The Children of Lovely Lane

by Nadine Dorries

  She also noticed how Mrs McConaghy bristled when anyone commented on how good she was. ‘What a find that girl was. You must be beside yourself with all that time on your hands now,’ a trader delivering a wagon of jute had said only the previous morning. And she positively hated it when the comments were made to Lily as they left the office. ‘This place would grind to a halt if you weren’t here, queen.’ When that happened, Mrs McConaghy would harrumph ungraciously, scrape the legs of her chair on the floorboards, throw looks like daggers over her shoulder, and then become all thoughtful. But her grumpiness did not affect her treatment of Lily.

  Lily always took care to make a fuss of Mrs McConaghy when this happened. She’d make her tea and run to Sayers for an Eccles cake, anything to put a smile on her face. But she never complained. Mrs McConaghy was as nice as pie to her most of the time, and she said as much to Sister Therese every time she asked.

  ‘Are they treating you well? Are they?’ Sister Therese, always suspicious of those who had to be dragged into offering a poor form of charity, would look intently into Lily’s eyes as she waited for an answer.

  Lily didn’t dare hesitate for a second too long. If she did, she knew that Sister Therese would be down at the plant, checking up on her. ‘They are, Sister. Mrs McConaghy, she’s very good to me. She’s used to me now, and me to her. It all runs very smoothly.’

  She smiled a rare smile because she was absolutely correct. Things at work could not have been better. It was home that remained the stubborn problem and there was the constant nagging worry that, day on day, little Joe’s breathing was getting worse. His rib cage stuck out like a bird’s and yet every time she took him to the doctor’s, the man always said the same thing. ‘The boy is crying out for his mother. That wheeze, it’s a psychological illness. The day your mother gets herself out of the pub and looks after him herself will be the day it stops.’

  Lily would scoop Joe into her arms and call into the chemist’s for another bottle of camphor oil. How could she explain to the doctor that she was the only mother Joe knew? The only one he wanted. She felt desolate when the doctor dismissed them. Helpless and sick with worry that no one anywhere wanted to do anything to help little Joe.

  5

  I wonder when someone is going to offer me a cup of tea, thought Miss Ava Van Gilder as she folded her gloves in her lap for the hundredth time. This wooden chair is hard, my journey has been long, cold and uncomfortable, and yet no one appears to be the slightest bit concerned.

  She shifted her handbag further up her lap, sniffed disapprovingly to no one but herself and straightened her back ready to respond when she was called in for her interview. To pounce. To dazzle and impress. To ensure she left St Angelus with the job she so desperately needed, because there was no going back to whence she’d come.

  Her morning had not been a good one. Her train into Lime Street had been delayed due to the sudden snow and Liverpool had appeared like a ghost town as she’d steamed into the city from the Crosby bed and breakfast she’d booked into the night before. She had enough money to last for two more weeks and she desperately needed this job and the accommodation that came with it. But, more than anything, she needed to keep her past a secret. I’m jolly glad my interview is the last one of the day, she thought. Wouldn’t have done to be late. Never been late for anything in my life. Not about to start now.

  The corridor outside the boardroom of the St Angelus hospital, in which she now sat, made her train carriage seem luxurious in comparison. It was cavernous and silent. The walls were covered in dark, bottle-green tiles from halfway up to the arched ceilings. The tiles had been polished until they gleamed and the walls below were painted in a dark cream gloss stained brown by nicotine that had stubbornly defied even the fiercest application of elbow grease.

  Miss Van Gilder sat like a bird on a perch staring at the cage floor. Her thin frame and beaked nose trembled from time to time. Directly in front of her stood the two large wooden doors that led into the hospital boardroom. The sound of murmured voices slipped out from under the gap at the bottom of the door and wafted tantalizingly towards her. She heard a laugh.

  Laughter? Her hawk-like features crinkled as she peered over the top of her glasses, as if to stare harder at the door. How odd that they are laughing, she thought. Her bony wing nubs that passed for shoulders relaxed and a puzzled frown crossed her face. It was the candidate before her who was being interviewed, that much she knew, and she was suddenly overcome with the urge to know exactly what they were talking about. That interview has lasted far too long, she thought. I’ve been sitting here for over three quarters of an hour. She threw a sniff of disapproval in the direction of the doors.

