The Children of Lovely Lane Read online

  Having given Dessie her polite attention, she was already looking back down at the papers on her desk. Dessie went to speak but then changed his mind and tipped the coal into the scuttle at the side of her fire. Straightening his back, he stole one last glance. His heart was pounding as it now always did in her presence. He had deliberately contrived to come to her rooms; he hadn’t cared whether or not she would be there. To share the sweet air she’d breathed would have been enough.

  She smiled at something that was written on the paper she was reading and tutted as she picked up her fountain pen from the desk. She began to write and was oblivious to Dessie as he took a moment to gaze upon the woman who was rarely out of his thoughts.

  It was her hair, always neatly swept up but with curls that defied her kirby grips and set themselves free before lunch. It was in her small steps, her vulnerability, her smile, the way she wrapped herself inside the nurse’s cape she refused to abandon. There wasn’t a man alive who didn’t want to be that cape.To protect her tiny birdlike form and to fold his arms around her. He watched her write, then backed towards the door and closed it with a light touch so as not to disturb her. He looked up once more through the panes of glass above the brass handle. She had failed to notice him leave, but Dessie didn’t care. It was enough that she had known his name, thanked him for the coal, looked him in the eye. He could survive on that for a week or more.

  Dessie, you have it bad, he said to himself as he took the wooden stairs down two at a time.

  He didn’t notice Biddy, who was standing on the mezzanine with a tray in her hand. A smile crossed her face as, head down and with the empty bucket in his hand, he skipped past her.

  ‘Was that coal for Sister Haycock’s office?’ she asked.

  Dessie stopped mid flight. ‘It was, Biddy. I put some on the fire and the bucket’s full to overflowing. She will be nice and warm now.’

  ‘Right, well, we need some in the schoolroom too. There’s twenty-two nurses in there near shivering to death.’

  ‘Right enough, Biddy. I’ll send Tom up with some.’

  Biddy grinned. ‘Oh, right, so you won’t be doing it yourself then?’ But she was too late; the outer door had clattered shut. ‘Well, well,’ she muttered. ‘It looks like Madge was right.’

  Emily had walked over to the window and pulled up the sash. The seagull trotted along to the far end of the wide red sandstone sill and eyed her suspiciously. Emily had taken half a stale arrowroot biscuit and laid it on the ledge.

  ‘There you go, you daft bird,’ she said. ‘That’s for you.’ The gull looked at the biscuit and then back up at Emily. ‘Eat it at your leisure,’ she said, ‘but be quick, before the rain comes.’

  Bringing her head back in, she caught sight of Dessie rushing across the yard. She saw one of the lads rush up to him and take the empty coal bucket out of his hand and noticed the affectionate way Dessie slipped the lad’s cap backwards on his head and then pushed it back into place. She heard the lad exclaim, ‘Aw, Dessie!’ and laugh.

  Shivering, she pulled down the sash and watched as Dessie made his way to the porter’s lodge.

  Biddy came back into the room and set down the tray on her desk. ‘Well, that’s a good fire. I’ve brought my cup up, going to steal one out of your pot,’ she said to Emily, whose back was turned as she continued to stare out of the window.

  Carrying Emily’s cup over to her, Biddy saw Dessie about to turn the corner. Glancing at Emily, she could see that she was watching him too.

  ‘What happened to Dessie’s wife?’ Emily asked.

  Biddy decided to lie, to give her the story Dessie had been told. But this was going to be difficult; the least said, the better. ‘It was the bomb on the dock. The same night.’

  Emily looked sideways at Biddy as she took the cup and saucer. There were no further words needed. She knew exactly what Biddy meant. Dessie had lost his wife on the same night Emily had lost her family. They had both suffered and like everyone else in Liverpool who had lost people in the war, they did so in silence.

  ‘I’m surprised he isn’t with anyone, you know, engaged or something? He’s such a lovely man. I’d have thought some smart and clever woman would have snapped him up by now.’

  ‘Dessie, no. He grieved for a long time, but he’s over it now. All he cares about are the lads and their families. A bit of a hero is our Dessie, down on the Dock Road.’

