THE MIDWIFE’S SISTER . by Christine Lee . (Pan £7.99) Within the very sentimental world of Sunday night television, Call The Midwife’s heroine, Jenny Lee, was played with gentle reserve by actress Jessica Raine. Call The Midwife’s heroine, Jenny Lee (left), is based on a real person . But a startling new memoir by the sister of the midwife on whom the character is based suggests the real Jenny Lee was a more fiery and difficult character. The young Jenny actually came to midwifery after being dismissed from her nursing course at the Royal Berkshire Hospital for losing her temper and smacking a small child. Then only months away from qualifying, the consultants pinned her near-perfect exam papers up on the notice board as an example to others. But she was deeply in love with a much older married man at the time, and Christine Lee now believes that her sister’s romantic frustrations were the cause of her angry outbursts. Reading the details of the sisters’ childhood, it’s obvious that Jenny had cause for anger long before her married lover refused to leave his wife. Jennifer was born in 1936, the daughter of a Post Office clerk called Elsie — a woman with ‘bedroom eyes, fabulous hour-glass figure and great legs’ — and a handsome chancer, Gordon Lee, who had whisked Elsie away on his milk float from the dance at which they met. Christine came along in 1939 as Gordon built up a successful haulage business. The first seven years of Christine’s life were idyllic — she had parents who laughed and holiday adventures on the Essex coast with her fearless older sister. Their mother flirted her way to extra luxuries during rationing. But everything changed one summer day in 1945, when Elsie came home to find her husband in bed with his secretary, Judith. Elsie had a stroke. Divorce followed. The girls were sent to a convent school run by nuns whose metal rulers left savage, red weals on dyslexic Christine’s hands as she struggled to write. Jennifer kicked back at her tormentors and got the pair expelled. Meanwhile, Gordon married Judith and the wealthy couple moved to a luxurious country home — except for the room set aside for his two girls. That boasted bare boards, a bare lightbulb and one camp bed. The real Jenny Lee (played in the BBC series by Jessica Raine, second right) ended up in midwifery after being dismissed from her nursing course at the Royal Berkshire Hospital for losing her temper . Elsie went on to marry a violent bully called Jock, who demanded the girls be out of his sight when he came home from work at 5pm. By this point, Christine claims, Jennifer had become quite violent, sometimes ‘grabbing me by the hair and repeatedly banging my head against the wall’. On one occasion, her older sister chased her around the house with a carving knife. Christine had done nothing to provoke the attacks — ‘her fury was all to do with the collapse of home life’. That collapse became total when 14-year-old Jennifer accidentally stayed downstairs playing the piano after the 5 pm curfew. Jock slammed the piano lid onto her fingers and she was thrown out of the house the next morning. A year later, she lied about her age and got a job as secretary to a headmaster her mother would come to call ‘Neville the Devil’. Jennifer fell in love with him and there was a local scandal. He was the one who eventually insisted she move away to begin a career in nursing. Jennifer adored the profession, but while her sister studied, Christine preferred to party. Marriage to an ambitious doctor seemed an easy way out, but when she needed spinal surgery shortly after the birth of her first daughter, she realised her husband was straying. She would go on to marry four times and have two more children, while Jennifer settled for a marriage with good friend Phillip Worth and had two daughters. Neville remained the love of her life. Both girls moved into the arts after having their children. While Jennifer built a career as a concert pianist then a writer, Christine became a sculptor. But they grew apart. Christine married into money, which Jennifer resented. And Jennifer’s experience working with the nuns of Poplar led her to become religious in a way that alienated her from Christine, who felt shut out by her sister’s reliable response of ‘Go with God’ to any dilemma. Christine felt she used it to justify a lack of engagement with other people’s problems. But Christine says she found peace with her ‘fierce, no-nonsense, brisk and kind’ sister at the end. Beneath the large ‘DO NOT RESUSCITATE’ notice pinned over the bed in which she died from cancer in 2011, Jennifer finally relaxed and talked openly with Christine for the first time in decades. The following year, Christine celebrated their enduring bond in an 8 ft sculpture for Exeter Cathedral — two angels, strong and loving, with a narrow but unbreachable space between them.
Jenny Lee's life was turned upside down when her parents divorced . She became violent after her mother married a bully called Jock . She turned to midwifery after being dismissed from a nursing course . Jenny later moved into the creative and became a concert pianist .