The Angels of Lovely Lane (14 page)

The others were amazed, as much by the velocity and volume of Pammy’s chatter as by the story itself. Dana had no trouble in keeping up. She was from Ireland and there wasn’t a woman in Liverpool who could hold a candle to an Irishwoman for gossip or chat. Beth was almost asleep. She had volunteered to copy her list for everyone, to make sure that nothing was forgotten, but no one was terribly interested and Beth had seemed slightly put out.

‘I swear, if I hadn’t had that cake to sustain me, I would have fainted from sheer exhaustion halfway through that story, Pammy. Just trying to keep up was an effort,’ said Victoria. ‘But your mother makes jolly good cake, Dana.’

Dana grinned with pleasure. Never in her life had she met or held a conversation with anyone who was as well dressed or as well spoken as Victoria.

Beth rubbed her eyes. The daughter of a former army sergeant, she had also been travelling since early that morning. ‘My interview was a doddle,’ she said. She appeared not to notice the astonished expressions of the others. ‘I worked hard for my exams and I know I got top marks, so I would have been very disappointed if I hadn’t got in. It was all fair and square with me, no help from a fairy godmother. My father is a stickler for doing things the right way. The army way.’

Victoria, Dana and Pammy fell silent. Beth’s words were threaded with barbed wire. She had shattered the warm and giddy atmosphere of companionship and the excitement of new friendships formed.

‘I suggest we all get some sleep,’ she went on. ‘I’ve left a list on your mirror of what to remember for the morning, Dana. Here are yours.’ Beth held out two pieces of paper to Victoria and Pammy. ‘I have no intention of setting a bad example on the first day. Night, all.’

The door had closed behind her before anyone had a chance to respond. ‘Night,’ the three girls chimed in half-hearted harmony.

‘Gosh, well, she is a funny one,’ whispered Pammy. ‘I thought she liked us, sitting in here and eating your cake, Dana.’

‘Imagine,’ said Dana. ‘What’s got into her?’

‘She’s probably just nervous and tired like the rest of us,’ said Victoria, putting the lid back on the cake tin and brushing the crumbs from the bed into her hand. ‘Better not leave any evidence of our midnight feast, eh? It’s like being back in boarding school.’

Pammy wasn’t listening, and looked thoughtfully at the closed door. She had already decided Beth was one to be watched.

As Dana tried to sleep for her first night in a new room, she ran through the events of the past twenty-four hours. Nothing that had happened puzzled her as much as the tear in Mr Joyce’s eye when she had said goodbye and boarded the ferry. Her thoughts then wandered to Teddy, the man with the impish smile, and she finally slept, smiling.

*

Less than a mile away, Teddy ran up the steps of the doctors’ residence and almost bumped straight into someone who was leaving. ‘Gosh, sorry. In a bit of a rush there,’ Teddy gasped, dropping his case on to the top step with a bump.

‘Not at all,’ the other man replied, ‘my fault entirely.’ Teddy stared. The man was familiar, yet he was not. Teddy thought he knew him, but he didn’t.

‘Sorry to gape. I thought you were someone else,’ he said, holding out his hand.

‘Everyone does. You probably thought I was my father. Mr Gaskell.’

‘Blimey, yes, I did. You do look like him. I heard his son was the new consultant on gynae. God help you, have you met Sister Antrobus?’

The young doctor Gaskell smiled. ‘No, that pleasure awaits me. Do you live in, too? My parents want me to move back home with them, but I’m not sure I could manage that.’

Mr Gaskell senior was proud of his son and there wasn’t anyone in the hospital who hadn’t heard about his boy’s work on the front line during the war. How he had suspended his training, been injured, returned to active duty, survived, and came home a hero. Teddy thrust out his hand. The man he had thought a mere junior doctor five minutes ago was in fact a consultant. An important man.

‘It is an honour to meet you. Welcome to St Angelus.’

Dr Gaskell smiled back and shook the offered hand. ‘Please, just call me Oliver when we’re outside the hospital. I’m off to find a quick pint before bed. Care to join me?’

‘Not half,’ Teddy said. ‘Let me just throw this case indoors.’

Two minutes later, the men walked in through the door of the Grapes. The parrot on the bar squawked ‘Pint of Guinness, pint of Guinness’, and as they laughed it occurred to Teddy that he was possibly the first junior doctor in the history of St Angelus to nip down to the pub for a pint with a consultant. He fleetingly thought of the Irish nurse he had tried to chat up. The country girl who, it turned out, had a smile to die for and dazzling blue eyes. Teddy felt good.

