The Angels of Lovely Lane (32 page)

Finally, Dana slipped back to her room with an outfit draped over her arm. She wondered whether she should knock on Pammy’s door and explain. She heard the church clock strike midnight and decided against it. Her secret could keep a little longer.

*

Across the road, Patrick watched from the shadows of the bushes as the lamp in Dana’s room flicked back on. He knew it was her room. He had seen her draw the curtains on half a dozen occasions. He would wait. His father had sent him. ‘Don’t return home until she has agreed to be your wife,’ he had said as he dropped Patrick off at the station.

Patrick could not let his daddy down. He would wait until she left the home on her own, and then he would stop her and talk to her and put everything right.

*

Victoria dressed Dana while Pammy fixed her make-up.

‘Stop, would you?’ Dana squealed. ‘I look as if I fell in the coal bucket, there’s so much muck around me eyes.’

‘You stop yer moaning,’ said Pammy. ‘That’s the best, that, and it’s only been in the shops for a few weeks. Elizabeth Taylor wears it and her eyes look incredible.’

‘Stand up then, let’s see you.’ Victoria took Dana’s hand and helped her out of the chair.

‘Go on, spin round,’ said Pammy.

‘Spin round? I can hardly stand on these slingbacks of yours, Pammy.’

‘Do you ever stop moaning?’ Pammy pulled an exasperated face.

‘Oh, I know, I’m sorry. I’m nervous, that’s all. I’m just a country girl and this is me first big date, after all.’

‘Well, all I can say is let’s hope they improve. There has to be more to courting than a quick chat on the back steps to theatre.’

Victoria shot Pammy a stern look. ‘Give him a break, Pammy. He’s on call every night for a month. He must be keen if he can’t wait that long to see her.’

Dana’s face broke into a grin. If there was one thing she loved to hear, it was Victoria telling her how keen Teddy was on her.

*

Half an hour later, Dana was thankful that the spring rain had stopped. There was a full moon and the cobbled back road into the hospital glistened. Victoria and Pammy had sneaked down to the back door with her while Mrs Duffy was in the sitting room serving the drinks.

‘I will slip along here when Mrs Duffy has gone and leave the snip up.’ Victoria had told her. ‘Make sure you drop it back down when you come in, or you’ll get us all into trouble.’

‘Don’t worry, I will. I’ll give you a knock when I return.’ Then, with a hug and a blast of stiff wind through the back door, Dana was swallowed by the black of the night.

Victoria leant back on the door for just a second and whispered, ‘Please, God, please, don’t let there be an emergency and make him late.’

Dana took off her shoes as she ducked under the window of the sitting room and down the side path on to the road. As she walked briskly up to the hospital, she felt her mouth dry with a combination of fear and excitement. She thought she heard someone behind her and turned quickly, thinking she had forgotten something and it was Victoria or Pammy, but the road was clear. No one was following her. It’s the heels, she thought
. What am I doing?
Mammy would kill me.
But despite her anxiety her footsteps quickened as she hurried towards the back gate of the hospital.

As she neared the steps to the theatre block, she could see that the door was wide open and the lights were on, spilling out into the courtyard, filling the cobbled square with a bright white light. This was not what she had expected. There was no one standing outside having a cigarette, as there often was during the day. The theatre block was the only place in the hospital where smoking was strictly forbidden indoors, because of the oxygen tanks. Dana stood stock-still and wondered what to do. She didn’t want to be standing at the bottom of the steps in the pool of light. She felt this would be degrading and began to question herself again. If she was near the steps, waiting for him, when he came down, she would appear too keen. What had seemed the right thing to do when she read Victoria’s note, suddenly felt wrong and inappropriate. He should be waiting by the nurses’ home for you, she thought, even though she knew that, given his rota, this was impossible. Victoria had explained that he wasn’t allowed to move any further from the hospital than the doctors’ residence.

