The Angels of Lovely Lane (30 page)

‘Staff Nurse told me you were joining her and I would be your first bed bath. I hope I wasn’t too difficult for you, and that thing down there, it wasn’t too much of a shock?’

Pammy responded instantly. ‘Oh no, not at all. I will never forget my first bed bath, and thank you so much for being so nice to a stupid probationer like me.’

Pammy knew she really would never forget her first patient. She had learnt more in those few minutes than she had in weeks in the classroom, the most valuable lesson being the way Staff had made Dottie laugh and feel better. As good as any painkiller or medicine. Nursing wasn’t all about the tablets or the dressings or the bedpans. It wasn’t about clean floors or an eighteen-inch turn-down; it was about really caring for your patient enough to brighten her day. She also knew she would never forget the overpowering scent of Irresistible talcum powder. It was something she would never smell for the rest of her life without thinking of Dottie Toft.

*

Jake and Martha sat on the low wall in front of the bins, while Jake rolled a cigarette and Martha held her cup of tea in one hand and his in the other. She watched as he carefully twirled his Rizla paper between finger and thumb.

‘When are you going to tell your mam, then?’ Jake asked. ‘We can’t keep the date a secret for ever. You will want to plan a nice wedding, won’t you?’ He slipped the tobacco tin into his overall pocket and lit up, then reached out to take his tea.

‘We can tell her together on Sunday,’ said Martha. ‘Me mam has said I should take you to our house for yer tea when we come back from the park.’ Jake grinned from ear to ear.

‘Great, I can’t wait. What do you bet everyone in the hospital will know, before we even get back into work on Monday morning?’

Martha laughed. ‘Jake, everyone in Liverpool will know, never mind St Angelus.’

‘Can I give yer a kiss here, Martha?’ Jake asked, his eyes twinkling.

‘No, you bloody well cannot,’ said Martha. ‘Get back to work now. I’m not marrying a man who hasn’t got a wage.’

As Martha walked back to her kitchenette next to the consultants’ sitting room, she grinned to herself. I want a hat, she thought. Not fancy, just a nice pillbox with a net veil and a pretty flower. She smiled to herself as for the hundredth time she tried to decide when and how she would ask her friend Josie if she would be a maid of honour.

*

He had been watching her through the window, his eyes never leaving her face. As he had left the house that morning, his wife had thrown a potted palm down the stairs and it had caught him between his shoulder blades just as he opened the front door. It had hurt, but not as much as it had dented his pride, or inflamed his anger. He had restricted her housekeeping allowance in order to limit her daily alcohol intake.

‘Give me more money,’ she had screamed at him. That was after she had thrown the plant and before she had slipped down the wall, like a rag doll, and slumped on to the floor. When he turned to look back up the stairs, he saw that her face was puce with anger.

‘Give me some bloody money,’ she screamed again.

Earlier in the morning she had been pleasant enough, claiming the money was for food and a few necessities. When he told her he would buy whatever she needed on his way home she lost her temper, and then she tried to kill him by aiming the potted palm down the stairs and at his head.

As he watched Martha and Jake, flirting and giggling, he felt a resentful anger bubble up within.

*

Martha washed up the dishes that had been left in the sink. She had put the last of them in the cupboard and was just drying her hands on her apron, ready to damp-polish the sitting room, when he took her by surprise. The doctors were all busy in outpatients and it would be another hour before any of them returned to the sitting room, half starved and looking for lunch.

‘Hello, my sweet,’ he said as he pushed his way in, forcing Martha backwards with him.

‘Mr Scriven,’ she said in an alarmed voice. But that was the last thing she was able to say for some time as his hand slammed over her mouth and she felt her knees buckle beneath her.

As the four girls met by the back entrance of the hospital to walk home together, they fought for the gaps in the chatter to explain their day.

‘I only nearly mixed up two blood samples,’ said Victoria. ‘A junior doctor just shoved them into my hand and asked me to shake them all the way to the pathology laboratory. I had absolutely no idea what he was on about, but a third year saved me and then when she took them out of my hand she said, “Which belongs to who?” Well, I had no idea and the doctor was on his way out of the door until she stopped him, and all the time she was shaking these glass tubes to stop the blood from clotting. It was enough to make one want to give up on the first day.’

