The Mother's Of Lovely Lane

by Nadine Dorries

  Victoria chose to ignore Pammy’s running joke about Bolton being somewhere on the edge of the universe.

  ‘D’you hear, Vic? Dana’s our mate. If she needs us, we should be there. You tell her, if she wants anyone to take a few days off and pay a visit, we will be there.’

  ‘That’s nice, Pammy, but it will be difficult, because I’m not supposed to say anything,’ said Victoria anxiously. ‘You know how private Dana can be. I don’t want her thinking we’ve been discussing her.’

  ‘As if,’ said Pammy with a hint of indignation in her voice. ‘I’ll just ring meself and ask when she’s coming home. Tell her we are all missing her. Like we are. It’s not a lie. Me mam asks me every time I go home how Dana is and when she’s coming over for a roast.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell her that,’ said Victoria. ‘Dana loves Mrs Tanner and her roasts. Who doesn’t? They’re famous. Matron was asking me about them only the other day.’

  ‘Was she?’ Pammy’s eyes opened wide and she almost choked on her words as Victoria began to laugh. ‘Oh you, you got me there, eh, Victoria. Not bad for a woollyback.’

  As the girls laughed and joked about, Beth lost track of the conversation and looked away. From the corner of her eye, she sneakily watched Oliver Gaskell as he turned through the main entrance and towards gynae on ward two. The girls were heading in the opposite direction, towards the new operating theatres. Beth’s beating heart had almost stilled, although her mouth felt dry and her skin hot.

  Pammy would roast her if she could read her thoughts. Beth, the short dumpy one who wore glasses. Beth, the one no one talked to about men or love or sex or marriage. Beth, the one everyone assumed would one day be the spinster matron among them, the person everyone wanted to be godmother to their children, because they admired and pitied her all at the same time. Beth, who had never even been kissed. What am I doing, she thought to herself. He’s the Casanova of the hospital. The man Pammy despises. The doctor everyone knows is a heartbreaker. So why, as his reputation gets worse by the day, does he have this effect on me?

  Oliver Gaskell held the door open for one of the junior doctors and at the last second, before he let it swing shut, he turned his head and caught Beth looking at him. He grinned. He was well used to the effect he had on nurses and he loved it. His charm worked every time. Even on the short, dumpy ones who wore glasses. He winked and waited for Beth to smile back at him.

  He had kept a low profile since Nurse Moran had disappeared. He had spent weeks being the first to the post table in the sitting room at the doctors’ residence, ready to remove the numerous tear-stained letters she had written and burn them on the fire before anyone else saw them. He didn’t want anyone thinking he was more of a cad than he actually was. Anthony Mackintosh had told him that there had been a great deal of gossip flying around the hospital and the last thing he wanted was for either his father or Matron to hear it. He was the golden boy in both of their eyes and that was the way he wanted it to remain.

  To his surprise, Beth ignored him. She didn’t even blush. Instead, she simply turned towards Nurse Tanner and continued her conversation. But not before she had lowered her lashes and thrown him the briefest glance of disdain. He felt slightly miffed. There was no way he was losing his touch. That was absolutely not the case. Was it? Only yesterday he’d had one of the probationers glued to his side in the pub all evening. Maybe it was time to get back in the saddle now that the Nurse Moran fiasco had died down. That was exactly what he would do. He’d chat up the overly keen probationer today and offer to take her out for a meal. That always worked. Nurses’ pay was so low, they couldn’t resist a free feed.

  Despite his intentions to fuel his ego and charm yet another unsuspecting nurse, he couldn’t help wondering which ward little Nurse Harper was working on. He might have to turn back and give her the benefit of his smile once more. She must have not seen him. It couldn’t be right that she hadn’t smiled back. He was a consultant, for goodness’ sake. Every nurse smiled back at a consultant. Especially him. They didn’t just smile. They blushed, their eyes shone, their hearts raced and they were putty in his hands. He could see it in the flutter of their fingers, the fixing of the hair, the licking of the lips, the wiping of damp palms on skirts. Maybe she was just miserable and didn’t know how to smile. Yes, that must be it, he thought. She’s a stranger to happiness and that was something he knew how to fix in a flash.

