The Angels of Lovely Lane Read online

  THE ANGELS OF LOVELY LANE

  Nadine Dorries

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

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  About The Angels of Lovely Lane

  It is 1953 and five very different girls are arriving at the nurses’ home in Lovely Lane, Liverpool, to start their training at St Angelus Hospital.

  Dana has escaped from her family farm on the west coast of Ireland. Victoria is running away from a debt-ridden aristocratic background. Beth is an army brat and throws in her lot with bitchy Celia Forsyth. And Pammy has come from quite the wrong side of the tracks in Liverpool.

  Now they find themselves in a very different world. From formidable Matron, to terrifying Sister Antrobus. From kind housekeeper, Mrs Duffy, to Dessie, who rules the porter’s lads – not to mention the doctors, who range from crusty to glamorous. Everyone has their place at St Angelus and woe betide anyone who strays from it.

  But when an unknown girl is admitted, after a botched late abortion in a backstreet kitchen, a tragedy begins to unfold which will rock the world of St Angelus to its foundations.

  For Chris

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About The Angels of Lovely Lane

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  Chapter eighteen

  Chapter nineteen

  Chapter twenty

  Chapter twenty-one

  Chapter twenty-two

  Chapter twenty-three

  Chapter twenty-four

  Chapter twenty-five

  Chapter twenty-six

  Chapter twenty-seven

  Chapter twenty-eight

  Chapter twenty-nine

  Chapter thirty

  Chapter thirty-one

  Chapter thirty-two

  Chapter thirty-three

  Chapter thirty-four

  About Nadine Dorries

  About The Lovely Lane Series

  About The Four Streets Trilogy

  Also by Nadine Dorries

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  Liverpool, December 1940

  Young Emily Haycock ran like the wind along George Street towards home. She was ten minutes later than usual and her lungs filled with the Mersey mist as she covered the last few yards uphill to the back gate. She had left the munitions factory on time, but had been frustrated by the slowness of the bus, which seemed to take for ever. George Street sat at the top of a sandstone precipice from which well-trodden steps led down to the docks.

  Emily knew that no sooner had she set foot inside the door than she would need to collect the food coupons and run back out again, down the road to queue with the rest of the factory workers at the corner shop at the end of Albert Street. She hoped there would be enough bacon and butter left for the family tea by the time she arrived, so that she could feed her younger brothers. Soon, it would be dark, the shop would close and everyone would prepare for the blackout.

  Emily’s stepfather, Alfred, had returned wounded from fighting with the King’s Own Lancaster regiment the year before. He now walked with a caliper on his leg and a stick in his hand. His constant pain was obvious to all, although he rarely complained. The day after his full medical discharge, he wasted no time in signing up for the Home Guard, which was where he spent every single night, seven days a week.

  ‘Hello, queen,’ he said, as Emily almost fell in through the back door. He was sitting on the edge of the sofa. Wooden-framed and stuffed with horsehair, it had taken all their strength that morning to drag it from the parlour to in front of the kitchen range. Here, under a darned and patched blanket, lay the pitifully thin form of Emily’s sleeping mother. Earlier that morning, despite her obvious discomfort, she had insisted on being lifted out of bed and carried downstairs. The air in the kitchen smelt acrid. Of blood and sputum, of unwashed hair and vomit-laced breath.

  ‘Shh.’ Alfred placed his finger to his lips.

  ‘How is she?’ Emily whispered as she tiptoed over and gazed down at the once beautiful pale complexion, now the colour of tallow. Her mother’s head was turned to one side, almost facing the back of the sofa. Beads of perspiration rested on her top lip and Emily could hear the gentle sound of her laboured and shallow breathing as she slept the deep healing sleep of the sick. Her dark hair was matted and clung to the side of her face. On one corner of her mouth remained a streak of stale blood she had wiped with her handkerchief during a bout of coughing. The thin, parchment-like skin covering her eyes appeared to have sunk deeply into her skull.

  ‘Had a good day, love?’ Alfred stroked Emily’s forearm with his hand. A gesture of affection and solidarity in the midst of their shared concern. Emily could not yet answer him; she couldn’t speak. Each time she walked into the house, she required a brief period of adjustment before she could step into her life as it now was, and not how it was supposed to be. She was only just sixteen and during the daytime, as she worked at her factory bench, she was able to pretend that this new situation, with an ailing mother and an injured stepfather, did not exist. She could imagine that life was still as it was, before the war, before the TB, before the days when she was forced to abandon her plans to train as a nurse at St Angelus.

  ‘The doctor came today. He said he wants her to be admitted into the sanatorium, over the water, in West Kirby, and she promised to think about it. He said he would move hell and high water to get her a bed. He’s a good man, you know.’

  Emily nodded in agreement. She had met the specialist with her mother a number of times, and liked him a lot. It seemed to her as though he was kindness and concern itself.

  ‘How do I pay for your visit?’ she had heard Alfred ask, after his first call.

  ‘You don’t,’ the doctor replied. ‘The government cover this under a special scheme and even if they didn’t, you wouldn’t have to pay.’

  After he left, Emily had read his list of instructions.