Spotting a row of cars, Dana dipped behind one and stood waiting where she had a clear view of the door, so that when he came down the steps she could hurry towards him as though she was late. That would be much more dignified. She almost stepped out twice, only to jump back in time when she could tell that the rapid footsteps did not belong to Teddy. The cold began to seep into her bones and she started to shiver. Through the opaque windows upstairs, she could see activity. The occasional shadow of a nurse or a doctor moved across the glass, blocking out the bright lights of the theatre. It was impossible to tell who it was or indeed if any of the shadows belonged to Teddy. The words of the staff nurse on her ward began to tap on her brain.
He was stood up by a second-year nurse. They say she broke his heart
. At first she dismissed them, but the longer she waited, the clearer and louder they became until they were banging on the inside of her head, blocking out all reason and deafening her. The church clock chimed twelve and she saw the lights in theatre go out, one by one. A rapid tattoo of feet descended the steps as the night technician and staff left the building and made their way over to the greasy spoon. Whoever it was they had been operating on, it was now over. Dana spotted Dessie, who had been working since six thirty a.m. and was yet to clock off. He was pushing a large oxygen bottle across the yard.

‘All that young girl needs now is a prayer from us all as we hit the pillows,’ she heard him say to a man who was taking a cigarette out of a tin.

‘Aye, she’ll be as right as rain in the morning. The doctors know their stuff.’ The man lit up two ciggies and handed one to Dessie. ‘At this rate, they’re going to have to start opening the theatre at night on a permanent basis. We can’t keep working these hours. You have to tell Matron we need more porters.’

‘I’m on to it,’ Dessie replied. ‘I don’t know what’s happening out there. We’ve gone from being a nice quiet hospital to one that seems to be going mad, sometimes.’

‘Aye, it’s called progress, Dessie. Houses being built and babies being born everywhere. It’s as though the war never happened.’

Dessie inhaled and Dana saw his face glow red in the light of the flaming cigarette tip. ‘It’s the opposite. It’s because the war happened. Babies, houses, jobs, it’s all about forgetting. It’s moving on, more than progress.’

‘Get you, Dessie. Always a deep one. See you in the morning, mate.’

The two men moved off in opposite directions, and suddenly the courtyard was plunged into darkness, as the final light was extinguished. The clock chimed once, for twelve fifteen. Despite the fact that she knew deep down he wasn’t coming, Dana told herself she would wait for one more chime, at the half past, in case he was still inside. Writing up his notes maybe. Keeping hidden to give them some privacy, hoping they wouldn’t be seen. When the lonely note of one a.m. rang out, Dana turned, and with tears of humiliation and disappointment running down her cheeks made her way back to Lonely Lane with the words,
He waited for her for over two hours. The medical students never stopped teasing him about it
playing over and over in her mind.

Celia Forsyth lay in her bed and heard the careful footsteps passing under the front windows and around to the back door. Minutes later, with her ear pressed to her door, she heard the shuffle as Victoria’s door opened and gently closed. She also heard the stifled sob.

The warm day had given way to a moonless dark, wet night. The rain fell steadily as Sister Haycock made her way up Princess Avenue, holding on to her umbrella with both hands as on tiptoe and with the lightest feet she sprinted across puddles to avoid drenching her shoes. By the light of the old gas lamps, she saw that her stockings were splashed and splattered with the wet debris of the street and she sighed inwardly. Yet again she would be worrying all the way back to the flat if there would be enough gas left in the meter to wash both the stockings and herself.

She turned down a small pathway and knocked gently on the door of the home for distressed and injured soldiers. It was late and they would be waiting for her. No need to wake everyone by ringing the bell. She was greeted by the night sister who, as always, looked delighted to see her.

‘How is he?’ she asked before the door had been fully opened. She felt guilty that she was late. She was always late and the guilt never diminished. She knew full well that the other soldiers in the home would probably have visitors during the day and believe that Alf, her stepfather, was unloved, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.

‘Oh, he’s just fine, as always. Come in. He’s been talking about you all day. We told him that you would definitely be here, as usual. I said to him, has she ever missed a day?’

