The Corner House (19 page)

Impatient now, Eva swivelled on her heels and searched anew, finally locating a staffroom where two nurses sat reading, one smoking a cigarette, the other gnawing at an apple. ‘Excuse me.’ Eva entered the room. ‘I wanted to ask somebody about little Jessica Nolan.’

The younger nurse leapt to her feet. ‘Is she on the prowl again? We keep telling her, but she—’

‘No, she’s not on the prowl,’ replied Eva smartly. She closed the door and placed herself squarely in front of it, eyeing the nurses up and down for a second or two. ‘It just so happens that I brought Jessica Nolan into this world. I also just happen to know a Mr James Coates – I came to offer him lodgings when he gets out of here. Killing two birds with one stone, you might say, though I hope they stay alive, both of them. All three, if you count Theresa.’

The older nurse crushed her cigarette end in a saucer. ‘Mrs Nolan’s not well,’ she began.

‘I know. She had rheumatic fever as a kiddy and she’s never caught up with herself. Is it both lungs?’

‘She needs a lot of rest,’ continued the nurse. ‘She’ll still be here in twelve months, I dare say.’

‘And the child?’ asked Eva.

‘Six months at the outside. She’s in good general health, so we might move her to a shared ward once she gets used to leaving her mother at night. We’ve not been able to persuade her yet.’

Eva kept her counsel. If these two were anything to go by, the place might well go up in flames. She bit back a few words about how they should have tried to get to know Jessica, how they ought to have been looking after folk and cheering them up. There was more to nursing than just the medical side – a lot
more. ‘She’s a grand little lass,’ she said eventually. ‘And her mother will let her come and stay with me once she’s better.’

‘Right.’ The older woman looked at the upside-down watch on her apron. ‘Time to do our rounds,’ she said.

Eva, having satisfied herself with regard to Jessica’s longer-term prospects, left the staffroom and stood for a while in the deserted corridor. What a devil of a place this was. Jessica must leave here as soon as possible, because even the walls seemed to be soaked in misery, a shade of palest sepia that looked like an onset of jaundice.

‘Hello?’

She swivelled to find an open-faced man standing just behind her. He must have been creeping about on soft-soled shoes, since Eva’s hearing was almost perfect. ‘Who are you?’ She knew he was a doctor, because he was wearing a coffee- or gravy-splashed white coat, while the statutory stethoscope dangled round his neck.

‘Blake,’ he said.

‘Dr Blake?’

‘That’s right. I’m in charge here, for my sins.’

He wasn’t young, wasn’t old, wasn’t up to much in the looks department. A good scrubbing would have done no harm, in Eva’s opinion, and a new razor blade was called for, too. ‘How long will you be keeping young Jessica Nolan in this God-forsaken place?’ she asked.

The doctor smiled, displaying a collection of white, slightly uneven teeth.

‘Well?’ asked Eva. He seemed a genuine enough bloke, though a tracery of veins betrayed a fondness for the bottle.

‘She’s clear, more or less,’ replied Dr Blake. ‘In fact, the exposure to her mother has probably given her an excellent level of immunity against TB. We’re just making sure, playing on the safe side. After all, we don’t want her going home ill, do we?’

Eva decided that she liked him in spite of his appearance. If his skin was anything to go by, there’d be little of his liver left in ten years. But he cared about the kiddy, she could hear that in his voice. ‘Tell her mam that Eva Harris visited, will you? Tell her I’ll have Jessica whenever the time comes. All right?’

He smiled again. ‘Splendid,’ he said before dashing off towards the wards.

Eva shook her head slowly, thoughtfully. He shouldn’t be drinking, not after all that education. Ah well. Life was a bugger, and no mistake.

Katherine Walsh was ready for school. Her dad had gone to work, while Mam was fussing and messing about with Katherine’s plaits. Mam always did a little braid at each side of the central parting, working these smaller sections in with the rest of the darkish blonde mass and making two thick, beribboned ropes which hung down the child’s maroon jumper.

‘We don’t want you having nits,’ declared Liz. ‘And remember, they moved you up early from nursery to infants because you’re clever. Clever people work hard and do well for themselves. There’s more than a dozen lady doctors in town now. In my day, you’d have had a hard time finding a woman doing anything important.’ She spun her daughter round and fixed a couple of hair slides at the beginning of the smaller plaits. ‘Don’t let yourself down and don’t sit next to any dirty children.’

