CHRISTMAS ANGELS
Nadine Dorries
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About this Book
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About Christmas Angels
1950s Liverpool
Christmas is the most harrowing time of year for the nurses of St Angelus Hospital.
A brilliant nurse secretly battling a fatal illness over Christmas… A starving baby boy abandoned in the freezing cold… A cruel, controlling mother, determined to block her daughter’s nursing career at all costs…
In the run up to Christmas, nurses Pammy and Beth are aiming to win the coveted national decorating competition for the St Angelus children’s ward, but drama after drama threatens to upset their plans.
Amid the hardship and poverty of 1950s Liverpool, only the humour and community spirit of nurses and patients will get the Angels through their toughest Christmas yet.
Contents
Welcome Page
About Christmas Angels
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
The Real Christmas Decorating Competition
About Nadine Dorries
About The Lovely Lane Series
About The Four Streets Trilogy
Also by Nadine Dorries
Newsletter
From the Editor of this Book
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
For my agent, Piers Blofeld,
with thanks for believing in me
1
It was long gone midnight and Maura Doherty was sitting on the kitchen settle with her second daughter, Angela, lying half on her knee, half against her chest as she hugged the sleeping child close to her. Sleet gusted against the kitchen window, carried on the squalls that flew straight up the dockers’ steps from the Mersey and battered the houses least able to withstand it.
Maura’s husband, Tommy, set another two pans of water and a kettle on the range to boil, ready to fill the room with yet more steam. ‘Here you go, love,’ he said, treading carefully as he carried the enamel washing-up bowl filled almost to the brim with scalding water and placed it on the floor next to her. He was in his vest and braces but was still wearing his cap. A damp roll-up, fighting to remain lit, dangled from his bottom lip. ‘I’ve put half a teaspoon of the Vicks on the top, like you said.’
Maura turned her head to the side and could see the greasy film, melted, floating on the surface of the water. Even before she’d looked, she’d smelt the menthol vapour and felt it hit the back of her throat. ‘I don’t think it’s working, you know,’ she said, her face etched with worry. ‘Her breathing’s not getting any better. It’s getting worse, if anything.’
Tommy squatted down by the side of her, his head close to Angela’s. Like many dockside families, he and Maura dreaded the winter, all too aware of the consequences of living in the rows of terrace houses on the banks of the Mersey.
They both heard the door at the bottom of the stairs open on to the kitchen. In the puddle of amber light thrown down from the bare bulb stood their eldest daughter, Kitty, dressed in her flannelette nightdress and clutching her threadbare teddy with one hand and sucking her thumb with the other.
‘Is Angela sick?’ she asked as she removed her thumb from her mouth. A long strand of spittle stretched from her face to her hand and remained intact.
Maura nodded her head and looked down at Angela, who was dozing, red-faced, and struggling to breathe.
‘Come here, queen,’ said Tommy as he strode over and scooped Kitty into his arms. ‘Angela’s not very well. Your mam, she’s going to stay down here with her tonight, but you are going to need to be a help in the morning because I’m on the early shift. The Cotapaxi and the Norry are both coming down from the bar first thing.’ Tommy, along with every other man on the streets, worked down on the docks unloading cargo. ‘So, back to bed for you, and I’m coming up meself now too.’
Kitty was still half asleep and her eyelids were heavy, barely able to stay open. She nodded earnestly at Tommy. ‘I always help Mammy, Da.’
‘I know you do, love. Come on, give Mammy a kiss and let’s go back up.’
Kitty wrapped her legs around her father’s waist and an arm around his neck and Tommy carried her over to Maura. He bent down so that Maura could just about reach up to kiss her cheek. Kitty’s pigtail plaits brushed against Angela’s face and Angela opened her eyes and looked straight up at her sister, but she didn’t smile. She tried to sit up, but her chest was rattling loudly and within seconds she fell back to sleep.
Tommy walked with Kitty over to the stairs. ‘I’ll come back on me break in the morning, Maura, and I’ll tell Kathleen when I knock on for Jerry on my way down. If there’s no change in the morning, we’ll take her to the doctor’s.’
Maura nodded. She was too exhausted to argue and Tommy was right. It was free now, they didn’t have to worry about the money any more. ‘Aye, we will,’ she whispered as the door closed and she heard the heavy tread of her husband and daughter making their way back up the uncarpeted but well-scrubbed wooden stairs. She sighed and with her lungs full of steam and vapour, shuffled Angela higher up into her arms, lay back against the settle and closed her eyes.
Tommy had brought down some old grey army blankets and pillows from the bed upstairs and tucked them around the two of them, but Maura didn’t sleep. She listened to every fresh and ferocious battering of sleet on the window and every breath her daughter took in and out until the night had slipped away and the first light crept in through the windows.
*
Aileen feared that she would be late for work. She hated to be late for anything, but today of all days would be disastrous. She’d been asked to call in to Matron’s office mid morning and she had no idea why. She was dreading it and, as usual, her mother was doing her best to make things worse. Aileen had lost count of the number of times her mother had forced her to take time off, claiming that she was so ill she required Aileen’s personal nursing care at home. Aileen had almost become ill herself with the worry of it all. Even though they now had Gina to help out, it still happened too often, and today looked like it might be one of those days. The wheedling and the complaining, all too familiar.