‘When do you start in your new post?’ asked Teddy, who dreamt of the day when he would become a consultant. Oliver Gaskell seemed so young.

‘Not for months yet, believe it or not. I will be spending a little time lecturing at the medical school, until the new G&O lecturer arrives and I’ve promised to do the odd lecture at the nursing school here.’

‘Gosh,’ said Teddy. ‘Don’t you think it’s weird? We spend years waiting to change from Mr to Dr and here you are, at the peak of your career and back to Mr.’

Both men laughed. ‘Not sure my father would agree with you there,’ Oliver said.

‘How long has he been at St Angelus?’ asked Teddy.

‘Do you know, I think it must be over forty years.’

‘Make the most of your time in the med school old chap, because compared to ward two and Sister Antrobus, it will be a doddle.

‘To the new world,’ said Teddy, as they raised their glasses.

‘To the new world,’ Oliver Gaskell replied. ‘Now, please, tell me all about Sister Antrobus.’

The girls had agreed to meet in Dana’s room at eight thirty the following morning, dressed in their uniform, ready to face the day. Mrs Duffy had instructed them not to be late. ‘Cereal and toast with bacon rashers for breakfast. You will need a head start. You have Sister Ryan to meet and you’ll need a strong stomach for that.’

No nurse ever skipped breakfast. It came before the mile-and-a-half walk to the hospital and three hours of hard physical work before they collapsed in rotation into the greasy spoon hospital canteen for mid-morning coffee and two thick slices of hot buttered toast.

Dana had been asked to send a great deal of information to the hospital in advance of her arrival, including her vital statistics. Hanging in the wardrobe she had discovered five starched palest pink uniforms with her name written on a linen tag, and five starched aprons. A pink petersham belt and a probationary nurse’s polished buckle lay on the dressing table, along with five white starched and frilled caps and a handful of small brass studs. Dana picked up the cap. There were five holes at various places in the fabric. She picked up a brass stud and threaded it through one, then frowned deeply as she wondered what the other holes were for. On the back of the door hung a heavy, black, scarlet-lined cape with her name inside the collar.

Mrs Duffy had told the girls that after breakfast they were to gather in the sitting room, in their uniform, where they would be met by Sister Ryan for cap-folding instruction and a quick talk about dress and conduct. Then Sister Ryan would walk with them to the school of nursing within the hospital grounds.

Dana struggled with the uniform. The tiny linen-covered buttons were small and fiddly for a farm girl and almost impossible to fasten. There were more pockets in the dress and the apron than she could count. She was sure each one must have a purpose, but the meaning of the various shapes and depths was lost on her this morning. Her lace collar was so starched it wouldn’t lie down flat at first, and when it did it scratched the back of her neck so much that her skin flared up bright red to match her hair. The fastenings of the apron were so incredibly complicated, with their long straps and the linen loops to thread them through, that she wasn’t sure she had secured it correctly. Her red hair wouldn’t stay behind her ears but curled and bushed out at the sides, thanks to the smog and damp air of the previous evening, and she had no idea what to do with the cape. She decided that she would wear it, and then almost staggered under the weight. At least it was obvious that the two heavy red ties crossed over the front and fastened with the buttons at the back. That was the easiest part of the entire uniform.

Thank goodness for the cape, she said to herself, studying her profile in the mirror, thinking that the heavy material at least covered up her now obviously incorrect fastening of the apron. She had seen a picture of a nurse wearing a cape on the notice board at the bottom of the stairs and felt quite accomplished. The cape was as heavy as she was and she felt instantly warmed, whereas in the cotton short-sleeved dress she had almost shivered. She wondered whether she should carry her purse or take her handbag, and hoped the suspender belt she had bought, which felt quite big and loose, would hold her lisle stockings up. Ah, there you go. What else could such big pockets be for, she said to herself, slipping her bulky purse, full of the change her mother had put in for the collections at mass and the small fortune from Mr Joyce, into her front apron pocket.

‘Never take yer eyes off yer purse in Liverpool,’ her mammy had said. ‘Keep it with you at all times and separate from your bag. That way, when your bag is stolen as surely to God it will be, in such an awful place, ye will still have the purse and will be saved.’

Dana was doing as she had been told by her mammy. She knew no other way. She had yet to meet Sister Ryan.