  Bedroom window to remain open.

  Complete bed rest elevated on five pillows for at least six months.

  No bathing.

  Nourishing diet.

  No anxiety or excitement.

  One visitor at a time only wearing a face mask of quadruple tightly folded muslin.

  Hands of attendants and visitors to be washed in a diluted solution of Dettol before leaving the house.

  Contact the hospital should symptoms worsen.

  It was at that moment Emily had known her dreams of becoming a nurse were over.

  ‘She doesn’t want to leave the house or the kids, but whatever you said to her this morning, it’s had an effect,’ Alfred said. ‘Dr Gaskell wants her to have another X-ray and then he wants to collapse her bad lung, to rest it. He’s stuck as to what else to do, because the total bed rest doesn’t seem to be working. She can be so stubborn, your mam.’ As he spoke, he gazed down at his wife with a look so tender, it was painful for Emily to see. Emily knew what he meant. Only that morning she had asked him to call in the doctor again. She had been concerned at what had appeared to be a rapid deterioration. Instead of coughing up blood a few times a da
y, it seemed as though this morning it had been every five minutes.

  ‘At least she agreed to the total bed rest. She has stuck to that.’ Emily was clutching at straws and Alfred knew it.

  ‘She also agreed to go and visit Dr Gaskell at his St Angelus clinic tomorrow. He’s a good man, coming out here to the house to see her. She trusts him, and he’s the biggest man in Liverpool when it comes to this, you know. He knows what he’s doing all right. I think he’s going to try and persuade her, once she has had the X-ray, to be admitted straight to the sanatorium. He told me he’s worried now that the second lung is badly affected. The trouble is, so many of the sanatoriums have been shut down because of the war. The waiting list could be months. There may not be anywhere for her to go.’

  Alfred’s voice trailed away. Both he and Emily knew that if her mother had agreed to consider leaving her young sons, she must be ill.

  ‘We have to be at St Angelus at ten in the morning,’ he said after a moment.

  Emily squatted down and took her mother’s hand, bony and blue-veined, like a bird’s claw, and kissed the back. She hid her face. Alfred must not see her cry. He had enough to deal with and she must be his support, not a burden.

  Emily’s parents laboured under the impression that she had no idea how bad things were. They were mistaken. She had heard them, in the dead of night, when they thought she and the younger children were asleep, talking, whispering, crying.

  She had heard her mother’s coughing, seen her shiver and sweat, bring up blood, collapse into a chair, swamped with fatigue. The swollen ankles and the painful chest. She had seen enough people in the same condition while she was growing up on Liverpool’s dockside streets during the 1930s. She knew.

  Early that morning, as Emily washed her mother and took her her morning tea, she had made her decision.

  ‘I’m going to stop work at the factory, Mam. Rita’s been great helping with the kids, but until you are better I think I had better stop here at home. After all, the doctor says you’re only allowed to get up to go to the toilet once a day. I have to be here, Mam.’

  There was a catch in her breath. Emily was closer to tears than she had been aware. Her mother had tried to reply, but instead began a fresh bout of coughing. Emily saw the bright red frothing deposit that her mother did her best to conceal in her handkerchief.

  ‘I think that’s best too, love,’ her mother had said, grimacing through the pain, as Emily lifted her arms to wash them, gently taking the handkerchief from the thin fingers as she did so.

  ‘That’s not a good sign, I don’t think, is it?’ she said, inclining her head towards the crimson stain.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, love. I think maybe it is a good sign, you know: get the badness out and then you can heal properly.’ Emily’s mother had no idea where the words came from as she tried to reassure her daughter. Put there by an ancient memory, or the ghost of a passed relative, or simply invented to help her in her hour of need as she struggled to reassure her family. To hold them together.

  ‘I’ll ask Da to call the doctor in, and I’ll let them know at the factory that I’m needed at home. Next Friday can be my last day. We have to get this better, Mam. Will you please go into the sanatorium?’

  A weak smile passed between mother and daughter. Emily bent down and kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘I have to get on, Mam. Can you hear the kids?’

  Again, they shared a glance of understanding tinged with affectionate exasperation as the sound of breakfast squabbles wafted up through the floorboards. ‘I’ll drop them at Rita’s on my way to work – that’s unless I drop them on their heads first, mind. I have to go in half an hour or I’ll be late. Alf and I are going to move the sofa into the kitchen, like you asked, and then Alf will help you down the stairs. You are right, you know: it is warmer down there, but you are not allowed to referee the boys.’ Emily knew that was exactly why her mother wanted to be moved downstairs, and that there was nothing she would enjoy more.

  ‘You go on, love, and thanks,’ said her mother. She squeezed Emily’s hand, but as Emily reached the door, she called her back. ‘Emily, come here.’

  Emily slowly turned to the bed. Through her mind ran the words, ‘Don’t, Mam.’ She didn’t want her mother to tell her what was wrong. Much better that they both went on pretending that things would soon improve. For Emily, it was easier that way.

  ‘I know Alfred’s not your real dad, but you do know he loves you, don’t you? He thinks no less of you than of the boys. You have always been special to him.’

