The Four Streets

by Nadine Dorries

  ‘Oh, gosh no,’ said Lizzie, ‘and you won’t either. The poor woman went off duty that night, slipped on the wet floor in the kitchen and broke her own arm. She won’t be back at work for a while.’

  Lizzie walked on to take the pulse of the child in the next bed, as Nana Kathleen turned to Nellie and said, ‘Well now, who says there isn’t a God, eh?’

  ‘God doesn’t have red hair,’ laughed Nellie.

  ‘Doesn’t he now?’ Kathleen laughed with Nellie, but didn’t ask her what she meant. She didn’t need to. She had seen the flash of red hair hovering over Nellie as she struggled on the bed that night.

  Nana Kathleen visited every day and brought tales to Nellie of how Alice was coping with Joseph.

  ‘I know it’s often an ill wind that brings bad luck,’ she said to Nellie, ‘but Alice is doing really well with Joseph. In fact, Nellie, fingers crossed but if you ask me it seems that she is finding it hard to resist the little fella’s cheeky face.’

  Nellie was open-mouthed, hungry for every detail. ‘How, tell me how, what is happening?’ she demanded to know.

  ‘Well, I kid ye not, but when I got back from the hospital yesterday, they were both asleep on the chair in front of the fire. Him lying full across her chest and she looking as contented as ye like with her arm across his back. It’s her mother’s love, sneaking out whilst she is asleep, so it is.’

  Nellie gave Kathleen a hug. Her nana was a miracle worker.

  Both children, but especially Nellie, loved the daily life of the ward – the hustle and bustle, the comings and goings of the cleaners, porters, doctors, kitchen staff and nurses – and it wasn’t very long before they knew everyone by name.

  But not everyone and everything was as it seemed…

  Stanley had worked as a hospital porter at the hospital since he had been demobbed from the army at the end of the war in 1945. He had seen the job advertised in the Liverpool Echo four days after he returned home and applied immediately. His old mum, who was alive at the time, wasn’t happy.

  ‘Try and get on the buses,’ she said. ‘It’s not bad money and free travel, you won’t ever have to pay a fare again, and neither will I, when they get to know I’m yer mam. Or what about the English Electric on nights, that’s good money?’

  Stanley needed to look after his mam. His father had been killed in what was supposed to have been the war to end all wars and she had spent every day of World War Two in fear of a telegram arriving. Stanley was her only son and had been wrapped in cotton wool since the day he was born, eight months after his father had volunteered for Kitchener’s army and been dispatched to the Somme, where he survived for just two days. When Stanley’s father left, he had boarded the train at Lime Street with his head held high.

  When Stanley’s own dreaded call-up papers had arrived, he had burst into tears.

  His mam had a point about the money at English Electric, but Stanley wasn’t interested in money. The buses weren’t a bad option. Lots of children used the bus to get to and from school, so there would be plenty of opportunity for the illicit contact he sought. He would be able to look at and talk to them and, if he was lucky, make friends with some. However, the hospital job was calling him: vulnerable children in a hospital bed who might need his help in some small way. Stanley closed his eyes when he read the job advert. Could there possibly be a more alluring option?

  He also knew he couldn’t be the only one. There must be others who thought like him. And if there were, then surely they would look for exactly the same kind of job and maybe he would recognize a kindred spirit, someone he could share his dark and secret thoughts with. Maybe Stanley could find a friend.

  It took him only months to realize that in Austin, another single porter who still lived with his mam, he had a mate. Austin looked at the younger girls in exactly the same way Stanley looked at young boys. Stanley had looked for the signs when the porters were gathered in the X-ray department to be allocated children to take back to the wards.

  A number of conversations were taking place between X-ray staff, parents and porters, but, like Stanley, Austin found it hard to concentrate on the adults talking, because his gaze would rest on a particular child, sitting in a wheelchair, waiting to be returned to the ward. Stanley knew that gaze. The gaze that lingered on the bare legs or the soft blond hair.

