‘Morning, nurses,’ shouted Jake. ‘Are you off to the new theatres?’
‘Yes, we are.’ The girls had stepped off the kerb and gathered around the passenger window.
‘Well, let me tell you, the men from the Echo are up there with a big camera, so give them your best smiles, nurses!’
‘You have a flamin’ cheek, Jake – we always wear our best smiles, don’t we, girls?’ Pammy placed her hand on her head and smoothed her hair back under her cap as she spoke.
Perfecting her appearance was a preoccupation of Pammy’s, although Beth would have argued that it was one every girl in Liverpool seemed to share. They all seemed to Beth to be leagues ahead of girls from the army stations she’d grown up on. She envied their attractiveness, style and shrewd quick-wittedness. It was a fact, the girls in Liverpool were more beautiful than any she had seen in any city anywhere. No wonder sailors wrote haunting songs about them.
Beth was standing beside Pammy and she smiled at Bryan. She didn’t notice the colour rise from under his shirt, race up his neck and blend into his hairline.
Victoria picked up her fob watch and glanced nervously up the road. ‘We are going to be late and it’s Sister Pokey in charge this morning,’ she chided as she stepped back on to the pavement.
‘She is that, Nurse Baker.’ Jake ducked his head to better see through the window. ‘She’s been there since half past six. Sister Haycock sent Biddy over to help and she’s been driving her mad.’
‘Oh, bloody Nora,’ Pammy exclaimed. ‘Thanks for warning us, Jake. See you, Bryan.’
Pammy and Beth stepped back on to the kerb and ran the few steps to catch up with Victoria, who on the mention of the name Sister Pokey had decided to set the pace and carry on walking.
‘Our Lorraine can’t stop talking about Bryan Delaney,’ said Pammy, turning to watch the back of the van disappearing towards Lovely Lane. ‘I’m going to have to see if I can do a bit of me mam’s matchmaking there.’
‘Ah, that’s so sweet,’ said Beth. ‘Lorraine has grown so quick. I’ve noticed the change in just these two years.’
‘She’s growing too fast. Most of the girls around the docks are well married with a couple of kids by the time they’re nineteen. I’m regarded as a spinster. The wedding in St Chad’s on Saturday, she was only sixteen. Mam doesn’t want that for our Lorraine. She wants her to come to St Angelus like me and get qualified. God, I am so nervous about today!’
‘Me too. I’m terrified about theatre,’ said Victoria. ‘It’s my first time working with Sister Pokey. And I can’t imagine what it’ll be like with people being cut open all the time. What I enjoy most is talking to the patients, but unless we’re helping the anaesthetist, I can’t see we’ll ever get to talk to a patient who’s awake.’
The wind was stronger as they turned the corner into the road that led to the rear of the hospital. They made their way towards where the gates had once stood, before they were removed for the war effort. All that now remained were rusty tears on two large mounds of red sandstone, testament to the size of the ornate iron gates that had served to prevent people escaping, in the days when the hospital had been a workhouse.
‘I’m the opposite,’ said Beth as she pulled her cape tighter across her front. ‘I can’t wait. I have always felt that theatre was my calling. I wouldn’t worry, though, Victoria. Sister Pokey is just looking after the opening and the first few weeks, so I heard Mrs Duffy say.’
Mrs Duffy was the housekeeper at the Lovely Lane home and although not an official member of the St Angelus mafia, she always seemed to be one of the first with the news.
‘They must have to appoint someone else soon. Mrs Duffy told me last night, Pokey wants to be back down in casualty as soon as she can. There’s a staff nurse too, remember. She’s been on theatre for years. The most exciting thing we will get to do is washing blood-stained wellies and instruments.’
The girls groaned as one.
‘Oh, I do really get that, Beth,’ said Pammy. ‘Feeling like theatre is your calling. It is funny, the idea of the patients being asleep. To be fair, the patients are great, it’s the relatives that drive me mad. Have you noticed how the fellas on men’s medical will be smoking their fags and gabbing away in the day room, messing around, being a right pain in the backside with all their barmy, smutty jokes, and yet as soon as visiting time comes around, it’s into bed with a wan face and groans of pain, all for the benefit of the flamin’ wives. Then they come running into the kitchen or the sluice and blame us.’
