The Children of Lovely Lane Read online

  ‘It’s not a job she needs anyway, Biddy; it’s love she wants.’

  Biddy moved to the griddle and, using a long fork, speared three slices of dripping bacon and laid them on to the bread.

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that? But she doesn’t meet anyone, ever. She is devoted to her work, day and night. The only break she has is when she visits her stepfather in the old soldiers’ home on the Dock Road. What life is that for her? She can’t find love in a home full of injured and elderly veterans. She needs to meet a man her own age, and until she does, Cupid’s bow has no chance of finding that skinny little arse upstairs. None.’

  ‘Bet you don’t say that to her face, do you!’ Madge was rinsing out her cup under the tap and gave Biddy a sideways grin.

  ‘Oh, I certainly do. We understand each other. I sometimes think I’m all she has. There’s no one else that I’ve seen.’

  ‘Oh, get out of here! What about the new consultant on gynae, Dr Gaskell’s son?’

  Mr Oliver Gaskell had been on gynae for over six months, but five more years would have to pass before Madge, who had worked at the hospital since before the war, ceased referring to him as ‘the new consultant’.

  ‘Oh, I had big hopes for him,’ said Biddy. ‘He seemed very keen. But no, she won’t even let me mention anything to do with romance. Clams up, she does, and if I even speak his name, she changes the subject quick, so she does.’

  Biddy had no idea that Emily had indeed considered the prospect of Oliver Gaskell; they’d even been out on a date. But after she’d discovered him slow dancing with Nurse Tanner at the doctors’ ball and kissing her hair as he held her a little too close, all notions of a blossoming romance were banished. No one was given a second chance with Emily, and now her protégée, Pammy Tanner, was besotted with him. In her heart, Emily knew he had never really been for her.

  Madge folded her arms across her red knitted twinset and studied her freshly painted bright red nails. Her dyed blonde hair bobbed under her chin. Not for the first time, Biddy thought how good she looked for a woman of fifty. Unlike her, Madge was no slave to her curlers and bunions; she was always very well turned out. She loved bright colours, seamed stockings, stilettos and every new lipstick colour that came into Woolworths. But the description ‘common’ would never be applied to someone who was as clever as Madge and held down a job that no one else could do.

  ‘Well, I think I know someone who is more than a little sweet on her,’ said Madge as she turned her attention away from her nails and towards Biddy.

  ‘Who’s that then?’ said Biddy, suddenly very interested in what Madge had to say. ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘Oh, I would say that was the case all right. It’s Dessie. Never stops talking about her, any chance he gets. You test him. Ask him what’s the weather going to be like this afternoon and he’ll find a way to mention her name even then.’

  Biddy smiled. Madge spoke with a smart telephone voice and everyone admired it. Her sharp vowels and clipped diction conveyed knowledge and superiority, with the hint of a Welsh accent in the background. The Irish in Liverpool got along with the Chinese better than the Welsh and that was a fact. But then, as Biddy often said to her friend Elsie, they weren’t all bad, the Welsh, just the ones who were prejudiced against the Irish.

  Biddy folded her arms across her ample chest and looked thoughtful. ‘Dessie, well, that is one man that has never crossed my mind.’ Dessie was a good friend of hers.

  ‘No, he wouldn’t, would he. You are a bit too close to Dessie, that’s why. You can’t see what’s under your very nose. Fancied her for years. Now, if you ask me, she will never have even considered him – she’s known him for too long. That’s where you come in, I reckon. Cast a spell, make a love potion, put them in the same room. Something, anything to make her see Dessie in a different light, not as the head porter she works with at the hospital but as, you know...’

  ‘Know what?’ Biddy furrowed her brow.

  ‘Oh, Biddy, as a man who she would want to... Oh, Jesus, Biddy, get into bed with, between the sheets, you know, show her a good time like.’

  Biddy spluttered by way of response. A crumb of chocolate cake had fallen on to the table from cook’s oven tray and she’d popped it into her mouth. Now she almost choked on it. Tears sprang to her eyes as she looked at Madge. ‘Oh, help me! I’ve just realized how much like a daughter she is! The very thought of Dessie and my boss – get out of here! Haven’t you got a switchboard to operate or something?’

