The Mother's Of Lovely Lane

by Nadine Dorries

  There was a moment’s silence as both Matron and Dr Gaskell thought back to that horrendous time. The bombing on May the third 1941 had devastated the city and altered countless lives for ever. Mill Road maternity hospital had taken one of the hardest hits, killing mothers and babies, ambulance drivers, doctors and patients. So many were dead and the damage so bad that many bodies, including those of mothers with babes in arms, had to be limed and then cemented over. Men who were away at war, sustaining their own injuries on the battlefield, had no idea that back in Liverpool their homes were being bombed and their families lost. It was all still too much for words and as a result was barely ever mentioned. Except by the superstitious Irish community, who, when complications arose, still refused to attend Mill Road to deliver their babies.

  The door to the small kitchen off Matron’s sitting room caught in the breeze of the open window and banged shut as Elsie O’Brien, the housekeeper who looked after Matron’s apartment, wheeled in a trolley of tea and toasted crumpets.

  Hearing raised voices, Elsie kicked the brake on the trolley and decided to serve the tea as slowly as she could possibly get away with. This way she would hear more. Gather more gossip and vital information to pass back to Biddy Kennedy and the rest of the women in the St Angelus mafia. The mafia had an important job to do, looking out for the women and families from the dockside streets who worked at the hospital. They were the protectors of jobs, the feeders of children, first and last.

  ‘I will pour the tea, thank you, Elsie,’ Matron snapped.

  Elsie’s heart sank. ‘I haven’t buttered the crumpets yet, Matron. I’ll just do that first.’ She turned to Dr Gaskell, tried another tack. ‘Oh, Dr Gaskell, isn’t it awful about the accident and poor Dr Davenport almost dying.’ She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief, but Matron was having none of it.

  ‘Thank you, Elsie, I will butter the crumpets.’

  Elsie almost grumbled out loud as she shuffled her way back to the kitchen, leaving Matron to serve her own tea. She would have to resort to positioning a brandy glass on the back of the kitchen door now to hear any more news.

  Matron handed Dr Gaskell his cup and saucer and their eyes met. A calmness settled on Matron’s vast sitting room as they both reflected on Dr Davenport’s accident and the events of the past few weeks. The rain lashed up from the Mersey and beat against the windows, sending rivulets of tar down the blackened red-brick walls. Seagulls called out in the distance and the dark oak furniture gleamed in the reflected glow of the fringed lamps, testament to twenty years of devoted polishing by Elsie.

  Dr Gaskell was one of the best TB doctors the country had ever known and the most respected consultant in the whole north-west of England. He was wily as well as sharp. As he sipped his tea he hatched a cunning plan which he hoped would outwit Matron, make her see sense and allow him to prioritize the new theatre above the maternity unit.

  He looked about the familiar room, placed his cup and saucer back on the trolley and decided he would have one more go. He was going to have to drop the bomb. Her stubbornness was leaving him with no option.

  ‘Look, Matron, I am also supportive of a new maternity unit, but we will only receive money for one or the other in this budget. I would like this to go no further, and I know it won’t, but, you see, there are some very difficult problems we need to face. You don’t need me to tell you that only a century ago this hospital was a workhouse. We are built almost on the river and as a result we have, er, problems to overcome. It’s more than just mice and water rats now, I’m afraid. These, er, creatures have to be dealt with and a pair of tomcats just won’t do it.’

  Matron placed her own cup and saucer on the trolley and he saw her hand wobble slightly at the mention of the loathsome, dirty creatures whose name he dared not speak. She knew what he was referring to. She knew everything. But it was something she refused to acknowledge. The cursed inhabitants of the Merseyside slums, the processing plants, the docks and the shops – and, it would seem, her hospital.

  ‘Being so close to the Mersey, the old theatre block just isn’t fit for purpose any longer. There was another subphrenic abscess on male surgical today. The patient had to return to theatre to have it drained and then the antibiotics will help to deal with it, but we both know that not so long ago that poor man would have died, more likely than not. Draining the abscess was all we had, wasn’t it, Matron? That and intensive nursing through a high fever and prayer requests to the nuns at St Chad’s that the poor blighted patient would survive. It’s the third post-operative subphrenic abscess following abdominal surgery in as many months. Mr Davis is beside himself. He doesn’t want this to reflect on his technique as a surgeon, and nor should it. Very soon the Irish will think he’s cursed and refuse to be operated on by him.’

