Shadows Of The Workhouse: The Drama Of Life In Postwar London

MR JOSEPH COLLETT

Sister Julienne and I left Nonnatus House and cycled towards the tenements, known as the Canada Buildings. We made our way to Alberta House, to a patient I had not met before – a man with leg ulcers that required daily dressing. Sister had told me the ulcers were severe, and warned that dressing such wounds in the patient’s home was very different from doing so in a surgically equipped and sterile hospital. The man was a Mr Joseph Collett, aged over eighty, and he lived alone in one of the ground-floor flats.

We knocked at the door. There was no immediate response, but we heard movement inside. The door was opened by a very old and rather dirty man. He peered at us through thick-lensed glasses, and it was obvious from the way he was looking and trying to adjust his focus that he could not see at all well. Nonetheless, he must have recognised us, for he opened the door wide, drew himself up very straight, and bowed slightly, saying: “Mornin’, Sister. I’ve been expecting you. Good of you to come. Who have you got with you today? Someone new?”

“This is Nurse Lee, and when I have shown her the routine, she will be looking after you.”

He turned towards me, and put out a hand to touch my coat sleeve, as the partially sighted do. He couldn’t quite see me, but he was obviously assessing my height and general contours, by which he would recognise me. “It’s nice to have you here, young lady, and I am sure we are going to get on famous. Allow me, Sister.”

He said this with old world courtesy, took her bag, and slowly walked with it to place it on the table.

“I’ve got the boiling water ready for you, and the flavine, and lint. I think you’ll find everything’s there.”

Sister Julienne started unpacking her bag, and I looked around the room. The smell was none too pleasant, but I had got used to that in the tenements. The walls were a dirty beige, with wallpaper peeling off. The paint was dark brown, blistered and cracking. A small gas stove sat in one corner, by the stone sink. Next to the sink was a lavatory, which was an obvious addition to the room and not part of the original structure. The windows were so dirty that very little light could penetrate, and there were no curtains. An open doorway revealed the bedroom, with a brass bedstead. The whole area – living room, bedroom, kitchen area and lavatory – could not have been more than about fifteen to eighteen feet square, and there was no separate bathroom. It was quite adequate for an old man living alone, but I knew that many such tenement flats housed whole families. How did they manage, and stay sane?

A fire was burning merrily in the hearth and a hod of coal stood beside it. I noticed a tin bath full of coal under the sink. A very beautiful grandfather clock stood proudly against the opposite wall, next to a large wooden crate full of sticks and old newspapers. A heavy wooden table – the sort antique dealers would fight over today – filled the centre of the room, and some grimy plates and mugs were spread out on a newspaper. The room was full of old military photographs, prints and maps, and what looked like medals and trophies, yellowed with age and dirt. I concluded that Mr Collett had been a soldier.

Our patient sat down in a high wooden chair next to the fire, took his slippers off and placed his right foot on a low stool. He pulled up his trouser leg, revealing horrible blood-and-pus-soaked bandages. Sister Julienne told me to do the dressing, whilst she watched me. I knew everything had to be disposed of in the patient’s house, so I placed newspapers on the wooden floor. I kneeled down and started to undo the bandages with forceps. The stench was revolting, and I felt nausea rising as I struggled to peel off the layers of bandage, which were stuck to each other with slimy fluid. I let them fall onto the newspaper, to be burned on the fire. The ulcer was the worst I had ever seen, extending upwards from the ankle for about six to eight inches. It was deep and suppurating badly. I cleaned it with saline, packed the cavities with gauze soaked in flavine, and rebandaged. Then the other leg had to be treated.

Mr Collett didn’t complain whilst I was attending to his legs, but sat back sucking an old pipe with no tobacco in it, talking now and then to Sister Julienne. The grandfather clock ticked loudly, and the fire crackled and blazed. The siren of a cargo boat echoed through the room as I completed the second dressing and bandaged up the leg, with the quiet satisfaction of knowing that I had made this dignified old soldier more comfortable.

I cleaned up, saw that everything was burned, packed my bag, and Sister and I prepared to leave.

“Won’t you stay for a cup of tea, Sister?” he asked. “It won’t take me a minute.”

“No, but thank you; we have other work to do.”

I thought he looked crestfallen, but he said quickly, “Then I won’t keep you, marm.”

This old-fashioned use of the royal “marm” surprised me, but strangely it didn’t sound out of place.

“Nurse Lee will come to you each morning from now on.”

He laid his pipe on the mantelpiece and stood up. He was very tall, more than six feet, and stood very straight. He walked slowly over to the door and opened it for us, then bowed again slightly as we left.

Out in the courtyard the air smelled sweet and fresh. A horse-drawn coal cart entered, and a huge man jumped out, lifting a tiny child of about two or three onto the cobbles. The man strode through the courtyard calling in a distinctive and penetrating yodel: “Co-al, co-al,” the second syllables rising a perfect fifth from the first. The long strides of the man took him swiftly through the court and the little boy, running as fast as he could to keep up, tumbled and fell. As he picked himself up, he lifted his fluffy blond head, and in a tiny, piping voice called out: “Co-al, co-al.” A perfect fifth!

Women came out of many doors and hailed the coal man, who carried a bag, or half a bag, up the stone steps to the balcony where it was required. No one had a real bunker or space to store coal, so small amounts of half a hundredweight had to be bought frequently. Coal fires were to become obsolete due to the 1960s Clean Air legislation, but in the middle fifties they were the only form of heating for most people.

Inevitably, if you see a person daily in his own home over several months, you will cease to regard him as a patient and come to know him as a person. Treating Mr Collett’s leg ulcers took about half an hour, during which time we talked and, as old people can always remember the distant past more easily than they can remember yesterday, we talked about his early life.

Mr Collett was not a typical Cockney in appearance, speech or manner. He was much taller than average, and had a slow, thoughtful way about him. His quiet dignity and formal way of speaking commanded respect and I never presumed to call him ‘Joe’. He was a Londoner, first generation, and spoke with a London accent, but it was not heavy Cockney, typified by an idiosyncratic use of grammar and idiom. He told me his parents were country people from Sussex who had been tenant farmers. The family had been displaced by the Enclosure Acts of the nineteenth century and, unable to sustain themselves even at a subsistence level, they had drifted towards the city in search of work. They had settled in Croydon, where Mr Collett had been born in the 1870s, the oldest of eight children. His father had been a painter and decorator, and an unskilled builder’s labourer. He was often out of work, because in the nineteenth century painting was a trade at the mercy of the weather. Paints had no chemical quick-drying components in them and would take about four days to dry, so in wet weather no painting could be done externally, and the men were laid off. The building trade was in the same position, because cement would not dry in less than three days.

“But my father was a good man,” said Mr Collett. “He would not see his wife and children go without. There was always stone-breaking to be done for road-building and railway construction, and he would go to the yards and break stones all day. He would come home at night wet through, aching all over, with a few pence in his pocket that he had earned, and my mother would rub his back and chest with liniment and apply flannel soaked in hot mustard water to keep out the cold. He was a good man. He wouldn’t go to the pub and drink away his money, like many we came to see.”

Mr Collett shook his head in disapproval, and cut off a chunk of tobacco, which he proceeded to shred finely in the palm of his gnarled hand and stuff into a leather pouch, in which he kept a piece of apple peel “to keep the tobacco moist”, he told me. I was fascinated by this tobacco, called shag or twist, which was sold in lengths. Shag was the tobacco my grandfather smoked, and the smell of it filled me with happy childhood memories. Tobacconists kept long coils of it, perhaps two or three feet long, like a curled, black sausage, and a few inches would be sawn off and sold to a customer. I thought the smell was lovely as Mr Collett shredded it in his hand (or perhaps it was just an improvement on the usual fusty smell of the room), and I encouraged him to cut it up and smoke the stuff, which produced clouds of thick, grey smoke when a match was applied. Incidentally, shag was the same tobacco that men often chewed. You would see a lot of old men chewing away with toothless gums, sucking the last drachm of juice from the tobacco, after which they would spit it out.

Mr Collett always asked me to join him in a cup of tea, and I always refused, for two reasons: I had never been able to drink strong tea, the unvarying brew of East Londoners; but, more importantly, the thought of drinking anything from the filthy mugs that I saw on the table made me feel sick. Neither of these reasons could I tell him, so I always said that I was too busy. He accepted this, but he always looked sad, and once he just nodded his head quietly and swallowed hard, as though there was a lump in his throat. I could see him, of course, better than he could see me, and if he had known that I was studying his face, trying to read his thoughts, he would have stood up quickly and turned away; but I was packing up my bag and watching him at the same time. There was a patient weariness and sorrow written all over his strong features, which made me think he was lonely, and that my visit was the bright spot of his day. I didn’t like to leave him, even though it was always a relief to quit the all-pervading smell of the place.

Then I had a brilliant idea. Boiling water poured into those filthy mugs would melt the grease and accumulated dirt, which would then float to the top. If I asked for a cold drink, the dirt would remain stuck to the sides of the mug. It was foolproof. So I said that I didn’t like hot drinks, but would enjoy something cold. I was thinking of orange juice.

His face burst into smiles, like the sun coming out on a grey day. “That’s what you shall have, my maiden.”

He stood up, and went to a small cupboard near the sink. He fumbled about, feeling for the things that he could not see clearly, and came out with two hand-cut crystal glasses and a bottle of sherry.

“Oh no, no,” I protested, “I can’t drink alcohol, not when I’m on duty. I meant orange squash, or something.”

His face fell. The sun went behind the clouds. I realised how much it meant to him, and how little it meant to me. The scales are unevenly balanced, I thought. I laughed and said: “All right, I’ll just have half a glass. But don’t you dare tell the Sisters, or I shall get the sack. No nurse is ever allowed to drink on duty.”

I sat down on the wooden kitchen chair by the big mahogany table, and we drank a glass of sherry together, sharing the secret of my disobeying orders. The light was dim, because of the dirty windows, but the fire glowed red, transforming the squalor into cosiness. Mr Collett’s eyes gleamed with pleasure, and I had the impression that he was so happy he could hardly speak. Two or three times he dabbed his eyes with a filthy old handkerchief, and muttered something about having a cold in the eye.

That moment was significant in my life, because I understood that he had wanted to give me something, but had not known how. A cup of tea was all he could think of. My refusal had been a rebuff. By joining him in a clandestine glass of sherry, we had shared more than just the drink: we had shared a conspiracy of silence. It obviously meant more to him than I could have imagined, and I felt all my youthful pride and arrogance crumbling to dust beside his humble, unaffected joy in my company.

That day was the beginning of a friendship that was to last until his death.

As I left and stepped out into the court, a woman with a shopping basket was entering the flat next to Mr Collett’s. She was old, but brisk and spritely. She looked up at me, challenge written all over her features.

“You seein’ vat dirty old man agen – phew!” She spat out the sound, with a hiss.

“Nasty old bugger, I says. I’m tellin’ yer, you Sisters oughta have somefink better to do than run around after him all the time. Phew!”

She spat on the cobbles again.

“Him, who is he, any road up? He’s not nobody, he’s not. He’s not one of us, he ain’t. Where’s he come from? – that’s what I wants ’a know. And look at ’ow he keeps ’is place. Filthy. It’s disgustin’, I says. He ain’t not got no right ’a be livin’ there among God-fearing folks as likes to keep themselves respeckable.”

She nodded her head emphatically. The curlers under her scarf stuck out at angles, making her look particularly vicious. She smacked her gums together, and repeated “disgustin’” as though she were stating the ultimate in moral depravity, and disappeared through her doorway before I could say a word.

I was seething with fury. What right had this woman to speak to me, or anyone else, in that way about her neighbour? I felt deeply protective of Mr Collett, as obviously she would not hesitate to spread such venom about him to anyone who cared to listen. It was insufferable. He was dirty, admittedly, but no worse than many. And anyway, he was partially sighted. The sherry had left me with a warm glow inside, and this gratuitous attack on a gentle old man whom I respected sent my blood racing. No wonder he was lonely, if he had this woman as a neighbour.

I mentioned the incident over lunch at Nonnatus House, with great indignation.

Sister Julienne tried to calm me down. “We meet a lot of that sort of thing among the older people of Poplar. They are deeply suspicious of anyone from the next area of the Docklands, even the next street, sometimes. If we believed everything they tell us, we would believe everyone to be a murderer and villain, or a wife-beater and granny-basher. I cannot be quite sure, but I believe Mr Collett had two sons who died in the First World War. If this is the case, our deepest sympathy is due to him.” She smiled at me quietly, and said no more.

The next day, a bottle of orange juice was standing on Mr Collett’s table. Bless him, I thought, he must have made a special shopping trip on my account. I wanted to ask him about his sons, but decided it would be better not to. He could tell me if he so wished. I asked him to tell me more about his early life in Croydon, and about his family.

“It was a good life for children. Back then Croydon was a small place in the countryside. There were fields and farmhouses, and streams where the children played. We were poor, but not as poor as many, and my mother was always a good manager. She could make a meal out of a bone, she could, and my father kept an allotment, so we always had fresh vegetables. But it all came to a tragic end.” He paused, cut off another chunk of tobacco, and filled his pipe.

I bandaged up his first leg, and started the second. “What happened?” I asked.

“My father died. The scaffolding on the building where he was working collapsed. Five men were killed. It was due to slipshod workmanship on the part of the scaffold-builders. There was no compensation for the wives and children of the dead men. My mother could not pay the rent, and we had to get out of the house. It was a nice house,” he added, reflectively, and sucked his pipe. Clouds of smoke filled the room.

“I don’t rightly remember where we moved to, but it was smaller and cheaper. We kept on moving to smaller and smaller places. I was thirteen, and the eldest of the children. I left school at once, and tried to get work, but in 1890 there was no work.” He told me how he had tramped for miles trying to find anything: on the land, on building sites, with horses, on the railways. But there was nothing. “The only job I could get was in the yard where my father used to break stones in the bad weather. But it was piecework, and I wasn’t really old enough or strong enough to break the granite boulders. I hardly got a thing for a day’s hard labour. I remember my mother cried when she saw me at the end of the day. She said, ‘You are not going to do this, my son. I’m not going to have you die as well.’ The men were rough, you know, really rough, and they were all swinging fifteen-pound sledgehammers. Most of them were drunk. You can imagine the accident if a lad of thirteen had been hit instead of a stone.”

I undid the second bandage. “So what did the family do?” I asked.

“We came up to London. I don’t know why; perhaps my mother was told there was more chance of work for her, or for me. We came here, to Alberta Buildings. I can still see the old flat from here – that one on the fifth floor, second from the end, by the stairway. It was just one room, like this one, but with no water or lavatory, of course. I think there was gaslight, when we could afford to use it. It was cheap, but even at three-and-sixpence a week my mother had to work day and night to keep a roof over our heads. From the day my father died, my mother never stopped working.” With the childhood memories flooding back to him, Mr Collett described how his mother did cleaning by day, portering, and took in washing and ironing. There were good wash-houses at Alberta Buildings in those days, he said. On top of that she took in mending for the second-hand-clothes dealers, did umbrella stitching in the winter and parasol-making in summer.

He went on to tell me that she had applied to the Poor Board for relief, but was told she was not of the Parish, and to go back where she came from. As a special concession, the chairman had offered to take three of her children, saying that she would then be relieved of the burden of having to feed them, and would have only five children left. The three children would be put in the workhouse. When his mother refused, they had called her ungrateful and improvident, and told her that she need not trouble herself to come back to them, because the offer would not be repeated. They sent her away, saying she would have to manage as best she could.

“She did manage, but I don’t know how. She kept a roof over our heads, and provided enough food to keep us from starving. But we seldom had a fire, even in the coldest weather. We never had shoes, and our clothes were thin, and mostly in rags. All the families around us were just as poor, and it was made far worse by drunkenness. Most of the men drank, and that meant a lot of violence in some of the homes. Many women were in such despair they drowned themselves. Every week the cry would go up: ‘A body in the Cuts,’ and it was always a woman. You can imagine how the children felt . . . always scared their mother might be next . . .”

He sat thinking for a while, puffing his pipe, then chuckled. “It’s a funny thing, you know, but children can accept almost anything when they feel loved and secure. In spite of being cold and hungry, my brothers and sisters were always laughing, always playing out in the court, always inventing new games. I never heard any of them complain. But I was different. I was thirteen when my father died; I remembered the old life and hated our new one. I hated seeing my dear mother working eighteen or twenty hours a day for a pittance. She would sit late into the night, sewing shirts by candlelight, in a freezing room, with no food inside her, all for sixpence. I resented the injustice of it. Of course, I was out each day looking for work, but times were hard and the best I could find were odd jobs, like holding a horse, or running errands, or sweeping out a yard.

“I tried to get work in the docks. You would think there was plenty of work in London’s Docklands, wouldn’t you? Well, there was, but there were thousands and thousands of men after the same work. I reckon there were ten men for every job – no chance for a young boy like me.”

