The Free Spirit

Mothers and Daughters, 1971 (Part Three)

"How often has she gazed from castle windows o'er and watched the daylight passing..."

It was the eighteenth of December when we arrived in London - a Saturday - and the kids had been released from school through a half day on Friday the seventeenth. We left that evening, and didn't arrive in London until almost supper time. We were all exhausted and chose to order food to be delivered for dinner before we all nodded off for the night, and on Sunday the nineteenth, I called friends and family letting them know that we were in town. As it happened, Trixie and her family were away for the holiday, but she did write to me once she had gotten my message, and Nonnatus House, busy as ever, claimed to never be too busy to accept a visit from me. I visited with my children, whom the members of Nonnatus House had practically watched grow up, and found them to be as amicable as ever. There were new faces that I didn't know, but some faces that I did. Valerie Dyer was still working with them, as was Sisters Julienne, Francis and Hilda and so was Phyllis Crane, who would retire within the year. The Turners still lived in the area and Angela was near the end of her school career, Timothy was a doctor in the country and Teddy was still in school. It was strange to see Sister Julienne looking so aged, but I knew it would come. Sister Monica Joan was bedridden now, and was very unwell, so I took the liberty to write to former members of Nonnatus House of her ill health - to Jenny Lee, to Chummy, to Jane Sutton, to Patsy and Delia - in hopes that they would come to say goodbye to her. Patsy and Delia were somewhere in the states and could not come, and Jane Sutton couldn't be reached, but I was happy to see that Jenny and Chummy came to pay their respects and say goodbye.

"It's wonderful to see you both, again," I said, greeting them in the parlour of Nonnatus House. In the back of my mind, I knew I was just putting off visiting my mother's grave.

"I'm surprised that Sister is still with us. She must be awfully old!" Chummy exclaimed in her usual high class chatter.

"Close to a hundred, but Dr. Turner doesn't believe that she will live much longer," I said. Sister Monica Joan was born sometime in the 1880s, as she was in her early twenties when she took her final vows in 1904, so she must have been somewhere between 90 and 100.

"The Turners are still here?" Jenny asked me, and I nodded.

"Indeed they are. Neither of them can bear to leave Poplar, I suppose. Even I still find it hard to leave here," I replied.

"I do miss the good old days, of us girls traipsing the cinema singing along to My Fair Lady," said Chummy fondly, recalling the memories of our youthful days as district midwives. All of us had retired from midwifery - you lot know what I've been up to, but Jenny was a music teacher now and Chummy was a ward sister in a hospital in Hertfordshire. "What of Trixie and Cynthia? Oh, bother- Sister Mary Cynthia?"

"Trixie and her husband are off on holiday for the week with their children and Cynthia, last I'd heard, joined a different religious order that's been protesting the war," I replied.

"Hippie nuns? And I thought I'd seen it all!" said Jenny with a laugh. "I never found myself in that scene, but my husband, Phillip, and I are against the war. But we were never as involved as you and your husband have been, Catherine."

"I stayed away from politics," Chummy chimed in. "Peter and I had our views, but we kept them to ourselves and carried on with our lives. Freddie is getting to that age where he's asking us questions about it, though."

"Elton, too, but he's been questioning the war since he was very young. All during his childhood, mostly, he watched me get up on stages and preach about the errors of the war and how unnecessary it is, and he's been to protests, too. We went to Woodstock, myself and my family," I said.