it. She smiled. "A biscuit would be most welcome."

"You are a proper catholic though, of course?"

She shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Anglican."

"A shame that."

"So I've been told."

"So how long have you been in Small Heath then?" Ada asked ash she brought some cheap, biscuits from a package for their tea.

"Only a month perhaps."

"Do you intend on staying then?"

"I have no attachments here." The girl tried for something like a smiled. "But I have no attachments anywhere else either so I suppose I have no objection to staying."

"You're not engaged then? Don't have a bloke?"

"No, I don't."

"A pretty thing like you? Can't be for want of askin'."

"That's kind of you to say."

"It's the truth. You know it if you have a glass."

Alright perhaps Eleanor could forgive her for the hat remark then. In truth it was almost a relief to talk with Ada. After so many months of talking to no one but mothers, who tended to be silent and deferential, accepting her lectures without remark or sign of understanding, the pious and somber nuns and the serious and studious other midwifes, the braw and bony way Ada talked was a genuine pleasure. Besides the tea was properly brewed, even if it was rather cheap it was strong enough to take off paint should it have been called on to do so. And Ada had given her but a splash of milk to cut it—just the way Eleanor liked hers.

She took a sip and leaned back in her chair, taking in the home with a more generous eye. "Mr. Thorne is... a printer I presume?" She gestured to the stacks of papers that were piled around.

Ada smiled. "Something like that I guess you could say."

"And you Mrs. Thorne... do you work?"

"I work at a few things, nothing paying though."

"I see."

Ada grinned. "You think I'm a working girl, don't you?"

Eleanor helped herself to four lumps of sugar and stirred it into her tea.. "A what?"

"A working girl, lady of the night... a prostitute."

Eleanor sat up straight. The thought had indeed crossed her mind the way that the other woman lived. She had a few on her list that she knew were respectueuses. Sister Ruth had not been shy when she'd laid out the list of women she was assigning Eleanor to take over. But Ada had been a more recent addition, not someone Sister Ruth had ever met. Certainly there was something sluttishness about the flat that was common with working girls but the fine ring on the girls second finger and the boldness of her had been incongruous with all the pute that Eleanor had yet to run across.

"No Mrs. Thorne, I did not think that." Eleanor met Ada's eyes with a firm confidence.

"No? And why not exactly?" Ada asked. "I'm a woman alone with a belly full of a child and my husband is off at all hours. What makes me different from a common whore then?" She struck up a cigarette, breathing in deeply.

She offered one to the other woman with a gesture of the packet but Eleanor gave a small wave of deference to indicate she didn't want one. She couldn't help notice that it wasn't a rolled cigarette but rather a manufactured one.

She stirred the weak, cheap tea absentmindedly before answering. "You come from money Mrs. Thorne."

Ada's smile widened. "You think I come from money? With this accent and with this here house?" She said gesturing to the old, slightly dirty wallpaper and cheap appliances.

Eleanor took a sip of tea. "Poor people are not curious to meet me Mrs. Thorne, nor eager to have me in their house. When they hear my accent and see the way I walk, they shut their doors if they can. They don't smoke that brand of cigarette and they certainly don't ask me as many questions as you just have. A woman who has to scrape coins together to keep food on the table for herself is not eager to meet the class of woman whose father pays her husband too little for too much."

Ada's eyes gleamed with real joy at that. "You sound like a bloody communist speaking like that Miss Arden. Is that what brings you to Small Heath then? Grew a heart did you and felt like repenting for all the centuries your ancestors had their boots on the necks of the working class and decided you needed to come tend to them and their injuries?"

Eleanor's smile was a little sad. "That, I'm afraid, would be giving me too much credit."

Ada waited for a moment, clearly hoping she would expound. When Eleanor did not seem inclined to offer the reason for her visit she said, "well then, tell us what did bring you here to my little hovel on this dirty little street."

Eleanor opened her mouth to offer the story that she had told a hundred times before- to her parents, to the nuns, to the other midwives and her friends back home- that she had found in the war that she liked tending to the sick, that she felt that God had chosen and asked her to take up midwifing as her profession. Instead, almost to her surprise, she said, "I did not want to get married."

"Eh?" Ada's brow wrinkled. "What'dya mean you didn't want to get married?"

"Simply that. I had been to London to be presented, done half a season in society and found that I did not think a husband would suit me."

"Why ever not?"

"I wouldn't want a man to have that kind of power over me." Again she was genuinely surprised at her own candor. She wondered idly if Ada really had put some whiskey in her tea for she could think of no other reason her tongue would be so unusually loose around a stranger. To her parents she had always been viewed as rather a secretive child. Eleanor keeps her own counsel, Gabriel had once said of her when their mother had been prattling on about how she could do to talk a bit more and mope a bit less, what's wrong with that? But here she was, practically pouring her heart out to a relative stranger.

Ada considered for a moment, seeming to consider all the men in her life. One hand slipped absentmindedly over her belly to stroke it in a protective, soothing pattern. "Well that's a bloody fucking sensible thing to say." She finally concluded. "I wish I could do the bloody same but it's a little late for that now isn't it. You must not have any brothers then eh? Some of them can be worse than a husband when it comes to setting forth dictates and decrees for a girl."

"No I don't." She bit of the rest of the sentence, not anymore.

Ada seemed to be considering her with renewed interest now. "So you just told your parents that you didn't want a man and that you were going to take up midwifing instead?"

"Yes something like that."

"And they let you then? They didn't tell you you couldn't?"

