The Angels of Lovely Lane (34 page)

Oliver raised his eyebrows in surprise.

‘I would like the soup, please, followed by the chicken.’

*

Dessie had been helping to clean up the bombed-out church. His mother had been christened there and it had been attended by every member of her family. He had seen the notice in the
Echo
calling for volunteers to help clear the rubble and to sign the petition to rebuild the church and return it to its original glory.

He walked down Bold Street. At the bottom, he would turn left and carry on down Church Street to the hospital before he collected the pies and made his way to Biddy’s. He wanted to check on the lads’ rota first. Two were leaving to work for a firm of builders who were taking on in town. It had been years, but Liverpool Corporation had finally begun to distribute contracts for the new council houses to be built in Bootle. The Irish were once again flooding through the gates, ready to labour in gangs on the roads and houses. His lads were all Irish. He knew he was in danger of losing them to the rebuilding of Liverpool. More money to be made and excitement to be had that way than from stoking boilers or delivering clean linen.

He had no idea what it was that made him look through the restaurant door. It was a Sunday night. Town was quiet. Liverpool, famous for its partygoers and music lovers, radiated an atmosphere of calm, following the Saturday-night storm. He sidestepped a tankard of ale, standing upright on the pavement, half full, left and lost by some poor reveller the night before.

Music wafted out from an upstairs window above a tailor’s shop and he reached the restaurant door just as a couple heading towards him on the other side of the road began to cross towards it. He turned his head to look into the golden light and away from the gloom of the street, and that was when he saw her. There was no mistaking her. Dessie stopped dead. She was no longer a young woman, but Dessie always thought, with each year that passed, that she had improved with age. Her cheeks were soft and pillowy and not like his wife’s had been, gaunt and hollow. He watched as Mr Gaskell threw back his head and laughed, just before he reached out and placed his hand on top of hers.

The pain was so sharp that Dessie felt as though his heart had been pierced.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the stranger, who was now standing in front of Dessie on the pavement and blocking his immediate escape.

Dessie’s heart beat faster, terrified that she might turn to the side and see him. What would she say? What could he say? Would she ask, ‘Dessie, why do you look as though your heart has just broken in two?’ Would he be able to say, ‘The woman I have worshipped from afar all this time has just left the stage upon which my dreams were made’?

He stood in the pool of golden light and warmth which spilled out of the restaurant but he couldn’t speak. He nodded to the man and tried to get out of his way, but his feet felt like weights of lead and refused to move. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her, or from Mr Gaskell. The woman with the stranger had dropped her fine leather gloves on the pavement and she was laughing. Dessie’s good manners took over and he bent to pick them up.

‘Oh, thank you so much. I am such a butterfingers,’ she trilled, in a high-pitched tone.

Mr Gaskell looked over. Sister Haycock was talking and yet he seemed to be distracted by the open door. He glanced Dessie’s way. Please don’t recognize me, Dessie thought. Please, don’t.

He didn’t. Dessie had spoken to him a dozen times since he began to work at the hospital, but Dessie recognized the distant look in his eyes when they talked. He was nothing like his father, a man liked by everyone who worked at St Angelus. The son displayed a lack of interest in anything other than his own goals and ambitions.

The door closed on the diners and he walked on, fighting an urge to stand at the window and stare. To become invisible so that he could observe her every expression, hear her laugh and wish with all his heart that it was he who was sitting opposite her and not Oliver Gaskell.

*

Biddy busied about her kitchen, waiting for Elsie to arrive. She was always a few minutes ahead of Dessie. As soon as Elsie reached the kitchen door, agitated and anxious, Biddy knew something was seriously wrong. Not least because Elsie’s arms were not holding the six bottles of Guinness Biddy had been looking forward to.

‘What in God’s name is up with you?’ Biddy laughed, more to ease her own rising anxiety at the state of Elsie than anything else.

Elsie grabbed Biddy’s sleeve. ‘Biddy, I’m at me wit’s end with our Martha. She’s acting so peculiar and she put me in a right position she did today. I’ve had to lie to Jake and tell him she was ill. They were supposed to be having their dinner with me and she told me she didn’t want him around.’

