The Children of Lovely Lane

by Nadine Dorries

  Miss Van Gilder was ready for this question, although the meeting was not going as well as she would have liked.

  ‘The new cleaners will be machines, Matron. There will be no more mops and buckets, but floor cleaners and polishers. Cleaners will no longer be expected to have the same involvement as they did before; they will be sent to wherever in the hospital they are needed.’

  Emily decided it was time to administer the killer blow. ‘Miss Van Gilder...’

  Mrs Jolly coughed her disapproval.

  ‘I am sorry. Mrs Jolly, chairman, through yourself, just one last question.’ Emily stormed on without waiting for a reply. ‘Miss Van Gilder, do you know the owner of the Acme cleaning agency?’

  Elsie squeezed Biddy’s arm. Biddy almost yelped with the pressure.

  ‘Ouch, will ye stop! I want to hear the answer.’

  ‘Oh God, Biddy, I’ve almost wet meself. Rita Hayworth herself couldn’t have done any better than that.’ Elsie was almost jumping up and down on the spot.

  ‘Matron, is there someone in the kitchen?’ Mrs Jolly peered towards the baize door in puzzlement.

  ‘Only the domestic staff, preparing your lunch,’ Matron answered.

  Unbeknown to Elsie, she had given Miss Van Gilder time to compose her response.

  ‘Obviously I know the owner. I have met him on a number of occasions. He spent time in the hospital and on the wards. He had to tell me what could be achieved and for what price.’

  Clever reply, thought Emily.

  Dr Gaskell furrowed his brow and looked directly at Emily. Her question had been loaded. He knew that there was something behind it, but he didn’t know what.

  ‘Is that the only capacity in which you know the owner, Miss Van Gilder? You had never met him before you came to St Angelus?’

  ‘Sister Haycock!’ Mrs Jolly’s voice boomed down the table. ‘That is the second time you have spoken without having the courtesy to seek the permission of the chair. You shall not speak again.’

  Dr Gaskell coughed. Mrs Jolly took the hint.

  ‘Miss Van Gilder, please answer that question. But, Sister Haycock, do not ask a supplementary question again. I am chairing this meeting, it is not a free-for-all.’

  Miss Van Gilder averted her gaze. She would now have to tell a direct lie.

  Before Miss Van Gilder had a chance to reply, they were all slightly startled to hear the most timid of voices piping up. ‘Mrs Jolly, may I be permitted to help Miss Van Gilder with this question?’

  It was Mrs Twigg. A lady who rarely spoke, though Emily had always felt that she was on her side. She had squeezed Emily’s hand in sympathy the day Miss Van Gilder had been appointed and Emily had been grateful.

  ‘Why, of course, Mrs Twigg. Poor Miss Van Gilder is being bombarded with questions. I am quite ashamed, I have to say, that someone who has put so much work into this should receive such a hostile reception.’ Mrs Jolly beamed encouragingly at Mrs Twigg.

  Mrs Twigg picked up the proposal as though examining a fact. The board members fell silent. All eyes were upon her. They knew very little about her other than that she had lost both her husband and her only son. Her husband in the Great War, her son in the Second World War. Dr Gaskell had talked to her a few times over their pre-meeting coffee and she’d told him that she now tried to dedicate her time to causes that would make the world a better place. ‘There must never be another war,’ she had said.

  Emily thought the air in the room felt heavy. Biddy and Elsie lifted their glasses off the door and checked to see if anything was wrong. Biddy shrugged and placed hers back again.

  Miss Twigg lifted her head and looked directly at Miss Van Gilder. The sweet smile left her face and her expression hardened. Emily thought the feather sticking out of her hat looked totally ridiculous and wondered when women would stop wearing hats indoors.

  Dr Gaskell thought, what a sweetie, she is trying to help.

  Matron was suspicious. This woman was one of Mrs Jolly’s acolytes. She had been directly nominated to the board by Mrs Jolly; her intervention could not possibly be helpful to the hospital.

  ‘Miss Van Gilder...’ Mrs Twigg’s voice warbled with age and carried no authority. ‘Is it not the case that the owner of the Acme cleaning agency is your son and that you left your last hospital just as you were about to be exposed for your dishonesty?’