  Emily nodded – she knew this – and turned towards her desk. Too late, she realized that Biddy had moved closer to the window.

  ‘Holy Mother of God!’ Biddy screamed. ‘Would you believe this, the bird’s brought us a biscuit all the way up here to the window.’

  2

  Amy Curran’s house was stuffed full of everything money could buy. Too many chairs. Too many side tables covered with fringed cloths and ornate lamps. Pictures and crucifixes adorned every wall and there was barely an inch of windowsill not covered in ornaments. Compared with their neighbours, Amy’s parents were wealthy. Her father worked at McConaghy’s, the jute and scrap-metal processing plant owned by his sister-in-law and her husband. He had been there from the start, done most of the work to establish the business and therefore enjoyed five per cent of the profits.

  ‘Five flaming per cent. They wouldn’t have a business if it weren’t for me,’ he complained to his wife every morning, about ten minutes before he was due to put on his cap and donkey jacket, pick up his sandwiches, which were always wrapped in greaseproof paper and tied up in damp muslin, and cycle the two miles to work. ‘McConaghy’s is what it is because of the hard work I put in. Keeping the traders sweet, buying them a pint of Guinness on a Friday night. Your sister and her husband, they don’t know their arses from their elbows. Two people keep that place going: me on the floor and little Lily Lancashire in the office.’

  This was a daily lamentation and Amy could mimic her father word for word. She had no idea what he was complaining about.

  ‘I can’t eat. My stomach’s bad this morning,’ her mother would reply as she laid his breakfast before him.

  He always completely ignored her, supped his tea and continued. ‘Lily knows every penny that comes in and out, and she’s as honest as the day is long. That poor kid, she comes to work in rags and do they offer to give her a pay rise? Do they hell.’

  ‘I think I’m going to go back to the doctor’s today, I’m going to tell him it’s bad. I need a new cough bottle as well, this one’s not working,’ his wife would reply. Two people holding two conversations over breakfast, each in their own world.

  Amy often heard her father complain about his five per cent, but she thought it must still amount to quite a lot. It was enough to allow her mother to take her into town every Saturday morning and buy her a new outfit. Amy was the best-dressed girl around and she knew it. She had everything. A dressing table heaving under its collection of nail varnish and lipstick. Shoes in boxes that were stacked almost to the ceiling, and a brand-new fox-fur throw that sat in pride of place on a hanger on the outside of her wardrobe door. Amy loved her possessions and she lived for her Wednesday appointment at the hairdresser’s and manicurist. She drew gasps of envy as she walked down the avenue towards home. Often her arms were laden with brown-paper bags and boxes adorned with the names of the best shops in town. On the day she turned twenty-one, she would do the same walk with her mother’s mink coat swinging around her legs.

  Amy had one friend, Dodo, who worked as a clerk in the casualty department at St Angelus Hospital. She’d been christened Doreen, but that was not a name Amy liked, so Amy decided to change it to Dodo. As an only child, Amy was used to getting everything she wanted. She had reached the age of eighteen without ever being told no, and changing Doreen’s name was no different: it was as if Doreen were one of the many china dolls Amy had been given as a child. And if there was ever a hint of resistance, Amy knew how to make life difficult.

  ‘Look, if you want to be friends with me, you can, but I cannot abide that name. Dore
en? It’s a terrible name. How are we ever going to pick up a fella in town with that name? It sounds like one of my mam’s friends from the mothers’ union.’

  Doreen had looked disheartened. She quite liked her name. ‘I can’t change my name, Amy, you eejit. I’m Doreen O’Prey and I always will be.’

  ‘Here, have this, Dodo.’ Amy held out half a bottle of pink, gloopy nail varnish to a grateful Doreen.

  Doreen’s face lit up. No one in her house had ever owned a bottle of nail varnish.

  ‘And, Dodo, I think it’s about time you and me started to go out in town a bit. For bloody fuck’s sake, we’re both eighteen and virgins. That’s not normal.’

  Doreen almost dropped the nail varnish. ‘Amy, hush, you can’t talk like that. You will have to go to confession now.’

