"Kenilworth. Here we are."
Marianne, navigating from the passenger seat, lifted her finger from a scribbled note of directions, and looked with interest at the little house. Little being the word under consideration, thought Patrick. The two-storey row house, being narrow and long, looked smaller from the front than their entire third-floor flat in St. Albans. The street was several degrees shabbier than their previous home, though quieter and cleaner than the market and tenement blocks they just had driven through.
Patrick's shiny new MG, in British racing green, had drawn attention from the stallkeepers and children milling about, and he knew that the arrival of the new doctor would somehow beat them to their new home.
On cue, the door to number 21 opened, and a middle-aged lady in a faded but well-ironed housedress and overall stepped out onto the stoop next to theirs, waving.
"You the doctor?" she called. "I've your 'ouse keys 'ere. 'Ang on a mo." And she fished in her overall pocket and came up with an old-fashioned skeleton key on a piece of twine. She trotted down the stairs in sturdy brown canvas plimsolls, and waited for Patrick to finish pulling up along the sidewalk before leaning on Marianne's open window. "'allo, love," she said warmly, "You're Doctor's missus? Well, I'm Mrs. Bree. You're welcome, so you are."
"Hello, Mrs. Bree," Marianne replied, returning her new neighbour's friendly handshake and curious glance. "This is Dr. Turner, and I'm Mrs. Turner. Thank you, it's lovely to be here."
Mrs. Bree grimaced wryly, leaning further in to shake Patrick's hand, too, and handing him the key. "Wouldn't call it lovely meself. No slice of 'eaven round here. Never mind, pet, we'll learn yez soon enough. We're right glad to 'ave a proper doctor back in Poplar, make no mistake. You wanner ask anything, you come see me. All right?"
"We will, Mrs. Bree," he promised. "First question: is there a British Restaurant about?"
"There is, and a good clean 'un, too. Follow this road down to 'aymarket Close and watch for Bread Street on left, cross from the big convent, with the nurses' 'ostel in it."
"Ah! We'll take care of two pieces of business at once."
They waved and pulled into the street again. Patrick looked over. Marianne had her thoughtful face on, playing with the skirt of her dainty pink day-dress. It had seemed entirely suitable for a late summer car journey, more comfortable than a suit, but it was out of place here.
"It's not much like St. Alban's," he said, so she wouldn't have to. Poplar was years behind the larger, west-London towns in terms of post-war cleanup and recovery. Overcrowded and under-resourced, Poplar was near the top of the new National Health Service's list of urgent placements for District GP assignments. Their standard of living was about to be reduced by several tiers, and Patrick's potential lifetime income with it. But they were young and energetic, and shared a passion for service and social education. Marianne, gently bred near the Wirral, had driven a city bus and then an ambulance during the war, and soon after that, had convinced Patrick that she would not regret being the wife of a government GP, once the National Health scheme was rolled out.
"They need us here," she replied, "But they're resourceful and proud of it, Patrick. We'll have to start softly, and convince them we're here to help, not to change everything."
"I think that's where our new friends the nuns may help. They've been here nearly a hundred years, and they've always been a nursing order. Fully trained, every one. There's a plan for us to work in partnership, with me consulting at their clinics as well as my own, and they continuing to supply district nursing and midwifery."
"And me to keep you from falling to bits and forgetting to eat," Marianne smiled. "Time for the Turner charm, darling. You'll win them over."
"Perhaps I'll wait a bit before letting on I was raised Catholic."
"They'll know," his wife pointed out, "and it won't occur to them to mind, I shouldn't think. They'd be more concerned if the new doctor came in and undid all their family planning education."
"Well, exactly. I wouldn't want them to think I'm not on their side."
"By their deeds shall ye know them, dear."
It was Sister Julienne who won them over first, with her even more ambitious plans for community health care, particularly for the women and children of Poplar. Articulate and highly trained, she would fight like an extra arm for a patient, Patrick thought. If she hadn't been a nun, she'd have made a fine Head Matron, if not an administrator in a large hospital. Except that he suspected she was the type who best loved working with her patients, and sighed at being pulled away.