She left her room and was greeted by the three girls at the top of the stairs outside Pammy’s room. Her handbag was over her arm, her purse was bulging from her apron pocket, her hair was escaping from her cap and her face was glowing like a beetroot, and it was only eight twenty-five in the morning.

‘Oh my granny’s ghost. What are you doing with the cape on?’ exclaimed Pammy, as soon as she laid eyes on her.

The stairwell was filled with the clatter of shoes, as new probationers like themselves and those further on with their training hurried down the stairs for breakfast. Dana was the only one wearing her cape and carrying her handbag. She heard some of them begin to giggle when they spotted her, and then one of them said, ‘She’s the Irish girl, isn’t she? A peasant, I expect. Won’t have a clue. What is St Angelus coming to, accepting bog jumpers as registered nurses?’

Dana felt the heat of shame burning up and spreading out across her face. Tears prickled behind her eyes, and she felt suddenly overwhelmed. She had spent her entire life on a small farm on the periphery of a remote country village, but no one had ever called her a peasant. The shame she felt was not just for herself, but for the hurt her mammy would feel if she had heard.

Pammy bristled and looked as though she were about to follow the two offensive girls down the staircase and give them a piece of her mind when another group swept past them and an older girl, who they assumed must be a third year, said kindly, ‘Hello, girls. I’m Lizzie. Mrs Duffy wants me to keep an eye on you and help out if you have any problems. I’ll catch up with you all in the sitting room tonight, but come on, don’t be late on your first day. Sister Ryan eats girls who are late for breakfast.’ She looked at Dana, barely suppressing a smile.

‘Oh dear, what have we here? Help her out, girls. Leave the cape behind, lovey.’ She nodded towards Dana and smiled at Pammy. ‘I’m on the floor above. Don’t take any notice of that little madam I just heard. She’ll get her comeuppance fast enough. Her name is Celia Forsyth and she’s already got people’s backs up pushing leaflets under doors and asking who would like to make up a knitting circle. She’s only been here for five minutes herself.’

‘Lizzie,’ a voice hissed from below them in the stairwell, ‘get a move on.’

‘See you later, loveys.’ Lizzie tripped on down the stairs.

‘Oh, no, am I doing this all wrong? Am I? I must be. Why is no one else wearing their cape?’ Thanks to Lizzie’s intervention Dana had recovered from the hurt she had felt and was now horrified at having got it so wrong.

‘Because we’re in the house and there’s a big fire lit in the hall and the kitchen, soft girl. Here, let me help you get it off. You’ve tied it as tight as a nun’s knickers,’ said Pammy.

‘What’s that bulging in your pocket, Dana?’ asked Victoria politely.

‘It’s my purse. Mammy said I wasn’t to let it out of me sight when I was in Liverpool.’

Victoria gently extracted the purse from Dana’s pocket. ‘Well, that’s as may be, but while we are here, I am sure you won’t be allowed to take it on to the wards. Why don’t you do what I’ve done? I have a ten-shilling note in my pocket, just in case I need it.’

‘Oh, God, right, I will,’ said Dana.

‘Well, never mind about that for now,’ Pammy interrupted, ‘just put the purse back in your room and let’s get a wiggle on. We don’t want to be in trouble on our first day.’

‘I have English money if you’re stuck,’ said Victoria.

Dana nodded. She was feeling as stupid as she was grateful. Victoria smiled sweetly and Dana was reassured. Victoria had a voice that naturally carried tones of kindly authority, and from what Dana had seen of the second- and third-year nurses there were lots of well-spoken Victorias and Beths and very few Danas and Pammys. If she hadn’t already known that Beth had spent all her life in military camps, she might have guessed. If she hadn’t been told that Victoria was the daughter of a lord, she would have known anyway that she was from a background much better prepared than her own to deal with life’s challenges. Dana accepted that Victoria must be right.

‘You poor darling, you look so out of sorts.’ Victoria’s voice was so sultry and refined that Dana immediately felt calmer. ‘Come here, let me sort out your hair.’ She took a couple of kirby grips from her pocket and clipped Dana’s hair back behind her ears.

‘I didn’t think we were allowed to use them in our hair. I thought they were only for the caps,’ whispered Dana.

Victoria smiled. ‘Well, darling, if that’s the case, we’ll both be in trouble. But as the instructions clearly say hair must be worn up off the face and under our caps, I’m quite sure we will be safe.’