‘Well, I bet you didn’t have a long conversation with a dead body, get flung into a dirty linen basket and start a fight on the ward,’ Dana chirped, and in unison they all cried, ‘Oh God, Dana, you are so Irish. Are you making all that up?’

‘The bedpans,’ squealed Pammy. ‘Was there ever a job as foul?’ But before anyone could answer her she had spotted a group of doctors and medical students in the distance, also leaving the back entrance of the hospital and heading towards them, down the lane. ‘Don’t move,’ she said, putting up her hand to fix her hair. ‘We need to get friendly with a few of these doctors. We all want a night out, don’t we? I reckon it won’t do us any harm to meet a few of these chaps. I recognize one from our ward today, really lovely he was. Stall, girls, stall. Dana, tie up your laces, go on, get down on the ground.’

‘Not on your life,’ said Dana, who dared not look to see if Teddy was among them, but could feel her heart beating wildly. She hadn’t seen him, but she had sensed he was there; she just knew. ‘Get down and tie up your own laces.’

‘All right, don’t then,’ said Pammy, ‘but don’t move.’

The girls pretended to chat, Pammy laughing far too loudly as they surreptitiously turned round to face the doctors. As they approached, Dana recognized him and she was sure he had spotted her. She felt as though she had entered a world of her own. Her mouth had gone dry and all she could think about was the smile on his face and the feel of his strong hands on her waist as he had lifted her up and into the dirty linen basket.

Beth began to complain. ‘For goodness’ sake, do we have to hang around here? I would quite like to get back to Lovely Lane. We all have studying to do tonight, you know. We’ve got to fill in the worksheet Sister Haycock has given us for each night. It would be a disaster to miss the first one. Hello? Is anyone listening to me?’

No one was. Pammy was in a state of high excitement. She had complained lately how dull their evenings were. Twelve weeks of study and the confinement of the PTS had almost driven her crazy. They were all on days for the next month. Pammy badly wanted a night out.

‘Here’s our chance, girls,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll ask this lot if they have any idea where a bunch of bored nurses can find some fun.’

‘That’s a bit forward, Pammy,’ said Victoria. ‘Maybe we should wait until they ask us.’

‘Are you kiddin’? I’m not asking them to marry us. We haven’t been out in months. I’m going to crack up if I have to spend another night in with a mug of Horlicks. I’ll just drop it into the conversation all casual like. Watch me.’

‘Listen to you, you mean,’ said Beth. The doctors strode on and soon covered the ground between them.

‘Nurses!’ shouted one young man with dark-framed glasses and a short mop of equally dark and very curly hair. ‘What a good job we bumped into you. We’ve all been wondering whether or not the new intake would be a good bunch.’

‘We are,’ said Pammy. Nothing was going to stop her from having her night out.

Dana had seen him at once. In a cloud of flapping white coats, he stood out from the rest. She wished her heart would slow down, that the colour she knew had risen in her face would subside, that she would remember how to speak when he reached her. He had broken away from the rest of the group. She clasped her hands to stop them shaking and swallowed hard.

He was grinning in that boyish way she remembered from the first night they met. Even when he had scooped her up and dropped her into the linen basket, her heart had beaten wildly. Now and again she had stolen a delicious free moment to relive it in her mind. She had almost torn herself apart wondering whether she had been too brusque. Played too hard to get. Had she let her Irish pride come before a lonely fall? His hair flopped over his eyes and bounced up and down as he walked. With each step, her heart beat faster. Was this an illness? He had filled her thoughts and the scenario of events from their first meeting had replayed in her mind like a film reel. She had laid her head on her pillow and imagined what it would be like if Teddy’s head were on a pillow next to hers. If she could slip her hand across the sheets and touch his body, if he answered when she whispered his name. She had felt foolish today, trying to play hard to get. He had probably seen right through her. Thank goodness she had a second chance. Don’t blow it this time, she thought.

She swallowed again as he approached. She forced herself to give him the biggest, most welcoming smile. Even her lips trembled.

He was almost upon her when she took a tentative step forward to greet him. ‘Hello,’ she said. But he didn’t hear, and her mind screamed in confusion as he strode straight past her to Victoria, threw his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek.