She shook her head. "They aren't that kind of parents."

"What kind is that?"

"The kind to forbid things."

Ada shook her head in wonderment. She pointed the hand with the cigarette in it at Eleanor with firm accusation. "That. That is the most posh thing I swear I've ever heard."

Eleanor erupted in laughter, throwing back her hair with such abandoning joy that the mousy little cap flew back, landing on the floor. She reached for it as it fell but missed, only clapping a hand to the tidy little arrangement at the back of her head as the cap tumbled down. She didn't try to stifle her laugh though, the other hand went to her chest almost as if to encourage the sound out. Her laughter, Ada found, was quite infectious—an unrestrained burbling forth of joy that swept her up until she was giggling as well.

When Eleanor had finished laughing she bent down to pick up the hat again, wiping damp from her eyes. "Yes, I suppose it is... sorry to laugh it was just... well you looked so funny and sure of yourself when you said it. As if you were accusing me... of the worst thing imaginable." She managed through little bursts of giggling.

Ada was smiling too. "What kind of fucking plummy parent's don't forbid their children things? I swear to God I've never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life."

Eleanor was still wiping damp eyes. "Yes I suppose it is rather."

"It's no wonder you ended up in Small Heath then."

"What do you mean?"

"Any parent with a lick of sense wouldn't let a little flower of the upper class fall so far into the mud as this if they could help it."

Eleanor frowned. "I don't mind Small Heath, it's a little dirty and the people are a little distrusting of me as I said. But I think once they've gotten used to me it will be alright."

"Have you seen much of it then?"

"I walk all over to visit the mothers if that's what you mean."

Ada's smile was a little mischievous. "No, that's not quite what I meant." Before Eleanor could ask what she meant Ada stood. "Well then, let's get cracking on with it shall we."

Eleanor nodded and stood as well. The separation between the kitchen and the bedroom was only a few feet, not even a curtain hung between the two of them. This was hardly an uncommon arrangement in the neighborhood—Eleanor had seen smaller quarters for a family with up to seven children and the eldest nearly adults. Still, she always felt a little tingle of apprehension when she approached the bed itself, as if she were snooping into the private affairs of the couple in question. In her old life she would have blushed to see the bed of a married couple, almost as if she would have caught them in an amorous act. Strange that she found seeing the bed almost more embarrassing and intimate than the examination of the woman herself.

"I'll need you to take off your small clothes. You can leave the dress on but lie on the bed on your back."

She turned to give the other woman some privacy as she took of her shoes, hoes and underthings, opening up her satchel and putting on her apron. She fetched out her ledger book where she kept recordings and turned to a fresh page. She printed Ada's name in the corner neatly.

"This is your first baby then?"

"Aye."

"Never been pregnant or lost a babe before?"

"No, I've been careful." Next to Ada Thorne she wrote G1P0 to indicate she was gravida once but para never.

"And when was your last flow?"

Ada told her the date and she got out the clever little wheel that helped her mark down the weeks. In the first column of the table she wrote the date, then in the next 34w4d to indicate she suspected Ada was in her thirty-fourth week and forth day of the pregnancy. As she had been taught she felt the baby through the skin, assuring herself of the lie within the stomach. "Has he been moving well for you?"

"A little too much."

"Any bleeding from below or a sudden gush of fluid like your water has come?"

"No."

"Any frequent contractions?"

"No."

"Occasional ones are not uncommon in the last weeks but if they become frequent and regular it could be a sign your baby is coming early. If that is to happen I want you to drink two large glasses of water and send for me immediately."

She felt again the stomach and frowned. "I think he's head up. It's not uncommon at this stage. He can still flip into the proper position in the next few weeks though so don't let it trouble you."

"I know he's head up. The little bastard is always kicking me right in the... tenderest imaginable place."

She measured her from top to bottom and noted down the length.

"I need to do an exam from within now. To make sure that you're not dilating too soon."

"Oh aye, I've been warned about it."

She went to the sink and washed her hands very carefully with particular soap that she produced from her bag. It was caustic stuff and at first her hands had been raw and bleeding when she used it. She'd broken down after a week and gone to buy some rather expensive hand cream with the money that her mother sent her every week. She hid the cream from the other girls who lived in the convent with her, not because she didn't want to share it but because she was ashamed of how clearly costly it was.

She dried her hands carefully and then went to where Ada was lying on the bed. She put her hands on Ada's knees and pushed them apart until she was frog-legged in the bed. With one hand she pushed up the other woman's dress until she could see her sex. She parted the folds and then slipped two fingers in, reaching back until she could feel the cervix. High, closed, posterior, she thought to herself before washing her hands again and writing it carefully down.

She helped Ada off the bed and then turned to let her get her small things back on, writing down a few notes to help her remember for the next visit. "Everything looks just as it should Mrs. Thorne." She told her when she was finished changing back. "I'll be coming every week now to make sure you're progressing as you should. When your water breaks or you begin to feel regular labor pains send word to the convent and I will come at once. If I'm with another mother another girl will come in my place. Please send for me as well if you have any brisk bleeding or you think your water has broken."

Ada nodded. "I shall."

Eleanor took of her apron and folded it neatly back into her satchel along with her book. "Thank you very much for the tea Mrs. Thorne." She said politely.

"Welcome to Birmingham Miss Arden."

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW. I promise to finish this fic if you promise to review every chapter. I need just a little push of inspiration to post and write the rest of this which feels like it's pouring out of my hands faster than I can type.