The Children of Lovely Lane Read online

  THE CHILDREN OF LOVELY LANE

  Nadine Dorries

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About The Children of Lovely Lane

  The nurses of Lovely Lane – Dana, Victoria, Pammy and Beth – are now in their second year and are about to face some truly harrowing and difficult times on the wards.

  St Angelus needs a new assistant matron, but the members of the Liverpool District Hospital Board have overruled Emily Haycock and Dr Gaskell with their choice. Enter the mysterious Miss Van Gilder from somewhere down south.

  The life of St Angelus is soon disrupted as her proposals turn the running of the hospital upside down and threaten the jobs of the domestics and porters. But Miss Van Gilder harbours a dark and dishonest secret, and the staff at St Angelus – who are used to looking after their own – set out to uncover it.

  Will they do so in time, before her meddling begins to affect the morale of the nurses and put the lives of their patients in danger? For one very sick little boy, especially, it will be touch and go.

  For my own children. My three ferociously bright, independent, strong, kind, beautiful daughters, Philippa, Jennifer and Cassandra.

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About The Children of Lovely Lane

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  About Nadine Dorries

  About The Lovely Lane Series

  About The Four Streets Trilogy

  Also by Nadine Dorries

  Newsletter

  From the Editor of this Book

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  1

  Emily Haycock’s hand trembled slightly as she read the letter that, unknown to her, Dr Gaskell had placed on her desk only half an hour earlier. The envelope, crisp, blue and distinctive, had called out to her before she’d even had time to remove her cloak. It was the first thing her eyes had alighted upon as she opened her office door. As the director of nursing at St Angelus, Sister Haycock lived in rooms on the first floor, above the main entrance To the hospital. She no longer wore a uniform but was reluctant to abandon her thick, lined cape, which could be thrown over her shoulder in seconds. Emily was always in a hurry.

  I shall have to retire someday, Emily, and I feel it may be sooner rather than later. I would like to leave knowing that St Angelus is in good hands. The right hands. The new NHS has presented us with many difficult challenges and I have no doubt there will be many more. The hospital must embrace this new and rapidly changing world and nothing would please me more than to see you established in the role of assistant matron. You would then be ready to take the helm when Matron reaches a similar conclusion to mine regarding her own tenure of her prestigious and long-held post. It is time for a new generation to take care of our patients and everyone who works at St Angelus.

  Lowering herself into her chair, Emily let out the long breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Liverpool born and bred and just the wrong side of thirty, Emily had worked her way up through the nursing ranks of St Angelus. Over the years she had earned respect for standing up to Matron and was liked by all, even, rather begrudgingly, by Matron herself. She and Matron had got off to a bad start, but once Matron had been reassured that Emily did not covet her job – not for the time being, anyway – she had softened towards the now not so young woman.

  Dr Gaskell was the most senior physician in the hospital and Emily had no idea that he watched over her, nor that it was because of him that she’d been taken on at St Angelus in the first place. He had treated Emily’s mother for TB many years earlier and had never forgotten the earnest young girl with the worried expression and wide eyes who’d asked him, ‘Is Mam going to get better soon?’ When Mrs Haycock had later failed to turn up for her X-ray and transfer across the water to a sanatorium, he had made enquiries and was told that his patient had been one of the many casualties of the direct hit on George Street during the worst night of bombing Liverpool suffered in the war. The only surviving members of the Haycock family were the young Emily he remembered and her stepfather.

  The next time Dr Gaskell saw Emily was on the day of her interview at the hospital. He recognized the name and then the face of his late patient’s daughter. As she sat before the appointments committee, of which he was the chairman, something touched him. He could sense her vulnerability. He could only imagine what she had lived through and he was determined that St Angelus would do right by this obviously very capable young woman. It was his casting vote that had swung the position for her. It was a rare and sweet moment of satisfaction for him and he felt he had honoured a duty to his patient by proxy. He had, after all, been able to help. It was not a conscious act, but from that moment on he had become Emily’s guardian angel.

  Having become a ward sister, Emily was now responsible for the nurses’ training throughout their three years at the hospital. She loved her job. She had passed up the opportunity to apply for the post of assistant matron herself in other hospitals in Liverpool, preferring to remain at the hospital she had known as a child, which sat between the Dock Road and Lovely Lane.

  Emily kept Dr Gaskell’s letter in her handbag and when no one was looking she slipped it out and reread it many times. In her heart, she knew it was what she should do. It was what she wanted more than anything: the next and last step towards achieving her dream of becoming the matron of St Angelus. But she also wanted to take her current group of nurses all the way to finals and until that day arrived, she would stick with them. It was her obligation. It was too soon to become assistant matron. There was also the unspoken stigma, one she was as yet not ready to face or embrace, that all matrons were spinsters. Once a matron, never a wife. Tucked away deep inside her heart was the hope, small and fading, that one day she might meet someone she could love and marry. She was still young enough, but only just. She could still have a baby, but she would have to be quick, and there was no hint of either happening any time soon. The day she felt strong enough to abandon her dream would be the day she would say to herself, that’s it, you are officially a spinster of this parish for ever more. Only then would she take the next step up the nursing-hierarchy ladder.