  The sound of breaking glass filtered through into the boardroom from the kitchenette.

  39

  Matron and Dr Gaskell both stood in front of the window in Matron’s sitting room while they waited for Emily to join them. Matron produced a decanter of sherry and Dr Gaskell did the honours. When Emily entered, she thought what a cosy room it was. The old burgundy leather chairs. The huge fireplace. Soon it would all disappear and be replaced by a new emergency-care unit. Sad, but a reality of booming, post-war Liverpool, she thought, as she walked across the acreage of carpet to join them.

  Dr Gaskell handed Emily a glass. ‘We have a few things to celebrate and while we’re once again on the front foot, even if for the shortest time, we also have a few changes to implement.’

  ‘Not all entirely with my approval,’ said Matron.

  Dr Gaskell smiled broadly. ‘Margaret, I have never known you to approve of everything I say. Never! However, I credit the better running of this hospital to your difficult nature.’

  He raised his glass. ‘Emily.’

  ‘As you can see,’ said Matron, ‘we are all on first-name terms now, but I’m afraid it will always be “Dr Gaskell” for me.’

  ‘And me,’ said Emily as she took the glass and grinned at Dr Gaskell. He was up to something, she could tell.

  ‘Emily, I wanted to say well done. If you had not opened up that line of questioning, I have no idea where that meeting would have ended up. I am not going to ask you how or why you travelled down that particular road or how you colluded with Mrs Twigg – I am not sure I want to know the details – but you were a class double-act.’

  Emily took a large gulp of her sherry. She too would have liked to know how and why Mrs Twigg had taken up her line of questioning. She had never said more than half a dozen words to the woman. If there was any colluding with Mrs Twigg, she hadn’t been involved.

  ‘Have the police gone now?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, thank goodness. I really do not like it when the police are in any part of the hospital other than casualty. Before you know it, a reporter from the Echo will be here. I don’t know how they do it. When that factory burnt down, they were here before the patients, all over the place. I found one in the kitchens.’

  ‘Ah well, they say that money is at the root of all evil, do they not.’ Dr Gaskell raised his glass to his lips and sipped his sherry.

  ‘It would appear so in the case of Miss Van Gilder,’ Emily said. Despite the excitement of the day, she looked downcast and deflated. Her usual sparkle had all but disappeared.

  Matron looked at Emily and Dr Gaskell coughed. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Or would you like me to do it?’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ said Matron. ‘Really, I don’t know what has got into you lately. Emily, Dr Gaskell and I have something to say.’

  ‘Only Matron is the one about to do the talking.’ Dr Gaskell grinned at Emily.

  ‘We have decided that, while we have an advantage over Mrs Jolly and the LDHB, there is one change we would like to bring about. I concede that it is time. I may have stuck to my guns a little too long over this and as it is a rule I introduced a very long time ago, it is one I would like to be personally responsible for removing. I would rather that than have Mrs Jolly do it some day in the future as a means of imposing new rules from above. As from now, the no married nurses rule is to be abolished.’

  For a few seconds Emily could hardly believe what she was hearing. It was as though she had stepped on to an alien planet.

  ‘Am I about to wake up?’ she asked. ‘Matron, you have just called me Emily. And you’ve said that you’re abolishi
ng the married nurses rule. I absolutely have to be dreaming, don’t I?’

  Dr Gaskell reassured her otherwise. ‘If you had not done what you did today... And, goodness me, it was a brainwave to enlist the help of Mrs Twigg, the most timid member on the panel. You deserve to be rewarded and this has been your pet project for some time.’

  ‘You do understand that we will be leading the way?’ said Emily. ‘Even most of the London hospitals don’t allow married nurses yet.’

  ‘Exactly – not yet, they don’t,’ said Dr Gaskell. ‘But, as you know, I sit on a number of committees in London and the universal abolition of the no married nurses rule as an NHS initiative is very much on the agenda. So why shouldn’t we be the first? St Angelus should very definitely lead the way.’

  Matron held out her hand to take Emily’s glass. ‘Finish your sherry, Emily. I think there may be something you have to go and do.’