In those days such jobs as there were went mostly to the boys whose fathers and grandfathers had been dockers, Mr Collett explained. There were frightening scenes at the dock gates: hundreds of half-starved labourers, clad in rags, crazed and desperate, fighting for the chance of a few hours’ work. Perhaps fifty would be taken on for the day while five hundred would be turned away to idle their time away in the streets. No wonder men were violent.

“At low tide there was always scavenging to be done in the mud. Some lads found things of value, but I never did. The best thing I found was bits of coal, washed off the barges, and drift-wood. At least that made a fire for the evening.

“The worst thing was the way the gentry was so suspicious all the time. I was looking for honest work, but I was called “ragamuffin”, “varmin”, “lout”, “thieving dog”. Just because I was thin and ill-clothed and looked hungry, they assumed I was a thief.”

Mr Collett’s mouth tightened. His proud face stiffened at the memory of the insults. I had finished his second leg and sat back on my heels looking up at him, thinking that the accumulated experience of old age was much more interesting than the chatter of the young.

I had a glass of orange juice, whilst he drank a cup of tea. It was a good compromise, because he gave me a glass, which was dusty, but not filthy.

I was enjoying his company and conversation and didn’t want to leave him, as he seemed so happy. On impulse I said: “I must go now, but it’s my evening off tonight. Can I come and have a glass of sherry with you, and you can continue your stories?”

The joy on his face answered my question. “Can you come, my maiden? Can you come? I’ll say you can come, and a thousand times welcome.”

YOUNG JOE

Cycling back to Nonnatus House, I had misgivings about my quixotic suggestion of returning that evening. Medical people are warned about the difficulties that can develop when friendships with patients are formed. It is not something that is forbidden, but it is discouraged, and for very good reasons. So, after lunch, I spoke to Sister Julienne in private. She didn’t look disapproving, or even particularly concerned.

“Well, having said you will go this evening, you cannot possibly fail him. That would be needlessly cruel. I think he is a lonely old gentleman and your visit will give him pleasure. Enjoy yourself. He is a very interesting old man, I have found.”

With Sister Julienne’s blessing, my misgivings vanished, and I cycled round to Alberta Buildings at about 8 p.m. with a light heart.

Mr Collett was so obviously overjoyed to see me that he seemed nervous. He had gone to some trouble, and put on a clean shirt and waistcoat and a pair of highly polished boots. Like all old soldiers, he had never got out of the habit of buffing and rubbing his boots to perfection and the whole room smelled strongly of boot polish. The dirty plates and mugs and newspapers had been removed from the table, and two fine crystal glasses and half a bottle of sherry had been put out in readiness. The fire burned brightly, casting flickering shadows over the dingy walls.

He said, “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come, but here you are.”

He walked slowly and carefully over to his chair. “It’s good to have you here. Sit down. It’s so nice to see you.”

I was overwhelmed and a bit embarrassed by all this, and sat down awkwardly, not knowing quite what to say.

“You’ve come. You are here,” he repeated. “Ah, this is so lovely.” Obviously I had to say something. “Yes, I’ve come. Of course I have. I’m not going to run away, so let’s have a glass of sherry, and we can talk about old times.”

He laughed with delight, went over to the table and lifted the bottle. He felt around for the glasses and I moved to help him, but he said, “No, no, I can do it. I have to all the time, you know.”

He poured out two glasses. His hands shook a little and he spilled a considerable quantity on the table, of which he was unaware. I realised that spilled food and liquid would probably account for much of the smell in the room. The rest was likely to be an uncleaned lavatory, unwashed clothes and the bugs that infested Alberta Buildings. I wondered if he had a home help.

But I wasn’t going to think about that sort of thing. If he was unaware of, and quite content with his dirt, why should I criticise? Sister Julienne had told me to enjoy myself, and that I was going to do.

I took a sip of the sherry, and said, “Lovely. This is a cosy room, and you know how to make a nice fire. You were telling me about your childhood. I’d love to hear more.”

He settled down comfortably in his wooden chair, and put his feet on the stool (ulcerated legs have to be kept raised as much as possible). He pulled out his shag and his penknife, and started cutting it up. I inhaled a sniff of the strong tobacco. He took a sip of his sherry.

“This is luxury. When I was young I would never have dreamed of such luxury. A fire every day! A warm bed at night! Enough food to eat . . . A welfare state that pays my rent because I am too old to work, and pays me a pension of ten shillings and sixpence a week, to buy all that I need, including a bottle of sherry when I want it. This is luxury my poor, dear mother never knew in all her life.”

He was cutting up his shag slowly and carefully, holding it in the palm of his left hand and drawing the knife downwards. It looked alarming, as though he was going to cut his hand, because the tobacco was clearly tough and needed a lot of pressure. But from long practice he knew just when to ease the pressure, and he never cut himself. He worked by feel, not by sight. He slowly unravelled strands of the villainous-looking stuff with which he filled the bowl of his pipe. Next, he took a wooden spill, about eight inches long, from a pot at his side and stuck it into the fire. It burned up brightly, the flame leaping high into the air. He brought it towards him, sucking hard on the pipe, and the flame dipped downwards into the tobacco. He sucked and puffed contentedly, and smoke filled the air. Then he blew the flame out, and returned the half-burned spill to the pot, in much the same way that my grandfather used to do.

“Sheer luxury,” he said, smiling contentedly. “I was telling you about our first years in Poplar, after my father died; how my poor mother had to work day and night; and how I couldn’t find work, except odd jobs, to help her. Well, there was one job I got that was good fun for a lad who’s looking for adventure.

“I was down the Blackwall Steps, waiting for the tide to go out, so that I could go scavenging. A man came along and said to me: ‘Here, boy, can you cook a stew?’

“‘Yes, sir,’ I said (I would have said ‘yes’ to anything).

“‘ Can you skin a rabbit?’

“‘Yes, sir.’

“‘Bone a fish?’

“‘Yessir.’

“‘Make tea and cocoa?’

“‘Yessir.

“‘Clean a wick and fill a lamp?’

“‘Yessir.’

“‘You’re the boy I want. My cabin boy’s done a bunk. Can you sail today?’

“‘Anywhere, sir.’

“‘Be here at high tide. The British Lion’s the barge you want. A florin a week all found.’

“It was all so quick I hadn’t time to draw breath. I raced back to Alberta Buildings, round to the washhouse where my mother was toiling away, and told her I had been hired as cabin boy on a Thames barge. My mother didn’t look as thrilled as I had expected. In fact, she was dead against it. We had words, and I shouted at her: ‘Look, I’m off, whatever you say, and I’ll come back a rich man. You’ll see.’

“So I ran back to the Steps, no extra clothes, nothing like that. Sure enough, at high tide, the British Lion came along, and I jumped aboard. It was the most wonderful time I had in my life, and I reckon every boy’s dream. I was on the river for six months. The barge carried flints, coal, wood, bricks, sand, slates – anything. We would take a load of coal down to Kent, and pick up a cargo of bricks to bring back to Limehouse. In those days hundreds of trading vessels plied the river, huge ocean-going cargo boats down to one-man skiffs. You could always tell a barge by the red sail, and often the sail and the cabin were all that could be seen. The barges were so low that, with a full load, the whole deck would be under water. It’s true.”

He heard my incredulous gasp and roared with laughter, and sucked his pipe.

“People would stare from the banks, because honestly, all they could see was a red sail, and men paddling about knee-deep in water, with apparently nothing beneath them.

“I was as happy as a boy could be,” he continued with another laugh. “I made the stews, trimmed the lamps, learned boat-handling, and didn’t mind I wasn’t paid. The skipper always said he would pay me after the next trip. After a bit, the mate whispered to me, ‘That bloody monkey’s not goin’ ’a pay you. He never does. All the cabin boys do a bunk in the end.’

“That was a shock to me, that was. I had been counting up the florins in my mind, and had reckoned on one pound after working ten weeks, and two pounds after twenty weeks. I thought I was rich – except that I hadn’t got the money. So I asked the skipper and he said, ‘After the next trip, lad. When I’m in funds.’

“Well, the next trip came and went, and no money. Three or four more trips – no money. I got cross and resentful and told him if he didn’t pay me, I’d do a bunk. He just smiled pleasantly, and said, ‘After the next trip, Joe, the next trip, trust me.’

“Well, of course, I knew he wouldn’t pay me, and the next time we reached Limehouse, I left the barge and didn’t go back.”

He paused, and sucked on his pipe, but it had gone out, so he scratched around in the bowl with a sharp implement that he pulled from his penknife, and lit another spill from the fire. The flame leaped upwards again, narrowly missing his eyebrows. I thought with alarm that he might one day set himself, and the whole building, on fire. His eyesight was not good, and his hands shook. I wondered how many old men in a similar state of infirmity were playing with fire in Alberta Buildings.

“If I had known what I was doing, I don’t think I would have left the barge, pay or no pay. You see, I was happy and busy, which is what a boy needs. The skipper and his mate were nice men. We got on all right. I had enough food to eat, and a bunk to sleep on. What more can you ask in life? What does money matter? The trouble was, the skipper had hired me for a florin a week, so I was expecting it. If he’d asked me in the first place to join him to learn boatmanship and navigation, with no pay while I was learning, I would have accepted, and my mother would have been pleased. But he lied to me, and that was his mistake, and my misfortune.”

Joe had left, fully expecting to find a similar job on another barge. But there were no jobs. The other barges supported just a skipper and a mate, but no cabin boy because the skippers could not afford to pay a boy. The British Lion only had the luxury of a boy because he was never paid. Joe hung around the water’s edge and haunted the wharfs and jetties every day, begging to be taken on, but in vain.

After six months on the river, he was tanned and strong from long hours of work in the fresh air. He had trapped rabbits and caught fish, or pinched carrots and turnips from fields at the water’s edge. He had grown taller and filled out, with good food inside him. The dense population of Poplar, the stuffy buildings and crowded streets suffocated him, and the lack of fresh air and sunlight nearly drove him to despair. Food was scarce, and he grew pale and thin again. On the barge, he had held himself upright, and his eyes had sparkled with the pride of his position as cabin boy. Returning to the streets of Poplar, he slouched and dragged his feet, his eyes dull and downcast. Worst of all was his state of mind as it dawned upon him that he was one of the myriad flotsam drifting around the Docklands, unwashed, underfed, ill-clothed, barely educated, with no realistic hope of anything better. He was fifteen.

Of all the jobs that a boy could aspire to, casual dock labour was one of the least viable and most depressing. Joe could, and no doubt should, have looked further afield, but after a taste of life on the river and the thrill of handling cargo, he saw himself as a river man. Most days, he would linger round the dock gates with a crowd of seedy, hungry, ignorant men, waiting for the chance of a job. Violence could explode at any time.

His poor mother worried about him, naturally. It had been a joy to see him fit, taller, stronger, after six months on the barge. When she learned that he had been cheated of his pay, she was justifiably furious. But there was nothing anyone could do, so she wisely said little and was thankful to have her son back, looking so well. But as the months passed, and she saw the degrading effects of poverty and unemployment biting deep, her worries increased. Furthermore, she now had to feed him. She earned her money mainly from washing. The two eldest girls had left school and worked in a shirt-making factory. Joe knew that he was fed on sweated female labour, and his proud young heart rebelled at the knowledge. At thirteen he had seen himself taking his father’s role and supporting the family. Now, two years later, he had to acknowledge not only that had he provided nothing but also that he was a burden on the female wage-earners.

“It was when I was at my lowest that I met the recruiting sergeant,” he said. “But what time is it? I’ve been sitting here, talking nineteen to the dozen, and you, bless your heart, listening, as though an old boy rambling on is interesting to you. You mustn’t mind me. I don’t often get the chance to talk. I hope I haven’t bored you.”

At that moment the grandfather clock, solemn and stately, sounded the quarter hour.

“What time is that? Quarter past ten?”

“No. Quarter past eleven.”

“Eleven! It can’t be. Oh, how time flies when you are enjoying yourself. I’ve talked far too much, and you must go, my maid. You’ve got a day’s work to do tomorrow, and you need your beauty sleep.”

I had to assure him that he hadn’t talked too much, that he couldn’t possibly be a bore, that I was fascinated by his story and that I hadn’t enjoyed myself so much in ages. Nonetheless, I had to go, but would certainly have another sherry with him, for the pleasure of his company, and in anticipation of hearing about the recruiting sergeant.

As I stood up, I glanced above the fireplace. I was surprised to see that a large area of the chimney breast was black – about two feet in an irregular circular shape. In addition, it seemed to be moving slightly, or shimmering, like oil on a damp surface. I had not noticed this earlier, and curiosity compelled me to take a couple of steps nearer to see what it was.

I saw, and I recoiled with horror, my hand over my mouth to prevent a scream escaping. The moving mass was thousands of bugs. I had heard that Alberta Buildings were infested with house bugs, but had not seen them before. They were behind the plaster of the walls and ceilings, where they crept along, infesting every level and every flat. They came out at night, attracted by the heat, and it was impossible to get rid of them. Only with the demolition of the Canada Buildings, a few years later, were the bugs destroyed.

I stood there, rooted to the spot, my eyes darting around me to other areas of the room, feeling these vile creatures were everywhere. I imagined I was itching. My mind flitted to a horrible incident during my training when an old gypsy woman had been admitted to the ward on which I worked. She was gnarled and weather-beaten, and her long grey-black hair was matted and unwashed. On the third morning after her admission, the white pillow was entirely black, and we found it to be literally covered with fleas. Thousands of them had hatched from the eggs in her hair, due to the warmth of the hospital ward. I was one of the young nurses who was told to clean her up. She was aggressively resistant, and the fleas were hopping everywhere. It took days to get rid of them, and to rid ourselves of fleas. No wonder I began itching all over when I saw the bugs!

Mr Collett could see neither the bugs on the wall nor the expression on my face, which was just as well. He rose, smiling, and held out his hand to say goodbye. With great difficulty I controlled myself and said goodbye, with renewed thanks for a lovely evening.

Outside, I shuddered, as much from shock as from the cold air after the warm room. I got on my bike and rode back to Nonnatus House. A hot bath was the only thing on my mind.

THE RECRUITING SERGEANT

Bugs crept and crawled through my dreams during half the night and seriously disturbed my sleep. I dreamed of a huge scaly creature that got bigger and bigger. It was poised to jump on me. It opened its horrible jaws and let out a ferocious “Aaaarrrgh”. I awoke with a scream. It was the alarm clock. Shaken and trembling, I looked fearfully around the walls. No bugs. I pulled back the curtains and examined the whole room. None. “I can’t go back there,” I thought, “it’s too horrible.”

At breakfast, pale and heavy-eyed, I picked at my cornflakes in the big kitchen where we ate our breakfast at the large pine table.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” said Trixie, sharply. “I thought you had been to see an old man of nearly eighty last night. Or did we get it wrong? Is he nearly eighteen?”

“Oh shut up, you cynical cat,” I muttered crossly, and told the girls about the bugs. They gasped with horror and Trixie, being the most affected, threatened to strangle me if I said another word. Cynthia gazed at me in sympathy, and Chummy said: “Great Jehosaphat! How perfectly ghastly. What did you do, actually?”

A suppressed sound came from somewhere in the region of the boiler. It was a kind of gurgling, a spluttering, like a valve leaking. We had forgotten Fred, the boiler man and odd-job man for the convent, who was crouched on the floor among the ashes. The splutterings became louder and more frequent, ending in a long-drawn-out wheeze. I could see that Fred understood and sympathised with my experience. But did he? He took a deep breath, threw back his head, and bellowed with laughter. His eyes watered. He coughed, and the fag shot off his lower lip to a distance of three or four feet. His skinny body fell forward onto his knees, and he shook with laughter. He took a grimy handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes and blew his nose.

“You girls’ll be the death of me, you will. Cor bli’! I’ll shi’ me breeks if you goes on like vis. You wai’ till I tells ve ol’ girl. She’ll pee ’er drawers, she will. Likes a good laugh, she do, bu’ can never ’old ’er water, poor soul.”

I was deeply offended. This was not a suitable reaction to my experience.

Fred saw my expression, and went off into another paroxysm of wheezing and coughing. “Who’ a lo’ o’ fuss abou’ a few bugs!” he exclaimed when he could speak.

“There weren’t a few, there were thousands,” I said indignantly.

“Great Jehosaphat! How perfectly ghastly. Tell me, what did you do, actually?” he said wickedly, mimicking Chummy’s plummy accent. She coloured deeply, and looked uncomfortable. Most of the Cockneys made fun of Chummy’s accent, but Fred had not done so before. She was hurt, and I was cross with Fred on her account.

“I didn’t do anything,” I said sharply. “It’s none of your business anyway, and I assure you it was perfectly ghastly, so there.”

He curled up again in another paroxysm of laughter. “All righ’, all righ’, Miss Perfic’ly Ghastly, keep yer wig on, but don’ ask me ’a git worked up. I’ve seen them bugs too offen ’a gi’ excited.”

At that moment the Sisters entered the kitchen, and wanted to know what was going on. I gave a graphic account, dwelling on the vast numbers of bugs, and my sleepless night, perhaps just exaggerating a little.