‘Oh, I know,’ exclaimed Victoria. ‘Give me strength. If you had seen the queue outside Sister’s office at visiting time last night. A line of worried-looking wives asking, “Have you got a painkiller for the old man, Nurse? He’s in agony, he is. Says he’s been asking for hours but no one’s been to give him one.” It drives me to distraction. I told one sucker of a wife just before I left, “Has he not had any painkillers? In pain now, is he? That’s most odd because only half an hour ago he was following one of the probationers around the ward offering to help her give out the drinks. He was more interested in which nurses’ home she was living in than asking for pain relief.”’
‘You did not!’ gasped Beth.
‘Oh yes I did. No one blames me for leaving a patient in pain and gets away with it. It’s just sympathy from the wives they want. Pathetic, if you ask me. And to think, some of them were away at the war, fighting. You would never believe it.’
‘Well, I don’t think Teddy Davenport was like that when he was a patient on orthopaedics,’ said Beth. ‘And we know his relatives, Victoria, don’t we? They’d have got an earful if they’d tried.’
The girls began to laugh. Teddy would become Victoria’s brother-in-law as soon as Victoria had sat her finals and her wedding to Roland Davenport could be arranged. She had grown up near Roland and Teddy, in a village near Bolton, and had known them since they were boys. The Davenports had been the Bakers’ solicitors for several generations and it was Roland who handled the affairs of the almost bankrupt Baker Hall estate following the tragic death of Victoria’s father. Roland supported Victoria in her desire to honour her late mother’s memory by completing her nurses’ training before they got married.
‘Oh, here we go, the doctors are out and off to work,’ said Pammy.
They all slowed their steps as a group of doctors dashed out of the door of the doctors’ residence and made their way down the path towards the main hospital entrance just ahead of the nurses. One had a slice of toast in his hand which he ate as he walked. The others were talking amongst themselves, white coats flapping about them in the breeze.
Oliver Gaskell was at the front, chatting away, a gaggle of junior doctors close to his elbow and hanging on his every word. Beth glanced at Pammy and Victoria. Both had steadfastly turned their faces in the opposite direction. Pammy to make a point, Victoria in solidarity. Certain that neither was looking, Beth turned and fixed Oliver Gaskell with her eyes. She wanted him to look at her without immediately losing interest and searching for a more attractive place to rest his gaze. To regard her as someone worth a second glance. Look at me, please. Just notice I exist. She almost closed her eyes as she willed him to turn his head and look across at her.
As if he could hear her thoughts, Oliver Gaskell lifted his chin and looked straight over. It wasn’t unusual. He couldn’t help himself. He made a point of checking out every nurse in the hospital. Always in search of a new victim.
Beth’s heart began to flutter like a bird trapped inside the cage of her breast, but she betrayed not a hint of it as, without smiling or acknowledging him, she held his gaze. The blood began to pound in her ears and she felt almost faint with the effort.
An expression of bemused interest swept across Oliver Gaskell’s face. He furrowed his brow and, looking at Beth, he grinned, lifted his hand and pushed his dark, overly long fringe backwards.
Beth did not smile back. Instead, she dropped her gaze and turned her head towards Vi
ctoria, as though the brief exchange had never taken place. ‘Do you know when Dana and Teddy will be back from Bolton, Victoria?’ she asked. Her voice wobbled slightly, but neither Pammy nor Victoria appeared to notice.
‘I’m not sure,’ Victoria replied. ‘I’m travelling up to see Roland when I’m off-duty later this week. As you know, Dana and Teddy are staying at the Davenport home with him, but he and I are going to sneak off and stay in my house. That’s the beauty of living in the country, no one will see him coming in and out, and Dana and Teddy won’t have to worry about the neighbours thinking they are alone together. Roland’s going to give the housekeeper some time off. Although God only knows what the neighbours would think they were up to – Teddy is only just walking unaided. It’s going to take for ever to build up his leg muscles after the accident. To be honest, I’m not sure he has a muscle left on him. The wastage was quite a blow for him, apparently, when the plaster casts were taken off. Dana says there’s more meat on a butcher’s pencil than there is on Teddy’s legs.’