  Weeks later, she finally shared the contents of the letter with Biddy. Biddy Kennedy was the housekeeper in the school of nursing and had assumed the role of mother, mentor and friend to Emily the day she became aware that all three posts were vacant.

  ‘Well, if the board has now advertised the job, why would ye not be applying for it?’ Biddy asked her as
she busied herself polishing the telephone on Emily’s desk.

  Emily had been reading the application forms for the new intake of student nurses and was about to start on her notes for the next lecture. The words The Lymphatic System had been sitting at the top of a piece of foolscap paper for the past two days, taunting her, waiting. But there was no point trying to concentrate when Biddy was in the room.

  ‘You know what, Biddy, I think the January ’52 intake were the best this hospital has had since I took up my post at the school,’ she said, looking up from her papers and sitting back in the chair. ‘I’ve had nothing but good reports about Nurse Tanner. She’s so highly thought of, Matron is placing her on casualty next. Who would have thought that, eh, after such a rocky start?’

  ‘Don’t avoid the question,’ chided Biddy with a smile. ‘We all know you have a soft spot for Nurse Tanner and the nurses down at Lovely Lane. Anyone would think they were your own children. They’ve done their first year, they know their way around now and, believe me, not one of them will give you thanks for holding your career back while theirs moves forward.’

  Emily laid down her pen. Here we go, she thought. I’m in for a grilling. There was no way to escape an interrogation led by Biddy and so she gave her her full attention.

  ‘I know all of that, Biddy, but I’m attached to this group. I stuck my neck out with this lot. You do realize that Dana Brogan is the first nurse from the west of Ireland to be put on to the SRN training and not the SEN, don’t you? And that Nurse Tanner is the first nurse to work in this hospital with a full Dock Road Scouse accent? That’s all my doing. Those girls are my responsibility. I can’t desert them.’

  Biddy raised an eyebrow but didn’t interrupt.

  ‘I’ve only been in this job for a few years and I can’t leave until I can really show that I’ve made a significant difference. It’s going to take another two, at least. The day I see nurses Tanner, Brogan, Baker and Harper all lined up and ready for me to pin a St Angelus hospital badge on to their uniforms is the day I can start to think about it. They will be the proof that I have done something useful.’

  ‘That’s as maybe. I hope it keeps fine for you and it isn’t a decision you will live to regret. Imagine if the new assistant matron is even more of a scold than Matron – we all know how long it’s taken to get her to be civil to you.’

  Emily sat on the board of appointments which scrutinized the applications of every single person wanting a job on the medical team at St Angelus, from student nurse to consultant. Dr Gaskell chaired the board. Once he’d realized that Emily would not be applying for the role of assistant matron herself, he’d asked her to do the first sift and draw up a shortlist.

  ‘Well, we have tried to get the right sort of applicant,’ she said. ‘Someone who isn’t stuck in the pre-war days of the 1930s. A modern assistant matron is what this hospital needs. Someone who is kind and clever. Who cares about the patients and the nurses alike. Who wants to embrace all the new changes and who is committed to lifting the ban on married nurses being able to work. Which, as we know, is just plain discrimination and has to stop. That’s the woman we are after, Biddy.’

  Biddy picked up the pen pot and polished the already gleaming desk with gusto. Setting the pens back down, she grinned at Emily. ‘You do know you have just described yourself, don’t you?’ she said.

  Emily deliberately ignored both her question and the look she gave her. ‘I’ve got a new technique to make sure we get just the right person,’ she said. ‘I was in charge of the first sift of applicants. I don’t know how Matron agreed to that, but she did. The candidates were all much the same: same background, same experience, almost all military-trained, ex-members of the Queen Alexandra army nursing corps. That’s the thing, the war is still having a big impact. So I only chose the applicants who had nice-sounding names.’ She sounded rather pleased with herself.

  Biddy stood upright, her brow furrowed as she looked at Emily with incredulity. She slowly replaced the handset of the telephone she had been cleaning on to the cradle. The bell pinged in protest as she gave the handset a final flick with the duster.

  ‘So, let me get this right. Your involvement so far means that the new assistant matron will have a nice name,’ said Biddy, her voice tinged with disbelief.

  She crossed the room to give the windowsill a final wipe over and slipped her polishing rag into her apron pocket. She stood and faced Emily straight on. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, hurrying through the back gate of the hospital, the contingent of nurses arriving from Lovely Lane to begin their day on their new ward placements. The pink uniforms were a sight for sore eyes against the soot-blackened red brick of the hospital building. Pammy Tanner was leading from the front, as always, chatting away, laughing, her starched cap on her head bobbing, looking dangerously close to collapsing in the morning mist.

