Christmas Angels

by Nadine Dorries

  Mrs Duffy appeared not to have noticed the momentary silence as she continued to remove trays of bacon and roast tomatoes from the range. As far as she was concerned, Emily lived in the accommodation at the hospital, and Emily’s careful visits to ruffle up the bed had kept this impression alive for those who chose to make it their business. Emily knew that women like Mrs Duffy and Matron still lived by the pre-war codes of morality and conduct. For women like herself, however, the war had changed everything. As a woman of the 1950s who had survived the Blitz, she had quite different attitudes to women even twenty years older than her, let alone women of her mother’s and grandmother’s generation, even if this was sometimes only expressed behind closed doors. A revolution was brewing and women like Emily Haycock were leading the way, secretly pushing back the barriers of expected behaviour, inch by inch.

  ‘Sit down, Sister Haycock, there’s enough for you too – but not for that dog! Stop it, all of you! Do you all think I came down with the last shower? I can see the dog munching under there.’

  Scamp knew his second name. Dog. It was the only one Mrs Duffy used. His ears dropped and he slunk so low, he was almost as flat as the parquet floor on which he lay. It was his good luck that breakfast was in full flow and Mrs Duffy had no time to throw him out.

  ‘The dog has more bacon than I do at breakfast, Mrs Duffy,’ chirped up Celia Forsyth.

  The room fell silent and everyone looked at her. She had the good grace to blush and shoved the last of her bacon into her mouth, failing to mention that one of the probationers had slipped her bacon on to Celia’s plate.

  ‘Come along, nurses, you’re all running late again. I want you out of here in fifteen minutes. I won’t have anyone saying I allow my nurses to be late on the wards. Sister Haycock, half of these nurses are to be making their way to your classroom.’

  Emily laughed. ‘Just five more minutes, Mrs Duffy.’

  The room was filled with morning chatter and the clinking of teacups and saucers. Steam rose from the pot and the kettle whistled a low hum, informing Mrs Duffy that it was on standby, ready and waiting for quick refills.

  ‘Actually, I came for a reason other than the delicious breakfast,’ said Emily, ‘and it’s not to talk about assignments either.’ She smiled as she buttered the toast Mrs Duffy had sliced and handed to her. She was so busy talking, she forgot to say thank you.

  The table quieted as the boys appeared in the doorway, both clasping their caps before them. Like all boys from the dockside streets, they knew their manners. ‘All done, Mrs Duffy,’ said Jake.

  ‘Ah, good boys, rest your feet a minute. Sit on the sofa in front of the fire in the hallway and I’ll bring your bacon sandwiches out. They’re keeping warm on the range.’

  Jake and Bryan made to protest.

  ‘Away with you now. Did you think I would let you lug that big heavy tree all the way here and you wouldn’t leave with full stomachs as a reward?’ Mrs Duffy bustled out and the girls watched her leave.

  ‘Look, I have to get to the school of nursing or Biddy will send a search party out for me.’ Emily bent her knee and stooped slightly, secretly slipping Scamp a scrap of bacon.

  The probationers asked for permission to leave the table.

  ‘Of course. Off you go,’ said Emily. ‘It’s only Nurse Harper and Nurse Tanner I need, unless anyone else is working on children’s?’

  Celia harrumphed and left the table. ‘This way, probationers,’ she said as she marched towards the stairs.

  Pammy and Beth watched her go. ‘Honestly,’ said Pammy, ‘that girl is the end. She treats those probationers as though they’re her handmaidens. Talk about pulling rank. God help us all if she ever becomes a ward sister – she’ll be bad enough as a staff nurse.’

  Emily knew that there was more chance of hell freezing over than of Celia Forsyth becoming a ward sister. However, the only person who didn’t seem to know that was Celia Forsyth herself.

  ‘Right, listen, I need to be hot on the tails of those probationers. I’ll get it in the ear from Biddy if they’re making a noise in the classroom and arrive too long before me. Oh, don’t tell me, I know very well who’s the boss in my school of nursing. I am just a convenience. It’s Biddy who has the keys to the kitchen, and isn’t that always the most important person anywhere.’