  Madge smiled as she clip-clopped out of the kitchen door on her strappy stilettos. But before she left, she turned back to Biddy. ‘Think about it. Two lonely people. Two lovely people, Biddy. You know it makes sense.’

  *

  Emily had frowned at the closed door as she listened to Biddy’s footsteps descending the wooden stairs to the kitchen. She was disappointed with herself for how she’d handled the task of selecting candidates. She didn’t want to let Dr Gaskell down and yet she knew she already had by not applying for the post herself.

  A seagull swooped upwards from the Mersey, squawked, landed on the ledge outside her window and bumped its head on the glass, making her jump. The fire in the grate burst into flames and crackled as the coal settled into place.

  ‘You stupid bird,’ she said to the seagull as it turned and gazed into her room. It looked at the papers on her desk and then up at her face and back to the papers. It made her smile. She picked up her pen and one of the assessment sheets waiting to be marked. Within seconds, she had placed it back on the blotter.

  ‘Let’s hope that doesn’t come back and bite you on your skinny little arse, miss.’ Biddy’s words repeated in her ear. They had hit a nerve. For the first time, Emily was concerned. Although she would never admit it, Biddy had an uncanny knack of always being right.

  Emily had no idea that Matron had been very unhappy about Dr Gaskell giving her the responsibility of drawing up the shortlist of candidates. For Dr Gaskell, persuading Matron to agree to a new assistant had been a battle all of its own. He had needed to call on his fading charm and had deliberately dropped into Matron’s rooms to talk about the new appointment some weeks earlier. There hadn’t been an assistant matron since the war, since Sister April. That was 1941, twelve years ago. Sister April had left to work in the QAs, on transfer to the field hospitals, and hadn’t been heard of since. Some thought that Matron had been waiting. Hoping. Sure that one day Miss April would return up the steps and in through the main doors of St Angelus and surprise them all. But there had been not a single word. Letters to her family had been returned unopened. Phone calls went unanswered.

  When 1947 had arrived and there was still no news of Sister April, it was obvious to everyone that Matron was fretting. ‘I shall make enquiries,’ Dr Gaskell had said. He’d been chairman of the board for longer than anyone, even Matron, could remember. ‘I still have plenty of medical contacts in the army, Matron. With a name like Sister April, someone is bound to know where she is.’

  But his enquiries had fallen on barren ground and now the time had come to appoint a new assistant matron. He had broached the subject gently with Matron. ‘St Angelus is growing almost faster than we can keep up. Who would have thought that so many reckless young men would be driving around in cars and on motorbikes. Two boys dead in casualty last night alone.’

  Matron had sighed. ‘I’m not opposing the idea,’ she said. ‘It’s just that, Sister April, well, I had expected her to return. She loved St Angelus.’ Her voice trailed off and she turned away, embarrassed, as tears filled her eyes.

  ‘I know, Matron, but it has been a very, very long time.’

  Matron could not deny it. It had indeed been a very long time, for them all. The after-effects of the war were fading every day. People were caught up in the excitement of what peace had to offer, not least in the hope that it would bring increased prosperity. For many, remembering was almost too painful. Everyone in Liverpool had lost someone or knew someone who had
suffered during the darkest years.

  ‘And it’s not just the motorbikes and cars. The new wave of demobbing is keeping our maternity department full to the gunnels. The bedding down of the NHS is pushing everyone to the limit. You are exhausted. You work twelve-hour days seven days a week. You run her a very close second, but you aren’t Florence Nightingale, you know.’

  Dr Gaskell smiled. Matron relented.

  ‘You’re right. I haven’t seen my mother in almost six months. I need to take the train to Lytham St Annes to visit her in the home. She’s almost ninety now. I must do it soon.’

  ‘Well then, I think you’ve just made that decision for yourself. An assistant matron we must have. I have asked Sister Haycock to deal with the initial applications, to shortlist down to eight. There, I’ve said it, and now you will give me a hundred reasons why you think I’m wrong. That’s the way we’ve been running this hospital for years, isn’t it?’