  ‘We do not have those dirty little creatures in my hospital!’ Matron was as close to raising her voice as she had ever been in all her years at St Angelus.

  It did not go unnoticed and Dr Gaskell’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Her complexion had drained, her eyes had brightened and her body had stiffened. ‘It must be down to Mr Davis, it’s something he is doing wrong.’ Matron picked up the teapot to refill their cups. The tea slopped over as she did so and when she sipped from her cup, she almost choked on her tea.

  Dr Gaskell continued regardless as she removed her linen handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her lips. ‘Well, actually, it isn’t just Mr Davis. The latest arrived following an appendicectomy. Mr Carter operated on that patient.’

  He leant forward, picked up his own cup and saucer and sipped very carefully at his tea while he allowed that fact to sink in. ‘We have a serious problem, Matron, and I think I know what might be causing it. There is only one way I can convince you of this. I shall return tonight after my supper at 8.30 p.m. and we shall inspect the theatre together. More crumpet, Matron?’

  Matron looked very worried. He had her cornered, but she knew that there was no way she could refuse. He was up to something and she would have to play along. She returned to her tea, to play for time and give her a second to compose her thoughts.

  At the sound of the word crumpet, Elsie appeared like a genie from a bottle. She popped her head around the door and into the room. ‘Need more crumpets toasting, Matron?’

  ‘Er, no, thank you, Elsie, I can’t even manage this plateful.’ Dr Gaskell had turned Matron’s stomach with his talk of those dirty black creatures that she wouldn’t even countenance speaking about in relation to her hospital.

  Elsie looked bitterly disappointed as she retreated into her domain.

  ‘All right then,’ Matron said. ‘I don’t suppose I can refuse. Although, I must say, you are becoming something of a dramatist in your old age, Dr Gaskell.’

  ‘Well, we shall see about that later, shan’t we,’ he replied as he allowed a smile to raise the corner of his lips.

  *

  Elsie had a spring in her step as she made her way to the greasy spoon for the domestics’ morning coffee break. Even though Matron hadn’t allowed her to listen in on the conversation with Dr Gaskell, she had still picked up some crucial snippets. She was met by the warmth from the cookers and the smell from the huge urns of milky coffee as she opened the café door. Seeing that there was no one at the food counter, she made her way over to it.

  ‘How is anyone supposed to eat that bacon?’ she asked the young girl who was serving. ‘That’s a tin of bacon fat you’ve got there – where’s the meat?’

  The young girl looked at Elsie with a resigned dismay that told her she had answered that question many times that morning already. ‘Shall I put a rasher on your barm cake for you?’ she asked.

  ‘A rasher? You can’t call that a rasher. I suppose you’ll have to, but I’m only paying half price. Bacon meat is not the same price as bacon fat – go and tell the cook that. She has the fattest kids on Vince Street and we all know where the bacon’s heading, don’t we?’

  The girl gave Elsie an imp
erceptible nod. Her mother and Elsie played bingo together. Embarrassed, she fished about in the tin of bacon fat, speared a couple of slices with a fork, laid them on a barm cake and passed the plate over to Elsie, who made to take her purse out of her apron. The girl looked around, checked that no one was watching and shook her head.

  Elsie understood. ‘Thanks, queen,’ she said as she winked. ‘You’re a lovely girl. I’ll tell your mam what a good’un you are.’

  She let her unopened purse slip back into her apron pocket, then turned her head to glance around the vast room of scrubbed tables and wooden chairs. She was trying to locate Biddy, Madge, Betty Hutch and Branna – her usual cohort of domestics. But Hattie Lloyd, Dessie Horton’s next-door neighbour, was sitting on a table near the counter and spotted her first. Elsie almost jumped as Hattie shouted out her name.

  ‘Did you just pay for that bacon barm, Elsie? Didn’t notice you open your purse.’

  ‘Of course I did, you silly cow. What business is it of yours anyway? Your eyes are nearly as big as your mouth, what a pity they don’t see too well.’