As Aileen moved over to the bed and laid out her mother’s clothes, a sinking feeling settled into the pit of her stomach. She remembered the many occasions she had tried to cajole her mother in the past and how torturous those mornings had been and how weak and futile her own excuses had sounded. ‘But, I can’t take time off. I’m a staff nurse now and besides, Sister Tapps is a stickler. You have to turn up to the ward half dead and need admitting to St Angelus yourself before she will accept any excuse for absence, Mother.’
When Mrs Paige had first been discharged from hospital following her stroke, she had exploited the guilt she knew Aileen carried for being healthy in the face of her mother’s infirmity. She abused her daughter’s compassionate nature, her willingness to help, and in the first few months, Aileen had allowed her to do so. That had been her big mistake.
If i
t hadn’t been for Sister Tapps, Aileen was very sure, she would not have remained in nursing. One day not quite twelve months ago, after yet another morning when Aileen had had to make her excuses, Sister Tapps had taken Aileen into the sitting room on her ward and closed the door behind her with barely a sound.
‘Take a seat, Staff Nurse Paige,’ she had said, in her softest voice.
Her gentle manner had done nothing to ease Aileen’s anxiety. This is what you do with parents when a child has died, she’d wanted to say to her. You bring them in here, close the door, ask Branna to fetch tea and sit them in front of the fire, with a clean handkerchief ready on your sideboard.
She was convinced Sister Tapps was about to send her to Matron, to dismiss her. But there was no handkerchief on the polished sideboard. No glass of water to restore the equilibrium when the tears were spent. She looked through the glass panes above the handle of the wood-panelled door. It had been painted buttercream to please the children and keep the atmosphere light and airy, quite different from the dark coffee colour of all the other St Angelus wards. Branna was changing the flower water and cleaning the vases that had been laid out on the highly polished central ward table. It didn’t look as though she’d been asked to make tea. The nurses were pulling out the lockers from the sides of the beds into the centre of the ward to clean them.
She decided to be the first to speak. ‘I’m sorry, Sister Tapps, it was Mother, she was ill and she was difficult about me leaving the house. I would never want to be late, ever – I love my job, you know that. She’s just so difficult and—’ When Aileen had sat down, she’d had no idea that she would need one of the handkerchiefs that Sister Tapps kept ready for bad-news days.
‘Oh, goodness me, child.’ Sister Tapps jumped up and crossed the room.
Tappsy – as she was known to all the nurses – was looking thinner, Aileen thought, though that was hardly surprising. She had to be in her mid to late sixties, she reckoned, and her hair had turned white and fine a while ago. She’d not lost the hint of the soft Irish brogue from her voice though. She’d left Galway some fifty years earlier and had not returned for many years, saying to anyone that asked that the journey was too long and that she didn’t like to be so far away from the ward and her charges.
‘Look, you have no need to apologize to me. The nurses on ward six have told me how trying things can be for you.’ Sister Tapps was doing her best to be discreet. Aileen’s mother had a reputation for being one of the most tiresome patients St Angelus had ever known.
She handed a handkerchief to Aileen, who took it without embarrassment and blew her nose. Sister Tapps sat down in the comfortable chair next to her – carefully placed so that she could reach out and take a distressed mother’s hand, should the need arise.
‘I’m sorry, that was an impertinent thing for me to say. There have been so many telephone calls of late to Matron’s office, when your mother has been ill.’ Sister Tapps smiled. She was trying her hardest to put Aileen at her ease.
Aileen knew that if it had been any of the other ward sisters at St Angelus, she would have been out on her ear. Reminded of the phone calls, the most recent having been made only that morning, her heart beat madly with the anxiety she felt at letting people down. She hated having to run down the road to the telephone box at the junction with Green Lane and call Matron’s office whenever her mother won, which was far too often.
Matron was always sympathetic but firm. ‘I am so sorry to hear your mother is poorly, Staff Nurse Paige. Do tell her that we can always arrange for a domiciliary visit from Mr Stephens, her consultant, and that we shall expect you back on duty later today.’ In her skilful way, Matron subtly conveyed to Aileen that she didn’t believe in Mrs Paige’s frequent bouts of illness either.
‘Thank you, Matron, thank you.’ Tears of frustration would spring to Aileen’s eyes, her throat would thicken and her heart would beat so fast and loud beneath her ribcage, she could barely hear her own thoughts as the door of the telephone box clicked shut behind her. As the cold air hit her face, she would take a big gulp and tilt her burning cheeks to the wind. She loathed the smell of the phone box. The lingering aroma was always there waiting for her when she dashed in: stale cigarette smoke, dirty windows, cold metal. It frequently chimed with the way she felt, cheapened by the lies and excuses she was forced to make.