Katherine sighed. There were no dirty children in Bromley Cross. Some wore poor clothing, but no-one came to school filthy. ‘Mam?’

‘Yes, love?’

‘Can I have a sister?’

Liz gulped hard. Her insides were wrong. She had been into hospital for a big operation, a procedure
which invariably made pregnancy an absolute impossibility. Bernard had stayed off work for three whole weeks, had been heartbroken by his wife’s pain and disappointment and by his own distress. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered at last.

‘Other girls have sisters.’

‘Yes, yes. Now, you mustn’t be late and—’

‘Jean Morris has four sisters.’

‘Did you find a clean hanky?’

‘Yes. I just feel as if I should have a sister. There’s other children at St Aiden’s with no brothers or sisters, and they don’t seem bothered. But I’m different and I know I should have a sister.’ Had it come out right? How could Katherine persuade – no, convince her mother that she felt like … like half of something, as if she had been left unfinished.

Liz crammed a woollen bonnet onto her daughter’s head. She would have given anything for another baby, anything except Katherine herself. ‘We don’t always get what we want in this life,’ she muttered. ‘Put your gloves on.’

‘It’s nice out,’ moaned Katherine. ‘It’s springtime.’

‘Do as you’re told.’

‘Yes, Mam.’ She pulled on the red mittens. ‘Where do they come from? Babies, I mean. Jean Morris says her mother grows her own in her belly.’ The idea of a sister had always been there. Katherine could not remember a time when she had not needed, even expected a female sibling. ‘How do we get a baby?’ she persisted. ‘What do we have to do?’

Liz didn’t hold with this sort of talk, not for a child of Katherine’s tender years. Yet something wanted saying, something that would stop the mithering. ‘Jean Wotsername’s right,’ she conceded. ‘Babies
grow inside their mothers.’ She knew the next question, was waiting for it.

‘Can’t you make a sister for me?’

Liz looked at herself in the overmantel mirror, saw a face thinner than the one she remembered. The brown hair remained vital, but dark smudges had appeared beneath eyes described by Bernard as milk chocolate. The lips were narrower, as if life had disappointed them and caused them to draw inward. ‘I can’t, love,’ she whispered.

‘Why? You growed me.’

‘Grew, Katherine. I grew you.’

‘So why can’t we have a sister?’

Liz sighed, remembered how she had fought against the doctors’ decision. The general practitioner had referred her to a specialist, then the specialist had decided to remove Liz’s womb because there was a growth in it. She had been bleeding profusely and irregularly, had suffered great discomfort until the operation had removed all symptoms and all hope.

‘Mam?’

She had screamed and shouted all the way down to theatre, had become silent only when anaesthetized.

‘Can you grow a brother, then?’ At a pinch, a boy might have done. Lads were terrible pests, but a brother might have been better than … than this emptiness. ‘Mam?’ Katherine’s voice raised itself. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, sweetheart.’ She was useless now. Bernard should have married someone else, a woman who might have provided him with an heir. He was a strong man, a man capable of fathering many children. Yet he seemed so happy, so content with just
Katherine. No. It wasn’t a case of ‘just Katherine’. Katherine was everything to her daddy, but … but oh, he must have had some regrets, must have wondered about a son. All men wanted sons. ‘It’s quarter to nine, love. Come on, let’s be getting you along the road.’ Determined to endure no further upsetting nonsense, Liz dragged her daughter out of the cottage and along Darwen Road.

As she watched her only child dashing off towards the infants’ cloakroom, Liz wiped a tear from her eye. She stood uncertainly outside the railings, a few drops of rain wetting her cheeks. March was going out like a lamb, was drifting prettily towards April, just a gentle breeze, a tiny shower, daffodil buds shaking themselves into wakefulness. Even the tulips, slower than their golden-trumpeted fellows, were starting to pierce the soil like rows of soldiers carrying green bayonets.

She stepped back from the school wall and continued up the moor to Brook Farm. Brook Farm would offer no real sister-substitute for Katherine, but perhaps an alternative might be found, a scrap of warmth for the little girl to nurture and love. Anyway, every child should have a pet, Liz reminded herself as she reached the wooden gateway. The notice was still there, dampened by rain, but readable, ‘
GOLDEN RETRIEVER PUPPIES FOR SALE
’. Liz Walsh rubbed a mixture of spring rain and raw emotion from her face. A dog would help, she told herself.