  The ceiling above her soared upwards into a large, ornate dome. She’d noticed its clock as she’d walked up the main hospital steps and now she heard it strike three. Her interview had been scheduled for two thirty. I’m not sure I want to work in a hospital with such a laissez-faire attitude towards timekeeping, she thought. But as she bristled with disapproval, she remembered with a jolt that she had no choice. She had run clean out of choices.

  A set of footsteps echoed on the parquet flooring in the unseen distance. She could not see from whom or where they came and as they approached and grew louder, a shiver of fear ran down her spine. ‘They have found me,’ she whispered out loud, clutching at the handle of her handbag. Her feet shifted quickly under the chair, poised and ready to jump. Her knuckles shone white and her short breaths came faster as her gaze focused on the sound of the footsteps. A film of perspiration broke out on her top lip and she quickly wiped it away with the back of her glove as she licked her dry lips and almost started praying.

  Sitting there on the small wooden chair below the vast dome, she felt like a minute specimen in a vast bell jar waiting to be experimented on. The fading sun threw down a shaft of watery light and lit the floor around her.

  I’m doomed, she thought. I’m done for. The footsteps became louder and firmer and she was sure they’d speeded up. Her eyes almost filled with tears, but not quite. Tears were strangers to Miss Van Gilder. Her heart began beating faster and louder in her chest and she thought whoever it was that was coming for her must be able to hear it too.

  ‘Fancy a cup of tea, dear?’

  The owner of the footsteps came into view. They turned the corner and walked purposefully along the high-ceilinged corridor towards her.

  ‘I said, would you like a cup of tea, dear?’ It was Elsie O’Brien, the housekeeper for Matron’s apartment, which was just off the administration corridor and overlooked the main entrance to the hospital. This time her tone was a little impatient.

  Miss Van Gilder exhaled slowly.

  ‘You must have walked all the way from Lime Street,’ Elsie said. ‘There’s no trams running because of the weather, so they say. Have you travelled far?’ Elsie patiently awaited a response.

  She was disappointed. There was no reply other than, ‘Black, no sugar. Thank you. Most welcome.’

  Miss Van Gilder had managed to slow her breathing back down to normal. She felt her pulse steady. The blood retuned to her cheeks as quickly as it had drained away. She was exhausted.

  ‘You look a bit peaky. Are you feeling all right, dear?’ Elsie peered at her face, curious, confused.

  Ava Van Gilder wanted to snap at the insignificant woman who called her ‘dear’. To demand to know who she thought she was talking to. But this was not the time. Be calm, be charming, most charming, Ava reminded herself. At least until you know you’ve secured the job. You must. You do need this job. Charming.

  ‘You don’t have to, you know,’ said Elsie, never one to give up.

  ‘Don’t have to what?’ Too late; she had snapped.

  But Elsie was unfazed. ‘The sugar and the milk. We’ve got loads of sugar here for general use now the sugar rationing is over for hospitals. I can put a couple of spoons in, if you fancy. I’m like you with the black, though. It was all we had during the war. The dairy
house at the end of George Street was bombed. The cow went west, along with the rest of the street. Don’t even like milk any more now, I got so used to having the tea without. I do like a milk stout though, every now and then. Do you?’

  Elsie smiled, revealing the badly fitting false teeth she wore only for work. Removed within seconds of arriving home each evening. Miss Ava Van Gilder glared.

  ‘Make each one of the candidates your friend,’ Biddy had instructed Elsie that morning over breakfast. ‘Chat to them. Find out everything you can. Always good for us to have a head start and know who we’re getting as assistant matron and what we will have to deal with.’

  Biddy had given Elsie her pep talk before the interviews had begun. Her advice had worked, until Miss Van Gilder arrived. She’d hoped the shared moment of lightness, the no milk and black tea, would break the ice, take her and Miss Van Gilder down an avenue of productive discussion. After all, she was there to be interviewed for the second most important job in the hospital. Elsie had liked all of the applicants until now. With a cup of tea balanced in one hand and a second lemon puff in the other, some of them had near told her their entire life story.