  Stanley saw that Austin always carried sweets around in his pocket. Stanley went one better. He asked his mam to knit him a little glove puppet teddy to put in his top pocket. The kids loved that. They couldn’t wait to jump into his arms to see if the teddy was asleep. His mam came round to the idea of her son as a porter and thought he was a hero. When he got home after a shift at the hospital, he was treated like a prince.

  ‘I hope they know how lucky they are at the hospital to have a man as kind as you working with them children?’ she would say, at least once a week. Stanley thought it was he who was the lucky one. His decision to apply for the hospital porter’s job had been a stroke of genius.

  Once he had plucked up the courage to make the connection with Austin, letting him know that he and Stanley had a shared interest, his life transformed overnight. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, and Stanley had to wait for the right moment to come along, but, sure enough, eventually it did.

  One busy theatre day, they were taking a little girl from the operating theatre directly to the nurses’ station. Only five years old, she lay on the theatre trolley semi-conscious, naked, and with tubes and drips everywhere. Stanley saw how long Austin’s gaze lingered on her exposed limbs.

  Even when Stanley spoke to Austin, his eyes kept darting back, until the theatre nurse placed a gown and a sheet across the child’s body, for the journey back to the ward.

  ‘OK, lads, quick as you like. They are waiting for her right now on ward two,’ snapped the theatre nurse, in a businesslike tone, as she moved on to receive the next child coming through the operating theatre doors.

  As they walked down the centre of ward two, with the empty trolley, having delivered the poorly patient to her bed and the care of the nurses, Austin came out of his trance and said, ‘What did you say, mate?’

  ‘Nowt,’ replied Stanley, smiling to himself.

  On the way they passed a child, aged no more than three, crying, sitting alone on the edge of her bed. Stanley watched Austin look around the ward to check if there were any nurses nearby, but they were all busy with the child they had just brought back from surgery. Having made sure that he was not observed, Austin moved over to the little girl.

  ‘Eh, eh, Queen, what’s up?’ he said, picking her up and swinging her into his arms. ‘What do you think is in my top pocket, eh? Go on, look.’

  Her tears began to subside and immediately turned to giggles when she put her hand into Austin’s top pocket, and he pretended to growl and bite at her hand as she brought out a sweetie. Having stopped the tears, Austin moved on to the next stage.

  ‘Come on now; give Uncle Austin a big cuddle.’

  She put her grateful arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. She was wearing only a loose hospital nightdress. Facing him, with each leg around his middle and her arms around his neck, Austin put his hand on her tiny bottom and pressed her body into his stomach.

  ‘There, there, Queen, Uncle Austin is always here for a cuddle.’

  Stanley was talking to the child in the next bed, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off Austin. He saw the tear in Austin’s eye and the look of ecstasy cross his face, before they heard a nurse’s footsteps approaching. Austin put the little girl hurriedly back onto the bed.

  As they walked away, they put on an exaggerated clowning act for the children, Austin pretending to beat Stanley for being slow, making the children roar with laughter.

  ‘Oh no,’ the men squealed, ‘Nurse Helen will tell us off, now what are we going to do?’ They winked at the nurse walking past, who laughed and shook her head.

  As they made their way back to the porters’ hut for a cup of t
ea, Stanley plucked up the courage and said to Austin, ‘I like the little lads, myself.’

  Austin looked at him sharply, Stanley winked, and that was it: a whole new world of opportunity and delight opened up to him from that day on.

  Years later, very little had changed. Austin had introduced Stanley to others who had the same predilection.

  ‘There is nothing wrong with us,’ said Austin to Stanley, ‘we just like something different from others, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.’ They all felt the same.

  Austin had introduced Stanley to the Sunday meeting that took place in secret at Arthur’s house on County Road.

  ‘Homos will be in the law soon,’ said Arthur, often. ‘We will be one day too.’

  Stanley supposed that, as he liked boys, he was a ‘homo’ too. The difference was, he liked them from the age of two to twelve. Once they reached puberty, they were of no interest to him.