‘Look,’ said Sister Tapps, ‘Matron and I just wanted you to know that we understand what a dreadful time you must be having, looking after your mother full time and trying to be the best staff nurse I have ever had on my ward.’ Tappsy smiled.
Aileen sniffed. It was true. She was trying her hardest to be the best staff nurse St Angelus had ever known. In a year or two Sister Carter, the sister on ward three, Aileen’s favourite ward, would be retiring and Aileen wanted that job more than she had wanted anything in her entire life. She prayed that Matron might overlook her occasional lateness and consider her for the post.
‘We want to help you to get yourself sorted out so that you can do the job you love without any cause for worry. I’ve noticed how stressed you’ve seemed just lately and it’s obvious you’re struggling. So we’ve come up with a plan.’ Tappsy clasped her hands together, stood up and opened the door to call for Branna, the ward domestic.
Here comes the tea and sympathy, thought Aileen, but it was far from that.
‘Branna, did you write down the details for your daughter like I asked you to?’ said Sister Tapps.
‘I did, Sister.’ Branna McGinty delved into the pocket of her long overall and took out a piece of paper. She pretended not to see Aileen’s tears and kept her eyes on the note as she held it out towards her. ‘That’s my address, and my daughter’s name. Gina. Sister has known her since she was a baby. She’s fifteen now and she’s looking for domestic work.’
She held out the piece of paper towards Aileen, who instinctively reached out and took it as she looked up at Sister Tapps. Between them, Matron, Tappsy and Branna had come up with a way to help her. A solution she had been too afraid to consider, let alone mention to her mother. But here were her superiors telling her what she had to do, and now that it was mooted as a real possibility, it seemed obvious. They had an answer to her problem and its name was Gina.
It was now almost a year since that conversation in Tappsy’s office, and this morning, as her mother continued spitting out her whining venom, Aileen almost blessed herself with relief, as she had many times since. Gina was now a part of the Paige household, paid for by Aileen out of her own pocket to work at the house all the hours Aileen was at St Angelus. Gina had been the answer to her prayers and it was because of her that Aileen had been able to hold it all together. Even though her mother hadn’t let up, the guilt of responsibility had faded with the knowledge that Gina was there. Aileen had even managed to join the St Angelus choir last summer, which she loved. She had a Christmas carol rehearsal to go to that evening, in fact. At St Chad’s.
Her mother’s voice broke through. ‘You simply cannot go to work whilst your mother feels like this,’ she pleaded. ‘What if something happens to me? What if I have another stroke? Do you want me to be here all alone without my daughter at my side?’
Aileen had heard this so many times before, she barely had to even think of her response; it was automatic. ‘We have Gina here to look after you, Mother. That is why I took her on and you agreed that would be the best thing. You won’t be alone because we have Gina and she is really very good, isn’t she?’
‘I did not agree, and anyway, what if I did? I had no option. You would have left me here alone. Your sister, Josie, she doesn’t approve, you know.’
Aileen had heard this one before too. ‘Well then, maybe Josie can call in more often than once a week for a lunch she makes Gina prepare. Maybe she can look after you?’ Aileen almost bit her own tongue off. Her mother was doing that thing again, making her say things she would regret for hours afterwards, bringing down her mood.
‘I shall tell Josie you
said that,’ her mother fired back. ‘That girl works so hard, with her husband and children to look after. I don’t know how you can say the things you do.’
‘I’m sorry, Mother, I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just that I have a busy day ahead on the ward, and a meeting with Matron, and Gina is here, so you won’t be alone.’
‘Really, Aileen, is that how much you think of me? Leaving me to be looked after by a slip of a girl who doesn’t know one end of a thermometer from another. I don’t think I will feel very safe if you aren’t here. Don’t you see that, darling?’
Aileen looked up sharply. Her mother only called her ‘darling’ when she was up to something.
‘Sometimes I feel just like I did before I had my stroke, very light-headed and off my food, and you know how that nearly killed me. You wouldn’t want me to be alone with that girl if it happened again, would you now? You know how bad I was last time, and imagine if your father could see you now, what would he think?’
Aileen stared at her mother and the words ‘he would be so proud of me’ ran through her mind. Her mother saw the look in her eyes and bristled.
*
Two hours later, Aileen braced herself for the meeting with Matron. She was convinced she was about to be reprimanded or, almost worse, that Matron had made a decision about who was to be the new sister on ward three, now that Sister Carter had finally retired. Please let it not be Sister Antrobus, she prayed. Maybe Sister Antrobus had made a complaint about her – was that what this meeting was about?
Elsie O’Brien, Matron’s housekeeper, led her to the door of Matron’s office and tried to calm her shaking hands. ‘Here now, don’t you be getting nervous about seeing Matron, her bark is worse than her bite. That’s more than can be said for the dog though. Blackie. Watch out for him, his basket is behind her desk. Look at my leg here.’ Elsie lifted up her leg to show Aileen a silvery purple scar that shone out from underneath her stockings. ‘The little bugger got me before I got him back with the mop. He’s Matron’s baby, but don’t even try and stroke him, he’ll ’ave your fingers off.’
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