If I had expected cries of sympathy and horror, I was to be disappointed.

Sister Evangelina humphed. “Well there are bugs in all the tenements and in many of the houses. I’m surprised you haven’t seen them before. Don’t make a fuss. They won’t hurt you.”

Sister Bernadette added, “I was delivering a baby one night, by gaslight. I looked up and the gas mantle, which was fixed to the wall, had a circle of black around it, just as you have described. This was on the wall over the woman’s bed!

Sister Julienne, who had kept her hand firmly over her mouth, to prevent herself from laughing, I suspected, especially after Fred winked at her, said: “It’s a bit of a shock to us all, when we first see them. You have to understand that they live in buildings, and do not infest human beings. The real danger is that they are suspected of carrying typhoid, but as there has not been an outbreak of typhoid since the nineteen-thirties, I think you are quite safe. As for your never going back there, I’m afraid that is out of the question. You are going back this morning, to treat Mr Collett’s legs.” With that she left the kitchen to start her morning’s work.

I dug my nails into the palm of my hand and clenched my teeth. I had hoped to be relieved of treating Mr Collett. If he had been told that another nurse would be taking my place, he would have had to accept it, and not see me again. What could I do? Nothing. But Sister Julienne was as firm as she was saintly and I had no choice but to go back. I realised I would have to take a grip of myself.

Cynthia whispered to me, “Come on. Let’s go to the clinical room, away from Fred.”

Her soft voice was reassuring, but her first words unexpected. “Now come off it. It isn’t like you to get so worked up. If bugs are in all the tenements, we must work with them all the time, only we don’t see them. Out of sight, out of mind. Now forget about it. You will probably never see them again.”

I knew she was right. Her slow, gentle grin put everything into perspective, and we laughed together as we got our bikes out and pumped up the tyres. District work tends to blow the cobwebs away.

Mr Collett was smiling and happy when he opened the door. “Welcome, my lassie, and I hope you had a good night’s sleep. Yesterday evening was the happiest time I’ve had for ages.”

I didn’t tell him that I had been awake half the night, but wondered what his thoughts would have been if I had never come back. He would have suspected something, and supposed that he was to blame. I didn’t like to think of the hurt he would have suffered.

As I undid the bandage, I remarked: “These ulcers are improving – why did you not have regular treatment before?”

“Well, I didn’t like to bother anyone. I’ve had them for years, and always bandaged them myself. I had to see the doctor about my eyes, and he saw I was limping a bit and asked to see my legs. Then he arranged for you Sisters to come. I didn’t ask for treatment. I never thought they were bad enough.”

They were the worst leg ulcers I had seen, and he didn’t think they were bad enough to justify a nurse’s treatment! I asked him how they had started.

“It was gun wounds during the war. They healed up all right, but there was always a weakness. As I got older, little patches started, and then spread. But I can’t grumble. My legs have been good to me most of my life. You expect these little things as you get old.”

Little things, I thought, I wouldn’t call these ulcers “little”!

The mention of gun wounds made me think of the recruiting sergeant, who had been driven from my mind by the bugs. “Last night, before I left, you said you would tell me how you met the recruiting sergeant.”

He settled back comfortably in his big wooden chair. That morning he began a story that he continued in subsequent visits, often over sherry in the evening.

“Well, I was fifteen, going on sixteen, and I reckon if I hadn’t met him, it would have been a life of crime for me. There was no work, and I’d met a lad who was into everything. He always seemed to have money. He was younger than me, but quicker and smarter. We palled up together. I’m not going to tell you what we did, because I’m not proud of it, but one day he suggested going up the West End, where the pickings would be better. I’d never been up West before. I remember feeling dazzled by the great buildings, the fine open streets, all the carriages, and ladies and gentlemen in their fine clothes. We went to Trafalgar Square and hung around. My eyes were popping out, especially at the sight of the soldiers in their crimson jackets and black trousers. One of them came over to where we were standing by a fountain. I was so flattered; I couldn’t believe he wanted to talk to us.”

He chuckled and blew a cloud of smoke across the room.

“I thought it was a special honour. No one had told me they were at it every day, on the look out for lads like me.

“‘Nah then, nah then, my fine young man’ (he was talking to me, not to my mate), ‘aint a fine young man like you got nothing to do on a day like this?’

“I must have shrugged and grinned sheepishly.

“‘Well then, did you ever see a soldier with nothing to do?’

“I hadn’t, but then I had never seen soldiers before, and I was struck dumb with the honour of having this splendid figure of a man single me out for conversation.

“Then he asked me what I’d had for breakfast.

“Nothing,” I said.

“‘Nothing!’ he roared, ‘nothing! I’ve never heard nothing like it. Did you say nothing?’

“I nodded.

“‘No wonder you’re looking a bit skinny, begging your pardon for the liberty, squire, but one can’t help noticing these things. Look at me, now.’

“He patted a well-filled stomach with appreciation.

“‘Bacon and liver, and brawn and kidneys, with fresh farm eggs and field mushrooms. As much bread-and-dripping as a man can eat, with beer if your taste runs to beer at breakfast, or tea and coffee, with fresh cream and sugar from Barbados. That’s the sort of breakfast a man needs to line his stomach for the day. And did you tell me you had nothing? That is unbelievable. Unbelievable.’

“He shook his head as though he honestly had never heard anything like it before.

“‘Well now, young man, you come along with me. A special friend of mine runs an alehouse over there. As a great favour to me, I’m sure he can find you something to fill your stomach with. He’s got a kind heart, he has, and when I tells him that my friend – if I can make so bold as to call you my friend – has had no breakfast, it will fair melt his tender old heart, it will . . . No, not you,’ he said to my mate, who had edged forward at the mention of breakfast. He put his hand on my shoulder and led me to the alehouse.

“It was dark and smoky inside and, after the sunlight, I couldn’t see anything, but the soldier led me to a table and sat me down.

“‘Bill,’ he roared, ‘Bill. Does a man have to wait all day for a pint of porter? Look lively, man.’

“The fat, well-fed figure of the landlord emerged from the gloom.

“‘A pint of your best for me, and for my friend – er – why, bless my soul, can you believe it, I don’t even know your name. I’ve felt so comfortable with you, like I’ve known you all my life, but I don’t even know your name.’

“I’m Joe Collett.

“‘Joe! What a coincidence. My young brother’s called Joe. And a tall, handsome young man he is, just like you. Oh, what a lad he is, my brother Joe. Such larks! Remember the larks we’ve had in here with Joe, eh, Bill? Those were the days. My young brother Joe joined the Dragoons, and now he’s a commanding officer, with a servant and a carriage, and as much money as he knows how to spend. But I was forgetting. Now, Bill, my old mate, my young friend Joe has had a bit of a night of it, and has unfortunately missed his breakfast.’

“The landlord sounded astonished.

“‘Missed his breakfuss? A man can’t get through the day without a good breakfuss ’a warm him. That’s terrible, that is.’ He patted his large belly, and looked at me with a sympathetic face.

“The sergeant winked suggestively. ‘There! I knew as how you’d see the gravity of the sitivation, Bill. I says to young Joe over by the fountain there, I’ll take you over to my mate Bill, I said, and he’ll see you right. Now what have you got out the back there you’ve got a bit of spare of, that would satisfy young Joe? Not nothing too flash, like, because he ain’t got much money on him at present.’

“I was alarmed. I hadn’t got any money. But before I could speak, the landlord said, ‘Call it on the ’ouse, sarj, on the ’ouse. It’s an honour to entertain a Guardsman any time. And any friend of yours is a friend of mine. Now, young sir, would tripe and faggots, and a good chunk of last night’s pease pudding fried up crispy-like, suit you?’

“I couldn’t believe my luck. It sounded like a meal fit for a king.

“‘Oh, an’ do you like bread-and-drippin’, young sir?’

“I loved bread and dripping!

“The meal arrived, and it was enough for two kings. I just ate and ate. The sergeant didn’t say anything. He just smoked his pipe and drank his porter, and looked out of the window at the pigeons squabbling on the window sill.

“When I had finished, he said, ‘You were hungry, squire.’

“I nodded, and thanked him warmly.

“‘Don’t thank me, lad. You heard what the landlord said: it’s an honour to entertain a Guardsman. We gets that all the time, we do. We gets used to it. Treated like royalty, we are, wherever we go. No one can do enough for us. Did you ever see a soldier go hungry? Course not.’

“He puffed his pipe, and called for another pint of porter, saying, confidentially, ‘Between ourselves, the ale in this house is real special. Old Bill brews it himself. If you are a konosser of good ales, young squire – and I am sure you are – I don’t think you will be disappointed. Unless, of course, you prefer coffee after breakfast.’ What a suggestion to a fifteen-year-old, going on sixteen!

“Bill brought two pints of porter, and I began to confide in the sergeant. I told him my father was dead.

“‘Oh, your poor mother,’ the sergeant said huskily, pulling out a handkerchief. ‘My father died when I was a young lad – much younger than you, of course. I was sixteen when my father died, and my poor mother had a life of hard, hard work in order to keep us.’ He blew his nose and dabbed his eyes. ‘What would a man do without his mother? She sacrifices everything to bring up her family, and does without herself. A man can’t do enough to repay his mother, he can’t. My mother’s settled comfortably in a nice little cottage in the country, which me and my brother John got her with our army pay.’

“‘I thought your brother was Joe.’

“‘I mean Joe. John’s the other brother I haven’t told you about. Here, Bill, more ale, and look lively.’

“‘Did you say a cottage in the country?’

“He nodded.

“‘Yerse. It was the least we could do for our poor old mum. My brother Joe and me – he’s a good lad, he is – we saves up our army pay, and now she lives like a princess, our old mother does. Wants for nothing.’

“I thought of my mother, sitting up half the night, mending for a rascally second-hand-clothes dealer, going out at five in the morning to clean offices, and then toiling all day over the wash tub. I said, ‘How do you get into the army?’

“He looked surprised, and raised his eyebrows.

“‘Oh, was you thinking of an army career, then?’

“I nodded. ‘But how do you get in?’

“He drew his chair closer to mine, and lowered his voice. ‘It’s not easy. I can tell you that for a start. You needs hinfluence. It’s not what you knows, but who you knows, as the saying goes. It’s a lucky day for you, squire, that you met me, because I’ve taken a real fancy to you, seeing as you are like my young brother Joe. How old are you, Joe? Seventeen, eighteen, eh?’

“‘Seventeen,’ I said. It was a lie, I was fifteen.

“‘I thought as much. A good judge of age, I am. It’s lucky for you you are seventeen, because you couldn’t get into the army if you was only sixteen.’

“He leaned closer, and muttered out of the side of his mouth: ‘Is your health good? No nasties, nothing like that, I take it?’

“I said my health was good.

“‘Are you a Christian? The army won’t have none of them heathens and hatheists.’

“I said I was Church of England.

“‘Now, you’re an intelligent lad, I can see that. Can you write your name?’

“I said I had been at school full-time until I was thirteen.

“‘A scholar, my word. With your edifaction, sir, you will rise to the rank of brigadier general, you will.’

“He stretched out his hand, took my porter from me, and drank it himself.

“‘If you are going to put pen to paper, young sir, you will need a steady hand. All the edification in the world aint going to help if your hand is shaking, on account of too much strong porter before lunch. Where was you planning lunch, by the way? Perhaps I can join you?’

“I said I hadn’t any plans, but I was thinking about joining the army, and how could I do it?

“He leaned closer, and tapped his nose. He looked all around, before whispering, ‘It’s your lucky day, lad. I reckons as how I can help. I knows where the recruiting office is sitivated, and if I recommends you to the company’s commanding officer – I’m very well thought of in higher command, I am – I reckons you would be in with a chance. Without me you haven’t a hope. They’d turn you away as soon as look at you, they would. Come on, let’s go.’

“Out in the sunlight, I blinked, and lowered my head from the glare, but the sergeant turned to me.

“‘Right now, Guardsman Joe – what did you say your name was? Collett I must remember that – Collett. Guardsman Collett, stand up straight. Throw your head and shoulders back. Breathe deep, chest out. The soldiers of the Queen don’t slouch around the place. Now, pick your feet up. Left, right, left, right. Eyes straight ahead. Left, right.’

“We marched across the square at a cracking speed. People fell aside. Everyone looked at us. I felt so proud. We passed my mate, who just gawped. I didn’t turn my head to look at him.

“We entered the recruiting office, and the sergeant snapped his heels together with a crack like a whip, and shot his right arm up in salute to the officer who stepped forward.

“‘Sah. Mr Joseph Collett, sah. Aged seventeen. Good health. Good education. Father dead, sah. Wants to be a soldier, sah. Highly recommended, sah.’

“There was a lot of saluting and ‘sah-ing’, and heel snapping, and the sergeant said, ‘Right, young Joe. I’ll leave you with the commanding officer. I’ll be off now. Good luck, lad.’

“And I never saw him again.”

With bewildering speed Joe had been hustled into the medical room, and asked to stick his tongue out and drop his trousers. A doctor gave him a quick look over, and passed him as fit. He was taken to a desk and told to write his name and address at the top of a printed form, then to sign his name at the end of the page. Confused but confident, Joe did so.

“Guardsman Collett, you are now a soldier in Her Majesty’s Scots Guards. You will receive full uniform, full rations, full billeting, and a shilling a day. Here is a travel warrant to take you from Waterloo to Aldershot, which will be your first camp. You may go home now to tell your mother and collect your personal belongings. The last train from Waterloo goes at 10 p.m. If you are not on it, remember: you are now a fully enlisted guardsman, and failure to report at barracks will be counted as desertion, which is punishable by a flogging and six months in prison on bread and water. Here is your first day’s pay of one shilling. Now follow the uniform sergeant downstairs, where you will be fitted with boots and uniform. Stand to attention, Guardsman Collett, and salute when you are leaving a superior officer.”

In the wardrobe room Joe had been fitted up with full uniform and boots. He looked exceedingly handsome in the scarlet jacket and black trousers, and he gazed at his reflection with barely suppressed joy. He put the shilling and his travel warrant in his pocket, and was given a brown-paper parcel containing his old clothes. He was given directions to Waterloo Station and, with dire warnings about prison and flogging if he failed to turn up, was sent on his way.

Joe marched all the way back to Poplar, his newly acquired military swagger getting stronger with every step. His buttons gleamed, his boots shone, his red tunic dazzled the eye. People stood aside. Older men touched their caps. Small boys marched beside him, imitating his step. Best of all, young girls giggled and whispered and tried to attract his attention. But “eyes straight ahead”, as ordered by the recruiting sergeant, was Joe’s rule, and never once did he glance back, however enticing the female attentions. Girls had never looked at him before. “A soldier’s life is the life for me” – and his young heart sang in tune to his step.

He marched into the court of Alberta Buildings, round to the washhouse, and flung open the door. The chatter stopped and a gasp of admiration went up from the women at the wash tubs. But his mother had her back to him. Turning round, she gazed uncomprehendingly at the figure in the doorway for a few seconds, as though she didn’t recognise him. Then a low moan escaped her lips, rising to a terrible scream, and she fainted.

Joe rushed forward in alarm. Women crowded round. Water was splashed over her face and neck, and she opened her eyes, which, seeing Joe in his scarlet tunic, flooded with tears. She sobbed uncontrollably, unable to speak. A woman said, “You best get her back to your place an’ all, Joe. Poor soul. She’s that took she can’t hardly stand, poor lamb. Oh Joe, you didn’t never oughta’ve done it, you never.”

Alarmed and bewildered, Joe helped his mother across the cobbled court and up the stone stairway to their flat. Doors opened, and women came out onto the balconies to witness the drama.

A neighbour brought in a cup of tea, and handed it to her with the words, “I’ve laced it with a drop o’ somethin’ soothin’, Mrs Collett, to keep yer strength up. Lor’ knows, yer goin’ ’a need it,” and she gave Joe a reproachful stare.

His mother drank the tea, and the sobs diminished. When she could speak, Joe asked her why she was crying.

She clung to him, and rubbed her swollen face on his sleeve. “A soldier, Joe! My eldest son, my comfort, my hope, a soldier. They draw them in, young men, thousands of them, every year. Cannon-fodder, they calls them, ‘the scum of the earth’. They draws them in to die.” Tears again flooded her eyes, and she wiped them away with her shawl.

“Go and ask Mrs Willoughby three doors down if I could have another cup of that tea, will you, dear? She’s a kind soul, and won’t mind, I know that. She feels for me. She’s lost sons in the army.”

Joe was not merely deflated. He was shattered. He had expected a hero’s welcome. He took his jacket off, not wanting to step onto the balcony in scarlet, and fetched another cup of tea, laced with a drop of rum, which many good Poplar housewives kept for moments of crisis.

While gratefully sipping the tea, his mother said: “I ’ad four older brothers, and they all died in the Crimean War. I was only a little girl, and ’ardly remember them, but I remember my mother crying, an’ ’ow she never recovered. The grief seemed to cling to ’er for the rest of ’er life. My older sister was engaged to be married to a young man who died at Sebastapol. The suffering was terrible, by all accounts – just terrible.”