After a tour of Nonnatus House and the Parish Hall half a block away, where the nuns held regular clinics, Sister Julienne invited them to stay for tea. There was no need for the British Restaurant after all. The Nonnatans kept a very good table, thanks to a talented personage called Mrs. B., and were well-supplied from their own kitchen garden. Several other nuns and the lay nurses arrived home from their daily callouts, and drew up chairs to join them. There was no regimented separation of religious and lay staff here, he thought - an interesting change from his upbringing, in which the nuns of his memory might as well have lived on a different plane of existence.
Sister Julienne introduced the nurses first: Nurses O'Reilly, Hayes, Franklin and Trainor.
"I think we're forever to be known as Doctor and Doctor's Missus," said Marianne, and the nurses laughed. Nurse Hayes asked Marianne if she still had the pattern for her pink dress, and the conversation turned lively among the young women.
Sister Julienne smiled to hear it. And then she introduced the eccentric, beatific Sister Monica Joan, Sister Evangelina, who had seen front-line service in a Red Cross field unit at Dieppe; broad-faced, freckled Sister Benedict the book-keeper and bee-keeper; Sister Paul, Sisters Mary Catherine and Mary Helen; and small, bespectacled Sister Bernadette sitting across from him, who from her black pinafore dress, white blouse and pinned-on black coif was a postulant.
"Our daughter," Sister Monica Joan confirmed. The Turners paused quizzically.
"It's a term for a sister in formation," Sister Julienne explained, "For example, in the Mother House, each year of new postulants are known as brothers to each other, from the shared start of their religious life. Here, we are so small that we might only receive one or two a year. So in the absence of brothers to grow up with, they have only us old hands. There is a lot to learn all at once, from religious training to our work, and so we try to remember that our daughters need extra kindness and understanding."
"And for me to remember I'm back in First Form again," Sister Bernadette added, sharing a humorous glance with Sister Julienne. Patrick guessed this was a young lady who was used to asking a lot of questions, and not being satisfied with rote or half-answers.
"You've come a long way," he remarked, on hearing her speak. North of Scotland, carefully tempered, he thought. "Did you train at Glasgow?"
"No, I came down some years ago," she told him. "I was at King's College Hospital, and then the London for specialization."
Which might explain her attempt to smooth out the burrs of her accent, he thought. The medical schools were not kind to those who sounded of a rural or northern class, even from old landholding families, and he imagined the nursing world included the same inherent snobberies. Though the war had scraped thin many of the old social divisions, it left people clinging to the familiar structures that remained. He'd had to downplay his own Scouser chatter at university, even though it helped break down barriers at the bedsides of injured conscripted men far from home, at Normandy and Sicily.
"The pinnacle of her graduating class, crowned with laurels," Sister Monica Joan beamed again. There was no mistaking her class of birth, with her trills and vowels firmly entrenched. "A fine fellow, Bernard. What a surgeon he'd have made."
Sister Bernadette smiled and looked down at her salad. Sister Evangelina rolled her eyes. "Don't turn her head, please, Sister Monica Joan. We're lucky for all our nurses."
"Oh, well done," Patrick said to the newest sister, seeking a diplomatic middle ground, "We do need all the good training we can get. And all the prayers, too. I hope you're fond of hard work, Sister Bernadette."
"I like nothing better," she said, as if surprised he would ask.
"Just four months," he overheard Marianne murmur to the nurses, then, with a little colour creeping up under her sandy curls. Under the table, he slid a reassuring hand over her knee.
"Ah! I was off by two weeks," Nurse O'Reilly said. "I thought maybe three and a half. Just a wee pip yet. Well, we'll take care of you. Ever done any nursing yourself?"
It was a common enough question for a doctor's wife, as the medical marriage pool tended to be based in propinquity - that is, the nurses who worked right under the busy doctor's noses.
"Sort of. More of a medical assist. I was an ambulance driver. Last two years of the war, in Liverpool," she replied, and the nurses nodded approvingly. Sister Evangelina even looked slightly thawed.
"Were you really! Well, you've come to the right place," Nurse O'Reilly said.
Patrick looked around the table and thought that she was absolutely correct.