Jessica had not been allowed to go into the house. Williamson’s Farmhouse was for adults who needed what Dr Blake termed minimal supervision. Jessica glared at him across his desk. His hair was all over the place again, and he had spilled two dribbles of
brownish liquid down the white coat. Dr Blake had no-one to look after him. He lived in a small room near the main entrance of Williamson’s, and he ate his dinners here, in the office. Well, he ate most of his dinners. Quite a lot of food finished up on his clothes, bits of gravy, spots of yolk, streaks of tea and coffee. ‘Why haven’t you got your own house to live in?’ she surprised herself by asking. He should wear a bib when eating, she decided. Or one of those cloth napkins tucked into the shirt collar.

‘I’m from London.’

That explained nothing. ‘But you live up here now.’

‘For a while. I might go back.’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know, Jessica.’ He needed a drink. Really, he needed several, but he tried not to overindulge while on duty. ‘But I haven’t bought a house here because … well, I may move on after the war.’

‘Why?’

To get away from inquisitive little madams like you, the doctor thought. ‘It depends where I get a job.’ Patience was engraved deeply into his words.

‘A TB job?’

‘Possibly.’

Jessica folded her arms. ‘Why can’t I go in the house, doctor? I can look after myself. I can get washed and dressed, I can even help with things like making beds. Mam says I’m a very good helper.’

He sighed inwardly. ‘There aren’t any children over there. As I explained before, you would be on your own, bored. You would miss your mother and—’

‘I’m not with my mother any more.’

Stephen Blake tapped blunt fingernails against his
desk. He couldn’t help liking Jessica. Everybody liked Jessica.

‘I’m fed up,’ she wailed. ‘And I’ve been good. And I’m nearly better.’

He shook his head. Jessica had consented to the move from her mother’s room, had even managed to be quite pleased about it at first. Truthfully, she required stimuli, education, other children. Like all young ones, she was in need of activity.

The child continued to stare hard at her adversary. He was a very sad man, she concluded after a short period of study. ‘I’m really, really fed up,’ she insisted.

‘I know.’

She folded her arms and waited. Mam was a lot better. She was still forbidden to mix, but she didn’t cough pink froth any more and she could walk about, read, knit. In spite of the embargo on visitors, Mam had made a friend, a man from Liverpool who talked funny and got Woodbines smuggled in every Friday. Yes, Mam was fine and Jessica wanted to get on with life.

‘I can’t work out which is worse,’ she said airily. ‘Being squashed in with Mam, or getting stuck with Mrs Knowles and Mrs Crabtree.’ Sadie Knowles snored, she sounded like a train pulling into Trinity Street, while Ellen Crabtree knew everything about everything. Both women kept their teeth grinning in tumblers, and Mrs Knowles drank tea very loudly, as if trying to suck it up from a great distance. ‘They even eat without them,’ remarked Jessica. ‘They only put them in for visitors and Mrs Crabtree won’t wear the bottom ones at all, wouldn’t put them in even for the King.’

The doctor stopped drumming on the table. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Teeth,’ she said.

‘Oh.’

‘And I should be at school. I’m going to be behind everybody and I’ve always been best at reading and sums and singing and—’

‘Jessica?’

‘Yes?’ She pasted a smile across her face. Was he weakening?’

‘Hush a moment.’

The child froze. Whatever it took, she was going to break out of this prison – even on a part-time basis. It was awful. No matter what Jessica did, Mrs Crabtree criticized, complained, moaned. And older people smelled funny, as if they had gone stale or something.

Dr Stephen Blake felt like a man encountering his Waterloo. He couldn’t send Jessica Nolan into the house. What if one of the men turned out to be a molester of children? What if the little girl got out and got lost? He tut-tutted. ‘What will I do with you?’

Invited to break the brief silence, she spoke up brightly. ‘I could stay with the housekeeper. She’d look after me, so nothing would happen.’

Did the child read minds, too?

‘And I’d be good. Very, very good.’

Good? There was far too much merriment in those cornflower eyes, too much bounce in the ash-blond curls. ‘Shall we compromise?’ he asked.

She didn’t know the word, but it sounded encouraging, as if she might get some of her own way. She nodded quickly.

‘You go to the farm after lunch each day, help with jobs in the kitchen, then come back into your ward when you’ve had a play in the farmyard.’