“But the Crimean War was ages ago,” Joe protested; “it’s all over and done with. The Empire’s strong. There are no wars now. No one would dare attack the British Empire. And I’m a soldier of the Queen Empress, and proud of it.”

She forced a smile. “You’re a good lad, my son, and your mother’s a silly old fusspot. She’s not going to spoil your last afternoon with tears. When do you have to report to barracks?”

He remembered the travel warrant and the shilling in his tunic pocket. He pulled it out and laid it proudly on the table beside her. “I’m paid a shilling a day and it’s all for you. I get my billet and my food and my uniform, so I don’t need money. I’ll bring it all to you, and you won’t want no more.”

Poor woman! She had cried all over again. What mother wouldn’t?

“You must keep some for yourself, my son.”

“Nope. Not a penny. I done it for you, and you shall get the pay.”

“My boy! Oh, my lad!” She kissed his hands and wiped her tears on his sleeve. “My dear boy. But I fear for you. My heart is heavy. I fear for you.”

She finished the tea, and pulled herself together. The rum helped. The children would soon be in from school, and later the girls from the factory. She couldn’t present a tearful face to them.

“You start getting your things together in a bundle, while I go down to the yard to wash my face. Then we’ll use your shilling to buy some whelks and a loaf, and some real butter and a saucer of jam for the little ones. We’ll have a real feast your last evening at home.”

And that is exactly what they did. The younger boys were over the moon about their big brother’s uniform. Each of them tried on the jacket, and the six-year-old pranced around the room with the jacket trailing on the floor and the sleeves flapping wildly. The sisters were agog with admiration. Suddenly Joe had become a man in their eyes. Only their mother was silent, but she kept a brave smile on her face.

Time passed all too quickly. The laughter, the cheers, the songs, had to come to an end. Joe had a train to catch from Waterloo at ten o’clock that night. He dared not miss it.

ARMY LIFE

Guardsman Joe Collett arrived at Waterloo Station at 9.30 p.m., along with about sixty other young men recruited that day. Each of them thought that he had been singled out for special consideration by a recruiting sergeant. They were all very poor boys and were surprised to see each other. None of them knew that the army was obliged to recruit twelve thousand men each year to make up the numbers, mostly lost through death.

Also at Waterloo Station were around a hundred girls, dressed to kill. Oh, the skirts, the ribbons, the laces, the tucks, the frills and flounces! Oh, the boots with dainty buttons, and the wide-brimmed hats, heavy with fruit and flowers and feathers! And what was that Joe saw? Could it be paint? Joe had never seen rouged lips and cheeks before, and he was enchanted.

The girls clung to the soldiers, two or three to each. Some of them carried a phial of gin or rum in their garters, and these were brought out with much skirt-rustling and mock modesty. There was only half an hour before the train was due to leave, but the girls knew how to use the time to advantage. Much can happen in half an hour, and each girl knew that the recruits had been paid a shilling that day.

Most of the new recruits had gone alone to the station, but some were accompanied by mothers, aunts or sisters. These young men were put to great embarrassment by the girls, who openly sneered at them, and cast bold, contemptuous eyes on their womenfolk. These good women were scandalised by the wanton behaviour of the girls, and tried to protect and warn their sons, which only made matters worse.

Joe, being alone, taller than average, and undoubtedly good-looking, was mobbed. He was offered a phial of rum which, laughing, he swallowed in one gulp. It went straight to his head. He clung to a brunette, who cuddled him, and led him round the station, singing. Joe felt he had never been so happy in his life. Two more girls joined them and led him out of the station into the little lanes. It was a quarter to ten. In the lanes the girls cuddled and kissed him, and fondled him all over. In his intoxicated state Joe felt that more than his blood was rising. It was then that the girls discovered that Joe did not have his shilling on him. They screamed with rage. They kicked him and pushed him and he fell against a wall, hitting his head. They tore his jacket off him, frantically going through the pockets, threw it on the ground – Joe’s beautiful red tunic – and trampled it in the mud. He cried out, but could not stop them. They pulled his hair and scratched his face until the blood ran. They spat on him and then rushed off, with a flick of skirts, around the corner.

Dazed, bewildered and bleeding, Joe leaned against the wall. He tried to gather his senses, but couldn’t think what had happened. His head hurt from the blow. He was sliding comfortably down the wall when a sharp noise penetrated his fuddled hearing. What was it? It was repeated. Dear heaven, it was the train whistle. Aldershot . . . the last train . . . must catch it . . . desertion . . . flogging . . . prison. He snatched up his jacket, nearly falling flat on his face as he did so, staggered towards the station, hurtled towards the moving train, was pushed onto it by a porter and fell into a seat.

“Blimey, mate, you look as if you’ve had a good time,” said his companion, with a sardonic grin.

The train gathered speed, and Joe fell asleep. He was awakened by a rough hand shaking him. “Wakey, wakey, Sleeping Beauty. You’re a soldier now, and we’re at Aldershot. You can dream of her another time.”

Aldershot? What was that? Joe woke to see half a dozen grinning faces above scarlet tunics staring at him, and it all came back. He was a soldier now . . . the recruiting sergeant, that was it. Head up, shoulders back, chest out, breathe deeply, no slouching now. He jerked himself upright, and pain split his head from ear to ear. He groaned.

The men roared with laughter. “He’s only a kid, leave ’im be. He’ll learn. Here, mate, give us yer arm.”

Joe staggered off the train on the arm of his unknown companion, and a staff sergeant stepped forward. “Right men. In line. Roll call. Look sharpish.”

The motley group of raw recruits shuffled backwards and forwards, sideways and hitherways, trying to make a line. The staff sergeant bellowed and swore and brandished his regimental swagger cane, trying to get them into military line. He was not successful, but had to make do with second best.

“Right, you horrible men. You wait till I get you on the parade ground. You’ll damned soon learn how to form a line. Roll call.”

An old duty sergeant stepped forward with two sheets of paper in his hand containing lists of names, which he proceeded to read out. His reading was not very good. No doubt the process would have been quicker if a duty sergeant who could read properly had been sent, but the ability to read was not an accomplishment that was rated very highly in the army.

He got through several simple names without mishap – Brown, Smith, Cole, Bragg – but then was stuck.

“Warrarramb . . . ” he shouted.

No one answered.

“Warrarrnad” Louder.

No response.

“What you say?” yelled the staff sergeant.

The duty sergeant tried to look confident, and shouted “Warrarrandy”

No response.

The staff sergeant strode over to him, his cane swishing, his boots clicking, and snatched the paper. In the flickering gaslight of the station he squinted at the page. “Warrenden,” he shouted.

A man stepped forward. Roll call proceeded in this manner. The duty sergeant did his best, but got stuck on Ashcroft, shouting “Askafoot”. Bengerfield, Willowby, Waterton set him stuttering, until everyone thought roll call would never be finished.

One man was missing. The name was shouted backwards and forwards several times, but no one stepped forward. The staff sergeant struck the calf of his leg with his swagger cane and, with great deliberation, pulled out a stub of pencil and underlined the name.

“It will be the worse for him,” he said menacingly. “Right men, form a column, four abreast, quick march.”

Forming a column for untrained men is as difficult as forming a line. The staff sergeant swore and cursed and used his cane liberally, eventually getting some sort of ragged column together. With a “left, right, left, right” they marched off.

It was four miles to the camp, which did Joe good. By the time he got there, his head had cleared from the effects of the rum, and ached only a little from the crack on the wall. The night air refreshed him, and the men surrounding him gave him a feeling of security.

The sentries at Aldershot Barracks leaped swiftly to attention when they heard the column approaching. An incomprehensible word was barked out by the staff sergeant, sounding something like “Awt”. No one in the column thought it meant anything and continued marching. The four at the front were confronted by a menacing row of guards, each with a bayonet raised at forty-five degrees, and pointed directly at their stomachs. Another step, and they would have been skewered. They halted. The men behind carried on marching, straight into the backs of the men in front. About half the column fell on each other in this way. Being fresh from a sane world where this sort of thing is considered funny, they fell about laughing, but the staff sergeant failed to see the joke. He swore and raged at their imbecility.

The column re-assembled inside the gates and marched another quarter-mile to the billet, a grey rectangular building, four storeys high.

A short way off from this building the staff sergeant shouted.

“In a minute, I am going to say ‘halt’, and that means ‘stop’, and when I say ‘halt’ I want you to stop. Got it?” They continued marching.

“Awt.” Half the men stopped, the other half didn’t. The result was exactly the same as at the gate. The staff sergeant nearly went berserk. Somehow he managed to re-assemble them, marched them another fifty yards and shouted, “Halt.”

This time everyone stopped.

“Right. In line.”

This was no easier than it had been at the station. In fact it was harder, because it was pitch-dark. Men stumbled and fell over each other, muttering and laughing.

“Silence!” roared the staff sergeant.

“Silence yerself, yer bloody windbag,” shouted a voice.

“Who said that?” roared the sergeant.

“Father Christmas,” said the voice.

“Corporal, open the door,” roared the sergeant.

The corporal on duty opened the door of the billet.

“Forward. Quick march,” roared the sergeant, leading the way up four flights of stone steps. At the top, the corporal in charge of the billet opened the door, and the disorderly line of men entered.

“New recruits, Corporal, and a bigger bunch of stupid bastards I’ve never met.” The staff sergeant turned to go. He turned to the men. “You wait. You just bloody wait. You’ll wish you’d never been bloody born, you will.” And with those pleasant words, he departed.

I roared with laughter at this story. We both laughed, Mr Collett and I. Nothing binds people more strongly than the same sense of humour, and the ability to laugh together. I was thoroughly enjoying my evenings of sherry and an old soldier’s reminiscences. The British Army of the 1890s was not something I would have expected to find interesting, but in the firelight, with a good storyteller like my companion, the years came alive.

I was also aware that Mr Collett had become deeply fond of me, which was touching. One of the pictures on his walls was of a pretty young girl in 1920s dress. I understood that this was his only daughter, who had been killed in the bombing in the Second World War. Perhaps I was becoming a substitute granddaughter to him. I didn’t mind. I liked him. He was a dear old man, and reminded me of my own grandfather, whom I had loved and admired deeply, and who had been more of a father to me than my own father. He had died a couple of years previously at the age of eighty-four, and I still felt the loss. If Mr Collett and I were both substituting another person into our growing affection, it was all right by me.

He refilled my glass. “Do you like chocolates, my dear? I bought a box of Milk Tray this morning, with you in mind.”

He reached up to the mantelshelf, and felt for them. I was still a bit chary about eating anything, because of all the filth around the place, and once, when he had produced a grubby plate of biscuits, which I had seen him drop on the dirty floor and pick up, I had said that I didn’t like biscuits. But an unopened box of chocolates was a different matter. Anyway, I loved them. After that, it was always sherry and chocolates. Incidentally, I never saw the bugs again, and after a while I ceased to look for them.

“So you got to your billet, and your head wasn’t too bad. What happened then?”

“We were told to make up our cots. A soldier sleeps in a cot, not a bed. They are constructed in two halves, the bottom half of which pushes into the upper half. This allows for more space during the day in the centre of the billet. The corporal showed us how to do it. The biscuit, which is a soldier’s straw-filled mattress, and two rough blankets, were folded on the top part of the shortened bed. We had no pillows, no sheets. Nothing fancy like that. The corporal told us the sip-but was on the landing.”

“What on earth is a sip-but?” I interrupted.

“Oh, that’s back slang for a piss-tub. There’s a lot of rhyming slang and back slang in the army. At least there was in my day. It may have been dropped by now.

“I remember my first night very well. It was so new, so exciting, that I couldn’t sleep. Apart from which I still had a headache from the girls pushing me against the wall. My thoughts were racing – those girls, my mother, the recruiting sergeant, the staff sergeant, the station, the march through the night. I must have dozed off towards dawn and in my dreams I vaguely heard a bugle call. Seconds later the corporal burst into the billet, shouting: ‘Show a leg now, get out of it. Open those blasted windows and let some fresh air in. It smells like a bloody farmyard in here. Get out of it now, do you hear me?’

“Perhaps I didn’t move, but the next thing I knew was that my cot collapsed, and I landed on the floor. The corporal had pulled the bottom half away from the top half, which was a very effective way of rousing anyone who did not leap out of bed the instant reveille was blown. This sounded at 5 a.m., summer or winter.

“The corporal ordered us to dress and put away our cots and fold the biscuit and blankets. I was in a daze, but the roar of the corporal kept me on my toes. He kept bellowing on about the blankets not being folded straight, and how, he’d never seen such a useless, slovenly bunch of recruits, and how we would be licked into shape and no mistake. He ordered two men next to the door to carry the sip-but to empty it down the drains and clean it at the pump, where it would be left until the following evening.

“‘Right now. Stand by your cots. This is only the reception centre, where you are treated gentle-like. Later you will learn what army life is, when you have been sorted into the regiments what you have enlisted for. Get me. You will have an hour’s drill before breakfast. Then your breakfast, then an hour’s parade, then present to the colour sergeants for sorting. Got it? Right. In line. Down to the parade ground.’

“We got into some sort of line and filed down the stone stairs. In the darkness outside we could hear voices rather like the staff sergeant’s barking out orders. We were put to physical exercises – press-ups, star-jumps, squatting with straight back, step-ups. Imagine all that with a headache and no sleep! But I kept thinking this was better than hanging around the dock gates looking for work, and it was. The last quarter of an hour consisted of the most exhausting exercise so far – running with your knees lifted high at each step. After this, we were starving for our breakfast. This consisted of dry bread and sweet tea. It tasted delicious. After that we were led to the parade ground for another hour of drill. At 9 a.m. a bugle sounded and the colour sergeants marched onto the square, each followed by a duty sergeant carrying a list of names, which they read out in turn. The recruits were sectioned into their colours, and marched off. This happened every day, because the recruiting sergeants were busy enlisting unsuspecting young lads like me every day of the week.

“There were only four Scots Guards recruits that day. It’s a crack regiment.” (Mr Collett said this with great pride, lifting his chin high.) “We were taken in marching order to the quartermaster’s stores, where we were issued with top-coat, cape, leggings, one suit of scarlet, one of blue for drills, boots, shirts, socks, and numerous pieces of regimental dress. We were issued with a rifle, bayonet, and two white buff straps, with pouches that could hold fifty rounds apiece. We were also issued with a busby, the tall fur headdress reserved for Guards. Everyone in the regiment was very proud of these.

“We – the four of us, that is – were shown to a whitewashed barrack room overlooking the square. A corporal was in charge of each billet, and a couple of older duty-men also kept billet there. They showed us how to fix straps for drill purposes, how to roll the top-coat and fix it to the kitbag, how to fix leggings, what cleaning materials we would need, how to place our cape and scarlet top-coat, when not in use, on the racks above our cots – even how the straps of the kitbag should hang from pegs above the head of the cot.”

The pettiness of it all, the meticulous attention to detail, reminded me of my nurse’s training. I told Mr Collett about it. We were issued with three fitted dresses, twelve aprons, five caps and a cape. We were given precise instructions on how they must be worn at all times. The hem of our dresses had to be fifteen inches from the floor, no more, no less. Caps, which were flat pieces of starched linen, had to be folded and pinned to an exact shape and size. Aprons had to be pinned at an exact point above the bosom, and adjusted to the precise length of the dress. Shoes had to be black lace-ups, of a specific style, with rubber soles for quietness. Stockings were black, with seams. Belts and epaulettes were of differing colours, distinguishing the different years of training a student nurse underwent. Full uniform had to be worn at all times when on duty. I recall, in my first year of training, being ordered out of the dining room by a third-year nurse, because I had forgotten to put on my cap. Later, when I became a ward sister, I forgot my cuffs on one occasion when I went to the matron’s office, and was sent back to the ward to get them before I could address her!

We discussed whether this sort of discipline was necessary. Mr Collett said: “Well, it certainly is for men, because large numbers of men living together can easily become like wild animals. Men are brutes at heart, and without the civilising influence of women they quickly revert to savagery. The discipline of the armed forces is the only thing that keeps them under control. I wouldn’t have thought it was necessary for women, though, would you? But I maintain that nurses always look lovely, and so I approve of the uniform.”

I chuckled at this. There is no doubt in my mind that the nurses’ uniform of the early and middle 1900s was just about the sexiest thing ever invented. Nothing has surpassed it for allure. I was not the only young nurse to be acutely conscious of a heightened sex appeal when in uniform. Ironically, the draconian old sisters and matrons who rigidly enforced the uniform seemed to be unaware of the effect it had on the male sex.

Those were the repressive days when student nurses had to live in barrack-like nurses’ homes, and be in by 10 p.m. No men were allowed, and a nurse who smuggled one in would be dismissed if she was caught. Student nurses could not marry. All this was to repress our sexuality, yet we were dressed up like sex kittens. With exquisite irony, in today’s permissive society, when anything goes and nurses can do whatever they like sexually, the uniform has changed beyond all recognition, and the average nurse now looks like a sack of potatoes tied in the middle, often wearing trousers rather than sexy black stockings.