  ‘Here come your girls,’ she said to Emily, with an almost imperceptible nod of the head. ‘A Scouser through and through, that Nurse Tanner. Always uses ten words when one will do. She can never keep still either, talks with her hands. Have you noticed?’

  For a second Biddy was distracted by the clean morning freshness of the young nurses. Nine hours later, they would stagger down the steps, exhausted, the journey back to the Lovely Lane nurses’ home taking twice as long as the morning journey in. She watched the girls disappear as they mounted the steps into the main hospital building then turned her attention back to Emily. ‘If you’d chosen your student nurses by how nice their names sounded, Nurse Tanner and Nurse Brogan wouldn’t be here now, would they?’

  ‘Well, what else did I have to go on?’ Emily exclaimed. ‘There was nothing to pick between any of them. Only having spinsters working in hospitals means that by the time they’re forty their résumés read like facsimiles of each others.’ They all become one big blur.’

  Biddy shook her head in amazement. ‘Well, let’s hope that doesn’t come back and bite you on your skinny little arse, miss,’ she said, chuckling.

  ‘It will do no such thing. They have all been QAs. All served in the military. All worked in field hospitals. All unmarried. All held a sister’s post for between eight and ten years.’

  Emily was only half offended. Her relationship with Biddy was special, but now that Biddy had put into words her less than scientific sifting process, it sounded utterly ridiculous, even to her. She was beginning to feel more than a little challenged. She decided to change the subject. ‘Now, a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich would go down nicely. And later, I’m bagging a slice of that chocolate Victoria sandwich that I smelt being made in the kitchen yesterday. That would not go amiss and neither would a little less of your cheek.’ Food was always safe ground where Biddy was concerned.

  ‘I can smell the bacon,’ said Biddy. ‘Fancy that, we have chocolate in the kitchen. It’s the first time since 1940, cook told me. Thirteen years ago. Can you imagine that? That was when the supplies ran out.’

  ‘I knew we had chocolate,’ said Emily. ‘My nose can sniff it a mile off. Do you know, I swear that when cook took the lid off that tin yesterday, I could smell it all the way up in the classroom.’

  ‘You should have seen Tom, the porter’s lad who delivered it,’ said Biddy. ‘Drooling, he was. Put a smile on everyone’s face, it has. Right, a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich on its way, Sister.’ A subtle readjustment of the special relationship had just taken place, signalled by the fact that Biddy had just referred to Emily as Sister. Before the day was out, it would be back to skinny arse.

  Biddy tipped up the coal scuttle on her way out of the room and threw a shovelful on the fire. Closing the office door, she left Emily to her own devices and smiled as she made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  ‘What are you grinning about?’ Madge Jones from switchboard was leaning against the sink holding a cuppa, watching the small Chinese cook bake the best sponge she had ever seen.

  ‘It’s funny how popular our kitchen has become
since the chocolate arrived,’ said Biddy as she greeted Madge with a smile. In the hierarchy of non-medical hospital staff, Madge was somewhere up at the top, alongside the head porter, Dessie Horton. Like Dessie, she had a job that no one else could have done without having a nervous breakdown.

  ‘I’ve just come to smell it, Biddy,’ said Madge. ‘But don’t think yourself too special. The tins are arriving in all the kitchens today – I can go anywhere to smell chocolate, you know.’

  Both women laughed.

  ‘What’s the news then?’ asked Biddy as she began to assemble a tea tray and butter two slices of thick white bread.

  Madge moved closer so that none of the kitchen staff could hear. ‘Well, there was an interesting phone call I stayed on the line to listen to. You know I don’t do that very often, of course – confidentiality and all that.’

  Madge took a breath and a pull on her ciggie while Biddy nodded furiously. Her expression gave not a hint of what she was thinking: yes you do, you bleedin’ liar, you listen in on conversations all day long. But Biddy couldn’t say that. Madge was very useful to the group, but she was a tricky one; she had an air of self-importance and no one dared challenge her.

  Stubbing out her ciggie in the ashtray balanced in her hand, Madge continued. ‘Anyway, it was Dr Gaskell. He was talking to one of the other doctors on the regional TB board, the one in Manchester. I heard him say that he was upset your Miss Haycock didn’t put herself forward for the post of assistant matron. Said he’d written a letter to her as good as letting her know that if she applied for the job, it was hers. Said he’s going to ask her to reconsider.’ She cast a nervous glance towards the cook and tapped the side of her nose.

  They had a pact, Madge and Biddy. Not a word of what Madge said went outside of their little group. Knowledge and secrecy, they were well aware, equalled power.

  ‘Well, he’s going to be disappointed. She’s not applying for the job,’ said Biddy in a very matter-of-fact tone, ‘because she wants to keep an eye on Nurse Tanner and she thinks none of them will get through without her. She’s a guardian angel to that nurse and she won’t stop until she’s qualified and there is nothing me or Dr Gaskell or anyone else for that matter can say that will alter anything. She’s a stubborn madam and that’s the way it is.’