  Gossip was the prime currency of St Angelus and every juicy titbit she could glean would further boost Elsie’s status among the other domestics. You were only as relevant as the gossip you knew. Later that day, when Elsie and Biddy, along with Branna McGinty, the domestic on ward two, and Madge from the switchboard, met for their tea in the school of nursing – black for Elsie, swimming in milk for the others, chocolate butter-cream sandwich cake for all – Elsie could give them chapter and verse on the pros and cons of each candidate. That was the plan, although this candidate was proving a difficult nut to crack.

  Employing an assistant matron was a big step in the life of St Angelus. There had been ripples of chatter throughout the greasy-spoon café at breakfast every morning that week. People coming up to ask Elsie when she thought the post would start. Elsie felt terribly important and grand. The keeper of the most important secrets in Matron’s office. The truth was that people were more concerned than interested. St Angelus not only cared for the sick but via an efficient black market kept local families afloat. A system had developed over years and was based on a relationship of trust between Dessie as the head porter and Matron. No one wanted the system to end. Food, coal and a wage were all any war-widowed family wanted and Dessie could provide all three. A new assistant matron who would upset the rhythm of life at St Angelus could ruin all that.

  As Elsie poured Miss Van Gilder’s tea, in the kitchenette at the rear of the boardroom that also served Matron’s apartment, she decided she had already made up her mind about the woman. Elsie could sense trouble a mile away. She hoped that her interview would be a disaster, a catastrophe even, and wondered if Branna had anything from ward two she could slip into the tea that would be quick acting and have a calamitous effect. She raced into Matron’s office, which was also just off the administration corridor, and, picking up the telephone to the switchboard, dialled Madge to enquire about the whereabouts of Branna.

  With a stroke of luck, Branna happened to be sitting next to Madge on the switchboard, having popped in for a quick cuppa. This was something Branna had done with increasing frequency since ward two had lost Sister Antrobus to casualty. Sister Antrobus was the most feared sister in the hospital. The manner in which she had used Matron and played on her feelings had brought to the surface a latent loyalty in every decent person who worked at St Angelus, and that was almost everyone. Branna was no different. ‘No one will ever treat me like a slave again,’ she announced on the day Sister Antrobus was transferred out of gynae and into casualty. ‘I’m taking no nonsense from the acting staff nurse. I’m starting as I mean to go on.’ And that meant regular visits to the switch, which was situated close to ward two, and chats with Madge, who worked on the switchboard six days a week. Branna loved to slip into her small room and watch the board light up. She was fascinated by the way Madge could plug and unplug wires, start and end telephone conversations and, of course, listen in. If Madge ever nipped to the ladies, Branna would pick up the headphones and listen in to a conversation, quickly dropping them when she heard Madge reappearing.

  ‘It’s for you, Branna,’ said Madge as she handed the headphones to Branna.

  ‘For me? Holy Mother of God, who knows I’m here?’

  Her cup rattled in the saucer as, leaping up from the stool, she almost stumbled in her haste to take her call.

  ‘Branna, it’s me, Elsie. Have you got any syrup of Senna in your bag, queen? I think we need something quick up here. Lord have mercy, there is a right one about to be interviewed.’

  ‘Jesus, no, I haven’t. I have nothing for the purging. Do you need something to act quick?’

  ‘Well, if this one gets the job, I’m telling you now, we are all doomed. I’m putting milk in her tea, even though she said not to, because this woman needs to be shown a good time, but as God is my judge, it won’t so much as reach the back of her throat before it turns sour. We have to do something to stop her getting through. This is an emergency, Branna.’

  Elsie’s voice began to rise. They had all heard the stories about the assistant matron over in Narrowgreen hospital. How she counted out the food rations, had the staff’s bags checked before they left the kitchens at the end of each day, monitored the coal stores. Every week, a new story delivered a shiver to run down the spine.

  ‘Elsie, are ye mad? You cannot poison a woman being interviewed because you don’t like the look of her!’ said Branna.

  ‘It’s not the look of her, Branna. You don’t understand me. It’s a feeling I have. It’s in her eyes, Branna. Something unholy, it is. She makes the goosebumps stand up on me arms.’