I asked Mr Collett how he coped with all the regulation of army life. Was he as bad as I had been in my early nurses’ training? I must have driven the ward sisters mad. He laughed, and said he didn’t believe it.

“But I had a hard time at first. We all did. The Scots Guards prided themselves on being a crack regiment, so we had more hours of drill, rifle and bayonet training, longer marches, and heavier pack-weights than other regiments. Also we had less time off. We were so exhausted in the evening that we seldom went to the wet canteen. Often I just made up my cot at 8 p.m. and went fast asleep until reveille.

“I had more money than I’d ever had. On a shilling a day I was able to send four shillings a week home to my mother. I knew that would pay the rent, and I swore to myself that I would always pay the rent, so that she need never again fear the workhouse. And I kept that up for years and years, even when I was married.”

I asked him about his marriage.

“Well, after three months at Aldershot, I was given forty-eight hours’ leave to go to see my family, before being posted to Plymouth. Across the court of Alberta Buildings lived a girl I had known for years, but she seemed so much more grown up than I had remembered her, and I reckon she must have thought the same about me. She was the prettiest little thing I had ever seen.” He chuckled fondly, and slowly refilled his pipe. He rubbed it in his hands, and stroked his cheek with the warm bowl.

“We were only sixteen apiece, and forty-eight hours isn’t long, but I knew she was the only girl in the world for me. We reached an understanding that she would wait for me until I was in a position to marry her. Long engagements were common in those days, and couples thought nothing of waiting ten or fifteen years before they could get married. As it happened we had to wait only three years.” He lit a spill from the fire, applied it to the tobacco, and sucked hard. He looked thoughtful.

“It’s a damned good thing I did meet my Sally during that forty-eight hours, because the promises we had made kept me clean while I was at Plymouth. It was a lively town, and ten or twelve regiments were garrisoned there, as well as sailors and marines. There were pubs and bawdy houses in every street, and prostitutes in every bar. I learned fast. You do in the army, and it didn’t take long to figure out that if I went with one of them girls I was likely to pick up VD. That would have been the end of my army career, the end of my hopes for winning Sally and the end of the rent for my mother. So I kept myself clean. All the other chaps said I was mad, and I should enjoy myself while I could. But I saw enough of them go into the venereal wards of the sick bay to know they were the ones who were mad.” He looked severe.

“But hadn’t you better go, young lady? Are you going to be locked out at ten o’clock? I don’t want to be getting you into trouble.”

“I will go, but I want to hear about your marriage first,” I said eagerly. “It sounds so romantic. Anyway, there are no restrictions with the nuns. They are much too sensible for that. Now tell me about how you got married.”

He patted my hand fondly. “After Plymouth, I was posted to Windsor Castle, as one of Queen Victoria’s foot guards. It was the best posting I had, and I loved it. There wasn’t really a lot to do. It was all marching and square drill. There were several hours of sentry duty, day and night, but we relieved each other every two hours, and then we had two hours off, until the next relief. At Windsor Castle I started reading. I knew I was not properly educated, and wanted to do something about it. There was a library in the barracks, and I just read anything I could get hold of. It became a passion with me. The more I read, the more I realised how ignorant I was. I devoured history like other chaps devoured booze. I spent all my spare time reading, and it was a habit that never left me, until my eyes began to go, and it became impossible.”

He looked sad, but perked up. “But I can listen to the wireless. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.

“Anyway, what with one thing and another, I loved it at Windsor Castle. Now, it’s a funny thing, but in the army, I’ve noticed, the less work you have to do the more you get paid. We were paid ninepence extra per day for Royal Duties. I was now earning good money, and was able to apply to my colonel for permission to marry. He said I was too young, but when I told him that I had known the girl since I was thirteen, he relented. Married quarters were sometimes available to soldiers and their wives, and that was what I was after. I wasn’t going to get married and have my Sal living in a room in the town, and me in barracks. The colonel said we would have to wait until a cottage became available, which we did, and within two years Sally and I were married at All Saints’ Church, Poplar, just over the way there. I took her down to Windsor soon after. Our twins were born at Windsor Castle, and I was the proudest young father in the regiment. But our happiness was too good to last. News from South Africa was bad. Infantrymen were being sent out every week. I had a feeling, though I didn’t say it to Sal, that my turn would come, and it did. On the first of November 1899 I sailed for South Africa.”

SOUTH AFRICA 1899-1902

Mr Collett’s legs were greatly improved with daily treatment. The ulcers were reduced from about eight inches in diameter to two inches. They were more superficial and were also drying out. Consequently, the smell in the room was improving. It was still dirty, with a faint whiff of urine hanging in the air, but the sickly-sweet stench had definitely gone. I realised that the smell must have been due to the suppuration of the wounds. If only he had sought treatment earlier, and not tried “do-it-yourself” remedies, the ulcers would never have got into such a state in the first place. I reduced the visits to alternate days, and then every third day, and the improvement was maintained.

Our sherry evenings continued as a regular feature, and I knew how much he loved my visits. He made no pretence about his joy at seeing me. I began to think that I was the only person who visited him and wondered about his family and friends. It was unusual, if not unknown, to see a Poplar man without either. Family life was close, and old people were valued. Neighbours lived on top of each other and were always in and out of each others’ doors, especially in the tenements. Yet I never saw nor heard of anyone popping in on Mr Collett to see if he was all right, to ask if he needed anything, or just to pass the time of day. I wondered why.

He said to me once, regarding his neighbours: “I’m not one of them, you know. I was not born and bred in Alberta Buildings, so they will never accept me.”

I asked him about his family. He said, simply and sadly, “I have outlived them all. It is God’s will that I should be left. One day we will be reunited.” He wouldn’t say any more, but I hoped that as time went on he might.

One evening, I asked him to tell me more about the Boer War.

“I was drafted in the autumn of 1899. My poor Sally was heartbroken. We were so happy at Windsor. We had a nice little army cottage. She did washing and mending for the officers and earned some money that way. She was happy, and as pretty as a picture. What’s that jingle now, let me think:

The Colonel’s wife looks like a horse

The captain’s wife is not much worse

The sergeant’s wife looks a bit slicker

But the private knows how to pick ’er.

“Or something like that. Anyway, my Sal was the prettiest girl in the regiment. Our twins were born, and they were on their feet and running around, when the postings came. We knew it would be for a long time. Sally and the boys couldn’t stay at Windsor, so they went back home to live with her mother. The flat is just above where we are sitting now. That’s why I like living here. I can sit of an evening, and think of Sally and the twins, when she was so young, living right above me.

“We sailed from Plymouth. There were crowds on the quayside, cheering, waving, singing. Some of the lads were happy and excited at going, but my heart was heavy, and a lot of others felt the same. I reckon that single men make the best soldiers, because they have few regrets about what they leave behind.”

He went on to describe the troopship, crowded with men and horses, carts and wagons, guns and munitions, food and supplies. The journey took five weeks. Discipline had to be very strict, because of living in such a close, crowded space. The men did hours of drill on deck. But they were in good spirits, because it all seemed like an adventure. “We were going to knock hell out of those Boer farmers who dared to defy the British Empire,” he said.

They landed at Durban and were ordered to form ranks and march. They weren’t told where they were going, just told to march. They marched for eight days in full winter uniform in the boiling heat, carrying 150 lb packs. The sun burned down relentlessly, and flies and mosquitoes followed them all the way. There were no roads, so they marched through open scrubland, and along rough tracks. The countryside was beautiful, and wild, nothing like home, but they were too tired and too hot to take it in.

“I was in a Highland Regiment, as you know – the Scots Guards – and I’ll tell you something: there is nothing in the world like the sound of the bagpipes to raise a man’s morale, to lift his spirits, and give him strength. However tired and thirsty we were, the bagpipes at the front of the column only had to strike up and within seconds you felt your feet lift off the ground, your step lighten, your spirits rise, and every man-Jack was marching strong, in rhythm to the pipes.” Mr Collett chuckled, straightened his shoulders, threw back his head, and swung his arms as though he were marching.

“There’s a photograph of my regiment hanging on the wall over there, if you’d like to have a look.”

I peered at the grey-and-yellow photo of a column of soldiers, which didn’t really mean a lot to me, but I said it looked impressive.

“Yes, it was impressive, you’re right. But, at the same time, it was insane.”

I was surprised to hear him say that.

“Well, you imagine: going to war, and marching through open country, soldiers in scarlet, playing bagpipes! Talk about secrecy or surprise tactics! The enemy could see and hear us for God knows how many miles around. And we never saw them. All over South Africa columns like ours were marching, and being attacked by an unseen enemy. Yet the British generals still didn’t learn. We carried on in our old swaggering ways, and lost countless thousands of young men because of it.”

He told me they were ordered to climb a hill one night. He didn’t know where, because none of them were told, but it was steep and treacherous, more like mountain terrain than a hill. They had no special climbing equipment. They wore their military uniforms with full pack, as well as rifle and bayonet, and were wearing boots made for marching, not for climbing. Nor were the men trained for mountaineering.

By dawn they had got to what they thought was the top, only to find that there were higher ridges all around that were invisible from below, and in which groups of armed men were hiding. When the whole brigade had gained the first ridge, fire opened up from all sides, from cannons, rifles and long-range muskets. They were completely unprepared. Hundreds of men were mown down before they could retaliate.

“I shall never forget the scene,” said Mr Collett. “The cries and screams were terrible to hear. We formed ranks and fired back, but our position was hopeless. We were in full view of an enemy we could not see. It was a day of gunfire, under a baking sun. No shelter, no water. Just relentless gunfire.”

By nightfall the barrage from the guns died away, and in the darkness all that could be heard were the cries and groans of the wounded. “We tried to help them, but we were stumbling over rocks and dead bodies. In any case, there were no doctors or medical orderlies, no bandages or morphine, no stretchers – nothing.” The men were ordered to retreat, and to leave the dead. In the sun the injured would die of thirst the following day. “That was the moment when I realised the truth of my mother’s words, that we were just ‘cannon-fodder’. Young private soldiers were ordered, time and time again, to march directly into gunfire, and High Command didn’t give a damn how many died, nor the cost in human suffering.” Mr Collett was trembling and his voice was shaky.

He bit his lip to control himself.

“And would you believe it, it was all unnecessary. Of course, we didn’t know it at the time – the ordinary soldier didn’t – but there had been no reconnaissance. There were no maps of the terrain, and no scouts had been sent ahead to assess the area or the heights of the various hills. If we’d had a ground map, the whole incident would never have happened. The British lost two thousand men that day, the Boers two hundred – all because there was no reconnaissance.

“I’ve read a lot of history in my life, and bad leadership seems to crop up time after time in the British Army. Of course, we had some good colonels, and generals as well, but it was always a lottery.”

Mr Collett spoke with some bitterness about the effect in those days of the class system when, as he put it, only the aristocracy and upper classes could hold a commission, and they bought their rank. Working-class men could not afford to buy a commission. This meant that a young man with money, however stupid he might be, however lazy, or indifferent to army life, could buy a rank and be put in charge of other men. The tradition of an easy life for the officers, with nothing but parties and races, was well entrenched, and any friendship between officers and other ranks was forbidden. “They did not think of us as human beings,” said Mr Collett. “We meant nothing to them. We were just ‘the scum of the earth’, utterly disposable.

“I don’t know how it was that I wasn’t killed. In my regiment, more than three-quarters of the men who went out to South Africa died, either in battle or in the military hospitals. Yet somehow I was spared.”

Another killer was disease. Mr Collett had suffered slight leg wounds in one skirmish, and had a short stay in hospital. While he was there he saw a constant stream of men being brought in with what was called dysentery. It was, in fact, typhoid fever, due to infected water, and it spread like wildfire. At one stage it seemed to be out of control. He commented: “I don’t know if anyone who caught the disease recovered, but I know that I never saw a man walk out. I only saw the bodies carried out – ten or twenty a day from one ward – and they were quickly replaced by as many new patients with the same disease. The small hospital that I was in had been built for three hundred patients, and it was carrying two thousand. There were nowhere near enough doctors or nurses to treat all those men, so most of them died. Three times as many men died in the hospitals as died on the battlefields. I don’t know how it was that I didn’t catch typhoid. I was spared for something worse.”

I wondered what could be worse, and imagined the heartache and frustration of trying to nurse sick and dying men under such impossible conditions.

“Somehow I survived and had to take part in what was called ‘the bitter end’. After two and a half years of fighting we were no closer to victory than we had been at the beginning. We couldn’t engage the enemy. They were always hiding and attacking our lines, our communications, our stores, always surprising us. So our generals decided to attack their food supplies. This meant attacking their farms. A ‘scorched-earth’ policy was approved and we private soldiers had to carry it out. We hated it. Most of us felt degraded and emasculated, attacking women and children. We turned them out of their homes and burned their farms and barns. We killed their animals and burned their fields. Nothing was left after we’d finished. They were turned out to wander the veldt with no water, no food, prey to wild animals. I remember one young Boer woman with two little children and a baby. She was sobbing, begging us to spare her. I wanted to, but refusal to obey military orders is unthinkable. It would have meant execution by firing squad if I had done so. Perhaps I would have risked it if I had been single. But my money was going to Sally and the boys, and to my mother for the rent. What could I do? And even if I had disobeyed orders, it would have done no good. Other men would have carried out the job.” He looked very grim and bitter.

“It was humiliating to us, and to our commanding officers. We were sent out to fight men, not defenceless women and children. We should never have done it. Never.” Mr Collett clenched his hands tightly.

“It was a black time for the British Empire. Thirty thousand women and children died, mostly young children, and we were disgraced in the eyes of the world. We outnumbered the Boer fighting men by twenty-five to one, yet even then we couldn’t win without attacking their homes, their womenfolk and their children.

“In the spring of 1903 I sailed for home, and I was discharged from the army in 1906.”

“Did you regret your army years, or do you look back on them with pleasure?” I asked.

“Mixed feelings. The army certainly educated me and broadened my mind. I mixed with men from other backgrounds and experienced other ideas and points of view. Without the army, I would have been a casual dock labourer, mostly unemployed, so I am grateful for the work. With my army record, I was able to get a good job as a postman. And a postman I remained for the rest of my life until I retired with a pension to keep me comfortably in my old age.”

His ingenuous simplicity had always charmed me. He looked upon his squalid, bug-ridden flat as comfort, even luxury; he was grateful for a modest pension that enabled him to buy food and coal sufficient for his needs. He saw himself as a wealthy man, who could afford to buy a bottle of sherry and a box of chocolates with which to entertain a young nurse of whom he had grown fond. He was completely content.

I leaned forward and squeezed his hand with affection. “I think it’s getting late and I must go, but next time you must tell me about re-adjusting to civvy life. I guess your twins didn’t know you?”

He didn’t reply, but looked dreamily into the fire. “You go, my maiden, you go,” he said, softly. I left an old man to his memories, the consolation of loneliness.

My next visit to Mr Collett was a morning about three days later. His legs had improved beyond all recognition and the ulcers were now completely dry. It was very gratifying.

On the mantelpiece, amid all the dingy and faded old photographs, was a gleaming white card, with a gold border and an embossed crown on it, requesting the pleasure of the company of Mr Joseph Collett and lady at the Old Guards’ reunion at Caterham Barracks on a Saturday in June. I remarked on the card. He told me that for several years he had enjoyed going to the Old Guards’ Day, but had not been able to go in recent years, due to his deteriorating eyesight and bad legs.

Impulsively I said, “Look, your legs are so much better now. It won’t be any trouble for you to get around. Let’s go together. It looks like good fun. It’s not every girl has an opportunity like this, and I don’t want to miss it.”

He positively lit up. He took my hands and kissed them. “You darling girl! What a wonderful idea. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. We’ll go, and we’ll make a day of it. I can tell you, the Guards do us old soldiers proud. What a day we’ll have! What a day!”

I requested the day off well in advance, telling Sister Julienne about the invitation, and the plans. The girls were most intrigued; what on earth would it be like? Trixie suggested that a Young Guards’ reunion might be more exciting, but wished me pleasure with my old ones.

The day itself dawned bright and fair. I was round at Alberta Buildings shortly after eight o’clock. Mr Collett was excited and chatty. He was dressed for the occasion in a faded old suit. His shoes had been polished, and he carried a new trilby hat. Most important of all, and by far the most impressive, he was wearing a row of medals on his chest. It had not occurred to me that he had medals, and I looked at them closely. He was proud and happy, telling me what each of them was for.

We took the bus from Blackwall to Victoria Coach Station, and then a coach to Caterham, arriving at about ten o’clock. I was excited, having never been inside a barracks before. For a young, inexperienced girl it was a stupendous occasion, and my excitement communicated itself to Mr Collett. We stayed very close together, because of the crowds, and I held his arm all the time as he couldn’t see clearly. I had expected a rather solemn occasion with a lot of old men talking about old times. But it was nothing like that. It was an Open Day, with full military honours and pageantry. The reunion itself was an evening event.