  Every week they paid to have pictures sent to a postbox delivery address. Each person in the group took it in turns to collect them before meeting the others at Arthur’s house. They circulated the envelopes of photographs amongst themselves, most of which came from abroad and were of varying quality, but they paid the money happily. This was the darkest of secrets and those that shared it were well practised in keeping any knowledge hidden. The code was that if anyone was caught collecting the pictures, the rest were protected. They all knew that one day maybe one of them would have to take the rap, but they also knew the others would be safe.

  Over the years, Austin and Stanley had learnt a new technique: to make friends with the families of children they liked. Today, Austin had gone to a child’s birthday party and he had been invited to sleep over. The last time he had done that, the father had caught him taking a photograph of the daughter in the bath and had asked him to leave. Austin sailed too close to the wind sometimes. He had been out of his league with that family. After that incident, they spent two nervous weeks being extra careful, wondering if the father truly suspected anything and had written to the hospital.

  Stanley was always telling him, ‘Stick to the poor kids. They are the ones whose parents are too busy or neglectful to notice. They are the kids who don’t get any affection and always need a cuddle. No one buys them presents or sweets. They are always more grateful and if they squeal, no one will believe them or be bothered anyway. Do as I do, stick to the poor kids.’ That was Stanley’s fail-safe.

  Austin loved his new Kodak Brownie and couldn’t stop taking pictures to sell on. It was so easy in the hospital. The children thought they were smiling for the camera alone. Sometimes, they were sitting on their parent’s knee. Stanley was amazed that never once did a parent ask why a hospital porter was taking a photograph of their child.

  Poor people were unused to, and lapped up, attention.

  A camera was a novelty. It paid attention.

  Stanley was on nights, he had his usual job to do for one of Austin’s mates. He thought it was probably the priest, but he was never told whom he was helping. They all preferred it that way and he knew that if someone was helping him, they never knew who he was either. Secrecy was king. What you didn’t know, you would never be able to tell.

  Stanley’s job tonight was to ring one of the children’s wards at midnight and tell the nurse someone would have to go to the pathology department to pick up some test results for the doctor who was coming on night duty, and that they needed to hurry because the pathologist had to leave. He would say that he was sorry, the porter would have done it but he was run off his feet.

  It took a good ten minutes for a nurse to walk to the pathology department from the ward. Five to work out what was going on and think they had missed the pathologist, ten to walk back and then another five for the cigarette she would smoke outside the ward door before going back in. That was thirty minutes when it was guaranteed there would be no ward round. If there was only one nurse on the ward, she usually stayed in the office until her colleague got back, in case the phone rang. It always did. That was the second stage. To ring the ward again, seven minutes exactly after the first call.

  If it was the priest, he hardly needed help because he was known on all the wards as a regular visitor. According to Austin’s instructions, Stanley had already checked that the fire-escape door to the car park was unlocked and left slightly ajar, a spanner in his hand in case a curious nurse popped over to ask what he was doing.

  Before he pulled the curtain across, he took a peep at the bed closest to the door. Lying there was a young thin girl, barely into her teens. Stanley found that a bit odd. Austin liked them younger even than Stanley, as did most of the men in their group. Age two to eight was Austin’s preference. Ah, thought Stanley, then it must be the priest; he seems to like them from quite young to right into their teens. Dirty bastard, he thought, as he put the door back with the bar not quite catching the lock. The irony was totally lost on him.

  As soon as they were recovering and up and about, Kitty and Nellie begged to be put in charge of the night-time drinks trolley, while they helped the night nurse settle the younger patients down to sleep. The trolley had jugs of hot chocolate and Horlicks with plates of biscuits. They had never had anything other than tea at home. Hot chocolate was a luxury to be marvelled at.

  Nellie and Kitty asked the nurses to keep their beds together and they moved progressively up the ward each morning. They pulled the curtains round to make their two beds into one when the doctors did the ward round. They had been like sisters before and, even with the age difference, they were more so now. Everyone loved them; they brought joy into a ward that could often be a heartbreaking place for staff.

  They became so close they even got into each other’s beds where they would chat for hours. When the nurses came round they made them squeal with laughter, as Nellie would lie flat on her tummy and hide in Kitty’s bed under the covers. They were such a happy and pleasant pair, the ward staff would be sorry to see them both go, even Sister, who never laughed.