  Branna had nothing. Her locker was bare. ‘I took some home from the medicine trolley on the ward only a week since. Night Sister gave it to me. Jesus, I only told Hattie Lloyd, but you’d think everyone in our street was bunged up. ’Twas gone by the following night. I swear to God it was sold.’

  Elsie stopped for a moment while she digested this piece of news. ‘Is there nothing else that would make her temporarily uncomfortable, like, you know, unable to speak, or make her scream out in pain or something?’ She felt the rosaries in her apron pocket burning into her thigh.

  ‘Elsie, do you think my name is Dr Branna McGinty? I’m the ward orderly, not a flaming consultant. You’ll be asking me to do your hysterectomy next. Jesus. You would have me locked up.’

  ‘Oh, this is bad,’ said Elsie. ‘I’ve got a feeling in me waters and you know how they are always right. You can’t fool my bladder. Been three times this afternoon. This woman, she will be no good for us. I swear she looks as though a smile has never cracked her face. I have to go now. I need the lavvy again. Me nerves are shot. I’ll see yer for tea later.’

  As Elsie trotted to the bathroom, she mulled over the fact that if the board decided that Ava Van Gilder was the chosen one, the new assistant matron, they would have nothing to give them a head start. She had not extracted a single fact from the woman. Back in the kitchen, she picked up the tea and with a heavy heart plopped in three spoons of sugar and poured in the milk. To hell with it, she thought. Live dangerously. It might put a smile on her craggy face.

  She could hear the tinkle of young laughter emanating from the boardroom and smiled. That was Sister Haycock. Elsie remembered how Biddy had been worried that Sister Haycock didn’t laugh enough. Well, she was laughing now. Elsie had liked the applicant who was now being interviewed. She was wearing yellow and Elsie had never seen anyone wearing yellow before.

  ‘Now there’s a lovely lady,’ she whispered and thought to herself that she must telephone Biddy, with her being such a good Irish Catholic. It was a fact that the Irish had more prayers answered than anyone else, being as they went to Mass more often, and everyone knew that Ireland was the holiest country. She would ask her to pray for the lady in yellow.

  Matron’s dog, Bl
ackie, shuffled in his basket in the corner. Elsie had to keep him hidden while they had visitors from the Liverpool District Hospitals Board. Blackie was now a grumpy twelve-year-old and had lived at the hospital in Matron’s apartment since he was a puppy. But that was before the days of the NHS, and times were changing.

  ‘Yes, Blackie, Biddy’s smashing with the prayers. Always being answered, they are. Never lets her down at the bingo. I’ll give her a call next.’ With a sigh, she picked up the cup and saucer and left the warmth of the kitchenette to face the woman she had already nicknamed Ava Bone Grinder.

  ‘Here’s your tea then,’ she said as she handed her the cup and saucer. ‘I put the sugar in anyway.’

  Miss Van Gilder made to protest.

  ‘Go on, spoil yerself. I reckon they’ll be calling you in a few minutes or so. Now, where did you say you last worked?’ She sat down on the chair next to her.

  Miss Van Gilder stared at Elsie as if she were a maggot that had just crawled out of her apple. ‘I did not say anything,’ she replied. She looked Elsie up and down but failed to say thank you for the tea. Her meaning was as clear as day.

  Elsie rose from the seat quicker than she had sat down. This was all going so badly. ‘There’s the toilet just along the corridor there if you need to spend a penny. I’ve just been meself. I wiped the seat and put a clean towel by the sink, so it’s all nice and clean for you. The water’s lovely and hot...’

  There was a moment’s silence before Miss Van Gilder replied. ‘Thank you,’ she said primly. Her pinched white face barely moved. She didn’t smile. But then, taking Elsie completely by surprise, she spoke.

  ‘Has each interview taken as long as this one?’ she snapped.

  ‘More or less,’ said Elsie. ‘It’s Sister Haycock asking this lady a lot of questions. They seem to be taking it in turns. Very thorough, she is. But she can chatter, can our Sister Haycock. Her and Biddy, they never stop chattering some days.’