  His smile and self-deprecating manner failed; they made no impact whatsoever.

  ‘But, Dr Gaskell,’ Matron protested, ‘it is I who’ll be working most closely with the assistant matron. It needs to be someone we find agreeable, someone I know that I can work with.’

  ‘Someone like me, you mean?’ Dr Gaskell raised his bushy white eyebrows inquisitively.

  Again, Matron chose not to rise to his bait.

  ‘She will be allocated some of the very important tasks that I simply no longer have the time to carry out, and there is the question of trust in her competency. I cannot hand over half my work to someone unless I can be absolutely certain that the job will be done properly. It is I, not the board, who will need to work with her every day. She will take on so many of the new changes...’

  ‘And that, Matron, is exactly why we need to deploy the skills of Sister Haycock.’ He didn’t mention that he was secretly very disappointed that Emily had not jumped at the chance to fill the post herself. ‘Come along now. You and I, we are of the old school. This new generation of doctors and nurses who served during wartime have already been tried and tested. They came back and picked up their careers exactly where they left off. They are a new breed altogether. They have different ideas to us, more in keeping with this new world everyone keeps talking about.’

  They had moved into Matron’s sitting room and both sat down in front of the fire that the Matron’s housekeeper, Elsie O’Brien, had stoked up ready for Dr Gaskell’s visit. As someone who had dedicated his life to the treatment of TB, Dr Gaskell abhorred a cold room, and they had been sitting in front of the same fire for more years than either of them would care to remember. The place was silent, except for the ticking of the longcase clock, which had once belonged to Matron’s mother.

  Matron was sitting on the edge of her seat, legs tucked beneath her, hands clasped in her lap, staring into the leaping flames. Dr Gaskell had known her since she was quite a young woman, but as he glanced at her profile he noticed for the first time that she had aged significantly and he didn’t know when this had happened. Was it when Sister April had left for the QAs, during the war? Or when she had fallen in love with Sister Antrobus, who could not have been more unlike Sister April? That love had been horribly abused. Sister Antrobus had been exposed as a hard-hearted woman who would stop at nothing to get her way. A woman with a powerful personality and plenty of ambition who had let Matron down so badly and shamed her in front of the entire hospital. When Sister Antrobus was finally thwarted by Nurse Tanner, she’d been removed from gynae and transferred to casualty, a move that Matron had said meant she would no longer have to spend too long with any one patient.

  Matron was all too aware that she’d been the subject of hospital gossip for weeks, but she had borne her ignominy with her frilled cap held high. It was possibly then that she’d aged so much, thought Dr Gaskell. A broken heart too far, a dignity crushed under the weight of whispers. His own heart suddenly felt very heavy. He was probably the only person in St Angelus who’d been aware that Matron was in love with Sister April. He had probably known even before she did. He was a man in love with his own wife. A woman he cherished and adored. A woman who had borne him a son, who supported his TB work, who never complained about the hours he worked, and she was never out of his thoughts. He’d seen the same affection he had for his own beloved wife in Matron’s eyes, when she’d worked with Assistant Matron April. He’d also seen Matron’s desolation on the day Sister April had walked out through the gates. He’d watched her heart break and he ached in sympathy, knowing that her feelings were socially taboo. Never to be spoken of; to be endured in agony and silence. What strength she must have had for all of these years, he thought. And then to fall for Sister Antrobus and lose face.

  Dr Gaskell softened his tone to one that he was more used to deploying at the bedside. ‘Come along now,’ he said. ‘We are of a different era. The NHS, it will change everything. It is hard for us to understand, but, you know, what little power we have left here will also disappear one day. I’ve asked Sister Haycock to oversee the process for the good of St Angelus, and for you, Margaret. And if I’m entirely honest, for myself too. We have to move with the times.’

  Matron looked up sharply. The last time Dr Gaskell had called her by her Christian name was to tell her that there was no news of Sister April.