  ‘No I bloody won’t,’ said Amy, who was trying out the swear word for the first time and quite liked the daring sound of it. They were in her bedroom and she began to laugh hysterically. ‘Bloody, fuck! There, don’t you love it!’

  Doreen looked like she was about to faint.

  ‘Oh, all right, Dodo, keep your knickers on. I’ll stop. Look, all you have to do is wear some of my nice clothes – you can’t have them, mind – and come into town with me. That way, you can bag yourself a nice fella and not a docker like all the other girls around here. You don’t have to do the sex, but me, I can’t wait. I want to know what all the fuss is about. It’s not the Grapes Inn for me and you, Dodo. We have a bit of class. We’re going out on the town.’

  Despite some mild resistance, Amy persuaded her father to have a word with Dodo’s father about her and Amy going into town together. ‘Daddy, I’m dying here with Mam, she never stops going on about how sick she is. The only time she wants to talk to me is when it’s about her rheumatism. Please, Da.’

  He was putty in her hands. Whenever he got the chance to escape from the hypochondria for a night out himself, he grabbed it. Putting on his cap, he made his way to Dodo’s door to explain to her father what a good idea it was that the girls should have a Saturday night out. He would make sure that they were safe and that all the costs were covered.

  And so it was that Doreen became Dodo when she was with Amy, because, as Dodo, she was occasionally given a cast-off coat to keep, something with a ripped lining, or a pair of shoes with a broken heel that she could have as her own if she got them mended. And they did go into town and Doreen began to think that Amy really knew what she was talking about because on her first night she met a lovely man from Middlesbrough who was a travelling salesman. She fell for him the minute he walked over to her with a Cherry B in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  Doreen had never touched a drink in her life and it was the first time she had smoked. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said coyly when he lit it for her and placed it in her fingers.

  ‘Learn, and do it bloody fast, Dodo,’ hissed Amy, to Doreen’s embarrassment.

  Doreen wondered why Amy didn’t keep her comments for the man called Ben who was heaping his attention on Amy. She pulled and spluttered on her first drag and wanted to die as Amy laughed out loud and said to the two men, ‘Would you look at the cut of her! She knows nothing. Don’t spill that Cherry B down my dress, Dodo, you can’t afford to get it cleaned if you do.’

  Doreen wanted to die with shame, wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. It was always the same with Amy. She wished she had the courage to tell Amy to stuff the dress and to walk out and go home, but with her dad unable to work as a result of his war injuries, she gave every penny of her wages to her mam and if she was ever to have any kind of night out, this was it.

  Amy knew Doreen had no money and so she paid for the bus into town and the first drinks at the bar of the Grand, and Dodo was grateful. It was something she was not allowed to forget.

  ‘What do you sell?’ Doreen asked her admirer, moving the laughter away from Amy’s unkind barbs.

  ‘Vacuum cleaners,’ said the man as he filled her glass. ‘Stick with me, Dodo, and there won’t be a time-saving device you won’t have heard of. I get them all first hand, straight from America.’

  Dodo, who had never actually seen a vacuum cleaner, was suitably impressed. Maybe Amy was right. A different life could be waiting for her.

  By the fourth Saturday evening, the novelty of discovering smoky bars and music had worn off for Amy, but the novelty of the man who bought her drinks had not. She knew only that his name was Ben; he’d never told her what his surname was or where he lived, but she answered those questions herself when he went off to the gents while they were all in the bar of the Adelphi. She slipped her hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. It was all there and in a flash she committed his name and address to memory. She admired the wad of ten-pound notes, then deftly tucked the wallet back in its place.

  Doreen leant over to talk to her. ‘I don’t think I’ll be coming next week, Amy. This Bob chap, he’s not that nice and, to be honest, I’m bored with his talk of vacuum cleaners and steam irons. You will have to find someone else to come with you next week. I’m going to go up the bingo with me mam and her mates.’ It had taken Dodo all day to build up the courage to tell Amy. Her throat was dry and her hands were shaking with the effort of it.