Biddy stopped Elsie mid-flow. ‘Elsie, I can hardly tell what you are saying, will ye slow down? Tell me from the beginning. What’s going on?’

Elsie took her handkerchief out from the end of her cardigan sleeve and sobbed, ‘Biddy, I cannot believe it. It’s our Martha, she’s been possessed. Altered beyond all recognition she has.’

Biddy knew Martha almost as well as her own mother did and she also knew that Elsie was more prone to exaggeration than most. Nevertheless, she realized that something was very wrong. ‘Are ye sure? Why did you have to lie to Jake? That girl doesn’t go to the outhouse without telling ye first. If something was up, you would be the first to know, surely.’

Biddy could see that Elsie was beyond worried. She was scared. Her face was pinched and white and her eyes were full of concern. Biddy felt unease rising in her belly as all her senses screamed that something was very, very far from well, and she almost didn’t want to hear what Elsie had to say. With a sense of impending doom, she wanted time to slip back, to the moments when she had been looking forward to the arrival of Elsie and Dessie and her Guinness and pie.

Elsie jabbered on and quickly recounted the events of the day. How Martha had asked her to send Jake away when he had called round.

‘Tell him I’m sick, Mam. I don’t want to see him. I don’t feel well.’

Elsie had done as Martha had asked, but she had felt ill at ease and annoyed with her daughter.

‘“Have you gone off Jake Berry,” I said, “the best-looking and hardest-working lad in Liverpool? Because if so, you need your head testing, young lady. I sent away a very disappointed lad, so I did.” “She’s sick?” he said to me. “It’s nothing serious is it, Mrs O’Brien?” Well, I had to lie through me teeth and all the time she was stood behind the door to the stairs, sat on the bottom step, in case he came into the kitchen.

‘I could see how much that lad thinks of our Martha as plain as the nose on me face and I felt dreadful having to lie to him, what with the position Martha had put me in. “No, lad, she will be fine by tomorrow, a bad head she has,” I said, “nothing an early night won’t sort out. She’s already in bed.” God, I felt terrible, Biddy. He was so worried. “Will you tell her I love her?” he said. How many girls around here would die for a man like that, eh? “Aye, I will, lad, I will. As soon as she wakes,” I said.’

‘And is Martha sick?’ asked Biddy.

‘Sick?’ Elsie looked thoughtful and Biddy knew that look. ‘To tell you the truth, Biddy, I’ve been worried about our Martha for weeks. When she’s at home she mopes around the house and she looks so miserable you wouldn’t think she had a wonderful fella like Jake Berry. How could anyone whose fiancé buys an electric washer and mangle be miserable? I can tell that poor Jake is confused. She hasn’t even been to the house this week, or mentioned the wedding once. They must be working her hard in the consultants’ room because as soon as she gets home she’s fast asleep on the settle and she’s in bed before me at night. She spends half her morning in the outhouse. I thought maybe she had eaten something. I’m worried she might be ailing with something bad like. She never complains, though.’

‘Not like her mother then?’ said Biddy. Elsie appeared not to notice the barb as she continued.

‘She’s been acting like she’s older than me these past couple of months, she has so. Kids these days, they don’t know they’re born. How hard did we have to work when we were sixteen, eh?’

Biddy nodded, her expression inscrutable. She had known Martha since the minute she was born. It was Biddy who had boiled the kettles for the hot water when the midwife arrived and ran upstairs to tend to Elsie and the baby. Big Charlie was at work and little Charlie at school. When Martha had arrived, only Elsie and Biddy were in the house to welcome her.

Biddy had already put two and two together, but it appeared that she was way ahead of Elsie. She poured some steaming tea into two cups. When Biddy returned home from work, she could down a whole pot to herself. ‘’Tis the Irish way,’ she often said to Dessie, who could only manage two cups in one sitting.

‘When you get home, will you ask her to come and see me? Maybe there’s something she can tell me, something private like. She could be worried or scared about the wedding, and sometimes it helps to have someone outside the family to talk to. Send her round. Tell her I need help with something.’

Elsie looked relieved. ‘I will that. And do you need help with something, then?’

‘I want to put a few old clothes up in the suitcase on top of the wardrobe. I need a clear out in my bedroom. That’s a good excuse.’