  Emily’s eyes filled with tears at the prospect of trying to patch things up with Dessie. Which was clearly what Matron had in mind. Emily suspected Biddy’s chattering tongue, but she couldn’t think about that now. Matron’s decision would change everything, but would Dessie see it that way? Had she put him off for ever? She handed Matron her glass. Today was certainly a day of huge surprises.

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh yes you can. You have already done a lot more today than say you’re sorry. Do you really want to end up like me and all the other spinster matrons who have given their lives to nursing? To live out your days in a home for retired matrons or a hovel of a bedsit on Scotland Road because it is all the pension will stretch to?’ Matron sighed and moved across to the window. ‘Your support for a change in the rules has forced me to think about all this, Emily. There’s a reason that nursing is a profession of the middle classes. I’m one of the lucky ones, I shall inherit from my mother, so when the day comes for me to leave here, I will manage well enough. But how will you survive alone, Emily? Who and what will you have? As you know only too well, nursing is one of the worst-paid jobs in the country. And the sad truth is, however careful you are, even if you are frugal, live in and save every spare penny throughout your working life, it’s still unlikely you’ll have enough for an even remotely comfortable old age.’

  Everything Matron had said was true. Emily had no one and nothing.

  ‘How do you know about...?’ she asked.

  ‘Never mind that. Did I ask you how you knew Mrs Twigg?’

  ‘But...’

  ‘Emily, no ifs or buts. He’s waiting in my office. He thinks I have called him up here for a meeting. Go to him now, go on.’

  *

  Once Elsie and Biddy had cleared up the shattered brandy glass Elise had dropped behind the boardroom doors, they wasted no time in spreading the news of Miss Van Gilder’s demise. By lunch time the mafia had their plans in place. There would be a celebration in the hospital social club that night for all the domestics and everyone on Dessie’s team.

  While Matron, Dr Gaskell and Emily were drinking sherry, Branna was buttering bread and spreading paste on sandwiches down in the social club. Taking a break, she picked up the phone to Madge.

  ‘Are they sending the keg here, Madge?’

  ‘They are, Branna. Dessie organized it. He’s sent four of the lads over with a trolley to collect it and some bottles of Guinness too for the ladies, in case we run out. They sent a Black Maria for Miss Van Gilder, did you see it?’

  ‘I did. Good riddance. This will be the best party this hospital has ever known. We live to fight another day, eh, Madge? Have you seen Biddy and Elsie?’

  ‘The last I saw of them was half an hour ago. They had Nurse Tanner with them and they were on their way to see Matron. I heard Matron telling Dr Gaskell on the phone to hurry to her rooms. She told him that if Sister Haycock came to the front door, Biddy and Elsie and Nurse Tanner would leave out the back. Fingers crossed that we’ll have something else to celebrate tonight as well, Branna! Wouldn’t that be lovely.’

  ‘Well, well, it’s all going on! Me, I’ll just keep making the butties.’

  ‘You do that, Branna.’ Madge was laughing. ‘But lay off the Guinness until tonight, would you.’ She pulled out the plug to the social club. ‘Right, who’s next to know the old bat’s gone and the jobs are saved? Ah, the mortuary...’

  Branna returned to the tower of unbuttered bread and hummed contentedly. She picked up her knife as Tom came in through the back door, carrying yet another tray of provisions from the main hospital kitchen.

  ‘More bread, Branna. And cook sent over a slab of cheese. She said not to do all paste. People might think she did them. She said to make some cheese as well.’

  ‘I’ll grate it, Tom. It will go further that way. How many of the lads do you think will be coming tonight? I’m doing two rounds for each of them. Is that enough?’

  Tom’s eyes hadn’t left the pile of sandwiches while Branna was talking.

  ‘Here you go, take this one,’ she said as she spread fish paste on two slices of bread.

  Tom almost slammed the bread tray on the counter as he reached out to take it. He would never have asked Branna, he was too polite, but Branna could spot a hungry boy a mile away.

  ‘Did you see the Black Maria, Branna? The police took old Bone Grinder. Can you imagine? What did she do?’ He spoke between mouthfuls.

  ‘She was a bad woman, Tom. She tried to take money from the hospital that wasn’t hers and she tried to lose us all our jobs.’