The day was exhilarating. The British Army really knows how to put on a show. The colour, the flags, the pipes and drums, the drills. The scarlet uniforms, black busbies, the marching, with the pipe major throwing his staff high into the air. I was thrilled. Mr Collett had seen it all before, and couldn’t see it very well this time, but he heard my cheers and was delighted.

Towards evening, when the marching and the drilling had ceased, and the tired crowds were starting to leave, I thought we would be leaving also. But Mr Collett pulled me back. “Now it is time for the regimental dinner. Come on, my beauty. This way. They’ll see ‘the privates know how to pick ’em’.”

We went to the great dining room by special invitation. We were a little late, because Mr Collett’s walking was slow. We passed young soldiers, who clicked their heels and saluted. We entered, the doorman took our card, and called: “Mr Joseph Collett and Miss Jenny Lee.” There were about two hundred men and women seated at the tables. Heads looked up, and then a voice called out: “Gentlemen, now here is a really old guardsman.” And everyone in the room stood up and raised their glasses: “To an esteemed old soldier.”

Tears of emotion sprang from Mr Collett’s eyes. We were led to the Colonel’s table, and placed at his side. The dinner was sumptuous, and the Colonel and his lady so gracious to the old man. They talked about the Boer War, and Africa, and army life sixty years earlier. He was treated with the respect and recognition that he deserved so well.

FRANCE 1914-1918

The joyous day at Caterham Barracks cemented our friendship and I knew then that, come what may, I was bound to Mr Collett for life. We chatted and laughed all the way home, and parted at the bus stop near Blackwall Tunnel. He insisted that he didn’t need me to go back with him, as he was perfectly capable of finding his way in the dark. It gladdened my heart to remember the respect, even deference, with which he had been treated at the barracks by the Colonel. He would not forget that day in a hurry.

One day, whilst treating his legs, I asked him about his life after leaving the army. I knew that Sally and the twins were living in Alberta Buildings by that stage. Did they continue to live there when he came back?

“No. I got a job in the Post Office you see, and so we had to move near to the sorting office in Mile End.” He went on to tell me about his new life. Postmen had to sort their own mail in those days, and had to be in the sorting house by four o’clock each morning to receive the night mail. Sorting took a couple of hours, then they would be out on the road delivering until about 1 p.m. After a couple of hours off, they went back to sort and deliver the evening mail, which finished about 7 p.m. Mr Collett thought it was a good life.

“The twins were getting bigger. Pete and Jack were about six or seven, and the spitting image of each other. No one except their mother could tell them apart and even she got it wrong sometimes. They were lovely boys.”

He bit his lip and swallowed hard, choking down the emotion.

“You’ve heard, I suppose, that identical twins often seem to live for each other. Well, I can tell you how true that is. They were two people, but I often thought that neither of them could be quite sure where one ended and the other began. They were always together, you couldn’t separate them. They didn’t seem to need anyone else. They even spoke their own language. Yes, it’s true! We would listen to them playing, Sally and me, and they used different words with each other than they used with everyone else. It was a mixture of ordinary English and their own language. They could understand it, but we couldn’t. You can never be quite sure what’s going on in a child’s mind, and identical twins are more of a mystery than other children. Pete and Jack lived in a world created by their combined imaginations, filled with giants and dwarves, kings and queens, castles and caverns. They didn’t really have any friends. They didn’t need them. They had each other.”

“Didn’t their mother feel left out?”

“You’re right there, she did. The boys weren’t lacking in affection, or anything like that. They were just totally self-sufficient. In fact, Sally once said, ‘I reckon you and me could die, Joe, and they wouldn’t notice. But if one of the boys died, I reckon the other would just fade away.’”

Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes, and he murmured, “Perhaps it was best, all for the best. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” He fell completely silent, lost in thought.

I had heard of two sons being killed in France, and looked at the picture of two handsome little boys on the wall. I asked, “Did you have any more children?”

“Yes, we had a little girl, and Sally nearly died in childbirth. I don’t know what went wrong, and the midwife didn’t know either, but my Sal was near to death for weeks after the birth. Her sister took the baby and wet-nursed her for the first three months, and the boys went to my mother. It frightened the life out of me, so I never let her go through it again. That’s one thing you learn about in the army, if nothing else: contraception. I never could understand these men who let their wives have ten or fifteen children, when they could prevent it.

“But Sally recovered, thank God, and the children came home. We called the little girl Shirley – don’t you think that’s a pretty name? She was the loveliest little thing in all the world and a blessing to us both.”

I did not need to see Mr Collet professionally more than once a week, because his legs were nearly better, but our sherry evenings continued, and during one of them he told me the story of Pete and Jack.

Young girls are not usually interested in war and military tactics, but I was. Wartime had shaped my childhood, but really, I knew little about war itself. The First World War was a mystery to me, and we were taught nothing about it in our history lessons at school. I knew that vast numbers of soldiers had died in the trenches of France, but so great was my ignorance that I did not even know what “trenches” meant. Later I met people who had suffered in the Blitz, and heard their first-hand stories, so when Mr Collett mentioned his sons’ experiences I encouraged him to talk.

Pete and Jack had been sixteen years old when the war started. They had left school at the age of fourteen, and for two years had been Post Office telegraph boys, racing around London on their bikes delivering telegrams. They were known as “the flying twins”. They loved it, were proud of their work, proud of the uniform, and were both healthy from all the fresh air and exercise. But in 1914 war started, and a national recruitment campaign was launched. “It will all be over by Christmas” was the government’s promise. Many of their friends joined up, lured by the thought of adventure, and the twins wanted to go too, but their father restrained the boys, saying that war was not all adventure and glory.

1915 saw the launch of the famous poster of Lord Kitchener, pointing darkly out of the frame and saying “Your country needs you”. After that, young men who did not join up were made to feel that they were cowards. Hundreds of thousands of young men volunteered, Pete and Jack among them, and marched off to their graves.

The men were sent for three months’ military training in how to handle a gun and a grenade. Also how to care for horses and sword fighting for hand-to-hand combat were part of their training. Mr Collett commented wryly: “That just shows you how little the military High Command knew about mechanised warfare with high explosives!”

Men, boys and horses were packed into a steamer that stank of human sweat and horse droppings, and were shipped across the Channel to France. They were sent straight to the front-line trenches.

I said, “I’ve heard about this, front lines and trenches and going over the top and the likes, but what does it all mean?”

He said, “Well I wasn’t there – I was too old. I suppose I could have gone as a veteran, but the Post Office was vital work, because all communications were handled by the Post Office, so I don’t think I would have been released. However, I have met several men who were there at the front and who survived, and they told me the realities we never heard about back home.’

“Tell me about them, will you?”

“If you really want me to I will. But are you sure you want to hear? It’s not the sort of thing one should discuss with a young lady.”

I assured him I really did want to hear.

“Then you had better get me another drink. No, not that sherry stuff. If you look in the bottom of that cupboard you will find half a bottle of brandy.”

I filled his glass, and he took a gulp.

“That’s better. It upsets me, talking about it. My two beautiful boys died in those trenches. I reckon I need a bit of brandy inside just to think about it.”

He finished the glass, and handed it back to me for a refill, then continued his narrative.

The things he told me that evening were deeply disturbing. The trenches, I learned, were a series of massive dugouts intended as temporary camouflage in flat countryside that offered no natural protection for an army. In the event, they were used for four years of continuous warfare, and provided living accommodation for soldiers.

For months on end men were camped underground in trenches that were always damp, and sometimes waterlogged. Conditions were so cramped, and the men so tightly packed side by side, that the only way to sleep was to stand with their heads and shoulders learning over the parapet. Trench-foot (rotting of the skin caused by a fungal infection), frost-bite and gangrene were rife. The men endured filthy clothes, unchanged for weeks, and lice, millions of lice, that spread from one man to another and were impossible to eliminate. There was no sanitation, and drinking water was contaminated by mud and sewage. Hot food was an infrequent luxury. The rats were everywhere, thriving on an unlimited supply of human flesh as men died in such numbers that the living were unable to bury them.

Both armies were entrenched in their dugouts, often in a line only a hundred yards apart, and both sides were ordered to blow the other to smithereens. Men were being blown to pieces all around; arms, legs, heads were blown off; men were disembowelled, faces torn open, eyes shot out. If the men were ordered to leave their trenches (“go over the top” as it was called) and advance on foot towards the enemy line they would be heading straight into the line of fire and as many as 100,000 men could die in a single day.

And all the time, the cold, the damp, the hunger, the lice, and the stench of decomposition as rats gnawed at the corpses of the dead, drove the men stark raving mad.

“It’s worse than I had thought, far worse,” I said. “I can’t even imagine it. I think I would have gone out of my mind in such a situation.”

“Many did. And there was precious little sympathy for them.”

“It is surprising that men did not simply run away. What was to stop them?”

“Desertion was punishable by death by firing squad.”

In that instant I remembered my Uncle Maurice. He was a strange, withdrawn man subject to violent passions and irrational behaviour. He was potentially dangerous, and I had always been very afraid of him. My aunt told me that he had spent four years, the entire war, in the trenches and somehow miraculously survived. “Don’t provoke him dear,” she would say, and I could see that her entire life was devoted to trying to ease his mind and bring tranquillity to his life. She was an angel, and I thought at the time that he did not deserve her – but without her he would have been a nervous wreck, and probably even certified as insane.

She said, “He hardly even talks about the war, he bottles it up. Occasionally I can get him to talk about it, and I think it helps. But he still even now, thirty years afterwards, has dreadful nightmares. He screams and thrashes around the bed, and shouts to people in his dreams.”

Having heard Mr Collett’s descriptions of trench warfare I began, for the first time, to understand my Uncle Maurice, and my aunt’s saintly devotion.

One day she told me the most dreadful story of all. Her husband had been ordered to join a firing squad of ten men to shoot one of their companions who had deserted and been captured. The victim was a boy of nineteen who had been so terrified by the noise of guns and the death happening all around him that his mind had snapped and he had run away screaming. He was quickly arrested, for he had not managed to stumble more than half a mile, then was court-martialled, and sentenced to death for desertion. All the men knew the boy and each one hoped and prayed he would not be ordered to join the firing squad. Ten men were selected and ordered to shoot the boy in cold blood, and my uncle was one of them.

I told the story to Mr Collett. For several moments he said not a word, but was busy cleaning out his pipe with a murderous-looking weapon, scraping and gouging the nicotine and tar from the encrusted bowl of his old friend. Then he blew hard down the stem and bits of black stuff flew into the air.

“That’s better,” he muttered “no wonder it wouldn’t draw.” Then he said, “Fill my glass, will you dear?”

I sloshed more brandy in, not knowing how strong it was. He took a sip and rolled it on his tongue, then said: “That is a dreadful story. It will remain with your uncle for the rest of his life. War brutalises a man. It is not surprising he was moody and violent. But you must remember two things: running away from battle has always been punishable by death. Military discipline must be harsh, or every soldier would run away; and secondly in a firing squad of ten men only one held a rifle with live ammunition – nine held blanks. So every man had a nine out of ten chance of not being responsible for the death of his colleague.

“I don’t know what to think. I suppose it’s as you say – military discipline must be harsh – but it’s dreadful all the same. I find it almost unfathomable.”

“Of course you do, my dear, you are in a profession that is devoted to caring for life, not destroying it. ‘War is hell’ – General William Sherman said that about the American Civil War a hundred years ago. It always has been hell and it always will be.”

“My grandfather told me that his uncles had been in the Crimean Wars and never came back. The family never knew what happened.”

“No they wouldn’t. The common soldier was completely expendable, not even named. Did you know that after the battle of Sebastopol the bones of the dead were collected up in sacks and shipped back to Britain to be ground down into fertilizers that was sold to farmers for a profit.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is true. Perfectly true.”

“It’s disgusting! I think I’ll try a shot of your brandy.”

“Be careful. It’s strong stuff.”

“I’m not worried, I can take it.” I boasted.

I poured some, and took a gulp as I had seen him do. It didn’t just take the roof off my mouth; it set fire to my throat and gullet and windpipe. I started coughing and choking violently. He laughed. “I warned you.”

When I had recovered, I said, “But that was a hundred years ago. They can’t have been so callous after the First World War.”

“Beautiful cemeteries were built all over Northern France, the graveyards of millions of young men. They rest in peace.”

“Have you been there to see the resting place of Pete and Jack? It would be a comfort to you.”

“No, they are not buried there.”

“Where then?”

He sighed, a sigh so deep that all the sorrow of the world seemed gathered into it.

“We don’t know what happened to them. A telegram, “missing presumed dead”, was the message from the War Office. This was at the end of war. They had lived through three and a half years at the front, only to go missing presumed dead during the last few months. My Sally’s heart was broken. Little Shirley was the only thing that kept us going.”

He sat silent and still for a couple of minutes, sipping his brandy and sucking on his pipe. I did not care to interrupt his thoughts. When he spoke his voice was dull and resigned.

“About a year later we were informed that their bodies had never been found. Thousands of families received the same letter. You see men were just blown to pieces and nothing identifiable could be found. Or a trench wall might have collapsed and buried them alive; or they could have fallen and sunk into the mud and been sucked down, and the mud closed over them. We don’t know. Millions of boys, on both sides, died and were never found. And millions of families are grieving still.”

LONDON 1939-1945

I saw more of Mr Collett after that, but we never again mentioned the twins. He told me that Shirley, the pride of his heart, had had a good education, and passed the School Certificate, an achievement attained by very few East End girls in those days. This enabled her to go into the Post Office to be trained in accountancy and bookkeeping, to work as one of the counter staff. She also studied telegraphy and Morse code.

“It was two years of study,” Mr Collett said. “The system was based on long and short sounds, or flashes of light. We spent many hours, the three of us, tapping and flashing messages to each other. Sally and I picked up some of the code, enough to learn the alphabet, but Shirley became a real expert. She had to be a touch-typist as well and could sit blindfolded, listening to a message being tapped out and typing the words with never a mistake. Then we darkened the room, and I sat flashing the code to her with a torch while she typed the message. Still no mistakes. Her skills were greatly valued when the Second World War came. In 1939 she was put straight onto the reserve Special Occupation List.”

I asked him about his memories of the war and his admiration for Winston Churchill shone through.

“From 1935 onwards you had to be blind not to see that something was going to happen. Hitler was re-arming and mobilizing his troops, casting fear and unrest all over Europe. Unfortunately, most of our leaders seemed to be both blind and deaf. Only Churchill could see clearly and he poured out warnings, but his words fell on deaf ears, and the government refused to rearm. Consequently, when war came in 1939, we were completely unprepared. We had the minimum trained army and navy, and virtually no equipment.

“Now, Churchill is a man who has interested me all my life. He is a contemporary of mine, and was also in the South African war. The first I heard of him was his famous escape from Pretoria prison, which electrified the troops, and the whole of England, when the news got back to London. The funniest thing about it was the letter he left behind for the Boer Minister of Defence. Something like: ‘Sir, I have the honour to inform you that I do not consider your government has any right to detain me as a prisoner. I have therefore decided to escape from your custody,’ and ending up: ‘I remain, sir, your humble and obedient servant, Winston Churchill.’

“In 1916 Churchill became a lieutenant colonel of the Royal Scots Fusiliers (I was a Scots Guardsman, you remember). He served in the front line alongside his men, which was more than most of the officers did. After the war he dabbled in politics, but was never very successful. He made a lot of mistakes – but whatever he did, he did it on a grand scale, and he was always fascinating, a magnetic personality.

“I tell you, I have never been more relieved in all my life than when he became Prime Minister and Minister of Defence in 1940. He had moral strength and a command of words that put fire in your belly. He united the people to stand up to Hitler and fascism, even though we had only broken bottles and carving knives to fight with. I honestly believe that without Churchill we would have lost the war, and Britain would be a Nazi state today.”

It was a sobering thought. I had always taken freedom for granted. I had been a child during the war, and had seen things through a child’s eyes. It was not until after the war, when I was about ten years old, that I saw on a cinema newsreel the ghastly pictures of Belsen, Auschwitz, Dachau, and the many other death camps dotted across Europe. This was when I began to understand the evil we had been fighting.

Also, being a country-born child, I had seen very little of the war itself. We lived only thirty miles from London, but life was peaceful and untroubled. My mother took in evacuees, which was good fun as far as I was concerned. Food was scarce and I didn’t see a banana or an orange until I was ten, but apart from that there might not have been a war going on at all. Where, I wondered, had Mr Collett spent the war?

His response was firm. London was his home and it was where he had remained throughout the war years. Sally didn’t want to leave London either – it was where she had been born and bred. They both felt there really was no other option. This attitude was fairly typical of Londoners. In 1939 large-scale evacuations of women and children occurred, but within six months most of them were back. They couldn’t cope with the countryside and returned in droves, preferring the risks of London to the quiet of the countryside.