  She pushed her chair in and looked from Pammy to Beth. ‘Now, we have only weeks until your exams, and Christmas gets in the way, but there is something I want you to do. As you know, Sister Paige is a new ward sister and I thought it would be a wonderful welcome for her if children’s entered the Nursing Times competition for the best-decorated hospital ward. You have heard about that, I take it?’

  Pammy and Beth both nodded, too occupied with the last of their breakfasts to reply.

  ‘I’m asking you, Nurse Tanner, because you have the creative resources of your mam to call upon, and Nurse Harper, you have your organizational skills. Putting those two together, it seems to me that St Angelus can’t lose.’

  Pammy sat back in the chair. ‘Flippin’ ’eck – exams, a national competition to win, the St George’s concert and Christmas! I was only complaining to Anthony last night how quiet everything was. How fast things change. We’d better get a move on, eh.’

  Beth didn’t comment; she was enjoying the warm glow brought on by Sister Haycock having mentioned her organizational skills. As an army daughter, she was well used to routine and discipline. They had been moved from camp to camp, and everything in their day-to-day lives had been marched to the beat of a list. There was a list for everything. For all of her life, Beth’s daily to-do list had begun with the words Get out of bed – included for the sheer pleasure of being able to tick it off. ‘I think you can count on us, Sister Haycock,’ she said, finding her voice at last.

  Pammy nodded enthusiastically. ‘Let’s have our first day, though, shall we. I’ve got no idea what happens on children’s ward.’

  Emily made for the hallway and, lifting her coat from the hook, pushed her arms through the sleeves. Pammy got up to help her. Sister Haycock had known Pammy’s family for all of her life. Her and Maisie, Pammy’s mam, had been born and raised on the same streets. There was a closeness between them that Pammy would never exploit in the hospital, but in Lovely Lane she felt on safer ground. ‘So, what do I tell my mam about you and Dessie Horton then? Does anyone know you have just about moved in?’

  ‘Shhh!’ said Emily sharply, looking around. ‘No, I don’t want anyone to know yet. I’m going to organize a pow-wow at your mam’s house about the decorations, so I’ll fill her in on all the details then.’

  ‘Does Mrs Duffy know?’ asked Pammy.

  ‘Heavens above, no! She’d be the last person I’d tell.’ Emily bent down and scratched the top of Scamp’s head. ‘Right, I’m off.’ She picked up her handbag. ‘You both need to be too – and it’s your first day. And, Nurse Harper, don’t worry about Sister Tapps. Be kind to her. Hers is a sad story. I will tell you one day, but all you need to know just now is that like everyone else in the St Angelus family, we look after her. Do you know, she nursed me as a child when I was in the hospital?’

  ‘No!’ the cry went up.

  ‘She’s that old?’ said Pammy, genuinely incredulous.

  ‘Get away, you cheeky articles,’ said Emily.

  Emily turned back from the front door and looked around the hallway for Mrs Duffy, to say goodbye, but there was no sign of her. ‘Did you see where Mrs Duffy went to, boys?’ she asked Jake and Bryan, who were sitting on the sofa opposite the hall fire.

  Jake looked up from his now almost empty plate. ‘I didn’t, Sister Haycock.’

  Emily glanced back down the hall. ‘Oh, well, never mind. I’ll catch her soon. If you see her before you leave, tell her I said thank you for breakfast.’

  ‘Right, we need to get a move on too,’ said Beth.

  They threw their cloaks over their shoulders. Sister Tapps might give Beth a scolding if she was late, and besides, it
said on her list to arrive at ward four at 7.30 a.m.

  ‘If the van wasn’t full of Christmas trees, I’d offer you a lift, nurses,’ said Jake as they all trotted down the steps together.