  The swing door shuddered back and forth behind him. He stole one last backwards glance as the three nurses sprang up the steps to the new operating theatres and a man with a camera shouted, ‘Give us a smile, nurses. Go on, queen, please.’

  Beth, Pammy and Victoria turned to the camera and beamed and he couldn’t help noticing that Beth’s smile was the brightest. As they laughed and joked with the cameraman, a new desire for conquest sparked inside Oliver Gaskell. He felt mildly resentful of what the man with the camera, wearing a shabby coat and a cap, had just achieved, where, for the first time ever, Oliver Gaskell had miserably failed.

  *

  Dana Brogan stood at the window of her bedroom in the Davenports’ house in Bolton as the driving rain pelted the glass. It was not yet 9 a.m. and she thought of her friends, who were starting their day in the new theatre block without her amongst them to share all the excitement. Her red hair was reflected in the glass and her blue eyes stared back at her, blurred by the rivulets of rain on the outside of the leaded pane. The drops that gathered on the window mirrored those that ran down her cheek. She gazed out at the moors and the grey-brown rocky outcrop rising in the distance and thought longingly of the rolling green fields and bogs of Ireland’s wild Atlantic coast, where she had grown up.

  ‘Dana!’ Teddy called from the room below. ‘Dana!’

  ‘Coming. Just getting my cardigan.’ Dana quickly wiped her eyes, moved to the dark oak chest and heaved open a heavy drawer. She retrieved the navy woollen cardigan her mother had knitted to keep her warm on night duty and held it to her face. She was homesick and miserable and the person she wanted most in all the world right now was her mother.

  ‘Dana!’ Teddy shouted again.

  ‘Coming.’ Dana didn’t hesitate. Slipping her arms into the cardigan, she raced to the door.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ She almost shrieked the words as she ran to where Teddy was standing and grabbed his arm. ‘You’ve almost pulled those curtains down from the pole. Why didn’t you wait for me?’

  ‘Because, Dana, I have to walk. I have to get back to St Angelus. I can’t get the use of my legs back by sitting in a chair. You can’t just disappear and leave me like that when I need you, Dana.’

  She led Teddy across to the leather wing-back chair he had made his own since he’d been discharged from hospital. The seat was higher than the others in the drawing room and easier for him to get in and out of. The room had been furnished by his mother in 1920 and very little had altered since. Even though both their parents were now dead, Roland and Teddy hadn’t bothered to change anything. Roland was waiting for when Victoria and he were married and he could let her take over.

  The curtains were a heavy green velvet and Dana looked up in dismay at the one Teddy had been clinging on to for support, which was now half hanging off the end of the pole. Almost ignoring his comments, she said, ‘Oh, Holy Mother of God, I’ll have to get up on the chair and fix that now. Roland won’t be pleased.’

  ‘Who cares what Roland thinks?’ Teddy snapped as he flopped back into the chair. ‘It’s my house too. It was left to both of us.’

  ‘Yes, but, Teddy, Roland lives here all the time…’ Dana’s voice trailed off as she felt tears spring to her eyes once again.

  She was glad Victoria was coming later in the week because she didn’t know how much more of this she could take. Teddy had transformed from a loving, happy man to one who was surly and taciturn. This was not the man she’d fallen in love with. It was as though he was angry with himself about the accident. She had tried to talk to him
about this.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, you know, Teddy. That girl, she just ran out in front of your car. There was nothing you could have done.’

  Instead of being grateful for her words of reassurance, he almost bit her head off. ‘I know that, Dana. I was there, remember.’

  She had almost lost her temper as she replied, ‘You should be happy you are alive, Teddy, not constantly shouting. We all thought we were going to lose you on that awful night and I have been here with you day and night ever since. Feeding, washing, tending, nursing and caring for you, Teddy, but all you do is complain and snap at me.’

  His only response had been to turn his head to the fire and sulk. It was a full day before he spoke to her again.