Dana’s heart almost broke in two as she watched Victoria reach up and wrap her arms around his neck. Then Victoria kissed him back and whispered breathlessly, ‘Teddy, I’ve found you at last.’

*

Emily Haycock decided that the moment had come. She had to have the conversation she had avoided for so long.

‘Biddy, will you stay and have a cup of tea with me?’ she asked when Biddy popped her head round the door to say goodnight.

‘That tea on the tray? It’s cold. Why would I want to drink that? Oh, I see. Is that just your way of getting me to make a fresh pot when I’m on me way out of the door? Would you get the cheek of you.’ But Biddy had already placed her bag on the floor and taken off her coat.

Five minutes later she returned to Emily’s office, bearing the tea tray and a smile. Biddy thought that Emily was dreading returning home alone. If only she knew, Biddy felt the same.

‘They’ve all gone in the kitchen and I had to do it meself, so think yourself lucky,’ she joked. ‘I’ll tell you what, this intake of nurses, they’re a funny lot. They’re a bit cheekier than the last bunch. Do you feel as though things are changing? People, I mean, not things. I’ve been here a long time and I’ve never known such a perky, happy group of girls.’

‘I think they are, Biddy. I think the more probationers we try to recruit from the same background as the majority of our patients, the quicker the change will take place. I want some of the nurses in St Angelus to say bath, not barth.’

Biddy handed Emily her tea.

‘Biddy, can we have that chat now? The one about your incontinence? Because I’d like to help.’

Supper was over and the nurses of Lovely Lane were sitting around in the lounge, watching the new black-and-white television.

‘Ssh,’ said Lizzie to the room in general. ‘It’s news about the new Queen.’ She leapt out of her chair and turned the dial of the fourteen-inch TV as far as it would go.

Mrs Duffy bustled into the room, pushing the drinks trolley in front of her. ‘Draw the curtains while you are up please, Nurse,’ she said.

As Lizzie looked for the cord down the side of the dark green velvet drapes, she stopped short. There he was again. Over the past two weeks, she had seen a young man lounging against the park bushes on the opposite side of the road on at least four or five occasions. At first she had thought he was waiting for the bus. Now, she was more suspicious.

‘Mrs Duffy,’ she said, without turning round, ‘who do you think that young man is, opposite the house? He’s been there every time I’ve closed the curtains for the past couple of weeks.’

Mrs Duffy came and stood next to her. ‘Where, dear?’

Lizzie moved aside a little to give her room, and then exclaimed, ‘Oh my, he was there just a moment ago. He’s gone now.’

‘Maybe he was just waiting for the bus?’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘Do you want me to mention it to Dessie? See what he thinks?’

‘No, no, don’t be daft,’ said Lizzie. ‘He looked harmless enough.’ She drew the curtains together and took one last peep, just to be sure. Maybe he had just been waiting for the bus after all, she thought.

‘Is it the news, girls?’ Mrs Duffy said excitedly as she pushed the squeaky trolley against the wall.

‘It is, Mrs Duffy. Don’t worry about the drinks; we’ll help ourselves. Come and sit down and watch it,’ said Victoria, patting the seat of the empty chair next to her.

‘I can’t let you serve your own drinks after the way you nurses have worked all day,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘I can do two things at once very well, Nurse Baker, and often do.’ Victoria, anticipating the rejection of her offer, had already stopped listening and returned her gaze to the television.

From the far corner came the clatter of steel on steel. It was the knitters. This group had been organized by Celia Forsyth during the first week of PTS. Dana loved knitting, having been taught by her mother as soon as she could hold a pair of needles. She would have loved to join in, but felt inhibited by the fact that Celia Forsyth was the organizer. She had tentatively mentioned her interest to Beth.

‘I love to knit,’ she had said. ‘I’m not as good as my mammy, though. She makes beautiful cardigans and jumpers. She knitted like crazy to kit me out before I left. Went mad she did because she only had a few months’ notice.’

‘Well, why don’t you join us then? Take no notice of Celia. She may have organized the group, but she doesn’t make the rules. There are no laws as to who sits in the knitting corner.’

‘Are you joking?’ Dana laughed. ‘I’d be dropping my stitches every five minutes. Your one, she hates me, though I’ve no idea what I’ve ever done to deserve it. She put a note under everyone’s door inviting them to join the circle. Under every door but mine, that is.’