  Tom didn’t know enough to know what question to ask next.

  ‘Wait there,’ said Branna and she filled him a mug of tea. ‘There you go. Wash that down before you get back to work. How’s your mam?’

  Tom didn’t reply until he had finished his tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘Ta, Branna, that was grand, that. Mam’s not well. She’s had to give up her cleaning job at the school. She is coming in to St Angelus for an operation soon. She said she doesn’t mind because she’ll be able to see me every day at work.’

  ‘Ah, did she, lad? Well isn’t that lovely. And I bet she’s jealous because I get to see you all the time. You’re a good boy, Tom.’

  Tom grinned from ear to ear as he picked up the tray to return it to the kitchen.

  ‘See you for the craic later,’ said Branna. ‘With a bit of luck the hospital will be quiet tonight.’

  As Branna watched Tom head to the door, she felt vindicated. She had let Biddy, Elsie and Madge gather their various bits of information about Miss Van Gilder, but, unbeknown to them, she had decided to make her own intervention. The notion that Sister Antrobus could be a useful ally had stayed with her since the last mafia meeting. She knew everyone thought Sister Antrobus was a tyrant, and goodness knows, Branna had had her run-ins with her when she was in charge of ward two. But Branna thought they might use her formidable reputation to their advantage. Everyone knew that Sister Antrobus was at loggerheads with Miss Van Gilder – it was the talk of the hospital every time they met and the sparks flew – so Branna had sought her out.

  ‘We have a problem with Miss Van Gilder,’ she’d said to her. ‘I can’t tell you how I know what I do and it has to be kept confidential, because I don’t want to be getting anyone into trouble, but is there a way you could help?’ Then Branna described everything they had uncovered about Miss Van Gilder and her son.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ Sister Antrobus said, her eyes gleaming. ‘I think I have an idea, but I cannot tell you what. Don’t mention to anyone that you’ve spoken to me.’

  ‘Leave no stone unturned when dealing with a worm,’ Branna muttered now, as she buttered yet more bread. ‘No stone unturned.’

  She would bide her time before telling the others that she had enlisted the help of Sister Antrobus. That day would come. Branna understood that in St Angelus knowledge was power and she now fancied a bit of that power for herself. ‘Next time Madge comes the big I am...’ she said to herself, slapping marge
on another slice.

  40

  At first, Amy ignored the pains. Bad stomach, she told herself. She ploughed on through the jam roly-poly the lady who did had left for pudding, but as a wave of nausea swept over her, she laid down her spoon and pushed the bowl away.

  ‘Are you leaving good food?’ her mother asked. ‘Mind you, just as well. I’m sure you’ve noticed yourself, Amy, but you are putting on a few pounds there, my girl. Won’t find yourself a husband looking more like that pudding than eating it.’

  ‘I couldn’t eat another thing. I’m full,’ said Amy. ‘I’m off to bed.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up.

  ‘Have you forgotten your manners? Since when did you think you could leave the table without asking?’

  Amy ignored her mother and walked to the door, leaving her parents at the dining table. She knew that an argument would begin the moment she left.

  ‘It’s your fault, spoiling her so much. She doesn’t even pretend to have any manners any more.’. Amy’s faults were always laid at her father’s door.

  ‘You won’t be wanting to get to bed so early soon,’ said her father to Amy’s back. ‘I’m buying us a telly.’

  ‘Well, I won’t be able to watch it, not much anyway,’ her mother piped up between mouthfuls. ‘I can’t sit in one place that long. Not with sciatica like mine.’ She eyed Amy’s bowl to see whether she’d left enough to be worth finishing off.

  ‘You manage to do that most of the week when I’m at work,’ her husband shot back. ‘You’ve got a woman coming in every day now, what else do you do if you don’t sit? You can’t even remember how to cook a potato. The range is a stranger to you.’

  Amy was almost glad they had launched into one of their arguments because she was seized by a horrendous pain. It felt as though someone had slipped a vice around her belly and was beginning to tighten the screws. She placed her hand on the doorframe for support and only just checked herself before she screamed out in agony. She gripped on tight. Stay up, stay up, were the words beating through her brain. She felt faint. Then, as fast as it had arrived, the pain began to fade.