‘His muscles will have wasted away from all that time lying in the hospital bed when he was on traction,’ said Beth. ‘It’s a common enough complication. The physiotherapist gave Dana all the exercises he had to do before they left.’
Beth was the clever one of the group. She took her studies seriously. As the daughter of an army major, she had spent her life travelling from camp to camp and strict routine had become her means of survival. Each homework assignment from the school of nursing was completed before the other nurses in Lovely Lane had so much as put their teacups down, extinguished their cigarettes and changed out of their uniforms.
‘Matron has been amazing, letting Dana go to Bolton to look after him,’ said Pammy.
‘Well, he is a St Angelus doctor,’ said Beth. ‘We do look after our own.’
‘Yes, but she is his girlfriend and there are no parents at his home, are there Victoria?’
Victoria nodded as she pulled her cloak across her front and gripped it tight. ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather when Matron agreed to it,’ she said. ‘I think it might have something to do with Roland being there – the big brother, and him being a solicitor. She probably thought that he was suitably strait-laced and would keep an eye on Teddy and Dana.’
She grinned and there was a knowing twinkle in her eye. She and Roland had decided that three years until she finished her training was far too long to wait to enjoy the more intimate side of their relationship. They had cast aside the convention that there should be no sex outside of marriage. With no parents alive herself, Victoria was more than aware that if Matron, or even Mrs Duffy, the housekeeper at the Lovely Lane home, knew exactly how intimate she and Roland were, they would faint before her eyes. It helped that after Victoria’s father had died and the estate had been sold, she had been left her own home, the former dower house, not far from the Davenport family home where Roland and Teddy lived.
‘That’s rich, considering the two of you,’ said Pammy with a wink.
Beth was quiet. In affairs of the heart she had no authority. She felt excluded from what were now daily conversations between her friends. Dana, Victoria and Pammy were all happily dating and when the four of them were together, she felt like nothing more than a bystander as the talk always quickly turned to discussing Teddy, Anthony or Roland and the complicated ways of men.
‘And what about you and Dr Mackintosh, eh, Pammy?’ Victoria asked, raising an eyebrow.
Pammy shrieked at the sheer audacity of the suggestion that she and Anthony had taken their relationship to the next level. ‘We haven’t done it, Vic, honest to God. Me mam would kill me if I had, and when she finished, me da would start. Besides, I’d be terrified of getting caught. Aren’t you worried?’
‘Golly, no, not at all. Roland is very careful. He tells me he has it sorted and as his brother is a doctor, I totally trust him.’
‘Does he jump off at Edge Hill?’ Pammy looked fascinated as she waited for Victoria to reply.
Now it really was Beth’s turn to speak. She had no idea what Pammy was talking about. ‘Edge Hill? What does that mean? That’s the train station before Lime Street, isn’t it?’
‘Sorry, Beth.’ Pammy placed her hand on Beth’s arm and threw her a pitiful glance.
Beth hated the way they began any conversation about their boyfriends or their relationships with the word ‘sorry’.
‘That’s just it. Roland is, er, getting off before Lime Street.’ Pammy and Victoria looked at each other, their eyes twinkling. Both ignored Beth. ‘Not being from Liverpool, I had no idea what that even meant until I heard the charge nurse on male medical discussing it with a patient who had had a vasectomy.’
‘Really?’ said Pammy. ‘If you’re a Catholic, like me, there’s no other choice.’
‘Well, it’s working just fine for us too,’ said Victoria. ‘He hates using a sheath, says it’s like having a bath with his mac on.’
Pammy and Victoria both began to giggle.
‘That patient on male medical,’ interjected Beth, ‘he had a dozen children. That was why he was an in-patient. Oliver Gaskell said that if his wife were to have another baby, it would kill her. Jumping off at Edge Hill wasn’t working too well for him,’ she said triumphantly.
‘Beth!’ Victoria and Pammy both spoke at once. ‘Are you sure?’