I had heard a similar story from the Sisters. About seventy Poplar women, all of them pregnant, had been evacuated with two of the midwifery Sisters to Cornwall. One by one these young women returned, always giving the same reason: the silence got on their nerves; they were frightened of the trees and the fields; they couldn’t stand the wind moaning. At the end of six months there were only around a dozen left, so the Sisters themselves returned to the place where they were needed the most – the heart of Poplar.

In 1940 Mr Collett retired from the Post Office. Straight away he joined the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) and Sally joined with him. In the early months of 1940 the duties were to see that government directives were carried out. This mainly involved checking that people carried gas masks, that blackout regulations were being observed, that sandbags were filled and that air-raid shelters were suitably equipped. At first, ARP wardens were often called snoopers and laughed at, but in September 1940 the Blitz started and their work really began.

For three long months London was bombed every night, and there were sometimes daylight raids as well. Bombing was concentrated mainly on the Docklands, but this was also the area with the highest civilian population and hundreds of thousands of Londoners died or lost their homes.

If one looks at a map of London, the horseshoe loop in the Thames going round the Isle of Dogs is fairly obvious. From the air it is a landmark, and the German bomber pilots could not fail to see it. Bombs only had to be dropped on that target, and they were sure to hit either the docks or the housing around them. Thousands of tons of high explosive fell in less than three months. Poplar, housing up to 50,000 people to the square mile, was indeed a sitting target.

There were never enough air-raid shelters for such large numbers of people. In other parts of London people went into the Underground stations, but Poplar had none. The nearest underground was Aldgate. The government provided corrugated iron for people to build Anderson shelters in their gardens, but most Poplar people did not have a garden. Fortunately, many houses did have cellars, where people slept. The crypts of churches provided shelter for hundreds of people, and whole communities lived day and night in the churches. More than one baby was born in All Saints’ crypt, as I learned from the Sisters. The overcrowding was terrible. Each person had just enough room to lie down, and no more.

There was always the fear that plague or disease would sweep through the shelters. Water and sewage pipes were frequently hit, but somehow they were always repaired, at least enough to prevent the spread of disease. Gas and electricity supplies were often hit too, but they were always patched up as well.

Mr Collett said to me: “Looking back it seems impossible, but everyone worked day and night, with amazing good spirit.

“When you are living in such conditions, close to death, every day is a gift. You are happy every morning to see the dawn break, and to know that you are still alive. Also, death was no stranger to us. Poplar people were used to suffering. Poverty, hunger, cold, disease and death have been with us for generations, and we have just accepted them as normal, so a few bombs couldn’t break us.

“We were used to overcrowding, so the shelters didn’t seem too bad. The loss of a house or rooms was no worse than eviction, and most people didn’t have much furniture to lose anyway. A family would just move in with neighbours who still had a roof over their heads.

“It was an extraordinary time. Suffering and anguish were all around us, but so too, in a strange way, was exhilaration. We were determined not to be beaten. Two fingers up to Hitler, that was the attitude. I remember one old woman we pulled out of the rubble. She wasn’t hurt. She gripped my arm and said: ‘That bugger Hitler. ’E’s killed me old man, good riddance, ’e’s killed me kids, more’s the pity. ‘E’s bombed me ’ouse, so I got nowhere ’a live, bu’ ’e ain’t got me. An’ I got sixpence in me pocket an’ vat pub on ve corner, Master’s Arms, ain’t been bombed, so let’s go an’ ’ave a drink an’ a sing-song.’”

There was even more devastation when the firebombs came, and it was these that were responsible for Sally’s death. Both Mr Collett and his wife had had a premonition, sensing that one of them would be killed, but they didn’t know who, or when. The firebombs were small, and burst into flames when they hit the ground. They were easy to put out – it could be done with a sandbag, or even a couple of blankets – but if the fire spread it could set whole buildings alight. The government appealed for volunteer fire-watchers who would go to the top of tall buildings to keep a watch on the area around them. They gave the alert when a firebomb fell, and the men with sandbags rushed to the spot at once to put out the fire. These fire-watchers had to know the area well, and were mostly old people who didn’t have the physical strength to deal with all the digging and heavy lifting required in the streets. Sally volunteered. He said: “She and others went up the highest buildings with nothing but a tin hat to protect them from the explosives and firebombs. One night the building Sally was in got a direct hit. I never saw her again. Her body was never found.”

After telling me this sad story he paused, and stared into the fire, for a few minutes, then said softly: “She knew the risk. We both did. I’m glad that she was taken first, and not left on her own. Death is kinder than life. There is no more suffering beyond the grave. We will meet again soon, I hope.”

He said the words “soon, I hope” a second time, and I didn’t know what to say, so I asked him about his daughter.

Shirley’s skills in Morse code and telegraphy were classed as a “special occupation”. She joined the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) in 1940 and entered the Intelligence and Communications Corps of the RAF. Her father saw a little of her when she came home on leave, but mostly he didn’t even know where she was stationed, because all her work was highly confidential, and secrecy was tight. She had never married, and had always been very close to her parents. After her mother’s death she threw herself into her work.

Mr Collett, too, found that hard work was the only remedy for unhappiness. After Sally’s death he worked day and night, not bothering much about food or sleep. As an ARP warden he did anything and everything that needed doing: helping ambulance men, digging away rubble, carrying water, filling sandbags, and mending burst pipes. He went out at night when bombs were dropping all around, not caring if he was killed. He helped people out of burning buildings, got them to shelters, carried babies, pushed prams. “It was a hard time, but satisfying,” he told me, “and all the while I fancied Sal was looking down on me, and sharing the experience.”

Many of his experiences from those days he could still vividly recall. He told me about one little boy, about six or seven years old, he said he would never forget. The wardens had dug him out of the rubble he had been buried under for several hours. He was underneath the body of his mother. She must have thrown herself over her son in order to protect him, when the bomb fell. She was quite stiff and cold, but he was safe beneath her. One does not know the psychological damage that such an experience can inflict, however. He said the boy’s name was Paul. Mr Collett mused: “He would be in his twenties now, and I often wonder how he has grown up, and if there has been any lasting mental damage.”

He continued his tragic story. “During the next five years I saw Shirley occasionally. She was flourishing. War has that effect sometimes. The unusual circumstances bring out the best in some people. All her intelligence and leadership qualities placed her in positions of command, and she thrived on it. I was so proud of her.

“In 1944 it seemed that the war was ending and we dared to plan for her demob and picking up our life again. But it never does to plan ahead in wartime. The VI and V2 rocket attacks started. At Christmas 1944 I was told by the RAF that a rocket had fallen on the staff headquarters where Shirley was stationed, and that she had been killed. I have been alone ever since.”

THE SHADOW OF THE WORKHOUSE

Poplar was destined for change. Town planners had a new broom with which to sweep clean, and they were so successful that they swept virtually everything away. Poplar had survived the war, the blitz, the doodlebugs and the V2 rockets. The people had picked themselves up, brushed off the debris, and formed themselves into a community again, almost indistinguishable from the communities of their parents and grandparents. What finally destroyed Poplar was the good intentions of bureaucracy and social planning.

The tenements were to be demolished. In 1958 and 1959 notice was served to thousands of tenants and alternative accommodation was offered. This could be as far away as Harlow, Bracknell, Basildon, Crawley or Hemel Hempstead, which might as well have been the North Pole, as far as most of the older people were concerned. Social workers and housing officers buzzed in and out of the tenements all day with sheaves of forms and good advice and forced good cheer. The residents were not taken in. Most were wary or apprehensive. Some were distraught.

This was the time, and the only time, when I felt sympathy for Mr Collett’s neighbour. She came up to me one day as I entered the court of Alberta Buildings and said piteously, “Vey sez we go’ ’a go. Go where? Somewhere we don’ know, somewhere a long way off. Somewhere no one’ll know me, an’ I won’ know no one. It ain’t right, it ain’t. I’ve always paid me ren’, you can look a’ me book. Never a day la’e. I keeps me flat clean, like me mum used ’a. You can see for yerself. Can’ chew do somefink? Ve Sisters ’ave a lo’ of say in fings round here.”

All the Sisters experienced scenes like this. The idea amongst the older generation that the Sisters would somehow intervene and help them save their little homes was touchingly persistent, but quite erroneous, of course. We tried to comfort the people as best we could, but I doubt if it did much good. The community was doomed. The people who had seen off Hitler by sticking two fingers up and carrying on were themselves seen off the premises.

Then the demolition men took over. The land became valuable. Big business stepped in. The ordinary people didn’t stand a chance. Tower blocks were built, which were supposed to be so much better than the tenements. In fact they were the same thing, only far worse, because interaction between neighbours had been stripped away. The courtyards had gone, the inward-facing balconies had gone, walkways and stairways had gone, and upstairs and downstairs neighbours were strangers, with no obvious points of contact. The communal life of the tenements, with all its fraternity and friendship, all its enmity and fighting, was replaced by locked doors and heads turned away. It was a disaster in social planning. A community that had knitted itself together over centuries to form the vital, vibrant people known as “the Cockneys” was virtually destroyed within a generation.

But this was all in the future. We did not know, in 1959, that the effects would be so catastrophic to the Poplar people. We only knew what was happening at the time – namely that the Canada Buildings were to go. We discussed it endlessly over the luncheon table, and one of the nuns said, “Well, if the tenements go, it won’t be long before we have to go, because we won’t be needed here.”

We all looked at each other with sadness, but Sister Julienne said, without a trace of regret: “For more than eighty years we have served God in Poplar. If we are no longer needed here, He will give us other work to do. In the meantime, I suggest we stop speculating on the future and get on with the job in hand.”

When I next visited Mr Collett, a social worker was just leaving. She looked harassed, poor soul, and was besieged by women as she stepped across the courtyard. I felt sorry for her. What a job! You are on a hiding to nothing, I thought as I watched her go.

Mr Collett’s legs were almost better now, and as he was quite capable of dressing the superficial wounds himself, I called only once a fortnight to check that there was no deterioration. His walking was much better and he was able to get about easily, which was entirely due to simple, regular treatment. Nursing is one of the most satisfying jobs in the world.

He was silent and thoughtful as I undid the bandages. I think we were both wondering what the other was thinking.

He was the first to break the silence. “You’ve heard, I suppose, that the Buildings are being closed? Yes, Of course you know all about it. I don’t understand why. These buildings are sound. They were still here after the Blitz, when thousands of terraces went down like packs of cards. The Canada Buildings will last for centuries, yet they want to pull them down. All my ghosts will be cleared away with the rubble. Will they be laid to rest, I wonder? Will I?” His words sounded like a premonition.

“What are they offering you?” I asked.

He started, as though I had interrupted a dream. “Offering me? Oh, I don’t know. Several things: a flat in Harlow; another in somewhere called Hemel Hempstead. I’ve got to think about it. I must say, it’s very good of them to offer me anything at all. When I was a boy, if a landlord gave notice to quit, he was not obliged to offer you anything else. So I’m grateful for that, and I told the lady social worker so.”

I smiled at his generous disposition. There can’t have been many social workers at that troubled time who heard an expression of gratitude. “How long have you got to decide?” I asked.

“A few weeks. Perhaps a month. No longer. It’s all very sudden.”

It was indeed sudden. The sound of children playing was the first thing to go. Flats were vacated, and removal men were in and out of the courtyards; windows were boarded up; the stairways were left dirty and increasingly derelict; dustbins rolled across the cobbles. The constant hum of human activity was replaced by empty echoes as the courts picked up the sound of a single voice and threw it backwards and forwards, till it fell silent in the still air.

I wondered how much more I would see of Mr Collett. If he was going miles away to the countryside of Hertfordshire or Essex, how often would I be able to visit him? Our cosy evenings of sherry and chocolates and chats seemed to be coming to an end.

I popped in on him about a week later to ask if he had come to a decision. He had.

“I’m going to St Mark’s in Mile End,” he said. “When I was young, it used to be a workhouse. But that was a long time ago. Now it is a residential home for old codgers like myself. I think it will be for the best. The lady social worker tells me I will be well looked after. I’m going next week.”

I was shocked and alarmed by the news. The shadow of the workhouse had darkened the lives of countless people for more than a century. Although officially closed in 1930 by Acts of Parliament, workhouses had merely lingered on under another name. I feared for Mr Collett, but I did not like to express my doubts, or even to sound negative, so I simply said: “I’ll come and see you, I promise.”

Back at Nonnatus House, I poured out my misgivings to Sister Julienne. She was thoughtful and looked grave, but said: “You must understand that this is his decision. He is intelligent, and I think he probably realises that he will not be able to manage to look after himself, alone, in a new place.”

I was young and passionate, and argued the case. “But he’s so much better now. He can get around without any trouble. Although his eyesight is dim, he’s not blind, and he can find everything he needs.”

Sister Julienne smiled her sweet, beautiful smile. “Yes, my dear, I know, but that is only because he knows where everything is, and habit makes it possible for him to continue living alone. In other surroundings he would be lost. It is the same for most old people.”

My unease persisted, but I knew there was nothing I could do.

A few days later, when I was in the area, I thought I would pop in to arrange a final evening with my old friend. To my astonishment, the flat was empty. I peered through the curtainless window. Everything was the same – but different. Inanimate objects have a life of their own, especially when they are the daily companions of a living soul. Without that life, they take on a bleak, desolate appearance, like furniture piled up in a warehouse. I knew he was gone, and didn’t need anyone to confirm it, although the woman next door stepped out, or rather shuffled out. Gone was her self-righteous aggression; gone, her busy-body ways and manners. Instead she exuded a dull, helpless apathy and despair. Her voice was subdued. ’E’s gorn. Vey took ’im vis mornin’ wiv ’is case. Vey’ll take me an’ all, vey will.” She shuffled back into her flat, and bolted the door. Poplar people never bolted their doors in daytime, unless they were afraid of someone.

At Nonnatus House, I felt a heavy sense of loss as I climbed the stairs. It had all been so sudden. My first thought was to go and see him at once, but then I dithered around, thinking that he needed time to settle in and get to know other people. Perhaps it was all for the best. If a thing has to be, it’s best to do it quickly. He was a wise old man; he would not have agreed to go so soon if he had thought there was anything to be gained by delay.

It was about a fortnight later, after lunch, when I cycled up to Mile End to find St Mark’s. I entered by the huge iron gate, and looked at the bleak grey buildings. I was accustomed to the old workhouse buildings, because most of them had been converted into hospitals or isolation units. I knew that they all had a particularly grim appearance, but I had never seen anything as forbidding as St Mark’s. My heart sank as I looked around.

I enquired after Mr Collett. Perhaps I had imagined that some helpful, pretty young nurse in a natty little uniform would take me straight to him. Not so. The only person I saw was a rather dirty-looking porter pushing a trolley of bins. He spoke no English, but pointed to a door. Inside was a sort of office area with no one around. It was cold and high-ceilinged, with plaster cracking and crumbling off the walls. I called, and my voice echoed up the stairwell. Still no one came.

I wandered out, and through another door. A wide, empty corridor stretched ahead, with doors going off it. I opened one, and entered a large, square room, where a lot of old men were sitting around Formica-topped tables. For a room so full of humanity it was eerily quiet. Faces looked up at me, all blank and expressionless. I looked round, but could not see Mr Collett. Nor could I see anyone to ask about him. Some plates rattled, which indicated a kitchen, and I went towards the sound. Two young men were inside, but neither of them spoke English. They repeated the name “Collett” several times, but shook their heads. One of them indicated another building. I followed the advice, and was fortunate to meet a porter, who said, “You need Reception, dear, over there,” pointing to the first door I had entered.

Back in the hall with the echoing stairwell I hung around, and “hello-ed” for about twenty minutes. Eventually a middle-aged man entered, carrying a sheaf of papers. I gave him my request.

He looked at me in astonishment. “You want to see a Mr Collett? Is that what you are saying?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Are you a social worker?”

“No. I just want to see him. Have I come at the wrong time, then? Am I out of visiting hours?”

“No. We don’t have any visiting hours. We generally don’t get any visitors. I’ll have to open the office and find out where this Mr Collett is.”

In the office, he thumbed through piles of papers. “I think I’ve found him. Mr Joseph Collett. Is that the name you want? Block E, Fifth Floor. Go up that staircase you see opposite.”

He pointed to a stone staircase. I climbed five flights and pushed open the heavy door, entering a room similar to the one I had seen on the ground floor. It was large, with about twenty Formica-topped tables and four hard-backed chairs at each table. Old men were sitting on most of the chairs, their arms on the table, staring at the man opposite. Some had their heads down, resting on their arms. No one spoke. The room smelt acrid with urine and body odour. The high windows let in light, but they were too high for anyone to see out.

I looked around until I saw Mr Collett at the far end of the room. He was looking down at the table at which he was sitting, and did not see me approach. I went straight up to him and kissed him.

He gasped, looked up, and tears filled his eyes. His lips trembled, and the tears fell. He whispered, “My maiden, my Jenny, you’ve come, then.” He was too overwhelmed to say anything more.