The home housed thirty patients with varying degrees of problems but all shared the same criterion for entrance: each was entirely dependent on others to get through the day. The depth of Alf Haycock’s tragedy had made him eligible and, indeed, almost a favourite with the staff. Emily had to provide part of the funding, which amounted to almost half of what she earned, but she had learnt to manage. She had become an expert at scouring jumble sales in the better areas of Liverpool. She ate at the hospital and went almost entirely without at weekends. The nurses at the home were all married, which prevented them from working at St Angelus, but in Emily’s opinion they were the best. She had observed at first hand how caring they were, and had decided that marriage and motherhood were a bonus in nursing, bringing qualities of wisdom and compassion that even she could not train into her nurses. She had decided she would do her best to influence the board to drop that most stupid of rules.

‘He’s just had a cup of tea with a shortbread and he loved it. Asked for another, he did. I said to him, wait until Emily gets here and you can have one together.’

Emily’s mouth watered. She had missed her tea at the hospital and her stomach rumbled at the prospect of her favourite biscuit.

‘Have you come straight from work again?’ The night sister asked the question with a hint of disapproval in her voice and Emily nodded, unable and unwilling to lie.

‘Well then, it’s just as well I saved you some supper in the kitchen, isn’t it? You work too hard, you know. Mind you, in this new world, don’t we all? You go straight in to him and I’ll bring you both a nice tray.’

The night sister shuffled off down the corridor while Emily shook out her umbrella and leant it up against the front door, removed her headscarf and shook that too. Undoing her mackintosh and loosening the belt, she made her way towards Alf’s room.

Alf had never recovered from the bomb that hit George Street. He had lost his wife, his sons and his mind, all on the same day. As she walked into the room, he looked up from the chair in which he spent most of his time.

‘Hello, my Alfred the Great,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late, but I’m here now. I can put you to bed.’

He smiled up at her. A smile full of remembrance and affection. She knew he still recognized his stepdaughter. Maybe not for all of the time she was there, but always in the first few seconds, she thought, although the doctors did not agree with her.

‘You know your mother’s watch?’ Her father began talking before she had even sat down. ‘I took it to the shop to be fixed. The little finger had stuck, and do you know, when I went to collect it today, they couldn’t find it. Can you believe that? They asked me to go back tomorrow, so the owner can have a good look round for it. I told him, you had better find it, mate, it’s made of gold that watch and it was me mother’s before the wife ’ad it. Your mam said she keeps looking down at her wrist to see if it’s there. Said she feels lost without it.’

Emily pulled her cardigan down to ensure it covered the watch, which she wore every day. The watch and her mother’s wedding ring had been the only two items returned to her and she had worn both ever since. She felt the familiar warm metal of the ring on the chain beneath her dress.

‘Well, that’s terrible, Alf. I hope he finds it.’

‘He will, queen, don’t worry, he won’t want the coppers knocking on his door and that’s what I’ll do if I don’t get it back. I’ll go to the Whitechapel station meself, if they don’t find it.’

They had had the same conversation every night for the past thirteen years. Occasionally it varied as a different memory came back to him. One that had niggled at him during the day. The doctors often stared at her blankly, as though she were the one who had lost her mind, when she tried to explain that she thought he saved things up for when she arrived, to share with her. There were moments during the day, she was sure from what the nursing staff told her, when he anticipated her arrival and looked forward to her coming, but the remainder of the time he spent with the ghost of her mother. In the first few years, she would show him the watch on her wrist, but it meant nothing to him. Nor did leaving the watch with him. He would look at it when she explained and say, ‘Aye, that’s right,’ and then continue in just the same vein. Sometimes he would fret that he was late for a hospital appointment or that he had misplaced his blackout rota, or go on and on about the shoes he had to clean for her brothers for church, or worry that the kids hadn’t come home from Rita’s yet and must be driving Rita mad. She could never explain it to him, because even after all these years it was not a story she could tell without her eyes filling with tears and a catch in her throat. There was not a day when she too didn’t think about Rita, the woman her brothers had died with. Or hear her last words and her brothers’ whoops of joy when she said they could stay in Rita’s house while she ran to the shop with the coupons for butter. ‘You are such a love,’ Rita had said.

Such a love. Such a love. Such a love.
Sometimes, the words played over and over in a loop in her mind and she could hear Rita’s voice, as clear as though she were in the next room.