  *

  The Lovely Lane home fell deadly silent as the front door slammed behind them. The sound of the brass pendulum in the dark oak grandfather clock, unheard during the hullabaloo of breakfast, once again filled the hall as it swung to and fro. The whistle from the kettle was now a gentle hum as it stood abandoned on the side of the range. Scamp, sensing he was alone, crept out from under the table and, standing on his back legs, took the scraps of toast crust and bacon bits from Pammy’s plate. Having been fed almost two slices of toast and four bacon rashers by the nurses, he padded out of the room, gazed at the shut front door longingly, as if expecting the nurses to return at any second, and with a loud sigh spread himself out before the smouldering fire in the hallway. He would enjoy the heat on his full belly while he could. The sounds of the coal shifting in the grate, the buses and cars moving along the road, and the children running past the park gates on the way to school all kept his ears pricked with interest, until, unable to keep his eyes open any longer, he fell into a deep sleep.

  Mrs Duffy stood in the kitchen, as still as a marble statue and almost as white. Her back was propped against the sink, her handkerchief clasped in her hands, and tears were running unchecked down her cheeks. She had heard every word, even before Emily had delivered the killer blow: ‘She’d be the last person I’d tell.’

  She hadn’t wanted to hear that. She hadn’t meant to listen. She’d been returning the boys’ empty cups and saucers to the sink and had made her way in through the rear kitchen door and that was when she heard it. Sister Haycock was as good as living with Dessie Horton, and Mrs Duffy was the last person she wanted to tell. The words had cut her like a knife. Did she think she was a gossip? Someone who would judge her? She appeared to have confided in everyone except her. Why? Hadn’t she been the one who had comforted Emily when she lived in the nurses’ home? Wasn’t she the one who kept food aside for when Emily came back from her nights looking after Alf her stepfather? Didn’t she worry about them all – all of her nurses, and that included Emily – every single day? Childless herself, she regarded them all as her daughters, pouring all her care and affection into ensuring that they felt a mother’s love even though they were far from home. And yet Sister Haycock had said that she, Mrs Duffy, would be the last person to know her important news. Did she think she would disapprove of a lovely man like Dessie Horton, whom she herself had known for years? Was she not a part of their family and they of hers?

  ‘You stupid woman,’ she said bitterly as she dried her eyes. ‘You think you’re their mother, but you aren’t. You are nothing to any of them. Just the person who cooks the food and fusses too much.’

  She moved over to the table and did something she never did: she sat down and poured herself some tea. She looked over to the jar of mincemeat she’d put on the side only minutes before. She’d been looking forward to the night ahead, to making the pies and decorating the tree. But now she let out a big sigh. Even in the midst of her dejection, her thoughts turned to whether she could fit in making the mince pies on top of everything else. She would need to start soon.

  She looked at the tea and felt a pang of guilt. ‘Just one minute,’ she said to Scamp as he lifted his head and glanced in from the hall. He rose and padded into the kitchen and laid his head on her lap, his big brown eyes staring into her own. She remembered giving Sister Haycock the plate of toast and how her hand had reached out and distractedly taken the plate without any thanks. Fresh tears welled. ‘Oh, you stupid woman, what’s wrong with you?’ But she knew what was wrong, really she did. She felt rejected. Unwanted and untrusted.

  Scamp licked the salty tears from the back of her hand. She looked down at him and for a moment studied his eyes. ‘I even let them persuade me to keep you,’ she said to him. The irony was not lost on her, as he whined in response and gazed back up at her, that the only person who really cared for her was the dog she had initially rejected.

  ‘Oh, pull yourself together, you stupid old woman.’ She pushed her handkerchief back up the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘This is not how the war was won, eh, dog?’ She let her fingers caress the soft spot between Scamp’s eyes and, without a second thought, she rose, picked up the remains of Beth’s breakfast and placed it on the floor at his feet. ‘They think I don’t feed you, don’t they. I just don’t want them doing it, that’s all. At least I got that right.’

  She retrieved the handkerchief from up her sleeve and blew her nose hard. It was what it was, and no amount of tears or desolate feelings could change that. They had their own lives, every one of them, and when the day came for her to retire, not one of them would give her a second thought.

  But despite her disappointment and hurt, Mrs Duffy could not change who she was. She loved her nurses and less than half an hour later she was making a fresh batch of mincemeat for the mince pies and shouting at the maids to get a move on with the rooms. She needed to get the washing dry in time, ready to be ironed and back on to the bottom of the nurses’ beds before they returned home.

