Dear Mrs Busby,

Thank you for your kind words and for letting me know how Delia fairs. Please tell her I will gladly write every week if she will allow it. I would very much like to know how her recovery is going, should you find the time to reply to my letters. I know how terribly busy you must be, so I will understand if this isn't possible every time.
I have enclosed a letter to Delia and I would be very grateful if you would pass it on for me.

Yours Sincerely,

Patsy Mount

... ... ...

Dear Delia,

Well November has reared its ugly head and it's back to double vests and gloves here now. It rather feels as though winter has sunk its teeth in harder than usual to make up for those few unseasonable warm days and already there is frost on the cobbles when I set out on my early morning rounds. Still, Fred (our handyman and friend here at Nonnatus House) has somehow managed to tear himself away from his new marital bliss for long enough to mend the boiler and he has promised that the chimney will be swept by the time we all come home tonight. He said that last week as well, but this time he has been busily draping the place with old sheets to protect the carpet from soot, so we must give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that when we come home it will be to a cheerfully blazing fire and perhaps a nice mug of hot chocolate. One never knows ones luck!

Last night The Noakes family joined us for supper which was very jolly. Chummy Noakes used to be a midwife here at Nonnatus House and although she left before my time to get married, she is still a great friend to everyone here and works with us part time to help out when it gets especially busy. She is a wonderful dear. A boarding school girl like me but one of the best sort. She is quite possibly the tallest woman I have ever encountered (I put it down to all the sun in India where she spent her early years), so I imagine her being the gentle giant of a sixth former who would be shy with her peers but take frightened little first formers under her wing and have them laughing in no time. Of course Chummy is a good few years older than I am so school days are a thing of the past, but somehow no matter her own troubles or ours she always has us all smiling again within a few minutes of her arrival, just like my imaginary first formers.

Unfortunately though, in spite of the fact that cooking is not among Chummy's many talents she will insist on trying to help out by offering to bring the food whenever the family dines with us, and last night was no exception. After a valiant effort all round with rather blackened shepherd's pie, Sister Monica Joan set down her fork and announced that 'the time had come for sweet meats'!

Oh but have I told you of Sister Monica Joan yet? She is the oldest of the Nonnatus family and I can't begin to guess how many years she has worked as a nurse and nun in this community. Age has rather affected her and she is by turns the wisest and the most unusually eccentric person I have ever come across, with an appetite for cake unrivalled I am sure in all of London.

In any case, in the end I'm afraid to say we all plumped for crumpets and Battenberg instead of the pie (even Chummy!). It was perhaps not the most filling or nutritious of meals, but there is something immensely satisfying about living out everyone's secret childhood ambition to eat cake for dinner!

Usually Trixie, Barbara and I have a nightcap in the room Trixie and I share after supper, but last night it was just me and Babs. Trixie has taken to disappearing on mysterious errands that she refuses to explain with more than an enigmatic smile and a wave as she hurries away. I rather wonder if she is starting out with a new chap but afraid to jinx it by saying too much too soon. Still, it doesn't do to gossip and speculate on ones friend's affairs so I will tell you things I know for sure instead. Dear Barbara has no alcohol tolerance at all, as we learnt on her first night at Nonnatus (I was up until 3am in the bathroom with her, manning the mop and keeping her hydrated after she tried Trixie's 'fortified wine') so the lid stayed firmly on the bottle of scotch and we drank bournvita instead.

Barbara wanted to nip out for a bag of chips ("one cannot live on crumpets alone Patsy!") but somehow I couldn't bring myself to fancy them so she brought out her birthday box of chocolates instead. It was rather nice actually. Trixie is delightful company, never a dull moment but Barbara is rather shy by comparison so when the three of us are together I don't get such a chance to get to know her. It turns out she is quietly hilarious and had me in stitches over first day disaster stories. In one day she spent several hours on an overcrowded train (standing wedged between a woman with an enormous Victorian perambulator that Barbara said could probably have fit her inside and still leave room for three or four babies; and a teenage boy who spent the entire journey trying to sneak a peak down her shirt), got lost on the streets of Poplar, was presented with an unsolicited bunch of bananas by a market vendor (just what everyone needs when starting a new endeavour I'm sure) and finally arrived at Nonnatus House only to have Sister Monica Joan refuse her entry. It was at that point that her suitcase burst open in the street and half the dogs in the neighbourhood decided to play piggy in the middle with the most personal of her clothing! It only ended when Sister Monica Joan had a change of heart and came out to throw a bucket of water over the lot of them, giving poor Babs a chance to pick her soaked garments out of the gutter. Then of course to top it all off Trixie and I accidentally poisoned the poor girl with alcohol in our attempt to welcome her. For all her gentle exterior she must be tougher than she gets credit for simply for not having run away after that first disastrous day!

Anyway, much as I would love to stay and chat, duty calls again, this time in the form of insulin injections to give and dressings to change (I am on the district nursing rosta this week).

All the best,
Patsy

... ... ...

Darlings Deels,

I'm afraid I lied to you in my letter today. Life in Poplar is not the rosy image I have been trying to paint with my words. I am almost sure I know where Trixie goes in the evenings and it is certainly not to see a man. I know she isn't coping but I don't know how to help because it's all I can do to keep my own happy face in place until we switch off our lamp for the night. She doesn't talk about it, at least not to me (I think she sees more of my own distraction than she lets on) but the simple fact that 'Trixie's bar' has been closed for business the last few days shows that her difficulties with drink have come to a head. I want to ask her about it, but how can I? Sometimes the mask is all we have, and it would be unfair to snatch Trixie's from her while I still cling so fiercely to my own.

The rest is true, apart from my own role in the proceedings. I hardly hear the conversations over dinner these days. When I make myself laugh at a funny story it sounds to my ears more like I'm crying and I am afraid someone will notice and ask what's wrong because kindness might just pull me apart. Mostly what gets me through is thinking about how, if I can make it through this dinner or that dance, I will be able to write of it to you and maybe it will make you smile. Only happy things for you now my darling. Whatever happens here I will not write to you of sorrow. You have helped me stay strong for so long, and now I will be strong for you.

When my mother and sister died it was in a place where feelings made you weak. I thought that if only I had known enough I might have been able to do the right things to save them. In her last sickness my mother caught me crying and told me to wipe my eyes and put on a happy face because pain is how we know we're still alive but being strong is nine tenths pretending you're immune. Once she was gone I learned that no matter how many tears I shed, sentiment would not bring either of them back, so I buried it and poured all my energy into learning to perform useful actions instead. I have supported people through the best and worst days of their lives, I have seen birth and death and poverty and although I have always cared and worked to make the world a better place, until I met you I never let it touch the deepest part of me. But you- you waltzed right in and turned me into a softer person without me ever suspecting it was happening.

It wasn't until I went back to our flat after seeing you in the hospital that I realized that sentiment isn't meant for those whom tragedy has taken away - it's for those of us left behind. I can't bring back your memories for you, I can't even be the one to care for you while you recover, but I could scrub a window and put your flowers there to catch the morning light just the way you dreamt it should be, and I can write these secret love letters that you will probably never see. And if those things are more balm to my soul than yours, well, I have come to realize that that's alright too. Pain might be how we know we're alive but perhaps sentiment and hope are how we know we're human.

I love you Delia.

Ever yours,

Patsy