  Amy turned on Doreen and her voice was so loaded with venom, it made Doreen’s eyes sting with tears. ‘Well, do that then, but don’t come crying to me when you haven’t got a decent dress to put on. Go up the bingo in your rags and tags, but don’t come knocking on my door, you useless article.’

  Doreen’s throat thickened and she had no words to reply. Instead, she flew to the door and waited for the man she was relieved she would soon be rid of. Bob. Doreen had promised he could take her home on the bus and how could she refuse? Now that Amy had turned so nasty, she didn’t have the bus fare anyway. If she had, she would have made her own way home; she would have run to the next bus stop and been rid of them all.

  Doreen closed her eyes. She didn’t care if she walked around in rags. All of this going out with Amy, all this seeing men and going to bars and swearing, it just wasn’t her. It wasn’t Doreen. She’d had enough. She might be poor, but she wasn’t so daft that she couldn’t see that it was a path to ill repute. Doreen was a good girl. Her family respected her. Her da was proud of her, getting taken on at the hospital. It was her da’s friend Dessie who had seen to that. They had fought in the war together and as soon as her father had had to give in to his weakened chest and accept that he was an invalid, Dessie had come to the house to see what he could do. Doreen had found it hard at first. She’d started at the bottom, but now she was working in casualty, checking in the patients, and she loved it. People even knocked at the door to her house and brought their ailments with them. It dawned on her that she was a better person now than the one Amy was becoming and she would not take the same path.

  Amy watched her run to the door of the Adelphi and stood and waited for her to change her mind and run back. But she didn’t so much as turn around; she just stood there with her back to Amy. Well, sod off then, Dodo, Amy said to herself as she drained her Babycham. She would be back, of that she was sure. And Amy had other things to think about. Her parents had gone off to Abersoch for their annual holiday that morning, leaving her behind, and she was enjoying being free. Out in her red coat and shoes, she was like a bird with brightly coloured plumage and a daring vivacity to match.

  Ben had come back from the gents and was now striding towards her, zipping up his fly as he walked. He was always much more smartly dressed than Bob. He definitely had money, she was sure of it.

  ‘Where’s the Dodo?’ he asked as he lit a cigarette.

  ‘She’s buggering off early. Bob is taking her home on the bus, she said.’

  ‘She’s still a bit of a child. Not like you, eh, Amy? You’re all woman.’ Ben leant forward and, just before he kissed her ear, blew his smoke in her face.

  ‘My parents are away. Would you like to come back to mine
?’ she whispered.

  As he lifted his head from her neck, his eyes lit up. ‘Would I? I would. I think that sounds like a very good idea.’

  On previous Saturdays, Ben had walked Amy to the bus stop. On the first night he’d kissed her. On the second, he’d slipped his hand inside her bra and Amy had been wild with the daring and the excitement of it. As he kissed her neck and throat he’d whispered, ‘Lift up your skirt, Amy,’ but she hadn’t had the time as the bright lights of the approaching bus they had failed to hear were already illuminating the bus stop.

  Amy wanted Ben to go further as soon as possible. She knew this was wrong and that if her father walked past and saw her, he would all but die with the shock, but she didn’t care. She was bored. She had to have something she wanted that couldn’t be bought. She was bored with clothes and shoes and bags, and now she was bored with Dodo. The girl whose name she had changed.

  ‘Maybe if I let Ben go all the way, he’ll want to marry me,’ she’d said to Doreen that afternoon.

  ‘No one does that until after they’re married,’ a shocked Doreen had replied.

  That morning, when it was finally time for her parents to depart for their annual Abersoch holiday, Amy couldn’t push them out of the door fast enough. They were driving themselves in the new car, bought with the five per cent.

  ‘My gall bladder is playing up something rotten,’ her mother had complained. ‘I don’t feel right being so far from St Angelus when I’m feeling this unwell. What if it bursts or something and I need the hospital?’

  Amy’s mother had been complaining about her gall bladder ever since the GP, in a desperate attempt to hang some kind of label on her mother’s many aches and pains, had mentioned this organ, famous for being at the root of all pain in women who were fair, fat and over fifty.

  ‘Can it burst?’ asked her husband, concerned.