  Elsie saw the raised hand of Biddy Kennedy and without waiting for a reply threaded her way through the tables to where her friends were sitting.

  She slammed her plate down on the table as she pulled back her chair.

  ‘I’ve got your coffee already,’ said Biddy. ‘I saw you coming in. What’s wrong with your face now, Elsie?’

  ‘Bloody Hattie Lloyd, that’s what. She just accused me of not paying for me bacon barm.’

  ‘And did you?’ Biddy picked up her cup and blew on the scalding coffee, sending milky froth scudding into the air.

  ‘No, I didn’t. I complained about the lack of bacon. If I pay for a bacon barm, I want bacon on it. She’s over-made-up and over-opinionated, that one. God, she gets my goat. How dare she accuse me of not paying.’

  Biddy nodded in agreement and as she did, she turned in her seat and glared at Hattie Lloyd. ‘It is a disgrace and it’s right out of order. You don’t do your own down,’ she said.

  She pulled a packet of Woodbines out of her handbag and offered them to Elsie, who took one. There was a code amongst the women. Madge Jones never offered her cigarettes round nor took one from anyone. When she could, she bought the fancy gold-tipped ones from America, brought in on an American ship, and she shared them with no one. Betty Hutch and Branna McGinty rolled their own.

  Everyone lit up at the same time and as matches landed in the overflowing central ashtray, Biddy leant her elbows on the table and spoke.

  ‘I know we look after our own here, but I think the morning-shift cook in this place is taking things a bit far. She’s cutting the meat off the bacon and taking it home, probably selling it and robbing us of a decent breakfast in the process.’

  Madge nodded and Branna spoke up. ‘For some of the women with more than a few kids, and God knows, there are enough of them working here, the bacon barm they have in the morning is all they have to eat all day, until they get a couple of ’tatoes in the evening or a bit of scouse. Someone needs to have a word.’

  ‘I was thinking the same thing meself,’ said Madge. She held up her plate, on which lay an open barm and two slices of translucent fat. ‘It’s a joke.’

  ‘A job for Dessie, I would say,’ said Biddy as she lifted up the top of Elsie’s barm, peered inside and blew her smoke straight into Elsie’s face. ‘I’ll have a word with him. She wants her son to be taken on when he leaves school next summer. There are rules and they can’t be broken. She needs telling.’

  ‘So, what’s it to be, Elsie, new theatres or a maternity unit?’

  They moved on to the next pressing subject quickly. The half-hour break always passed before they knew it and they needed five minutes to get back to their posts.

  Madge grinned as she drank her coffee. Madge and Elsie were always in competition to demonstrate who had the greater access to information about the goings-on at St Angelus. It was a tightly run race. As switchboard operator, Madge’s ability to both answer calls and take useful notes was crucial to the St Angelus mafia. After years of practice, she could sniff a useful conversation a mile off and knew exactly when to slip the plug back in when a light was still on, slowly. Elsie, on the other hand, had perfected the art of loitering with a duster or tea tray.

  ‘Well, we don’t know yet,’ Elsie replied, ‘but Dr Gaskell is up to something tonight. He’s taking Matron to the theatre when it’s dark to show her why something needs doing. I couldn’t make any sense of what he was talking about to be honest. He said the hospital has to deal with worse things than mice.’

  Betty Hutch raised her eyes from the rim of her cup. She only spoke when she had something of note to say. She had cleaned the old theatres most nights for the past twenty-two years and she instantly knew what Dr Gaskell was up to. ‘It’ll be a new theatre then,’ she said.

  They all turned to look at her as one.

  ‘Do you think so?’ asked Biddy. ‘It’s not like Matron not to get her own way. Dr Gaskell usually backs down.’

  ‘Not on this, he won’t,’ said Betty. ‘He will definitely win.’ No one ever argued with Betty Hutch.

  ‘Well, that’s been a useful coffee break, I would say,’ said Biddy. ‘We’ve sorted out the cook and we know which way the wind is going to blow on a new theatre or maternity unit, which is something even Matron doesn’t know yet.’

  ‘That’s not so unusual,’ said Madge. ‘Most of us know what’s happening before Matron.’