The chair opposite was empty, so I sat down and we held hands across the table.

“I would have come sooner, only I thought you should have a chance to settle in, and get to know your companions. I’m so sorry if you thought I wasn’t coming.”

He muttered, “Yes . . . no . . . I mean, that’s all right, my pet, that’s all right. You’re here, and I love you for it. I’m so grateful.” He squeezed my hand.

I bit my lip, close to tears myself, and looked round at the cheerless room, filled with lethargic old men saying nothing. I didn’t know what to say myself. We had never had any difficulty with conversation before; in fact, time had always seemed too short for all that we had to say. But now I was tongue-tied. I asked empty questions like: “Are you all right, then?” “What’s the food like?” “Are you comfortable here?” to all of which he replied, bleakly, “Yes, I’m doing very nicely, thank you. You don’t want to worry your head about me.”

Minutes ticked by, and there were long silences. I knew I would have to go, because I had my evening visits to start at 4 p.m. It had taken me at least forty-five minutes to find him, and time was short. It had been only the briefest of visits, and I hated leaving him, as I tried, haltingly, to explain.

He said, simply, “You go, my maid, and don’t mind me.”

I kissed him again, and fled from the room. At the door, I turned. He was stroking the cheek where my lips had touched him, and his tears were falling fast onto the table.

I don’t know how it was I didn’t have an accident as I cycled back to Nonnatus House. I was filled with sorrow.

After supper, I spoke to Sister Julienne. She listened in silence to what I had to say, and didn’t speak for a long time. Thinking she hadn’t taken it in, I said. “You do understand what I’m saying, don’t you? It is simply dreadful. He shouldn’t be there.”

“Oh yes, my dear, I understand all right. I was thinking of Our Lord’s words to Peter, as recorded in St John’s Gospel: ‘When you are young, you go where you wish, but when you are old, others will take you where you do not wish to go.’ This was taken to indicate the manner in which St Peter would die, but I have always thought that it is a general reflection about us all. For we all grow old, and very few of us retain our health and strength to the last. Most of us become helpless and completely dependent on others, whether we like it or not. Old age is a time when we learn the virtue of humility.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had often found myself in a similar position with Sister Julienne. She had a purity of thought and a simplicity of expression that were quite unanswerable.

She continued: “Mr Collett’s tragedy is that all his family were killed in the wars. The tragedy is loneliness, not the surroundings, which I doubt he notices. What you see as intolerable living conditions may be all par for the course to him. If he were living in luxury in a palace, he would be just as lonely. You are his only friend, Jenny, and he loves you. You must stay with him.”

I said that I had pledged myself to do that, and then I started to rail against the folly and inhumanity of turning him out of the flat where he had been comfortable and independent.

She stopped me in mid-sentence. “Yes, I know all that. But you must understand that the Canada Buildings have long been due for demolition. People are not going to put up with a bug-infested environment and insanitary conditions today. The Buildings must go, so the people must go. I am well aware of the fact that most of the old people who are being moved will not be able to adjust to new surroundings, and that many of them will die as a consequence. Which brings me back to the words of Jesus: ‘When you are old, men will take you where you do not want to go.’”

She smiled at me, because I must have looked so sad, and said: “Now I must go and take Compline. Why not join us this evening?”

The beauty and timelessness of the monastic office of Compline eased my troubled soul.

“The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.”

I thought of Mr Collett and all the other old men, isolated – even from each other – by loneliness.

“In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust. Let me never be put to confusion.”

The candles lighting the altar were reflected on the windows, shutting the dark without, and enclosing the nuns within.

“Be thou my strong rock and house of defence.”

Jews and Christians have drawn strength and wisdom from these psalms for two to three thousand years.

“Thou shalt not be afraid of any terror by night.”

All those sad old men – were they afraid? Afraid of living, yet more afraid of dying?

“For He shall give his angels charge over thee.”

Did they know any joy, in their joyless surroundings?

“Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord.”

Just hold them in your prayers, as Sister Julienne will in hers.

“Protect us through the silent hours of the night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world may repose upon Thy eternal changelessness.”

The Sisters left the chapel quietly. The Greater Silence had begun.

I saw Mr Collett as much as I could after that. I never stayed very long – half an hour perhaps, not more, and this was mainly because we both found it difficult to know what to say. The circumstances were just not right for cosy chats, and we were no good at small talk. Also the inertia, I think, was dulling the mind that had once been so alert. Knowing how much he used to enjoy radio documentary programmes and plays, I asked him if he listened to his wireless. He looked at me blankly, so I repeated the question.

“No, I haven’t got my wireless. I don’t know what they did with it. I don’t think I could have it here, anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

I asked what had happened to his things.

“I don’t know. The lady social worker said she would look after all that. I suppose they were sold, and the money put into my account. I’ve got a bank account, you know. I gave her the number.”

“Have you seen her since?”

“Oh yes, she came here. She is very pleasant. She gave me this.”

He fumbled in the inside pocket of his waistcoat, and produced a bit of paper. It was a receipt for £96 14s. 6d. for the sale of furniture. I thought of the grandfather clock, the fine old table, and his high wooden armchair. Now all that was left was a piece of paper.

The big room with its high windows was oppressive, and the all-pervading smell of urine nauseating, but I doubt if the old men noticed this (after all, the sense of smell fades along with the other senses as age advances). The worst thing for them, I could see, was the boredom of having absolutely nothing to do, hour after hour, day after day. One or two got up and shuffled off to the lavatory, or to another room, which I was later to discover was the dormitory. But apart from that, they did nothing. A few played cards or dominoes, but the games never seemed to excite much interest. The Daily Mirror and the Express were passed around, and some of the men glanced at them but, from what I observed, most of them just sat at the tables, looking at each other. I never saw any other visitor, and I wondered how it was possible that so many old men could have no one at all who wanted to visit them. I saw only Block E, Fifth Floor, and I did not know how many other blocks and floors there were, filled with old men, seemingly abandoned, each day killing the time, until time killed them.

One day I asked Mr Collett where his pipe was and if he smoked it. He said, “We are only allowed to smoke on the balcony.”

“Well, do you do so, then?”

“No, I don’t know where the balcony is.”

I felt very cross at such thoughtlessness on the part of the staff. They were not unkind, as far as I could see, but they were mostly Filipino or Indonesian young men, who spoke little or no English, and it obviously had not occurred to any of them to take a nearly blind man to the balcony and make sure that he knew how to find his way there and back.

“Well, let’s go out to the balcony, then, and you can have a smoke, and we can get some fresh air at the same time. Have you got your pipe, your twist, and some matches?”

“Not on me. They are in my locker. I’ll go and get them. You can come with me. I don’t suppose anyone would mind.”

He stood up, and felt his way along the tables to a short corridor at the end of which was a wide double door leading into the dormitory. My experienced eye saw at once that it was the size of the average hospital ward, designed for twenty-eight or thirty beds. It held, at a rough guess, sixty or seventy. They lined each wall, and the far end wall also. They were small two-foot-six-inch iron bedsteads, with thin mattresses over sagging springs. Beside each was a tiny locker about twelve inches wide, and the beds touched the lockers on either side. I looked down towards the far end of the dormitory. There were no lockers, and the beds were so close to each other that, presumably, the only way the occupant could get in and out was by climbing over the end. Some were occupied by old men, who just lay there, sleeping or staring at the ceiling. My critical nurse’s eye looked at the bed linen and blankets. All were filthy, and the stench of urine and faeces was evidence that fresh linen was a rarity. A ward sister would have had a team of cleaners in there in seconds. But I saw no staff at all that day.

Mr Collett felt his way along fourteen beds, and then went to the locker beside the fifteenth. I watched him, and noticed that he was walking with difficulty again. I thought, with alarm, about his leg ulcers – so much better, but only because of regular treatment. Was he still getting it? I looked around at the general neglect, and had misgivings. Perhaps he was treating the ulcers himself. I resolved to ask him before leaving that day.

He found his pipe and chuckled as he cradled his old friend in the palm of his hand. We made our way, first to the table where he had been sitting, and then to the balcony, counting the number of tables, and the direction he would have to take. I wanted to be sure he knew how to get there by himself. The door was big and heavy, with a metal safety bar, but he could manage to open it.

The fresh air was lovely, though cold, and the balcony was pleasant, but there was nowhere to sit down. I had to hold Mr Collett’s pipe and matches whilst he cut up the tobacco. He filled the pipe and lit it, and, with a satisfied sigh, exhaled clouds of thick smoke. “Luxury,” he murmured, “sheer luxury.”

I noticed the way he was standing. It was not good. He was shuffling from one leg to the other, and taking a few steps backwards and forwards. I didn’t like the signs. People with leg ulcers can usually walk, but standing still in one place is nearly impossible for them. I asked him how his legs were, and who was treating them.

“Well, I can do it myself.”

“Yes, but do you?”

“Now and again, lass, now and again.”

“How often? Every day?”

“Well, not quite every day; but enough, quite enough.”

“Do the staff renew the dressings?”

“They looked at them when I first came here, but I don’t recall since.”

I was silent. Two months, no trained person dressing the ulcers or supervising his treatment. It was not good enough. I said, “I would like to have a look at them.”

“Another time. Another time. I’m enjoying the fresh air, and the pipe, and, above all, your company. I know you’ll have to go soon and I don’t want to spoil it. You can look at my legs another day.”

He was right. The time was drawing near to 4 p.m., and my evening visits. I could not linger, so I kissed him tenderly, and left him with his pipe, and a rare smile on his face.

THE LAST POST

Something told me that Mr Collett did not have long to live. I was anxious about his legs, but apart from that I could see that he would never adapt to the communal life of St Mark’s. Sister Julienne had been quite right, I discovered. The unpleasant surroundings meant nothing to him at all. The tiny bed in a dormitory with about seventy other men was quite acceptable. In fact, he described himself as “Very comfortable. Doing nicely. They are very good to us here.” So if he had no complaints about the conditions, I realised that I should not. His trouble was chronic loneliness, and the inability to adjust to change.

On two occasions when I visited I asked to see his legs, but he prevaricated, making different excuses each time, and I didn’t think I could force the issue. The next occasion when I called he was not at his usual table. The man who generally sat opposite him pointed to the dormitory and said, “He ain’t got up today.”

I went to the dormitory, and in the fifteenth bed on the right Mr Collett lay motionless. I looked at him for a long time from the doorway, hating myself for hating the smell, and for not wanting to approach the bed. A sort of dread had entered my heart, and I wanted to turn and run.

He moved and coughed slightly, and this set me in action. I went up to his bed, kissed him, and whispered, “It’s me. Are you all right? It’s not like you to stop in bed.”

He took my hands and kissed them, and murmured that he would be all right by and by.

I sat beside him, not talking, squeezing his hand from time to time, thinking, If he stays here, not moving, for several days he will get pneumonia, and that will be it. Pneumonia is the old man’s friend, they say. A quiet and peaceful end. I hope he goes that way in his sleep. What greater blessing can we ask at the end of life?

Then it occurred to me that, whilst he was lying in bed, it would be easy to look at his legs, so I asked him if I could. He neither agreed nor disagreed, but seemed indifferent.

I pulled the blankets away from the foot of the bed, and the stench of decaying flesh rose to greet me. A rough, fluid-sodden bandage covered each leg, and I unwound them with difficulty. I had no surgical forceps, or scissors, and had to do it with my fingers. The bandages looked as though they had not been changed for a fortnight, and were stuck to the flesh underneath. As I tried to ease them away I thought I might be hurting him, but he did not move, nor show any sign of pain or distress.

At last the wounds were fully exposed. I had to grip the iron bedstead, and call upon all my nurse’s training of discipline and self-control to avoid crying out. From the knee to the ankle there was no skin at all, just livid, suppurating flesh, oozing pus and blood. Daylight was fading fast, and the dim electric-light bulb hanging from the ceiling was no great help, but I thought I could see traces of black around the edge of the wound. I looked down at his feet. The toes looked greyish and swollen, one or two of them a darker colour than the others.

“Oh, my God, it can’t be. Oh, please, no. Not him. It’s not fair.”

There was only one way to tell. I unfastened the brooch I was wearing and dug the pin deep into the centre of the wound on each leg. He didn’t move. Then I dug it really hard into his toes. He didn’t feel a thing. There could not be the slightest doubt: gangrene.

He said, “They are feeling better today. They’ve been giving me gyp the last few weeks, but they don’t hurt now, and I guess they’re getting better.”

I had to control myself. Fortunately he could not see my face, but he was sensitive to my voice. “As long as you are comfortable, you just stay there. I’ll go and get someone to put another dressing on, because I’ve taken the bandages off. I won’t be long.”

I raised the alarm, and later the superintendent and a doctor came to the dormitory, but in the meantime I had to leave for my evening work. After I had finished my visits, I cycled back to St Mark’s and, for the last time, climbed the staircase to the Fifth Floor of Block E. Mr Collett had been transferred to Mile End Hospital.

I was relieved to hear it, and I cycled the half-mile down the road to the hospital in order to find out which ward he had been admitted to. It was too late to see him, but I was told that he was comfortable and sleeping.

Immediately after lunch the next day, I cycled up to the hospital and went straight to the ward. The ward sister told me that Mr Collett had been operated on that morning, and had not yet come round from the anaesthetic. The operation had been a mid-thigh amputation of both legs.

I was taken to the side room where he lay. The calm cleanliness and efficiency of the hospital was reassuring after the shambolic dirt of St Mark’s. Mr Collett lay on spotless white sheets, his face calm and relaxed. A nasal tube was in situ, and a nurse was sucking the mucus from his throat with an aspirator. She then counted his pulse and checked the flow rate of the blood drip that was running into his arm. She smiled at me as she turned to go. Hospital protocol and discipline had the upper hand, and Mr Collett was now a part of it.

I sat with him for a little while, but he was fast asleep, and looked quite peaceful, so I left, resolving to come back after my evening visits, by which time he might have come round from the anaesthetic and would recognise me.

It was about 7.30 p.m. when I approached the ward, and the screams assailed me long before I pushed open the door. A harassed-looking staff nurse was on duty, and as I ran towards the side ward a frightened nurse whispered: “I think he’s gone mad.”

Mr Collett was sitting bolt upright in bed, his blind eyes staring, wide with terror. He was waving his arms and screaming: “Watch out, to your left, a grenade exploding.” He screamed and ducked to escape an invisible missile flying over his head.

I ran to him, and took him in my arms. “It’s me, Jenny. Me, I’m here.”

He grabbed me with superhuman strength and pushed me down to the floor. “Get down, keep your head down. They’ll blow you to bits. A bloke over there had his head blown off a minute ago. That one over there has lost both his legs. It’s a terrible place to be. Gunfire all around. Down. GET DOWN!” He screamed with all his strength and hurled himself forward. The stumps of his legs twitched violently and he fell out of bed. He seemed impervious to the fall, and grabbed me, pulling me under the bed with him.

“Stay here. You’ll be safe here, in the shelter. I’ll keep a lookout for any other poor soul. Look out!” He screamed and looked up. “That plane, see, it’s just dropped its load of bombs, they’re coming for us. It’ll be a direct hit.” He screamed louder than ever, “KEEP DOWN!”

A doctor and two male orderlies rushed into the ward. The staff nurse had a syringe filled and ready. The orderlies crawled under the bed and held Mr Collett, who was fighting and screaming. The doctor injected a powerful anaesthetic and a few minutes later, Mr Collett rolled over onto his side, asleep, but the stumps of his legs twitched violently with involuntary nervous spasms.

We were all shaken and trembling. The two orderlies picked the old man up and put him back into bed. He looked peaceful again. The hospital staff left, but I sat by his bedside for a long time, crying quietly.

At nine thirty the night sister asked me to leave, saying he would be kept sedated all night, and telling me to ring in the morning.

Before breakfast, I rang the hospital, and was told that Mr Collett had died peacefully at 3.30 a.m.

There was no last post for the old soldier; no solemn drum roll; no final salute; no lowering of the colours. There was just a contract funeral, arranged by the hospital, leaving from a hidden area next to the morgue. A priest and one mourner followed the coffin, and we travelled in the hearse, next to the driver. I had not thought of flowers until nearly at the hospital gate, so I had bought a bunch of Michaelmas daisies from a street flower-seller. We were driven to a cemetery somewhere in North London. I don’t remember where it was. I only remember a cold, bleak November day, as we stood on either side of the open grave, the priest and I, reciting the office for the burial of the dead: “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.” The men shovelled the soil over the coffin, and I laid the purple daisies on the rich brown earth.

CODA

It was many years later – perhaps fifteen or twenty years – when Mr Collett visited me. I was happily married, my daughters growing up, my life in full flow. I had not thought of Mr Collett for years.

I woke in the middle of the night, and he was standing at the side of my bed. He was as real as my husband sleeping beside me. He was tall, and upright, but looked younger than when I had known him, like a handsome man of about sixty or sixty-five. He was smiling, and then he said, “You know the secret of life, my dear, because you know how to love.”

And then he disappeared.

THE END