A Nurse’s Tale
By Ola Awonubi
London, May 1948
The sweet scent of daffodils and primroses excites my nostrils.
In those dark days, it seemed as if such tranquil and simple joys were buried beneath the death and the destruction of war.
I do not know whether I will have the time to pen my thoughts when I get back to Nigeria, as I have done during my time here.
Maybe I will pick up these muddled and untidy letters – held together with a piece of string I found at the back of my cupboard and the residue of all the hope I could muster up during the war – and remember what it was like to live each day as if it was all I had left.
This is a new England now and I pray that my grandchildren will come back here and enjoy a day in a park like this.
There is a part of my heart that is wedded to this place.
I love the friends I have made. The kind old ladies who want to touch my hair and ask me, ‘Where you from, love?’ I love apple pie and custard and Lord Woolton pie (it is so tasty that you could swear there is actual meat in it and not Marmite because of the rationing).
I love walking in Hyde Park with my husband Timothy, holding hands and imagining that I am Princess Elizabeth and he is Prince Philip.
I love listening to the latest music from the States, the softness of silk tights against my legs and the scent of rain-drenched gardens of lilies and roses as I run to catch the bus.
Growing up in Nigeria, I read the words of Dickens and Austen and imagined fine gentlemen like Mr Darcy, tiny twisted streets and tall spires of churches, stately homes with big fireplaces and lots of crimson-cheeked happy children running around with dogs.
I got the dog bit right but everything else is just the England of my books and of my dreams. The dreams our colonialists made up for us.
My eyes have seen another England.
The one my father had warned me about when he first sent me to finishing school. The one that meant I had to stay up at night and study longer and harder because I would never be seen as being equal to my classmates or colleagues. The one where, because of the colour of my skin, I would always be seen as mentally inferior to my peers.
An England where there were places that I had been advised were not good for me to venture into because they did not want any of my ‘kind’ in the area. The England where people could ask me whether my black – my beautiful brown skin – could be washed off, as if it was a stain against their pristine whiteness. Then there were those who wanted to know if I had a tail under my crisp white apron and blue uniform. In this England, Black people were forced out of Anderson air shelters by members of the public – and sometimes even the police – to run the risk of being blown to pieces by German Luftwaffe bombing.
An England where I carry the memory of the time when a young woman in labour preferred to suffer her pains and scream alone, rather than allow ‘that bloody darkie’ to put ‘her filthy black hands’ on her. Another nurse came to assist her later.
I was calm because that was what they taught in nursing school.
Always smile. Always be professional. Always think about what’s best for the patient.
So, I learned how to make sure my face was a blank canvas, which I kept in place till the end of my shift. It was only when my roommates were fast asleep that I allowed myself the luxury of hot tears of anger, self-pity and homesickness for Afin Ake.
Forget that you are a Princess of Egbaland and that you have servants at your beck and call in Ake Palace. Forget about the fact that you attended the kind of private school that the woman having the baby might never be able to afford. Forget that this woman – who couldn’t even string a sentence of the King’s English together, with correct tenses and grammar, without swearing – thought she was superior to you just because of the colour of her skin.
Yet as the waves of pain increase, the nurse requests that I help her with the woman and when I grip her hand as her son begins to make his way into the world, our eyes meet, and the colour of my skin disappears and we are just three women working hard in the age-old battle to coax new life out into the world.
‘Jenny,’ I announce. ‘It will not be long now. I need you to push...’
After the birth, we make sure mother and baby are comfortable, and then Nurse Peters and I deal with the afterbirth and clean up. The new mother turns to Nurse Peters and asks for my name.
‘Nurse Ademola.’
Jenny is looking more herself now. The colour is slowly ebbing back into her cheeks and we have got her out of her stained nightwear into a clean nightdress and have lain down clean linen. ‘I’m sorry I was being a bit silly back there. I’ve never really met a darkie before. I mean, look at you – all smart and in a nurse’s uniform and all...’
Nurse Peters gives me a wink as we neaten the bedclothes and pick up the soiled items. ‘Yes, Nurse Ademola is quite famous, you know. One day you can tell your son that a princess helped bring him into the world.’
‘You what?’ Her lips tremble with incredulity.
Nurse Peters straightens up and folds her arms across her chest. ‘She is a princess of a kingdom in Africa but she went to school here and all...’
I wince at the qualifier even though I know Veronica’s being kind.
She is one of us now...not some savage from the wilds of Africa. She even went to school here, so she’s OK...
The patient stares at me as if I have acquired two extra heads. I do not know which response I find more depressing.
‘Ooh...Henry.’ She bends her head to look at her son, who is staring sightlessly in her direction. ‘Lookie hear. A darkie nurse and a princess as well. Whatever is this world coming to?’
I take a deep breath of air and stretch my lips into my trademark professional smile, especially reserved for some of the natives of England. ‘Congratulations, Mrs Johnson.’
I have noted that there is no doting husband waiting outside. There has also been no mention of him fighting any war or being buried on some forsaken field somewhere. I am aware that many women lie, though, and add the ‘Mrs’ to keep a veneer of respectability.
Not that we care. We are not here to judge in any way, but today I feel slightly mischievous – maybe the whole situation we are facing is seeping into my self-imposed reinforced exterior – and I hear myself asking whether she needs us to contact her husband or any other member of her family.
She straightens up in the bed and holds her baby close as if I might be about to take him away. ‘My husband is away, fighting in France.’
By this time, we have been at war with Germany for the past two years and our boys aren’t exactly allowed home on holidays unless they’ve been badly injured or have mental-health issues. I give her the tight smile I reserve for people who get on my nerves. ‘Of course.’
We leave the room and Veronica shakes her head at me. ‘Not our place to judge.’
I shrug. ‘Not her place to call me a “darkie”.’
‘Matron said—’
‘I know what Matron said.’
‘You need a cuppa.’
I smile then because, in this messed-up world, my colleagues believe a cup of unsweetened hot tea – with a spoonful of powdered milk, if our rations stretch to it – is all that is needed to put the disjointed pieces of our world in place again.
Excerpt from “A Nurse’s Tale” copyright © 2023 by Ola Awonubi. Published by One More Chapter (HarperCollins).
About the book: Born Nigerian royalty, Princess Adenrele Ademola trained and worked as a nurse at Guy’s Hospital in London during the Second World War, and faced both the devastation of the Blitz and the prejudice of some of the people she was trying to help. 80 years later, Ade’s great-niece Yemi arrives in London clutching the Princess’s precious diaries and longs to uncover the mysteries they hold…
A Nurse’s Tale is a richly-detailed, compelling historical novel inspired by the true story of one woman’s courageous contribution to Britain.
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Ola Awonubi was born in London to Nigerian parents. She grew up and attended school in Brighton and lived in Nigeria before returning to England in 1992. An avid reader, she enrolled in writing classes and went on obtain an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East London.
You can read our interview with Ola Awonubi here.