  7

  Aileen Paige stood in front of the white, panelled door with the laden breakfast tray in her hands. Each morning she said the same thing once she had clumsily gained entry to the room – ‘We must find a small table to put outside your bedroom door, Mother’ – but she’d never found the time to buy one, and now that she’d just been made a ward sister, there would be even less opportunity.

  This morning was no different. She gave a big sigh, raised her right knee, wobbled slightly on the other foot, gripped the tray, balanced it on the knee, quickly let go with her left hand, turned the brass knob, flung open the door and just managed to grab the tray back into both hands before a catastrophe occurred all over the ruby-coloured carpet. Her heart beat a little faster. One day, she thought, I’ll drop the lot.

  Watery winter sunlight shone through the arch-paned window and illuminated a dash of tea that had shot out of the spout of her mother’s favourite Old Country Rose china teapot and stained the white linen tray cloth brown. Her mother would notice. ‘Drat,’ said Aileen out loud.

  ‘Is that you, Aileen?’ came her mother’s voice from within.

  Aileen took a deep breath. She wanted to shout back, ‘Who else would it be, Mother? Do you have another daughter who would go to the freezing back kitchen to cook your eggs for exactly three minutes and thirty seconds?’ But she didn’t dare. Aileen never liked to rattle the bars of her mother’s cage – the results could be disastrous. ‘It is, Mother. I have your eggs for you, just as you like them.’

  Her mother had leant forward in her wing-back armchair to watch Aileen as she walked towards her with the tray. She had already taken herself to the toilet and arranged the chair to her liking, but she’d done so when she was sure there were no observers to comment on her agility. She waved her hand in the air as if to dismiss Aileen. ‘Oh, take them away. I can’t eat them today. I’m just not feeling up to it.’

  Aileen froze and stared at her mother, then took another deep breath before continuing towards the chair. ‘Don’t be silly, Mother. You have to eat. Come along now.’

  Mrs Paige grumbled and frowned at Aileen. ‘Just because you’ve been promoted to ward sister, it doesn’t mean you can start bossing me around, you know.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ said Aileen.

  Having laid the tray down on the table between them, Aileen flopped into her own wing-back chair in front of the fire, opposite her mother. She picked up the bone-handled butter knife and began to butter her mother’s toast. Mrs Paige didn’t like her toast soft. Aileen was instructed to stand it in the toast rack while she carried the tray up from the kitchen to make sure that the steam rose and left the toast crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. She also had to pour the water into the pot as her very last job before she came up the sta
irs. Her mother drank her tea weak and almost at boiling point and would happily dispatch Aileen back down to the cold kitchen if it wasn’t just right. As a High Church Anglican, she would often comment, ‘Stewed tea reminds me of the Irish Catholics – thick and bitter.’

  Mrs Marion Paige had never been afraid to speak her mind or assert her will and this had not changed after she’d become chair-bound following her stroke. Illness had not diminished her authority or acerbic nature, and Aileen’s married sister, Josie, was far from sympathetic. ‘You need to get things sorted, Aileen, because I’m not looking after her,’ Josie had informed her when their mother had returned home from the hospital. ‘My James wouldn’t tolerate it, and besides, the children tire Mother out.’

  ‘Mother’s food and what she eats is all she has any real control over,’ Aileen had retorted. ‘She spends a long time in that chair and if she wants to fuss about her food, that’s fine by me.’

  ‘She’s living in the past, Aileen, as if the war never happened. She’s always been like that. Thinks she can still speak to people as though they’re slaves, and she has always had you wrapped round her little finger. But I’m afraid I cannot help. I have my own substantial home to run.’

  Aileen was not convinced that Josie genuinely wanted her to put their mother in her place. She’d started to sense that there was something else going on. It was the way Josie wouldn’t meet Aileen’s eye when she spoke to her, the way she shifted from foot to foot and never stayed in her company for more than minutes at a time. Aileen suspected that Josie was not being honest or playing fair, but she didn’t know how or why.