Elsie’s shoulders drooped with the relief of a burden shared with her oldest friend. ‘Of course it is. Don’t you go standing on that stool on yer own. We don’t want nothing happening to you, Biddy. She’s taken to her bed. As soon as she wakes up, I’ll send her over. Whenever that will be.’

Biddy watched Elsie as she drained the last of her cup and poured herself another, and wondered what she would do if Martha didn’t call round and she didn’t get the chance to speak to her. If Biddy was right in her suspicions, Martha would avoid her like the plague. Truth will out, thought Biddy to herself. Truth will out.

‘Anyway,’ said Elsie, draining her second cup. ‘How’s your bladder been today?’

Biddy was almost speechless. ‘Not as bad as yours will be, if you don’t get down to the offie for the Guinness before Dessie gets here,’ she replied tartly.

‘Right you are, I’m off.’ Before she reached the door, Elsie turned back to face Biddy. ‘You are a good mate, Biddy. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

As the door closed, Biddy drained her cup. ‘You’d manage,’ she said to the door. ‘You’d manage. No one would miss me.’

*

Emily let herself in through the front door and slowly climbed the stairs to her room. The last thing she wanted was for her landlady to wake and, in the nosy way she had, question Emily about her whereabouts that evening. As she let herself in through her bedroom door, she breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Made it,’ she whispered.

She left the light off as she brewed herself a cup of tea, and, standing at the window nursing her cup in her hand, she observed the Sunday-night activities around Sefton Park and thought of her mother. Sometimes she wished that she had a photograph. She had sifted through the rubble herself. There was nothing. She always felt a momentary flash of panic when she failed to recall her mother’s face. The more she panicked, the less she could remember it. When that happened, she spoke to her mother aloud, willing her to appear, if only in her mind’s eye.

‘Is he for me, Mother?’ she whispered into the dark now, pressing her forehead against the cold pane of glass. Nothing came back. No whispered words of maternal wisdom, just the darkness of the night and the dampness of the Mersey air.

Oliver Gaskell had made it clear that he had wanted to accompany Emily home. He had been a little too keen for that to happen, and she was far too embarrassed. Even if she had felt the same, she would rather die than let him see the neighbourhood she lived in.

‘I shall wait with you at the bus stop then and no argument,’ he had insisted. ‘I won’t have it any other way.’

She wished he would. There was only one direction her bus could be travelling in and the name Lark Lane on the front was a dead giveaway. She decided there and then, as she looked down upon a courting couple hurrying along the street hand in hand, that she would have to move into one of the spare rooms on the old accommodation corridor, along from Matron’s office. She would have three retired old biddies and Sister Antrobus for roommates. The corridor was rumoured to be about to be emptied and converted to a new ward for critical admissions, but nothing was definite yet. It would give her time to find a better solution to her problems, and meanwhile the corridor had its own washing machine and bathrooms, with an unlimited supply of piping hot water.

Drinking the last of her tea, she battled with the question that often came late at night, when she was tired and emotional. She shivered as she slipped between her cold sheets. She had been happy to keep her promise for years without question. Now, dissatisfaction and loneliness were creeping into her life. It was Pammy Tanner. Seeing her at the interview and over the past few months at the hospital had resurrected the memories she had buried. The past she had successfully managed to forget. Or so she had thought.

And as often happened at the end of the day, in the dark of the night, she heard the voices of her little brothers and her friend Rita. They were always followed by the sound of the exploding bomb, just as her tears escaped.

Victoria Baker needed a holiday.

The long summer had passed, and as they had been warned would be the case, the first-year nurses came bottom of the list when it came to holiday requests.

‘If Matron’s flamin’ dog wanted a break, he would come before us,’ grumbled Pammy.

Victoria decided to take things into her own hands. Things were moving at Baker Hall, and Roland was growing impatient. ‘Sweetie, I think you have to come home sooner rather than later,’ he had told her on the telephone. ‘I’m afraid the time has come where your Aunt Minnie and your father really need your help.’

Victoria had made an appointment to see Matron. She didn’t know about Blackie. She had never seen the dog or even heard anyone mention him. She thought that Pammy was joking.