  ‘We will still be on the interviewing panel and we still have a vote each, even if the trustees from the Liverpool District Hospitals Board outnumber us now. Best let Sister Haycock take charge of the applicants. She has a more objective view of who and what will be required. Now, do you still keep a bottle of sherry in that sideboard?’

  Matron smiled. Dr Gaskell never failed to get his own way with her. He was the only doctor in the hospital she truly looked up to. As she handed him his glass of sherry, she blinked as she took in the lined face and white hair. Although he never declared his age, it was widely agreed that he must have passed his seventieth birthday some time ago. ‘How much longer do we two have left here?’ she said as she sat back in her seat.

  ‘I have no idea, but I’m confident that when the time comes, we will know. And with a bit of luck, that will be on the same day, and we can leave together. This place will go on, you know. It’s a fact of life that as we get older, our contribution becomes diminished by those who are younger and have more energy.’

  ‘When did you become so worldly wise?’ said Matron. There was a hint of irritation in her voice, but it quickly disappeared as she acknowledged that he was right. ‘I find I’m fighting battles that I don’t really need to fight,’ she said. ‘It never used to be that way. It’s as if I want to fight them, to validate my authority. Such a waste of energy.’

  Dr Gaskell tried to change the subject. ‘How’s your mother?’

  Matron’s mother was in one of the best nursing homes in Lytham St Annes. It was more like a luxury hotel and Matron had sold the family home to pay for it. Securing the best care was a way of assuaging her guilt at having dedicated her life to looking after others but not her own mother. She still had her savings and some money left over from the house sale, but when the day came for her to retire, she would have nowhere to go and no one to go to. Dr Gaskell had a wife and a family. The future would be very different for him, she thought.

  As they sipped their sherry in front of the fire, Matron hoped that the day she’d have to face retirement, poverty and loneliness would never arrive.

  *

  Down in the yard, Dessie Horton called to the porter’s lad hurrying towards the school of nursing with a metal bucket in his hand. He was spilling coal across the cobbles as he went. ‘Where are you off to with that, Tom?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s for Biddy, Dessie. She needs more coal in Sister Haycock’s office over at the school. I’m taking it now.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom, I have it.’

  Tom laid the bucket down on the cobbles, pushed his cap back, scratched his head and looked up at Dessie. ‘But, that’s my job, Dessie.’

  ‘I know, lad, b
ut I want you to run back to the lodge now. Jake has a list of wards needing oxygen bottles. Much more important than the coal.’

  Satisfied that he hadn’t upset or offended Dessie, Tom ran off in the direction of the lodge. Like all Dessie’s lads, he was as loyal to him as the day was long. Dessie, a widower in his early forties and with no children of his own, treated every one of his lads as if they were the sons he’d never had, and they responded with unwavering respect and affection.

  Emily looked up as she heard the office door being gently opened. ‘Oh, hello, Dessie. There’s a surprise. Where’s Tom, he’s not ill, is he?’

  ‘No, not at all. Jake needs him, we have a run on oxygen bottles. Seems every ward as well as casualty is busy today. It’s the smog, Matron says, giving everyone a bad chest.’

  Emily turned and looked out of her window at the dark grey sky and the yellow tinge to the air. ‘The smog has been really awful. What’s going on, Dessie? They say the winter is going to be bad this year, lots of snow coming.’

  For a short moment, Dessie couldn’t answer. He knew it was getting worse. He used to watch her from afar, as she walked through the gates to the school of nursing. She was so blissfully unaware of the impact she had on every man she spoke to. Even Dessie’s assistant, Jake, happily married to Martha, melted under the blue and penetrating gaze of Sister Haycock. She was fêted by the nurses, a hero in their eyes. Always standing up for them, fighting their battles, championing their causes along with a few of her own. She was fiery and passionate but also lonely and vulnerable. When he saw her heading out at night to visit her broken stepfather, Alf, his heart crunched. Dessie knew her story. They all did. Her entire family – mother and brothers – blown up in the George Street bomb. Only Alf had survived, because he’d run out of the house to look for Emily.