with their narrow waists and big skirts, seemingly unaware of the changes that were beginning to give women an equal place in society. Each chapter of this book reveals just how this flawless attention to detail was brought to life.
Working on the series has given me an insight into the extraordinary decade that followed the war, shown me what faith is capable of, and given me the chance to better understand the delicate and under-praised work of the midwife. It has been an exciting adventure, one I am honoured to be able to share.
HEIDI THOMAS
(© Cath Harries)
First encounters always linger in the mind. The older I get, the more I appreciate the way the mind seems to take a mental snapshot of the moment. I can still envisage the first time I walked through the doors of my grammar school, the first time I saw my husband, the first time I clapped eyes on my baby’s face.
I was initially approached about the book by Pippa Harris of Neal Street Productions, who believed the memoirs of the then unknown Jennifer Worth might have potential as a television series. I was not – I am ashamed to say – especially intrigued. Fresh from the joyful experience of writing the BBC classic serial Cranford, I was passionate about finding new books to adapt, but didn’t think this would fit the bill in any way. It was not set in my favourite century (the 19th) and, even more importantly, its author was alive and well and living in Hemel Hempstead.
Adapting another writer’s work for the screen is a fraught and delicate business – changes are inevitable, and I have a keen conscience. I shudder at the thought of causing distress or offence to the person whose imagination, hard work and talent have brought a book about. While I was writing the scripts for Cranford, sometimes the only thing that kept me going was the thought that Mrs Gaskell had been dead for many decades. Meanwhile, Jennifer was not only still with us, but had based Call the Midwife on her own, deeply personal experience of working in the East End in the 1950s. I imagined that even the smallest details would be important to her, and that any alterations might prove painful.
‘No,’ I said to Pippa, ‘I don’t think it’s for me.’ Pippa didn’t listen. She and I have known each other for many years, having worked on our very first television job together – the series Soldier, Soldier – in the 1990s and there was a touch of stuff-and-nonsense in her tone.
‘Just read it,’ she said. ‘I know you, and I know you won’t be able to put it down.’
‘But it’s set in the 1950s!’ I replied, rather weakly. ‘It’s not historical, and it’s not modern either. It just won’t be my cup of tea – I want to do another Gaskell, or a Dickens.’
Pippa sent it to me anyway. I read it, and she was right – I couldn’t put it down until I’d finished. I can still recall the weight of it in my hands (this was the early, hardback edition) and the way my wrists ached as I compulsively turned page after page. It was my first encounter with the magic of Call the Midwife, and I will remember it all my days: the first sighting of the youthful Jenny Lee, picking her wasp-waisted way through the bomb sites of Poplar; the first batty utterance from Sister Monica Joan; the first time Chummy tumbled from her bike.
Over and over again, I was surprised and delighted by the characters, the stories and the sheer muscular vigour of Jennifer’s writing. I have never been sure whether I devoured the book, or the book devoured me, but by the time I closed it and crawled into bed, the die was cast: I was on board, and wouldn’t rest until I had brought Call the Midwife to the screen.
Looking back, I actually made that decision when reading page thirteen. I know this because my original copy of the book still sits on my desk, and I can see that on page thirteen I underlined a single sentence in pencil, and wrote one word in the margin alongside it. That word is ‘YES’, and it marked the first time Call the Midwife made me cry. In the middle of a crisp, factual description of childbirth in a working-class London home in the 1950s, Jennifer had dropped one beautiful comment that transcended all barriers of geography, class and time. It was this:
‘How much more can she bear, how much can any woman bear?’
Those words went straight to my heart. Here, at last, was a book that told the unflinching truth about an experience that defines the lives of women the world over, and has done so for countless generations. Furthermore, birth is something that happens to us all. We must all be born, just as we all must die. It is the one common miracle, an experience that unleashes every emotion we possess. As a midwife, Jennifer understood this more than most, and by setting down her memoirs, she shone an unprecedented light on her own profession.
In turning the books into a television series, it became my privilege to continue the work that Jennifer started. Much laughter was had – and many more tears shed – as the show evolved.
Getting a TV drama to the screen is always something of a journey. As the writer, I travelled alone at the outset. But Call the Midwife rattled onwards, a bit like a train, stopping to pick up people along the way. Producers, designers and directors came aboard. As filming approached, we were joined by actors, technicians and composers. There were babies in the mix, and medics to advise us. The challenges were legion, but we were a happy band, and this book is our attempt to share the graft, grind and sheer exhilarating joy of going back to the 1950s to make the show we loved so much.
As I write these lines, the cameras are about to start turning on the second series of Call the Midwife. Jennifer Worth died two weeks before we had begun to film the first. She would call me sentimental for this, but I find it impossible not to picture her standing alone on a railway platform, having got off the train several stations too soon.
Ours was an unusual friendship. Jennifer was bossy and I am stubborn, so it could have been a disaster. When we were first introduced, each of us was quite rightly nervous of the other. But in that rare way that happens when minds truly meet, we soon bypassed all the niceties and joined forces. That was that; we were in it together. And we still are.
On my desk, tucked into my very first copy of Call the Midwife, is the final letter Jennifer wrote to me. It contains some thoughts on the last script she was well enough to read. She ends, in her elegant spidery hand, with the words, ‘I leave it to you with confidence.’
But Call the Midwife is not mine, and I do believe that deep down Jennifer never really felt that it was wholly hers either. She always insisted that, in the books, she was simply bearing witness to the lives of others. In writing the television series, I followed her example and tried to do the same. Because birth is in the possession of humanity itself, and from our very first breath, these are stories we all share.