The girls had learnt much in their time at St Angelus but still had a way to go in the ways of life and men.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure all right. If I were you, Victoria, I would tell your Roland that it’s time to take his bath with his mac on.’
Pammy and Victoria stopped dead in their tracks, mouths open as Beth walked ahead.
‘I’m sure the problem was that he wasn’t considerate enough, not doing it properly. Not really that bothered if his wife became pregnant. My Roland has a great deal of self-control and is extremely considerate towards me. He would never let me become pregnant before we were married.’
Victoria half ran to catch up with Beth.
‘You both need to have that, really. The self-control. You can’t leave it all to the man and, well, my Roland is very intelligent, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He would never be happy with just heavy petting. Neither of us would, Beth. I’m a modern woman and I’m not a Catholic. I just don’t believe in waiting for marriage so that I can do what I want to do.’
Beth simply smiled at Victoria. She wasn’t as convinced about this jumping off at Edge Hill method of birth control as Victoria appeared to be.
The main entrance of the hospital and the red sandstone steps up to the new theatre units were now in sight. Pammy decided to change the subject. ‘I miss Dana. I wish she was here for the new theatre opening,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ said Victoria, grateful for the relief from Beth’s scrutiny. ‘Who would ever have imagined that we’d even be having this discussion? Sometimes I wake up and feel as though it isn’t real. If I feel like that, Dana must feel ten times worse. Poor Roland, he doesn’t even like to go to work and leave Teddy, even with Dana in the house.’
‘How long until Teddy’s back to work, do you think?’ asked Pammy. Now that the doctors were ahead of them, she was scanning their backs for a glimpse of Anthony.
‘Well, you won’t believe this, but he says he’s going to be back on duty in two weeks.’
‘No way! That can’t be right.’
Victoria now had all of Pammy’s attention. ‘No, I don’t think so either, but it’s what he says. He’s adamant. To be completely honest, it’s more than his legs that are giving Dana a problem. That’s the main reason why I’m going up there this week. Dana says things aren’t right. I’m not sure what she meant, but when I was talking to her on the phone last night, she began to cry and when I asked her to explain what was up, she couldn’t. All she kept saying was, “Don’t let Teddy know I said anything,” which would be jolly difficult anyway, because she barely said a word and what she did say didn’t really make any
sense. She was really very distressed. I wasn’t going to tell you both, to be honest, not until I came back, because it might all be about nothing at all. But the more I try and persuade myself of that, the less convinced I become.’
‘What? What do you mean? Why haven’t you said anything before now?’ said Pammy.
‘What do you think it is? Is she all right?’ said Beth, who had missed Dana the most.
The four girls were close. They had begun their nurse training on the same day, they lived in the Lovely Lane nurses’ home together and they knew each other’s secrets. They had been through the worst ordeal following Teddy’s horrific car crash and it had brought them all as close as it was possible for friends to be. The twenty-four hours following the accident had felt like a living hell to them all and they still could hardly believe that Teddy, the joker, the vibrant, noisy, cheekiest doctor in the hospital, had very nearly lost his life. Until Dana was back amongst them and Teddy was back at work, they couldn’t properly move on from that horrific night and return to normal.
‘I don’t really know, Beth. She was almost too upset to be making any sense at all. She just kept saying I wasn’t to say anything to any of you. I talked to Roland straight after – she hadn’t said anything about not telling him – and he said he’d heard Teddy snapping at Dana during the day, and that Teddy was acting like a man with a death sentence over his head, not a man whose life had been saved and who was improving at a rate of knots. Apparently, he has lost all his happy sparkle and become a very morose and miserable person. Anyway, I will tell you more on Saturday, when I get back.’
‘Poor Dana, I bet she’s missing us,’ said Pammy. ‘Make sure you get back as quick as you can on Saturday. All the way to Lime Street, Vic, no jumping off.’ She nudged Victoria in the ribs. ‘Vic, if we need to get ourselves over to Bolton on our off-duty days, you just tell us. Do the trains go out as far as where those animals covered in white fluff live? Oh, what are they called? You know, the woolly-backed things?’
The Mother's Of Lovely Lane Page 10