  Biddy opened her handbag to extract her cigarettes again. ‘Has anyone noticed how tired Noleen Delaney is looking? Jesus, have you seen the cut of her? The woman is like a ghost.’

  ‘I saw her leaving the hospital when I went to clock on this morning,’ said Madge. ‘I shouted to her, but she was miles away, didn’t hear me.’

  ‘She would have been on her way to St Chad’s,’ said Branna, who had not stopped eating for long enough to fully join in. ‘She spends more time on her knees, that woman. And their Mary, she doesn’t lift a finger, you know. She should be ashamed of herself. Gives her mother the runaround, and with all that Noleen has to do for their Paddy. Mary should be helping with the housework after school so her mother can get to bed during the day, but instead she’s never out of Maisie Tanner’s house, messing about with nail varnish and the like with Lorraine Tanner. The two of them, always eyeing up the lads, they are.’

  ‘Paddy’s a right grumpy sod. I’d have done for him meself if he was mine,’ said Madge.

  Biddy felt her temper rising. ‘Did you expect him to return from the war cock-a-hoop because he left his leg behind? He’s a moaner, I’ll give you that, but not because of his leg. It’s because he has no work. No pride to be found for a man with no pay. The fact is, we have let this go on for far too long. We should have acted sooner. Noleen is worn into the ground and it’ll be an early grave she’s heading for if we don’t wake up and do something soon.’

  Elsie struck a match and they all bowed their heads towards the centre of the table to take a light then nodded in agreement as they inhaled.

  ‘I wonder if Dessie could help. There must be a job – something, somewhere, for God’s sake – that a man with one leg can do?’

  ‘Can he write?’ asked Madge.

  ‘How would I know that? I’ve never asked him to send me a bleedin’ letter. I wouldn’t have a clue. Don’t no one tell Noleen we’ve been talking about them, though. She’s too proud, that one. Mighty proud. She doesn’t understand our ways. Poor woman looked like she was dead on her feet. Haven’t passed a word to her for weeks. With her being on nights, I just never see her any more, and she never gets to the bingo since Paddy came home injured and that’s been years now. She never asks for help, always gives the impression she’s coping, but she can’t hide the bags under her eyes and she’s nothing but skin and bone. I blame meself. I must have been asleep, taken in by all her codswallop, I was.’

  A scream pierced the air from the dir
ection of the hot counter and they all looked over to see Hattie Lloyd almost throw her plate back over the counter. ‘I’m not eating that disgusting… creature!’ she shouted. ‘It’s still bloody alive. Look, its legs are moving.’

  The room fell silent and everyone watched as the cook herself came out to retrieve the plate from the floor. The young girl behind the counter was unperturbed. Finding unwanted creatures in the food was a not uncommon occurrence. They frequented the darkest corners of the hospital too, from the kitchens to the porter’s lodge. She made to fill another barm cake.

  ‘I don’t want it now,’ shouted Hattie. ‘It’s put me off, it has.’

  The ladies looked one to the other. No one spoke. Wry smiles were exchanged and then Biddy broke the silence and said, ‘Ah, God bless her cotton socks. It couldn’t happen to a nicer woman now, could it? Oh, look, here come the nurses on their break, we must be late.’

  Pammy Tanner had breezed into the café with Victoria Baker and Beth Harper.

  ‘I see Nurse Brogan isn’t with them,’ said Branna.

  ‘No. And here’s a bit of news,’ said Madge as she placed her cigarettes back into her bag and snapped the clasp shut. ‘You know how Matron’s been allowing Nurse Brogan to look after poor Dr Davenport in male orthopaedics, after her own shifts? Well, when it’s time for him to go home, she’s letting her go and nurse him in Bolton, where he comes from. I heard Matron talking to Dr Davenport’s brother on the phone – you know, Nurse Baker’s young man. A solicitor, he is. Very grand. So Nurse Brogan won’t be here, the poor love. She’s going to be stuck at Dr Davenport’s bedside for a very long time if you ask me.’

  ‘Well, that will be a test of true love, eh?’ said Branna. ‘I’d kill my husband meself if I had to spend every day sat at the side of his bed looking at his ugly mug.’