  Kitty was very happy until, on the third day, Father James paid them a visit. Without warning, he suddenly appeared at the foot of Kitty’s bed, where Nellie was also lying, and offered them a jelly baby out of a crumpled white paper bag, which he took out of his cassock pocket.

  ‘Say no,’ Kitty whispered urgently, as he approached.

  Nellie looked at Kitty in amazement. She was expecting Nellie to say no to sweets?

  ‘Do as I say,’ said Kitty, with such urgency in her voice that Nellie didn’t dare defy her, even though she loved jelly babies and didn’t get sweets very often.

  Father James sat on the end of the bed in which they were both lying.

  ‘Your mammy asked me to pop by, Kitty, and say prayers with ye both for a speedy recovery, even for ye, Nellie,’ he said, looking at Nellie sneeringly. Father James had not forgiven Nellie for having the cheek to kick the door shut in his face just after Joseph was born.

  Kitty said nothing. Nellie turned sideways and looked at her in amazement. Kitty was being rude in not speaking to Father James and Nellie knew that wasn’t allowed in the Doherty house.

  Father James turned to Nellie. ‘I would like to have a quiet word with Kitty on me own. Nellie, would ye like to go and see if the nurses need ye for anything? Do ye not have your own bed to go to now, whilst Kitty has a visitor?’

  Nellie immediately threw back the corner of the counterpane, ready to dive out of the bed and dash to the nurses’ office. Anything to get away from a strange and uncomfortable situation.

  ‘No,’ said Kitty so loudly that Nellie pulled the counterpane back in shock and didn’t move. Nellie always did everything Kitty told her.

  Father James made small talk on his own for five minutes and then, after offering them the jelly babies again, took his leave to talk to another child at the top of the ward who went to the same school as the girls.

  For the rest of the day, Kitty hardly spoke. Nellie had noticed that whilst Father James had been sitting on the
bed talking, his hand had been pressed against Kitty’s thigh. While he spoke, Nellie stared at his hand and, when he became aware of it, he pulled it away sharply. Nellie watched Kitty’s face and thought she looked scared.

  As he walked away back down the ward, Nellie took hold of Kitty’s hand and said, ‘I hate Father James so much.’

  Kitty put her good arm round Nellie’s shoulders and hugged her.

  ‘God, I love you, so I do, Nellie Deane,’ she said and they both laughed.

  Nellie asked Nurse Lizzie why Father James was in the ward so much.

  ‘He comes to pray over all the poorly children,’ said Lizzie. ‘Do you know him? Isn’t he just fantastic, he’s always popping in.’

  Nellie didn’t know what this information meant, but she knew it wasn’t good. She knew the people she trusted the most in the world didn’t like Father James and that included Kitty and her Nana Kathleen. If they didn’t, neither did Nellie.

  Each evening there was excitement on the ward, as the name of the child going home the next day was written on a board. Kitty and Nellie both cried when they discovered that Kitty was going home the day before Nellie.

  Nellie wanted to go home. She desperately missed Joseph and Nana Kathleen and her da. Her da brought Joseph into the ward some nights, but she could see he was missing her too. Suddenly, now that Kitty was going home, everything had changed; she was very keen to leave herself.

  Nellie and Kitty parted to sleep in their own beds on Kitty’s last night, after discussing how they would live in the same street when they grew up, become wedding-dress designers, or famous actresses, and marry two brothers so that they could become properly related.

  They had lots of hugs from the nurses, but Kitty was nervous. She didn’t want to sleep alone in the going-home bed at the end of the ward. She begged the nurses to let her sleep with Nellie, but they wouldn’t agree. The two children finally parted when the nurses came to give Nellie a sedative, in preparation for her visit to theatre in the morning, to have the final bandages removed from her eye. As she left Nellie’s bed, Kitty wept. She told Nellie she was frightened, but Nellie couldn’t reply; the sedation had worked on her like a sledgehammer and she went out like a light.