  At least she had Roland to talk to. He had lived in the house alone, other than when Victoria visited, since Teddy had commenced his medical training in Liverpool. Dana was close to him. He was Victoria’s fiancé and she knew they would all be friends for life. This morning, before he left for work, he’d chatted to her in the kitchen as she prepared Teddy’s breakfast.

  ‘Dana, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you are looking quite tired at the moment. Don’t let Teddy push you around, will you? I know he is quite keen to get back to work, but as I have often heard you say, healing can’t be rushed.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t, Roland.’ Her words were weak and even she didn’t believe them. ‘It will take him a while to get back to himself. I’m sure he will soon, though. He just needs lots of tender loving care. Let me make you some tea and toast before you leave.’

  ‘No, you won’t, Dana. That is why we employ a housekeeper. You have your own patient to look after and that is quite enough. Look, when Victoria’s here, why don’t we all go out to the hotel on the top road and have a nice dinner. Why don’t you suggest it to Teddy while I am at work today?’

  Dana’s eyes lit up and she fought back the tears of gratitude. ‘What a lovely idea, Roland. Won’t that be nice. It will be the first time the four of us have been out since, oh, I don’t know, it feels like for ever.’

  In the drawing room, Teddy sat alone, waiting for Dana to bring his breakfast to him. He had made it down the stairs unaided that morning. Mabbutt will be pleased, he’d thought. I must make sure he knows. It was time to phone Dr Gaskell senior and get himself back into work.

  The thought sent a shiver of guilt down his spine. Before that day arrived, he would have to tell Dana his secret. About the black brooding cloud that hung over him. About the awful thing he had done and how the crash was obviously his punishment for the selfish way he had behaved. The kinder Dana was, the more she did for him and the more selfless and caring she became, the worse his guilt.

  He looked up from the chair as she carried in his tray. Her red hair was bobbing up and down. It had grown over the weeks and it suited her. Made her look older, more sophisticated. She was no longer the naïve young girl who had stepped off the boat from Ireland with a list of instructions from her mammy. She looked at him and smiled her beaming, trusting, so-in-love-with-him smile.

  ‘Roland is off to work,’ she said. ‘I made him some breakfast too. Victoria phoned after you went to bed last night, and do you know, the girls have their first day in the new theatres today. It must be so exciting for them, don’t you think?’

  Teddy looked into her smiling eyes and her innocence made it all so much harder to bear. As she poured his tea, only one thought filled his mind. She has to know. I have to tell her. The pain stabbed at his heart because his Dana was as proud as she was loving and kind, and the moment he confessed his terrible crime, his unforgivable sin, she would leave him and then it would be over. Before he’d had the time to tell her that he was hers – an idiot, a fool, a stupid man, but an idiot who would love her always and for ever, should she want him – it would be over.

  5

  Lorraine Tanner and Mary Delaney had been firm friends since the day a young girl from one of the dockside families had laid them next to each other in the same coach-built pram, along with two others at the opposite end, to be walked up and down the street.

  ‘Can I take your baby for a walk, Noleen?’ was a line Noleen and every young mother heard at her back door within days of giving birth. Groups of girls as young as seven competed to fill the first battered Silver Cross coach-built pram of the day. They would traipse up and down the back entries, opening back gate after back gate and calling through to the women, who were invariably standing at the kitchen sink, until enough babies had been collected.

  Mothering was a game to be played before learning to read. Live babies replaced the dolls and toy prams their parents could never afford to buy. The girls would rush to collect the best-dressed babies, those with knitted bonnets or pram suits to ooh and aah over. No one wanted to push the poor babies in clothes that were over-washed to a greyness and resembled rags. There was no fun to be had if there were no curls twisted with fingers and aided by a bottle of Goldilocks from the chemist. White leather reins were rubbed in Blanco, the chrome on the pram polished and its wheels cleaned and rubbed with the pride and tenderness of a chauffeur tending to his Rolls Royce.

  Recently, however, Lorraine had discovered another compelling reason to place herself in the Delaneys’ kitchen. That reason was Bryan Delaney, whom Lorraine had also known since the day she was born. But Bryan was now all grown up. Being a porter’s lad and working for Dessie at St Angelus, he had prospects, or so her da had said.