  Emily let her breath go and sighed in relief. ‘God, Mam, of course I know that. I love him too. Alfred is my da and I don’t think of him as anything else. He’s been the best. You couldn’t have married a nicer person. I tell him every day he’s my Alfred the Great!’

  Emily grinned at her mother, who looked like a doll lying in the bed, she was now so thin. She saw the tears welling in her mother’s eyes and knew that what had just passed between them was more than mere words of appreciation for the man who had provided them with a home, security and love. Her mother was looking for reassurance that Alfred would be cared for, should anything happen to her.

  ‘Don’t worry about Alfred, Mam; he will always be my number one. I will never let him down, I promise.’

  Emily had lain awake the previous evening and heard the whispered exchange between her parents. ‘Too far gone. Both lungs now.’ Her mother sobbing, Alfred scrabbling for inadequate words of consolation. Alfred’s muffled voice and her mother never once failing to comfort him.

  She had wanted to run into their room, slip into their bed and beg, ‘Please, tell me, what’s going on, because this can’t be true. I don’t understand what’s happening. Everything is changing and I’m so scared.’ She was filled with the fear of not fully knowing what was ahead, and the dread of being aware that worse was probably yet to come.

  *

  Now, at the other end of the day, it occurred to Emily that her mother had deteriorated after just a few hours. ‘She’s spent most of the day lying on the sofa. She refuses go back to bed now that she’s down,’ said her da. ‘Said she wanted to see you when you got in from work and the kids when they came home from school. You know your mam, she hates to miss anything.’

  Emily smelt something that made her mouth water. Turning round, she saw that there was an earthenware pot on the kitchen table, covered by a tea towel, and instantly tears, which were never far from the surface, sprang to her eyes. She knew it was a donation from one of the neighbours; probably Mrs Simmonds, who often popped in and sat with her mother when her da did his rounds. If there was no meat to be seen she would take home with her whatever veg she could find in the Haycock kitchen, returning them hours later in a more edible state than when they left. On other days she would make double the scouse she needed for her own evening meal and then leave half on the table for Emily to heat up for the children when they arrived back from Rita’s house. Rita: yet another good neighbour they depended on. Emily felt as though Rita were her confidante, her best friend. More than that even, the older sister she had never had. Only a few years older than Emily, but already with a family of her own.

  Emily’s mother opened her eyes and smiled at Alfred. Emily felt a twinge of jealousy. Her ma and Alfred loved each other so much that Emily often felt excluded by their private exchanges. She dropped back to her knees by the side of the sofa. ‘Mam, are you all right?’ She was vying for her mother’s attention, dragging her away from Alfred and feeling guilty for it.

  ‘Oh, there you are, queen,’ her mother whispered, with a hint of surprise. ‘I must have known you were home. I’m glad I woke up. Could you just grab the coupons, love, and go down to the shop for me before the kids come home?’

  ‘The kids are already home, love. They’ve gone straight to Rita’s,’ Alfred said, smiling at his wife. Rita’s little sons and their own were inseparable. ‘They’ll be back soon, queen. She took them straight from school.’

  ‘
It’s like we have four little boys, or none at all,’ Emily said, extracting the ration books from the drawer in the wooden kitchen table. ‘One day we’ll find out which ones are ours, eh? When we can finally peel them apart.’ Even her mother laughed at that, although the effort made her cough.

  There had been talk about the children in Arthur Street and George Street being evacuated. Too close to the docks for their own safety, the letter had said. Many of the children had already left, mostly to North Wales, but those whose parents refused to be parted from them, or believed the war would be over sometime soon, remained. ‘Our boys won’t be going anywhere,’ Alfred had said, when the letter arrived. ‘If a bomb gets us, we’ll go together.’

  Emily had laughed. ‘A bomb won’t get us, Da, but still, it might be safer and easier for our mam if the children go. One of the women in the factory said that lots of the evacuees are being well fed. Those who have gone to North Wales are getting eggs and meat, and that’s as good a reason to agree to them going as anything else.’

  Many of the children in Arthur Street had been evacuated to Rhyl the previous week and the women were still crying. Alfred had seen and heard them and he was adamant that he did not want the boys to be sent away, but Emily knew that perhaps the time was right. Maybe, now that her mother wasn’t coping at all any more and was no longer objecting to the idea of the sanatorium, it was time for Emily’s young siblings to join their peers. The thought of life without the boys at home and her mam away in a sanatorium made her feel she was falling into a pit of loneliness.

  ‘The war will be over before the kids even reach Wales,’ Alfred had said. ‘It’ll be a waste of a journey and besides, I don’t want no strangers looking after our kids. Yer ma wouldn’t sleep at night. Worried sick she would be.’

  There was some truth in what Alfred said. Emily knew that this evening the kids were at Rita’s and having a great time, but she also knew that Rita was thinking of doing exactly the same thing. Her husband Jack was on the front line and he had written home weeks ago, instructing her to do just that. Rita hadn’t said anything yet, but Emily had seen the woman who organized the evacuee transport leaving her friend’s back yard only yesterday morning.