  ‘He’s a clever lad is Bryan, not following his da down to the docks. Not that Paddy could unload a hull ever again, but still, you never heard of a porter’s lad being killed by a crane, did you? And he doesn’t have to make his way down the steps to the stand every morning wondering does he have work on the docks or not.’

  Stanley Tanner did indeed have respect for Bryan, and pity for Paddy. Like his daughter, he came round to the Delaneys’ as often as he could, to see his mate and try to keep him cheerful.

  Paddy hated the pity. It was in the eyes of the men he’d once called his friends and workmates. The boys he had gone with on Saturday afternoons to watch Everton play when they were at home, the friends he’d gone out for a drink with on Friday nights. Before the war. These days he was less than welcoming to visitors, especially the men he had worked with on the docks and served with in the war.

  ‘It’s just that he really feels it, it has him frustrated, not being able to work or get out. It’s his pride,’ Noleen would say apologetically as, embarrassed, she escorted Paddy’s visitors out. She’d wring her hands in her apron in anxiety, afraid they would not call back. ‘I’m so dreadfully sorry. You will come again, will you? It’s just that he’s in so much pain, it makes him grumpy and grouchy, and when it’s not the stump, ’tis his pride that hurts.’

  This evening Noleen found herself having to apologize for Paddy’s behaviour once again. It was her night off and she’d come back home after evening Mass to find Stanley Tanner in her kitchen and Paddy barely speaking to him.

  ‘Don’t you be worrying,’ Stan said to her as she stood at the back gate to see him off. ‘There but for the grace of God go all of us, Noleen. There’s a lot of them just like Paddy who have returned from the war with a lifetime’s reminder. God bless him. He was fighting to keep us safe, Noleen, and everyone remembers that. Paddy copped it, we didn’t, and for that we should all do what we can. I don’t take any notice of him and neither does anyone else. He’s turned into a big nark all right, but you know what, he can’t knock me away. I’ll be round again next Saturday morning with the paper as usual, to see what he thinks and put a bet on the gee-gees for us both. That’s if he stops being all holy and afraid of Father Brennan and lets me put one on for him.’

  Noleen was too proud herself to say to Stan that this was part of the problem. Paddy didn’t have a penny to put on the horses. It wasn’t that he was being the good Catholic he pretended he had become when Stan called around. Or that he was afraid of Father Brennan and what he would say if he
knew. It was more that the money was earned by Noleen and so, even if they had any to spare, Paddy wouldn’t spend a penny of it.

  She came back in from saying goodbye to Stan and walked over and sat on the arm of Paddy’s chair. She slipped her arm around his shoulders, knowing full well that he found it more difficult to be grumpy with her when they were touching.

  They touched a great deal. On the one night a week when they did lie in bed together, Noleen imagined they were young again. That it was before the war. She would lay her head on Paddy’s shoulder, pull his reluctant arm around her and curve herself in to the length of his body. Placing her hand on Paddy’s belly, she’d feel the soft skin around his navel, unchanged, the same fine hair to thread her fingers into, the same neck to kiss.

  Her eyes would be closed, her body yearning, but Paddy always eventually pushed her away. First he’d shrug off her hand and then he would turn his face and within seconds he’d fall asleep. He had taken to wearing a pair of old pyjamas in bed, one leg tied into a knot halfway up. He didn’t want her to have to look at his stump and the end of his stump was so sensitive that even the slightest brush of the bed sheet against where the stiches had once been sent sharp arrows of pain shooting up his leg.

  Noleen couldn’t bring herself to ask him why he wore the pyjamas or why he no longer made love to her. She didn’t care that he had only one leg. He was her Paddy, the man she had loved and married when they were just sixteen. She would roll over and bury her head into the pillow to hide her burning tears of frustration and disappointment, unaware that facing the cold stone wall, Paddy’s silent tears fell too.

  ‘You are pushing all your old mates away with your stubbornness, love,’ Noleen said now as she tried to squeeze up next to him on his chair. ‘Especially Stanley. Why are you doing that? You could do with someone to talk to in the evening when I’m at work.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone to pity me,’ Paddy snapped. ‘I need no one other than my wife and my kids. That’s enough for me.’